21st Century Learners

and this

are both by Peter H. Reynolds and can be found at Thinkfinity.org here.

Wonder what the kids would say about themselves?   Hmmm, that could be an interesting task for the Year 11 study skills program...

Cheers

Ruth

How to learn? from mistakes (Diana Laufenberg)

To start the new school year*, an inspirational TED talk about teaching



Her three key points (and please do watch the video, don't just clock these and click on in your travels - it's a great ten minutes) are:

• experiental learning
• student voice
• embracing failure

Page URL if the video doesn't work for you:
http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_laufenberg_3_ways_to_teach.html

Cheers

Ruth

*Yes, the Australian school year follows the calendar - we've just finished our summer holidays and are back for a new school year.

YouTube as search engine

Is YouTube the next Google? Is YouTube your search engine of choice?  Maybe not yet, but for some, including kids, it is.  A thought-provoking article, At first, funny videos.  Now, a reference tool in the New York Times, written by Miguel Helft, discusses this phenomenon.

The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries.

And further on:

At YouTube, Hunter Walk, a director of product management, said the move toward video might not necessarily lead to a decline in the consumption of text or other media. Video, text and other formats, he said, will complement one another in interesting ways.


Mr. Walk said a good example is provided by an ad for Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries — the one in which a voice asks “Who do you want answering the phone?” at the White House at 3 a.m. during a crisis. A search for “Hillary Clinton 3 a.m.” on Google would bring up news stories about the ad and the controversy surrounding it. On YouTube, the same search brought up the original commercial, as well a response by the Barack Obama campaign, pundits’ commentaries and an assortment of spoofs, giving users a much different understanding of how the story unfolded, Mr. Walk said.

At present, the school system in which I work has blocked all access to YouTube, for students and staff, due to concerns including those related to child protection.

I wonder about what decisions will be made in the future.  Dictionaries, for instance, always had words like f**k and s**t in them; kids could find them, but had to hunt.  Few school libraries would not have pictures of naked people, whether in a National Geographic or a health book.  Now, with the internet making searching many sources faster and simpler, stuff kids had to work to find is more immediately located.  The openness of the internet makes it a challenge for educational systems, deciding what to allow, what to block, and why; and even if they can. 

And then there are always the sites like YouTube.  Like the dictionary, a collection, a cornucopia, of material judged worthy and less worthy.  And at what point (assuming that it's not possible to allow some access only, as I've been told is the case - to allow some is almost inevitably to allow all) does the educational value outweigh the educational and social (eg. child protection) negatives? 

Web 2.0 is about interaction, user-driven, user-uploaded content.  But in a free, democratic society, the freedom is there to upload the good, the bad, the indifferent.  There are great YouTube videos and vilely stupid ones.  Great blogs and vilely stupid ones.  Fabulous Flickr images and ridiculous/troubling/antisocial ones.  The collection that is our human society, our mess and melange of thoughts and ideas, available in unimaginable volume, as never before.

I don't know the answers.  As a teacher, as a teacher librarian, I think about these questions, though.  What access should we offer at school?  It's probably always going to be less than home internet access (and that's assuming all kids do have home internet access), but where the line is drawn?  That's a problem for Solomon.

And creeping up on the horizon are cheaper and cheaper netbook computers, wireless broadband, mobile phones (cell phones/cellphones) with internet access), so it's getting easier and easier for kids to step past the protective systems their school may put in place, and jump onto the internet.  To use YouTube as a search engine, for example.

Solomon?

.

Plagiarism and malpractice

Ensuring students are aware of what constitutes correct use of information, and what is plagiarism and malpractice is important (of course).  The NSW Board of Studies has a program done by all NSW HSC candidates.  If you're not aware of All My Own Work, you may find it a useful online resource.

The program's content is divided into five modules:


1. Scholarship Principles and Practices
2. Acknowledging Sources
3. Plagiarism
4. Copyright
5. Working with others

Each module contains:

• Information and advice on the module focus questions
• Quiz questions
• Summary
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Link to a glossary
• Links to relevant websites.

