Online safety

I remember a long time ago, when getting online could only be done on a computer and you had to use a dial-up modem, the big thing in the internet world back then was chat rooms. Slowly, as getting online became easier and more popular and more kids started hanging out in virtual chat rooms, an interesting but serious threat arose to children's safety. Children were being lured from their homes and families to meet with strangers that they had met in these chat rooms. I remember hearing and listening to news reports about those situations and wondering how on earth could that be possible. Back then, it was thought that the danger loomed only in chat rooms, for it did because back then, that was the only "meeting place" for people to gather and talk. Shortly thereafter, the term "internet predator" was coined.

Online safety is a very serious issue. It was back then and it has become an even more of an issue now. We still use the term "internet predator" but we have recently added a new term, "cyber-bullying". As our children, schools, and homes become increasingly online, the threat to children also becomes greater. It's seems that daily we hear about crimes being committed that are the result of children's online activities. Crimes where the children are lured, kidnapped, abused, assaulted, beaten, or killed. The children are the victims and as a result of cyber-bullying many of the perpetrators are children as well.

What to do? I have children. They're young. They're beautiful. They're innocent. And, I want to keep them that way but I cannot. They will get older. They will seek independence. They will seek freedom. As their parent, I will have to eventually give that to them. But, I will not just let them loose on the world and say have fun, be safe. I have to teach them how to be safe. I have to teach them what dangers are around them. I have to teach them how to avoid those dangers. I have to teach them what to do when the danger is front of them. This learning is a regular part of life. Every parent must do this with their children. If this is what I have to do teach my children to go to a friend's house down the street or to be someplace where I am not around, then this is exactly what I have to do, what I must do if I allow my children to be online.

This is what our schools must do as well. Teaching online safety must be a priority in our schools. If our students are going to be online then we must teach them how to be safe online, we must teach them appropriate conduct to be online. In our schools, I think we do a great job about teaching students how to interact with people. But, as our students interaction with people is becoming increasingly online the need then exists to teach them the proper conduct to be online. In this area I'm not sure how we're doing.

In the last several years we have changed what "being online" looks like. At one point you needed a computer to do so, now you can do it with a "phone". We see students online all the time. But, how do we monitor what they're doing online. We can't. We can't monitor what they post, what they share, what they say.  I can't monitor what my kids might do, say, or act when they're visiting at a friend's house, but I can instill in them the values to be good, decent, and respectful. We must teach our students those same values of conduct when "visiting"online.

But how do I do that? Teaching online conduct isn't as easy as it may sound. Thankfully, there are resources for educators to use. One resource that I used this past school year was Kids in the Know program. This program is a must for schools to use. It's an entire curriculum for schools from Kindergarten to Grade 9. The focus of this program is to teach online safety and to reduce the victimization of children. I also like the fact that this is a Canadian resource. I strongly suggest, urge that teachers use this resource. It teaches kids what to do when presented with different dangerous online scenarios.

Kids in the Know is one resource but there are others. The educator has got to find something and use it. Online safety is important. If we want our students, our children to be safe then we must teach them and teach them well.

Collaborative Learning...the way learning should be.

In my previous post, Digital Storytelling, I shared an experience about collaborative learning from my Grade 10 English class and it's effect on me. That project that we did was fun. Not only was it fun, but I learned something worthwhile, meaningful, and long lasting. That knowledge went far beyond what the teacher was expecting. I didn't just learn about that particular theme and plot but I learned how to problem solve. I learned how to effectively complete a task. I learned that I actually like English literature (to the point I pursued a minor in it in University). I learned that my contributions within the group were valuable and necessary. I learned that from what I learned others can benefit from it and they can learn as well.

That is the purpose of collaborative learning. It engages the student. It involves the student in his/her learning. It causes the student to take ownership of the learning. Collaborative learning is brain based pedagogy. Consider the following information from Brief Overview of Collaborative Learning:

• Key to Tacit knowledge - Creating and structuring opportunities for people to network, communicate, mentor, and learn from each other can help capture, formalize, and disseminate tacit knowledge, and thus accelerate learning and organizational effectiveness. Often hard to capture tacit knowledge ("how things are really done") in structured, formal learning events. 

• (Cooperative / Collaborative Learning) produces higher achievement and greater productivity than does working alone is so well confirmed by so much research that it stands as one of the strongest principles of social and organizational psychology. 

Researchers from the University of Lethbridge have this to say about collaborative learning and brain-based research.

