Connectivism and The Networked Student

I spend much of my time reading, writing, discussing, and blogging about ideas around the broad theme of 21st Century learning. More specifically, what should 21st Century learning look like? How can social networking technologies be harnessed in learning spaces? How can emerging technologies truly, meaningfully impact the future of learning? How do we prepare our students and teachers for the challenges and opportunities of the 21^st century?

This video on Connectivism and The Networked Student resonates with many of my views on the subject, and answers in part some of the questions raised above. No surprise that the video has a connection to the person some refer to as the "father of e-learning 2.0" - Stephen Downes.

"The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during Fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century." (Description of video on youtube).

Love the 'Paperworks' style of the Common Craft videos ...

Map Your World: Google Maps in the Classroom

Imagine a History assignment where a student must submit a write-up on Mughal Architecture (or the form it takes as an oft-asked question in exams - "the contributions of Shah Jahan to Indian Archtecture"). Or a "project" on the temples of India. Think of the way this is usually done - a hand-written write-up with pictures cut and pasted into the notebook. Or in schools where students have access to computers this would take the form of a Word document with text and images or perhaps a powerpoint presentation with text and images. While the latter may be much more appealing as an exercise and as a product, and uses technology for collating and presenting the information, it pales in comparison to the use of some of the coolest new tools on the Internet that would make all the sense for use in such an assignment, and result in much more meaningful and engaging learning - and of course, the end product would be way more cool too!

I'm talking about the use of Google Maps - Google's powerful but really easy-to-use mapping tool accessed at http://maps.google.com. These maps are very well developed - with comprehensive information on local businesses too - for countries such as the US; they're fairly decently developed for Indian metros, and developing - slowly but surely for other parts of India too (thanks to mapmaker.google.com). In addition to local maps and landmark information, Google Maps also provides terrain maps, satellite imagery, and for some places (mainly in the US) a photographic “street view” of the real world. Using the “My Maps” feature anyone can create their own custom maps by adding new annotations or markers for just about any spot anywhere for which maps exist with some level of detail. These placemarkers can have a title and include text (which can be formatted like any Word document - with bullets, fonts - style and size, and other usual text formatting). What's most exciting is that it's also possible to include images, web links and video. These personalized maps can be saved, emailed and embedded (using the unique web address that each of these maps is given), and more than one person can collaborate to create one!

Now envision a work product for that history assignment - a map of North and Central India with placemarkers for all the monuments built during the Mughal period, with factual information such as dates, materials, architectural features and other details, along with images and videos from youtube. Not only is it visually more informative with the text, images and videos associated with each monument, but the location-based information conveys so much better the history, the spread and impact of the Mughal Empire in India.

I'm sure some of you may have tons of ideas already buzzing around in your head about the tremendous possibilities of the use of these in any subject or context where maps of the world have meaning. Here are some more ideas of the use of this tool -

• in geography (maps with geological information; and for developing spatial and directional skills),
  
• in literature and language ("literary field trips" on google maps),
  
• in science (animal and plant habitats around the world),
  
• in social studies (map neighbourhoods and local communities),
  
• or simply have students document their field trips or holidays with their personal photographs and narratives (a great language arts activity).

If you and your students have access to the Internet, it does not make sense to ignore the potential of Google Maps as a learning tool. If you're enthused enough to give it a try, here's a video from the Google channel on youtube that'll help - it explains well how to create personalized maps --

MWesch's Take on the Culture of Youtube

Michael Wesch (mwesch on youtube), he of the The Machine is Us/ing Us fame, spoke at length on the anthropology of Youtube in an entertaining and enlightening lecture delivered at the Library of Congress about a month ago. This delightful one-hour long video titled 'An anthropological introduction to YouTube' is up on youtube - naturally :)

Wesch's channel on youtube is truly worth subscribing to. He and his students (he is a professor of Cultural Anthropology and Media Ecology at Kansas State University) have created some eye-opening videos that explore the impact of web 2.0 on human interaction, like this telling video titled The Vision of Students Today on what the 21st century student looks like and what education should look like to cater to the needs of such a student.

So if you missed the Numa Numa wave on youtube, now is your chance to catch up, catch on and enjoy :)

New York Times Essay Takes an Optimistic Look at Technology in School Education

This is an article written for the New York Times by a self-professed techno-optimist (I think I too could call myself that), about the coming of age of technology use in classrooms after years of bumbling and trying and testing.

