To wit: I am no longer Caramat Teacher! <Gasp!> I am now the IEC Data Management Coordinator.

This simple fact has changed a lot of everything. The family is no longer isolated in Northern Ontario. Instead it finds itself living in balmy (no snow in October!) London, ON.

The kids are no longer the only students in their school. They are now in a regular school with one grade in each classroom.

We are able to attend movies, go swimming, go shopping, visit real libraries and most important…go to Chapters! when we want to.

I am going to make it a habit to blog on a weekly basis. After reading my entries from the summer I have realized how important it is to put my thoughts onto a webpage. There were many ideas from three months ago that I had forgotten that were semi-important.

I had an idea this week for what to work on for a dissertation. Allow classes of first nation students the opportunity to develop adventures within the maze’s holodecks. The adventures will be curriculum based but examining what it means to be a first nation student in a non first nation world. I am thinking Papert, Freire, and Dewey will be the major theorists that I will use. Comments?

1. This paper will examine how students’ utilization of educational technology develops their social education by altering their understanding of community and society.

2. This paper will examine whether individuals’ utilization of educational technology alters their social education by modifying their values and beliefs.

3. This paper will examine whether utilization of educationla technology in a faciliatated learning environment alters participants’ values and beliefs.

Thanks for the extra feedback.

Walter Cronkite’s death this past week brings forward some interesting questions about the community having influence of narrative. Cronkite was the man who told the US that John Kennedy had been killed. This was such a seminal moment that even I have seen that video multiple times and I am Canadian and was born 11 years after it happened.

But that is exactly my point. With everyone learning this news from the same source it was a shared experience.

Imagine if Kennedy had died during the time of grassroots video. Would the moment have been as powerful at the time or even historically?

I wonder if we can use Michael Jackson’s death as a comparison? It was as sudden and unexpected. Both individuals were cultural icons. Yes, Jackson’s death spurred a sudden retrospective of his best work, yet the country didn’t stop like it did with Kennedy and I don’t think it will resonate historically. Is this becuase news was fractured coming from multiple media sources? I would argue yes.

What I worry about is what happens to our community (not our class’ but city’s or country’s) conversation when media is so fractured. When there is no common dialogue how do we get different groups to communicate? Does it create a possibility of Balkanization with different ideological groups nodding in each agreement with their own thoughts while yelling that people that think differently are idiots? Look to our cable media and our governments for a possible answer. 

As teachers how can we fight though this? What can we do in our classrooms or institutions to make sure that our students learn to create their own message, but also learn to listen to competing ideas?

When you figure it out, please let me know.

I must say that I have a much better appreciation for the breadth educational technology than I did two weeks ago.

As much fun as I had the past week, Disney World the week before was still better.

It’s going to be interesting to see how I juggle all my other responsibilities with course work when I go home.

I’ve had lots of fun finding time with different classmates to just sit and talk and get to know them better.

My daughter can’t wait ’til I get home so I can tickle and kiss her.

Calgary seems a lot bigger north to south than east to west.

Not only am I learning about strategies for using technology, I am finding lots of new technologies to use with my students.

You MUST read this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19friedman.html?_r=1&em

I’m kinda’ upset that I didn’t get to watch one minute of this year’s British Open.

I guess I have to get used to sacrifices of all kinds.

I find it interesting how almost everyone I have talked to this week has expressed some doubt in their ability.

It makes me wonder what my students are really thinking in the classroom when I give them different assignments.

For not reason at all: A grasshopper hops into a bar and onto a stool. The bartender comes over and says “You know we got a drink named for you here.” And the grasshopper says “Really!? You have a drink named Steve?”

I am looking forward to the excitment of this next week.

I am really excited about the next four years.

I was walking through the campus yesterday and I caught another sight of those huge rabbits that live on campus. At the time I was thinking about how a lot of people had been feeling intimidated with the course work and the concepts that have been presented this past week.  Seeing the rabbits at that moment made me connect the two and I suddenly realized that the rabbits (to me anyway) represented the content that that had been presented to me during the last week.

Back home I have used technology and I have worked in a classroom and I had even worked with technology in a classroom. I thought I had good ideas about what I needed to know about technology in the classroom, especially in my context. However I come here and in the last week all these new ideas and pconcepts have been presented to me, ideas that are bigger, fatter and hairier then anything I would have contemplated before concerning technology in the classroom.

Now to the rabbits. Back home we have rabbits. But they are tiny, skinny rabbits. For six months of the year there is snow on the ground, we don’t get a chinook in February so the rabbits have to learn to exist on a very lean diet. When I came here and saw the rabbits they were twice the size. I actually couldn’t believe I was looking at rabbits. The size of the rabbits forced my to redesign in my head my concept of rabbits. But I now I have a better defintion of rabbits in my head and I’m not taken aback when I see these small kangaroos jumping across campus.

For technology, it will take a little longer, it will take a lot of reading, discussion and contemplation, but eventaully I will develop a bigger, better and much more robust understanding of education technology, but I will be a better educator for it and I won’t believe that at one point point I considered it such a big fat hairy deal.

In 8 days we are going to be leaving this lovely city (well most of us anyway) and returning to our homes and places of work. Once we leave we will be playing many more roles then we currently are…myself I will become a teacher, principal, father, husband, son and many other titles that don’t immediately come to mind.