When students can share their own knowledge and skills with others, not only do the “receivers” gain because they learn something new, but the student who is acting as the teacher will solidifyhis or her knowledge teaching it to others. (Erlauer, 2003, p. 145) 

I think the best way to sum up collaborative learning is to use the words of Confucius.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

We want our students to succeed and collaborative learning is a method that will help students do just that. Here's an article from Alberta Learning about current methods utilizing brain-based research to help students succeed. Brain Based Learning.

I have used collaborative learning in my science class and am looking to use it more often in my other classes.  In my Grade 8 Science class for the Biology portion, students had to learn the different organ systems in the human body. I let the students learn it on their own and then teach it to the class. Here's what I did...

1. Group students in 3 or 4. Assign each group an organ system.
2. Let students do research on an organ system. Research must be done on specific criteria that I gave them, on things that they must know and what other students must know. This is their curriculum.
3. Show students how to use a tool like Google Docs/Drive. This part took at least 2-3 classes to learn to use this tool. 
4. Students used Google Docs/Drive and collaborate on their research documents, etc. Most chose to use powerpoint.
5. Once research was done students had to decide how to present the material to the class (how will they teach the material). I encouraged students to be creative in their teaching of the material. Students also had to decide on how to evaluate other students on the material they have taught. Students had the flexibility/freedom to plan a field trip, do demonstration/experiments (under teacher approval and supervision of course) as necessary to present the material. 

I had to make sure that the students were staying on task and were understanding the material that they must know.

The biggest problem that I faced was taking the class time to learn Google docs/drive. I was hoping that  what they learned using Google docs/drive that they would have carried that over into using that tool in other classes. I tried using Google docs as a way for students to share files/homework with me but that didn't seem to catch with the students. This time around I'm going to try and have the students create a blog that they will use for all their learning. I'm hoping that this will catch this time around. I'm also hoping to get the other teachers on board to using student blogs and having students write to their blogs. Maybe, just maybe this could be a way for students to turn in work.

Digital Storytelling in the classroom - Implementation

In my previous post I said that I would use this in the classroom. That is definitely true. However, I just realized that I have been doing it already, albeit in a limited sense. I would like to use this more often and I would like to use this as alternate means of evaluation as well. I think there is a definite inherent value in doing this especially for students. As they do this they will use higher order thinking skills. Not to mention that they will be engaged and involved in their lesson.

Below are two videos that I have put together (one for this course and the other last November) and samples of some of the videos that my students have done. I put these videos on youtube. The ones that my students did I set them for private viewing (to satisfy legal privacy issues).

I put together this video that I will probably use in my class when we do singing worship in Bible class. Many times we like to sing in class but we can't always get the musicians in the class to play. In class, we'll find videos on YouTube and sing along with the music. I found one YouTube for the song, "Here I am to Worship", but I didn't like how that looked, it wasn't visually appealing to me. So I decided that I would make my own. Here it is. Since I'm a Mac user, I put this together using Apple's Keynote and iMovie.

I made this video in November of 2012. My tribute to Fallen Canadian Soldiers in the Afghanistan conflict. I am deeply saddened by the lives lost and deeply grateful for our Canadian soldiers that do a job that no one else will do. This video contains actual combat footage that I found online. I used Apple's Keynote and iMovie. I have debated whether I should use this in school for Remembrance Day assembly. Because of the combat footage, I might only use it for upper level students, Gr. 7 and above.

Below are some of the videos that my students have made. I'm wondering if perhaps they could be considered digital stories.

This is a video students did advertising a pair of shoes for health class...for our Advertising unit. These students filmed and edited this using an iPad.

A video from Health class...for our Mental Health and Wellness unit. This video was done by ESL students. Content is a little lacking but I think they did a great job anyways. Made me laugh. This video/story was filmed using a  student's mobile device/smartphone (Samsung Galaxy I think) and then edited using iMovie.

A video done by students about what Christmas is really about. Students went and shot their own "on-the-street" footage and also found similar "on-the-street" footage from others on Youtube. Afterwards, they compiled it all together and edited it and this was their final result. This was then used at the school's Christmas concert. Students used video cameras to capture footage and then edited using iMovie.

Digital Storytelling.

Digital Storytelling is absolutely awesome. I wish I had been told about this as a strategy a long, long time ago. It is so very simplistic in nature but an incredibly awesome tool to convey learning. Peuntedura would be proud of this (Bloom as well) I think to see students and teachers using this to display higher order thinking skills.