The context is US schools and quite different from the average school in India in terms of access to technology - "The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. Computing is an integral tool in all disciplines, always at the ready." While India is nowhere near there in terms of access, there are learnings for schools and teachers in India - to leapfrog to using technology in ways that make sense today - that these schools in the US have realized after decades of attempting to make technology work. For example,

"Until recently, computing in the classroom amounted to students doing Internet searches, sending e-mail and mastering word processing, presentation programs and spreadsheets. That’s useful stuff, to be sure, but not something that alters how schools work."

[How many schools in India are investing in technology just to get their students to be doing this? That money is better spent elsewhere, in my view. Kids are going to learn these tools anyway - and with much more ease then teachers, I should add.]

"The new Web education networks can open the door to broader changes. Parents become more engaged because they can monitor their children’s attendance, punctuality, homework and performance, and can get tips for helping them at home. Teachers can share methods, lesson plans and online curriculum materials.

In the classroom, the emphasis can shift to project-based learning, a real break with the textbook-and-lecture model of education."

The biggest take-away for me from this article -

"..while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology."

The Human Side of Moore's Law

Really enjoyed reading this article by journalist Bob Cringely (shared by Vishu Singh on educatorslog.in).

Cringely asserts that while the performance of personal computers has increased a millionfold over the last 30 years (following Moore's Law), it takes about as much time (30 years) - one human generation - for waves of technological innovation to be completely absorbed by our culture.

He goes on to talk about the impact on education of the "empowerment" that these technologies have brought about among today's younger generation.

"We've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools."

A few more interesting excerpts that resonate well with what I figure is going on in education today the world over, at varying speeds - in India perhaps slower than in others, but happening nonetheless.

"Google is the best tool for an aging programmer because it remembers when we cannot. Dave Winer, back in 1996, came to the conclusion that it was better to bookmark information than to cut and paste it. I'm sure today Dave wouldn't bother with the bookmark and would simply search from scratch to get the most relevant result. Both men point to the idea that we're moving from a knowledge economy to a search economy, from a kingdom of static values to those that are dynamic. Education still seems to define knowing as more important than being able to find, yet which do you do more of in your work? And what's wrong with crimping a paragraph here or there from Cringely if it shows you understand the topic?

This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained - a view that doesn't work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we're getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.

This is an unstable system. Homeschooling, charter schools, these things didn't even exist when I was a kid, but they are everywhere now. There's only one thing missing to keep the whole system from falling apart - ISO certification.

....

Well reputation still holds in education, though its grip is weakening. I know kids from good families who left high school early with a GED because they were bored or wanted to enter college early. Maybe college is next.

MIT threw videos of all its lecture courses - ALL its lecture courses - up on the web for anyone to watch for free. This was precisely comparable to SGI (remember them?) licensing OpenGL to Microsoft. What is it, then, that makes an MIT education worth $34,986? Is it the seminars that aren't on the web? Faculty guidance? Research experience? Getting drunk and falling in the Charles River without your pants? Right now it is all those things plus a dimensionless concept of educational quality, which might well go out the window if some venture capitalist with too much money decides to fund an ISO certification process not for schools but for students.

The University of Phoenix is supposedly preparing a complete middle and high school online curriculum available anywhere in the world. I live in Charleston, SC where the public schools are atrocious despite spending an average of $16,000 per student each year. Why shouldn't I keep my kids at home and online, demanding that the city pay for it?

Because that's not the way we do it, that's why.

Well times are changing."

@ NECC - 4: Education 2.0 in India

From my session on educatorslog.in at NECC 2008 - Education 2.0 in India: Community and Sharing through Blogging and Tagging...

@NECC 2008 - 2: EduBloggerCon 08

A few words about EduBloggerCon 2008 - the "unconference" or rather "collaborative conference" at NECC pulled together by Steve Hargadon. For more on the idea of an "unconference" - check this post by Steve.



I was unable to attend the various sessions as I was busy taking care of some snafus related to my session the next day and had to make a desperate run a few miles out to get some printing done. I did however enjoy the one I was able to attend - outside in the Second Life space late morning. I liked that it had an informal, unconference feel - in terms of the space especially and how everyone was sitting on couches and chairs, on the floor...some even standing around the periphery, but participating nonetheless...

I also enjoyed the discussions around Clay Shirky’s new book - Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Many quotable quotes in there, but here's one I'll add here--

"Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors"

We're clearly waiting for such a revolution in education.

It's always a pleasure for me to step out of the blogosphere and meet f2f with the active edubloggers from around the world who are shaping web 2.0 in education.

Thanks, Steve, for organizing this. Here's to more such open, collaborative exchanges in the future that help bridge the virtual blogging world with the real world.

A short video put together by Dean Shareski --