Group items tagged

Although the Colab was created specifically to teach social media theory by the use of social media, and the Social Media Classroom includes resource lists, syllabi, and , lesson plans focused on that specific subject, it was intended from the beginning to serve as an all-purpose tool for educators who seek to use social media in pursuit of a more participative pedagogy. That’s where the community of practice comes in. We’re devoting an instance of the Colab to converations among educational practitioners that we hope to grow into a self-sustaining community around the use of social software in pedagogy in the broadest sense—any subject, any age level, any institution. We welcome participants who want to learn more, share best practices, meet others who share an interest in social media in education. The hope of those who created the initial Colab and accompanying curricular and support material is that this effort, and the tools we provide, will inspire others to vastly expand and deepen our resource repository, add their syllabi and lesson plans, discuss with and learn from others. We’ll start with Forums, where the early participants can meet and discuss what we’d like to do together, and the wiki, where we’ve seeded some fundamental resources and invite others to add new ones. If there is interest, we can add blogs, chat, RSS, social bookmarking, microblogging and video. The Colab is based on Drupal, a free and open source Content Management System, and we hope to grow ties with others in that community who are interested in working with educators to co-develop new tools and improve existing ones. To join the community click here

it was intended from the beginning to serve as an all-purpose tool for educators who seek to use social media in pursuit of a more participative pedagogy. That’s where the community of practice comes in.

a self-sustaining community around the use of social software in pedagogy in the broadest sense—any subject, any age level, any institution. We welcome participants who want to learn more, share best practices, meet others who share an interest in social media in education.

We’ll start with Forums, where the early participants can meet and discuss what we’d like to do together, and the wiki, where we’ve seeded some fundamental resources and invite others to add new ones. If there is interest, we can add blogs, chat, RSS, social bookmarking, microblogging and video.

we hope to grow ties with others in that community who are interested in working with educators to co-develop new tools and improve existing ones. To join the community click here

Right answers: School teaches that there are right answers.

But, in real life, there are very few right answers.

Bullying and peer pressure

In school there are always other kids telling you how to dress, how to act, how to be cool.

Stifling of curiosity: Isn’t it obvious that learning is really about curiosity?

Adults earn about things they want to learn about. Before the age of 6, prior to school, one kid becomes a dinosaur specialist while another knows all about dog breeds. Outside of school people drive their own learning. Schools eliminate this natural behavior.

Subjects chosen for you:

Classrooms:

Classrooms make no sense as a venue for learning unless of course you want to save money and have 30 (or worse hundreds of) students be handled by one teacher.

Schools cannot work as places of learning if they employ classrooms.

Grades: Any professor can tell you that students are pretty much concerned with whether what you are telling them will be on the test and what they might do for extra credit.

Parents do not give grades to children and employers do not give grades to employees. They judge their work and progress for sure, but not by assigning numbers to a report card.

Certification: We all know why people attend college. They do primarily to say they are college graduates so they can get a job or go on to a professional school.

Confined children: Children like to run around.

Of course in school, sitting still is the norm. So we have come up with this wonderful idea of ADD, i.e. drug those who won’t sit still into submission. Is the system sick or what?

Academics viewed as winners: Who are the smartest kids in school?

Those who are good at these subjects go on to be professors. So those are certainly the smartest people we have in our society.

But, I can tell you from personal experience that our society doesn’t respect professors all that much, so something is wrong here.

Practical skills not valued: When I was young there were academic high schools and trade high schools. Trade high schools were for dumb kids. Academic high schools were for smart kids.

The need to please teachers: People who succeed at school are invariably people who are good out at figuring what the teacher wants and giving it to them.

In real life there is no teacher to please and these “grade grubbers” often find themselves lost.

Self worth questioned: School is full of winners and losers.

In school, most everyone sees themselves as a loser. Why do we allow this to happen?

Politicians in charge: Politicians demand reform but they wouldn’t know reform if it hit them over the head.

Major learning by doing mechanism ignored: And last but not least, scholars from Plato to Dewey have pointed that people learn by doing. That is how we learn. Doing. Got it? Apparently not. Very little doing in schools. Unless you count filling in circles with number 2 pencils as doing.

Government use of education for repression: As long as there have been governments there have been governments who wanted people to think that the governments (and the country) is very good.

School is about teaching “truth.”

Discovery not valued: The most important things we learn we teach ourselves.

This kind of learning is not valued in school because it might lead to, heaven forbid, failure, and failure is a really bad word in school. Except failure is how we learn, which is pretty much why school doesn’t work.

Boredom ignored: Boredom is a bad thing. We drug bored kids with Ritalin so they will stop being bored.

What they mean is that school should be like they remember rather than how it is now