From The Thinking Stick by Jeff Utecht (Web Link).

Jeff works at a 1:1 school (one computer per student) in Asia where they are currently interviewing for new posts. He’s uploaded a list of very interesting questions giving a glimpse of modern day schools. Here’s a select few questions – not their blended learning nature (all the questions together with ideal answers can be found here).

Being able to look up information and resources on the web is an important skill. Explain how you go about looking up information on the web. How do you verify that the information you found is trustworthy and of use to you and your students?
Jeff’s answer: “This question is asked to see if candidates understand the importance of verifying information found on the Internet. Do they understand .edu sites? Do they know how to check a WHOIS? Listen to their response and see if they can tell you how they verify information on the web and do they sound confident enough that they could teach this to students in their class?”

Knowing we are a 1:1 school and that we expect students to use their laptops for learning. What is something that you would start learning and thinking about today to prepare you for this new learning environment?
Jeff’s answer: “I want to know they are thinking about the change that happens to the classroom when you introduce a computer to every child. Are they thinking about classroom management, are they thinking about online resources, are they thinking about how their class can be student-centered, how when you put this tool in the hands of students that you no longer control the content in your classroom and you, the teacher have just become a facilitator of learning. I want to know they are thinking about the changes that happen to learning. If they say that teaching is teaching, I’d be worried. “

At what times do you feel that it would be appropriate to have “lids down”? When do you believe a laptop is not a tool for appropriate use?
Jeff’s answer: “I think this would be telling. Many teachers stuck in the lecture/listen mode would tell you that when they want kids to “listen” or “work with others” an interviewer would have to pry. Those of us who have used the tool as collaborative note taker (think live blogging or back channel notes here!) know the power of this, but a traditional teacher may struggle with the giving away the power of the tools to the kids.”

How comfortable are you with using online resources in your classroom? What are some resources you have used in the past? How have your found these resources?
Jeff’s answer: “Hopefully your candidate has used online resources in their class before and they can articulate what and how they use those resources. I would continue on this question asking probing questions that lead me to the next question on this list. Do they use Wikipedia? How do they use it? Do they only name online databases or paid sites? In part you might be able to learn about their ability to search and find information on the Internet through the answers to this question.”

Do you read any professional magazines or educational blogs as part of your own PD? If so, which ones?
Jeff’s answer: “With this question you are trying to find out if the candidate is comfortable with reading online resources. I believe this question also is a good lead question into the other questions below as they give the candidate a heads up that you are looking for a teacher that really understands how a 1:1 classroom is different, and that you expect your teachers do be reading online, researching online, and using the Internet as a resource in their classroom.”

Do you have an RSS reader? If so, what do you subscribe to?
Jeff’s answer: “This is a huge hiring point for me. If candidates say they have an RSS reader and they understand what RSS is and what it means to “subscribe” to something, then they are on their way to understanding how teaching and learning changes in a networked digital environment. It also indicates a lifelong learner who has some understanding of how the web is changing.”

Do you belong to any online communities?
Jeff’s answer: “What communities does the teacher belong to? Twitter? Any educational Ning sites? A Google or Yahoo group maybe? If a teacher answers he/she belongs to an educational community, then you have a lifelong learner on your hands who is open to learning and thinking in new ways. “

Do you have a Personal Learning Network? If so, can you tell me a story of how you learn from your network.
Jeff’s answer: “Now you’re starting to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you can find a teacher that A. Knows what a PLN is and B. Can tell you a story of how they learn, you are looking at a teacher who might not know the platform that your 1:1 program is, but knows they have people that can help them learn it. A teacher that knows how to use a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a teacher that will need little “official” professional development as they will be learning on their own, and most likely will be a leader in your school in helping others to learn.”

Good stuff.

An interesting and very short article about how we might consider re designing the traditional lecture theatre to accommodate current and future students.

“But maybe the most serious consequence of the digital revolution is that it is redefining the social aspect of learning. Millennials (today’s student) take digital technologies and improvements for granted. Chatting, texting, and network-gaming environments create global interaction. The impact of all this on learning spaces is subtle, but significant. Whereas previous generations use electronics primarily on an individual basis, Millennials see them as opportunities for dynamic social interaction. Clusters of students huddle around a computer sharing ideas—and approaching full immersion.”

And I like the idea of the ‘public square’ approach: “Classroom-planning models that focus on maximum efficiency often fall short in supporting impromptu student clusters, an aspect of interaction that these students take for granted. The old notion of a public square can now be recreated in multiple locations throughout a campus—even in the classroom. Architects must plan environments that support more information throughput, and thereby improve the quality of learning.”

“How can architects and planners create academic spaces that respond to this changing culture? Should we create a wireless, networked “dinner theater” space with tiered seating and lounge furnishings? Or perhaps a spherical classroom arrangement mirroring the multi-user interaction—student to student, row to row, and instructor to students? Both of these ideas illustrate challenges to the static monologue of a traditional classroom. ”

In a sense it is much more than being about classroom design since it is about enabling the new learning experiential learning experience – it’s more about curriculum design than anything else. This brings to mind an earlier post (Sustained Blogging in the Classroom) which considers how the act of blogging is part of the bigger picture of conversation and as such both the curriculum and the classroom needs to be designed to support it, (in this case the tutor redesigned their classroom to look like something similar to a Starbucks coffee lounge to support conversation started in the class blog).