It actually reminds me of a high school project that my friends and I did for our Grade 10 English class (way back in 1986). We were studying the Merchant of Venice and the project was to take a scene from the play and rewrite it in a modern setting or any setting of our choice. My friends and I chose to use the scene where Shylock's daughter speaks to him of her love interest with a Venetian man, a non-jew. We changed the setting from Venice to Mexico and instead of Jews we used Buddhists. We got a friend's parent to help us film it. We wrote the script. We planned all the details. We even added a levitating Buddhist monk. If ever there was a project that I was proud of, it was that one. As I think about it now, I really don't remember anything else I did academically in high school. I remember this one because I was engaged in it. I learned something from it. I learned more than the point, theme, and iambic pentameters of the play. I learned how to do something. I learned how to tell a story because I became a part of the story.

I wish that my other classes/teachers could have offered me something like this because it would have made my high school years that much easier for me. It would have motivated me and I could have had greater success. Perhaps I wouldn't have had to re-do a lot of my high school over again in order to get into university.

That high school project got me to collaborate with my partners and we were equally motivated to do well...not because this was another school project but because this had become something meaningful to us. We had to think critically and solve problems. We didn't have the technology we have now. We had one camera, one video tape, one VCR. That's it. Adding the levitating monk wasn't part of the project but we wanted to do it because we thought it would really capture the idea of how different Buddhists were from Catholic Mexicans just like how different Jews were from Venetians. But how were we going to show levitation happen on screen. Critical thinking and problem solving was really used by us for that. We did. Let's just say we used a long strong beam, a couch, drapes, and teeter-totter action to get it done. And it was well done.

Fast forward. If that was the experience I had, then I'm certain that with the technology we have now our students could do the same things or go further than we could imagine. It kind of reminds me of a TV show, the Six Million Dollar Man. In the opening sequence, the narrator says, "we can rebuild him, we have the technology, stronger faster, better!" That's how I see it with the technology we have to teach our students. In fact it's not us teaching them but them teaching themselves.

Digital storytelling is just an avenue to help our students get engaged and involved in their learning. The role of the teacher is to guide and help the student however he/she may need it. The teacher isn't formally teaching but helping the students to learn for themselves. As it pertains to digital storytelling,  Edutopia says the teacher acts as the executive producer. The teacher provides the leadership that the students need.

Would I use this in the classroom? Most definitely yes! The possibilities are endless. I could have students re-enact a historical situation in Social Studies and tell the story from varied perspectives. Later as a class we could then compare the different perspectives. In science, students could collect and combine pictures pertaining to photosynthesis and tell how it happens. In math, perhaps students could write a song/rap/story about how to multiply fractions.  In health/PE class student could write a digital story about body image and self esteem. Like I said, the possibilities are endless.

Feedly me... Seymour.

I'm a little worried about RSS feeds. Why? I don't want to be flooded with a whole lot of stuff. I equate it to junk mail. I get a lot of good stuff in the mail, both at work and at home. Most of the time, I look at it quickly and determine that this is good so I keep it. The problem is I don't have time to read it at that moment... so I file it (put it in a neat pile on my shelf or desk). "No worries",  I say to myself, "I'll get to it later". Bigger problem is...later is usually a few months down the road. So what happens? that material I wanted for later is out of date and useless.

That's what I'm worried about with RSS feeds. I have a lot interest in many things...and I have really good intentions with doing most of the stuff that I want to do...but I just can't seem to accomplish it all. It's also like the early of days of email. I remember signing up for my very first email with Hotmail. There was one point in the setup where it asked you to select things that were of interest to you. I remember selecting all these topics that I thought defined who I was and what I like to know about all the time. And then...my email inbox would be flooded with all these articles that I could never read and I could never go back and undo those changes. So that's my concern with RSS feeds. I just don't want clutter in my mailbox or on my desk or in my virtual world. Man, I hope this doesn't like old man banter.

However, I got to say I do see the value in subscribing to RSS feeds. Things I WANT TO KNOW about will be delivered to me...not the junk that goes with it. For example, I have friends that have blogs and I want to know what's happening in their lives. I get to know about it. I like basketball. I want to know what's happening in the NBA, I can watch the highlights when I want to watch them...and I don't have to wait on TSN on TV and waste an hour of my time for them to deliver the NBA news that didn't get delivered or I didn't get to see what I wanted to see. Man, that bugs me!

