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Tero Toivanen

Digital Citizenship | the human network - 0 views

blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=132

Britannica Facebook Internet Obama SMS Twitter Wikipedia blog co-presence education google earth hierarchy hyperconnectivity hyperempowerment hyperpeople mobile network peer production sharing social networks wiki

shared by Tero Toivanen on 07 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system.
  • While some may be content to sit on the sidelines and wait until this cultural reorganization plays itself out, as educators you have no such luxury. Everything hits you first, and with full force. You are embedded within this change, as much so as this generation of students.
  • We make much of the difference between “digital immigrants”, such as ourselves, and “digital natives”, such as these children. These kids are entirely comfortable within the digital world, having never known anything else. We casually assume that this difference is merely a quantitative facility. In fact, the difference is almost entirely qualitative. The schema upon which their world-views are based, the literal ‘rules of their world’, are completely different.
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  • The Earth becomes a chalkboard, a spreadsheet, a presentation medium, where the thorny problems of global civilization and its discontents can be explored out in exquisite detail. In this sense, no problem, no matter how vast, no matter how global, will be seen as being beyond the reach of these children. They’ll learn this – not because of what teacher says, or what homework assignments they complete – through interaction with the technology itself.
  • We and our technological-materialist culture have fostered an environment of such tremendous novelty and variety that we have changed the equations of childhood.
  • As it turns out (and there are numerous examples to support this) a mobile handset is probably the most important tool someone can employ to improve their economic well-being. A farmer can call ahead to markets to find out which is paying the best price for his crop; the same goes for fishermen. Tradesmen can close deals without the hassle and lost time involved in travel; craftswomen can coordinate their creative resources with a few text messages. Each of these examples can be found in any Bangladeshi city or Africa village.
  • The sharing of information is an innate human behavior: since we learned to speak we’ve been talking to each other, warning each other of dangers, informing each other of opportunities, positing possibilities, and just generally reassuring each other with the sound of our voices. We’ve now extended that four-billion-fold, so that half of humanity is directly connected, one to another.
  • Everything we do, both within and outside the classroom, must be seen through this prism of sharing. Teenagers log onto video chat services such as Skype, and do their homework together, at a distance, sharing and comparing their results. Parents offer up their kindergartener’s presentations to other parents through Twitter – and those parents respond to the offer. All of this both amplifies and undermines the classroom. The classroom has not dealt with the phenomenal transformation in the connectivity of the broader culture, and is in danger of becoming obsolesced by it.
  • We already live in a time of disconnect, where the classroom has stopped reflecting the world outside its walls. The classroom is born of an industrial mode of thinking, where hierarchy and reproducibility were the order of the day. The world outside those walls is networked and highly heterogeneous. And where the classroom touches the world outside, sparks fly; the classroom can’t handle the currents generated by the culture of connectivity and sharing. This can not go on.
  • We must accept the reality of the 21st century, that, more than anything else, this is the networked era, and that this network has gifted us with new capabilities even as it presents us with new dangers. Both gifts and dangers are issues of potency; the network has made us incredibly powerful. The network is smarter, faster and more agile than the hierarchy; when the two collide – as they’re bound to, with increasing frequency – the network always wins.
  • A text message can unleash revolution, or land a teenager in jail on charges of peddling child pornography, or spark a riot on a Sydney beach; Wikipedia can drive Britannica, a quarter millennium-old reference text out of business; a outsider candidate can get himself elected president of the United States because his team masters the logic of the network. In truth, we already live in the age of digital citizenship, but so many of us don’t know the rules, and hence, are poor citizens.
  • before a child is given a computer – either at home or in school – it must be accompanied by instruction in the power of the network. A child may have a natural facility with the network without having any sense of the power of the network as an amplifier of capability. It’s that disconnect which digital citizenship must bridge.
  • Let us instead focus on how we will use technology in fifty years’ time. We can already see the shape of the future in one outstanding example – a website known as RateMyProfessors.com. Here, in a database of nine million reviews of one million teachers, lecturers and professors, students can learn which instructors bore, which grade easily, which excite the mind, and so forth. This simple site – which grew out of the power of sharing – has radically changed the balance of power on university campuses throughout the US and the UK.
  • Alongside the rise of RateMyProfessors.com, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of lecture material you can find online, whether on YouTube, or iTunes University, or any number of dedicated websites. Those lectures also have ratings, so it is already possible for a student to get to the best and most popular lectures on any subject, be it calculus or Mandarin or the medieval history of Europe.
  • As the university dissolves in the universal solvent of the network, the capacity to use the network for education increases geometrically; education will be available everywhere the network reaches. It already reaches half of humanity; in a few years it will cover three-quarters of the population of the planet. Certainly by 2060 network access will be thought of as a human right, much like food and clean water.
  • Educators will continue to collaborate, but without much of the physical infrastructure we currently associate with educational institutions. Classrooms will self-organize and disperse organically, driven by need, proximity, or interest, and the best instructors will find themselves constantly in demand. Life-long learning will no longer be a catch-phrase, but a reality for the billions of individuals all focusing on improving their effectiveness within an ever-more-competitive global market for talent.
  • Tero Toivanen on 07 Jun 09
     
