Last year I had one of those incredible professional discoveries. I think these discoveries only come along once every few years. During my search last year for quality Professional Development I stumbled across the Education.auorganisation. I had a chance to attend one of their one day workshops as well as a session presented by their CEO at another conference later in the year. In this day and age of being able to listen into podcasts of PD all over the world I have become very picky as to what seminars I will make the effort to attend myself. I have not been disappointed with the Education.au workshops and events. They are cutting edge and world class. I have just started going through the Education.aublogs. These are a series of blogs written by different staff at the organisation and are really starting to raise some good issues of discussion. A recent post on there discusses the issues of wikipedia and what we should be doing with this resource and ones similar. It got me thinking, and once again I decided to write an entire post as my response to Garry’s post.
So what is it that is concerning us in education about wikipedia? I have decided to address two main points here….
1) I guess we are worried about the authority of source.
2) and that students are relying on it far too much
Authority of source:
I have written quite a great deal about authority of source in the past. So I am not going to re-hash my arguments that lead down the path of a philosophical debate that challenged so many readers. Been there, done that, and bought the Tshirt…. (If you are interested in reading my thoughts have a look through the discussions from late last year….). Rather I am going to challenge the concerns that many teachers seem to have with students referencing a source such as wikipedia. I cringe at the content driven curriculum we serve up to students in today’s classrooms. We are more interested in what they can regurgitate instead of what they can apply, analyze and synthesize. There is no doubt that there may be some inaccurate information on wikipedia and it is possible that it may mislead your students, however, why aren’t we using this tool to create what I believe could be a meaningful learning experience. An Example…. Student uses wikipedia to find information for a report…. Given the warning that comes from the site itself on the possible inaccuracies of the information the student’s task is to verify the information they have gathered from other sources. The assessment should then come not just from what the student regurgitated from a variety of sources, but the skills the student used in justifying and verifying their information. This is what I believe to be the number 1 skill that students in the 21st century need to develop. Verify and justify your content. Probably a skill we could get them to develop with the use of books from the library. Some information in books may be out dated…. perhaps the students could use digital sources to verify the information in the library resources. I remember a student some years ago writing about earthquakes, she wrote a paragraph about the most recent earthquakes to cause human devastation. According to that student’s report the most recent earthquake that caused human devastation was the Kobe Earthquake in Japan in the 1990’s. Her information obviously came from a book that was printed in the mid 90’s. When I talked to her about her report, letting her know that the information was inaccurate I realised that we as educators spend to much time teaching our students how to reproduce information and not enough time on helping them verify and justify information, as well as understanding the relevance of information (don’t get me started on bias). The skill this student needed was to simply realise that the book she was referencing was almost 10 years old and that there could have very well been more tragic earthquakes in the world since the printing of the book.
Students who rely on such sites too frequently:
I understand and agree with these concerns given my previous points. However, banning such sites is certainly not the answer - And giving a student a “F” if they use Wikipedia is certainly not going to help the cause. This is almost as fair as giving a student an F for using an out dated book from the school library as a reference in an assignment. However, there is incredible opportunity here to use this tool to help students develop the skills I mentioned in the point above. We create digital citizens not only by giving them the skills to simply operate in a digital society but also the skills they need to truly become effective digital citizens able to think for themselves. Why then is it important to teach these skills…. Well a reflection on the Epic 2014 video that has been around for awhile is probably a good starting point. Even if the future is not as it is depicted in this video, the thoughts contained in it certainly generate a great deal of food for thought….. comments?
So what do we think of this? What happens to these kids when they get to university? I can’t picture a university offering similar payouts!! Is this just another wonderful example of what happens when politicians run the education system?
After taking some time this afternoon to look over some blogs that I have failed to keep up with I came across the School 2.0 Project.
This looks like a great project with plenty of promise…. Worth keeping an eye on over the coming months. Just hope they get a better looking website together soon. I also noted a number of posts from Dave Warlick from the Science blogging conference. Made me start searching for a great blogging example where real world experts are engaging with students, helping them with their learning. I am sure I could have had a better look than I ended up doing, but I couldn’t come accross anything worthy of note. So my question to you all is - Does anyone know of a blogging site where students are engaging with real world experts through their blog?
Let me know if you know of any great examples. This idea excites me!!
I have had an extremely busy week and a bit since coming back to work after the Christmas break. I had planned to get a podcast up this week but things got out of control and once again I stopped for a break and wondered “Where did all the time go?” This would probably be the thought that I had time and time again as a classroom teacher. I guess in a different role these days it has come as a surprise to me that I am still wanting to know where all the time has gone.
