Week 4 Blog 8 Reflection on Blogging

I’m not exactly what you would consider to be a social butterfly. I’m usually content to stay home and watch TV as opposed to going to a social gathering somewhere. One of my part time jobs at a restaurant forces me to be social while my other job is in solitude. I prefer to work alone; however, web 2.0 can make it so that people like me can do both. I can literally work alone at home while collaborating with others. Whether I’m working on my Action Research Project or a course project with a team, or if I’m using web 2.0 in a job, I love the notion that I can work with others, yet still be alone. I’m still not into the whole Second Life craze, (my avatar is still the same basic guy) but as the need arises, maybe that will change. I’ve probably barely even scratched the surface as to what’s out there as far as useful tools go, so if anyone has any knowledge of any tools for the deaf, please let me know. My nearly six year old daughter is deaf and my Action Research Project has to do with developing signing lessons on the web, so any insight, leads or URLs will be appreciated. Even if I don’t use them, it’s nice to know that somebody reads my blog. Back to the group thing, I have a sister in NA and a brother in law in AA and I was wondering if there are any tools in web2.0 that would be of use for people in addiction recovery. Couldn’t group therapy be conducted over broad distances with people they know? Could they use the web to make amends with old friends and relatives? I don’t know; maybe there’s no good substitute for a hand written letter or a personal visit.

There is one thing that I know of that is probably the biggest, yet unnoticed and underrated movement on the web and it is not slowing down: family history. People have begun to search for their ancestral roots in droves and it’s so compelling it seems to be driven by some unseen force. I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and we strongly believe in eternal connections to our ancestors (Malachi 4: 5-6), but Mormons are not the only ones interested in this work. They used to have to travel to distant states and counties to look up records or even visit the actual cemetery to get information. That still may be the case in many instances, but web 2.0 has made it so much easier because now, distant (geographically and/or biologically) cousins or any combination of relatives and friends can collaborate in finding, organizing, and sharing those valuable records that are often more precious than gold to those who seek them.

Week 4 blog 7 Second Life

It had been several weeks since I had visited Second Life, I haven’t found it to be of particular interest to me, but having these assignments to force me there helps me see what potential benefits there are. I visited the two places that had to do with learning theory. The one on multiple intelligences was interesting, but I thought it was also a plug for the WEL TEC school in New Zealand. The other site was centered on Bloom’s Taxonomy. I can see how both of these sites would be great for undergrads who are aspiring to teach. Both sites provide plenty of meeting areas so they can collaborate on projects together or just virtually hang out. I’ve attempted to join a group that is headed by Perplexity Peccable (Her second life name). I have yet to receive a response, but some background information is included below along with the URL:

“In Second Life, my name is Perplexity Peccable. In Real Life I am a medical librarian and internet researcher, teaching emerging technologies and information skills courses for health care practitioners and students at the University of Michigan.”

http://tinyurl.com/7cjzgx

This group is dedicated for the hearing impaired in second life. It’s for the deaf, parents and family members of the deaf, and pretty much anyone interested in the deaf community. I imagine the deaf community will be more closely knit and unified thanks to groups like these. There are families who are more interested in signing these days who have no deaf children because signing is a great way to communicate with toddlers who are still developing their speaking skills. I imagine the military might have an interest in signing as well. Soldiers who can communicate without speaking are valuable in the field.

