Clientele and Source summary included here (Christine uploaded)
Our clientele
The teaching profession involves teachers with a wide range of technical ability and interest. The range includes the baby boomer generation who are close to retirement as well as new graduates who have grown up with Google and Facebook. This wide range presents challenges for schools in delivering effective and appropriate professional development that will assist all teachers in using ICT in effective teaching.
The context of professional development is ultimately standardized tests. These assessments measure not only what the students know but also how well the teacher has taught the course. The concepts of connectivism and constructivism have always existed in schools. They can be seen in any classroom discussion. However, the addition of new technology to this dynamic can easily be neglected or even rejected by teachers because teachers will always do what “works”. The problem is that what has worked for the last few decades may not be appropriate for a tech savvy generation of students. The aim of our website is to facilitate this transition in a way that achieves a synergy between the physical and the e-community.
Advertisements for teaching positions routinely include some mention of effective use of technology in teaching. If schools don’t train their staff in technology the staff will become unemployable. If they’re unemployable they’ll never leave and if they don’t leave the school will be stuck with staff who are less able to meet the needs of their students.
This is why we see our clientele as not only the individual staff member but also the executive. With the professional development process facilitated by the school’s ICT manager there is some accountability that the school executive can use to measure progress. The fact that a person in the workplace is the centre of the physical community is intended to make it easier for the staff to make the leap to the e-community.
Taking school communities online
“Our institutions…are largely based on the assumption that learning is an individual process, that it has a beginning and an end, that it is separated from the rest of our activities, and that it is the result of teaching” (Kop and Hill page 6) This is the nature of school as it exists today, even with the influx of new technology based teaching methods.
Teachers still see education as a cumulative process of gathering information based on tasks that can be added together to create a deeper understanding over time. “By contrast the digital environment is characterized by speed and immediacy through multiple communication channels.” (Conole page 1). On the surface these two situations would seem to be mutually exclusive. Conole (page 2) would seem to agree, arguing that education systems function through a focus on “ individual testing, evidence of attainment of a level of knowledge and understanding against a set of pre-determined criteria. By contrast, Mashups, remixing and co-construction” are fundamental to Web 2.0. What we’re trying to do with our on-line community is merge the traditional with the modern.
Traditional textbook based instruction methods are generally lock-step in style which provide support for the student but give them little freedom to take control over their own learning. “E-learning increases the freedom but reduces the supportive structure. The idea is to make the most of the freedom and replace the missing structure with your own”. (Clarke page 143) This works the same way for students as well as teachers. Our solution to this problem is to work with the fact that every school is already a community which they can use to get the support they need. The problem with this community is that it is too rigid. The regulation of bells and delineated subject areas means that while all the staff come to the same place every day there is limited opportunity for staff to network with each other, particularly across faculties. In fact, while staff meetings usually involve a very crowded agenda the time is usually spent on big picture policy level issues rather than dealing with the specific needs of individual teachers. Our online community seeks to address these needs by making the school’s ICT manager a “hub” that connects the physical and online communities.
This tension that exists in education is only partly caused by the standardized testing model of education. The other reason for this tension is that most, if not the majority of teachers don’t know how to use Web 2.0 tools in effective education. What we are trying to do is to bridge the gap by exemplifying the use of technology as an educational tool to help teachers to attain the skills necessary to employ technology effectively in the classroom.
What we’re doing
According to Kop and Hill (page 2)there are three important skills that a learner must have in order to succeed in a connectivist learning model. These are: “the ability to seek out information, the ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts, and the ability to make decisions on the basis of information that has been acquired”. It is the final point that they argue is integral to the learning process.
Of course, this could happen without technology being involved. The role technology plays is that it allows this to happen in a community and helps to make learning a cyclical process. Members of the community share, modify, then share their new understanding. Conole (page 2) calls this “the wisdom of the crowds”. This is an idea elaborated on by Kop and Hill (page 2) who state that “education is a knowledge creation process…not only knowledge consumption”.
This requires a personal learning network, which our website is designed to facilitate.
Our site is designed to instruct high school teachers on the use and educational merits of the numerous Web 2.0 tools. There is not enough room to describe all of them in this piece so I will focus on Blogs, Podcasts and Online Forums.
Blogs:
Potential advantages:
A general strength is the ability to make connections with experts and opinions outside the classroom/institution. However, this requires a level of trust and openness. Blogs can be used to promote critical and analytical thinking. Blogs can also work as a learning journal that teachers can use as evidence of their professional progress when completing the accreditation process with the institute of Teachers. (Mason & Rennie pp 61-62)
Potential disadvantages:
Blogs are public. Students may feel uncomfortable about “thinking aloud’ in a manner that creates a permanent record of their comments. Blogs can also require a lot of work from the administrator. (Mason & Rennie pp 61-62)
Podcasts
Potential advantages:
Audio is excellent at conveying feelings, attitudes and atmosphere. This plays a role in learner engagement. It also touches on different learning styles which can aid with cognition. (Mason & Rennie pp 70-71)
Potential disadvantages:
Audio is less effective at conveying detail and facts. We’re more likely to take general opinions and arguments from a podcast than we are to be able to recall specific information. More importantly, unlike text, audio is hard to browse and is a less efficient use of study time than the printed page. (Mason & Rennie pp 70-71)
Online Forums:
Potential advantages:
It is more equitable than face to face discussion because it gives equal time to people who are not confident public speakers. (Mason & Rennie pp 91-92)
Potential disadvantages:
The asynchronous nature of the medium requires more self-discipline from students to log on and participate. (Mason & Rennie pp 91-92)
How it will help
In response to the growth in e-learning Verhagen contends that “people still learn the same way”, they are just adapting to new technological methods. (Kop and Hill page 7) Connectivism has always existed in schools; it can be seen in any classroom discussion. Kop and Hill are right when they point out that the difference now is one of scale of communication. Our goal is to find a happy medium. By porting the school’s community on-line we are aiming not to replace the existing network but to expand and augment it.
Bibliography
Clarke A. E-learning skills 2008 chapter 5.
Conole, G. New Schemas for mapping pedagogies and technologies. Ariadne Issue 56 July 2008
Kop and Hill, Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. Volume 9, Number 3 October 2008
Mason R, Rennie F. E-Learning and social networking handbook: resources for higher education. 2008 Chapter 4.
