Monday 29 September 2014

Week 3 blog- The Garden of Creativity

My main aim for continuing my education and pursuing my master's degree was to find the best ways to nurture creativity. Dave's presentation on Rhizomatic Learning at first confused me. While my heart is in innovation and creativity, my head is clearly stuck in the traditional model of education. This idea of branching out and the learning going in so many different directions excites and scares me. In this class I have a hard time struggling with direction as I am used to the teacher telling me specifically what to and then doing it. This idea of picking anything for our major project has been a struggle as where do I start? Dave's concept of Rhizomatic learning is like the roots of a tree this would be how we model education. We can't control where it will lead, but we can influence where it will go.

Speaking of plant metaphors, one that has always stayed with me was a man whom I met at an Apple Computers Education conference about 8 years ago. He was the technology specialist in his district and worked at the board office. He said that we have to stop thinking of a computer as a $1000 pencil and look for ways to make it meaningful. He thought of himself as a gardener. A gardener plants seeds, tends the garden, monitors, nurtures and watches the garden eventually grow. He viewed his job as that as while he was not in a classroom, by helping teachers incorporate new technology this allowed for many students to grow. Classroom teachers generally get continual validation as they work directly with the kids daily and see the progress. For someone in a role at a board office they don't have the same immediate feedback as they might not see the "fruit of the vine" once it blossoms. I know many of the people in this class have a similar role as their current assignment is working outside of a singignitele classroom. I see so many great examples of this daily. I am lucky to work with great teachers who inspire kids (some with really limited ability on technology) and I get to network with awesome teachers in my education classes who are leading the way with student engagement.  

My professional development goals this year are to improve student engagement and nurture positive identity with students. I see so many students tuning out of school as they feel it does not relate to their lives (or perhaps they feel the school does not care about them). With tools such as blogs and social media I see great opportunities to give a voice to students. In having a voice, they will realize that they matter, there are others out there going through the same issues and finding ways to be expressive and creative. That all sounds good, but where I struggle is to how to make that happen. What motivates me is I see the potential of open education and communication and I do feel these goals I mentioned can happen. We can give students the tools (access and literacy in technology), but we need to ignite a fire in kids for them to want to learn to express themselves and communicate with others.

Saturday 20 September 2014

The history of educational technology and The Social Animal

Week 2- The history of educational technology and The Social Animal

This past week we had a guest speaker. Rick gave a good overview of the history of educational technology. One our our classmates mentioned she had a hard time figuring out a way to ask a question. While our forum was functional, it certainly was not intuitive. I too had questions, but never really felt comfortable asking them. My uncle used to build computers in the 1980's. I remember in 1987 this long cable going from the home phone in his living room, down a hall and into his room. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was connecting to the internet. He showed me all the cool things he could do, like check the weather and a conversation with anyone in the world. I had a Commodore 64 when I was a kid and since then always had a computer of some kind. New technology has never scarred me and I gravitate to looking to the latest gadget or software.

Andrew in our class posted a link to a Ted Talk that Rick mentioned. "The Social Animal" by David Brooks is a look at how important non-verbal communication is to humans. I especially like the info about babies and how studies have shown that babies that have a strong bond at an early-age with their mothers are far more likely to be successful in school. Non-verbal, interaction with people is so vital to development, yet we seem to be moving away from developing more face to face opportunities not only in education, but in how we communicate with each other (social media).

One of the fundamental goals of technology should be the betterment of our society. The benefits of the advances in technology are obvious, but what about the importance of non-verbal communication that David Brooks spoke about in his Ted Talk? My family is certainly guilty of it. After a long day of work when we all get home around supper time, the kids and my wife and I frequently take out some sort of device rather than having a conversation about our days. We all recognize the issue, but we do it anyway.

In the future, how will things be different? We can assume we will continue to have have rapid development of technology. How will we interact with one another? What will education technology look like? Will access to proper education technology be more universal?    

Sunday 14 September 2014

How Am I Contributing to the Learning of Others?

