Sunday, February 9, 2014
World Without Walls-Will Richardson
Respond to the class blog after you read Will Richardson's World Without Walls. React to Richardson's vision of education in a "collaborative age." What are some of the challenges that students and teachers are facing given the transformative agency of learning networks and technology? As an educational visionary, is Will Richardson to be taken seriously?
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The article by Will Richardson reminded me again of a book that I mentioned in class called, "Personal Learning Networks" by Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli. In that book the authors say, "we have begun to close the digital divide, but a huge 'learning network divide' remains." The challenge is that to utilize personal learning networks effectively, students (and educators) need a different set of skills. These new literacies include not only proficiency with the technology, but also the ability to build relationships and collaborate, design and share information, synthesize multiple streams of information, critique and analyze, as well as consider ethical issues. What the authors of "Personal Learning Networks" urge is that the first step in helping students navigate these new forms of literacies is for educators to become networked learners themselves. Educators need to understand the power of personal learning networks and the challenges firsthand so that they can better model and share usage and best practices with their students.
ReplyDeleteI believe Mr. Richardson should definitely be taken seriously. His currently blog - http://willrichardson.com - has some really fascinating stuff on it. (Note to Will: your blog might be a little more readable if you didn't spend about a third of his posts bitterly mocking people who don't think as deeply as yourself.)
ReplyDeleteAs far as challenges with Richardson's vision of far-flung learning networks go, they are much the same as the ones that we discussed last class. The key is teaching a new kind of literacy. Making sure children learn how to evaluate sources of information and sift through the near-infinite amount of data on the Web. Richardson puts it this way: "We must also expand our ability to think critically about the deluge of information now being produced by millions of amateur authors without traditional editors and researchers as gatekeepers."
The one point that Richardson makes that didn't ring true was his idea that children will "find their own teachers". I think this is true for certain kids for certain topics, but I suspect those kids will be a minority. I believe most people (not just kids) use the web to connect with like-minded peers and sources of information that confirm, rather than challenge their existing beliefs. I think good teachers will force students to examine their own beliefs and discover what is true and what is flawed. I may be wrong, but I think this won't happen as much in online forums with "the [teachers] they discover"; I believe it will good teachers "they are given".
Some of the themes that came to my mind when I read this article:
ReplyDeleteo Life-long learners and learning for learning sake
o Age of collaboration through innovative and transformative ICTs
o Global citizenship and global interdependence and interrelatedness of issues
o Knowledge-base communities where information and knowledge are the currencies that drive economies
o Leading and working with cross-cultural, transnational, and virtual environments
This led to me to reflect on our role as educators in preparing the next generation to thrive and succeed in the 21st Century. How can we continue teaching using traditional methodologies and following linear lessons from textbooks when they have access to information, experts, and content at their fingertips?
Students, from early on in their education, should acquire certain competencies and be exposed to various digital media tools so that they develop the necessary critical and analytical thinking, communication, and technical skills that will help them succeed, adapt, and advance in a dynamic world. I was both blown away and inspired by Laura Stockman’s initiative and how she branched out and reached out to the world to connect, learn from, and share experiences and passions with people from around the globe to make a difference! I was struck that at 11 years old she has ‘readers’; her blog attracted 33,802 viewers to date from all over the US and around the world. Richardson, referring to information and communication technologies, contends,
“These tools are allowing us not only to mine the wisdom and experiences of the more than one billion people now online but also to connect with them to further our understanding of the global experience and do good work together. These tools are fast changing, decidedly social, and rich with powerful learning opportunities for us all, if we can figure out how to leverage their potential.”
I totally agree with Richardson, that as educators, we should constantly think of innovative ways to expose students to global issues and help them build their intercultural communication skills in order to become global citizens.
As educators, we have an important role and responsibility to teach students how to use ICT effectively, safely, and responsibly. Richardson maintains that teachers must model practices of how to locate and discern reliable information and good partners. He goes on to point out other challenges or dangers of ICTs such as managing our digital footprints, ethics of co-creation and intellectual properties and suggests that instead of banning technology in their classroom to protect them from its pitfalls, we should guide them and teach them the proper and safe ways to use these technologies.
