Google, Social Studies, & Twitter

Dear Colleagues,

Given the short supply of that most precious of all resources (time), I will start with a summary of links to tools and discussion items for those that would like to explore without reading through the explanations and context that I've embedded them with.

1. Searching within a domain such as education (.edu) or government (.gov) - using the "site:" search function.
2. Using Google for definitions.
3. Google Scholar
4. Blog - Free Technology for Teachers
5. Google Earth
6. World War Battle sites for Google Earth
7. CBC Archives
8. Searching Canadian government sites with site:gc.ca
9.  Demonstrating scale.
10. Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts
11.  Oh my! Twitter makes history for Google search
12.  Library of Congress archiving Twitter
13. Google making Twitter searchable
14. Twitter sign-up

I was recently reminded of the importance of proper searching in Google. As I move through the day with my CDS (Caffeine Delivery System), occasionally a student will make the mistake of trying to claim that aspartame is dangerous, on the basis of some Cquestionable website that informed them that aspartame is a 'chemical' and there exists a vast conspiracy to hide its toxic effects.
The problem is that when students (and of course I) search with something like Google, the most common way to use it is with simple search terms, i.e. "aspartame toxicity". The first page to pop up after such a simple search is one selling a book, and is a well-known contributor to conspiracy theories about aspartame toxicity. When distinguishing between fact and fiction, the most popular sites given by a simple search are often the least reliable.

Alan November mentioned using the "site:" command on Google to help eliminate unreliable search results. For example typing "site:.gov OR site:.edu aspartame" selects only websites that contain the word "aspartame" from either U.S. government sites (such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health) and educational sites from universities and schools (also in the U.S. - Canadian universities don't have a similar URL that can be used as a search criteria). The results give a completely different picture of aspartame. One the first page there is a link to the chemical formula and its history, several sites mentioning, and then debunking, the aspartame conspiracy/toxicity myth. Since using this method removes the .com's, the .net's and the .org's - all of which can be bought by anybody, for any reason. Lots of good sites are removed as well, but using this as a 'first search' for students helps pinpoint the reliable information first, before going to a more general search. Since students are inevitably getting a lot of their information through such searches, teaching such search techniques is essential to help students learn the difference between credible and non-credible information on the world wide web. This search example uses the "OR" command, which means it retrieves resources from either government or education sites - for a narrower search (such as only searching educational site) the "OR" command and the other search criteria can be omitted.

Google has a lot of useful methods to distinguish and refine the information you're looking for. In Biology 12 class some students forgot their textbooks and needed definitions while working on a worksheet. Rather than retrieving their textbook, they used the "define:" command in Google. Typing "define: androgens" returns a list of possible definitions from multiple sources - a quick read reveals to the student that this is a general term referring to male steroid sex hormones. I think I prefer this method over the "The Textbook" - it exposes them to multiple definitions, different nuances, and ensures they know it's the concept, and not the exact sequence of words, that's important.

In the same class a comment arose about sugar intake in children and its positive correlation to hyperactivity - a belief long held by teachers and tired parents everywhere. Rather than using the previously mentioned "site:" command, we checked directly using "Google Scholar". Typing "sugar behavior children" into Google Scholar immediately returns relevant results, with the most recent studies first. The first link is a meta-study debunking the sugar-hyperactivity myth. Of course not all students are trained to know the difference between good studies and bad studies, double-blind and proper controls, but at least with this search they're in the right ballpark for seeking truth, even if they end up in left field somewhere. Compared with a general Google search for "sugar behavior children", which does have both good and bad results on the first page, but the very first result is an author selling a book and a disease model of 'sugar sensitivity' to worried parents. Google Scholar is an excellent resource for any teacher, and a particularly important one to train our students to use in this information dense world.

Free Technology for Teachers is a great blog to follow for useful technology resources for the classroom regardless of your subject area, but one of the latest posts has a lot of resources for Social Studies teachers : 12 Resources All Social Studies Teachers Should Try .  One of the suggestions is using Google Earth to explore places and settings for historical settings - I'd seen examples of that before but I didn't know Google Earth has the capability to put an overlay of a battle, building, or historical map. I spent a bit of time following links and ended up exploring Dachau for too long.

I'll let you explore the blog yourself, but if you're just interested in Google Earth you can download and install Google Earth here : http://earth.google.com/intl/en/download-earth-advanced.html , and you can download world war battle sites here : http://www.gearthhacks.com/userfiles.php?user=1698 .

