So flipping a classroom. Is that anything like flipping a pancake?

What if you could have your teacher’s lecture in your ear while you were sitting on the bus going home? No distractions, just the clear omni present Mrs. Vick’s monotone blasted right into the center of the brain in hopes that indeed it will leave some sort of imprint there. It gives a whole new meaning to the BLAH BLAH BLAH of Charlie Brown’s teacher.

I think I would have to take a story telling class and begin to model Mr. Watson, the all time best story telling History teacher there ever was. Of course back in those days you couldn’t get him out of your ear either since he’d just pick up and come right along with you to the grocery store or whereever you happen to be going. He’d keep kids at lunch for detention and just continue his lecture. When other kids would wonder where you had been, all you’d have to say is, “I got Watsoned?”   Do I really want to become like either of those models of teachers?  Yikes!

So..as I embark on trying podcasts for my adult students from all over Alaska, I noticed right away that conversational is not what I want to be. Of course I noticed that AFTER I uploaded two. My thought was that I want to sound conversational—like I’m hanging out around the coffee pot talking like I naturally do. Well…it didn’t work out. I say SO too many times and ah…. like I’m at the doctors getting that blasted wooden stick stuck down my throat. No, after this trial, I want to be scripted. My fear of being scripted is that it will be too dull! Oh why can’t I have a voice like Crista Tippet from my favorite podcast? I will have to put on my best dramatic interpretation of literature voice and read as if I were trying to keep old folks in the nursing home awake! It could be quite fun.

I’m betting on my extra cool intro and exit music with the help of Garage Band to add  a somewhat professional feel. I think I’ll get better at it as I go. Garage Band may be the Sears Catalog of its day. Once the Sears Catalog came out, you couldn’t tell immigrants from the non-immigrants: they all dressed the same. With Garage Band, anyone can be a professional if they have enough patience. Information is being gathered and sent around the globe so fast and with the help of Garage Band, people are listening to all sorts of voices.  They might even want to listen to mine!

Here’s my first attempt at my first lecture:  [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125219447″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Here’s the second part of the same lecture.  [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125219479″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

I am really quite concerned that my audience will decide to take a nap while they should be listening to me. In the classroom, I can notice those things. But since learning via distance ed has become easy, I, over the last several years, have often dozed on the couch while taking a distance delivery course beamed to me live across the interwebs. It is truly a deadly way to take a course. If I can be entertaining and if rural folks can download them, podcasts might be an good way to teach in rural Alaska. A lot of my students still are working with dial up speeds. They can’t look at You Tube unless it’s after midnight.

Here is my last attempt.  This time I’m READING my lecture.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I DO like it better as an informal talk.  I’m still not sure how it would be best.  What do you think?  [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/125322766″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

So watch for me on iTunes. This may become a regular hangout for me. I only hope my students will tell me if I’m too boring or going too fast.

Taking a class on the use of technology and teaching was my grand scheme to learn some magic way to organize myself with everything. How in the world do people have time to learn all these new apps and try out new software and still work for a living? And then, suddenly one of your favorite apps goes belly up! RIP Google Reader, Feedly just isn’t the same, especially since I just found out it didn’t survive the crash of my computer and I have to start all over! I was sure this course would move me up into the status of “Ah….now I understand how this all works.” Instead, I’m left dangling in the blogospheres….still.

What I really thought I needed was a personal learning network—a command and control desk!   Turns out I need a private coach, someone who answers my questions more in depth that Mr. Google can. My first question to my private coach would be, “Why does someone need to remember where something is on the internet? And how long in computer years (6 human years = 100 in computer years) does one have to remember where it is? Why would I want to bookmark something? I’m just not getting it! If I want to find something again, I should be able to google it and find it again—-or search my history—my computer remembers my pathways and keeps links purpled for months. Why, it even tells me how many times I’ve been to “how to make kale chips” in the last year!

