BrendaDee's Daily Learning in 2011

When Being There Doesn't Necessarily Mean You're There

via popcornjs.org

I spent this morning teaching a group of Education students fromCold Lake and Lac La Biche, Alberta. I wasn't there... but I was there... thanks to video Conferencing. Three hours revisiting the topic of Constructivism (within a social studies context)--- doing some of the same things I would had done if we were face to face and lots of things that we wouldn't have been able to do if we were face to face.

After the class, as I wandered back to my office, I walked down a hall full of students doing what university students have always have done, reading their assigned readings, writing and working in groups. Fresh out of three hours of Video Conferencing, I took a very intensional look at what was different about this hallway of learners. This is what I saw:

- most students on laptops 
- students reading a book with earplugs attached to an ipod 
- students with big earphones, listening and staring ahead 
- students scanning their cell phones 
- students working on their iPad 
- students showing someone something on their handheld device 
- students talking on their cell phones 
- students intently reading a book or article with their cell phone right beside them or in their hand 
Few students were not attached to some kind of digital device. 
I wished I could have taken a 360 degree picture of the scene before me (I didn't because of FOIP concerns). It would have been a visual commentary about how much learners and the place of learning have changed.

If schools and upper education are just starting to note the shift that has taken place in this profession, they're already way behind--- the shift has already happened and is morphing in ways most educators can't even fathom. 
Michael Wesch's Visions of Students Today, a kaleidoscope of images, text, and student voices (using HTML5, Popcorn + Open Video) was created as an assignment  by Michael Wesch's university students Their voices sends home the message loud and clear: Pay attention Educators-- this is important! We need to be heard!

Learning Institutions are trapped in a conversation about the wrong thing. Presently, the talk is all about how do we micromanage the digital devices that students are coming to class with and how "does the technology work" as a fix for the old. It ought to be about developing and choosing between visions of how this immensely powerful technology can support the invention of powerful new forms of learning to serve levels of expectation higher than anything imagined in the past” (Papert, 1999). Really listening to the voices in the Visions of Students Today video extravaganza should convince us that change is more than stirring--- that change has reached a tsunami level that can't be ignored or disagreed with. We need to take heed to Seymour Papert's 1999 warning that we're trapped in the wrong conversations-- and then look like crazy for the right ones.

The best place by the fire was kept for... The Storyteller.

A Tale of Two Worlds: Old School, New School

Calling All Readers! A Secret Bookstore

via laughingsquid.com

For all you book lovers out there- here is a bewitching idea. A secret bookstore (the owner refers to it as illegal) , located somewhere in a private residence in New York City, Brazenhead Books, a used bookstore since the 1970's, has found its way to the recently converted 84th Street apartment of owner Michael Seidenburg (his rent in New York City quadrupled). This venture is fueled by Michael's passion of reading and the his obvious passion for the sacredness of an institution that is quickly disappearing-- the privately owned bookstore. If Michael had followed most private bookstore owners, the doors to Brazenhead Books (see video clip below) would now be closed but instead this curious man has turned the bookstore concept upside down by creating his home into a salon for collectors. How do you find this bookstore? From another disappearing institution--- the phone book!

Come Together! Global Collaborative Art Project

Over the past couple of years we've been introduced to a new phenomena- crowdsourcing for the purpose of accomplishing artistic endeavors. The YouTube Symphony was the first project I saw along these lines and none of us will ever forget Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir.

Today I came across another such project--  The Johnny Cash Project, a "global collaborative art project constructing a music video for Cash’s final studio recording, 'Ain’t No Grave' from hundreds of user-submitted one-of-a-kind portraits of the iconic artist." A simple idea but amazingly profound in its outcome. Brain-child of Aaron Koblin (an artist who specializes in data and digital technologies) , project participants submitted their drawings using an online tool (you can try your hand at it too).

The result of this digital quilt of frames, doodles and Cash's legendary music is posted below as well as several participating artists sharing their unique experience of collaborating virtually to create a common work of digital art:

An Agent of Change for Others

The City as a Classroom?

"Only moderns could be facing each other and be worried about `communicating' as if they were thousands of miles apart.'' ~ John D. Peters

Peter Hirshburg and Marshall McLuhan courtesy of Mary Hodder's Photostream Creative Commons Attribution license

University of Alberta's Centinary Celebration of influential scholar and thinker Marshall McLuhan, begins this week in Edmonton.  This celebration will take many formats. In typical McLuhan form, planners are looking for alternative ways (Wave: A Major Art and Media Installation) to flesh out McLuhanisms such as:

"It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame" and

"Today the entire human community is being translater into "auditory space," or into that "field of simultanous relations," by electric broadcasting. It behooves the aritect and town planner, above all, to know what that means."

