Educators of the Future

Isaac Asimov stated in the early 1930’s……….

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”

Undoubtedly, our world is changing drastically and rapidly.  These changes make us question the foundations of our systems of education and schooling.  It is becoming increasingly essential that educators continue to stay current and familiar with emerging technologies and that they are comfortable integrating a variety of technologies into their educational practices.  Technological literacy has emerged as an essential literacy of equal importance to reading, writing, mathematics, scientific inquiry, and critical and creative thought.  However, it is also important to remember that technology is often the medium, and should not be confused with the message.  Educators of the future face the challenge of implementing technology in order to aid in reaching the larger goals of education; in order to create motivated life-long learners who have the skills, abilities and the willingness to educate themselves.  As the Internet and the ‘world of Education’ continue to shift progressively toward a notion of open thinking, sharing, and collaboration, the role of the teacher must also shift from sole provider of knowledge to a facilitator of learning.  As our planet and the human race face a convergence of simultaneous crisis, the implementation of web technologies will not be education’s greatest challenge.  Teachers will increasingly be faced with the challenge to create projects and learning environments that aim towards solving real world problems and sustainability.

Digital Storytelling

In Dean Shareski’s latest post on his blog ‘Ideas and Thoughts”, he passes on the idea [with credit to Doug Peterson, ZeFrank, Stephen Downs among others] that Google Streetview and its ever growing database is an exceptional tool for storytelling.  Dean created and shared a video about his small hometown of Morden in Manitoba, which emphasizes the point about Google’s growing database – even relatively small towns have now been ‘Streetviewed’.

Dean also shares a link to a video by Jim Groom, saying that, “Watching Jim Groom’s video, was like literally like going for a walk with him.”  It was Jim’s video that really hit me with the power of Google Streetview.  Jim tells his story about growing up in a tight-knit community in Long Island.  This is a part of the world that I know almost nothing about, and yet after watching his video,  I feel that I would ‘know my way around’ if I was to go for a walk in his neighbourhood.  I feel that I’ve learned something about the culture that is associated with the place.  Now Jim’s story is not particularly exciting or interesting, although I do feel that I have learned about that part of New York.  It is the power of this technology that I have found exciting and interesting.  If this technology was used by someone who did have an interesting story to tell, it could be quite powerful.  Google Streetview allows anyone with the right technology, and a bit of time, to create engaging videos to support a story of a place.

So I got to thinking about place, and stories of place.  What place would I love to tell a story about, and share with my students?  I first Googled my house, and switched to Street View.  I thought that it was pretty cool that my property was on Street View, although not interesting enough to share with anyone.  Then I thought about one of my favourite places on this planet… the artists’ market square in Montmartre, Paris, France.  I Googled Montmartre, and sure enough Street View was available.  I had to call upon my memory from walking the streets of Montmartre several years ago, and eventually found my way to the artists’ square.  If done right, some very interesting stories could be told with the Street View images of this heavily trafficked place.

The man in the green shirt in the center of the image below is a painter by the name of Cawian Mahmud.   When I visited this square about six years ago with my wife, we bought four paintings from Cawian to decorate our newly purchased house.  It was quite interesting to me to ‘find’ him in street view, as I have often wondered if he still worked and painted in Paris.  Cawian’s story is just one of the details that could be interwoven into a Google Street View walk through Montmartre.

I doubt that my small attempt is a great example (especially since I haven’t yet made a video of the ‘streetview walk’), never-the-less, I think the power of Street View is evident.  Whether used by teachers, or by students, Street View can be used to create interesting stories about the culture of a place.

On-line PD – I’ll Get to the Point

In order for true quality professional development to take place, I think that we need to address some of the ways around which we think about professional development as educational systems.  Yes, it is certainly true that there are hundreds of on-line tools and resources available to enhance PD, but I don’t think that it would matter if we had hundreds of thousands of excellent tools to choose from.   These tools are simply the medium through which to facilitate PD.  If there is no unified direction of message, does it really matter what tools or media are used?