Week 3 Blog 6 Communities of Practice

As much as I marvel at the way societies have changed over the centuries due to steel, oil, and the microchip, I also realize that we are still fundamentally the same. Ancient hunter- gatherers needed to work together to trap and kill a beast for food or to teach one another the medicinal qualities of certain herbs and plants. Then the people of various city states needed to agree on some kind of common code or law, like the code of Hammurabi, the first one to unite city-states in Mesopotamia under one common code. The founding fathers of our constitution did what they did as a group. I don’t think James Madison or George Washington, as brilliant and as capable as they were could have done it by their selves. Virtually every endeavor, whether great or small, has been done as a community. The communities certainly had to have leaders like Ghandi or Martin L. King Jr., but the ability to accomplish any task has come from the collective know-how of the group. Even cult leaders need to rely on their members for their twisted purposes. The difference nowadays is that the technologies that are emerging allow us to be the leaders and facilitators of our own causes. Our causes are small when compared to what Rosa Parks did throughout her life, but a community who wants to practice something is not limited to one neighborhood or county. It’s not even limited by land mass and oceans anymore. According to Etienne Wenger, “We all belong to communities of practice. At home, at work, at school, in our hobbies – we belong to several communities of practice at any given time.” (1998). So, why not expand our ability to obtain and share information if it leads to more good for our communities? On the lighter side, I remember my old favorite TV show, The X-Files. Agent Mulder used to go to his favorite trio of friends when something stumped him. They shared information with him and each other face to face in a darkened room with the shades drawn. They also had their own Newsletter called The Lone Gunmen. They were really into conspiracy theories as was Mulder. Imagine what they could have done with Web2.0.

References

Wegner, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning,

Meaning and Identity. Available from http://books.google.com/books?id=heBZpgYUKdAC&dq=communities+of+practice&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=kcoa-l7z5g&sig=OHOEPLtQLqhO2OYpiz-oHHTQlEk&hl=en&ei=gbDwSezJD4GNtgffur2uDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Carter, C. (Creator, Producer). (1993). The X-Files

[Television series]. [With David Duchovny & Gillian

Anderson] 20^th Century Fox Television.

Week 3 Blog 5- Social Media

What a remarkable time to be living in. I can communicate instantly with people across the surface of the planet wherever there is an internet connection. I can send them videos of recently shot footage. Peter Jackson can upload raw footage on his current movie project wherever he is to an editing studio in New Zealand or Los Angeles. I can see protests in Africa as long as any person with a vid phone or camcorder records it and posts it. If I need information on classroom management, I can look at my blogs that I’ve subscribed to instead of using up a colleague’s time on campus. I can get multiple perspectives on the same issue in much less time. A global ethic is still only something to aspire to as far as governments go, but individuals can get together and begin to solve problems on their own across oceans and borders while government bureaucracies get left in their wake. A few years ago, a young American teenager was able to raise funds to have fresh water wells drilled in Africa. Others provide clothing, shelter, food, and other necessities without help from any government. There is a video on You Tube called “Did you know, Shift Happens” that gives some interesting statistics and facts and figures, which may or may not be entirely true. It says at one point that new technologies are doubling every two years, which is probably true. But it draws a conclusion that says that by the time a college student is in their third year of college, those technologies from their freshman year will be outdated. I can’t agree with that. Some technologies come and go, but the wheel is still around. The microprocessor is still around. Email is still in play along with TV and radio. I don’t consider those outdated. We will naturally gravitate to what works best and use it as long as it suits us. I hope that people will remain critical thinkers as these new technologies are rushing in. I suppose that’s apparent with the recent shift in public opinion about our current president’s policies. Americans are exercising their right to assemble and to speak out and they’re using social networking technologies to do so. Regardless of your political affiliations, the Web 2.0 social media tools are changing the flow of information. Just be critical of what you see and read.

Week 2 blog 4 21^st century learning

My last few blogs have been more positive and upbeat about web 2.0 and the way technologies are changing education and learning. Today I feel a little overwhelmed about it all because I don’t know how we can keep up. Technologies are supposed to save time, but it seems that we need to be on line more to check our networks. I can’t say that I agree with Prensky, who said that “Our children have changed radically.” I think the term “Digital Native” fits ok, but I agree with Howard Rheingold. I don’t think that students have changed so quickly from one generation to the next, but they have adapted quickly to the new technologies because of their novelty and fun. I probably would have adapted similarly if the same technologies had been available when I was growing up. As excited as I am about the way information can be shared and how people are being brought together, I’m also concerned about just how daunting the task seems to be to get current educators up to speed, myself included. And what about up and coming educators? Are they learning what they need to in their undergrad work to meet the new demands of 21^st century learning. I went back to school in 2003 to get my teacher certification and what I’m seeing now, just six years later, is taking what I learned about Multiple Learning Theory and Brain Based Learning and juicing it up with steroids and putting a rocket on it. It’s just crazy how fast Web 2.0 applications are influencing our society as a whole, not just the education profession. I like the idea of more people being in control and able to create and contribute, but I’m also scared that too many people are just going to believe everything that is out there on the web without thinking critically about it. Or even worse, discounting something that is true and good out of fear that it’s a sham.