I was privileged to be an active member in a global community of schools from over 100 countries through a network called iEARN (International Education and Resource Network). I have collaborated with teachers and students from different parts of the world and planned projects that integrated global issues into the curricula. My work on these projects made me experience first hand the positive impact that technology has on students’ motivation to learn and consequently their academic development as well as their intercultural awareness.
You touched on an excellent point! As educators, we have an important role and responsibility to teach students ICT effectively and safely. I also often reflect on our role as educators in preparing the next generation to thrive and succeed in the 21st Century. How can we equip them with 21st century skills? I believe that educators cannot continue using only traditional methodologies and following linear lessons from textbooks. Educators need to integrate technology into all curriculum because their students have access to information, experts, and content at their fingertips.
DeleteWhether there is a conscious awareness or lack thereof, we are actively partaking in the “collborative age” through means of social media and networking sites. I do not perceive Richardson’s vision of education in this “collaborative age” as far fetched, but rather a revolutionary concept that prompts innovation and further investigation. As apt users of the internet, we are already connected to others by our passions and interests. Numerous social media and networking sites such as Snapchat, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Venmo, etc. are used countless times a day. There is no escaping the “collaborative age” where the transfer of data and connection never ceases. Education can benefit from utilizing some if not all of these tools.
ReplyDeleteHow can educators serve as “connectors” for students? Richardson mentioned, “It's about working together to create our own curricula, texts, and classrooms built around deep inquiry into the defining questions of the group. It's about solving problems together and sharing the knowledge we've gained with wide audiences.” Educators can connect with their students more easily than ever through blogs and cloud computing. Students can also connect with one another and study material without having to be physically present. I do believe there is unsurpassable value of being in a classroom setting and having face-to-face communication. Richardson stated, “We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives”. As educators we share the responsibility to find this balance, to create the most inclusive learning environment, and to ensure that students entrusted to our care become confident, prepared, knowledgable, and skilled global citizens.
Richardson's vision of education creates challenges for teachers who were taught to teach in a different way. It can feel overwhelming to be told you need to change everything you are doing. As a teacher, I take it day by day. finding new way to incorporate technology and connect to others. I don't feel like everything I do has to be done using technology. One way we use it in my classroom is to connect to parents. Students take videos of each other teaching new math concepts, and we post the videos to our blogs. Students can then refer to the videos when they are doing homework at home and parents can understand the way their child is learning. This Friday our class will be connecting to the California Academy of Science. (Thanks Alyssa) We have created questions about penguins and we will be able to talk to penguin experts and watch the penguins in the exhibit in real time. In second grade, I don't allow students to search the web, but I do talk to them about the websites I have chosen for them to visit and why I have chosen them.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad you are going to to that! I think this is a perfect example of WR concept of teachers as connectors bringing the students to the experts and not feeling as though every educator has to be the conductor of all the valuable content. I can't wait to hear how it goes!
DeleteI admire how you are so eager and willing to find new ways to incorporate technology and connection in your classroom! I think establishing a safe and easy parent connection through use of a blog or Google Site is very wise. I am sure your students and their parents appreciate being in the know of what's happening in the classroom.
DeleteRichardson has beautifully explained why connectivism is the new constructivism. Technology is really only better when used in certain ways (crunching big data, instantly connecting you with people around the world, portability, instantaneous action) and I think the most exciting is the ability to connect with others from around the world. When students know that their work is going to be shared with their peers, they put more effort into it. When they know that their work is going to be posted for the world to see, say, on YouTube, they may put even more effort into it. It naturally raises the motivation of the students when their work is shared, so why not share it?
ReplyDeleteI didn't find anything in the article that I disagreed with, in fact it got me thinking of ways that I could change projects so that students post their work online for others to give feedback, etc. For myself as an educator, this shift is very easy. I'm close enough to the age of my high school students that I know what they are interested in, what they use for entertainment at home and we probably use a lot of the same programs and websites. This makes integration of technology a lot easier for me than someone who is closer to the luddite end of things. Teachers need not only training in technology, but examples of how to use it, proof that it works better than what they are doing now, and motivational accounts from teachers that have used the technology. This is probably a lot of work, but I suspect it will happen in a grass roots way in the schools that have passionate teachers.