Herein lies the point.  There seems to be a lack of direction as to where we need to head in education.  There seems to be a lack of direction in aiming towards best practices in education, and there is certainly a lack of direction in how we should best utilize professional learning time.  Essentially, I believe this to be an issue of control, and I think it is time to let go.  Traditionally, educational systems and their leaders have prided themselves in their abilities to create quality professional development sessions that have been intended for the masses; a great majority of teachers.  I don’t think this works anymore.  We simply have too much choice, and that is a good thing.  Let’s embrace our power of choice.

It is time for educational systems and their leaders to understand that TEACHERS ARE LIFE-LONG LEARNERS. It is time to give up the control over how PD time is to be spent.  We need to pass this control over to the individual teachers who, as dedicated life-long learners, will ultimately decide what their best possible learning path is, and how they should best go about it.  This is how true PD will take place.  Teachers must be invested in their learning in order for it to take place. A growing number of teachers are finding many current PD opportunities are simply not engaging.

Scenario A.  A PD session is implemented with mandatory attendance from all staff members.  The PD session is designed in a sort of ‘top down’ approach in which the direction was decided upon by an educational leader.  The topic is yet another of several ‘new initiatives’.  The session is well attended, and many staff members contribute to the discussion, however others are not engaged, even sowing buttons on shirts in the back of the room.

Scenario B.  A block of time is set aside for PD opportunities to take place.  Staff members were given advance notice and ample time to ‘choose their own adventure’.  Some staff members have decided to drive to other schools in the system to meet with teachers with a similar focus.  One group in particular meets to learn photography techniques from a teacher who has already set up a successful photography program.  Other teachers decide to head to their classrooms.  One teacher uses his lap-top to watch a lecture from professor Michael Wesch via Ustream.  Another spends time watching a few TED Talks videos about creativity [like Ken Robinson's, or Elizabeth Gilbert's].  A small group of teachers meet to discuss potential recycling and composting projects to be implemented in the school.  One of the teachers in this group logs in to Tapped In, and they meet up with a couple of other teachers in another city who have already begun similar projects.  Another teacher browses through a list of new Web 2.0 tools and begins to play with software she was not familiar with.  Several others meet in the library for a more traditional and guided PD session and discussion about literacy.

From these example scenarios, it is my opinion that the second involves a higher level of professional development.  More teachers are engaged in their learning, as they’ve had control over the design of their learning path.  In order for this to happen, we need to change our outlook about PD.  We need to understand that professional learning can take place on-line.  We need to understand that PD can be solitary, and that professional learning can take place by watching quality lectures or YouTube and TedTalk videos.  It’s time to give the control of professional learning over to the professional who is to be learning.

On-line PD – TEDx Indie

There are an ever-growing variety of Internet tools, programs, and technologies that pose great potential for professional development opportunities to take place either on a local or global scale.  Over the last week or so, I have taken a look at the following:

• the 3rd Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference [a global conference in Second Life]
• Edutopia [funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation]
• TEDxTalks [independently organized TED events]

In my last post I talked about about the VWBPE Conference in Second Life and how that led me to some professional learning about augmented reality.  I began to contemplate and consider how augmented reality is already becoming a prominent part of our digital world, especially with GPS tools, smart phones, and iTools like iPads, iPhones, and iTouches.  This led me to some reflection about augmented reality in the classrooms and some thoughts about the iSchool initiative.

The next on-line PD resource that got my brainwave moving was TEDxTalks.  As most tech savy educators, I’ve been a fan of TED talks for a while.  Many of these lectures are quite exceptional, and I’ve often played TED talk videos in my classroom.  My favourite TED talks are lectures by visual artist and activist Chris Jordan, Al Gore,  and by Sir Ken Robinson.  Will Richardson posted an early morning ‘brain dump’ after a mind jolting experience at TEDxNYED in New York.  As a fan of TED, I was already interested, and then Will’s list of speakers really had me intrigued: Michael Wesch, Lawrence Lessig, George Siemens, Chris Lehman, and many, many others.  What is this TEDxNYED?  I followed his link, and then another, and another, and I ended up on YouTube’s TEDx channel.  I was blown away by the number of very high quality lectures, and really just the very concept of TEDx.

