Mr. Hamada’s Universe

Here’s a list of what I’m plugging to the staff here:

What: 23 Things: Tools for 21^st Century Teaching and Learning
Where: This is an online course
When: Begins September 14 and will go for 10 weeks

http://k12learning20.wikispaces.com/

• Technically, you should have registered by last Friday. However, you can try to sneak your registration in if you are really keen. There are already a few teachers who have signed up and I hope to host a 23 Things Professional Learning Community for all those involved.

What: ASB Unplugged
Where: The American School of Bombay
When: Feb 24 – 27 2010

• http://www.asbunplugged.org/drupal/asb_un-plugged/
• http://asbunplugged.ning.com/
• Registration Deadline is November 15 2009

 What: K12 Online Conference 2009
Where: This is a virtual conference.
When: Starts November 20 2009 with 40 presentations being posted for download over a two-week period (December 7 – 17). There will also be live events.

• You can get an idea of what it’s all about by checking out the Getting Started info from last year’s conference.
• http://k12onlineconference.org/

What: Create the Future: Become a 21^st Century Learner
Where: BISS International School, Beijing
When: January 16 – 17

• This is an EARCOS Weekend Workshop
• http://www.earcos.org/ww_approvedSY0910.php

Did I miss anything? (I know I don’t have the 21st Century Learning HK conference listed… I figure it’s too late for people to register anyhow…)

image: Untitled by _fLeMmA__

Marc Prensky is undeniably more qualified and better versed than me when it comes to educational pedagogy. I respect that his work on Digital Immigrants v. Digital Natives (pdf) was groundbreaking. But that was published in 2001 – a veritable lifetime ago – and it is now, in my opinion, obsolete. Although using labels that can be construed as racist and/or xenophobic, its basic premise – that one segment of the population is inherently more comfortable with technology – is still true, but how that segment is parsed out of the whole isn’t quite as binary as Prensky describes.

Chris over at Betchablog does a great job of unraveling The Myth of the Digital Native:

The Natives vs Immigrants concept serves as a neat, tidy metaphor that is useful on a basic level to help understand some of the differences between Gen-Y and those who grew up in the primitive pre-Google world.  However, the problem with the metaphor is that while it’s neat and tidy, it is demonstrably wrong on so many levels.

Digital fluency and acquisition can be compared to language fluency and acquisition. You might recall the differences between BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitivie Academic Language Proficiency) put forth by Jim Cummins: BICS are the day-to-day language skills one needs to get by in social situations; CALP refers to the language skills necessary to succeed in an academic setting.

You see where I’m going here, right?

Prensky’s Digital Natives have the digital equivalent of BICS: they can text, chat, FaceBook, MySpace, and Google (simultaneously, most of the time!). Not every Native, though, posseses the analagous CALP. Can they search effectively? Do they know how to organize and search the massive amount of content they are accessing or creating? Do they collaborate effectively for learning purposes? The list of questions goes on.

In life, things are rarely ever black and white. There are infinite shades of grey that almost defy description. Digital fluency is no different. While I recognize how tempting it is offer categories in order to simplify the discussion, it is these categories that are sometimes the issue. With this concept of Digital Native, it is too easy for teachers to assume that all students of capable of anything technological and to not teach them the more academic skills. Even worse, it is too easy for teachers to assume that, because they are Digital Immigrants, they are not able to teach anything to their Native students.

We need a new nomenclature, one that helps to differentiate between BITS (Basic Interpersonal Technological Skills) and CATP (Cognitive Academic Technological Proficiency), one that promotes the idea that transiency between the categories is possible, and one that is not binary by nature. At first blush, I like the categories Digital Tourist, Digital Resident, and Digital Citizen but I know they are nowhere near sufficient. What categories would you suggest? (While were at it, can we improve upon the acronym CATP?)

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives, Marc Prensky, BICS, CALP, Jim Cummins, labels, Betchablog,

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I have a confession to make: When looking over the 23 Things, there are only a handful of things that I don’t already feel like I have some sort of comfort with. I blog, I tweet, I wiki, I have a Personal Learning Network that I am continuously cultivating to suit my needs and interests. And I have firsthand experience as to how the collaborative nature of the read/write web has changed me as a teacher.

