Category Archives: 21st Century Skills

It Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t So Serious

21st Century Skills, advocacy, Media, politics, , , ,

I had already heard about John McCain’s inability to use a computer even before I read Tim’s post at Assorted Stuff yesterday.  I certainly agree with Tim that if this man is going to be our visionary, it seems essential that he at least have a passing knowledge of the potential of these tools.  As Sarah Lai Stirland points out in her post, these tools are the way to reach out to Millenials:

Even if he doesn’t feel the need to e-mail, perhaps he should check out tools such as Twitter to reach the Millennials. It’s not just about the coolness of such tools; it’s about getting a candidate’s unique persona and voice through a medium to connect to a new generation.

It occurred to me that John McCain may not be concerned about reaching the Millenials.  Maybe he figures he’s already lost them to his rock star opponent so why bother  to reach out to them.  But, there is something much more serious at stake here.

I believe one of the primary reasons teachers don’t use technology as much as they might to support teaching and learning is because they simply don’t have access to technology on a regular basis.  Access comes through funding, mostly federal funding.  How many other senators don’t use computers to support their own learning, thus making it difficult for them to understand why a teacher might want to?  Throughout the year, we in the ed tech community have been fighting to retain the EETT funding for K-12 and just yesterday I got an email from ISTE asking me to contact my senator about the “Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners” program that should be part of the Higher Education Reauthorization Bill.  The purpose of this legislation is to extend the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program that provided funding for projects related to preparing new teachers to make effective use of technology.  But the funding is not included in the Senate version of the bill.  I wonder if John McCain had anything to do with that?  You still have time to contact him as well as your own representatives to make it clear that this funding must be included if we are going to be able to educate the next generation on how to use computers effectively in the classroom.  For more information about the Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners program and a copy of the legislation please go to: http://www.iste.org/Advocacy/Feb08-support

One more comment from this teacher educator about the importance of this funding.  I’ve been reading a lot lately that the use of technology in schools will change once the current generation of teachers retires and the digital natives move into the classroom.  I don’t think that’s an accurate prediction.  I think the next generation is comfortable using technology but being able to text message and post pictures in Facebook is a far cry from using technology with students in the classroom in effective ways to support learning.  Please take the time today to contact your legislator (and Senator McCain, too) to let them know that this is important to you and to our students.

New Poll Has Parents Conflicted About the Web

21st Century Skills, Education, Media Literacy, ,

Just read an article in Education Week about this new poll from Common Sense Media that reports that parents are conflicted about the role of digital media in their kids’ lives, particularly in terms of how well it helps them learn to communicate and collaborate. Here’s a sample:

But parents expressed skepticism about the value of many digital media platforms, particularly when it came to whether digital media could teach kids how to communicate and collaborate, skills that are essential in a 21st-century workforce. For example:

• 67 percent of parents said they did not think the Web helped teach their kids how to communicate.
• 87 percent of parents said they did not believe the Web helped their kids learn how to work with others.
• Three out of four parents do not believe the Web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.

I can’t help but wonder why we would think “the Web” would teach our kids anything. Indeed, the Web is a tool with potential for lots of different types of learning, but if we expect it to teach anything, we have to interact with it. For kids, that means parents and teachers need to help them learn to use the tools in appropriate and powerful ways.

The report suggests that organizations like Common Sense Media need to help educate parents about the risks and rewards of new media. And, I think it’s a reminder to people like me that we need to be careful about the claims we make about new media.

The poll was conducted by Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping parents and kids enjoy media sensibly. They have ten “common sense” beliefs about media that begin with the belief in media sanity not censorship.

Just What We Need: More Negative Publicity

21st Century Skills, Education, Media Literacy, social networking, teaching

I taught in a small, rural school division where students still called me “ma’am” as a sign of respect.  Each year, the community hosted a huge weekend festival that, over the years, had begun to attract thousands of people from all over the region.  I never attended but from the stories I heard, it was a somewhat raucous event with lots of drinking and revelry.

I worked on a team with several younger teachers who had grown up in the community.  The week before the event, the principal arrived at our team meeting to remind us that, as teachers, we had a certain standing in the community, and he expected us to act appropriately if we attended the festival.  In particular, he suggested that we should not spend too much time in the beer tent.

Well, the beer tent is now online, according to The Washington Post, and it is called Facebook.  Thanks to Tim over at Assorted Stuff for pointing me to the article on young teachers and their Facebook sites.  You probably don’t have to read the whole article.  Just the headline–When Young Teachers Go Wild On the Web–gives you the sense of the direction this article takes.

I have written several articles about social networking for the VEA News.  My goal in those articles was to encourage veteran educators to explore social networking as both a way for them to learn more about it and as a way for them to collaborate with colleagues.  It’s a tough job both because of the technology but also since social networking sites get such bad publicity.  So, a big thank you to the Post for adding some more negative press to combat.

I will forward the article to my pre-service teachers as a reminder of what they are getting themselves into as teachers.  Or, maybe I shouldn’t both.  Tim points out that many of these young teachers won’t last beyond 3 years anyway so why should I give them yet another reason to consider a different career right off the bat?

The article does ask a serious question: “Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don’t see them? At what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?”  But I did laugh a little at the notion of standards for public officials.   ken Blackstone from Prince William helped out with a definition of those standards: “But as public employees, we all understand the importance of living a public life above reproach.”  Do we?  Or are these young teachers following in the footsteps of some of the great public officials like Eliot Spitzer?  His “public life” might have seemed above reproach until his not-so-above-reproach private life came into view.   And, I think in this case, these young teachers are living up to those standards:  it’s my life and I will get away with it until I get caught.

I think I’ll give my pre-service teachers the “grandmother” advice:  if you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see it, it probably shouldn’t be on your public Facebook page.  Pictures from your wild 21st birthday party are probably best circulated privately.  Not everything has to be shared with the world.   These are actually some pretty simple media literacy skills.  The girl who suggested that her work and social lives are separate clearly does not have a solid understanding of how the Internet works.  I would hope that if she is a good teacher (or since she’s young, has the potential to be a good teacher), school officials will be willing to work with her rather than just firing her.

I’m also going to continue to encourage my students to use those social networking skills for their own professional growth and, maybe even, for the growth of their students.  This semester, I asked my my pre-service teachers to join VSTE’s ning site.  It was a way to expose them to older teachers who had harnessed a “digital native” type technology for their own purposes.  I wanted to show them that social networking can be about your work life as well as your social life.  And, hopefully, to spark in them an idea for how they might use these technologies with their students, to break down the often oppressive walls of the classroom in ways that promote powerful, collaborative learning.

Battledecks

21st Century Skills, New Media, technology

I think Tom and Jim, who blog at Bionic Teaching, are two of the freshest voices in educational blogging. I’m a little late on commenting on this post about Battledecks, a very funny and challenging powerpoint karaoke game played at the SXSW festival. What makes Tom’s post particularly helpful is he includes ideas for how this might be integrated in a variety of different classes. And, he makes an important caveat: you can’t do this well with just bulleted lists of information. I’m a visual learner so went looking for video of the Battledecks competition.

Here’s the video from Rocketboom:

I’m already thinking about doing this with my undergrads on Monday! Or, at least show them the video.