TED has always been an excellent resource for professional development.  There are just so many great lectures on TED, and TEDx is a very welcome addition.  I browsed through, and quickly found a series of TED lectures from NASA.  After a few short lectures, I am now much more knowledgeable about the happenings on Mars, and about our advancement in the engineering science of robotics.  I haven’t managed to find any of the New York ED video here yet.  If you know where I can view them, let me know.  I’d like to see another lecture from Michael Wesch.

Want to know more about robots in 2010?

Our PD Problem – A Lack of Direction

On Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed yesterday, he discussed Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book The Flat World and Education.  Will describes her book as being “rich with detail about everything that’s troubling about the US education system (and the potential fixes).”  A section of her book describes the deficiencies relating to professional development in American education, and she states, “the landscape of supports for quality teaching looks like Swiss cheese.” I find this an apt description also of Canadian education as well, certainly in my realm.  Darling-Hammond discusses the general inconsistency in the delivery of professional development – a problem that exists here as well.  Will shares some ‘extended snips’ of her book that clearly outline her point [which I recommend reading - here].

“When a profession’s knowledge is not organized and made available to the practitioners who need it most, advances in the state of both knowledge and practice are slowed.”

“If teachers, principals, superintendents, and other professionals do not share up-to-date knowledge about effective practices, the field runs around in circles: Curriculum and teaching practices are inconsistent, many poor decisions are made, and the efforts of those who are successful are continually undermined and counteracted by the activities of those who are uninformed and unskilled.”

“Students experience an instructional hodgepodge caused by the failure of the system to provide the knowledge and tools needed by the educators who serve them.”

When I read these words, I can’t help but feel that she is describing the education system of which I am a part.  Now, I don’t mean to be overly critical of my principal, superintendents, directors or other leaders in my system.  I am quite sure that most have very good intentions for education, as well as for professional development opportunities.  However, I don’t think that it is a stretch to describe our current situation of professional development in education as ‘looking like Swiss cheese’, or ‘not organized and made available’, and that teachers are ‘running around in circles’.

Darling-Hammond criticizes the American education system, saying that American teachers spend more time in the classroom and have less opportunity for professional development than in other nations.  In Canada, I don’t necessarily see that we have a problem in a lack of opportunity for professional development especially in terms of time.  The problem is not a lack of available time, it is a lack of unity.  Our professional development opportunities only contribute to the chaos that is keeping us running in circles and creating and instructional hodgepodge.  There is no cohesiveness of direction, there is no unified messages or guidance of message, there is no consistency of direction for best practices in education.  So as I don’t criticize the intentions of the leaders of my system, I do criticize the lack of consistency of direction.

Richardson criticizes Darling-Hammond’s book, noting that, “there is very little here in terms of a meaningful discussion around what role technology plays in educating for a “flat world.” Kind of ironic.”  He goes on to discuss his own work with PLP that he feels “addresses most of the issues that Darling-Hammond cites.”  My next post will discuss a variety of web tools and resources that offer great potential for professional development opportunities.  As I head in a direction of evaluating or critiquing such resources, I can’t help but think that these tools are simply the medium.  There are some truly great technological tools that pose great benefits to opportunities for professional development.  However, if there is no unified direction of message, does it really matter what tools or media are used?

Darling-Hammond advocates for state and federal intervention as a solution to these issues.  However she goes on to say that, “I’m not optimistic that will happen anytime soon.  We can’t seem to agree on much in this country these days.”  And I think that this statement points towards the root of the problem.  Do we lack consistency of direction because we have too much choice?  With research that points in so many directions, do we no longer have any direction of best practices in education?

The Legal Quicksand of the Internet

Let Common Sense Prevail!

The title of this week’s post is appropriate as I feel as though I am sinking and am just barely keeping my head above the surface.  This is a busy life!