Another resource that makes me think of Social Studies is the CBC archives : http://archives.cbc.ca/ . They have a teacher section ( http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers/ ). Keeping with the world war theme, I listened to a radio broadcast from April 7, 1945, a Canadian reporter gives an account of the atrocities from a camp Canadian troops captured the day before.

Pausing before a brick wall splattered with blood and brains, the CBC's Matthew Halton tells Canadians back home about the atrocities committed by the Nazis. A day after Canadian troops capture a Nazi camp near Zutphen, Netherlands, Halton visits the site. He describes a trail of "slime and abominable crime," reporting that the worst thing you've ever read in any account of Nazi atrocities was there: "I saw and I was sick."

Serendipitously four other possible Social Studies sites were tweeted in the past week. The history site for Veterans Affairs Canada (http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=history), the history of federal ridings (http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/HFER/HFER.asp) the Canadian Military History gateway (http://www.cmhg-phmc.gc.ca/html/index-eng.asp) and the Aboriginal Canada Portal (http://www.aboriginalcanada.gc.ca/acp/site.nsf/eng/ao04588.html). All are great resources, but similarly to the first topic I notice that the Canadian government seems to have settled on a site URL: ".gc.ca".
This brings up the possibility of directing students to include searches that specifically search the Canadian government's website for information using the "site:gc.ca" command on Google.

For example, what reliable information does our government provide on the Vietnam war? Google search site:.gc.ca vietnam war . I've found both the Canadian and American government site searches (.gc.ca & .gov respectively) give a lot of excellent scholarly and reliable information for students.

I couldn't leave without at least one technology tool devoted to science: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/. This is a wonderful flash demonstration showing relative sizes from a coffee bean to a carbon atom - scale is hard to grasp and this little tool does a great job of getting it across. Thanks to "A" in Bio12 for bringing it to my attention.

A NYT article titled "Teaching About Web Includes Troublesome Parts", and a blog article "Oh my! Twitter makes history for Google search" commenting on the fact that the Library of Congress is going to archive every public Twitter comment made, right back to its inception in 2006, and Google is also going to make all comments searchable. As an archive for history and posterity, there is a wealth of data.

I remember when it was announced that ice was found on Mars. How was this news first announced? TV, Newspaper, or blog? None of the above - it was tweeted from the Twitter account of the Mars Phoenix Lander directly (sadly, the little guy seems to have died). From breaking news to marriage proposals, our collective Tweets are being saved for posterity. (And if you're not on Twitter why not start now?).
Regards,

Ron Neufeld

Canada's Best Boarding School

JayCut, Margaret Atwood still alive, and some crazy

Dear Colleagues,

First a new tool for student video projects, Margaret Atwood, science / math video links, and some news stories.

The neat new tool is JayCut, a free online video editor that offers the ability to export the videos to YouTube or download directly in different formats. I have found video projects, particularly screencasting, to be a useful addition to the regular types of projects I assign. Not only are students picking up some valuable secondary technology skills, but I often find that students who have have to show that they understand a topic via video understand it better than those that just write about it. The difficulties with plagiarism and students copying the work of other students is also discouraged quite naturally - if you're forced to explain a concept with your own voice and in your own words it doesn't really matter if you got the information from your textbook or another student - you still have to learn it.

How does something like JayCut help? One of the significant difficulties I have with projects that are based on a technology is my own ignorance when facing the multiple different editors and laptops that students bring to class. Windows comes with its own video editing software, and so do Macs. I could force the students all to use Windows Movie Maker, software that's installed on the school computers, but that would punish those students with Macs as their ability to work on the project during prep would be limited. Something like JayCut gives everyone, from teacher to student, a common platform to work and edit their projects. Students could even share an account to collaborate during prep or otherwise separated by time and space. For trouble-shooting it also gives the teacher a common platform to become familiar with. Now if a student has problems using a unique video editing program, I tell them to put it into JayCut and I'll help them from there. There are some limitations, such as a maximum video length of 30minutes. Oh, and speaking of Macs, here's a completely unrelated vid on how to make an iPad float. Now, I need to convince my dept. head that an iPad is essential for my classroom and charge it to the science department....