“Teach me to think, to create, to analyse, to evaluate, to apply. Teach me to think”.

Although it drawing both from Michael Wesch’s A Vision of Students Today (here) and the now legendary Karl Fisch’s Shift Happens (here) this video looks at how we might consider using technology to engage with our students. Great video.

It was made by bjnesbitt (more info) who states “This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills.”

On a negative note. While I do enjoy the notion of information being shared and remixed across the internet I do wish the authors’ would pay attention to citing the source of original content and more importantly where they got their statistics from.

And on a more challenging issue I do wish people would drop the ‘digital learners’ aspect. Really the big picture is all about presenting the students with a learning experience which empowers them. And although the technology is a facilitator it’s not the sole solution towards allowing our students to be creative.

Thoughts anyone?

Via by Lorelle Van Fossen (Edublogs Magazine).

The image suggests that todays educators are interconnected with a variety or resources/ methods. Would you say this represents you? Is it overwhelming or just how it is. Or as Fossen suggests “it opens up a whole world of the possible, finding creative inspiration, support, collaboration, and strength in each connection.”

What does it mean to you? My thoughts: where’s the student in all this? Where’s the relation between tutor and student? Is it implied, on the image, through staff use of social networks or wikis? And would the same interconnection apply them?

Image by Courosa

What a fantastic image.

Does this relate to us educators in terms of our vocation? I think so. But more to the point does the current education climate encourage a similar application to our students.

View full picture (here).

Also the interesting Making of Explorers

TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and is an annual conference held in Monterey, California. It is described as a “group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value”. The lectures cover a broad range including science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and also EDUCATION.

A couple of outstanding examples is the talk by Ken Robinson on why schools are stifling creativity here.

And Blaise Aguera y Arcase on his amazing Photosynth demo (I blogged this late last year) here.

More can be found here. The presentations are well worth looking at. Bionic Learning identify three reasons for checking them out:

1. There are some great talks relating directly to education
2. There are tons of options to pull these videos into class to introduce or enrich any subject you can think of
3. This is a perfect chance to watch some really spectacular presentations and look for ways to use their techniques and style in your delivery.

In fact on the Bionic Learning blog there’s a great comment left by a teacher who after finishing the class early was asked by a student to put up one of the TED lectures for them to watch.

Anyway there’s still time to go – plenty of time to convince your line manager (I wonder if Dave and Peter will split the costs…)

“Twenty-first century education won’t be defined by any new technology. It won’t be defined by 1:1 laptop programs or tech-intensive projects. Twenty-first century education will, however, be defined by a fundamental shift in what we are teaching—a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers. Today’s world is no longer content with students who can simply apply the knowledge they learned in school: our generation will be asked to think and operate in ways that traditional education has not, and can not, prepare us for.

Education has long tried to produce students who can think (and at times, think critically) and it has, for the most part, succeeded. As we move into a world where outsourcing, automation, and the ability to produce a product, physical or intellectual, at the cheapest cost, become the cornerstones of our rapidly evolving global economy, the ability to think critically is no longer enough. The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer. Rather, the students of tomorrow need to be able to think creatively: they will need to learn on their own, adapt to new challenges and innovate on-the-fly.”

Pre university students are already thinking about the challenges of living, working and learning in the new century. Not only that but this echoes a lot of the rhetoric being put forward by many educators today. Succinctly put – they have expectations – can we satisfy them?

Read the rest of the post here here,

One set of instructions consisted of a single paragraph with no numbers of bullets. The second was more user friendly while the third was in the form of a video (see below). Regarding the latter you get an glimpse as to how they use technology in the classroom: “I then told the children to open the laptops they had on their tables and look at the video. I showed it on the SMARTBoard too. I suggested to pause the video as it played so the children could keep up.”.

I wont reveal which set of instructions won but it’s worth reading the blog post simply for the description of a ‘Fold Off’ match between Tom’s class and a rival tutors class.

How To Fold A T-Shirt In 2 Seconds – Explained

Interestingly he also share his (and the class) experiences with the Create a Graph (click here). Basically a nice tool to demonstrate the creation of graphs with a whole class. What appeals to me is however is again the use of technology. In this case the children measured their pulses after a variety of exercises and entered the data on their laptops and finally “once the line graphs were created we exported them as PDF files and talked about them in the plenary of the session using the SMARTBoard”.

A final exercise centered around the development and application of basic word processing skills. This was achieved through creating sets of instructions for a game.

What I like about this post is that it demonstrated seamless integration of technology with class room activity while at the same time providing students with valuable and necessary skills to help them cope with an age in which technology is ever changing.

View full post

The way round this is to make the information come to you. You do this by using a Reader (aka RSS aggregator). the video below, created by Lee LeFever, tells you how you can do this in very simple terms.

I have also created a set of guides which can be accessed below

How to keep up with everything