Anyway, this title comes from one of this week’s content choices in EC&I 832.  The content for this block was presented as  a ‘choose your own adventure’ of sorts, and was divided into three choices:  one on information literacy in a digital world, another – a discussion of multi-literacies, and the third – about legal issues, copyright, and ethics of Internet use.  I browsed through much of the content for each of the three ‘adventures’ and found that each presented great resources about important issues to be considered as educators further implement web technologies in their classrooms.  Choosing the block about copyright and legal issues was relatively a ‘no-brainer’ for me.  This is a topic that I have been following and reflecting for some time, and I may have some strong opinions about. {Here is my original post on the topic.}

There are some truly great resource for teaching young people about copyright, copyleft,  legal issues, plagerism (more), creative commons, and using images.  Perhaps the best resources on these topic are the following TED Talks video clips.

In this TED Talk, Larry Lessig, the Net’s most celebrated lawyer, argues against current copyright practices.  He discusses the point that today’s legal issues of ownership of knowledge is strangling our creative culture.  Although he states that neither extreme – complete control vs. piracy – is correct, he is essentially making an argument for creative commons licenses.

Another great video resource for this discussion is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ TED Talk in which he explains the social methodologies and power of user generated content.

In today’s digital world in which the Web is compiled of user-generated content, the debate over copy protection has never been more heated.  Essentially what we have here is a debate over extremes of a copy protection spectrum, much like that of a political spectrum.

One one extreme there is copyright law, protection and ownership of creations and knowledge, complete control; “All Rights Reserved.”  On the other extreme there is copyleft.  There is piracy and plagerism; no control; no rights reserved.  In Larry Lessig’s TED Talk, he makes the point that one extreme begets the other.  A world of the extreme right, in which there is complete control of copy protection creates a reaction from the extreme left in which there is no respect for any copy protection rights and plagerism and piracy is rampant.  Such extremes and reactions exist in today’s digital world, and neither extreme is right.  Neither extreme displays any common sense.

Today’s youth have grown up immersed in media content.  Many of them have had digital technologies at their fingertips for much of their lives; many are ‘digital natives’.  Lessig talks about this generation as the ‘remix’ generation; who communicate by remixing and editing previously created content.  “This is how they communicate,” he emphasizes.  “They take sounds and images from the culture around us and use it to say things differently… These tools of creativity have become tools of speech.  It is a literacy for this generation, this is how our kids speak.  It is how our kids think, it is what your kids are as they increasingly understand digital technologies and their relationship to themselves.”  I know this to be true [and Lessig makes me feel young] as I am part of this ‘remix’ generation.  This blog, and just about anything else that I use to communicate, could be seen as an example of such remixing.  I am a visual thinker, and today’s tech tools allow me to create meaning and to communicate messages by reorganizing the Internet’s media content in new ways, to make new ideas.  This is a new literacy.

Let common sense prevail.  The viewpoints of the extreme right of the scale shows a complete lack of common sense in this digital age.  Views that state that permission must be granted before an image found on the Internet can be used are absolutely ridiculous and completely out of touch with modern reality.  Such rules make a great portion of the Internet’s use illegal.   We are already beyond the read/write stage of the Internet’s history, and are well into an age that would be better describes as the read/re-write age.  The majority of the re-writing, re-working, and re-creating that exists is completely innocent, and is not to be confused with piracy.  It is merely a new form of communication, a more visual, media enriched, and to-the-point reworking of existing content.

Let common sense prevail.  Here is a quote from ‘Net Know How, a resource used to educate young people about copy ethics.  “In this digital age, it is very easy to copy photos and illustrations from the ‘Net.  In fact, it is a process we discover when we “right-click” our computer’s mouse.  However, we must observe the same copyright compliance given to written property.”  This is an example of Lessig’s point that copy protection laws are strangling communication and creativity.  Common sense must prevail here.  Common sense should tell you that a vast majority of the images that are available on the internet have absolutely no commercial value, and as such, will get very little protection.  The truth is that the copy protection laws are in place for two main purposes;  “namely the protection of the author’s right to obtain commercial benefit from valuable work, and more recently the protection of the author’s general right to control how a work is used. …if the work is unregistered and has no real commercial value, it gets very little protection.”