In terms of building a PLN, I noticed that Margaret Atwood has become One Of Us; she's on Twitter. There's a recent article "How I learned to love Twitter" which helps explain how being part of Twitter is about being part of and developing a community. I remember reading Margaret Atwood when I was in school. At the time I thought she was one of those dead Canadian authors. Apparently I was wrong. The ability to observe (and possibly interact with) the authors of books under discussion seems an intriguing development, completely aside from Twitter's value as pro-d resource.

For those in Math or Science I would recommend checking out Khan Academy; a comprehensive set of YouTube videos on Math, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, arranged by topic. (The vision of the author is to provide high quality educational instruction anywhere in the world, for free.)

Lastly, some newsyish items that are related to education and to technology. (By technology, I mean I read about it online and it caught my outrage long enough to pay attention. That's a significant selection bias.)

A student in Mississippi (Constance McMillen of Itawamba Agricultural High School) wished to take her date to the prom, but there was a little snag. Her date was of the same gender, which was against school policy. This request was denied, and Constance was also told that if they arrived separately but danced together they'd be thrown out. Oh, and girls aren't allowed to wear tuxedo's either. You can check out the story here, and a Facebook fan page here. But wait! It doesn't end there. Apparently, feeling pressure afterwards, the school did decide to hold the prom. Except that it is looking like it was a decoy prom, that only Constance and a few other (presumably also less popular) students were invited to, while the 'real prom' was held somewhere else. It's not confirmed that the school officials were involved in the deception...but knowing what's involved in planning any event with students it would be difficult to defend the position that they did not. And the historical parallels alone...

Secondly item - I made the mistake of going to Fox News 'health' section (in my defense I found that the health section of USA Today was blocked by our proxy, and I wanted to check if it was all news sites, or just some), and I found this: Sex Education Could Mean Charges for Teachers. The logic is thus: teaching about contraception encourages sex, minors are not allowed to have sex, therefore teachers who teach about contraception are guilty of sexual assault. This is the opinion of a district attorney. Really really.

Regards,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Spying, Did You Know, Blogging, TED and PLN

Dear Colleagues,

You've probably already heard about the school that's facing some criticism for spying on its students while they were in the privacy of their own home. If you hadn't, apparently they embedded the ability into the students' laptop to turn the webcam on and off remotely - http://education.change.org/blog/view/school_uses_laptops_to_peer_into_students_bedrooms.

A new "Did You Know 4.0" for Sept 2009 (numbers and references are to the U.S.) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8, as well there is "An Open Letter to Educators" from YouTube - A rant about institutionalized education that's been pinging around the blogosphere - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4 .

For those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch - Top educational apps for iPhone / iPod Touch - http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2010/03/01/top-10-education-apps-for-ipod-touch-and-iphone/ .

An article on why teachers should blog - http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-teachers-should-blog.html. I would add that it indirectly presents an excellent case of why students should blog as well, and the last article is "Is Internet access a civil right" - http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2010/02/yes-internet-access-is-civil-right.html.

For a 'last resource', a video from TED. If you have not, as a teacher, investigated TED, you should. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading", and invites interesting speakers to conferences and makes these speeches available online. The topics and ideas may be controversial, but always thought provoking and interesting. My latest favorite directly addresses the interplay of science and ethics and defends the idea of objective moral standards - http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html - worth the 23min.

If your classes include any kind of philosophy or discussion component, check out TED if you haven't already.

Of course, I suspect the indirect conclusion at least some people will take from this email is "Ron either has far too much time or should probably should stop wasting his time on the Internet". That's probably true, but then this email wouldn't have a point, so I'll ignore it. The key point I would like to make is that I did not spend any time 'hunting' for the TED video on ethics, or any time searching for interesting blog articles to post in this email. Each of these emails is a demonstration of the power of a PLN, or Personal Learning Network. Rather than using a search engine such as Google to find resources, a good PLN brings filtered resources to you directly. There is so much content produced every hour, let alone every day, that despite Google's best efforts often good resources slip by, but at the same time actually spending time searching for these resources would be a relatively inefficient expenditure of time.

If it wasn't for a PLN I wouldn't have known to search for "Sam Harris Morality Ethics" on Google to even find his talk, and there's no guarantee that even if I did that it would be within the first few search pages.