This week, Alec asked us to reflect on two questions:
a) How are you contributing to the learning of others?
b) How are you making your learning visible?

I have never really considered those questions before let alone thought about the importance of them. I have been teaching for 15 years and my vision for my personal teaching is in my classes at work. Sure, you make an impression of students and they take that learning with them but this is limited to the kids who are in your physical classroom. Certainly, my employer has never phrased those questions to me. Does all of this mean that these questions are not important? 


No, I think these questions are important, but it is challenging traditional thinking. I consider myself very current in many ways, but perhaps some of my views reflect an old, out-of-date way of teaching. I do see that things are changing and I feel the students are wanting a new way of engaging in their education. 

How are you contributing to the learning of others?
I feel that is is not only my job to teach the academics, but life skills as well. In addition, I have tried to subtly push a personal agenda of having students be more tolerant of others, encouraging creativity, social justice and social good issues. The school where I have taught for the last eight years had up until a year ago very little diversity. The individual students were nice, but in general pretty sheltered and ignorant of not only the world around them, but issues in their own city. In the last two years, we have had many new citizens to Canada start coming to our school and I feel our students are becoming more aware and open to a variety of issues. I take no credit in this, but I do try to foster a interest in these areas and the students are more receptive to these issues.

How are you making your learning visible?
I don't think I am making the student learning more visible. With all of the legal issues of privacy and youth (for good reason) we do not generally make the learning visible outside of our school. Within the school our program is pretty high-profile and we attract students to the program because of it (I am a music teacher and I run most all of the music groups at my school).

Outside of work, I am on social media quite a bit as I am a musician and a big part of that is growing a fan base. In the last year, I have utilized Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and other social media mostly for promotion of my music. I suppose I could use these same areas for education. However, I am nervous of saying I am a teacher as I fear people will not take my music as seriously as they will think it is a hobby. Yes, I am a teacher but I don't think that means I spend any less time on my art as a musician. It is a very tough balancing act. I do see the potential for some really powerful collaborations in education through social media (sharing great resources as an example) and I am starting to engage in these education discussions more through this class.

What's a Mooc?

Hi,

I am excited to have started another on-line class and my first class with Alec Couros. This class is using many forms of technology and while is being delivered as "distance" education (not in a physical classroom) it already is highly engaging and personal. Our first class started this past week with a live session and it was cool to see how the class was going to operate. Even though no one was in the same room (I don't even know if Alec was actually in Canada as I think he was running the class off his phone in an airport somewhere), it was in real-time and highly engaging.

Our first assignments seem simple enough. I think it is more trying to get people familiar with the technology. When I first heard the final evaluation was not a paper I almost jumped for joy! I understand the value of papers, but they never have been a strong area for me (although I do feel I have improved greatly in this area). Truthfully, I kind of resent them. I felt some profs would only be looking closely at APA style and spend little attention on the thoughts and ideas. I understand why that is, but it just never felt balanced.

After thinking about it, it look like the final project is going to be way more thought and time consuming than any paper I have ever done. I am okay with that if it is something I feel I can really grow from and that sounds like what the intention will be. I have never even heard the term "mooc" before so I spent sometime getting familiar with it. I have a great deal of experience with Apple products and in 2007 I was named an Apple Distinguished Educator. Through Apple, I have spent a great deal of time in their iTunes U environment and even started to develop a music course in iTunes U. The concept of open education has the potential to be very powerful.

I did a little digging and came across Coursera. After spending a little time searching classes I felt like signing up for many classes! As a musician, I have always wanted to study music further than my experiences and U of R, but the reality of having a full-time job, family and the expense are factors that make that impossible at this point. I did discover some wonderful music classes offered by Berkley; in song writing and one in music production. I decided to sign-up for both of them. I have no idea how involved they might be (it says it is a six week class with six to eight hours a week) and I am not sure how taking two classes plus this class is going to fly with my limited time?

Regardless, it is really cool to discover the possibilities!