As an artist, and a teacher of visual communication, I do value copyright.  The most important part of copyright is that it seeks to protect the creator’s right to control how a work is used.  This is very important.  However, I also value common sense.  On his page, 10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained, Brad Templeton writes that, “If you feel you need to violate a copyright “because you can get away with it because the work has no value” you should ask yourself why you’re doing it.  If your answer to this that you are attempting to illustrate a point, that you are continuing the dialogue, or that you are merely communicating or expressing yourself or your freedom of speech, the let common sense prevail.   Common sense should relate ‘no harm – no foul’.

Playing with Prezi

The latest tool that I have discovered and added to my virtual portfolio [along with Wordle, Animoto, Visions, 23, and Voicethread] is the newly developed presentation software known as Prezi.  Prezi is a new web tool with great potential, and has been discussed by many of the great bloggers in the community of Ed. Tech experts ['edubloggosphere'? 'edtechosphere'?].  I believe I first read about it on David Warlick’s blog, 2 Cents Worth.

Take a look at the short intro video by clicking the image above.  I love the idea and potential of Prezi, however, I haven’t decided whether or not I actually love the app itself yet.   Prezi promises to replace Powerpoint as a standard for presentations.  Instead of creating slideshows that flip from one slide to the next, Prezi allows you to create a very large ‘canvas’ and move around the canvas to present information.  It’s flashy, it’s interesting, and more captivating than a traditional presentation.  However, I’ve had some trouble, and the application seems to still have some ‘bugs’.  I’m sure it works just fine for straight text presentations, but I’ve had some trouble when inserting images.  Although Prezi promises that the program is easy to learn [in ten minutes], I’ve spent hours trying to get things just right.  In the end, I’ve got a presentation that runs great from my hard-drive, but when streamed on-line, it is quite choppy.  See below for the example I’ve created.

There are a few things that I really like about Prezi.  I love how the information is presented in a linear format as an interactive Flash video.  All of the presentation editing can be done on-line, right at Prezi.com, or you can download an off-line editor to work on your own computer.  If I manage to figure my way around some of the choppyness of the final video [perhaps my images are too large], I will likely use Prezi for all of my future presentations.  I’m currently working on a presentation for my EC&I 874 project, and I think Prezi will work great if it can handle the large images.

In this video, educator Ryan McCAllum, shows the true potential of Prezi with his interactive video explanation of Web 2.o in the classroom.

Visions 3D Image Management

click for a larger image

I’ve been playing around with a cool 3D Image Management application called Visions made by Twins-solutions.
I like this app. It may be useful to anyone who has massive collections of pictures and photos on their computer, as I do. It allows you alternate ways to browse, view, edit and share photos.  I liken this program to iTunes for pictures. Any teacher who wants to display galleries of images to students may wish to check this out, as it allows unique ways to display and browse through image folders [much more interesting than Windows' default].  Its most grabbing feature is its interesting variety of  ways to view multiple galleries in 3D.  However, it does come with tons of other features for organizing, editing, creating, and even sharing photos on-line.  As an artist, I’m always looking for quick and easy photo editing apps.  I will have to ‘play’ with this some more, but right off the bat, I like the 3-D viewing features.  Check out the videos on the gallery page: http://www.twins-solutions.com/video.html

click for a larger image

This application is a perfect addition to my classroom practice, as I a consistently show collections of images to enforce some of the visual concepts that I try to teach in my courses.
In the screen shot above, you can see that the Visions app allows me to have a dozen image galleries on the screen at the same time.  Simply scrolling my mouse over any image in any gallery bring up a larger thumbnail, and a double click displays the image in full size.  This is just one of many ways to view image galleries.  Image galleries can be displayed in this cylinder view, or 5 other 3-D views.

