Learning Conversations

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.

Image above made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence. Photo avaliable here

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.

I recently attended a presentation from French teacher, Bernard Garcin. He has been running a collaborative project with 30 schools around the world. They use online technologies to support their students’ language learning. They started with email but have slowly graduated to more sophisticated web-based tools. The students are given projects to do, covering a range of themes. For example, two groups were asked to compare and contrast their countries’ energy consumption levels; another group was asked to describe a tour around their home city. All students must write in a foreign language in their correspondence (ie. they are not allowed to use their native language!) One interesting technique he talked about was the use of ‘online pools / surveys’ to initiate interest and spark debate amongst students. On a practical level, Bernard said that because of time zones, theyneed a min. of 4 schools to make the projects work and approx. 10 was an ideal number of participant schools.
Footnote: A number of similar collaborative projects with a creative and language arts theme can be found here.

Made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Available here.

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.