This is one of the nicest and most inspiring talks I have watched recently. This is the story of a young man, who started out on a great mission by accident. He just wanted to “help” out two of his cousins. And the road he chose to take, now brought him to establish this ‘academy’ which is used to teach, to learn, to proceed forward in a quest for knowledge. It all started with a couple of videos uploaded on YouTube for how to learn a concept in Maths.
Now there are over 2,700 videos for Maths, Science, Humanities, and so many more. All these videos are for everyone to use because as we have been saying, and most of you have been saying through this blog, everyone has the right to learn, at any time, at his/her own pace, when he/she needs it. Have a look at what Khan talks about and then browse through the videos. Use them for your own personal self, to learn, to teach and to grow.
The directory of learning resources, is a very good example of how sharing of resources and the online environment can somehow merge to produce tools which are useful for all. When this first started out, it was a singular private initiative by one person, Jane Hart. She started collecting what her network of friends used, and suddenly this network started increasing. But people, her followers, were not just simply using the resources/tools she was suggesting. People felt that they needed to contribute. They too wanted to share their experiences, what they were using. This is the spirit of today’s Web, Web2.0. This is a Web which is not just for people who “consume” information. This is a Web for people who “produce” information. These are called “Pro-sumers” – they consume and produce at the same time. And the results are most often amazing and extremely useful. I think this is an opportunity for an experience which we should definitively live with our students.
Evernote is a great tool which you can use to organise your notes, clip websites and info from websites, and share all this with your colleagues, students and friends.It is especially great for your mobile device, but I use it everywhere and with every PC and Mac as well. All you need to do is download the free application, create an account, which you will be able to access anywhere anytime as long as you have Internet connection and simply get organised.
Read this blog for more information on this free tool. David Andrade writes: I love Evernote. I use it for everything. Lesson plans, lesson schedules, notes, web clippings, lesson resources, travel notes and much more. I think it’s worth a try…
Much has been written about this subject. I do suggest you go over Steve Wheeler’s Blog… it’s one of the best blogs discussing Education, I have come across. Do have a good look at it and check out what Professor Wheeler blogs about… his blog archives are one for the most extensive in Educational Technology.
So basically some of the reasons are highlighted in Steve Wheeler’s blog, but I think that the most important thing is the “glue” which blogs can provide to the outside world. Blogs give you a voice, and that voice is easily published across the really Wide Web in one click. Your voice can be heard and you can hear other people’s voice. It’s not just you and your colleagues in your immediate staffroom… when you go in to the staffroom and you share something with your colleagues, whether it’s a joke or a complaint, or a thought or something which you have done and which you are excited about… you simply share it with a maximum number of maybe 10-20 people…but when you blog about it… suddenly you share it with so many more people. Blogs are a way to help you build your network, and blogs like everything else, will not reap the fruit of your efforts overnight. You need to nurture them with your thoughts constantly. It’s like writing a diary, and once you start then it becomes a part of who you are.
Therefore Blogging for Educators, is for me, a very important form of expression because it removes that sense of isolation which is sometimes built around the perception of a teacher (you know… the teacher is alone in his/her domain in the classroom) and paints a whole new image of the teacher, with multidimension, as the teacher or Educator’s experience grows and evolves with each passing day.
If you still haven’t started off blogging, you will find many tools which can help you. My personal suggestion is to use either Blogger (which uses your google account) or else WordPress (such as this blog you are using). Both are free for you to use.
A great blog having a great number of resources and tools which you can make use of for your classes. You can use RSS to subscribe to the posts, so that you can keep up to date with very little effort.
There are a number of other tools that you can use to keep track of the many websites which publish information that can interest you. Google offer the iGoogle reader. iGoogle is an RSS aggregator… you simply copy and paste the URL of your favourite sites, and iGoogle will keep you updated with the latest posts.
I do prefer to use Feedly. Feedly is another service which uses my gmail account. Everytime I come across an interesting blog which I want to keep visiting and which is of enough interest to me that makes me want to keep up to date with the info published I add it to Feedly. Feedly is available both on PC and Mac, as well as on all mobile platforms. A great tool to keep you up to date.
The third RSS aggregator, which is also nice to use is called Netvibes. I used to use it and the good thing about it is that whilst the other two RSS readers are personalised, and therefore available only to yourself, Netvibes allows you to create a public page with all the feeds from the websites which are of interest to you and may be of interest to your audience.
Clark Aldrich one of the world’s most prominent speakers of designs of Virtual Worlds, Simulations and Serious Games has declared that “The educational knowledge we deploy and measure is more dependent on what is easy to author than a societal desire or need”. This applies a great deal to the resources I find that we, as teachers, tend to produce and work with.
It only takes a minute to realise that the Web is just the tip of the iceberg of resources that can be used by everyone to learn… and to teach. And yet we still notice that in many classrooms, (not all and I do not wish to generalise), we still keep making use of the same old resources we were used to seeing back in our ‘good, old days’ when we used to complain how boring school was getting.
If you look at schools like Quest to Learn , you will understand what I am trying to say. This school, markets itself as the “school for digital kids” – their description states – “Through an innovative pedagogy that immerses students in differentiated, challenge-based contexts, the school acknowledges design, collaboration, and systems thinking as key literacies of the 21st century”. But in short this is a school that uses games and play to teach and to learn.