In the screen shot at the top of this post (click the image to see it larger) you can see a practical application of this program.  I have three galleries on the screen at the same time.  The left is a collection of image of Vincent Van Gogh paintings, the center gallery is a collection of images of a variety of Impressionist artworks, and the right is a collection of images of Claude Monet paintings.  This makes it quick and simple to switch back and forth between galleries and to select images from each gallery to display.   This will often be useful in order to compare and contrast visual concepts.  In this case, perhaps I want to discuss similarities and differences between Van Gogh’s and Monet’s styles of Impressionist painting.

Classroom Uses of Technology, Classified

Today, on his blog Remote Access, renowned edu-blogger Clarence Fisher has added a great post titled 9 Spaces for Technology in Classrooms.  In this post, he categorizes the possibilities of using technology in classrooms, coming up with nine different spaces of technology use in classrooms.  (See his post for description of each category).

The nine are:
– Collaboration
- Content Creation
- Research / Content Use
- Communication
- Data Collection
- Simulation
- Skill
- Tool Use
- Design / Engineering

I’ve think Clarence has categorized classroom use of technology quite concisely. This is a great list for those wishing to improve their implementation of technology within their pedagogical practice.  [Examine where you see yourself in terms of implementing technology in the classroom here: LoTi Digital-Age Framework.]
When I reflect back a couple of years, when I was teaching in a computer lab, I think that I had experienced each of the categories that he’s described.  I completely agree that there is often over-lap, and that one area often leads naturally into others.  I can think of times when my students would be working under a few of these categories at the same time. The list seems to cover the variety of uses of technology quite well, and I’m not sure if there is anything missing. If there is anything that could be added, perhaps it is an area or space in which we allow students to ‘play’ or explore the value of technological tools. This could be a space in which students themselves discover the application of such tools, and would likely then lead them into one or more of the other spaces.

Anyway, this is a great list.  It should spark some valuable discussion.  Pass it on – or join the discussion.

The Potential of Second Life

As I think about my last post about Second Life, I feel that I’ve made a pessimistic argument that is perhaps brought about mostly by my frustrations with the technology.  The truth is that there is great potential for Second Life to provide very intense learning experiences in a variety of educational settings.  The more that I read, the more that I am reminded of these possibilities.

I have stated that I am somewhat skeptical of the educational value of touring students through places in Second Life.  Again there are some very interesting places to visit, but I am not convinced that the outcome of such visits is any more than playing, and achieving a sense of the ‘coolness’ of the ‘game’.   The ‘touring’ value of Teen Second Life is likely not as great as the adult grid, as many of the best place to visit only exist in the adult world.

I am starting to realize that perhaps the greatest educational potential that Second Life has to offer is in building.   Projects like the Regina Public Schools’ Grade 8 Culture Project in SL, and the recreation of Batoche in SL are excellent examples of this potential being actualized in real and valid learning experiences.  In these examples, the students have done the building in SL on the teen grid (TSL).  In the example of the Batoche project, a class visited Batoche in northern Saskatchewan, took a large number of photographs, and then recreated a virtual version of Batoche in Second Life.  I cannot imagine a greater demonstration of learning.  Students would have a true spatial understanding of a place after creating it virtually in 3-dimensions.

Second Life creator Robbie Dingo (real life Rob W.) has created a masterpiece with his 3-dimensional recreation of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night.  

It is in the design element that this technology offers that I see the most potential for valuable learning experiences.  Garnett Gleim told me about a drama educator from Australia who used Second Life to create and record a virtual production of the play they were studying.  The class designed the stage, the costumes, the lighting, the camera angles, everything.  They rehearsed and performed their play in their virtual world and made a video recording of the performance.  And after all this, they performed the play in real life, to a real audience.  Doesn’t this sound like real learning in a virtual space?    These are the type of projects that excite me about Second Life.   They excite me, and they scare me.  I’m afraid of jumping in and finding myself ‘in over my head’.  As you can imagine, such projects must take an immense amount of time.  The Australian Drama project was likely the better portion of a semester, and I can scarcely imagine the number of hours Robbie Dingo puts into his creations.   I can, however, imagine a variety of projects like this that could benefit students in my visual art courses.  And so it is with this apprehension that I move forward with my exploration of Second Life.   Now I need to learn how to build.