The same applies professionally. I can keep up to date with the stuff I actually care about and need to know about. If I'm teaching a particular area in science and have found a source that I will check on periodically, I can have that delivered to me and follow that specifically.

Perhaps, I can follow my students. If I ask my students to keep a blog for school purposes then their material should be easily delivered to me...I don't have to go searching for their material online or even search my bookmarks for their blogs. It should automatically come to me.

Here's my screenshot of my Feedly page.

I have very good friends who are working as missionaries in South Africa. They run an organization called Seed of Hope, an organization that's helping a community to deal with and overcome the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Here's the link to their feed.
http://theseedofhope.org/feed/

I don't usually listen to podcasts, but I'm starting to see their full potential and the endless possibilities to implementing it in my class. I don't have any podcasts that I subscribe to...however, I usually listen in to a podcast that my wife listens to. She likes listening to a preacher, Herb Montgomery. So, here's the link to her podcast that I will listen in on. http://www.renewedheartministries.com/podcasts/podcast.xml

Here's a link to a set of Flickr images that I have recently subscribed to...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robmacklin/
I had a little difficulty subscribing to feeds on Flickr. I had to sign up to use it.



The challenge now is to make sure I use it regularly in my teaching somehow. 

The SAMR! The what? The SAMR. Oh, the SAMR

Wow! Listening and watching Peuntedura's SAMR model...I thought my head was going to bust. Information overload. A lot of useful information, but I felt like I was one of my students, thinking, "when is this guy going to stop talking!?" Don't get me wrong, I thought he had a lot of interesting and useful information but I seriously struggled hard to remain focused. I suppose that's how some of our students feel in our classrooms. Perhaps, I'm becoming more like my students, my attention span nowadays lasts only a few minutes or a few moments.

Nonetheless, his information was quite interesting, kind of like Bloom's Taxonomy for the digital age. Perhaps we could call it, Bloom's Taxonomy Reloaded, or, Bloom's Taxonomy: The Next Generation, or how about, Bloom's Back: this time it's personal. Anyways....

In some respects, I think it's difficult to gauge where I am on this scale especially since it could refer to a wide range of technological applications. In using some apps/programs/software, I would say I'm at the 'R' level whereas for others, I would say I'm at the 'S' level. But if I'm going to refer to my overall tech usage, I would say I'm at the Transformation stage.

I guess for anyone gauge where they are on this scale would depend on their comfort level for using and implementing technology.

Activities to represent the SAMR model

Substitution-the lowest stage of the model, where a student is simply using the technology as direct substitute to traditional methods. I think all teachers and students have used this method. We may have asked our students to submit written work using a word processor. In the class, I will use Google Earth or will ask students to use Google Earth to locate places on the "globe". This is a direct substitution to using a traditional atlas, map, or globe.

Augmentation-if I use the Bloom's Taxonomy model to describe Peuntedura's SAMR model, this stage would be similar to Comprehension to Application level...using the available to technology to make slight changes to the original activity. So if I have asked my students to submit an assignment "typed" instead of asking them to print and submit the document, I could ask them to email the document to me...or in the document, I could ask them to include pictures or links in their document. If i was using Google Earth let's say for a math lesson to calculate scale distance, perhaps I could use the ruler feature for calculating scale distance.

Modification-up Bloom's ladder we go, this would be similar to the Application to Synthesis stage. Using the Google Earth app, once I 've asked my students to calculate scale distance, perhaps I could integrate this with Social Studies and ask students to calculate total distances that ancient traders would have to travel on a certain route by land or sea, (i.e. total distances traders would have to travel on the silk road) and using the panoramio feature of Google Earth or its topographical map feature, ask students to identify geographical features that would pose a great challenge to traders. Oooh...perhaps then, this could lead to a Language Arts reasearch project where students would have to investigate how traders could have overcome those physical obstacles or what other challenges may there have been for traders along their travels. Students at this level could collaborate with one another on their research...they could use collaboration tools such as Google Docs/Drive (wow Google is just awesome...too bad I'm not being paid by them to market them).

Redefintion-I think the best way to describe this level is...this is where the students "own" it, this is where they say, "I got this!" So to continue with my example from the Modification stage, perhaps students could then decide how they want to present this information, perhaps as a slideshow, play, or as a report, maybe students could use Google Earth and create a virtual tour. Whatever students decide to do and how to present it, their material could then be shared online with others (through the use of blogs, youtube, etc), whereby they get to "collaborate" with the larger online community or their peers. Total creativity would be up to the students as they display their mastery not over the content but over using the tech tools available to them.

