With the Southampton PLE Conference #PLE_SOU at full throttle, I thought it would be a good time to reiterate my views on the personal web. Personal Web Tools (PWTs) are thought by some to be synonymous with PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) but the two should not be confused. The authors of the Horizon Report (I cannot recommend the Horizon Report series highly enough) succinctly define the personal web as"a term coined to represent a collection of technologies that confer the ability to reorganize, configure and manage online content rather than just viewing it". The report goes on to define personal webs as self created, and consisting of online tools that suit each individual's unique preferences, styles and needs. Sound like a PLE? Almost, but not quite.
My view is that PWTs sit inside a PLE but they are not the whole story. I believe the PLE extends beyond personal web tools to encompass other tools and resources, such as paper based resources and broadcast media such as television and radio, as well as conversations with other people, realia experiences and so on. Having said that, each and every one of the above could be mediated through web tools, but they are not exclusively so. I attempted to map these components out in a post entitled Anatomy of a PLE.
At its core, the personal web is also very proactive: The Horizon Report gave an excellent, if somewhat idealised conceptualisation of the personal web: "Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create customized, personal web-based environments — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning and other activities via highly personalized windows to the networked world. Online material can be saved, tagged, categorized, and repurposed without difficulty..."
I recognise that there is a problem here, and this has been pointed out by some of those who have responded to my Two fingered salute post and was also touched on during yesterday's session at the PLE conference in Southampton. It is this: Not everyone has the skills to use, or is willing to use personal web tools. For those who don't, the institutional VLE (or sadly, no web based use at all) is an alternative.
This may sound like a climb down from my position on the death of the VLE, but It is not. I have always believed in a hybrid solution and indeed use one in my own professional practice, but for the sake of the polemic momentum, I'm advocating that institutions seriously reappraise their use of the VLE (read 'managed learning environment'). Much of it is dross, creative thinking is stifled, true collaboration is constrained, many students hate it, and many of the staff are not all that keen either (because it creates a lot of hard work with very little pay-off). Where do you go it you want to learn something new? Certainly not the VLE. The institutional VLE cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be perceived as a personal web - it is often too sterile and homogenised - but I concede that it can be a useful, safe and content rich starting point for those who are embarking on learning through the web.
Image source by Freefoto.com
The personal web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Everyone has one - a personal learning environment, that is. Just look around when you are next sat on a bus or train, and you will see people sat listening with earbuds or using their mobile phones. Some will be reading books, or Kindles. Others will be discussing current affairs with their friends, or reading newspapers. It's quite simple. We all learn. We all use tools to help us learn. Personal learning environments or PLEs, are the collection of tools (not just online) that enable us to connect, create and share content with our own communities of interest and practice. Mine will be different to yours, because my choices and preferences about what and how I learn are different to yours. And what you choose to use personalises your learning, making it uniquely yours.
Today at the Personal Learning Environment conference in Southampton, delegates debated whether students actually have the competency to build their own PLEs. A Twitter discussion ensued, but ultimately, I think the wrong question was asked. Why should we question whether students have the competency to build their own PLEs, when in fact most learners already have their own PLE structure of tools sorted out when they arrive at university. As they gain more knowledge of their subject, broaden their personal learning networks and gain access to more content, so they modify their PLE to accommodate all the necessary storage, tagging and co-creation of content that ensues. Graham Attwell, in a recent keynote at the EDEN Dublin conference, made the profound statement that 'competency' is a socially and culturally constructed concept that has many interpretations. So the question is problematic on at least two levels. It depends on what you mean by competency.
The question that should have been asked was: Do students have the necessary skills to apply their informal PLEs in formal learning contexts? In other words, do they have the ability to use the loose aggregation of Web 2.0 tools (iGoogle, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube etc) to help them to engage more deeply with their learning? Do they have the prerequisite skills to apply these tools in a manner that gives them an advantage in their course of study? When I was an undergraduate, I used all kinds of tricks to short cut my study and buy me time. These included getting my hands on next year's course materials from previous students, and finding out what the assessment questions were likely to be when I finally sat them. It worked, and I emerged with a first class honours degree. Doesn't work for everyone, and that's why university staff should not attempt to impose tools onto students. Each student certainly has the competency to build their own PLEs and to decide what their tools and preferences for learning are. They are experts in them, after all.
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” - Dr Suess.