Right now I am a student of educational technology, that is it, just a student. (Not that being just a student is a bad thing. In fact I am loving having limited responsibilites right now.)

When we leave we will have the computer to connect us a group…and that is about it. Why aren’t we trying harder to get together in the evening and talk about what we learned in class. Why are we trying to get to know each other better by going to Chapters, grocery shopping, downtown together? Why hasn’t anyone discussed a group chipping in and going to visit Banff or Drumheller one day this weekend?

I know we all have work to do. I have the same readings as you and the same obligations to post…but let me ask you a question…Think back to high school…take your time…I’ll wait…Ok, you there yet…no?…now?…good. Think about your favourite memory from high school. Hold that thought and let me predict something.

YOUR FAVOURITE MEMORY DOES NOT TAKE PLACE IN A CLASS OR WHILE YOU ARE DOING HOMEWORK!!!!!

A very wise educator once told me that there are three types of learning that a person must balance book learning, spiritual learning and social learning. I feel we are missing a glorious opportunity to advance our social learning by focusing on our suggested readings as we are. When we know each other better we can have deeper and richer conversations about our readings on-line…when we are all home.

My students that I have Caramat got to take a trip to Edmonton last year. We were on the train for two nights each way, each kid got in trouble a couple of times and by the end everyone was glad that it was over. BUT…this past year it was all those students seemed to remember from last year. And by knowing each other better they were able to work better in class and were able to develop better finished products on their assignments.

So, who’s with me?

I’ll go back to my side of the room now.

Yes, I know I promised to have my definition of education technology tonight. I promise it will be there sometime.

In northwestern Ontario one of the primary texts that is being used to focus teaching across the area is Fullan, Hill and Crevola’s “Breakthrough.” In this text they propose a new model for developing a high capacity of teaching and learning. The model proposed is circular in nature for two reasons: to show how all the pieces are dependant on each other and how developing of a higher capacity is never ending. *

The very middle of the model, on which all other parts of the model depend, is moral purpose. They do not define exactly what they mean by moral purpose because they believe all teachers will have a different understanding of the term, yet all educators start and must maintain some form of moral purpose.

This idea is something that I have taken to heart and will understand that it will be time to leave education when I have lost my sense of moral purpose.

The role that we have as educators demands that we have some understanding of our moral purpose in and out of the classroom. As a subset of the educational profession, I believe that we as educational technologists I believe that it is imperative that we communicate this to other professionals and the general public.

When I read Denis Hylnka’s (2008) critique of the use of the term ethical I thought of the movie The Dark Knight. Batman’s conceptual definition or role was to ethically protect the public from harm, whether it was from the Joker or any other evil scenario. When he was placed in a situation where he was forced to choose to rescue one individual and potentially let another person die, he had to struggle with how his decision would cause harm to someone. When someone was harmed when could (should) have protected them he wondered if quitting was the solution. But he didn’t. He understood that he needed to act differently the next time, so that scenario would not present itself.

So it is with teachers who are educational technologists. We must have is our definition that we are ethical, that we have a moral purpose, so that if some our actions end up moving in an immoral or unethical direction we can try to stop the actions and reflect on how to ensure the situation does not occur again. 

*(I know I should be citing a source, but I do not have the book with me and I could not find an e-copy to use. When I get home I will update this posting with a citation.)

References I Had on Hand

Hylnka, D. (2008.) Educational technology: A definition for the 21st century. Educational Technology, 48 (6). 48-50.

First thing too talk about is the 5 principles from constructivism…Most of the points are not possible without true facilitation of learning, and probably not without educational technology. How does a teacher get a student (or even harder a group of students) interested in the reasons for Canadian Confederation from a text book? The text book can’t come close tany of the three points of the first principle.

I laughed out loud when I read the fourth principle (well maybe chuckled to myself a little bit). As jurisdictions embed the use of high stakes testing, curriculum expectations become more and more rigid. As expectations harden opportunity for diversity in the classroom dissappear. So the content of each class is rigid, with almost every class learning the same material the same way…and as educators we are supposed to encourage ownership in learning? Working with a slightly behind student in math this year I asked him “Why are you doing this question this way?” and he answered “Becuase I have to.” There was no meta cognitive awareness on his part. He was just trying to pass the class.

But with this focus of constructivism (in Ontario anyway it is the VERY big thing) I was quite surprised to see the liberal helping of behaviourism that is still being used as primary teaching strategies. All teachers in primary grades in Ontario are (essentially) expected to follow Fountas and Pinnell for literacy teaching. A big part (some say THE PART)of this methodology is guided reading. When I read the description of Direct Instruction on pg 22, all I could think of was guided reading (except guided reading does not have a ed. tech component). The whole plan that Fountas and Pinnell espouse matches the constructivist prescriptions, but why is the key component apparently belonging to a different educational philosophy?

As a last note I was surprised by how much I found that I had used behaviorist strategies. Is this becuase I have primarily worked with students that didn’t want to be responsible for their own learning? Or because they were so far behind I decided by myself I was going to take them to where they needed to be? Or something else that I have not thought of?

Please discuss amongst yourselves… (but let me know what you come up with)

I just arrived in Calgary today and visited the campus for the first time this afternoon.

I do not quite know what to expect for this semester but I am sure that if I work hard that I should do fine both this semester and during the 4 years I will be working on this program.

I will post more tomorrow with my first thoughts on my first day of school.