The site also includes the statement: Honesty in HSC Assessment, detailing the roles and responsibilities of staff and others as well as students.

(HSC=Higher School Certificate, the end of high school qualification in NSW schools)
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Education and technology: pros and cons

I've been browsing the New York Times, as you can tell.  Today's blog entry includes two recent articles about technology.  First,  reconsidering the role of technology in education: At school, technology starts to turn a corner, by Steve Lohr.

The educational bottom line, it seems, is that while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology.


“Unless you change how you teach and how kids work, new technology is not really going to make a difference,” said Bob Pearlman, a former teacher who is the director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

and, from an English school program:

Sir Mark says he is convinced that advances in computing, combined with improved understanding of how to tailor the technology to different students, can help transform education.


“This is the best Trojan horse for causing change in schools that I have ever seen,” he said.

Conversely, another NYT article, Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops, by Winnie Hu, discusses the pros and cons of issuing students with laptops.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

and...

Districts have dropped laptop programs after resistance from teachers, logistical and technical problems, and escalating maintenance costs.


Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.

It's not just technical glitches and students behaving in the ways that students inevitably will:

In the school library, an 11th-grade history class was working on research papers. Many carried laptops in their hands or in backpacks even as their teacher, Tom McCarthy, encouraged them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.


“The art of thinking is being lost,” he said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

And that final point is the one that, as a teacher librarian, I see happening all the time as a mindset and choice among kids, and that, as a teacher, is the one that I think needs serious thought about how we teach - process/information literacy, not just content.

Google's new browser: Chrome

As part of its ongoing competitiveness with Microsoft, Google's released its own browser, Chrome.

Google's own page about it is here.  You can download it free: note that it is still described as being in beta (ie still being tweaked - updates are applied regularly and automatically).

Sydney Morning Herald articles here and here: longer analysis here.

New York Times article here.

Right now, Windows only - Mac and Linux versions are coming.

Image source: the Google page link above.

AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner

From the AASL document:

Common Beliefs

The learning standards begin by defining nine foundational common beliefs:

1. Reading is a window to the world.
2. Inquiry provides a framework for learning.
3. Ethical behavior in the use of information must be taught.
4. Technology skills are crucial for future employment needs.
5. Equitable access is a key component for education.
6. The definition of information literacy has become more complex as resources and technologies have changed.
7. The continuing expansion of information demands that all individuals acquire the thinking skills that will enable them to learn on their own.
8. Learning has a social context.
9. School libraries are essential to the development of learning skills.

The Standards

The Standards describe how learners use skills, resources, and tools to

• inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge;
• draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge;
• share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society;
• pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

 Read more on the AASL site here.

Read a low-res .pdf of the document here. (The site link above also has a high-res .pdf link on it).

Image source.  Link from NSW DET School Libraries and Information Literacy Hot Topics.

Connections archives

The Curriculum Corporation's very useful journal, Connections, has online archives.  You can look at the latest issue, too.

If you're outside Australia or not aware of Connections:

Connections is a quarterly newsletter produced by the Schools Catalogue Information Service (SCIS), a business unit of Curriculum Corporation. SCIS is committed to publishing informative and useful material for the benefit of library staff in schools. Our focus is helping library professionals keep up to date with the latest in information services and information technology relevant to school libraries.


Connections is distributed by Curriculum Corporation to all schools in Australia.

Google's challenge to Wikipedia

...is knol.  Authors are identified, but articles aren't screened.  There's a comment section, but not the same editing of articles as is possible with Wikipedia. 

Oh, and did you wonder about ads?  Yup.  Ads can appear on the page, and the author and Google share the revenue.  Which seems likely to influence the articles written - wouldn't you likely get more hits on an article about, say, breast augmentation than the battle of Thermopylae? 

Sydney Morning Herald article here.

From a teaching point of view, another resource which we need to discuss with our students for its benefits and limitations - not just let 'em use it blindly.

