Tech Ed-dy

I’ve been carrying this article called Online Safety 3.0: Empowering and Protecting Youth around on my iTouch for a few days and finally had a chance to read it while riding a BC Ferry today.  It’s well worth a read in it’s entirety but the gyst of the article (as I understand it) is that we need to re-think our approach to online safety and move towards an approach that focuses less on negative consequences and more on media literacy and digital citizenship.  In the article, Online Safety 1.0 is characterized as the ‘predator’ danger approach and Online Safety 2.0 as being mostly about the harrasment and cyberbullying that has become prevalent due to the peer-to-peer nature of today’s internet.  Both of these approaches, it claims, are negative, lack context and are largely irrelevant to youth.  Online Safety 3.0 on the other hand they describe as being about enabling …

youth enrichment and empowerment. Its main components – new media literacy and digital citizenship – are both protective and enabling.

They share some interesting findings from the Internet Safety Technical Taskforce which wrapped up in January 2009, including that:

cyberbullying and harassment are the most salient risks youth face, all children aren’t equally at risk, and children’s psychosocial makeup and environment are better predictors of risk than the technology they use.

This may seem obvious to many, but to me it was an eye opener.  Our tendency to focus on the technology (Facebook, MySpace, IM etc) that allows peer-to-peer interactions online has a tendency to make us look at the problem as a ‘one size fits all’ one (students are misusing Facebook, so lets block it in school), when in fact problematic online behaviours are really just problematic behaviours that happen to take place online.  Instead of talking about the technology we should be talking about the behaviours, and the underlying reasons for them; just as we do with real world behaviours.

This gets me thinking about how to get my students to critically think about their online lives and behaviours in a meaningful way.  Often I feel like our conversations are about 2-d solutions to 3-d problems.  My students already know about the 2-d solutions, so much so that they have become buzzwords.  The word “cyberbullying” has become a buzzword and I don’t feel I done a very good job unpacking it with my students.  When I used to be an outdoor educator we had other buzzwords that were equally frustrating, words like “team work” and “communication”.  My students all knew that these words were important and what we were trying to teach them, so they were quick to use them during debriefs.  The really powerful learning came when they were forced to unpack what these words meant in a specific context, or even better when they were put into a situation that really challenged their ability to work as a team and communicate and forced them to re-examine their preconceived notions of what these concepts really meant.  I can’t help feeling like I’m dealing with the same dynamic when it comes to the words “internet safety” and “cyberbullying”.  These have become buzzwords in my students lives and they know enough about them to feel like there is nothing else to really discuss, when in fact there is lots.

This is the second year that my Grade 9 students have participated in the Digiteen Project.  As part of this project they spend some time researching the 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship before deciding on an Action Project to undertake at our school.  This has been a challenging project for me and I am still struggling to figure out why it hasn’t had the impact on my students that I thought it would.  What I am coming to realise is that quite a few of them come into my class feeling like they already know about Internet Safety and they don’t really see how Digital Citizenship is relevant to them.  I wonder if this is because they have spent years having adults talk down to them about these issues, instead of involving them in the discussion.  They say this really well in the article:

And young people themselves need to be part of the discussion, not just to listen and parrot what adults tell them to say, but to help think through the issues, help adults understand the difference between real and imagined dangers, how youth themselves are dealing with the real ones (research shows a good deal of intelligence on their part), and help adults come up with messages that will resonate with their peers.

So the question then is how do I get my students to take this conversation seriously enough to think critically about it and not just fall back on the buzzwords.  One of the models in this article gives me hope, it’s called the ‘Net Effect” and it’s based on a group of characteristics packaged by social media researcher danah boyd that really capture why what we do online is different than what we do face to face:

* Persistence & searchability: the Net as a permanent, searchable archive
* Replicability: the ability to copy and paste from anywhere on the Net, to anywhere online
* Scalability: high potential visibility well beyond the audience you had in mind
* Invisible audiences: never really knowing who’s seeing, reading or watching what you post
* Blurring of public and private: an extension of invisible audiences because boundaries aren’t clear – private from whom?

These seem like very tangible, personal topics to me and possibly just the framework for exploring issues of Digital Citizenship with my students in a way that will get them more involved.

