Saturday, February 26, 2011
A World Without Walls
Respond to Will Richardson's "World Without Walls: Learning Well with Others." React to Richardson's vision of education in a "collaborative age." What are some of the challenges that students and teachers are facing given the transformative agency of learning networks and technology?
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"And we have to work together to organize it all, as long-held taxonomies of knowledge give way to a highly personalized information environment."
ReplyDeleteThis statement of the many possible I could have chosen resonated after reading this blog post. The utter personalization of learning is a liberating idea that I adhere to as a student and teacher.
At the same time, I fear this liberation. To explain, there is the famous jam experiment by Columbia's Prof. Sheena Iyengar and Stanford's Mark Lepper. In the experiment, one group of people were given a taste of one of six jams while another group was given a taste of 24 jams. They gave both groups a coupon for one free jam to be redeemed later. The result? More people from the six jam group redeemed their coupon, rated the tasted jam as better, and were more likely to volunteer for follow up essay surveys.
I feel in this world of countless choices, a technology savvy teacher with experience and connections as stated in the post are more essential then ever. Our students can have too much choice. We as teachers need to share and explain our own structure for learning in this information saturated age. But to be honest, I know personally that I cannot keep up with my inbox let alone my RSS feed, let alone my fb updates, let alone my....
So, I close like I opened this post. With a quote by Dan Ariely whom I found by following another blog.siprep.org/cattech. The irony.
"People are information-rich and theory-poor. If you can give them a way of organizing their experience, then their minds are wide open."
In sum, the challenge is to provide solid theories, big picture ideas, take home messages, and social lenses that will help our students make sense of their own personal learning networks and technology.
Living in such competitive world as we do today, it is hard not to feel alone. Not only this, it is difficult to collaborate with one another to help each other without worrying about "losing" to the other person. However, with the advancement of technology, sharing knowledge has become easier and in some ways even a necessity in educating oneself. It is a known fact that technology is offering greater amount knowledge that is more up-to-date than what is offered to us in books and in classrooms. Through the invention of blogs and other online communication tools, we have unconventional "teachers" who are available to us 24/7. These teachers may be younger in age or have less "education"in the typical sense, but they have greater understanding of the topic at hand through personal interest or work experience. By conversing with them, we can gain more diverse ideas in shorter amount of time.
ReplyDeleteIronically, according to Will Richardson, "in our zeal to hold on to the old structures of teaching and learning and to protect students at all costs, we are not just leaving them ill prepared for the future, we are also missing an enormous opportunity for ourselves as learners." Kids can now gain greater knowledge from sources outside of their classrooms. By not allowing students to utilize these sources, just for the sake of keeping them under "control" is debilitating them in the long run. However, without the necessary control the vast amount of new resources seem to be more harmful to our students. How do we know which sources are trustworthy? How can we ever know for sure that the people we converse with online are our "friends" and not "predators"? How can we distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources for our students to utilize? In addition, even if we have all theses great sources, how do we utilize them without abusing them? Meaning, how can we use them to actually "gain" the new knowledge without simply relying on them to tell us the answers whenever we need. At the end of the day, the students need to know these facts, not simply have the ability to look up the answers. The main problem teachers have nowadays with technology is finding the useful/reliable sources and balancing between "abusing" them and "using" them to teach the students not only the necessary subjects, but preparing them for the future. So far we don't have the perfect solution for our problem, however I believe accepting the changes brought to the field of education by technological advances is the first step towards finding the solution.
In his article World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others, Will Richardson makes a strong case for a fundamental shift in how we perceive teaching and learning today. In order for schools to remain relevant, they must embrace the technological transformation occurring in the world and recognize that adhering to the same tired model will leave all students behind.
ReplyDeleteRichardson points out that teachers are everywhere in the modern world. Anyone with an internet connection can instantly find information on almost any topic and connect to networks of people from all over the world who share their interests. These changes have rendered the traditional factory school model outdated and ill-equipped to provide the education today’s students need. What American schools have been doing for the last hundred years no longer serves our young people.