Although searching, and knowing how to search, is still a useful skill for seeking specific resources, a PLN leverages serendipity. There are a lot of people spending a small amount of time talking about their passions, whether that's on their blog, or Twitter, or YouTube channel. Once you do find someone that knows what they are talking about (for me that tends to be teachers, scientists, and authors) there are a variety of ways to add them to your PLN. In many cases this can be subscribing to their blog, Twitter feed, or equivalent, and getting an email when they post something new. Since you already have determined they provide quality content, this provides a resource that's often more efficient than searching through the mounds of irrelevancy present in a search engine. As a system, since pushes sources you've selected directly, it can be used, saved, or ignored.

Even email, however, can become unwieldy. I follow 75 separate blogs, 53 people on Twitter, and 80 video uploaders on YouTube. Even with email notifications, this quickly becomes unworkable - there's no way I can keep up with every post, nor do I want to. I want the PLN to work for me, and not against me in terms of my (usually insufficient) time.

To make sense of it all, many of these sources incorporate an "RSS feed". Rather than waiting for someone to load the website, the RSS feed allows people to pull the content to them, using a program or secondary website. The end result is that I don't read 75 separate blogs. I scan my feed reader (Google Reader in this case) for the current selection of new articles since the last time I scanned. Most I skip as either uninteresting, not useful to me personally, and only check out the few that apply to me. If I see a useful resource for next year I can bookmark it (Chem 11, Gas Laws, Funny), if I notice something for someone else I paste it into a draft email for staff. It provides new ideas and resources every day, tailored to my interests, but incorporates the possibility I'll encounter something I'd never have thought of. The best part is that beyond discovering the resources in the first place, I don't actually have to do anything. I have it set up to load as my homepage when I start Fire Fox, so if there is anything interesting, I'll see it eventually. A little bit of useful Pro-D every day, rather than a few days at a conference once a year where I don't have a chance to preview the content, has been the most efficient Pro-D I've ever experienced.

I won't get into the specifics of setting up a feed reader, creating a PLN, or the details of RSS feeds (although I will in the future). If you're interested, there is loads of information online for the self-starters. If you'd like to have a look at setting up a simple PLN, or just following a few blogs, please come and have a chat. It's quite easy to do, and can be made to be very unobtrusive. I'm in the library again this week :)

Regards,

Ron

Bullying, online instruction, and The Virtual Revolution

Lest someone accuse me of using the extra time to do something unproductive, like writing reports, I've committed to re-starting my Pro-D emails while I'm sitting in Lisa's office. Lonely. Waiting for someone to ask me a question (although thanks to Paul & Harold for at least pretending to need help). Either I'll introduce enough ideas that people will start creating problems, or someone will come and see me just to reduce the clutter in their Inbox. Either way; win/win. (Does anybody actually ever try for a win/lose? "Most Obvious Concept of the Decade" goes to....)

First up is a blog article titled "Facebook, Privacy and Cyber bullying" on the social pressures that exist with social media. I found it interesting in and of itself, but more importantly introduced me to a book "Letters to a Bullied Girl", which seems a fascinating collection of letters of letters by both the bully and the bullied. I've asked Eileen to get it for the library - excerpts can be read in the Amazon link above.

Secondly, in the area of research this study found that classes with an online learning component (whether completely online, or blended with a regular classroom) on average produced stronger results than classes with face-to-face instruction as the sole instructional type. My first thought imagined a classroom of children, learning without teachers; a future where a teacher was as necessary as the liftman.

Second and third thoughts seemed to suggest otherwise. Reading more closely suggested that blended classes, that used both online and face-to-face interaction, performed the same as purely online courses, but both are taught by professional teachers. The study makes the point that essentially the instructor made more of a difference as a variable when comparing these two scenarios. I view this positively; when choosing between online or blended courses it's the teacher that still makes the real difference. (Of course, I couldn't find any comparison's to boarding schools, which would be yet another relevant detail for us.) Nor were these online or blended classrooms static environments of delivered content - in each case there is a teacher providing resources, teaching, creating and guiding. For all those tirelessly putting in the time and effort necessary to create those Moodle sites, and provide online interaction for your students, your time is being well spent. That's always nice to know.

It's a big report, and I've only skimmed/scratched the surface. Share what you think here or here.

And in other news - strong traditional literacy skills has been correlated positively with phone texting. Even my students had a hard time believing that one. Maybe I should be buying Ciara her first phone?