Another Look at Second Life

Over the last couple of weeks, I have spent several hours submersed in the virtual world more commonly known as Second Life.  This was not my first experience with Second Life.  I first became familiar with this virtual world a couple of years ago while studying for a course titled E.C.&I. 833, which was a critique of different distance learning models of education.  Over the last couple of years, I have returned to Second Life a couple of times.  I explored the Regina Public Schools virtual campus with the help of Garnett Gleim and Paul Cutting.  At that time, I was just exploring the world out of curiosity.  Paul gave me help customizing my avatar and learning ways to communicate, travel, landmark places, and teleport.  I remember being intrigued by the technology, and being optimistic about its potential impact on education.

Last year, I visited the world of Second Life again with Dr. Alec Couros and the rest of the class of E.C.&I. 831.  We met up with an instructor from the University of Saskatchewan and went on a virtual tour (similar to the experience in this class with Marnie) of several places of interest within Second Life.  We visited some interesting educational institutions, and a campus of the International Spaceflight Museum among other places.

This year’s experience has confirmed some of my previous thoughts about second life.  There are a lot of very interesting places in Second Life that are worth visiting.  This time around, I visited ancient Mesopotamia, 19th century Paris and the Eiffel Tower, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in 15th century London.  These are some great places, and Second Life is full of places just like this.  One of my favourites is still the Sistine Chapel.  I’ve spent much time checking out several virtual art galleries, include the virtual Louvre, and many others.  There is even a virtual Batoche, SK.  And so again, I am convinced that there are a lot of very interesting places to visit in Second Life.

I have now become rather cognizant of the fact that many of best places to visit in Second Life have been created by educational institutions.  The SL Sistine Chapel was created by Vaser College [as one example], and many colleges and universities have well developed campuses.  I’m not entirely certain what this means, but it is very clear that there is a very strong connection between Second Life and education.  I think that, as I was a couple of years ago, many educational institutions get very excited and optimistic about the overwhelming potential that Second Life poses.

Although I’ve found many particularly interesting places to visit, I’ve become somewhat skeptical of Second Life’s ability to amount to anything more than just potential.   And potential for what really?  I question the value of the experiences available in Second Life.  What exactly is the potential?  The potential to have artificial experiences?  I am not sure.  Years have passed, more interesting places have been developed, and yet I am still skeptical of any truly valuable learning experiences taking place in Second Life.

Click these links to read more about my first and second experience in Second Life.  Or better yet, click here to read an excerpt from a paper in which I discuss some of SL’s futuristic potential.

The Song Remains the Same, It’s My Ear that has Changed

Although at times it feels like a lifetime ago, I quite vividly remember selecting my undergraduate degree of Business Education because of its emerging focus on technology.  Even at that time [the late 1990's], at my young age, and the relative infancy of the Internet, I had an idea of the unbreakable connections between emerging technologies, education, and the arts.   My understanding of my role with technology and education has changed as continually as the technologies themselves have developed.   More than a decade has come and gone, vast changes have taken place, and although I still hold some of the beliefs I held at this time, much of my outlook toward educational technology has changed.

At the beginning of my career, I focused on teaching technology.  Not teaching with technology, but teaching technology.  Just as Marshal McLuhan would say that the medium is the message, I believed that  the technology was the content.  I taught keyboarding, word processing and other office applications, computer animation, programming, web design and photo editing.  I felt very successful at what I was doing.  I was very proud of my ability to engage most students, and I had very few major behavior or classroom management issues.  I particularly remember being very proud of achieving class average keyboarding speed improvements of over 30 words per minute, or enabling particular grade nines and tens to develop this skill well beyond 100 words per minute.  There were a lot of successes.  I was often able to push students to develop their technology skills, often guiding them to complete projects they would not otherwise have completed, or perhaps even thought possible.