Image source by Denise Parker
Everyone has one by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
How do you drive people toward your blog, and how do you gain a regular readership for your website? Well, there are many opinions on how this can be done. I read a very interesting and thought provoking blogpost on popularity earlier today by Ankesh Kothari, who guest writes on the Problogger site under the title of The Secret to Blog Popularity.
Here is an abstract from the post:
Psychologist Antonius Cillessen of the University of Connecticut wondered how kids became popular. So he started researching social behaviors and peer relations of early adolescent kids in American schools. And he found something very interesting. He found that every school had a bunch of very friendly kids who are socially accepted and liked by everyone. But they are never considered popular.
The kids who are considered popular are often just as friendly as these universally liked kids, but with one difference. The popular kids draw a boundary around themselves, and exclude a few “outcasts” from their circle. Professor Antonius found that you can’t become popular unless you learn to exclude. He stumbled onto a truth that Chinese philosopher Confucius had described years earlier:
“Build small community and thousands will want to join.” – Confucius
It’s a truth high-end clubs have realized too. The harsher they are in excluding people from entering their premises, the more popular they get. Facebook grew when Friendster and other social sites didn’t. Why? because of their initial exclusivity—they only allowed folks with a .edu email address to sign up.
Ankesh Kothari goes on to argue that exclusivity is the key to blog success. Exclude some, and you will attract others in great numbers, he suggests. Kothari's post is interesting on a number of levels. Firstly, it is written from a commercial perspective, and subscribes to the philosophy that 'big is better.' This in itself is not a good start for many educators, who are more concerned about achieving success for their learners than they are about making money for themselves (who would become a teacher if they wanted to get rich?). But the post also challenges the belief that 'if you build it they will come' which a great number of would-be bloggers cling to when they launch out into the blogosphere for the first time. Katie Hafner recently repurposed a Winston Churchill line when she said: "Never have so many people written so much to be read by so few." Cynical, but probably true for so many who write, and write, and write .... and nobody reads. They give up after a while, and their blogposts hang there in cyberspace like abandoned and dilapidated gas-stations in the desert. Most bloggers do not write because they want to achieve commercial success, but simply to share their ideas. If no-one reads these ideas though, it's a little like whistling into the wind. The article does however provides a clear insight into what drives crowds to certain sites and why they avoid certain other sites.
Secondly, the article is interesting because it highlights the power of content. Content is king, it has been said, but in this instance, Kothari is arguing that it is what you don't include as content that is just as powerful. He is not arguing only that you should exclude certain individuals from your blog (in this case beginners and those who are techno-nomads) but also that you exclude certain content. I can subscribe to the latter, but I find it hard to agree to the idea that we should deliberately exclude certain individuals from reading our blogs. It runs against the ethos of just about everything I value in good teaching. Yet I can concede the point that perhaps this kind of weeding out of readership will happen naturally. My own blog for example attracts mainly teachers, trainers and learning technologists in its readership. I wouldn't expect lawyers or bankers to be reading it too much, because the content is irrelevant to many of them.
Finally, the article is interesting because it is a guest blog post. Kothari may be hung up on exclusivity, and motivated by commercial success but he doesn't seem to mind spreading the love a little by sharing his ideas for free as guest posts on other blogs. He does this because he knows that he will gain a larger audience for his ideas and that what he gives away will be returned to him with interest:
The first thing I did when I started out was to focus on who my ideal readers would be. I zeroed in on people who would take action without making excuses, and who have achieved some success already and are hungry for more. I know that if I can help my readers’ blogs grow, my site will grow automatically. And so I only wanted to focus on readers who are willing and able to put in the work to take action and grow their blogs.
What Kothari does not mention however, is the style and the format in which blogs can be presented. I consider this to be fundamental to the success of good blogging. Find a formula that works and stick to it. You need an aesthetic and conducive setting for your content. You have sweated over it, so it deserves to be presented in the best possible way. This can only be done by trial and error, but ultimately, you have to be able to say something important if you are to draw your readership back time and time again to your blog. There are other factors not mentioned, such as the ability to come up with bite sized blogposts (long tomes can turn people off unless the content is earth shattering) and also snappy titles that attract readers when they see them, for example on Twitter.
Ultimately Kothari is correct when he says that we cannot serve everyone. I am uncomfortable with the exclusivity tag, but can see his point that content must be targeted to those who will benefit best from it. Kothari's post is a very revealing and thought provoking blogpost on all these levels, but most of all it is interesting because it epitomises what blogging is all about, and the underlying processes that make it what Lawrence Lessig calls: "The most important form of unchoreographed public discourse we have."