I also keep coming back to this blog post by ben blumsmith on teaching Mathematics.  In it he talks about giving students a problem with an superficial pattern that seems to explain things, but actually doesn’t.  The argument being that the cognitive dissonance that arises when they realise their pre-conceived notions don’t work is enough to get them to delve deeper.  This has got me thinking whether I can come up with some good scenarios (maybe videos, maybe stories) that will challenge my students pre-concieved notions regarding Digital Citizenship and get them to delve deeper?

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It’s been a while.

After enjoying a brief few months as a prolific beginner blogger life seems to have gotten in the way and the blogging momentum has tanked.  I suspect that this is a common trend amongst us blogging newbies and I think that, in my case at least, part of the difficulty has been in taking myself too seriously.  I enjoyed blogging a lot more when I used my blog as a platform for thinking and trying out ideas, rather than as a place to store fully formed thoughts.

I suspect that the shift towards “serious blogging” stems from the fact that I am trying to write posts that I can cross post between Tech Eddy and my school blog, and the school influence is pushing me towards “seriousness” and “finished” rather than “work in progress”.  I prefer “work in progress”.

So, in the spirit of thinking out loud … recently David Warlick wrote a post about 21st Century Literacies in which he quotes James Paul Gee:

In my view, in the twenty-first century we need the following—and we need them fast and all at once together: embodied empathy for complex systems; “grit” (passion + persistence); playfulness that leads to innovation; design thinking; collaborations in which groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group; and real understanding that leads to problem solving and not just test passing.  These are, to my mind, the true twenty-first century skills.

I found this a refreshing change from the usual topics normally associated with 21st Century Literacy, so I wanted to try and unpack a few of these ideas.

embodied empathy for complex systems

The world we live in and the problems we face are all really complex.  In my experience as long as a teacher tries to be the repository of knowledge they will end up simplifying the issues and students will end up with a limited understanding of the problems and a very simple ideas regarding the solutions.  The only way we can really help students understand the complexity around us is to allow for messiness and “not knowing’ in our classrooms.

“grit” (passion + persistence)

It seems to me that it is easier than ever these days to find a community that shares and can support your passion, but I was recently in a staff meeting where I was told that universities are complaining that kids these days are lazy (read lack of persistence).  I’m not so sure.  I think that kids learn differently and have different expectations regarding the ease with which they can access information, but I’m not sure that equals laziness.  I do wonder though whether the ease with which my students can use technology to access information makes it more difficult for them to learn persistence.  If they can’t google it or find it on Wikipedia they are apt to give up.

playfulness that leads to innovation

This is all about not taking yourself too seriously so that you aren’t afraid to make mistakes (sort of what this blog post is about).  You have to be willing to make and learn from mistakes to innovate.

design thinking

I think that embedding the design cycle into all my lessons has been one of the best changes to my teaching practice, ever.  Why?  Because I can see my students starting to look at what they are producing and asking themselves “Is this the best solution to the problem?” rather than “Is this going to get me an A?”  Ok, this might be a bit of an exageration.  They still want that A.

collaborations in which groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group

This is the next step I want to take in my classroom and school, I’m just not quite sure how.  The past year of blogging, tweeting and being involved in a flat classroom project have convinced me on a personal level of the power of personal learning networks.  Now I have to figure out how to gently introduce these concepts to my students and teaching colleagues.

real understanding that leads to problem solving and not just test passing

The first thing that comes to mind when I read this is YES, but “how do you measure this?”.  In my technology classes I can honestly say that I do teach this 21st century skill.  It’s all about project based learning.  But my math class is a different place.  I want to teach real understanding, but sometimes and for some students the rules have to come first and the understanding later.  And sometimes real understanding is what helps them pass a test.  I still struggle with this one.

Photo by by FotoRita [Allstar maniac] on Flickr

I’ve done it.  I finally stood up in front of a group of people and put voice to all the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head and on this blog recently.  It was quite cathartic and I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about.  I gave my presentation after a colleague gave her great presentation on non-fiction literacy and while I think I did manage to touch on some very important topics I realised just before I was about to go up that my presentation had a very big gap in it; in all my big picture thinking I never took the time to think about strategies that my students can use to actually READ the information on a web page.  This is ironic because it was the difficulties my students were having actually reading on a computer screen and sifting through all the words to find the stuff they really needed that got me thinking about literacy in the first place.

