Digital Citizenship - Week Three

While viewing and reviewing items now connected to my RSS feeder I found an interesting article on e-mail. Kim Flintoff in the group blog Digital Chalkie proclaims that e-mail is for old people. Now as a person that is more than one birthday past 29, I am not sure what I think of the old comment but do totally understand the context. It speaks to Jeff Foxworthy’s bit on fashion when he proclaims that people are riding along on the fashion train and then just stop, never changing from there. The same thing happens with technology. We get to a point where we are comfortable and can not imagine changing past that. Hard to believe that over thirty years ago I was in an Electronic Engineering Program when computers were just expensive electronic typewriters. We had to create our own project and some of us built a modem (a device to connect with other computers over the phone, unheard of) while others built their own computers but doubled the memory to a mind blowing 128K, yes K. I now have files that are much larger then that. My point is I was on the cutting edge, along the way I stopped exploring and growing. I am worried that as educational institutions decide to move towards a mobile learning environment that they will be missing the boat and still be decades behind the students they are trying to connect with. I must get 100 e-mails a day at work but I now believe the only ones that the students get are from the College as they are communicating in other ways. We went to my 70 year old aunts birthday and she informed us she was now on face book as it was the only way she would know what was going on in the lives of her grandchildren. 

While looking at the suggested things to add I have removed one. The average College guy does add humor and was a not bad read but I found it not to my interest. I only mention it as a warning to other student's who are tempted to write this type of blog to be careful. My warning is around being a good digital citizen. While I might find him funny, if he applies for a job under me he is not getting it and what is he going to say to his children when they find this digital footprint 25 years from now. We need to be aware of everything we post. What is funny now might be totally inappropriate in a couple of years.

Stephan Knapen also makes a great point of controlling your digital footprint when he writes about the difference between blogging and creating your own website. Creating a website, with your blog as part of it, allows an individual to totally control their digital footprint and take some real responsibility over their own brand. A website is a great tool for promoting yourself, building a professional image and a portfolio of accomplishments. Not only should I create a website for me personally but I also think I am going to encourage faculty in the skilled trade’s related programs under me to do a course related one as well. This will give students a better opportunity to explore and learn about the possibilities in skilled trades related professions.

The RSS feeder is a great tool for collecting and bringing all the resources and information you need or want to you. I now have two separate categories as well. Funny for a person who 7 short days ago had no idea of what this was. For my professional one I have things like the MTCU, Ontario College of Trades, the National Committee of Deans of Technology, Heads of Apprenticeship Training, and Skills Canada to name a few. For my educational one I have kept it to related blogs. I think that by reading and exploring different postings from a variety of bloggers will ultimately help me improve. I will become more digitally literate and a better digital citizen. 

Have a great week.

Jeff

My Experience With RSS Feeders

Wow what a great tool. This will definitely become part of my educational and professional life for ever. To not have my e-mail inbox full of daily updates from sources I have to track in case there is a relevant piece of new information will be wonderful. I check, when I have time, and them all at once. This is perfect and a must have for students of today (not tomorrow as the future of education has arrived).

While investigating and exploring some of these messages I found an interesting post that is a few years old by Stefan Knapen that was truly enlightening and opened my eyes to yet another tool for a students PLE. The post was on taking notes quickly, which I know that I, and many other students, struggle with. He of course mentions the Cornell Notes but this is a system and not one designed for speed. Stefan takes a simple principle that every one currently uses while creating a text message and applies it to notes. We all use them, (BRB for be right back or LOL for laugh out load) so why not in a way that will help. The student can create a simple little appendix of terms for key common phrases or words and quickly write them done instead of writing out the entire thing. Once the class is complete, the student simply goes back and fills in the actual word or phrase. They will always keep up with the lecture.The piece that really stuck out for me was the two downloads, for a laptop "Wordpilot", which I have already added to my PLE and "Word Extendor" for MAC. I am going to check for a version for my Ipad but I am sure it will be there. These help you do exactly the same thing but when you create the abbreviations and then use them, the computer automatically fills in the word or phrase. Great tools to add to the PLE.

