Technology In Education Online

I’m ending the first couple days here at the conference. It has been a very busy two days.  I ran a full-day workshop on Mondy, “Getting Started on the Moodle”.  Tuesday, I completed a half-day workshop on Joomla and just finished a presentation, “Moodle and 21st Century DETAILS: A Constructivist Approach to Teaching.”So as I reflect on the first couple of days, what are my thoughts?  Well, after completing these workshops I am more convinced that giving educators the opportunity to participate in the process is critical. My afternoon presentation on reflecting on how you need to take a more constructivist approach while using a Moodle. One interesting point came when I was discussing about the Workshop component whereby students could participate in peer evaluation and grading, following the guidelines of a rubric. One teacher emphatically stated she would never allow students to participate in grading.  The bottom line for me was her not having a level of trust in students to fairly access another students work.  Now here is the rub, why can’t teachers trust their students to be responsible and accountable? The other question is: Is there a power and control issue here?  I think, at times, it is really hard for some teachers to empower their students.  Do they see their role as commander and chief and students don’t have enough expertise to enable to handle the responsibility?  My thought here is, and it may relate or not, we don’t  teach students what is involved in the process of working in groups yet we throw students together a lot of times and expect them to handle the responsibility.   All I’d ask people to do is to reflect back on their own experiences of group work in school and ask the question: how did it work for you?  I’ve heard from educators the thing they disliked most when going back to school was having a class where the instructor would state that there would be group projects during the semester.  Inevitability, i would hear such statements as: “I wound up doing most of the work” or “Person A didn’t do anything. What happened? What went wrong?  The biggest problem is that we never teach, and perhaps because we were never taught our self, what makes up the group process. How group dynamics work. How you look at members or potential members and determine where their strengths and interests are and grouping students based on their strengths and interests.  Why do group members usually get disinterested? Usually, my experience has been due to people in the group being the controllers.  They want the project to go their way.  On the other extreme you have those that simply tune out due to feeling the group wasn’t hearing what they had to say. So how does this relate to peer review, which was the main point in begin with?  In today’s world students are going to be working collaboratively.  They will also have to know how to peer review.  So if we make the same fatal error with not teaching peer review, we are going to repeat the same errors we have made with group projects. We must step away from this thinking that my role as an educator is to hold all power and control in the classroom.  We have to open up our classrooms to be interactive, peer-review, and restructure group dynamics.

Today’s theme has been my quest today. All sessions I’ve attended have been Web 2.0 related.  If I were highlight the day I’d say there are just an incredible amount of “cool” stuff coming out all of the time related to Web 2.0.  Just when I thought I was catching up to things, something new comes along.  The run down of sessions today:

Starting off the morning attending Alan November’s presentation: “Cultivating a World-class Work Ethic”.  If I were to reflect back on the session the key thing is that we must think of our learning from a multitude of perspectives.  If we study, for example American History, do we only source out of Google only from an American perspective?  Do we, with all of this technology available, open ourselves up to a more global perspective?  And if we restrict what we teach and our approach to how we teach  what are we preparing our students to become.  There are so many great things available to students today, especially with Web 2.0 tools that by placing all of these barriers in our educational approach we don’t create life-long learners.  We are leaving our students the job of teaching themselves outside of school. Students must and should have a say in their own education.

The remainder of the day I spent going to various Web 2.0 sessions.  I think when you talk about creativity and empowerment Web 2.0 is the future….for now. Who knows what the next big thing is coming around the corner!  This can be looked at in two different ways: 1) Why learn this stuff if it is going to be passe in no time, or; 2) This is some exciting stuff and it allows me to continue to bring in new ideas to students!  People were talking about YouTube, Digg, Blogs, Second Life, Habbo & Club Penguin, MySpace,  and Facebook to name a few. The whole idea is taking a bottom down approach rather than a top down approach towards education. Forget about memorization and regurgitation. Let’s move away from this focus on standardization especially since we can’t even get the “experts” to agree what these standards are and how we measure students’ progress.

The final thought of the day is this: If we talk about transforming our teaching methods with Web 2.0, we must think about how we teach ourselves.  If we are attending conferences, I think we need to develop conferences more towards being interactive and hands-on.  People may argue that with larger conferences this is an impossible task.  However, lets’ think about how a conference might work/ look differently. Attendees come to the conference, for those that don’t have a laptop, attendees are given a loaner system to take with them throughout the conference.  An attendee walks into a session, round tables are setup where people sit down, open up their laptop, and begin to walk through using these Web 2.0 tools.  How can we afford this?  I’ve seen vendors, such as Gateway, Dell, and HP, at the conference. Why not tap into their resources to provide the loaners?  The same with software. We have Apple and Microsoft at the conference. Why not have them participate in this process to provide the operating systems.