References

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed: Multiple

Intelligences for the 21^st Century. New York:

Basic Books.

Jensen, E. (2008). Brain Based Learning: The New Paradigm

of Teaching. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Week 2 Blog 3 Media Literacy

According to many experts, education developed to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. If that’s true, it would explain why education has been so often thought of as so dull for so long. If public education existed only to prepare kids to enter the workforce in the industrial age, no wonder it’s considered a giant processing plant by so many. Recently, education has made significant improvements in its approach to reaching students. I’d like to think that we’ve evolved past the “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic” mentality and hopefully realized that those are just pieces of the pie and that it’s ok for the pie to taste good. In fact, the pie can be mixed and baked by students themselves using the media literacy tools on the web. If one version of the pie doesn’t taste good, then we can discard it and try another one. Groups can now be formed online to work on the same objective. Some argue that technology is stifling literacy while others contend that it is enhancing it. I think both sides are correct depending on the type of technologies used and with what purpose. Even a so-called time-wasting video game can have literacy embedded in it, so that a child can’t help but practice reading.

The important thing to remember from my last blog and to reiterate here is the value of working collaboratively. A crowd is not necessarily a bad thing. Under the right conditions and circumstances, the right crowd can produce something more valuable than any individual could come up with.. I think with the right parameters, a group of students could really surprise us using some of the collaborative technology on Web2.0. I think that if given the chance to create something instead of reading a chapter and filling out a worksheet, they would seldom disappoint. Babe Ruth had more strike-outs than home runs and Thomas Edison failed 2000 times at making the light bulb. Abraham Lincoln,… well, you get the idea. Kids need to be allowed to botch as many pies as needed to learn the scientific method. Have you ever seen the movie “October Sky”? The main character wanted to make a rocket in the time of Sputnik and the dawn of the space race. His first attempt resulted in the explosion of his Mom’s picket fence. After getting together with some classmates and collaborating with them, their efforts improved. They eventually won the national science fair due to their collaborative efforts to come up with a rocket engine design consistent with actual rockets that were going into space. The kids were not geniuses by themselves, they simply had a common interest and a desire to create and achieve something cool. It seems to me that collaborating on line will teach literacy indirectly without forcing it. How would it be for teachers if they didn’t have to struggle and coerce and pull teeth to teach literacy? What if students could be engaged in an activity where their reading and writing abilities improved without them even realizing it? Media learning on web2.0 is the answer. Like I said in my previous blog, pencil and paper should always be around, but I think schools should take full advantage of these new tools because they bring students together to create collaboratively. And by the way, they learn. But since the conscious focus is changed from studying and homework to fun and creativity, the learning is indirect and not such a chore.

References

Johnston, J. (Director). (1999). October Sky [Motion

picture]. [With Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, & Laura Dern]. United States: Universal.

Robinson, K. (2006, Feb). [Schools kill creativity].

Lecture given at TED, Los Angeles, CA.

Week – 1 Blog – 2: Learning 2.0

What has taken us so long? When grown-ups have had a challenge in their professions, haven’t they typically called a meeting and gotten everyone together to work on the problem by dividing it into relevant sections like in the Apollo missions at NASA or a big merger on Wall street? What about when the military approached Oppenheimer about making a nuclear weapon? It was agreed that in order to beat the Japanese and the Nazis in discovering the secret, they would have to centralize everything and get all of the nuclear experts together. Speaking of war, are wars fought and won by each general and admiral just doing their own thing as they see fit? Not exactly, they have to meet and centralize their efforts and strategies and reach a consensus on how to defeat the enemy.