So today we had a staff meeting and tried to unpack what the actual things are that we do with our eyes and brains when we skim for information (in order to find the big ideas) and scan for information (in order to find answers).  And this got me thinking about what a skills articulation might look like for non-fiction reading online.  I think it has to start with a teacher or librarian picking good websites that are at an age appropriate level.  These could then get bundled into a google custom search box.  The students would have to be taught how to ask good questions and come up with appropriate keywords for their search.  When they get some hits they should know how to toggle the cache so they can see all their key words highlighted; they should also know how to use the find feature in their web browser to search for further key words.

I think this is just the beginning though.  I need to start modeling for them the strategies I use for reading online, how I scan and decide what is pertinent.  And I need to make sure they get practice at this all the time.

The next step is to introduce them to google notebook, delicious and PLNs, but I think I’ll go one step at a time.

Picture from Flickr by Earl – What I Saw 2.0

In a few days I am going to have a chance to present to our parent body on the subject of Digital Literacy.  My presentation is going to be on the heels of a longer presentation about Literacy in general.  I am excited about this opportunity and feel like the timing couldn’t be better.  We are about to launch our new school intranet based on Wordpress, the teachers are all starting to experiment with blogs and the entire ed tech community seems to be buzzing with great thoughts regarding Digital Literacy.  Here is the description of what I am supposed to be talking about:

The second part will focus on the digital literacy skills your children should be developing so that they can become safe and productive members of our increasingly digital society.  Parents will hear about digital literacy projects Aspengrove School is currently involved with and discuss how parents can help foster these skills at home.

I am finding that my biggest challenge right now is in sorting through all the buzz in my head in order to put together a presentation that will be both eye opening and empowering.  My hope is that by writing my thoughts about this presention down as a blog post I will be able to make my own sense out of all the conversations I have been eavesdropping on.

Part 1: Setting the Stage

I have decided that the main message I want parents to leave the presentation with is that the nature of information today has changed and that we need to add some more Literacy tools to their children’s Literary toolbox so that they are able to interact with digital information in constructive ways.  To get this message across I plan on doing the following:

• Introduce them to the new nature of information by looking at Wikis and Wikipedia and have a discussion about whether they would trust the information on Wikipedia.  After this I will tell them about the study comparing Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica and about Pluto still being a planet in paper based Encyclopedias.  I will show them the discussion and history tabs in Wikipedia and introduce them to the idea of learning and knowledge as a conversation, rather than as a static thing.
• Following on this I will give them the URL of the wiki I have created as a resource for them parents21c.wikispaces.com and explain that I hope this will be a place we can start to share resources regarding Digital Literacy.

Next I want to find a good Presentation Zen way to present the following quote (I still need to find the original source, I got it from the newliteracy wiki), which I want to use to illustrate how radically the nature if information is changing.

In 2006, 5 million gigabytes of new information were added to the world and of that only .01% was printed.

Following on this quote I want to transition to the idea that the way information has changed is having a dramatic impact on the world we are trying to prepare their children for.  I like the following quote,

For the first time in history, our job as educators is to prepare our students for a future that we cannot clearly describe.

This next part is the tricky one.  I want to use this idea that with the future being so uncertain Literacy (both traditional and digital) is vitally important if their children are going to be able to function and participate in the information rich world around them.  I  like this quote from Marshall McLuhan about the ‘rear-view mirror effect’,

We see the world through a rear-view mirror.  We march backwards into the future.

I want the parents to come away from this presentation willing to stop looking backwards at some of the ways that they learned and be able to think openly about the new things that their kids need to learn to be successful in the future.

Part 2: Sharing a Framework for moving forward

I have to admit that while I have been fascinated by the current online conversations on Literacy and documents like the Jenkins White Paper and the MacArthur New Media study I have had a hard time figuring out how to turn this conversation into a working plan I can use in my classroom.  So instead I have decided to introduce Digital Literacy to the parents with this graphic.

I am comfortable with these three different aspects of Digital Literacy because they are all incorporated in my current curriculum to some extent and as such I have relevant examples I can share with the parents.  I am not sure that the Venn Diagram is the best representation, but I like that it shows overlap between the different skills.

Access and Critically Analyse Online Information

I plan to introduce this aspect of Digital Literacy by sharing some of Alan November’s work.  In particular I have found that the REAL strategy he recommends is the most effective tool I have found for quickly determining whether you can trust the information on a website.

To make sure that the parents really understand each of these steps AND the importance of being able to verify the accuracy of information online I will take them through an evaluation of www.martinlutherking.org.

