dear ed... let's not get confused with what we're calling new ... and what is really new...
1. connections to people (networks)
Great post by Dave Cormier - esp read Keith Hamon's comment
Here's pieces from Hammon to Cormier:
Perhaps one of the first literacies we need to develop, and one that I still don’t have, is to determine what constitutes a rhizomatic structure.
...I think I’m beginning to see this shift in structure in my college classrooms as people drop in and out of the class like virtual angels through blogs, work on gDocs, RSS feeds, chats, Facebook. When students really begin to develop a PLN/PLE, then the hierarchical identity of my classroom is subsumed in the assemblages of all those different networks. When the class works, then the rhizome intensifies, elaborates, far beyond the classroom. What do I call that? How does my university account for that? Who gets charged? graded? And do those various hierarchical functions become anachronisms? If they are, then what functions replace them? If I as a teacher no longer spend my time as the sole, authoritative gatekeeper of knowledge or as the rank-orderer and signifier, then what do I do?
Dave, I need these new literacies much sooner than do my students, who are already developing them, though they are seldom conscious of it. Let me know what you find out.
2. connections to information (creative/innovative/unboxed)
Sir Ken Robinson speaks after his 2006 Ted on creativity:
In a nutshell, ....we're all born with immense natural talents but our institutions, especially ed, tend to stifle many of them
...involves a combo of factors: - narrow emphasis on ...arts, humanities pe
- arid approaches to teaching math & science
- obsessive culture of stand testing and tight financial pressures to teach to the tests.
...to sense scale of disaster take note of:
- alarming rates of turnover among faculty
- levels of drop out, disaffection, stress & prescription drug use among students that keep students' minds from wandering to things they naturally find more interesting.
- plummeting value of college degrees
dominant systems of ed are rooted in the values and demands of industrialism:
they are linear, mechanistic and focused on conformity and standardization.
Education is about developing human beings, and human development is not mechanical or linear.
The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.
The ability to do this: to personalize and customize to each child is new ..thanks to the potential of networking on the web..
Figuring out how to use - and using - new tech is not what's new.
It's different.
It's cool enough that you'd think people would want to learn it - use it.
But the people lobbying against all the "new" tech are right. Using a new tool is not vital to learning. Learning to put my powerpoint on spalshr may intrigue more onlookers - but that's motivation... more than actual learning.
Connecting to information and people in ways we have never had the means to before... that is new.
Now we can individualize for each kid. We can tailor a curriculum per kid, suited to their passion, to their creativity. And.... and.... we can now find and connect each kid to an expert individual tutor - so that they are surrounded with immediate, authentic, passionate feedback/encouragement/expertise.
This is most incredible news - and we're missing it - because we are flapping too much about tech literacy/tools.
Or - please help me with my thinking here.
It seems too simple.
And since we're not getting it, (not only not getting it, but mungling it all up), the kids aren't getting it... dang ....
More great insight from Clay Burell.
Or - please help me with my thinking here.
It seems too simple.
And since we're not getting it, (not only not getting it, but mungling it all up), the kids aren't getting it... dang ....
