On Privacy

There's a lot of talk about the need for privacy, especially online privacy regarding personal information. I would agree that users, regardless of their age, need to be aware of the kind of information about themselves that they are spreading online and who might have access to it. It's not unheard of for companies to collect information as a form of market testing or consumer research without informing visitors to their websites.

Discussions regarding young people and privacy however, also tend to talk about the amount of self-disclosure that young people do on social networks. It's particularly common for older people to be shocked at the photos being shown, or to bring up rumours of applicants being turned down for jobs based on things that are mentioned or shown on their Facebook/Myspace page. This is the kind of notion of privacy that I find interesting because it seems to argue that the idea of "privacy" is a static one - that what constitutes a private moment for baby boomers would be the same as for the so-called net generation or the even more so-called "Greatest Generation" (that pre-dated the boomers). All one as to do is read newspapers from different periods and look at the kinds of activities that are mentioned for prominent citizens and what can see that definitions of privacy have changed over time.

Notions of scandalous behaviour have also changed between generations and so I think that a lot of these pictures on social networks of ill-advised behaviours might not be shocking one day, perhaps once all the baby boomers have retired.

Protein Synthesis vs. Interpretive Dance

In all honesty I've been looking for this video since my wife saw it on 16mm film back in university. The title says it all.

On Multi-Tasking

Recently I've been reading iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, by Gary Smal MD, and Gigi Vorgan. It looks at the how thought patterns and brain development are affected by new technologies. I was intrigued by the idea that reading something from a book might involve a different cognitive process than reading the same thing online.

The most recent chapter dealt with multi-tasking and recycled some of the familiar studies arguing that multi-tasking is not necessarily more efficient that proceeding through tasks in a linear fashion. From there, it is suggested that students who "multi-task" are doing themselves a disservice and as teachers we might want to encourage them to return to a single task methodology. Without doubting that in some cases, multi-tasking might be less efficient, iBrain made me wonder about the experimental design of some of these studies and their fitness for comparison with the ways that students actually multi-task. The one study that Small briefly explains had participants attempt to solve math puzzles while being also being asked to identify shapes. The result of this switching back and forth between tasks required more time.

It made me wonder however, how many students actually attempt to solve their math homework and their art homework at the same time (or say work on science and English simultaneously)? My own (completely anecdotal) observations of students "multi-tasking" involve them working on homework from one particular curricular area, while listening to music, watching TV, chatting to friends, etc. Listening to music or watching TV are rather passive activities, and students talking while working is nothing new. I don't feel that the extent of the disturbances for these activities would be as great as having to switch cognitive domains.

I would like to see more studies that focus on this kind of "parallel-tasking".

Is K-12 Shifting Towards Tacit Knowledge?

A lot of conversations that I've been a part of recently have emphasised the need for "deep learning", "active learning", "authentic learning" or "learning in the real world", etc., and at heart it seems to me that all of these activities appear to place an emphasis on students doing something rather than memorizing something. The role of the teacher becomes one of coaching students how to do things better, how to become a critical thinker, or a keen observer and so on. To some degree these kinds of activities appear to fall under the category of "tacit knowledge", or a kind of knowledge by doing that is hard to capture and explain. Most physical activity falls under this category of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is often contrasted with explicit knowledge, defined as a knowledge of concrete things like facts or discrete concepts.

The odd thing about these conversations between educators is that there is never a reference to the distinction between these forms of knowledge. I know that my professional education was surprisingly mum on the difference, but it would stand to reason that particular teaching techniques would be more successful in dealing with particular types of knowledge. It is notoriously difficult trying to get eastablished teachers to change their practice and I can't help wondering whether being able to draw a link between teaching practices and the transfer of particular knowledge types might be helpful.

Transient Thoughts

I am coming to believe that what we call schooling has as much to do with learning as professional ballroom dancing does to actual dance.

A Conflict Between Two Paradigms

On Friday a colleague and I had a lazy afternoon conversations about what happens when two groups interact with each other around a common purpose. The only problem is that each group is operating under radically different assumptions but believes that these assumptions are shared by the other group. We were thinking of course about the differing viewpoints that students and teachers might have about school, communication, and technology.

This morning we stumbled upon a video posted by Angela Maiers, who we've been following on Twitter for a long time now. Angela's website is dedicated to 21st Century Learning and is a treasure trove of resources.

The Power of Twitter

Twitter turned three years old last week and has earned a lot of recent press regarding it's phenomenal growth last year (reported in some cases as reaching 1400%), but the more critical coverage has been based on Twitter's expanding search functionality. There's a good summary article at the end of our post.

In my recent joint ADETA presentation on mobile learning we talked about Twitter as part of an integrated new approach to schooling. What we liked about Twitter was that it allowed students to have conversations based not on geographical proximity, but on ideas and themes. Twitter's search function makes this possible, allowing students to find timely access to information they need, regardless of where in the world the informants happen to live. Similarly, the topic based nature of Twitter conversations enables students to ask questions and receive help from experts in their field.

Of course, one of the problems with information relaid via Twitter is it's accuracy, and so teachers would do well to encourage students to test the veracity of such information, a fitting skill in this day and age.


To read the article, click below.
http://www.winningtheweb.com/twitter-future-search-google.php