Sliced Bread

Despite using US statistics, you’ll get the idea. Same same, BUT new new for 2009.

For a full history of Shift Happens, now with 20 million plus hits, head over to Karl Fisch’s eloquent summary.

 

If you are familiar with the numerous past Did you Knows? note the many  differences since 2007, a short 2 years ago.

Message to you Ruby? Are you really a learner? or do you say you are. If you WANT to answer affirmatively then have the courage to get out from under our excuse rocks, make even more mistakes, experiment and forget the teaching to the test.  That is providing my employer shows the requisite trust in return.

Nothing in Did You Know 4 is particularly cutting edge, it is however a timely and valuable update. The statistical summation is now contemporary but fundamental school technology has not had any seminal breakthroughs since 2007. It’s just all got faster, cheaper, easier.

What has developed substantially since 2007, with considerably more urgency attached, is if you, your place of learning or your systemic goverance  has failed to move, you may well find yourself all sorts of trouble in the next 12 months. Today playing edu catch up is no longer the option it once was.

Have a look at traditional media to see their reactive doom & gloom nonsense many have been trotting out. They didn’t see the social media freight train arriving and now they are trying to play catch up or, even better lets ban and/or control social media and certainly make it hard for consumers to access.

The rate of change means today’s learners need to be fluid, shifting, agile and moving, not locked down with predetermined staid “thats how we’ve always done it” answers. Feeling “loose”, opening doors, trying new ways and ceding control is an antithesis for manylearners, especially with 20 plus time on job. New scheme teachers & interns should not be exposed but many still are mentored towards these “tried, tired and proven” ways. 

Daunting? not really. The alternatives, especially irrelevancy, are far worse. 

Accelerating change is happening;

a) despite what you or I want

b) despite what you or I are willing to accept

c) despite what closed walled bureaucracy believes

Not sure if I’m saddened or gladdened by this jazzed up Shift message, especially when placed in the context of are teachers REALLY doing the right thing by the 2022 graduates, today’s Kindy kids?

For one University’s practical response to issues raised in DYK4,  have a look at what UNSW is doing. Despite targeting an older student base, arguments raised around social media use are also valid for other age groups.

Next PD at our place, we’ll all learn the lyrics.

Song by Kevin Honeycutt from ESSDACK.

Video directed/edited by Shawn Gormley.

Over at innovate2engage, the question Yes elearning DOES suck, but for how long?  is probably closer to the real issue, pedagogical change.

With DER NSW laptops arriving, it’s time to ponder a few learning thought provokers.
In Edutopia’s 10 minute video, Henry Jenkins succinctly raises some of the contemporary learning discussions still needed by DETs & in schools. Shiny baubles do not a revolution make.

Amongst many points Henry asks learners to consider; (my italics)

• Filtering & blocking (child protection, duty of care)
• tech access, equity & the participation gap (haves & have nots)
• validation of more diverse learning experiences (Is the HSC broken?)
• bury the simplistic “immigrant and native” furphy (finally, please)
• ethics, responsiblity & accountability of knowledge production (digital citizenship)
• authentic connections with and for learners (walled gardens vs real world)
• Will open source exchange based on discernment and trust be realised? (network solvent vs community glue)
• Developing judgement, networking, appropriation skills (teaching)
• virtual communities & games as learning (Now pedagogy)
  
  

Edutopia, “What Works in Public Education” has more on their Digital Generation project.    

Whilst in other news, Scott McLeod comments at Dangerously Irrelevant “Can’t wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two.”

That may ultimately be a crucial assessment litmus for 1:1 etal ICT.

But thats way too long, and damaging, to wait. Especially if  the baubles of now become more of what ICT has been.

What is your “new” first priority in regard to fundamentally shifting learning ?

I enjoyed

• Five Recommended Readings?
• Participatory Media Literacy. Why it matters?
• Waking up to the Economies of Networked Learning
• Newspapers & thinking the unthinkable
• Transforming Schools for the Future
• Digital Youth Project summary
• Fluid Learning