Image source by Geek and Poke
Secrets of the bloggerhood by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Anyone who has tried the Towers of Hanoi puzzle will know that it looks simple, but can be extremely complex to complete within the minimum number of moves. It drives some people mad. You can try it online here, but which ever way you do the puzzle it takes time and patience. It's not so much the amount of moves needed to complete the puzzle. It is the counter-intuition that often baffles. To complete the Towers of Hanoi problem, you must first build and then destroy what you have built to reach your target. 
'Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in a different time.' - Rabindranath Tagore
If you are a teacher, and you are trying to introduce new technologies or software into the classroom, be warned. You may be completely blown away by the shiny new devices, and the latest Kinect 360 or Nintendo 3DS may impress the heck out of you. But don't be surprised when the children in your class say, 'yeah, whatever'. It's difficult to impress young people with technology, but they can be impressed when teachers spend some time connecting personally with them, and helping them to understand. Children in primary schools only know the 21st Century. That is why it is important for teachers and parents to understand that they should learn in ways that they can dictate the pace and space of, rather than in the style that we have been accustomed to. Children expect and demand interactive content, because they have known nothing else in their short lives. They communicate through games. They speak the language of txt and connect constantly through social media. The ability to click or touch something to activate it is something they have always done. It's only a small step from there to making computers do things through non-touch gesture, or eye movements and facial expressions. The video below demonstrates how easy a 2 year old child can operate an iPad. She has her first encounter with it, and immediately knows intuitively how to use it. It reminds me of a quote from Marx (Groucho, not Karl of course) who said: 'A five year old child could understand this! Get me a five year old child!
Don't be surprised by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This year's Northern Grid for Learning Conference in Newcastle was a great experience for the 230 or so education professionals who attended. The day long professional development event was hearty, encouraging, inspirational and highly entertaining - not something that can be said of every conference I have ever attended. I won't go into too many details of the day, which has already been covered quite well by the likes of Bill Lord and Martin Waller, but I will say this: There was plenty of smiling time. In a time when education is being squeezed and where there are not a lot of reasons for teachers to be cheerful, this event was quite a tonic. Russell Prue, in his inimitable, hilarious, and ever so slightly camp style, opened the proceedings with a barnstorming keynote. The humour was at times sledgehammer stuff, with Russell poking fun at inept government ministers, and parodying rigid school systems. We need a new model of assessment he argued, and it should not be based on 'guess what's inside the teacher's head.' He severely criticised the manner in which standardised tests and exams are conducted and gave us several OMG moments - as he exposed some of the differentials that are evident between what teachers teach and what learners learn. Shift has already happened, he remarked, and the world is not turning back to where it once was. When we ban mobile phones in school, he asked, who are we trying to protect? The learners, or the teachers and the school? Warming to his theme, he received one of the biggest laughs of the morning when he said: 'No pillock in London has the right or the expertise to tell you what to do in your own school'. It was indeed an impressive start to the day, and many delegates went to coffee with grins all over their faces. 
The second day of the EDEN Dublin Conference saw keynote speeches from Paul Kim (Chief Technology Office at Standford University), Clare Dillon (Microsoft Ireland) and Graham Attwell (Director of the Welsh research agency Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning). In all honesty, there could not have been a much larger stylistic or philosophical gulf between the three speakers, all of whom made their own kind of impact on the audience in the O'Reilly Hall on the University College Dublin campus. Paul Kim was both entertaining and urbane as he conveyed us through a journey which examined the ways new technologies are transforming learning experiences for children in developing countries. Dressed smartly in a suit and tie, he spoke with authoritative calm not only on the deployment of new mobile and wireless innovations - he was also well versed in how the applications were affecting education, and his conclusion was fitting. Paul borrowed from the well known aphorism and modified it slightly, stating that 'the future is not widely distributed, so it's not here yet'. He concluded by showing a tombstone with the epitaph 'I have nothing more to say', and pointed out that the date (1907-2007) was a long life represented by a simple dash. What is the dash for you? he asked. How will you fill the dash, and what will be your epitaph - the impact you have made upon the world.