With these dramatic technological advances come great possibilities for teachers willing to re-imagine their role. But, change is perceived as risky and even unnecessary by many. The “Collaboration Age” that Richardson speaks of requires teachers to let go of deeply entrenched ideas about the role of the teacher and embrace new ways of interacting with students. It is an age of personal learning networks linking individuals across time and space, where collaboration is fundamental and learners use technology to connect, share and learn from each other in ways that have previously been impossible. The role of teacher as dispenser of knowledge is simply no longer suited to the world our students inhabit.
Relevant teaching requires evolution. This new world our young people are navigating is complex and fraught with potential hazard. In such a rapidly changing world, it is the responsibility of teachers to adapt to these changes to best serve the needs of their students. In the collaboration age, teacher must become guide, modeling how to effectively navigate our digital world-- locating, evaluating, organizing, creating, remixing and sharing across networks. Change is difficult, but the reality of the modern world demands a new teacher-- one ready and willing to make learning relevant to our time.
The inability of teachers and schools to adapt to the changes that are transforming the world of learning is irresponsible and ultimately harmful. The factory model of education that our public schools have adhered to for the last 100 years is outdated. Schools must embrace change and construct a new vision for the future of learning.
The evolution of technology and social media has radically changed the way we communicate with each other. The avenues for digital connection are countless: phone, text, email, video chat, social media, chat rooms and more. The ease with which we can be in contact and collaborate is evolving the way teach and learn.
ReplyDeleteAs Will Richardson talks about, schools are no longer restricted to the traditional locations and times. Technology and connectivity permits us to make educational and creative connections to others in ways that were impossible even a few years ago.
We have the ability to transform our classrooms and student’s learning experience through collaboration. Using technology, subject experts can be in your classroom in an instant, giving a lecture or answering student questions. Following a scholar or artist’s blog or Twitter feed brings their ideas to the classroom in real-time, promoting current discussion and debate. We can establish relationships and even partnerships with local organizations, providing a real-life relevancy to lessons. Collaboration through all types of social media brings the world into our classrooms, making them immune to their physical and time constraints.
In order to sustain viable learning, it is essential for educators to maintain communication with their students and provide constant feedback about their work and progress. Currently, students now look almost solely to their teachers for criticism and praise. The Internet now allows for disbursement of information instantly among a large group of people, and students can readily share their work and receive responses from peers, parents and even people outside the school community and across the world. Students can thrive with a real audience to appreciate their work.
However, this new “Collaborative Age” promotes special challenges for educators. Will Richardson describes the changing role, saying “we as educators need to reconsider our roles in students' lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second.” It is essential for teachers to learn how to discover, vet and use these new connections in their curriculum. Teachers must also guide their students in creating and maintaining a appropriate presence online. This means teachers must be understanding and using technology and digital connections in their lives. As we become less reliant on the physical elements of “school,” the possibilities for education are endless, but it will take time and careful, dedicated attention from teachers to help their students navigate this new world.
I agree with many of the sentiments of previous posters when looking at the need for a change in our school system. Schools and teachers need to adapt to the world that exists right now and in the future rather than preserve a world no longer lived in. A major challenge, as I see it, is that a change so wide-reaching and comprehensive will be painfully slow. We are all fortunate enough to be enrolled in this program at USF, as we are all going to be equipped with the necessary tools to make real changes possible. However, I cannot help but notice that we are a small minority even among teacher education students. I've wondered what this means in the bigger picture for the model that Will Richardson proposes for the future of education.
ReplyDeleteSure, there are older teachers who will be retiring en masse in the coming years and this will leave openings for new teachers with progressive, "collaborative age" teaching styles. But most public schools currently operate like businesses, and there's only one thing that matters: the bottom line. In this case, the bottom line is test scores. Test scores are the driving force behind administrative decisions and their directives are coming all the way from the top education policymakers. In order for Will Richardson's model to work, for now, teachers will have to be very good at balancing those tested standards. A truly transformative change in our school system will, unfortunately, have to come from directives by education policymakers. The rebuttal to that is the fact that we are seeing schools transform themselves into charters in order to liberate their administrations and we will always have private schools. However, many are left out of these institutions due to socioeconomic status or by being on the wrong side of luck. In sum, I think one of the main issues in this model is access.