Why do we collect bookmarks?  To think like a Borg, perhaps? (Yes, a shameless reference to Star Trek) To all build into a collective mind? Sharing is good, but should we share everything with each other? Where’s the diversity in that? Already red Americans wake up their computers in the morning and get Sarah Palin’s thoughts for the day. While blue Americans open their computers to Zen quotes. For the most part, blue and red Americans don’t share the same groups, so I’m quite certain they wouldn’t share the same bookmarks. So….blue is sharing with blue and reds with reds. We are reinforcing our own beliefs. It’s pretty crazy.

I’ve been on a Pinterest craze lately trying to understand why my daughter-in-law is addicted, as are many of my friends. I even asked my hair dresser (is that what they are still called?) Anyway, she never goes back to look at her pins on pinterest. She simply collects them. It’s true of most people I talk to. They just want to have their pins and know that they are safe somewhere. Is that true of people who collect articles on Diigo as well? Is Diigo simply a virtual underground cavern, where the dragon stores his/her jewels?  Is it an American capitalist notion that we have to collect junk?

As a blogger, I may be researching a topic and need to collect my artifacts in a cave somewhere, but usually I need to quote them and give out a bibliography. Why not then, save and share them in Zotero? Or any other bibliography saver? It brings us to ask the question again: why save?

To save articles for a Personal Learning Network is to have a snap shot of that virtual cave with all of your stored jewels you found on the internet. For me, it doesn’t work very well. Maybe because I find so many jewels worth saving! I can’t just throw them in a pile. I don’t see a good way of organizing the piles well. Tagging each item is nice, but what if I forget what tag I used? In a bibliography, I would at least remember the author or a key word in the title.

So the next question to ask is what is the purpose of a Personal Learning Network? To me this is a collection of my personal mentors. Through out my career, I have followed those people who I want to become. My biggest mentor must have been Nancy Atwell. I used her books as a how to manual and followed her every lead. I had people in my community using her as a mentor as well and so we became a learning community. They were all part of my learning network. We all learned together, we wrote together, we published together.

So, as I started this class, I was in need of order to my chaos. I added Diigo and Twitter to my computer rituals hoping they would help.

Click on the graphic to see a larger image.

This added at least another hour to my morning ritual of checking all of my incoming information.  I had my twitter account up all day and would add tweets and read articles and forward the good ones and save the others into my Diigo piles. The extra activity made me even more distractable and ADHD. There was always something good coming in the next tweet. I found more and more time got wasted.  Just a quick example, a tweet came in today announcing there will be a documentary made about my son’s favorite hot sauce.  I could not let that go.  I had to share it on facebook so that he, and maybe other hot sauce fans will be delighted—a complete waste of time.   What I had hoped for during this class was a smoother, stream-lined system of finding my jewels–the real important stuff without having to wade through the hot sauce!

What this foray has taught me is that I need to go back to my old ways to simplify. I need to follow my mentors. I need to read my mentor’s blogs on Feedly, keeping the most important ones at the top. I need to continue to collect real people around me who I can learn from as well. If my mentors are distant and a disaster strikes, they can’t help much, can they? When I have people at the core of my personal learning network, instead of apps and articles and snippets of movements, I feel like my symbiotic life with the computer is more useful and less out of control.

Having a Personal Learning Network is all about becoming the person you want to become and not letting the technology mold you into something you aren’t or don’t want to become. The cacophony of so much information coming in is like standing in the middle of a sled dog team right before dinner. Every single dog wants attention now and you don’t know who to go to next because they are all equally important. For me—I probably won’t continue Twitter and Diigo, it’s just too much cacophony.  I want to be present in the moment.  I want to reflect on an article after I read it, not file it somewhere I will never see it again.  I want to pass on information that has a purpose, that makes people think.  I don’t want to become part of the noise, but I would like to harmonize.

Education is changing with the use of technology. I am conflicted about whether or not it’s a good thing or a bad thing?  So  I decided to poll my friends who are teachers to see what they think.  I sent it to 25-30 teachers from Anchorage, Fairbanks, Texas and Florida, but only 13 responded.