Today saw the start of the 20th Annual EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) Conference, which is being held on the campus of the University College Dublin. The day dawned bright and sunny, although somewhat cool, and 425 delegates from 40 countries made their way over to the O'Reilly Hall to hear keynote speeches from Sir John Daniel (20 years of Distance Education in the Garden of EDEN: Good News and Bad News) and Dennis Pamlin (Information, Knowledge and Wisdom in the 21st Century) and a special address from the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. Although the first two speakers were excellent, and provided thought provoking, challenging and inspirational value to the conference, it was the speech from Mary McAleese that took many by surprise. I don't know what the delegates expected but I can guess. So many previous politicians who have addressed specialised conferences tend to present in a sanitised style that is polished but devoid of any real substance. This is because their speeches are written for them by functionaries who know very little about the subject they are addressing. But Mary McAleese is different to the average politician. She actually knows her stuff, because unbeknownst to the majority of delegates, she has an impressive academic pedigree, and is an afficionado of digital technologies in learning. I knew this already of course, having witnessed a speech she gave two months ago to a group of ICT professionals in the Dublin Convention Centre. She introduced herself as a 'fading president', but if anything, she sparkled. 
The first EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) Fellows day was a thought provoking and absorbing event. Held as a part of the celebration of EDEN's 20th anniversary, 24 Fellows, as well as members of the EDEN Executive Committee and invited guests met to discuss the future direction of technology enhanced learning in Europe and beyond in the grand surrounds of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. (Pictured - Fellows discussing a proposal for a position paper). EDEN Fellows are awarded the honour as "an expression of acknowledgement of professional merit by the Association, for NAP (Network of Academics and Professionals) members, who have demonstrated excellence in professional practice in the field of flexible and distance learning and provided valued support to the evolution and progress of EDEN."
It has been a interesting day. I spent most of it at the Learning Skills Group Conference in Olympia, London. Although I had to leave early to catch my train, I still managed to see the keynote by Chris Bones and the session on assessment by Donald Clark, and my impression overall was that it was a very well received event. There were around 450 delegates for this free event, and Don Taylor and his team are to be congratulated on putting together such a great line up of speakers, that also included Craig Taylor, Cathy Moore, Laura Overton, Nic Laycock, Alicia Sanchez and Charles Jennings. My own session, entitled 'New Technology and the Future of Learning' attempted to gaze (tentatively) into the near future, and to ask questions such as 'what will be the new roles of trainers and developers in the next few years?' and 'what new literacies will learners need to capitalise on new technologies?' I started with a personal journey of over 35 years working in learning technology, and made the point that as each new technology is introduced, there always seems to be opposition and objections. I counselled however, that technology for technology sake is often a mistake. New tech should only be introduced if there is a good reason - for enrichment, extension or enhancement of learning, when it can't be achieved using existing methods. It's very dangerous to try to predict anything, because we are often wide of the mark. But we can trace the trends and see the strong possibilities. I therefore made several broad brushstroke predictions that the future of learning will be: open, personal; social; mobile; augmented; and visual. I spoke about some of the new and emerging technologies such as augmented reality, magic symbol technology and infographics, as well as some of the already established technologies such as gestural interfaces, social media and smart mobile devices. There was an excellent discussion around the questions posed, and I daresay discussion will continue. Below is the slide show (with some additional annotations), to prompt you to join in with the discussion if you weren't able to personally attend the event.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give to teachers is: always be nice to technicians, secretaries, librarians, and other support staff. They are the ones who make schools, colleges and universities work. They are professionals and they deserve your respect. And if you mistreat them, they have the power to make your life absolute hell.
Those who know my personal history will know that in a former career, I was a classroom technician. From 1976 to 1981, I was employed in my first job as an Audio Visual Technician where my role was to support lecturing staff. I did graphic design, illustrations and photography for them. Occasionally I also worked in the print room, creating the documents that would later be published in-house. I worked in the College's video studio, usually behind a camera, sometimes editing and producing. I repaired projectors and soldered cables, wheeled video recorders and televisions in and out of lecture halls, tested microphones and public address systems, and showed movies for the Film Society. It was a fast paced and varied job, given that I was one of only 3 audio visual technicians serving a very large teacher training college. Most of the academic staff were great, and treated us well, asking our advice on how best to present their lessons to the students, what technology to use (in the 1970s, the technology of the day was the new Philips 1500 video cassette tape which held 30 minutes, the Kodak Carousel Slide Projector, 3M Overhead projectors and the Bell and Howell 16 mm film projector - computers had not yet arrived, and copying of handouts was done using a hand cranked Banda Spirit Duplicator). Most of the lecturers treated us with respect, but there were a very small number of academics who looked down upon us as though we were very inferior to them.