Vignette: Ha! Snort! and Yay!

Scene: a school library.  Junior high school science class is in to research Michael Faraday, Mr Galvani and Mr Volta and Why They Are Important.

Teacher sits them on the library steps (inside) to tell them about the assignment.  Reminds them that information may be sourced from computers and also from lovely things called, wait for it, books.

Class groans.  Books?  No THANK you.

Teacher Librarian wafts over to class.  Invited to speak by teacher, teacher librarian points out that foolish researchers rely only on the internet.  Wise ones use a variety of resources.  And books can be faster than computers, believe it or not.  Students are polite, but disbelieving.

Lesson slightly tweaked.  Students get divided into two groups: each to get 18 min on the internet computers (where they all want to be), and 18 minutes using book and print resources (cue another groan, but not quite as definite).

Teacher takes the computer group, I take the book group.  We rapidly find a range of book resources - encyclopedias (general and scientific), dictionaries of biography, books on famous scientists and discoveries.  We talk about reading through once, then making notes the second time through, to suit the questions being asked.

Six minutes in, all the book kids have resources in front of them and are reading/making notes.  Two of the computer kids have logged all the way in to the net and actually landed on something vaguely useful.  Others are either still logging in or are wrestling with search terms (some just type in slabs of text from the assignment, as far as I can tell) or just go straight to Wikipedia.  Teacher librarian points out to the computer kids, in possibly not such subtle terms as might have been used, but there you are, TLs are only human, that the book kids will be getting more free time after school, since they have made more progress during class time.

Ten minutes in, the book kids are humming along.  And have been joined by most of the computer kids.  For the rest of the lesson, although the computers are available, they will end up only being used by half the class or less.  The rest use the books, which efficiently provide fast and focused information.

I think at one point I might have whooped in a smug fashion when a kid remarked that the books were much better to use for this assignment.  Me, I'm no Luddite: but I don't think that class will groan again when they have to use books (I suggested to the teacher that maybe assignment parameters could include the requirement of a variety of print and digital resources.  He was happy with how the lesson went, and that the students did have the value of books reinforced).

It's partly to do with the magnetic appeal of the keyboard and mouse, and the other options they offer for exploration when the teacher isn't watching the screen, and the delusion under which students labour, that the quick loading of the internet translates automatically to relevant information.  No, it isn't magic, kiddies. 

But sometimes they need a practical demonstration.  Discovery learning.

Do school libraries need books?

A recent article in The Age newspaper about a school in Coburg prompted discussion on the oztl list about the shape and features of information services in schools now and into the future. Does the future hold libraries at all, or is the model defined by a space and its contents outmoded? (in which case, who's doing the work a teacher librarian does now? It's not all simplistically replaceable by Google and a keyboard. And is a library simply a space and books anyway?).

Read the article here.

Link in full:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/libraries-close-their-books/2007/03/23/1174597895189.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

or tinyurl:
http://tinyurl.com/3fjvjy

There is an article written by the Principal and staff, with their view of this situation: New age, new paradigm: the Coburg experience published in Access, November 2007. (Let me know if you're aware of an online link to it).

Safety on the internet

With the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, students (and not just students) can be tremendously innocent/trusting/unaware of security issues, providing personal information without realising how open it is, and the possible consequences. The SMH had a blog entry about this recently.

While sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not accessible through the public school system computers in NSW, we still have a responsibility to point out to students the importance of their online privacy. I make it a habit to have my postcode, if I have to give one, as 2000, the postcode for central Sydney (an easily remembered lie) - but of course, this isn't a useful strategy for a social networking site in which location is important as part of your identity.

Don't Panic! The Hitchhiker's alternative to Wikipedia - h2g2

h2g2 was inspired by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Launched in 1999, it was taken over by the BBC in 2001.

As with Wikipedia, its entries are written by its readers, and thus share the same reliability and unreliability.

From a school point of view, it provides another alternative in similar form for comparing/contrasting/evaluating.