Blog posts

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

The analogy I came up with a few days ago was that of eating. People eat very differently in times of abundance than scarcity. Their biology doesn’t significantly change (though it does some), but it would be foolish to look around and argue that people aren’t really eating differently, it’s just a change in their food context. It would be wiser to recognize that the socioeconomic context is an important factor to consider when it comes to nutrition and try to teach proper eating habits in an environment that is not just no longer one of hunting and gathering, but one that is very different for most of us from even 50 years ago.

<p class="articletext">Researchers have found three consistent effects of using – and especially, emphasizing the importance of – letter or number grades:</p> <p class="articletext">1.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.&nbsp;</p>

2.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.

3.&nbsp; Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.

The whole point isn't to *add* online writing on top of everything else you do. Nobody has time for that.<br><br>Rather, what you want to be thinking of doing is to gradually migrate to writing online *instead* of writing for those other purposes.<br><br>That doesn't mean you become a blog writer and nothing else. Rather, what you'll find is that writing for the website makes writing for all those other things a lot easier.

The idea is to take the stuff you do for private audiences and to present it (as much as you can) to public audiences.<br>

<p>First, it helps to look at the typical process of technology adoption (keeping in mind, of course, that schools are not typical of anything.) It's typically a four-step process:</p> <ol> <li> Dabbling.</li> <li> Doing old things in old ways.</li> <li> Doing old things in new ways.</li> <li> Doing new things in new ways.</li></ol>

"What the animation does is it assists the children in visualizing the action," explains Mitchell, who teaches <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nuuanu.k12.hi.us/G-1/public_html/index.html" target="_blank">language arts enrichment classes</a>. "The animation is a way of them developing the picture so they relate that to the writing, to what they hear, what they see, what they feel." Technology, she adds, "gives you one more way of teaching something."

"Looking for real-world relevance has to do with students being interested in what they do, knowing that it's useful outside of school," says Kaninau. "The experiences are not contrived or in isolation, but they're a part of a larger learning activity. Without those connections, it won't be meaningful, and it'll be forgotten tomorrow."

"They love it," says sixth-grade teacher Geraldine Kajitani. "If you start with ... hands-on activities and things that are fun, their attention is focused." And once that happens, she says, it's a snap to get them to study some of the drier material because they'll relate to it and remember it.

According to the teachers, the games were effective teaching and learning tools because they (a) were experiential in nature, (b) offered an alternative way of teaching and learning, (c) gave the students reasons to learn mathematics to solve the game problems and progress in the games, (d) addressed students' mathematics phobias and (e) increased time on task.

<p>The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast. If you think about this visually, the email/Word scenario has limited periods of creativity separated by the logistical and socially sensitive task of combining edits:</p> <p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-lowproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div><p></p> <p>The wiki completely changes this by shifting logistics to the shortest possible segment of time at the outset, leaving a much greater period of time for collaborative creativity and knowledge construction:</p> <p></p><div align="center"><img src="/download/attachments/54/ch1-highproductivetime.jpg" border="0"></div>

When asked what they learn by using social networking sites, the students listed 'technology skills', followed by 'creativity', being 'open to new or diverse views' and 'communication skills'.

Because computer mediated communications is language (specifically, written word) dependant, it is subject to the constraints of low/high context cultural patterns <a href="#morse46">[46]</a>. As indicated earlier, the role of language is to carry meaning, and interpretation is an integral part of culture. Language is one means of establishing context among participants of a particular culture group. In low context cultures, language must be specific and well defined, to provide the contextual definition in which to interpret the communication. On the other hand, in a high context culture language may be vague, lacking the specificity of the low context culture, as the environment within which communication takes place clarifies the specific meaning of language <a href="#morse36">[36,</a> <a href="#morse41">41]</a>. Thus language plays a key role in the communication process. A key issue determining the success of computer mediated communication is the encoding/decoding by which that communication is done. Given that computer-mediated communication is a textual (electronic) rather than a visual (face-to-face) medium, meaning must be carried by the language itself rather than relying on the environmental context as the means of communication and/or interpretation. Given this relationship, because the language of communication is English, low context communication is presumed, thus perhaps disadvantaging those whose cultural background relies on high context communication.

Interestingly, low context participants concentrate on the participation environment, while high context participants concentrate on their individual work/effort and/or skills in the discussion.

Noticeably however, the responses indicate that cultural background directly influences the priority of perceived benefits received and challenges posed from the same asynchronous communication network. The perceptions are based on learning patterns which are developed as part of a participants’ ethnic/cultural development, and are potentially challenged by participation in an asynchronous communication network, which of itself is implicitly culturally based. Further, high context participants in an asynchronously delivered seminar, while assured of higher quality participation through an offline ability to infer meaning through low context communications, are at least initially more likely to be disadvantaged by technology differences as well as the communications norms implicit in their cultural background.

<p><font face="VERDANA">Some of the key questions revolve around how culture is, or is not, experienced online: </font></p><p></p><ul> <font face="VERDANA"><li>Is it easier to work across cultures free from visuals cues, which tap into our prejudices? </li><li>Is it harder without visual cues so that we miss sensitive cultural cues? </li><li>Just how do we maximise the diversity and respect for cultures while tutoring online? </li></font></ul>

<td width="18"><strong>1.</strong></td> <td width="96%"><strong>Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity</strong></td>

<td width="18"><strong>2.</strong></td> <td><strong>Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments</strong></td>

<td width="18"><strong>3.</strong></td> <td><strong>Model Digital-Age Work and Learning</strong></td>

<td width="18"><strong>4.</strong></td> <td><strong>Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility</strong></td>

<td width="18"><strong>5.</strong></td> <td><strong>Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership</strong></td>