Social Networking and Teachers

Social Networking may be one of the biggest internet trends in the last few years, but while students flock to it in droves, it's educational potential still remains questionable and in need of investigation. However, we have been hearing reports of school districts being uncomfortable with their teachers signing up for sites such as MySpace or Facebook, as many places (not just Alberta) have legislation and/or professional codes of conduct that seek to regulate the public behaviour of teachers in and out of school. This article, came to us from Eschoolnews.com, via Twitter and MyLearningSpace, and centres around the problem of social networks allowing for the overlapping of a teacher's public and private behaviour.

Dr. Sharon Friesen

A few weeks ago, Dr. Sharon Friesen from the University of Calgary, came to visit the Instructional Services staff and talk about the need for educational reform. Many of Friesen's talking points involved moving the educational system away from the assembly line model that was developed (primarily in the United States) at the turn of the last century. In this model, students are viewed as products that have particular forms of knowledge imprinted (or processed) on them. Quality control measures governing the success of the imprinting, can result in the passing or failing of students. Some of these issues we discussed in an earlier post (The Song Remains the Same), and had even begun exploring in a somewhat abortive wiki-venture, Beware The Octopus. While we enjoyed Dr. Friesen's talk, her's is just one voice in an ever-growing chorus highlighting the need for many multi-faceted changes to our school systems.

Dr. Friesen is also the co-founed of the Galileo Educational Network, an organization that has done some great work in Calgary promoting more inquiry in schools.

Video conferencing

Today we are takig part in a Regional Lead Network workshop on video conferencing and online desktop sharing (great for having students do collaborative work). Several companies such as Polycom, Webex, and Smart offer different formats and platforms. As with our recent visit to Smart HQ with some Dutch teachers, we are very eager to explore the opportunities this software presents, especially when used in conjunction with interactive whiteboards or student laptops.

The Song Remains The Same

(or, The Medium Is Still the Message)

The linked video was passed to us earlier today via Twitter, from MyLearningSpace. It is the type of thing that usually crops up in Education and Technology sessions, pointing to the discrepancy between teaching styles and learning styles in the digital age, we recommend viewing it - but if you are familiar with Prensky's Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants, then you are already thinking along the right path.

However, what captured our attention in this video was the opening scene of an empty university lecture hall, with rows upon rows of seats, along with a caption mentioning how are 21st century students are sitting in 19th century institutions. It instantly reminded us of economic theories talking about how changes in modes of productions can bring about changes in social relations. Shouldn't changes in the storage, production, and transfer of knowledge bring about changes in educational relations?

Many writers on educational issues have discussed how the image of the lone authoritative speaker in front of the classroom suggests that the speaker has knowledge and the students do not. What this also supposes however, is that knowledge or information is scarce. It is the speakers' prior acquisition and mastery of information that grants him or her a privileged position. The explosion in information storage, production, and transfer that started with the printing press, radio, telephone, and computer has made information shockingly abundant. Many educational techniques centre around mastery of information retrieval, a skill that as practiced in the 19th century is no longer relevant. Instead, information retrieval for the 21st century needs to focus more on analyzing and judging value or worth.

Students intuitively understand something is wrong with the educational equation when they ask the perennial question "Why Do We Need To Learn This?" The question is likely to be directed not so much as the content, but the task - "Why do I need to learn how to remember this?" since the possession of a textbook, let alone web-enabled cellphone with online search capabilities makes memorization redundant. Instead, students are looking for a way to engage with the content, to explore its uses and relevance.

Many of the educational reform theories that we encounter deal with enhancing our current teaching technique - how to ask better questions, craft better activities, or assess better. What we need though, is not to refine our technique, but to develop a better one that honours a reality in which students have already mastered simple data retrieval.

Inquiry Schools

A request yesterday for the Inquiry Schools "Water Crossing" video, led us to revisit the Inquiry Schools website, where we discovered several more videos dealing with the Inquiry Process, chiefly one dealing with the topic of energy. Again, what impresses us with the work of Inquiry Schools is how clearly they lay out the Inquiry Process to be used in schools. In our own discussions with teachers we find that, too often, teachers underestimate the amount of time students need to think about the topic initially, and how much open exploration they ought to be allowed to do. Furthermore, these teachers tend to try to constrain the activity to their own class, or to a specific outcome. To us, ideally, Inquiry Projects are cross-curricular, grouped around very broad themes, such as water, energy, transportation, etc., allowing students to find their own area of interest within that. Furthermore, by extending the project across several subject areas, it not only increases the likelihood that students will find an area of interest, but also allows the teacher to increase the instructional time devoted to the early reflection and exploration stages. Rather than trying to shoehorn an introductory episode into a 45 minutes class, piggybacking on another subject class or two enables this precious time to be doubled, or even tripled. Of course, this raises the question of what kind of outcome ought to be expected, as a particular student might be working on the same topic for Social class, as opposed to English class. Any project outcome or rubric therefore needs to be developed in such a manner as it provides for elements common to all involved subjects, but also contains a subset that would respect specific knowledge, skill, or attitude outcomes of individual subjects.

A Friend in the Blogosphere

When the National Science Teachers' Association announced the release of their Lab Out Loud podcast series, we were naturally enough interested. The series comprises 52 episodes and contain extra notes for more in-depth information, with episode one being a look back at the impact of Sputnik on science education and a look forward at the types of skills necessary in the twent-first century.

More pleased however, was our discovery that one of the series' co-creators, Brian Bartel is running his own blog, www.explodingsink.com. Of course, we love the name, but were even more impressed to find that Bartel's Exploding Sink is very similar in intent to our own Exploding Beakers, though much more polished (hey, we're new!). We particularly loved his description of his "margarine lab" where students find percent of water in margarine, via heated composition. The activity serves as a good precursor to percent composition activities later in chemistry. We also appreciated his comparision of online media services, Discovery Education Streaming, and Safari Montage.

Bridgit

At Exploding Beakers we have long been fans of students collaborating with other students in different classrooms and schools. We are particularly impressed this morning with a trans-Atlantic project between a school in NewBrunswick and another in the Netherlands using Bridgit software. Try it out for yourselves!