This is also a school system that is a mirror of our society; it places an emphasis on competition rather than cooperation. If students have grown up a competitive model through middle school, it will take some time for them to adjust to a cooperative model by the time they reach high school. I am not saying this is an impossible task or one that is too challenging, but it is something to consider.
I think that a collaborative model that utilizes technology to create a powerful learning experience is the best model for education going forward. It focuses on skills that our students will need in order to navigate their world and create positive changes within it. Yosup's comment about how difficult it is to keep up with the speed of these changes in technology is spot-on. One of the most difficult aspects of this field is how quickly it changes and how much there is to keep up with. The article did make a brief mention of how students will need to learn how to balance their virtual lives with their outside lives and I cannot agree more.
The article also pointed out how administrators are actively fighting some of these advances, with the student who faced expulsion for organizing a Facebook note sharing group. I am reminded of the copyright wars currently being fought by the MPAA and RIAA against numerous internet institutions and people. Those at the top will have to change their tune in order for everyone else to be able to make a new sound.
Young students have already absorbed and been enjoying this ‘Collaboration Age’ by themselves without any lesson given from schools. Now schools are hesitating on the edge of new learning trend led by students. As the author mentioned, there are some fears and concerns that exist about this new learning trend exist and I think they should be carefully considered. However, I also think we should not let them impede the current education system to jump into the ‘Collaboration Age’. No matter what education trend has been taken over without adults’ approval, schools and parents are responsible to help students become well educated. Before the gap between school system and students’ own learning tools becomes wider, schools and parents may want to be brave enough to ditch their fear and carry their concern into an action to develop their better roles for this new learning trend. Although I easily say this, I might be one of them who have fear and concern on ‘Collaboration Age’ era. I worked for an IT Company and strongly believe the Technology’s endless potential benefits on education system, but still I can’t find how to effectively filter good side of new tech and information from all mixed and uncontrollable tools and information and apply them to education system. Also, it seems there’s no simple answer on the questions in the articles: ‘How to manage our digital? What are the ethics of co-creation? how do we ensure that what we create with others is of high quality?’. There must be many more challenges than these questions in order to have a well-developed ‘Collaboration Age’. And schools and parents’ efforts might not be enough to cover all the pitfalls in the transition to Collaborative Age because technology and the web are speedy and have no boundary. The ‘Collaboration Age’ may need to undergo many trials and errors for the optimal Collaboration learning stage. But I wouldn’t be so skeptical because I believe all evolutions require many trials and errors even if there's a great effort to make safe headway with thoughtful concerns.
ReplyDeleteWill Richardson hits one particular challenge we face right on the nose when he states:
ReplyDelete"Likewise, we must make sure others can locate and vet us. The process of collaboration begins with our willingness to share our work and our passions publicly -- a frontier that traditional schools have rarely crossed."
I think this point is well-taken because we are now facing kids that grow up differently then we did. Now kids are compelled to make everything(!) public. Will Richardson points out a positive example of this with Laura Stockman's blog about service and we also saw a good example with the YouTube "Bow Drill Set" example.
Looking at the other side of the token, I've also seen moronic examples such as a student posting a Facebook invite to the Grove (where local underage SF kids get together and drink) as well as a recent bus trip where kids filmed themselves playing "truth or dare." Of course we tell ourselves that we would never have done that, but who's to say? We didn't have an immediate audience like Facebook and we didn't carry a video camera around in our pockets at all times.