Why can’t students use the same kind of approach to learning and meeting challenges they face in school? Well, they can and have been for years. The pros call it cooperative learning or collaboration while most call it learning in groups. True collaboration actually engages the brain and leads to real accomplishment. (Kovalik, S., 2002) I didn’t start doing it until I got into college. From my own perspective, it seemed to have taken far too long for classrooms to start to pattern the adult world in this respect, but hopefully now they can catch up with a vengeance. Web 2.0 is now helping to facilitate what’s being called Learning 2.0. Thanks to Web2.0, a student is not limited to the group members in his/her classroom to achieve something. They now have access to many more ‘colleagues’ all across the world. The planet’s surface is the limit. Imagine the enhanced opportunities a student can have teaching each other about the biomes that they live in in real time. Virtually all content areas can benefit in the Learning 2.0 environment. I remember wasting a lot of time in the library looking for just the right video to illustrate my point and then I would end up settling for some Nova video that would put my worst ADHD student wired on caffeine to sleep. Now students can make their own videos and share them with other kids in Russia, South America, or anywhere else on the planet. At this rate, we’ll achieve warp drive and venture into the stars a lot sooner than Gene Roddenberry fathomed we would. In this little blog I don’t want to get into what has impeded or encouraged this progress, for the reasons are many and the debates go on; however, I do wish to state that I don’t think that anything can replace pencil and paper, or a good page turner for kids and adults. Kids need to memorize their times tables. And I hope a computer will never replace the worthwhile relationship between a student and a teacher.

References

Mobile Learning Institute. (2009). [With George Mckenna].

Video posted to

http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/films/film-george-mckenna.html

Kovalik, S. & Olsen, K. (2002). Exceeding Expectations: A

User’s Guide to Implementing Brain Research in the Classroom. Covington, WA: Susan Kovalik and Associates, Inc.

It's a small world wide web afterall.

Week 1 - Blog posting #1 - Web 2.0

So what about the World Wide Web? Did it really start out being called the World Wide Wire-tap? Has it accidentally become what it has, or are some conspiracy theorists correct about some true underlying “real reason” for the Internet? All I can say for sure is that it is bringing people together. I was amazed to see the timeline and how many web sites were available from the time of its public introduction in 1991 to 2006, when it reported over 100 million. (Solomon, 2007) Within the last few years, the emergence of the ‘new and improved internet’, AKA Web 2.0, has begun to change our society. I don’t believe that all of that change is good, but I would have to say that most of it is. The negative part of the change is that it seems more and more people, especially kids, spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen or sitting in their rooms texting on personal electronic devices instead of going out to ride bikes or any other number of outdoor activities. For this we limit our kids’ computer time.

Here’s a little bit of why I like the new tools that have emerged online. My wife and I are teachers, we are active in our church, and we have a daughter who has CHARGE syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Deafness is one of our daughter’s disabilities, so she is learning to sign at her school. We have four other kids as well. The old internet (Web 1.0) afforded us quick information and resources for teaching, facts about our daughter’s conditions, updates about our church at the website, and online games for our kids that are both educational and just fun. With Web 1.0, the information was there, provided by a few experts. With Web 2.0, I can contribute to other teachers like I do in my master’s program; I can share things with other parents of CHARGE kids. My wife can stay in contact with everyone at church through face book and they in turn can help each other and support one another (We live in a military town and a lot of husbands are deployed, so face book provides a fast way to see who needs help with something like meals when kids are sick or a lawn that needs mowing). I even have this crazy idea of creating a web site composed mostly of mini web lessons on signing so that parents and family members of deaf kids can log on and learn at their leisure. No longer are we simply information withdrawers, we are collaborators and can become experts in conjunction with other people who have similar interests and challenges in our lives. Web 2.0 tools can even indirectly influence the police on someone’s behalf, like the story of the lost/stolen phone in New York city (Shirky, 2008). I love how we don’t need to rely on a news crew to report on everything anymore, also.

References

Solomon, G., Schrum, L., (2007). WEB 2.0 new tools, new

schools. International Society for Technology in

Education, Washington, D.C.

Shirky, C., (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The Power of

Organizing Without Organizations. New York: The

Penguin Press.

This is my first blog. I started it because as part of my new Master's course entitled Emerging Technologies in a Collaborative Culture.