I just read Sean’s post about ‘Second Life’ and virtual living. I first heard about this phenomenon a while ago from a few friends. I found it amazing (and a little odd) that it has reached a point where people actually spend real money on things for their virtual selves.
It is a 3D virtual space that provides “insightful interaction, collaboration, learning, and experimentation” between users. These are all things that have been discussed this semester as desirable for students when using technology in a classroom. However, I agree with Sean, I am not sure if this particular ‘virtual world’ is entirely beneficial to all users, in particular younger students, but i find it interesting that they mention a lot of the benefits that other programs claim to have as well.
“The Department of Immigration historically has been less active than they should have been with settlement patterns. It needed to ensure that school populations were more diverse.” — The parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs, Laurie Ferguson.
There are concerns that the NSW Department of Education needs to consider more closely where it educates refugee children in Sydney. There is growing concern that there is a spread of ‘white flight’ from schools across Sydney. ‘White flight’ is explained as when students from Anglo-European background leave schools that have a high concentration of students from other racial backgrounds. For example, the increasing African presence in the suburb of Blacktown. A ‘confidencial survey’ done in NSW in 2006 raised concerns about white flight “undermining government schools and threatening social cohesion.”
I observed a situation similar to this one while I was in Guatemala. There was an English speaking international school there, that was taking in beca (scholarship) students into grades K and 1, from the local indigenous community, for the purpose of learning English. After a couple of years however, the spanish speaking beca students far out numbered the English speakers, and so the students were not learning the language, and nearly all communication was done in spanish. I know this situation is slightly different, but i can see that it is a potential problem that could happen here too, as well as many others of course.
Apparently, there were 30 or 40 schools in western Sydney which are dealing with this problem.
“We need to ask ourselves what kind of society will we be in 10, 20, 30 or 50 years’ time if we continue down the path of state-sponsored segregation and education by class, religion and ethnicity.” — The president of the Australian Education Union, Angelo Gavrielatos.
I just read Sunny’s blog post A Vision of K-12 Students Today about a video she found. I found it thought provoking and very moving.
In the middle of the video, the students hold up a number of signs asking how different forms of technology (ipod, camera, laptop etc) could help them learn. I think this is a clear challenge to teachers to think beyond the obvious. It is our challenge, our job, to develop with the techonology, and enable our students to use all the tools they have available to them. Especially the ones that they are most interested in, and that are going to become ever more important in the future. The students are asking to be taught to think, create, analyse, evaluate, and apply. The internet is the perfect tool with which to learn all of these skills, with the right training, programs, and i believe, the right philosophy. Fundamentally, the students are asking to be engaged.
I just watched the youth video from the 2020 summit. It was very comforting and encouraging to realise that the youth of Australia are taking these issues so seriously, that there are those that are inspired to work towards the goals that we believe in. I hope the students that I will be teaching one day will develop this same energy, and consciousness.
From watching the introduction to the summit, and from hearing the PM Rudd speak about what he is trying to achieve with this summit, it is obvious that we are starting to think globally. Not only on a business and economic level, but also on a personal, educational, environmental and political level. It struck me that Australia’s politics has turned a corner, a very BIG corner. I couldn’t even imagine Howard doing something like this. Rudd is opening the doors to discussion, questions, creative ideas, and creative solutions to some of the key issues that are facing us as a nation. The most important part of this summit to me is that he is opening the nation up to communication. This is demonstrated by the thousands of blogs and forums that have been created and commented on in the last month. The Internet has been a perfect forum for all the people not one of the 1000 invited to the summit to express their views, ask questions, and generally start the ‘conversation’ around these issues. See the Blogocracy for one example.
Video from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp-F7diymq8
I chose this image to base my teaching metaphor on primarily because it is very nature based. When i thought about it more however, it became apparent that it fit with a lot of my ideas about teaching. Firstly, the importance of the environment, that learning is a social act, and is done in a social context. Each student (or ripple) effects the others, and one thought or idea leads to the next. In this way learning is very connected. The second idea is that education is for change; that education is action based, not only in its method, but also in its outcomes. Education and learning should produce effects. In this way the stone that is dropped into the water could be seen as the teacher, or the catalyst, which initiates the change. This highlights the importance of a good teacher, someone who inspires learning, action, and change. The third idea revolves around the reflective nature of water. Reflection is a very important aspect of education. It leads to further insight into a students ideas, questions, communication, and metalearning.
There are a number of problems with this metaphor, however. Well not so much problems as things that I cant relate to it easily. The following are things i would have liked to include in my mini-philosophy. The metaphor:
Doesn’t allow for a facilitator role of teacher in learning, which I believe in.
Doesn’t easily allow for the collaborative nature of education.
Doesn’t have a place for the role of technology in education, (maybe I need a different metaphor for that.)
I just read Jemma’s metaphor about her view on teaching. I really loved her image and her ideas. It has inspired me to try and figure out (and try to explain) mine, using my own metaphor.
The underlying theme that seems to be present in this article is that teachers need to learn from their students in the digital areas where they feel less at home, and need to include the students in decsions about their own learning. However, to me, this valid message gets lost in the other claims Prensky makes. To me, this article seems to be about a very narrow group of students on the whole. It is about the kids that can afford the money and the time spent gaming and using the internet excessively. What about those students who do not have a computer at home, or have internet access, or own a Wii? The inequality of access does not seem to be taken into account. To label a whole generation ‘digital natives’ and another ‘digital immigrants’ seems like an oversimplification.
I have one overriding question, am I a digital immigrant or native? What about the generation of teachers at I am a part of? Where do we stand in Prensky’s distinct, somewhat polarising division between the teacher-immigrant and student-native? I have grown up with the internet, with gaming, with computers and mobile phones, and yet I am also a teacher, am I therefore technologically disadvantaged?
I am a little concerned about the singleminded message that seems to be developing from what I am reading. It seems to me that if we follow the advise of all the authors of the articles I have read so far (admittedly not a lot yet), that we might be in danger of going too far the other way, and forget about the benefits of books and the interactions we have in the physical classrooms we are a part of. I realise this is a long way from happening at the moment, and there is still the current fight to get the internet properly and innovatively integrated into classrooms in the first place. However, I find it interesting that I have not yet read one article that is advocating a healthy balance between e-learning classrooms and so called ‘old fashioned’ classrooms.
