My presentation titled "Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities" is now live on the K12 Online Site. For those of you interested you can view the video podcasts through that site by clicking here. I have also posted my three part video podcast on Youtube and embedded them below. I used a Pecha-kucha format. I receive the idea for the Pecha-kucha format from a blog post that Daniel Pink (author of A Whole new Mind) titled, Got Pecha-Kucha? It was a challenge to generate a presentation following a strict format of 20 slides automatically timed at 20 seconds per slide.
It forced me to be direct and attempt to write a provocative story while minimizing pontification. As I was producing these video podcasts, I realized that the stories that make me think, are often the ones that don't attempt to fill in all the details. They let me connect some of the dots and react.
Note that I have three segments (three Pecha-Kuchas) to my story The Setting, The Characters, and Collaboration (a solution). I didn't get my entire story in one Pecha-Kucha - I felt that I needed to provide 20 minutes worth of presentation. I know old habits are hard to break... I still think about time allotted for the presentation.
Also note that, each Pecha-Kucha (each segment) begins the story with the same introductory slides...
Anyway, I would appreciate any and all feedback on these presentations.
Part 1: The Setting
Part 2: The Characters
Part 3: Collaboration (a solution)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Changing a System: K12 Online Presentation
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4 comments:
I think that your whole premise here is a good one. There is new technologies and opportunities that we as human kind have never had before. the best way to deal with this change is to emphasize networking, in other words to insert yourself and your colleagues into the global realm. Start producing, contributing, and listening to a larger community of people who have the same profession, interests, etc... I think this is sound and will effect everyone in one way or another. My problem is that you suggest that your CSU students are "afraid" of production, this I feel is a cop-out. The bottom line is that we all feel the satisfaction of production, the problem is having the basic skills required to do so. I personally feel your class has deemphasized this because of the heterogeneity of the skill level. Furthermore I feel there is a lack of purpose. We all know that these technologies are available, but how should we integrate them in class? You give us all the solutions but not the answers. Overall I feel that instead of trying to assert the necessity of your ideas, start teaching us strategies for integration, we know your smart, we agree with your networking philosophies, but we don't know how to effectively use these tools in our classrooms. Lastly, I feel your emphasis on this change in the classroom gives far too little to the priorities of the Education Department at CSU, to produce good teachers. All the technologies in the world is not going to turn a poor teacher into a good one. On the other hand if you suggest the necessity of understanding traditional teaching methods and skills, while introducing technologies to assist this process. We could be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. That is we could be teaching traditional things that in todays society define what it is to have an education, while using technologies that would prepare our students for the needs of the 21st century. If you emphasized the role that technology plays in teaching, rather than the role of teaching in technology, your points might be better acknowledged. The effectiveness of your class would improve, if you educated us on how to effectively integrate these technologies in our classrooms. We know the importance of technologies, but how can we use them to our advantage as teachers effectively to overall produce an educational system that is efficient and successful?
Jimmy,
Thanks for you comments, very well said and constructive. I agree with your point that the class has not focused on "how to" integrate the technology into the "current" classroom environment. I think that the struggle comes because the ideas of Classroom 2.0 that I am introducing requires a change in the classroom and this change requires innovation, discovery, and attitude change from all involved. I don't have all the "how to" solutions, therefore, my idea was to build a community (you guys) to work on it. To use the network effect to learn from each other. Now I don't believe that we will find the solutions in our "ivory tower" of academia but I hope that through a community/ collaboration we can drive toward a solution... I always remind myself that change is slow.
I have thought about reversing the class content. Starting with more classroom (current classroom) friendly ideas that will help students see how to integrate technology into the classroom... I think this may be a good idea, do you?
I appreciate your comment about the fear, but I think that we are all afraid to produce and share... this opens us up to critical review and that is difficult for many.
James
What did you mean by reversing the content? Does that mean that you would assign a group video project earlier in the class and then get into rubistar and the other assignments we did first? I am not sure. I think that a real easy way to make this class run better is to dedicate the first week to focusing on the proficiencies in technology needed to be successful in this class. I know from being a student how redundant a lot of this information is as far as getting a google, rubistar, ning account, but I feel it is these basic things are what is holding back some of the class. Perhaps this kind of focus should be done early on, that way we can get the small stuff out of the way. This class and its ideals is always going to be burdened because of the access to technology. With that said I personally would have liked to do my own video for our Did you know? project. I feel this way because regardless I am going to do a whole lot more work than my group, this is just because of my skill level, but more importantly I do not want my grade to depend on others movie work, I hold mine to be fairly good. It might have been more productive to have smaller groups or individual work, that way everyone can focus on contributing. But as we know not everyone has access to the proper cameras, etc...so I understand it being a group project. To follow up on our discussion of fear I have come to an ever evolving conclusion. I think you are right, but I think more needs to be said. I think that some might be afraid because of the workload, (which your class is pretty heavy considering the credit hours), but thats the problem. You know, I bet it took hours to get your video ready to publish on youtube, I know mine did. The point is that it is much easier to write all that you said for example in a 3-5 page paper. This is where I especially agree with your philosophies of changing the classroom. It is much harder to have an effective video production than an essay. So I really don't have many suggestions, but maybe these groups will help people to break out of their shell and produce! The bottom line is that maybe in order to spark some interest it might be nice to assign a video that we could use in our content area. For example i created a fall of Rome slideshow that is posted on youtube and my blog. This would provide more of a purpose. Im not sure if this is any help, but again a great way to achieve involvement and engagement would be to create an assignment that we could use when we are student teaching. therefore, maybe next time we could assign groups according to content area. Fear is a word that has too much negative context, maybe reluctance would better suit the circumstances.
cheers!
Jimmy,
Thanks for your thoughts! I enjoyed reading about your ideas for the class and I agree with you...
Best regards
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