This will be the most hands on part of the presentation and I am a little worried about the trade off between the time it will take and the benefit but I think it is important that people going away feeling like they have learned something they can use right away.  To that effect I am also thinking of taking a minute to show them how to toggle SafeSearch in Google.

Engage in Safe and Constructive Social Networking

This is a part of the presentation that I am really looking forward to because it is the piece I have been thinking about a lot lately as a result of my experiences in the Digiteen project.  The message that I want parents to get from this part of the presentation is that they can`t expect that their children just know how to be safe online because they seem so tech savvy, and that they best way to keep them safe is to engage them in conversation about their online experiences.  One of my experiences in the Digiteen Ning involved coming across innapropriate behaviour in a chat room conversation.  My first reaction was to just delete the chat and exert my teacher “control”, which is I think what a lot of parents want to know “how do I control my childs internet use”?  While there are certainly a number of things a parent can do like making sure the family computer is in a public space in the end they will very likely be out maneuvered if what they want to do is try and control the situation.  This is illustrated really well in some of the Growing Up Online videos produced by PBS.

On the other hand the Digiteen Ning provided me with the tools to set up an asynchronous online discussion about Digital Etiquette as a response to the chat room behaviour and I was absolutely amazed at the number and quality of the responses I recieved.  Similarly I think that for the parents in my presentation to really keep their children safe online they have to take and interest in their online lives and make sure the channels of communication are open.

I would love to wax eloquent about the power of Personal Learning Networks but I think that will have to wait until another time.  Still I feel that there is a piece missing here.  If I am going to talk about Social Networking as a part of Digital Literacy then being able to learn from a network and create a network are an important piece.  Maybe  I can give them Vicki Davis’s latest article in Educause.  I am also thinking of handing out Will Richardson’s article from Educational Leadership entitled ‘Footprints in the Digital Age‘ in an effort to get them thinking about managing their children’s digital footprint instead of trying to ignore it.

Know How to Create and Share Knowledge

I am thinking about showing them this video on the New Media Literacies as a way to show that being able to interact with digital information and communicating what you know by producing more content is another aspect of literacy.  I’m still not sure if this is the best video, my other option is Learning to Change – Changing to learn.

For this section I want to emphasise that the PROCESS of creation is as if not more important than the technical skills involved.  I will talk briefly about the IB MYP Design Cycle and how I am using it in my Technology classes and then I think I will talk about Chris Craft’s Life Round Here 2009 Project which my grade 6’s will be participating in this year.  I might show one of the Photostories they made last year.

Part 3: What’s Next.

Finally I will wrap up by encouraging them to visit the Wiki I have created.  I am also going to start a blog on our private intranet in which I will highlight projects being done at the school that include Digital Literacy skills.

And that’s it.  If you have actually read this far all I can say is WOW.  I would really appreciate comments and feedback of all varieties as I really want this presentation to be a stepping stone on the way to our school becoming a real 21st century school.

I got an iTouch for Christmas, and I find it interesting how it has changed the way I interact with information on the internet.

What I like.  More immediate access to Twitter.  Being a parent, partner and teacher keeps me busy enough that I am not in front of my laptop enough to keep on top of all the amazing conversations going on in my Twitter network.  Having the iTouch in my pocket, however, has allowed me to peek in on these conversations more regularly and bookmark the parts I want to comeback to.

In particular I have really enjoyed peeking in on the current conversation regarding literacy.  I first became aware of it when Will Richardson tweeted an invite to this elluminate session, then I came across Ryan Bretag`s blog post summary of his thoughts on `The Great Literacy Debate`.  Finally, this morning I found (via AngelaMaiers on Twitter) this great blog post by Beth Holmes giving some great historical background to the conversation.  I wouldn`t have been aware of any of this without the iTouch.

What I don`t like.  The biggest drawback so far is that I have become much more of a consumer of information and less of a producer.  I find the virtual keyboard on the iTouch difficult to navigate and so find myself reluctant to type much more than a search term or username.  At the same time my laptop is open less as I can now follow conversations and go to websites using the iTouch.

I am also a little put off by the fact that Apple insists on me providing them with a credit card number to get a Apple ID, which I seem to need to download any applications onto my iTouch.  From what I can tell there are a lot of FREE applications that would help me to sync my iTouch with all the cloud computing services I use, but I can`t get them without giving Apple a credit card number.  I will probably break down and sign up for an Apple ID soon, but for the moment I`m going to be quietly indignant and continue to just use the applications it came with.