Thirdly, the comment was made today about how well our students were connected digitally; to their home, to each other, and other extended networks during their recent trip. While some schools are banning social media, and other modern tools in the classroom, the correlation between online study and improved results suggests this is not only the future of education, but perhaps also its foundation. Once we had static textbooks. Although some students did choose to interact, the writing scrawled inside and on the edge was never terribly unique or educational. Now we have textbooks - with accompanying online problems and text, videos, sound, and accompanying forums where students can discuss with other students some of the problems and difficulties with the subject. Where these are absent, students expect similar teacher-created resources, whether on Moodle, WebCT, or just a class in Facebook.

It's going to be an interesting decade.

The BBC has recently broadcast a new documentary called "The Virtual Revolution" - billed as an open and collaborative documentary. They've made available their own media for re-use through a permissive license, and overall it appears interesting and comprehensive. I've only seen some sections, and my main critique is it assumes that its audience hasn't heard of the internet; the "gee whiz" factor can be overdone. It's worth a look though, and they have provided a lot of the content online.

I hope there was something here that piqued your interest. If not, this last tidbit that floated past my email. Forget the issue about dress - parents creating and/or participating in a Facebook protest about a school? Extrapolate that to the next generation, once our connected students become even more connected parents.

And finally, just for a laugh, a Professor that absolutely does not want anyone bringing laptops or cell phones to class.

Regards,

Ron

The Back Channel - Power shift

A somewhat disturbing report on the growing power of the audience.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/10/09/how-speakers-should-integrate-social-into-presentations/

We have less to worry about than those at educational conferences (our school bans cell phones from the classroom - although I'm sure surreptitious texting still occurs), but the ability of students to communicate with each other is going to grow - and it's becoming less and less intrusive every year.

I'm thinking of encouraging a back channel now, perhaps through a classroom Ning, that I can observe and students can post comments to as a form of feedback. Encourage it as a positive tool before it grows into a virtual heckling device.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Activated Complex - Demonstration

Chemistry video for Reaction Kinetics: activated complex.



Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School

Technology Training - What's the point?

If excellent teacher's can teach without technology, what's the point of technology training?

Newspapers didn't appear to see it coming - who really could imagine people writing for free, and then attracting enough readers to hurt newspapers? Blogs offered a way that anyone could voice their opinion, and while the criticism that 'everyone' means that the bulk of blogs are inadequate, self-indulgent or unprofessional may be true, it misses the point entirely. People don't read all blogs, they read a limited number. As an almost evolutionary process, the good (or at least the readable) are sorted from the bad, and the critique now looks a bit weak - the blogs people read frequently exceed the quality of newspaper articles in knowledge, depth, understanding or entertainment. Unlike newspapers, blogs also allow the readership to comment, inform, correct and even chastise the author. This is not arguing that blogs are "better" either. Blogs simply out-compete newspapers in many traditional newspaper niches where it matters - readers.

This has a lot to do with education. When I started teaching schools still required many traditional teaching supplies: textbooks, pens, paper, chalkboard, desks, etc. The generational difference between teachers seemed one of form rather than function - I kept my grades, lesson plans, lessons and notes on a computer, other teachers used planners, agendas, and binders. We were still, however, doing the 'same thing' in many respects. The new environment, however, is new in function as well as form. Seven million (full text) books are available through Google Books. Wikipedia is the world's largest, and most current, encyclopedia. iTunes has iTunes U and YouTube has YouTube Edu, both of which offer lectures by professors. In many cases textbooks no longer need to be purchased for class. Films, examples, and demos can be viewed without a video or DVD, and for free. The quality can be equal to (or superior) to purchased items in many areas. Alternative lectures of the topics I'm covering in class are widely and freely available. Facebook, Myspace, and now Twitter have changed how we share, communicate and collaborate.

Experimenting with videos and digitizing class notes creating some video's of class topics has made for some interesting insights.

For example, some YouTube author has created a video entitled Parts of the Brain. It's not great, and is mostly just a dry re-statement of the parts with a diagram to show where the parts are located. Despite that, they've received a modest number of views (2000+), and some favorable comments. The conclusion to this anecdote is not that we should be providing/creating YouTube videos to our students. The conclusion is that soon, if not already, there will be available to our students resources that specifically engage them, as a unique individual, to learn a particular topic. One student commented "Thank you so much for being the kind of instructor that I'm paying for and NOT RECEIVING!!!", which highlights the issue directly. Although the videos may not be good, they did meet the needs of specific individual students. Given the ever-expanding amount of resources available, at some point resources that cater to an individual's learning style will be easily available. Using generalized teaching methods geared to a 'class' seem inadequate. As the encounter between blogs and newspapers demonstrated, people prefer to choose what works for them, rather than accepting what works for most.