Jeff

Digital Citizenship - Week Two

When I started this week I was very excited and I thought I had the Personal Learning Environment and Network figured out until I tried to create my own. As a person who went through an apprenticeship I totally understood exactly what Steve Wheeler showed us in the slide show "Bridge in the cloud" when he indicated that the start of the education was an apprenticeship which was created just for me and is now working back towards that. My advancement as a trades person was totally mine. Even though there were three apprentices hired in our shop on the exact same day, the other two served totally different apprenticeships and had different skills when we were finished. The journey is totally dependent on the individual as they learn. The questions, discussions and answers were mine. The reflection, in some cases if any at all, was totally up to me. I choose what information I got very personal with and what actually started to become part of me. I have seen other apprentices finish their time and be no closer to being a trades person then they were the day they walked into the shop. If you stop and think about it this is true in every field. The credential does not make you a skilled person, the knowledge and who you are makes you the skilled person.

Below is my current Personal Learning Environment (PLE). It will be very interesting as this educational journey continues into Digital Citizenship how this will change. I have owned a computer for years but would never download form the internet. This of course has changed quite a bit over the past several weeks as a requirement to particapate. My PLE is very basic with just four main sections but I think captures very well what my actual PLE looks like now.

Murrell J. (CC) 2013

As I continue to grow as an educator I want to ensure that I have become an educational change agent. I want to foster and improve on the education of each individual student that walks down the halls whether that is literally or figuratively. I think Micheal Wesch captured it perfectly when he said that students of today will transition from being knowledgeable to knowledge - able. The graduate of the future will not need to know all the information, they will just need to know where to get it and understand what to do with it. Through helping students understand and then create meaningful, constructive, personal networks and environments for learning while they are part of our institutions will not only achieve this but will generate all kinds of knowledge well after they have achieved their degrees as the learning will continue. Especially in areas of real interest. The thing to keep in mind is that  the young mind might not be interested at all in a subject that is presented but when given the opportunity to explore from the center of self, they will be totally engaged. At this point, in my mind, real learning will occur.

Allowing the student to have control of the learning is not a new idea. Sugata Mitra took this concept to the edge with great success. I have provided a link to his presentation at the end of this blog and I encourage you to visit it yourself. Sugata felt that in areas of the world were education, a liberator if you will, was so badly needed, there was no teachers. He experimented with supplying these children with certain levels of technology that they had never been exposed to before and then watched what happened. He actually witnessed what Graham Attwell (2007) describes as the technology "offers the opportunity for narrowing the divide between producers(teachers) and consumers (learners). Consumers (learners) become themselves producers (teachers)." I think that this is the piece where the educational magic will all start to happen. The learners become owners of the process and start to learn through personal interaction and meaningful critical reflection causing the subject to become part of them, forever.

Horses are meant to run, birds to fly, dogs to bark and people to learn. The Human race is a massive learning machine, just let us. I have started to reflect on how academia has structured education to fit it into a nice neat box. This little box is very limiting. We, the entire World, would not be where we are today if we had ever stopped asking why and critically reflecting on what was considered knowledge at the time. Traditionally, an instructor would learn the subject through their own view of the world and then dictate this back to the students. To most students this type of education is very boring and we have struggled for years to try and figure out what we needed to do in order to make the learning more interesting. Some will say that there has been some success here, I would say very limited. I now say we just need to get out of the way. By embarrassing a Personal Learning Environment, supplying them with the guidance required to build it, we merely need to supply them with the questions. They will find the answers. The students will engage, discover things from their own point of view, interact on an intellectual level with their peers who are also discovering through their own personal view and then ultimately learn. Is this not the entire point of education?

Finally I could not get my word cloud into this blog. A skill I must learn at a latter date unfortunately. I did notice that the word cloud spoke pretty true to my personal feelings about education. I found the words to be student centered and focused as well as primarily positive.

Here is that link;
(www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

Have a great week.

