Reflection: The Nature of Learning and Knowledge

I recently posted about a new, improved KWL chart for educators called the KWHLAQ. And while I certainly did not systemically or consciously adopt the structure into my ongoing learning process, I'm coming to realize its value and how its components are shaping my thinking and writing.

The impact may be most visible here in my summer blogging or perhaps in the coming weeks when I am preparing to return to teaching classes this fall. I feel like I'm loaded to the brim with new ideas about my profession and practice, yet I'm also feeling uncertain without one clearly defined path to follow forward. Perhaps it's the reality that my view of technology and education is being expanded daily and the array of possibilities now seems greater than ever. [Sigh]

I've also learned to truly value the summer break, something that many people see as teaching's greatest perk. It's not what made me want to be a teacher, but I'm gaining a deeper understanding of the necessity of reflection and the opportunity that summer gives for this process. I also know that the season is passing, and as blessed as I have been to have had the opportunity to study daily without working, I received a letter in the mail just yesterday concerning the coming first week of school and the myriad of activities, meetings, and assemblies; a reminder that I must put these wonderful ideas into action for them to have value in this world.

And so, I definitely feel as though I'm positioned in the final two sections of the KWHLAQ process: Action and Question. Thankfully, I've gaining in the number of resources and colleagues, on and off line that can aid me in my decision making for pedagogical actions, chiming back with meaningful answers to my earnest questions. I hope to continue my social bookmarking and blogging throughout the coming school year as my thesis project comes into a clearer focus. I'm a big believer in our habits shaping our character, and through my habitual blogging, the person I am has certainly become more knowledgable and yet more inquisitive too. Funny how that happens. I've searched for a source for the following quote, but ironically, I have not yet found its author beyond a website stating, "[knowledge is] a condition in which the more we know, the more we know that we don't know."

At the end of the summer, I think that is all I know.

Image: Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker" photographed by d.Seneste.dk http://www.flickr.com/photos/dseneste/5912382808

1 to 1: Maintaining the Human Connection?

Dean Shareski's recent post on his "Ideas and Thoughts" blog seems to oddly question the push for a 1-to-1 ratio of students and computer devices. Shareski's work may lead one to assume he is in unanimously in favour of increased technological access in education, but he poses a question that I think is intended to keep technologically eager stakeholders in education vision and goals in check. And to me, it's a welcome question.


Given the flurry of comments to this post, I'm pretty sure that some people read this question as a questioning of educators working in a 1-to-1 situation. I do not believe this is the thrust of Shareski's post. He is neither attacking or second guessing the excellent work that can be done by professionals in such a setting. I think he's questioning the bigger picture of pushing so hard for a 1-to-1 environment that we lose sight of the importance in face to face interaction.


Speaking from my own recent (current) experience of pursuing my Masters degree in a completely online format, I feel the lost Shareski laments about. I have never met face to face with my classmates and as a result, I do not feel a strong kinship with them. Certainly we are undergoing similar trials under simultaneous deadlines, but connections that would be made in person cannot be relied upon. In some ways I think that has made this cohort more efficient. We don't "waste time" making small talk, but we also do not learn much about one another beyond a paragraph posted on the first week of class. Now don't get me wrong, this is a graduate level program and I'm confident that each and every one of my cohorts is a well-adjusted adult learner with at least one degree completed. We are not adolescents struggling with identity, popularity, sexuality, trends, and acceptance. But our students often are.


Just like Dean Shareski, I am not about to start lobbying my administration for less computers and old software, but I do want to keep my pursuit of advancing educational technologies in check. All technologies have great potential to bring people together or drive to them apart and fostering human connectedness is more the goal of education than the blind ambition of stuff.

Bring Your Own Device? Nice!

Darren Kuropatwa's recent post on his "A Difference" blog regarding his blueprint for a "BYOD" class really got me thinking about the coming September and the next five or so years, when I begin to assume that every student will have a personal electronic device with them in school. Instead of arguing when and why this should happen, I'll just dream along with Kuropatwa's wish list of apps and work flow.

Well, to be honest, I still don't follow the entire flow of the class, although I do suspect he teaches Math not a computer course per say. Having him outline the way he would like to see his class function if he where in a liberating BYOD situation makes me question why I am not more clear with my own work flow via technology plan in my media literacy course? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the first generation iPads we have have given me a number of hiccups with regards to interaction with our school's Sharepoint portal. But that would be a simple excuse for the time I've been able to put in for work arounds. That said, as I read over Kuropatwa's ideal class, I feel further conviction to abandon the clunky and limited Sharepoint site and instead employ some of the vast number of free Web tools that are out there today. Well, to remain honest, that another of my issues. Yes the Internet is being swarmed with brilliant, free tools, but I almost wish that students would be able to bring their own devices in with them.