    Mark Pesce: Digital Citizenship and the future of Education.
Ian Woods

AJET 26(3) Drexler (2010) - The networked student model for construction of personal le... - 17 views

www.ascilite.org.au/...drexler.html

shared by Ian Woods on 23 Sep 10 - Cached
    • jordi guim
      jordi guim on 23 Sep 10
       
      Muy interesante sobre PLE / PLN
  • Table 2: Personal learning environment toolset Web application (networked student component) Tool used in test case Student activity level of structure Social bookmarking (RSS) Delicious http://delicious.com/ Set up the account Subscribe to each others accounts Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that reflect the content of chosen topic Add and read at least 3 additional sites each week. News and blog alert (RSS) Google Alert http://www.google.com/alerts Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic Read news and blogs on that topic that are delivered via email daily Subscribe to appropriate blogs in reader News and blog reader (RSS) Google Reader http://reader.google.com Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic Subscribe to blogs to keep track of updates Personal blog (RSS) Blogger http://www.blogger.com Create a personal blog Post a personal reflection each day of the content found and experiences related to the use of personal learning environment Students subscribe to each others blogs in reader Internet search (information management, contacts, and synchronous communication) Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/ Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for scholarly works. Bookmark appropriate sites Consider making contact with expert for video conference Podcasts (RSS) iTunesU http://www.apple.com/itunes/ whatson/itunesu.html Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if possible Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous communication) Skype http://www.skype.com Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with the class. Content gathering/ digital notebook Evernote http://evernote.com/ Set up account Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other tools Content synthesis Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com Post final project on personal page of class wiki The process and tools are overwhelming to students if presented all at once. As with any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the students best assimilate each new learning tool. For this particular project, a new tool was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process was complete, there were a number of personal web page aggregators that could have been selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the time included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These sites offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of code that is executed within the personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The students in this case designed the personal web page using the gadgets needed in the format that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of a personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note taking program, and social bookmarks on one page.
  • The personal learning environment can take the place of a traditional textbook, though does not preclude the student from using a textbook or accessing one or more numerous open source texts that may be available for the research topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively meet the learning objectives. The next challenge is to determine whether those objectives have been met.
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  • AssessmentThere were four components of the assessment process for this test case of the Networked Student Model: (1) Ongoing performance assessment in the form of weekly assignments to facilitate the construction and maintenance of the personal learning environment, (2) rubric-based assessment of the personal learning environment at the end of the project, (3) written essay, and (4) multimedia synthesis of topic content. Points were earned for meeting the following requirements: Identify ten reliable resources and post to social bookmarking account. At least three new resources should be added each week. Subscribe and respond to at least 3 new blogs each week. Follow these blogs and news alerts using the reader. Subscribe to and listen to at least two podcasts (if available). Respectfully contact and request a video conference from a subject matter expert recognised in the field. Maintain daily notes and highlight resources as needed in digital notebook. Post at least a one-paragraph reflection in personal blog each day. At the end of the project, the personal learning environment was assessed with a rubric that encompassed each of the items listed above. The student's ability to synthesise the research was further evaluated with a reflective essay. Writing shapes thinking (Langer & Applebee, 1987), and the essay requirement was one more avenue through which the students demonstrated higher order learning. The personal blog provided an opportunity for regular reflection during the course of the project. The essay was the culmination of the reflections along with a thoughtful synthesis of the learning experience. Students were instructed to articulate what was learned about the selected topic and why others should care or be concerned. The essay provided an overview of everything learned about the contemporary issue. It was well organised, detailed, and long enough to serve as a resource for others who wished to learn from the work. As part of a final exam, the students were required to access the final projects of their classmates and reflect on what they learned from this exposure. The purpose of this activity was to give the students an additional opportunity to share and learn from each other. Creativity is considered a key 21st century skill (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009). A number of emerging web applications support the academic creative process. Students in this project used web tools to combine text, video, audio, and photographs to teach the research topics to others. The final multimedia project was posted or embedded on the student's personal wiki page. Analysis and assessment of student work was facilitated by the very technologies in use by the students. In order to follow their progress, the teacher simply subscribed to student social bookmarking accounts, readers, and blogs. Clicking through daily contributions was relatively quick and efficient.
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