If you look at their plans, at their syllabi, at the curriculum which drives them, there is no NASA technology involved. There are no resources which cannot be repeated or done elsewhere. There are only resources that are very carefully designed with a purpose. There are lessons designed in the interests of the kids who want to be involved in a creative and innovative way. This is not a matter of saying… “oh I am really doing my best… I did so many handouts… what else do I have to do?” Maybe the answer to that question might lead you to think in a different way, to start thinking about the real needs of your students and not the needs of the MATSEC exam which they will eventually choose to sit or not sit for… so start thinking, start looking and exploring and find the right design which suits your students.
I just came across this blog post… Karyn’s Erratic Learning. In summary this blog discusses the way resources are designed. This morning I actually said: Do not use technology just because it is there… now I actually echo this blog, and say… Do not use the technology simply because it is “nice” or cool or trendy or because it is what you should be doing and what you should be using.
USE TECHNOLOGY BECAUSE YOU NEED IT. When the technology becomes part of our lives, pretty much like the household gadgets which we can no longer live without, then you will find that you cannot really work without the essential tools built around technology.
However the blog post goes further… it says that in just pretty much in the same way as pet food is marketed, all colourful and seemingly much more appetising, in reality, most of that food contains enough additives and preservatives that might harm the pet rather than be of benefit. People might buy the pet food because it looks nice, but functionality-wise it might lack. This is rather similar to the way certain resources are planned, marketed and distributed. Certain resources that might look “nice” might not have the functionalities which bring out a higher kind of learning, building skills and competencies which are more adequate to living and working in today’s society.
What sort of ‘functionalities’, in your opinion, would be adequate for living and working in today’s society?
I think I had a sort of epiphany upon listening to Salman Khan… I mean… really…and drama apart, I just love what this guy is doing…
Khan, has indeed founded the Khan Academy, and notwithstanding the fact that there is a humongous amount of resources which can be accessed and downloaded freely from the site, this guy is indeed revolutionising the whole notion of learning as being encapsulated within the classroom walls.
I look around me and I see educators, teachers, academics and other people involved in the great institution of Education (with a capital E) who are nothing but pessimisting, deluded and cynical bureaucrats concerned with all the petty issues, getting lost on the way, and forgetting what the true notion of providing education is. To me, education and educating is about freedom – everyone’s right to and duty towards freedom… it is the freedom to know, the freedom to learn, the freedom to live actually, because to my mind learning is like breathing…we breathe without being all the time conscious that we’re breathing but we definitely need it to survive. In the same manner, we need to learn, otherwise we would not be better than a cabbage (with all due respect to the cabbage) in a vegetable patch.
So what excited me about Mr Khan, is this idea, that he is not really concerned with the petty nuts and bolts of the institution or of the curriculum for that matter. He can’t seem to be bothered with classifying students as ‘A’ or ‘D’ students, or anywhere in between for all it matters. He is only bothered with providing an insight of a particular concept and he has found the video as his most preferred medium – which is fine. I mean I don’t necessarily think that all the videos are brilliant for all the classrooms we have or that video is the only resource that one should use from this day onwards… far from it… I am sure that there are more and better resources… but it is the concept of it which is thrilling.
If only teachers, teaching specific classes could make use of this concept. This is not saying a lot, it is saying… listen, let the students do the learning elsewhere… when they come to class – they will carry a luggage, and your role then (as teacher) is that of helping them pack, (add or remove) items to their luggage. It’s easy, yes? However I wonder, if this can indeed happen in our classrooms… well at least not until we change the way we teach, assess and THINK…
So today I really felt inspired to rant about the state of the Education, not just in Malta but from what I can see – well all over the place. Instead I will leave that rant to another time and will this time draw some enthusiasm from this program which was recently aired again on Discovery Science. The program’s title: The future of play, shows the way ‘Siftables’ can be integrated into play. This is kind of different from the concept of games which we usually refer to. Play in fact, as mentioned by Henry Jenkins, is not disguised learning. Play IS learning.
So I have recently spoken to David Merrill from Sifteo. And I really truly hope that we might somehow create some local projects here in Malta with these siftables. The mere concepts of bringing together these fantastically simple yet, effective tangibles for a collaborative environment, is just so exciting. This is not about developing siftables for learning. This is ALL pure learning. Learning big skills, soft skills, skills which really any learner can, with or without help, can make use of in real life.
Can you imagine the power of these resources with any students of any level of ability? I mean this could really revolutionise the way we view learners, no longer by academic ability but with strategic capabilities usually exhibited by gamers, who as we know do not depend on isolated curricular subjects.
So the issue now is – ok – how do we get creative enough to develop and test out the question I have just asked? Where do we start? – more to come on this in the near future…
The owner of one of England’s three major exam boards is to introduce artificial intelligence-based automated marking of English exam essays in the UK from next month.
Pearson, the American-based parent company of Edexcel (known as London Exams in Malta), is to use computers to “read” and assess essays for international English tests in a move that has fuelled speculation.
All three exam boards are now investing heavily in e-assessment but none has yet perfected a form of marking essays using computers – or “robots” – that it is willing to use in mainstream exams. Academics and leaders in the teaching profession said that using machines to mark papers would create a “disaster waiting to happen”.
Computers have been programmed to scan the papers, recognise the possible right responses and tot up the marks. Pearson claims this will be more accurate than human marking.
Although we live in a ‘technological’ society, I believe that technology can never replace human jobs in certain areas. In my opinion, this is one of them and I am very skeptic about the whole idea that computers can mark essays, where a number of multiple answers can be given in response to the same question. Keeping all this in mind, one has to ask the question, “How can a computer interpret profound human thought and judge if it is right or wrong?”
Seriously Virtual 