That’SLife

A colleague on Twitter was celebrating the successful takedown of one of his books from a Spanish blog today. The book appeared to have been scanned and uploaded to a popular fileshare site and the blogger had linked to it. The link was now dead. At the time I was faintly pleased, having engaged in the same activity myself once or twice.

A long Twitter exchange followed, involving quite a few people. Two sides, obviously - the ‘information wants to be free side’ arguing that books are prohibitively expensive for a lot of teachers and that new models of production and distribution are called for, and the ‘we don’t get much from our books but we’d like what we do get after all the effort that goes into writing and producing them’ bunch. Read the rest of this entry »

“When you really embrace technology and don’t just bolt it on to what you’ve got, you get extraordinary results”

“(schools should be) not the sole provider of information, but the broker of learning from a variety of sources”

“the challenge is how effectively we keep up with the way young people use technology”

“(…) schools might end up like railways; something you go to occasionally and regret”

“(…) must make home and school seamless“

Oh, the horror, the horror! The common sense… The humanity…

Reminds me of something. Can’t say what….

Why on earth isn’t this child drawing and colouring in, playing outside or collecting stamps? And how can he maintain his dignity and lust for life in such circumstances? I demand immediate action from social services to save this poor mite…

I thought it was about time I looked at this question from a more positive angle, so here it is. I’m going to take some things as a given (including the fact that I understand that many people do not have access to the technologies I’m describing), at least in my world…

1) Many millions of teachers around the world are online, connected, have computers at work and home and use them in both contexts. Many of those people use them at home for a variety of activities which include: research, online shopping, online communities, keeping in touch with remote family and friends, continuous professional development… In doing so they engage with technologies on the ‘verb‘ level - sharing, communicating, etc. When it comes to computers in their professional lives, however, many of these teachers engage with technology purely on a ‘noun‘ level: worksheets, timetables, emails and fail to implement the ‘verb’ way in their teaching. This has led to disillusionment amongst those who would like to use technologies in their classes, and ridicule from those who refuse to even consider them, for a variety of reasons.

2) Equally, many teachers around the world do engage with technologies on the ‘verb‘ level in their classes. These people are usually self-taught, active members of online teacher development communities and people who have spent a lot of their personal time (and sometimes money) on acquiring the skills that take them from the ‘noun‘ to the ‘verb‘. Few of them have received formal training in the application of technologies in teaching, but they have managed to get there and are doing amazing, creative work with technologies right around the globe. Their learners are the fortunate ones who are being given the opportunity to enhance their ‘tech-comfy‘ skills with a more useful ‘tech-savvy‘ set of skills which will have an enormous, positive impact on both their personal and prfoessional lives (from critical thinking skills, through online safety, through marketable practical skills which will help them in their professional lives).

Read the rest of this entry »

I take the opportunity of re-posting here my latest reply to the DOGME list [ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dogme/ ] and note that this is entirely acceptable and within the list rules that I’ll quote here to ensure that fairplay has been observed:

“Note: This is an open source site. This means you can freely copy, adapt and distribute material from this site so long as you explicitly mention the source of the material, attribute the original writer(s), and advise the group moderator accordingly. People posting messages on this site should bear in mind its open nature).“

In that vein, I note that the original writers are myself (Gavin Dudeney) and ‘R H’ and that the original post can be found here, and my reply here… Likewise, comments to this blog are unmoderated and you’re welcome to take whatever you like from it, or to leave a comment…

I’d also like to note that the DOGME list has an enormous quantity of thinking, caring, professional teachers on it and that the ‘technology‘ discussion has been a bit of a polariser, with a degree of disinterest and a greater degree of interest (as in ‘I have an interest in your seeing my point‘) from those of us who feel strongly either way. As far as I’m concerned that makes for an interesting and stimulating professional debate rather than a blacklist of people I shall shun at future conferences. Unless they tell me I have an unfulfilling first life, of course. Those people are definitely in the Black Book Of Shun… 