I started thinking about this last night and how our lives have become so much busier in a world that was supposed to supply technologies that made things easier. This would have to be the main reason I refuse to have a blackberry - Why on earth do I need phone calls, sms messages, and my email coming to me immediately!! When did the device take control of my life? I realise there is the off button that I can press when I get home of an evening - But how many people resist the temptation to just quickly check the latest email?
What an amazing world we are living in and things are going to just get quicker and quicker. I had a very respected colleague advise me recently that I should focus my formal studies in areas other than ed tech as I will “out grow” the ability to keep up with the constant world of change. I really appreciated this advice and have taken it on board to have a think about. However, is it true that we may just all loose the ability to keep up with change? At the age of 27 I think I am doing a pretty good job keeping up so far. What about generation X and Y are they going to grow up challenged by technical change one day as well? Or are they so use to change that it will just be something that is inbuilt for life?
I am starting to think that this is not as much of a generational argument as some may think. I believe it depends more on the persons level of interest or need to keep up with changes. Probably two interesting areas of discussion here…. First of all when does personal interest get taken over by sheer need to survive? All techno educators out there probably got into this game out of a interest in new technologies and a desire to see how they could impact education. However, now that many of us have positions that require us to share and utilise our knowledge and passion of these tools, will it ever get to the point that we struggle to keep up and therefore become irrelevant?
This final point is why I believe we need to make ICT and technology in learning all about learning and the learner. There is still a problem with teachers focusing on the gadget or the technology. If we try and simply keep up with technical change, we will eventually do ourselves out of a job - or we will get to the point of hating our job. However, if we continue to focus on the learning and creating a great learning environment, we will quite easily keep up with the change because it will just come naturally as another enhancement in great learning. This is why my award for greates PD of 2006 goes to Education.au - They get it - other conferences that have been around much longer don’t get it at all!! Too many techno nerds that think a PDA or a Smart Board will save the day!!! Then there are the strange agenda driven folk who spend entire conference sessions trying to tell us that we need to spend time worrying aobut girls in ICT!!! Oh please how about we just focus on the learner instead of who is doing what subject at school…. Did it ever dawn on any of these folk that maybe each learner is different and a large part of 50% of our population may not be interested in the subject of ICT (Computer programing). AHHHHH Those people frustrate me!!!! Hopefully most teachers have an interest in learning and the learner. Let’s keep it simple instead of worrying about what tool does what and who has the greatest version of what. There is my 2007 new years resolution - The rule of KISS - Keep it simple stupid!!
Apple has created a podcast page on the iTunes Store for the Macworld San Francisco 2007 Keynote Address. It is a very large file (over 1gig) but it is worth downloading for a few reasons. Number 1 this is just an amazing launch of a cool product that any techno nerd would want. Secondly, I think it is an awesome demonstration of brilliant presentation skills. How this man captivates a crowd is amazing!!
Who would have thought that you could sum up an 1.5 hour address in a song. This is great…. Some genius has mixed the stevenote (Steve Jobs Keynote Address at Macworld) to some funky music. Apple nuts will do anything!!
I am back after a great Christmas break. Looking forward to a great 2007. Have been back at work for almost a week now and have just started getting my head around another busy year. I have started my morning with a coffee at Starbucks - Ready to tackle another day.
I will also be posting a podcast this afternoon around the thoughts that were happening last year on here relating to Authority of Source etc. It has been an enjoyable discussion that is provoking some great thought amongst a few readers.
Thanks to Graham Wagner for his contributions and his willingness to engage in interesting conversation and discussion.
In other interesting news recently - Who does not want an Apple iPhone!! I actually have a geek friend who was so excited about the iPhone and gutted that it won’t be in Australia until 2008 that he printed out a copy of it on cardboard to make his own mock model!! :-) Mind you this was the same bloke who stayed up all night so he could read the blogs coming from the Macworld keynote (You are a true techno legend Matty)!!!
Well there has been so much said about the potnetial of this device - so I will not say much except for the fact that I hope we don’t think a device will revoltionise education. Good teachers are the only ones that will do that!!
This looks like a great project with plenty of promise…. Worth keeping an eye on over the coming months. Just hope they get a better looking website together soon. I also noted a number of posts from Dave Warlick from the Science blogging conference. Made me start searching for a great blogging example where real world experts are engaging with students, helping them with their learning. I am sure I could have had a better look than I ended up doing, but I couldn’t come accross anything worthy of note. So my question to you all is - Does anyone know of a blogging site where students are engaging with real world experts through their blog? 