So what, exactly, am I providing in the classroom that's not available elsewhere for free?

Many students walk into school with an impressive amount of computing power. When helping a student after class we had a disagreement about what I had taught. She consulted her iPhone, had the class notes downloaded and double-checked. She also had the review website I had suggested bookmarked, as well as several educational videos. Yet, with this impressive demonstration of resources, she was sitting on a couch in the common room, working over chemistry problems with her teacher, in her free time. No amount of Twitter, email, or virtual resources is enough to replace the basic need for a teacher/student mentor relationship.

While blogs may be causing problems for the New York Times, some magazines that have embraced the new technology (Discover, Seed) are flourishing. It appears to me that the NYT used the web as an extension of their newspaper, but Discover and Seed used blogs themselves to offer something different from their magazine. I don't know if it will work in the long run, but in the short run it has been much more successful.

New technology doesn't replace teachers, but it does shift how we might think about teaching. It seems that many of the teaching methods I still use, and was taught, were invented in a time when the student environment was resource poor. Much like the NYT, simply shifting what we do on paper to doing the same thing with technology is only one evolutionary step. Of more pressing importance is how to change the nature of teaching itself so that it keeps what still works, and adapts what does not to the new environment. For example, one twitter user pointed me to an article in which a college professor no longer gives lectures (no link, sorry). All of the class time is devoted to giving extra help and tutorial help, going over common mistakes, or hands-on learning opportunities. Rather than assigned homework, lectures are assigned, so that students are expected to show up having listened and made notes on the next days topic. As an adaptation to a resource rich environment, this seems intriguing. Unfortunately, as with all adaptations, whether or not it will be ultimately successful is uncertain.

An online poll asked "Can a teacher be a good teacher without using technology?". I think it unsurprising that the majority answered "Yes". The purest form of university I've ever heard defined is as a log, with a teacher at one end, and a student at the other. The follow-up question, “Is a teacher, who is not using technology (computer, internet, etc.) doing his or her job?” resulted in a rather emphatic "No".

If I am not providing my students with resources they can easily access, and if I'm not providing a learning environment where individualized resources from outside are encouraged and utilized, I am not serving the needs of my students. By today's standards, I risk becoming the New York Times - not quite good enough. The environment has changed enough, particularly in today's economic climate, that what schools and teachers evolution will eliminate is not entirely clear. It is never enough to be the best, as what's 'best' depends on the environment, a variable that appears to change more quickly with each passing year.

We have started a technology initiative, and I was compared (favorably I think) to a Bulldog in terms of herding it along. I thought a bit of explanation might be in order. The purpose of the initiative is not to learn a 'thing', like a tablet, a specific set of programs that can improve what we do in the classroom, or even new teaching methods. Its purpose is to take excellent teachers, and help create more familiarity with the environment, and provide more opportunities to learn technology. If this means that no new technology 'things' are used in the classroom, then that's fine. Being able to critically assess and experiment with new technology - adjust to the changing environment, as it were - will be more important in the long run than simply learning a new 'thing'.

Two quotes from Tom Whitby from Twitter:

"I have tunnel vision when I do tech training. I apprch it with 1 Ques: How can this help kids learn? If I can't use it I don't learn it."

"If teachers employ the technology to teach there would be less of a need to teach technology. "

While there are a great many resources out there and a great many excellent teachers with tips on how to use those resources, I do not see a consensus or agreement on what approaches are necessarily 'good'. I certainly can't claim that I've discovered any amazing way to help students learn more, or faster. The more of us there are looking, collaborating, testing and experimenting, however, the better the chance the environment can be harnessed rather than just waiting to see what evolution does. As is common with a changing environment, there seems to be a great many ideas about how to best capitalize the new resources, and it's certain that a great many of them will turn out to be wrong in addition to a great many of the traditional resources and methods. If there's one thing biologists know about evolution, it's that it's not very kind to the individual species participating. Unlike organisms, however, we have the advantage of being a bit more Lamarkian about this process, borrowing, adapting, and changing on the fly as successful strategies are proven. If you're not, however, learning the technology you don't have that advantage - and are subject to a more Darwinian form of elimination.

And that's the reason I think technology training is a serious issue.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School