One particular female lecturer - let's call her Sadie Stick - was well known for her impatience, temper tantrums and general arrogance. The staff were not particularly keen on her, and neither were the students. One day, after I had set up all of the teaching equipment for the morning lectures, and double checked it was all working in each room, I was back down in the AV workshop, about to launch into the day's scheduled repairs. The phone rang. It was Sadie. She was furious. She demanded that I come upstairs immediately into her lecture room, because the Overhead Projector she had ordered was faulty. I made my way quickly up the stairway and found her lecture room.
I walked in, and there she was, in front of almost a hundred students, hands on hips, glaring at me. I think she was having a particularly bad day. She launched into a diatribe about how incompetent I was, and how I couldn't even be trusted to provide a working Overhead Projector. Dr Stick berated me for wasting her time, and that of all her students (who I must say looked distinctly embarrassed by her tirade). She said she was going to report me for negligence, and see to it that I was disciplined. She pointed to the Overhead Projector, and demonstrated that it was not working. She clicked the switch on and off, on and off, on and off, to make sure that I received the message loud and clear exactly how angry she was. And at about that point, I think Dr Sadie Stick ran out of steam.
I looked around the room theatrically. I walked over to the power socket and flicked on the switch. The light from the Overhead Projector blazed gloriously on the screen. I then calmly, and without a word, walked out of the room... to absolute silence.
Image source by Alan Levine
Be nice to techies... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Once in a while I like to have a little fun with literature as can be seen in my blogpost in tribute to the genius of Lewis Carroll: A Web 2.0 Wonderland. For those who enjoyed such frivolous wordplay, here is a famous speech from one of William Shakespeare's plays, liberally peppered with hyperlinks to just a few of my favourite Twitter pals - some of those who have contributed significantly to my Personal Learning Network over the last year or so. These are all Tweeps worth following if you have any interest in education or learning technology. I have taken a lot of poetic licence with it. but if your name/link is not in this collection, please don't take up arms against me. Be nobler in the mind. Either your name didn't quite fit in to the scan (I can only take so many liberties), or I may yet include you in a future confection.... I hope you enjoy reading this and perhaps find a few new Tweeps to follow.
Once Moreland unto the breach, dear friends, once Moore;
Or Kruse the Hall up with our English dead.
In peace there's Domingo becomes a man,
As Michie stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war Bozarth our ears,
Then imitate the Aspin of the tiger;
Disguise fair nature with Hart-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a Terrell aspect;
Let Clay through the portage of the head
Like the brass Cronin; let the Bray o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a Gallen rock
O'erhang and Jakob his confounded base,
Smithers with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the Kuchel wide,
Hold hard the Baird and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is Finch from fathers of war-proof!
Frasers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from Vaughan till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
DisConnor not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did Barrett you.
Be Couros now to men of Grosseck blood,
And teach them how to Winn. And you, good Yeomans,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The Mitchell of your pasture; Lewis swear
That you are worth your Rubin; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you Levine and base,
That hath not noble Costa in your eyes.
I see you Dan like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's a Flynn:
Folley your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Kelly, England, and Saint George!'
Henry V, Act III.
Image source by Raul P
Once more unto the Tweeps... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
I'm sat watching the evening news and I'm listening to a report about a decline in literacy, due apparently to a dwindling interest in book reading. 1 in 4 children will never read a book outside school, intones the BBC news man. Other statistics are thrown at me as I watch the news reporter build his case. 1 in 3 do not own a book and 1 in 6 children will struggle with their literacy, he says. Figures quoted are obtained from the National Literacy Trust he says. The BBC TV reporter goes on to suggest that kids today are "increasingly bombarded with new technology and new distractions" (images of children playing shoot em up computer games flash across the screen at this point), and that "the place of books, literacy and quiet reading ranks highly amongst the concerns of many parents." The BBC reporter balances his report by conceding that "kids do read, but increasingly it's not books." Well, that's helpful. I want to ask - so what do they read? But already, the channel has moved on to the sport.
Here's what I know: Increasingly, sales of books on Amazon are in electronic form, and this year, for the first time, the online store has reported that the sale of e-books has outstripped conventional book sales. But e-books are usually the preserve of adults. Few school children that I know actually read books on Kindle. Most don't own a Kindle or other e-book reader. Do children read other things then - on the Web for example, or on their games consoles? More to the point, what are kids interested in reading? Should they, as is the view of our esteemed Education Secretary Michael Gove, be tasked to read 50 books a year? What a splendid way of turning kids off reading altogether! I know that if I was forced to read a book a week when I was in school, I would very quickly have found a way of losing those books in a ditch somewhere.