The following Curb article below (p.21-22) introduced me to the following McLuhan idea, one I'd never considered before: "... the city is a “technological composite,” a patchwork of media and technologies built up over time and space. In this context, new technologies may be imagined as “punctuations” in our historical landscape, inaugurating irreversible cultural, social, and economic changes."

The Right to Trash...

" When speech is merely offensive, and taking place outside of school hours and property, principals and teachers should ignore it-- and think of it as the price we pay for living in a free country."

A recent court ruling decided that students have the constitutional right make fun of their teachers online. My educator mind is wondering--- could this type of online harrassement interfer with learning. If there's a negative buzz online within your classroom (about you the teacher), won't it eventually find its way into the classroom? When one person's right interfer with the another person's... what then? 

Why Students Have the Right to Mock Teachers Online

"I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' freedom of speech, we need to control ourselves." ~ Peggy Nnonan

One of our most basic human rights is the Right to a Safe Place. What if the tools that mediate the face-to-face world and the digital world, facilitate an unsafe space for someone? a student... a teacher? This question led me to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a 63 year old document. How does this treatise apply in a digital world? Several phrases from the Declaration jumped out at me:

+ All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

+ Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

+ No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

+ No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Do No Harm--- That Means Us

Henry Jenkins isn't exaggerating. What he's  saying in the Edutopia video above is true in the United States, Canada, Alberta and many of the schools down the street from you and I. It may even be true of the school you are teaching in. There is a digital participation gap and we need to be concerned about that. I talk to teachers everyday who tell me that they can't access (in their classroom) YouTube, Web 2.0 tools that store student work on foreign servers and access to certain topics in their Internet searches. Jenkins talks about the students who don't have access to technology other than in school and asks what will become of these students if schools limit their access and don't integrate rich use of technology into their teaching. Jenkins believes that these students are doubly left behind --- the participation gap. 

"It's not about access to technology but access to learning experiences, social skills and cultural competencies, to a sense of empowerment and entitlement that allows them to fully be participants in this new society that is emerging" ~ Dr. Henry Jenkins

This video challenges educators to "pull back, have an open-minded perspective and be willing to explore", to "recognize and value the kind of learning that is taking place outside of the school and give a space for kids to share that expertise in the classroom so that they feel better about the things they do". 

Henry Jenkins packs a lot into this 9.5 minute video. It may be short in length but don't let that deceive you. The kind of changes he's calling for here will take a lot of courage and willingness to leave behind teaching practices that no longer fit today's digital learning landscape.

For more reading on this topic check out: A New Culture of Learning  (by DOUGLAS THOMAS and JOHN SEELY BROWN).

Lets Get Serious: Arts Education

 

“ The arts and humanities define who we are as a people.  That is their power -- to remind us of what we each have to offer, and what we all have in common.  To help us understand our history and imagine our future.  To give us hope in the moments of struggle and to bring us together when nothing else will.” ~ First Lady Michelle Obama

My twenty-one year old son John is graduating from a Performing Arts Program at Red Deer College (Red Deer, Alberta) on June 3rd. One of the most common questions asked of him during his two years of study has been "... So what are you going to do with a Performing Arts diploma?" As a mother (and teacher), I get asked that question all the time, along with "Will he get a real job with a Performing Arts diploma?" or "Are you going to have to support him until he finds a way to make a real living?" Pretty discouraging questions. 

Watching John work his way through this very demanding program has opened my eyes about the unique ways this unconventional learning route develops a young person who is brave enough to navigate through the negative mind sets attached to those enrolled in a Liberal Arts or Performing Arts program. I've seen his thinking ability and communication skills developed in unbelievable ways along with his ability to read body language, play the role of a blind soldier in 1918 (Unity 1918), become a team player and develop a self awareness well beyond his years . I've watched a boy who hated reading have a reason to read Dante's Inferno because he was using it as the underpinnings of a play he wrote and directed.

It's because of all of this that I took special delight today to learn that tomorrow evening the White House will be hosting a celebration of poetry and prose. During this special event, President and Mrs Obama will welcome poets, musicians and artists who will "read, sing and showcase the impact of poetry on American culture". Of special interest to me was Michelle Obama's part in the evening- a time when she will share the robust data that emerged from The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities report (PCAH), a body of evidence (see the report below) that reveals that the United States proud history of creativity and innovation is in jeopardy unless we prepare the next generation to be the inventor, creators and designers of the future. The PCAH report uncovers research findings linked to learning and makes five serious recommendations that will hopefully raise the profile of Arts in Education and the respect for those whose special abilities enable them to contribute to their world through art, music, drama and writing. Be sure to check out the PCAH web site.

Click here to download:

PCAH_Report_Summary_and_Recommendations.pdf (265 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

PCAH_Report_Summary_and_Recommendations.pdf (265 KB)