What it All Means
Though we certainly can't fully address this theme, we can reflect on what we have looked at in this course and imagine some potential implications for our ongoing educational practice. To help with this, I have a few resources here for you to look at.
The following is a presentation at the Universidad de Chile when I was on sabbatical in 2013. I use a systems framework to look at the impact of technology on education. You are familiar with the ecological approach if you have taken other courses with me, so you might enjoy looking through this to get that big and small picture perspective that I keep saying teachers need to be able to cultivate.
Moving on to Richardson, I have pulled some Ch. 10 highlights. Hopefully you’ve all read it and agree that his chapter provides a nice summary as well as some food for thought about the future for 21st century educators.
The Future...
the Internet will continue to explore as the most comprehensive source of information in history -- connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together
content creation will become more and more collaborative
"Teachers are tapping into the potential of the WWW that is a conversation not a lecture, where knowledge is shaped and acquired through a social process, and where ideas are presented as a starting point for dialogue, not an ending point." [p. 148]
NEW LITERACIES
~ Read/Write ++++
~ Editors as well as readers -- CRITICAL readers
~ Active consumers of information vs. passive acceptors
à PUBLISHERS and COLLABORATORS in virtual environments
~ INFORMATION MANAGERS: skills to collect, store, retrieve, relevant information
"We need to be participants, creators and sustainors of personal learning spaces & networks over our lives using safe, ethical and effective practice"
BIG SHIFTS
Redefining -- TEACHERS AS...
CONNECTORS not only of content but people
CONTENT CREATORS
COLLABORATORS not just with each other but with their students as well
COACHES who model the skills that students need to be successful and motivate them to strive for it
CHANGE AGENTS moving away from traditional paradigms of instruction
The Future...
the Internet will continue to explore as the most comprehensive source of information in history -- connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together
content creation will become more and more collaborative
"Teachers are tapping into the potential of the WWW that is a conversation not a lecture, where knowledge is shaped and acquired through a social process, and where ideas are presented as a starting point for dialogue, not an ending point." [p. 148]
NEW LITERACIES
~ Read/Write ++++
~ Editors as well as readers -- CRITICAL readers
~ Active consumers of information vs. passive acceptors
à PUBLISHERS and COLLABORATORS in virtual environments
~ INFORMATION MANAGERS: skills to collect, store, retrieve, relevant information
"We need to be participants, creators and sustainors of personal learning spaces & networks over our lives using safe, ethical and effective practice"
BIG SHIFTS
- Open Content
- Many, Many Teachers & 24/7 Learning
- The Social, Collaborative Construction of Meaningful Knowledge
- Teaching is Conversation, Not Lecture
- Know 'Where' Learning
- Readers Are No Longer Just Readers
- The Web as Notebook [or Portfolio]
- Writing is No Longer Limited to Text
- Mastery is the Product, Not the Test
- Contribution, Not Completion, as the Ultimate Goal
Redefining -- TEACHERS AS...CONNECTORS not only of content but people
CONTENT CREATORS
COLLABORATORS not just with each other but with their students as well
COACHES who model the skills that students need to be successful and motivate them to strive for it
CHANGE AGENTS moving away from traditional paradigms of instruction
To provide some more brain fodder, I would like you all to view the following Ted talk video:
Sixth Sense Technologies
At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demonstrated several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his innovative device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop"
Pranav Mistry is the inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. For more see on this see the TED site here.
And Now for Something Completely Different...
Here is a list of Creative short videos related to technology that can be said to present either dystopic or utopic views. As you can see none of them are over 10 mins so you may want to explore more than one. Most are in YouTube and some are on Vimeo
Bendito Machine [6:35] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiXOigfDb0U
This animated film tells the story of technological development in terms of ritual and worship - the characters in the film treat each new technology as god-like, appearing from the sky and causing the immediate substitution of the technology before it. What is this film suggesting are the ecological and social implications of an obsession or fixation on technology? Do the film’s characters have any choice in relation to their technologies? What are the characteristics of various technologies as portrayed in this film?
Sight [7:50min] https://vimeo.com/46304267 [vimeo]
Sight explores how the ubiquity of data and the increasingly blurry line between the digital and the material might play out in the sphere of human relationships. The focus on the emerging social and educational use of game-based ‘badging’ is particularly interesting. What is going on here, and how do you interpret the ending?
Thursday [7:34] https://youtu.be/HQ1z0Zzqg5U
Thursday depicts a tension between a natural world and a technological world, with humans caught between the two. What message is the film presenting about technology? What losses and gains are described? Who or what has agency in this film?
Here are two video advertisements - one from Corning, and one from Intel - setting out these companies’ visions of how their products will evolve and be used in the future. In both cases, the companies position their information technologies as completely integrated with daily life and education.
A Day Made of Glass [5:58min] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkHpNnXLB0
Bridging Our Future [3:17min] http://youtu.be/BYMd-7Ng9Y8
New Media [2:21] https://vimeo.com/33193443#at=1
A very short, very grim representation of the effects of technology on humanity. There are definite visual echoes of “Bendito Machine III” here - what similarities and differences can you identify between the two films?
Inbox [8:37] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75wNgCo-BQM
Inbox is a quirky representation of the ways in which web-based technology connects people, the limitations of those connections, and the nature of communication in a mediated world. Depending on how you interpret the relationship between the two main characters, and the ending, you might argue that this is a utopian account, or a dystopian one - what do you think, and why?
SOME OTHER INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS
Google Googles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4
This is still a new technology, but one that is starting to attract quite a bit of buzz. As it gets perfected, it is easy to imagine how this tool will become an amazingly powerful assistive technology.
Augmented Reality: see: https://sites.google.com/site/tech4tlcontent/aug
For those of you looking for a cute digital storytelling tool for your students check out the free version of Zooburst
http://www.zooburst.com/
ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books
Gaming in Education is becoming a big business. Here is a link to a colleagues wiki. He teaches this course during the summer
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