I'm sceptical about the BBC news item, and the idea it is propagating that literacy is on the decline. Hasn't it always been thus? I can recall government statistics from when I was at school (oh so many years ago) saying that our country was in trouble, because of the poor standards of 'reading, writing and arithmetic.' I was messaged on Facebook yesterday by another Steve Wheeler (no relation, and certainly no friend) who going by his picture, is probably of the same generation as me, but behaving more in compliance with his shoe size than his age. Out of the blue, on my wall this stranger had written 'Your not Steve Wheeler I am.' By response I kindly pointed out to him that the correct grammatical construction should be 'You're not Steve Wheeler. I am.' He fired back a snide comment. I blocked him. No matter. The key point of this story is that every generation has its literacy problems. Is there really such a decline in literacy? Has it changed all that much from previous decades? If there is a decline, should we really be placing all the blame on 'new technology and new distractions?' There are so many questions. It's a complex issue.
The statement that new technology is distracting, and the implication that it is doing damage to literacy needs to be challenged. I would point those who are sceptical about the role of technology in education, and those who claim that it has had little impact on learning to the time just before Gutenberg introduced his movable type printing press. Literacy - reading and writing - was then the preserve of the elite, and it was zealously protected. Post Gutenberg, it became a world in which all could participate, and knowledge grew exponentially as a result.
Perhaps we should not be asking why children are reading less print books. Instead, maybe we should be asking 'what are the new literacies they will need in the society in which they will grow up and work?' Perhaps we should look more at how the emphasis on literacy is changing to digital literacies (notice the plural) ... the transliteracies and other new skills of communicating across social media and mobile platforms that are already assuming greater import as they transform our society.
No, I don't think the demise of the printed book is nigh. I believe there will be a place for print for a long time to come. And there are still many, many children who continue to read and enjoy books. But print is now having to move aside to make some space as newer methods of mass communication take a more prominent role in our world. The way we represent knowledge, the world around us, society, community, reality, is changing. So there you have it. Those are my thoughts on the topic. Do you read me?
Image source by Guldfisken
Literacy, wot literacy? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
A blog post from Chris Betcher (@betchaboy on Twitter) is currently doing the rounds. Entitled You don't have to like it, the post is a no-holds barred indictment of teachers who find ways to avoid the use of new technologies in the classroom. Here's an excerpt from Chris's post:
I just cannot accept excuses about technology being optional, whether it's from someone who is new to teaching or others who are close to retirement. There are children in those classrooms every day who deserve the best education we can offer them, and it is completely unfair if that education is less than it should be because someone wants to pick and choose which aspects of their job they feel are important. No child should have to put up with out of date learning experience just because their close-to-retirement teacher is "taxiing to the hangar".
One of the most important things Chris says in his post is that technology is not a new thing. I would add to this that opposition to new technology in the classroom is also not a new thing. I gave a keynote presentation in Christchurch last year in which I showed quotations from those who had opposed the introduction of slates, the pencil, the ink pen and a whole host of other 'new technologies'. In each case, the arguments were superficially about the perceived adverse effects of the technology - 'the kids won't be able to write properly', 'what if they break the slate - it's expensive to replace', and 'The costs of these new writing implements could have been spent more wisely elsewhere.' Sound familiar? The same excuses and opposition is still being trotted out today by those who are opposed to the use of mobile phones in classrooms. 'Txting is dumbing down literacy', or 'the expense of buying and upgrading computers cannot be justified.'
I'm with Chris on this one. Teachers who avoid the use of technology in classrooms because they feel uncomfortable or out of their depth should probably reconsider their careers. It's not about comfort zones - it's about children's education. No excuses. If we deprive children of the best possible conditions for learning, we betray their future.
Image source
Excuses, excuses... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Earlier today on Twitter I said: 'To use any social media to its full potential in education you must venture beyond the classroom.' And I meant it. To achieve its optimum effect, the use of any social media - whether it be blogging, wikis or any other form of sharing of content - must breach the walls of the traditional learning space. Social media are time and space independent. They do not operate within, or rely upon, traditional ways of learning. Nor do they exist within a single timeframe. We need to see them in this context, not just as software and content on a computer screen, but as a gateway to a huge network of connections in an ever expanding global community. Facebook isn't just about friends and family anymore. It's about friends of friends, and connections to groups and online communities.