It was sometime after trading the computer lab for the classroom and the art room that I began to question what the end purposes of education were.  I am quite sure that a large number of young people are able to keyboard quite well because of my efforts.  Many probably rely on that skill regularly at school and a work.  I know of some students who have continued to program and have long ago exceeded my understanding of computer languages.  Perhaps there are some web-designers or even an animator or two out there that found their spark in one of my classes.  I am proud of that.  At some point however, I began to ask bigger questions.

What is the purpose of education?  Is the end goal to prepare young people to enter the work force?  Is the aim to help children develop skills that help them earn a living?  I’m still quite certain that these are important goals, but now I see them as just a piece of a larger puzzle.  Is the purpose of education to teach the youth how to earn a living?  Or is it perhaps the goal to teach children how to build a life? (see Neil Postman)  As I began to ponder questions of this magnitude, it became clear to me that in the earlier part of my career, I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.  I believed that the technology was the message.  Now, I question that notion.  Technology is not the message, but rather the medium to be used to deliver the message.  I believe much more strongly in principles of integrality, interconnectedness, and interdisciplinarity.   I think that technological literacies are still very important.  They are a very important pieces of the greater whole.  Computer skills still need to be taught as content, but perhaps in less of a separate nature, and instead, integrated into all disciplines of study.

So although ‘The Song Remains the Same’, and technological literacy is still essential, I think that I now hear the tune in a much different way; with a different ear; from a different perspective.

Identifying My Current Coordinates

It is without any doubt in my mind that I am on a very significant part of my path of professional development.  It seems like a great time to check the compass and think about my current coordinates.   For anyone interested in educational technologies and their link to pedagogy, the following ‘compasses’ provide great food for professional reflection.   The LoTi Digital Age Framework (The Levels of Teaching Innovation) is a great tool for classroom teachers to measure their implementation, authenticity, and effective use of digital tools and resources in the classroom.  Take a look… the LoTi Digital Age Framework… Where do you see yourself?  The National Education Technology Standards (NETS) has great information for teachers, as well as for administrators, and even for students to determine their position on the map of technological literacy.

Even though I found that I rated much higher on the NETS scale, I have found the LoTi Framework to be most useful in determining my own personal coordinates and helping to chart my course forward.  The LoTi Framework is a spectrum of integration levels of technology in pedagogical practice.  It begins at Level 0 (Non-Use) on one extreme and ends with Level 6 (Refinement) at the other extreme.  Awareness, Exploration, Infusion, Mechanical Integration, Routine Integration, and Expansion make up the middle ground of spectrum.

Although I have found some matches from my own pedagogical practice with levels lower, and some from level higher on the spectrum, I would most accurately chart myself somewhere around Level 4a: Mechanical Integration on the LoTi spectrum.  This is not a terrible place to be.  However, there is room for improvement, and the levels of Routine Integration or Expansion is where I have set my aim.

There are some obstacles that I will need to overcome in order to reach these levels of pedagogical practice.  These higher levels involve engaging students in exploring and solving real-world issues with the use of digital tools.  They involve collaborations that extend beyond the classroom, and students using complex digital resources to demonstrate complex levels of thinking (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) and deep understanding of content.  These are good goals, for any teacher.   They provide some guidance as I move forward on my pathway to becoming the most effective educator I can possibly be.

I’m Back… with HOPE.

This blog space, which I once called my Ed. Tech Weblog, is about to become active again.   Originally this space was created and used to blog and reflect about experiences that I have lived through my graduate studies in education technology.  More specifically, the blog was created as part of my involvement with a network of educators that were studying together in E.C. & I. 831 with Dr. Alec Couros.

I am returning to this web space and to the world of blogging with a new focus.  I am currently taking a graduate course in Education from Dr. Garth Pickard entitled Sustaining Wellbeing through H.O.P.E.  I found the process of blogging to be very helpful in organizing my thoughts, developing my thinking and writing through reflection, and I enjoyed several discussions posed through responses to my blog posts.  I am thinking about taking my blogging to a new level, and to begin blogging with my students.  More to come on that notion soon… anyway whatever I’ve posted in 2008 relates to my exploration of new and emerging technologies in education - and all new posts will relate to the complex concepts of sustainability, wellbeing, and of course… hope.