As an L^3 (LifeLong Learner; I’m a math teacher, give me a break!), I harness the power of Web 2.0 on an hourly basis. If I have blog questions, I tweet an Edublogs guru. If want to talk politics or pedagogy or sports or the joys of international living, I connect with intrepidteacher or MsMichetti. And I’m constantly reading the thoughts and blogs of some of the most influential 21st C. educationalists around. To say that I learn more from the people in my computer than the people in my building would be a gross understatement.

As a teacher, wikis allow me to encourage collaboration and independence between my students. Creative Commons licensed photos allow my students to ethically find images to support their work. YouTube gives me a library of media that can be used for business or pleasure.

Web 2.0 is just awesome (boom de ya da, boom de ya da!).

image: idn_web_rots by Rodrigo Vera

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Part of my school’s mission statement says, “Our mission is to encourage students to be independent, lifelong learners who strive for excellence”. With the proliferation of connectivity in general and Web 2.0 in particular, lifelong learning is more accessible and more relevant than ever.

Thing 1 is all about the 7.5 Habits of Effective Lifelong Learners.

One of these Habits is going to be easiest for me to get into: Play! My view towards most new things has always involved play. I’m a guy, and Real Guys don’t read directions! How do we learn? We play. When I sit in a new car, the first thing I do is push all the buttons to see what they do. When I get a new gizmo, I go through all the functions/buttons/menus just to see what’s “under the hood”. The same goes for a new Web 2.0 tool: I won’t know how to use it in my classroom or how to suggest that others can use it until I put it through it’s paces and find its strengths or limitations by just pushing all the buttons and seeing what they do!

Perhaps the most important habit will be to create and document my own learning toolbox. In my new role next year as Technology Facilitator, I will be responsible for helping all teachers in the Middle School/High School to create technology enriched learning experiences that leverage our 1:1 TabletPC program. I think that the tools that are highlighted here will be invaluable to that end.

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We interrupt your regular scheduled programming to bring you this special event.

Over the next 8 – 10 weeks, I will be participating in the K12 Learning 2.0 workshop and using this blog as my reflection space. To most of my hundreds tens one or two readers, this may not be very interesting. For that, I apologize in advance. But if you do find it interesting, by all means let me know. Your comments and insight can only help further my understanding!

Image: hdtv svt2 by kalleboo

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to write anything in this space. With the craziness that end-of-term and reports bring, plus winter holidays in Australia (3 weeks!) and Tet (1 week in Singapore), plus the everyday stuff of teaching, preparing, marking and (oh yeah!) being a parent, time is sparse in these parts.

But, I did want to say that in December I attended an intensive 4 day training in Singapore to prepare to become an MYP Mathematics Workshop Leader. It was a fantastic experience! I think I learned more about the MYP in those 4 days than I had in any given year. Plus, it was just amazing to be in a room full of people (Paula, Aubrey, Richard, Ray, Neil, Curtis, Ashish, Tue, Russell)  who are genuinely excited and positive about the programme (if you teach MYP, you know what I mean; if you don’t, let’s just say that not everybody is always on the same page).

I found out this week that I have been accepted into the world of Workshop Leaders and I hope to lead my very first workshop sometime in the next 6 months or so (but no guarantees).

I’m pretty amped!

Photo: Getty Grass Cartwheel by drgandy

At some point, I was recounting our in-house PD session with Jeff Utecht, inspired by my time at Learning 2.008. Day 1 (in my opinion, at least) was all about our TabletPCs and what we could do with them. (Day 2 was more about Web 2.0 and bringing that power into our classrooms, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

My second workshop focused on my experiences using the TabletPC, combined with Cam Studio, to create screencast movies. My goals were twofold: 1) to teach others how to set up Cam Studio (for some reason, this wasn’t/isn’t part of the standard ghost image) and 2) to give teachers of all disciplines a concrete example of how and why they can use these screencasts as authentic assessment, both in the formative and summative sense of the term.

Even with the predictable technical glitches, the session went well. In the ultimate measure of success, I’ve had a few teachers coming to me for questions after the PD days, so I guess that’s something!