I was sad to read about the college students who faced expulsion for having an online study group. That's such foolishness on the part of the college. All of my classes had student formed facebook groups where they would post answers to homework, remind each other of due dates, schedule meet ups and proof each others work. Why on Earth would I ever discourage something like that? It's amazing! What an incredible community to have where students support each other in their learning.
World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others
ReplyDeleteBy Will Richardson
Some key quotes...
"Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant."
"But it does suggest that we as educators need to reconsider our roles in students' lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second."
"We must also be adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about -- not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching)."
Richardson makes an interesting case both for the value of online collaborative environments for learning and for the much needed role of educators in training young people to be good digital citizens.
On one hand, I have mixed feelings about collaboration. As a rule, I prefer to work alone (usually late at night in a dimly lit room with the door locked). I am not even that comfortable sharing my work with my instructors, usually preferring to wait until I have assessed their characters before turning in my first (late) written work. My case *might* be a bit unique, owing to my learning disability, but I do not think it is too terribly so. In my current teaching placement, I can readily identify 3-4 students per class (average 30 students per class) who are visibly reticent to do their work in the presence of others. And this is despite the fact that the cooperating teacher is exceptionally easy-going and nice.
I think the issue here is one of emotional security. Sharing a written creation with others makes a student vulnerable. Even the nicest of teachers has to struggle mightily to provide a sense of security to a student whose affective filter has been activated by past harsh criticism and rejection. In my experience, the online environment is often even more threatening than simply sending work to an educator. Fellow students and semi-anonymous online "others" are not necessarily bound by the constraints of professionalism which act as an often unreliable break on teachers' harshness. Richardson deals with this issue indirectly by talking about how to foster a sense of collaboration through teamwork and dialogue. However, that presupposes that a student has overcome the emotional hurdle of making his or her work public in the first place.
After three semesters, I still struggle with posting my work on student discussion boards. I expect that many of my students feel the same way. In my opinion, that emotional barrier is the key unaddressed issue. It is all to easy to write off these concerns by citing how kids these days use social media, etc., but I think, at best, that masks the issue. At worst, it serves as a way to ignore the emotional lives of our charges. In my case, using social media is easy, even though sharing serious work is hard. The key difference is the cost of an unfair negative response or even in a non-committal one. Most people are crushed when their pride and joy gets savaged. There is a good reason why sociopaths are overrepresented in academia, they are unusually resistant to criticism. Opening up vulnerable children to this kind of trauma is ill-advised.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Richardson is right that this is the world in which we live. There are tremendous potential benefits to crowd-sourcing. One can argue that human progress has heretofore been limited by our evolutionary heritage. We are adapted best to function in egalitarian, democratic groups of ~250 or fewer people. If you add in more people, given Neolithic technology, egalitarianism or democracy suffer. The more people you add, the more probability you have for tyranny or division or chaos. Government, as a social institution, has developed alongside technology and has sought to maintain order while minimizing sacrifice of democracy and egalitarianism. Information Age technology offers us the promise of better, more democratic, and more egalitarian order. But its weakness lies in its lack of effective social sanction to act as a brake on anti-social and sociopathic behavior. Training our students to behave professionally online is an excellent answer to this problem. It will work for most of them, but it will do nothing to restrain the actions of the anti-social people.
We need to recognize the perils and prepare young people to deal with them effectively. Obviously, guided practice and experience are good starting places. Further, since teachers are the ones who have the opportunity to building trusting relationships with their students, they are the best ones to provide coaching. Still, I do not know exactly how to do that. I can coax a student into writing something meaningful and probably into posting it online. I can probably even soothe a student whose work gets harshly or unfairly criticized. However, I can not guarantee that this student will ever trust the environment enough to post that work again. We need to create in our students an emotional firewall to protect them from the actions of the anti-social people.