Allowing students to take possession of devices for our daily hour of class time is a positive response to their need for technology to be integrated into their education. However (and I do not begrudge the folks who funded our iPad program) the fact is that the devices stay at school and remain the property of the school in the same way a badminton racket is used for a purpose and shared so other can access it too. The big hold up here is that I'm really starting to see the importance of an individual really taking possession of a device to best work with it. I've been blessed with a laptop for the duration of this summer course and have made blogging and other Web 2.0 tools a daily thing. If I had to leave my house to access the Internet and could only do so for an hour a day, how much would I have learned this summer?

Bring your own device to class for technologically supported learning in school? I'm being very serious, quite optimistic, and in no way sarcastic when I say, "That will be the day!"

  

KWL 2.0?

I appreciate hearing new ideas, but I really truly appreciate hearing a new idea that is build upon a proven, sound idea. Such is the case with Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano's blogpost concerning the new, 21st century KWL chart. The KWL chart has been around for a while and as Rosenthal Tolisano suggests, it was certainly time for an "upgrade".

But what is gained? KWHLAQ infuses three processes to the learning process and while the ideas are not particularly new, the additions are welcome in my opinion. K still stands for what is known about the subject, acting as an anticipatory mode. W stands for what information you want to learn. H is a new addition and stands for how the information will be found. L remains to stand for what has been learned. A is a new addition and stands for what action will be taken, asking learners to apply their knowledge. And finally Q stands for questions, as in what new questions are generated by this inquiry.

The easy to memorize acronym is gone, but the additional components do reflect the information literacies that are increasingly necessary in the digital information age. What are your thoughts on this "upgrade"?

Rosenthal Tolisano suggests her new chart ought to hang on your classroom wall.

Flipping Education

I've been reading a lot more lately about the concepts of blended education and flipped classrooms. While the two processes are compatible, I'm really getting on board with the later and have begun aligning my classroom procedures considerably towards flipping. Recently reading Jonathan Bergmann's post retelling the genesis of the idea, I was captured by his earnest conversation with a co-worker that led to the idea's birth. I had a strikingly similar conversation this year past with a colleague that led him to screencasting a number of his lessons and demonstrations. He wasn't doing it to seek out a challenging new pedagogy, it was to save himself some time. While the capturing process is time-consuming at the initial on set, the payoff was immediate and well worth it.

Observing my colleague, I saw that him being freed up from repeatedly lecturing and demonstrating the same concepts and skills during class time to deal more directly one on one with students' concerns. This was an obvious win-win scenario. It was also awesome to see students arrive for class having viewed his tutorials the night previous. The learning had been offloaded, to become the students' responsibility and the teacher's role truly became supportive. That's when I really started thinking about the cleverness of the "flipped" moniker.

For whatever reason, this is the visual representation I see for the flipped model. Imagine an inverted triangle, with the teacher representing the bottom point and the many students sitting precariously above, relying on the teacher to make their learning experience equal to all the others balanced up on top. Now imagine the triangle sitting with the base (students) at the bottom. The teacher is now able to offer each and every student the same basic tutorial or lecture without being smothered by the needs of students to review and recap central concepts. Instead, students are in at the base-level and need to take the weight of ownership in their learning.

Perhaps this visual doesn't work for you, but to me it illustrates the freedom being offered to educators in adopting the inverted, perhaps counter-intuitive classroom procedure. Would it likely be challenging? Yes, myself and my students have to reconfigure the way we do learning and school. Does it mean throwing out everything that has worked in my classes? No, certainly not. Instead, it's a matter of capturing the traditionally repeated instructional elements of my classes and allowing students to view and review them in a take-away format. Am I likely to be "flipping" this semester? I'm certainly going to try the flipping practice in my media literacy course for starters, given the individualistic nature of the course and its employment of 1 to 1 technology. If this practice is successful for me like it was for Bergmann and my colleague, I'll be flipping my other more traditional English courses shortly after. That is, if my students are not "flipping out".

iPad @ Work

So, I'm actually on a short summer vacation at the moment. And I've snuck away from my sleeping children (and supportive, beautiful wife) to hit a cafe with wifi and do some blogging. I'm not that into public computing, but what choice do I have? I've bought a coffee and noticed that the server rung in my order using an iPad. I suppose she caught me staring at the device, because she quickly jumped into what I assume is an often-used little info chat informing customers that the iPad IS the cash register. I mumble something about having seen this sort of thing before, wander to find the coffee cream, and sit down.