BIAS:  Obviously there was an immediate bias.  I don’t have any teacher friends who aren’t using a lot of technology in their classrooms.  So….this survey was already somewhat flawed.

I knew that some of these teachers were more proficient than others With that, I decided to ask some base questions.  Only 1/3 of the teachers had done video conferencing, while ¾ of them had done classroom social networking like Ning and Wiki.  At least one thought social networking added too much complexity/work to the class.  Only three teachers read more than 4 blogs every week.  

As I suspected, most of them feel pretty confident about ipads, kindles, iphones and laptops.  So then I asked them to expand on their answers

What I noticed was that several of these teachers are relying on the technology the kids bring with them.  That means they don’t have to feel like they have to know it all, use it all, or problem solve it all.

So, then I asked how often they used Participatory Tools in their classrooms.  

This was telling.  Over ½ of the teachers use participatory tools every day or every other day. However, if those are the kids bringing their own devices, it’s no wonder they are feeling like using the tools more.

Thanks ipad PD for this picture.

So I wondered how they made time to learn it all?  If education is changing, how are the teachers supposed to have time to learn it?

From the answers I received, it seems most of these teachers do it because they are good teachers and they make time.  Only one said that they have workshops, but then added that he/she has to follow up at home.  

Thanks to ParentVoice for the image

So what did they say about spending school money?

It was almost unanimous that money should be spent on technology, but there were a lot of qualifiers.  My favorite answer was the $50,000 per employee in the private sector spent on technology while in education it’s considerably less.  That indeed says it all.  

Thanks Reclaim Reform for the photo.

But money isn’t the only problem.  According to these educators there are a lot of other problems.

These problems seem overwhelming, yet many of these teachers are still doing it.  Why?  It’s a belief system.  

X means false and √ means true

It was a tied vote.  In the blank spaces one said that it depends on teacher training and the other said they should play part of the central role, not the whole thing.   So if these teachers are average, the jury is still out on technology’s role in the classroom:  to be central or not so central.

Whether or not it should be central, does not mean it is a magic bullet.  There are still many issues with the use of technology.  These are the comments I loved that show my frustration with technology.

“More money for quality faculty.”        Quality teachers will teach using technology, so it’s a good investment.

“The rate that technology changes means that the classroom is always behind even if I have it personally and know how to use it.”

“I rely on BYOD because school district support and purchases aren’t reliable.:

“ I love what the tools could do if kids would consistently use them as a tool instead of a toy. Games, texting, etc. tend to pull students away from the task at hand with great regularity. Problem is enhanced by so many of the students not having similar devices at home so the temptation to make up for lost time is great.”

So, education IS changing with the use of technology because of some savvy, techie teachers, but consistency, money, district rules, economically disadvantaged students, are all serious roadblocks for that change.  Teaching remains an occupation where teachers attempt to get the attention of their students.  Technology seems to be one method that works.  It should not be the only method and at least half of the teachers surveyed here agreed with me.  🙂

If you would like to see the survey they took, click HERE.

If you would like to see all of the the responses to the survey, click HERE.

Continue the ban of mobile internet tools in K-12 classrooms.

By Cindee Karns

I started my on-line Integrative Education Master’s Degree in 1998.  I graduated and was hired as that school’s online “Walmart Greeter.”  In that job from 2000-2008, I taught mostly Montessori teachers from all over the world how to access the web and

to use their mobile tools to participate in the learning process, particularly digital cameras/videos.  I now am teaching permaculture on-line. I rely heavily on those and newer mobile tools for student assessments.For me, mobile tools are essential for on-line learning.  That said, I truly believe that they are not necessary in the K-12 classroom.

Our school system was modeled after America’s amazing inventions of the Industrial Revolution: first interchangeable parts during the Civil War Era and then Henry Ford’s movable assembly line, which allowed us to crank out Model Ts every 6 minutes.