Now, I don't bring up these examples to say that kids are making themselves too public. I'm bringing up these examples to show that this is now the world that we live in. There are pursuits that kids are interested in and now instead of a passing idea, kids can make them happen. Adolescents in particular have egos and want to make themselves known as they are carving their identity in the world, Richardson's idea that they need a "coach" is precisely right. But I'd also take it a step further, we need to show them that we are comfortable with this new world too. With platforms like Google Plus, (maybe) Facebook, Twitter and something like Edmodo, we can model and thus coach how to participate in our new collaborative world. Just teaching kids how to make things public is not enough, we have to actual model best uses ourselves as well.
After reading Will Richardson’s article, I couldn’t help but think of my own classroom, as I reflected upon the importance of cooperative learning. Because of maturity and independence levels, my students spend the majority of their day collaborating and working with their peers. Unfortunately, none of these learning experiences involve the use of technology. In an age where digital media constantly surrounds us, the use of technology within the classroom is very important. However, there are many issues that prevent technology from being used for collaboration. Within my own classroom, varying degrees of skill, and lack of resources and time are all challenges that I face in regards to using technology as a collaborative tool. I cannot speak for other teachers, but it is February, and my kindergarten students are still learning how to work cooperatively with one another- inside the classroom. The thought of teaching them how to collaborate (by way of technology) with students outside of the classroom, is quite overwhelming. Unfortunately, this feeling, coupled with my school’s lack of resources and my sense of urgency to teach everything, limits the level of collaboration that my students can do with the outside world. Although I can envision my students independently video blogging and chatting with other kids from across the world, that is not our reality at this point in time. I have to meet my students where they’re at and use my one classroom computer to make the magic happen. I can’t help but wonder if other teachers face similar challenges???
ReplyDeleteThis quote from Will Richardson's "World Without Walls" caught my attention. "In our zeal to hold on to the old structures of teaching and learning ... we are missing an enormous opportunity for ourselves as learners”. I wonder if many of the teachers who are resistant to technology do not see themselves as learners. I am relatively new to teaching, so I am not familiar with how teachers have historically viewed themselves. Has there been two roles in the classroom - the teacher or the learner? And did everyone in the classroom play only one of these roles?
ReplyDeleteI think that some teachers are resistant to change in general. This is partly due to trends coming and going in education with little effect or follow through. This causes skepticism among teachers who see blended learning and integration of technology as the latest fads, which they think will also pass. I do not think that the use of technology for learning will pass because students are already using technology to learn.
Students have found learning using technology to be more interactive and engaging than the old model of learning, where students passively listened to the teacher lecture, and they handwrote notes that the teacher displayed on the screen. Now the teacher can post the notes online, and class time can be spent instead on discussion, debate, and practice. There is an opportunity lost when teachers hold on to the old ways. Their students are less engaged, and time is wasted on time consuming, boring activities such as handwriting notes instead of spending time on engaging activities.
What would encourage these teachers begin to integrate technology into their classes? Professional development, specific goals, small steps, technical support, and encouraging principals would all help.
Richardson explains the dichotomy of the technologic worlds that most students currently learn and live in. We are currently in a time where the practices taught and modeled in most classroom/ school environments do not mesh with the advancements really available and functional outside that space. This not only leads to students using other avenues to learn the material they see as more relevant. It also leads them to see school as out of touch and even more irrelevant than necessary.
ReplyDeleteRichardson is also able to look at the challenges that become the educator in this situation. The struggle to teach and utilize new technology requires a certain understanding and mastery of these new tools. Teachers are then not only supposed to keep an eye out to spot the next great tool, but they need to do this before their students, who stereotypically and more technologically savvy, especially with technologies that are foreign to both.
I like how Richardson is able to lay out the challenges related to the issue at hand, but with some hope and excitement about the place we are in as educators. In some ways, we cannot be expected to work in the same function that teachers have typically been utilized. It's my opinion that the hardest people to please and convince as we move forward may be other adults. Those who do not operate in a classroom, yet hold us accountable and either formally or informally evaluate our successes as educators. As we move away from a system of education that is familiar, the same issues that we as teachers have in term of our relation to our students will also affect our connection and assessment processes as professionals.