I know that not many teachers are capable of doing some of the things I have suggested as examples, I know that I would be challenged to do it. It's a good thing that we could simply "Google" instruction or help to do a particular task. Guess what? That's exactly what our students are doing. If they can do it, so can we.

21st Century Skills...Really?

With all the reading I have done so far regarding 21st Century Skills and the imperative for it to be taught in our educational systems has me really concerned. Especially, listening to Ken Kay, President of the Partnership of 21st Century Skills and reading the organizations promotional material, I'm not convinced that the skills they are talking about are really all that new. In fact I'm more concerned that this "partnership" is all nothing more than a lobbying organization for some of the the varied groups of businesses that sponsor them.

So when they talk about preparing students for what's to come in the workforce and the skills necessary for that endeavour, who are they really looking out for, the students or the organizations that they represent.

Let's take a look at what these guys say is what is absolutely necessary for our students to succeed in the 21st century:

I look at these outcomes and wonder what is really new? Aren't these what we already teach? I know that in my province the above outcomes are already stated in the various outcomes of the curriculum that I teach.

Kay says that these outcomes will prepare students for the new workforce. But I say that if those outcomes are already being taught then it doesn't matter what workforce students will enter. They will have the skills necessary to be successful at whatever venture they choose. I believe this is the point that Jay Mathews is trying to make in his article in WashingtonPost.com (and in similar articles).

It does seem that this push towards "21st Century Skills" is more of a fad especially when the emphasis is getting students ready for the workforce. I will concede however to Kay's point that a student may have 3 or more careers in his/her lifetime and therefore we must ready the student for that possibility. If the emphasis is on getting students ready for the  new workforce then how is this different from what the educational system did 40 - 60 years ago? The workplace environment was different back then and the educational system prepared the students to be a part of that workforce.

Changes that need to be made, in my opinion, is to change the view that the purpose of education is to prepare students for the workforce. Rather, the purpose of education is to give students the knowledge and skills necessary to be productive members of their society. It seems that these "21st Century Skills" are only gearing students towards one track, one workforce, something that is highly technological, and highly math and science based.... and it is being sugar coated with the guises of creativity and collaboration. But I ask what about teaching skills that will encourage students to pursue their talents, pursue entrepreneurship, pursue artistic endeavours, pursue other ventures that will make them successful and productive in their society. Should not those skills be taught as well? (Yes entrepreneurship is listed as a 21st Century skill, but I was not given the impression that it would be for one's own good but rather for the good of the organization that the student may be employed with.)

Mathews in his article is very critical of this recent emphasis on "21st Century Skills" and he has a good reason to be. I too am equally critical. What some may call "21st Century Skills", I call good teaching methods. The change that needs to happen and must happen in our educational system is the methodology of delivering instruction and focusing that instruction on higher level thinking. Instruction cannot happen the way it was done in the past, where the teacher lectures and the student listens. We all know that is a method that does not work. So then a teacher has to find other methods that gets students involved and engaged in the lesson...using whatever skills necessary to achieve that. My issue with these skills is not that they are not necessary…they are, it is with the fact that it is something that is being pushed as new and revolutionary therefore it must be taught, sort of like a do or die situation... and that is what makes it seem like a fad.


On another point completely unrelated (somewhat) to my point above. The stats that were shared by the Partnership of 21st Century Skills were all American based (and yes I know that the organization is American and therefore its target audience is American). Perhaps then this is more of an American need/phenomenon/issue. Their stats and research focused on the failings of the American educational system and its impact on the American economy. So my question is, would it be different here in Canada? The Canadian educational system is far different from the American system and therefore our needs would be far different as well. The Partnership of 21st Century Skills related the failings of the American economy to the American education system. Does the same apply to Canada?

Look at this...


According to the Conference Board of Canada, we score an 'A' on our education as opposed to a 'C' for the US. I'm not saying that the Canadian  educational system is far better that than the American system. I'm just saying that perhaps our needs are different from that of the United States.

Yes, our educational system needs to make many changes, maybe similar to those of the changes that need to be made in the American system, but I want to know what are those changes that need to made in Canada, specifically for the Canadian educational system.

So does the same apply to Canada? Perhaps, but to what extent?