So here I am... wondering how does an iPad become a cash register? I assume they have an app for that. And after a little digging, I find out that the app is called Poslavu.

Now I'd love to tell you that I used my mega-hyper Internet searching skills to pin-point this nugget of information, but I simply asked the guy restocking napkins, who it turns out is the owner/manager of the cafe. We quickly fell into a conversation of experiences of restaurants past and expensive order management systems with one or two exclusive, bulky input stations and serving personal line-up to punch orders in. Listening intently to the owner speak about his set-up and operating costs, I am again surprised to see a server attend a table and notify the kitchen of a new order at the adjoining table before pocketing her iPod.

Why am I so surprised to a multi-functional devices such as iPods and iPads being used in a workplace? I shouldn't be. I know that software developers are pushing the limits of such devices. With the Poslavu system carrying a cost of roughly 1/4 that of a traditional industry type, I'm excited to hear that not only is the wireless way to go more slick and quick, but it is quite economical as well. The owner continued to tell me how even a novice server can simply touch menu item's icons and the Poslavu system will lead them through all options applying to their menu item. He says that server and kitchen errors have been reduced to a minimum as deciphering unique server shorthand is no longer and accurate order summaries are at the fingertips of each server.

After the conversation with the innovative owner, I finished the luke-warm dregs of my medium-roast coffee, and recalled a few of my colleagues scoffing at my class’s use of iPads. They questioned me about the practicality of such devices and the skills associated with them. The coffee has me buzzing, but it was this stimulating café experience that has refueled my engine for exploring new uses for technology in (and out) of school.

Check out a quick demo of Poslavu's capabilities.

Social Media Arms Race in School? Seriously

An unnamed blogger who posts under the header "What's the PONT?" recently threw out a title that really caught my attention. And then it got me thinking. And then it got me researching who he or she was to make me think so. And then it led me to write the following sentence starter, which I shudder to think of how many times will be written.


According to Wikipedia, "The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers ofweapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation. Nowadays the term is commonly used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors, essentially the goal of proving to be "better".


Now to jump back, I like to think that I am above my students with regards to critical thinking abilities, so when the aforementioned blog above ran the headline "Stop the Social Media Arms Race in School",  I needed to evaluate the accuracy of such a statement. The blog even went on to include a photo of Wikileaks leader Julian Assang, asking who is he the pupil of? At first I thought this may be another person advocating against social media because of its potential use in bullying, but upon further reading the author draws out an establishment vs. students vs. teachers scenario with some telling truthfulness. So I will examine this three sentence definition as I see it applying metaphorically to schools today.


First, is there a "competition between two or more parties for the best [technology]" in schools today? Certainly there is. Nearly all stakeholders in education are jockeying to get increased and improved technology into schools. Budgets are fiercely debated to maximize the coverage of technology, pilots programs are offered looking for innovative ways to leverage technology, teachers write proposals for new devices, and kids smuggle their often "against the rules" devices in daily.


Second, in our schools does, "Each party competes to produce larger numbers of [devices] greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation"? No, but I almost wish this were the case. Imagine for a moment if students were able to use all the "weapons" at their disposal? I bet there would be some significant increases in engagement if students knew they could use any media platform and device to demonstrate their learning. I know many students can text blindfolded, but struggle with penmanship. Why not allow them to put the "weapon" they can brandish with frightening accuracy in their hands for learning? Rules that are counter-productive to the escalation of technology.


Lastly, "Nowadays the term is commonly used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors, essentially the goal of proving to be 'better'." Sadly I would say this applies in the reality that the "What's the PONT?" author cites noting that students are keenly aware how to get around blocked websites and rise to the challenge of accessing information of diverse sorts. I would also contest that staff often are in competition with one another, IT departments and administrators when trying to gain access to devices or install software. Again I believe this comes back to the outdated rules governing access to much of the emerging technology of the Internet and fear to change things.


So when all is said and done, is there something like an arms race occurring in schools today? Yes, I would say that metaphor is quite applicable. This doesn't make me particularly happy to write given the outcomes of historic arms races. But it does help me to identify the two areas in which I feel progress is needed with technology in our schools. One, remove barriers to students and staff possessing or seeking information technologies. And two, support those students and staff with relevant guidelines that clearly model and enforce the ethical use of technology.


Image "Late 50s Cold Warriors" by X-Ray Delta One http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/4142181603/sizes/m/in/photostream/