These inventions changed the way America worked.  It’s not surprising that America designed its school system to match.  For over 100 years teachers have been opening young minds, pouring in facts and moving them down the assembly line.  Now, as we move from the era of machines to the era of technology, it’s no wonder that we are changing our school system to fit the technological view of the world.  Unfortunately students are not part of a machine, and any business model does not belong in education. (Kohn, p.1)

Over the course of my K-12 teaching career (1985-2008), I learned that students would gravitate to technology,but they didn’t always get things accomplished.  Technology was fairly distracting to the learning process, especially since I only had students 45 minutes a day.  I hated wasting class time on it, but always offered extra credit for using technology at home or at the public library. I taught computers after school and, during the summer of ’96, I did a 2 week computer camp.   But even with the use of computers, some students weren’t learning.

I started experimenting in the early 90s with simulations.  Gaming is a great way to learn.  What I learned was that students RETAINED the information from the simulation.  In order for brains to remember anything—-especially History facts—-the learning needs to be attached to experiences.  Once students experienced being a slave on a slave ship or being blacklisted by the union, they were able to attach the facts to it.  Those facts could easily be found on the internet.  The internet is a great encyclopedia, but it is not a learning machine.

So what is learning?  Curtis Jay Bonk, in The World Is Open believes that learning anything is learning.  It seems like he has not left the industrial model behind.  He’s urging teachers let the computer dump random facts in each student’s head to personalize the learning.  Just like our assembly lines in the business world, he is urging us to computerize our assembly line model of the school system.  Instead of having students move down the assembly line, he’s suggesting that each student is put together by a computer.   So he believes that if computers are available for kids to use, learning will happen.  Is that the kind of student we want?  A unique model, an individual model?

Learning is happening everywhere and almost everyone has access to a computer in Alaska these days.  The internet in the villages is at dial up speed, but it’s accessible.  Many, many children go home from school, they are often alone since both parents work. They get on their computers, ipads, iphones and play games, chat, watch movies,etc.  That alone is a danger since so many parents don’t give instructions/rules to their kids about internet safety.  When they finish with that they are doing, they go to the TV where they watch TV all night—even during dinner.  Students rarely have interaction with people.  It seems to me that adding mobile tools to school could be the end of communicating with people face to face.  When there is a conflict in a game on line, students just turn off the computer.  They don’t have to deal with it.

So why don’t students stay home all day and learn from the computer?  Why do we need school at all?  What is the purpose of school when anyone can learn at any time or any place?  I say it’s to teach students to be citizens of the planet, to teach them how systems work and most importantly, to learn to problem solve together.  School is a perfect place to teach those skills.

However, if you believe that the purpose of school is to get students ready for the business world, businesses aren’t wanting students who can look things up on the internet.  They are wanting problem solvers who can work with other people and get things done.  In an office you can’t just turn people off when they get annoying, you have to learn to deal with them. As I retired in 2008, I noticed that interacting with adults was becoming more and more of an issue with students.  They really weren’t interacting with anyone at home anymore.

What is important in school is a teacher with a computer and a computer projector.  Teachers need to role model how to use the internet.  They need to show kids reliable information and how to know what sites are truthful and which are not so truthful.  Class discussions need to happen around the issues of believability and authenticity.  Can any media site that is owned by Rupert Murdock be trusted?  That’s a very good conversation to have.  Unfortunately most parents aren’t talking to their kids about it and their kids still believe, even in 8^th grade—that if it’s on the internet, it’s true.

We need a revolution in education, not just a technology makeover.  We are facing huge issues as humanity:  400 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere and still rising (350ppm is the max); huge super storms, peak rare earths (to make all of our mobile tools), peak oil (we’ve used the easy-to-reach oil, the rest will be super expensive and possibly harmful to get out), economic stresses,  modern day slavery, health care and just look at our congress.  We need to learn how to communicate to each other again.

For all of these reasons, I strongly recommend that children be limited in their electronics use during school hour since they get so much of it outside of school. I recommend a new way to teach: problem based learning (with only one or two computers in the room to check facts), so that kids can learn to solve problems together.  Maybe someday in the future, we might have a congress that can actually pass laws.

Recources