There are some wonderful creative examples of ICT use in UK Education at Stephen Heppell’s Be Very Afraid site . Common themes seem to be authentic, project-based learning, audience, ownership and media literacy. I also noticed that almost every student interviewed had developed great interest & a sense of value of the specific topics discussed (in History, Science, Music etc.). For example, these Year 5 students developed a real interest in Vikings and their place in their local history. Like this writing class, their project involved an initial excursion to develop ‘real-world’ links. The use of mobile phones to capture media as part of the interesting Year 8 and 9 multiculturalism project at Lampton HS also emphasised ‘authenticity’, involving ‘life like’ tasks which require decision making and exposure to real world information, and also allow students to generate their own problems to solve (CTGV, 1990). Other projects, such as the ‘100 faces in 100 places’ project, followed a more participatory model of authenticity (Radinsky et al., 1998), involving real community members and activities that potentially become an integral part of the community.
CTGV (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt) (1990). Technology and the design of generative learning environments. Educational Technology, 31(5), 34-40.
Radinsky, J. et al (1998). A framework for authenticity: Mutual benefits partnerships. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.
This recent video (see below) considers 20 ways to use an iPod (and other mobile devices) in education. It’s interesting to consider new technologies like this and where they currently fit into the ‘Hype Cycle’. Will iPods (with associated applications) and other mobile devices follow technologies such as blogs and become well accepted amongst the education community as potentially powerful learning technologies (depending on how they’re used, of course)? If this does happen, will schools opt for cheaper ‘class sets’ of iPods rather than purchasing more expensive laptops or less flexible desktop arrangements?
More importantly, it’s interesting to analyse videos like this one and explore how many uses might approach Hedberg’s (2006) ‘generativity’ level of ICT use (see Table 1 on p5) ie. use of ICTs to encourage “learners to construct their understanding of phenomena” (p5) as distinct from presentational and representational uses of learning technologies. A couple of uses approaching this level were flagged in the Youtube clip (see below), although there were many others that seemed to replicate traditional instructionist approaches. One interesting example shown was the use of a mobile device to capture, view and review video footage (eg. of your own teaching).
I recently revisited the term ‘bricoleur’ while reading Brown (2000). The metaphor seems most suitable for thinking about the type of new media activities some children are participating in. As well as reading, critiquing and listening to new media, these young people are typically creating, ‘mashing’, publishing and ‘talking around’ personally and culturally meaningful artefacts. In this sense, they become digital ‘bricoleurs’, developing an ability to find something and use it in a new way to build further unique artefacts they value. There are especially high levels of ownership with these media creations, and there is often a strong ‘re-mix’ culture, where young people re-use others’ artefacts and expressions (Hsi 2007). User-friendly and accessible collaboration tools, such as those found in Web2.0 spaces, enable young people to actively participate in tasks, giving them a ‘voice’ and a strong sense of audience as they explore, share and interact with others. Examples can be seen in the growing number of outlets for young people’s digital video creations. For example, their digital videos can be displayed to a wide audience using a variety of new tools (or see here ) or perhaps via local or more global contests.
Brown, J. (2000). Growing up digital: How the web changes work, education, and the ways people learn. Change, March/April, 11-20.
Hsi, S. (2007). Conceptualizing learning from the everyday activities of digital kids.
International Journal of Science Education, 29:12, 1509 – 1529
Image above made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence. Photo avaliable here.
Just explored this commentary about educational YouTube videos … according to the blogger, there is ‘intelligent life on YouTube’! It seems that not a day goes past without hearing this type of hype about the Internet in 2008 … especially in relation to the quite exciting range of media freely accessible to teachers and students. Whether it’s the latest instructional video site, online video rental sites or YouTube collections, this hype seems easy to promote ‘web 1.0′ mindset of educational technology; a traditional ‘one way’, information delivery view of learning. In the case of video, this would involve the notion of learners passively viewing instructional videos. This is valuable of course but in my opinion, they ‘miss the mark’ in terms of the ability of web 2.0 technologies to support ‘learners as publishers’ and media creators. (Even on TeacherTube, there is only one channel devoted to student-generatated products!) Hence, it was refreshing to read Emma’s recent posting about the real affordances of Web 2.0 for children’s learning. She cites Freedman’s publication on Web 2.0 in Education (see paper in the Social Software folder in our Literature section), which contains many convincing and creative ‘case stories’ of teachers allowing their children to be creative with these new tools.
Image Source: http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/db/web2/
Just viewed the following commentary:
A ‘risk-taking’ teacher attitude seems to be crucial when it comes to using new technologies in the classroom. As the mantra in the video says: ‘what if I make a mistake? (in front of the kids!)’. Will I lose credibility? And what about all the other questions in the film that every teacher asks when ‘testing’ new web 2 technologies and associated teaching strategies in the classroom … eg. who will read this posting? What about plagiarism? etc. No easy solutions but nice to know that these feelings / concerns are shared amongst many others in the teaching profession. There’s nothing compulsory, but then again, kids might expect it and more importantly, might enjoy and benefit from it, depending on its purposeful and imaginative use.
Prompted by a YouTube video, Shirley posts her thoughts on collaborative projects – a great focus for her work this week! Wikispaces OR a classs blog is a great way for kids in ’sister schools’ to share these kind of products, utilising the ‘comments’ feature for other kids to converse and critique (otherwise, try the new Apple Student Gallery).
Anothere exciting possibility is the collaborative (online) creation of artefacts such as video projects. For example, Jumpcut (yes, it’s free!) allows people to collaborativly build a video together, despite being in different parts of the world. A child-friendly version of such a facility will add an extra dimension to these types of collaborative projects.
There are some wonderful creative examples of ICT use in UK Education at Stephen Heppell’s Be Very Afraid site . Common themes seem to be authentic, project-based learning, audience, ownership and media literacy. I also noticed that almost every student interviewed had developed great interest & a sense of value of the specific topics discussed (in History, Science, Music etc.). For example, these Year 5 students developed a real interest in Vikings and their place in their local history. Like this writing class, their project involved an initial excursion to develop ‘real-world’ links. The use of mobile phones to capture media as part of the interesting Year 8 and 9 multiculturalism project at Lampton HS also emphasised ‘authenticity’, involving ‘life like’ tasks which require decision making and exposure to real world information, and also allow students to generate their own problems to solve (CTGV, 1990). Other projects, such as the ‘100 faces in 100 places’ project, followed a more participatory model of authenticity (Radinsky et al., 1998), involving real community members and activities that potentially become an integral part of the community.
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