Here’s an example of a screencast that I’ve made to help my students:

And here’s an example of a screencast that some of my grade 8s made last year in Korean:

Ultimately, I’m trying to get my students create and upload screencasts to a wiki so that all students can use these as revision resources. I don’t want it to be about assessment or other extrinsic motivations to create and post. But I need to promote the power of the community first. I’m not sure how to do that, though…

Photo Credit: Through a Child’s Eyes by Ray Lopez

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Our recent PD session with Jeff Utecht is a direct result of Learning 2.008. A colleague and I came back from Shanghai and decided to shoot for the moon: we recommended that UNIS bring Jeff (and Kim Cofino, too, but not dice!) in for our in-house professional development weekend. Much to my surprise, they said yes and made it happen. Kudos to the admin team for that one!

We then decided to model our PD days after Learning 2.008: lots of hands-on sessions with time built in to reflect and play. While it wasn’t nearly enough time to reflect (seriously, is it ever?), I think the weekend was extremely successful.

I volunteered (was volunteered?) for four sessions. This is my recap and reflection of those four sessions, in four parts.

Session 1: Pimp My Tablet

First, I thought I was being clever with that title. Turns out, not so much. But I did make my own graphic!

Rationale:
From day one, teachers have not been very good at personalizing their tablets. A lot of that is due to the severe lock-down that we’re under. But there is so much that can be done to improve each teacher’s workflow. This was a chance for me to show others how I’ve made my tablet use more efficient and to give them an idea of all the settings, toolbars and shortcuts that they can utilize to make life a little easier.

Conclusion:
Ultimately, I’m not very happy with how this session went. There is just too much to talk about and the needs/abilities of the audience were very diverse. Put those things together and that’s a tall order in 45 minutes. I did manage to show some how to utilize the customizable toolbar in Office 2007, how to turn on their bookmarks toolbar in IE7, and how to create shortcuts so that they can save directly to our portal in any Office application. Of course, as soon as our tablets get re-imaged all of these changes will disappear for everybody, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them all that.

Photo: pimpmytablet, by-nc-sa. I created this image from an MTV-based image. If they want we to take it down, I will comply.

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Morpheus came to UNIS last weekend…

You remember The Matrix, right? (If you don’t, maybe we shouldn’t be friends. It’s only one of the best movies ever.) Morpheus shows up in Mr. Anderson’s life, dazzles him with some crazy out-of-this world stuff, and then offers him a choice:

Neo, this is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Jeff Utecht dazzled the UNIS Middle School/High School staff with some pretty out-of-this-world stuff: wikis, podcasts, chatrooms used to take class notes, Chris Lehmann’s Ignite Philly presentation, interesting new brain research (and lots more) as well as, most importantly, a vision of what education can (must?) become in order to remain relevant.

I’m excited to see how many of my colleagues are taking the red pill. The Twitter population at UNIS has quintupled with people willing to give it a try. People are buzzing about external wikis and blogs (as opposed to our in-house SharePoint wikis and blogs). I don’t know how many have been created over the last 24 hours. I’m planning on hosting another “Tablet Support Group” meeting this week to allow people time to debrief and reflect. (While we did try to build in some reflection time in our days a la Learning 2.008, it just wasn’t enough!) There is a flame that has been lit and I’m hoping it turns into an uncontrolled Five Alarm Fire that consumes classrooms and students and teachers.

Of course, there will always be those content to take the blue pill and continue believing that what they are doing (which is the same thing they were doing 2, 5, 10, 20 years ago) is relevant and best-practice. What do we say to them? What can we say to them?

I wish, in this poor metaphorical exercise, I could say that I was Neo. I doubt that I am. I’m probably more like Tank or Dozer. But I’ve got my eye on a few who could be The One…

I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came to tell you how it’s going to begin. – Morpheus

(In future posts, I hope to dissect my role in presenting a few session at our PD weekend. I also reserve the right to use “Edu-Matrix” in the future, just in case. I just like the sound of it: Welcome to the Edu-Matrix.)

I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead of me.

I just got back from San Francisco via Taipei, where I spent three days orientation-ing with Big Tree Learning. I got a chance to meet up with Lindsea and I’m really excited about what this company has to offer (more about that in future editions).

In four days I’m flying to Canberra via Bangkok and Sydney to meet up with my family and in-laws.

A few weeks after that, I’m flying from Canberra to San Francisco (again) via Sydney and Auckland, to finish my work with Big Tree, and then back again.

Once I get back to Canberra, it’s another week or so before heading back to Hanoi via Sydney and Bangkok.

Thanks to Google Earth, I can get an idea of how far I’ll travel this summer. The magic number?

67,000 kilometers.