Jeff

Digital Citizenship - Week one

Photo taken by me of what my desk looked like in college 30 years ago

As a person who did most of my learning some three to four decades ago, I have a very clear picture of what education looks like. We have the instructor at the front of the class and many students crammed into uncomfortable desks with books, rulers, calculators and tablets (the old style that had sheets of paper and you used a pen or pencil to write in) waiting for the knowledge to be shared. This was the way of the educational world for years. There is a general misconception that teachers always teach the way they learn. For me at least I know that this is totally untrue. I struggled to learn as a student in the traditional class room yet flourished as an educator. The truth is that I love to learn and want to be part of each new idea and concept that is introduced to the students. I get energy from their moments of discovery. I so much want to feel the positive energy as it flows in the class room like some magical force. I know this due to some pretty critical reflection on the subject as more and more technology has worked its way into education. On this journey of self discovery around technology and education, it occurred to me that I would not be cut out of the equation for learning but rather be able to utilize the digital world to actually be more involved. To be able to have input on the students moment of reflection through connections made possible by the digital age are fantastic. Technology and the digital age are well past us and it’s about time that we catch up. For me, the first step will be to understand and then become a good Digital Citizen.

Photo taken by me of my desk today

 Some of the aspects of working, learning and teaching in a digital world seem like common sense on the surface but as I engage the text I understand we need to take a much closer look. I had no idea what being a digital citizen meant and yet I interact in that environment daily. While reviewing the nine elements of digital citizenship as laid out by Ribble ( 2011, p.15-44) I had quite a few moments of reflection. As a digital citizen, which I have become simply by e-mailing on a daily basis, I had no idea how I should act and interact with others. 

 Of the nine basic elements there are a couple that jumped out at me. One is the very first element, Access. I do feel very strongly that all people should have equal footing and be given equal opportunities. I do understand though that this is not always the case or always possible. I wonder what I can do to erase these barriers in our school. I know that play it again sports addressed this issue for people struggling with the high cost of equipment. I am wondering if there is some sort of possible solution here for technology. I know that advertisers want you to believe that you must have the best but for that student that has no mobile device would not an older model work just as well?

I also took to heart the concepts on rights and responsibilities as well as etiquette. I had never thought of being able to participate in a type of learning that involved some sort of digital interaction would carry with it certain rights. For instance the right for a person to be involved even if they are concerned about what personal information can be accessed. It then becomes the educational institutions responsibility that the student’s basic right is full filled. At the same time, an educator who is involved with a course or class that has some or all of the learning occurring digitally, there will be a need for close monitoring. It must be ensured that any student is not having their digital rights infringed upon by others. As well, etiquette becomes a responsibility of everyone in the course and educators can never let opportunities to demonstrate good etiquette pass by, even if it is totally unrelated to the topic.

The other six elements are equally as important as the three I mentioned and in fact affect each other. “The nine elements of Digital Citizenship are not stand-alone issues. They relate to each other in a dizzying variety of ways.”(Ribble, 2011, p.43).  After looking at these I can clearly see how my perception of each will change as I study more in depth each new element. It is also very interesting to me that some speak directly to aspects of the class and learning, while others are a more world view. It will be interesting exploring the lines of interconnection and then bringing concepts and ideas to life outside the digital world as I am sure they are bound to alter my physical world as well.

The world has changed and finally education is changing as well. I really found it interesting that under essential questions (2011, p.16) Ribble speaks about what should be done now and then in four years. My observation here is that this book is two years old. Technology and the digital world have changed significantly in those two years and will change even faster over the next two. I think a more realistic question I am going to need to answer is what we should already have done and what are we waiting for. I also hope that somewhere someone is thinking about what we as educators will need to do in order to be able to transition and respond quickly to the changing market place.  It is imperative, and one of our digital responsibilities, that we supply students with exciting new ways to learn that they will then be able to transition into their working world.

Another important aspect of living in a digital world must be remembered by everyone. That is explained in the rules of netiquette that you should remember that they are human. “When you communicate electronically, all you see is a computer screen. You don't have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate your meaning”. I have experienced this and this is one of those things I need to fix. I have made people angry but when I actually speak with them they quickly realize that the tone they thought I was expressing had more to do with how they were reading it and less to do with the message.“When you're holding a conversation online -- whether it's an email exchange or a response to a discussion group posting -- it's easy to misinterpret your correspondent's meaning. And it's frighteningly easy to forget that your correspondent is a person with feelings more or less like your own”. (www.albion.com/netiquette/rule1.html)

Very busy week with way to many things to discuss, the journey has begun and I am hoping will be an enjoyable one.

Jeff