Message continues after the fold…

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Meet some typical learners of the 21st century - they like and use technology (when they have it) in their personal lives. Teachers (when they have it) use it for their personal and professional development. Even those who don’t use it in class often keep personal blogs and tweet, etc. So I’m still confused as to why those teachers can’t see the obvious:

• My learners like and use technology in their everyday lives…
  They often find it stimulating and rewarding…
• I use technology for my personal and professional development…
  It helps me communicate with professionals, family and friends…

One thought might be as follows: I wonder if I should capitalise on their engagement and my knowledge and experience as well as appreciation of the uses of technology, in my classes? If they like and use technology, and I like and use technology, perhaps we should explore that in the lessons we have together?

Yes, that really does make sense to me…

footnote: for Spanish readers (or those translating my post into Spanish in their heads) the quality of the pun is slightly reduced by the fact that the name of the film in Spanish was “Con Faldas y a lo Loco“, which, roughly translated, is something along the lines of “Rushing Around in Skirts“. Having duly considered this as the title for the posting, I was reluctantly forced to reconsider due to its lack of IT punworthiness…

Marc Prensky’s talk caused equal parts of adoration and despair at the IATEFL Annual Conference this year (mostly dependent on age, attitude and agenda) and, for those of us who knew what to expect, a certain admiration for some of his ideas, and all of his energy. Inevitably his words in that hour are picked over like flesh on the highway for those looking for supporting statements for their arguments, and I intend to be no different here.

Prensky said that those who are not particularly au fait with technology tend to talk about it using nouns - they talk of printers and cables, of documents and internet connections, of IWBs and data projectors. But these are, of course, mere objects and not at all interesting in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not intrinsically interesting in a discussion of technologies in the classroom.

This, inevitably, is where the ‘IWBs don’t promote learning or increase motivation’ argument bases itself, firmly in reasearch reports that conclude these two ‘facts’ and fail to examine why IWBS should do either of these things (do textbooks? do chairs?). It looks at the purported failings of IWBs in terms of nouns, not verbs. It’s all about the product (the noun) and not the process (the verbs).

Those teachers who use ICT regularly in their classroom tend - along with their learners - to consider technologies in their classrooms as verbs. It’s all about creating, mixing, downloading, blogging, podcasting, sharing, writing, talking… you name it!

And that’s probably why the two groups are not good at talking to each other. Until the ‘XXX technology produces no significant YYY’ brigade recognise that a tool is only as good, creative and educational as the person wielding it, and that the tool itself can not teach, then communication is going to be limited.

So, let’s cut the nouns and move to the verbs. And the first verbs for those not currently using technologies in their teaching and training will be ‘try’, ‘implement’, ‘experience’, ‘reflect’. When that’s done you’ll be in a better position to argue your case, I think.

In which we examine another fantastic theory currently being bandied about in an online group of which I’m a member, and it goes like this: Google is evil because it controls access to information and it makes money. This came on the back of someone suggesting that Google Wave might make an interesting teaching tool, thus prompting an outburst of the Evil Argument. Technology as evil, corporates as inherently evil, money as the very devil herself.

No matter that the OP works for a commercial language school (which makes money, the dirty, evil corporate) and spends a lot of his time using SEO to ensure that said language school remains high in Google rankings. But of course, like leather belts and shoes being by-products of the meat industry (sic!), these actions are by-products of something, and not inherently evil, unlike the tools used.

I don’t think this merits a long post, really. Simply a question:

What’s the difference between Google and a teacher? Well, one controls access to information and makes money, and the other one…. oh, no, wait a minute - I feel some kind of rip in the space time continuum roaring down on me. Of course we’re talking degrees of money, and degrees of information (those who don’t bring new technologies into their classrooms are more controlling of information, obviously), but, like George Bernard Shaw, we’re simply haggling over the price…

Well, whatever, a big boy did it and ran away…