Actions speak louder than words! Why not re-invent our conferences and make them more like what we talk about when we talk about Web 2.0 philosophical approach to learning.  Let’s remove the chairs lined up in rows and create a a round table experience with a more collegial, interactive experience!

What does it take for people to be active members in a learning environment?  Is there a magical answer to this question?  The reason I pose this question is due to my wondering how do you get people involved with technology integration.  For example, I’ve started to build a moodle (<a href=”http://www.techinedonline.com/moodle”>http://www.techinedonline.com/moodle</a>) with various topics being covered. I’ve noticed quite a few people coming to this site, but not a single comment, suggestions, request, etc.  So I’m left to ponder whether building such a site is a worthwhile adventure or is simply providing a repository of information enough.  I enjoy putting this site together and offering information to others.  However, it’s hard to know what direction to take with this site without knowing what peoples’ needs are or what they are looking for.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand people have other things happening in their lives and taking the time to respond is not a priority. However, this is the same dilemma I’m faced with in my work.  How do you get people to use the knowledge and resources at hand in order to better integrate technology into the classroom? Are expectations too high?  I ran into this situation a couple years ago when I introduced the concept of a discussion forum for teachers to use as a way of communicating with each other, as well as offering their own knowledge to share with others? Guess how many people participated? At first, a few people posted to the forums but those numbers quickly faded within the first couple of months.  I also setup a Tips and Tricks website for teachers. And what was the reaction? Most people stated they would just rather ask me then look at the site.  What strikes me as being somewhat baffling is that we tell our students to look for the answers rather then come to the teacher to give you the answer. Yet, we often do the same thing that we attempt to dissuade our students from doing.

Alan November, last week at the “TechForum Northeast 2007″ talked about how he had peoples’ blogs tied into his course website and still had people adding to it now even though the course ended this past spring.  I think I’ll try that within my moodle and see what happens. His thinking, which I agree with, is that people need to have some connection or feeling of ownership for it to be successful. I also liked his idea of using Skype to open up lines of communications. I’ll continue to offer skypecasts over the next few weeks (look for notices here) to see what kind of responses I get.  I’ll have more to say about last week’s conference later on.

As the saying goes, the best laid plains of mice and men often go astray….I’ve always been one to be on time and prepared.  So this AM I get up, get ready for the conference, walk out of the hotel, walk down the street, enter the civic center, and no one is around! I look around and then quickly check my confirmation for the conference and it is at the Convention Center!!! Back to the hotel, take the shuttle, and I’m sitting here at this conference getting ready to present.  I sit down and go to check over everything on my computer for the day and I have no plug to plug into and I can’t get a wireless network connection.  I scramble around find a wireless connection and I’m sitting here typing out this blog. </p>

When preparing for my presentation at this conference I wanted to change things up a bit to how I’ve presented it in the past.  I have often thought about how do explain a Moodle to someone who has never heard of it before or if they’ve heard of it,  how do you share your excitement over the use of a moodle? The best example of the excitement is to watch a teacher who heard about this “Moodle thing” but weren’t sure what it was. After taking them on a brief tour, they are off and running. As they discover what they could do with a moodle the ideas start flowing from them on how they can use a moodle. And this is what I want to share with those that attend my presentation today.  The technology is great but the excitement is the real payoff

Now it’s on to the keynote address

More to come as the day progresses.

As I arrived to setup my presentation this afternoon I wondered how many people would show and whether people would walk away as excited as I am about using a Moodle. It is always amazing to me when talking to people about using a Moodle they are absolutely stunned when you tell them that it is free!  The next comment usually is ….”so what’s the catch?” It’s always a re-energizer for me to present at conferences. The energy that I get from peoples’ interest always sends me back to my usual work with a renewed sense of energy (of course after I’ve caught up from all the traveling). I will be posting my presentation here later on this week as a podcast. I’d like to hear back from people that attended today’s presentation

At times the stars and planets align perfectly with each other.  As I was working on my doctoral EPP, I was trying to look at how using a Moodle would fit into what I was attempting to accomplish.  Mainly, my goal is looking at how possibly can a Moodle fit into a constructivst approach and at the same time evaluate teachers use of it.  Well, back in May I went through training to become a <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.loticonnection.com” title=”LoTi Connection”>LoTi </a>certified mentor. After completing the training I began to look at the various LoTi levels and it dawned on me, they fit very well together. By assessing how teachers are using the Moodle, I’m able to determine their current LoTi level.   From here, professional development can be focused on a teacher’s needs not simply throwing  a teacher into a one shot in-service or training.

Let me know what you think. Until next time.

Alan

This website will focus on technology in education. Discussions will revolve around how educators are utilizing technology in the classroom. Topics such as integrating vs. use and the confusion around wht the difference is between the two will be included. Other topics will include reviews and comments on software and hardware. I hope people find this blog useful and will contribute to its’ development.

Alan