Blooming # 4 Activity

The Blooming Questions activity demonstrated 21^st century approaches to education, because it made each member of the class think about the future of education.  Where is education headed?  How will education be shaped in the future?   This activity made me personally think about the ever changing educational field and how societal changes play a direct role in our classrooms.  Technology has moved to the forefront in our world/society, and it is our job as teachers to not deny, but yet embrace technology in the classrooms. How can I find ways as the teacher to incorporate more technology into the classroom?  Many educators feel as though our students (U.S.A.) are falling behind the rest of the world, because they are missing the skills that are needed on a global market.  Global awareness, media/technology skills, as well as innovation and creativity are just some of the skills that our students need and many districts/schools are just sticking to teaching our basic core subjects. 

This activity was an enjoyable activity for me personally, because I was able to share with my thoughts and opinions on the current state of education and where I see education headed towards with fellow classmates. I was also able to hear great ideas from my peers that made me think and reflect upon current issues as well as work collaboratively to reach beneficial questions for the rest of the class.  I also enjoyed the fact that we were then able to add to other group’s thoughts/questions, and by doing so, maybe this allowed our peers to reflect more upon their work.  It was interesting to see what other classmates thought about our questions, and their tips or recommendations to add to our thoughts.  I have always believed that it is more beneficial to have others read over and offer opinions to improve upon one’s work.  It is always great to hear from others, because many times someone else may see or be able to add to something you wrote that will enhance your knowledge base.

I believe it would be harder for our group to elevate our own questions, because once you come to a group consensus on an answer, you have to believe that your answer is the best possible option at the time.  You would not write an answer that was poorly worded or lacked substance if you have pride in your work.  I feel as though you always try to put forth your best effort, ideas, and thoughts into your answers, and to go back and try to raise the quality of the answer/question, would be difficult.  If you believe your question properly reflects your group’s mindset, then why would you want to change your question/answer?

There was a direct connection between this activity and educational leadership for a number of reasons. For one, each group I’m sure had group members that took charge and were more authoritative in their sharing approach.  Usually during collaborative assignments, there is at least one group member who tries to lead or steer the group in the right direction.  There are always some group members that are apprehensive about sharing their ideas and while they may have great ideas, usually the vocal leaders have their ideas used more often.  Another reason would be that to be a good leader in my opinion, you must be able to take constructive criticism, and be able to adjust, and adapt ideas to meet the needs of others.  All of your thoughts/opinions may not always be the best idea as a whole, and a good leader must realize this.  Leadership in education requires you to be able to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create all the time!  This assignment made us reflect on Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy and these skills are a great guideline tool for all educational leaders.

Technology for the Future- Assignment #3

I decided to watch the video by Sugata Mitra before reading the two readings in the Bellanca and Brandt book.  I found the video to be rather interesting and thought Mr. Mitra had an interesting take on education and how children learn best.  What I really liked about the video presentation was that Mr. Mitra did several studies and experiments and used his research to draw conclusions about how children learn.  He started the video by talking about how there are four central ideas or points that he drew from his experiments and four ideas he would like the audience to think about after his presentation concludes.  The first was the idea of remoteness and the quality of education.  Sugata Mitra wanted to know the further you are from the urban center (in what he terms remotal areas), what happens to the education?  Were those that were further from the larger metropolitan areas (slums and poor areas) socially and economically remote from the rest of the city?  Schools in remote areas generally have below average teachers, have trouble retaining good teachers, have poor infrastructures, and maintenance issues.  He showed a graph of the Total Performance on Tests vs. Distance from New Delhi and sure enough the further from Delhi, the worse the test scores were.  Also, 69% of the teachers polled at the “remote schools” wanted to teach at better schools and schools located in the city of Delhi.  Mr. Mitra then began to dive into Educational Technology and a study he performed for five to six years throughout several cities in India.  The project he embarked on is what he referred to as the, “Hole in the Wall Projects.”  Sugata and others would go into these cities and place touch-tone screen computers into poor areas and leave a video camera running to see what would happen.  Obviously the children that would come up and use the computer had never even seen these computers, let alone any computers before, and most, if not all, do not speak or understand the English language.  Mr. Mitra would only leave one computer in each city as well to prove a point.  In one city after only eight hours a young boy was teaching a young girl how to browse.  In the next city, a 13 year old dropout was browsing within eight minutes and seventy children were browsing the Web by day’s end.  Finally in one of the last cities that he spoke about he left one computer and several CD’s and returned three months after the fact to see how the children were progressing.  Upon returning, eight and twelve year olds were playing games on the computer and turned to Mr. Mitra and said, “We need a faster processor and a better mouse.”  Many of the children of the community had learned over two hundred English words including children as young as six years old.  In fact in many cases, the younger children were teaching the older children different functions of the computer (ages 6-13).  The videotape footage caught many of the children teaching one another the various ins and outs of the computer and working collaboratively to solve issues/problems that arose.  Mr. Mitra points out that all this learning took place with only one computer per city, so imagine what the kids could do given ample tools/supplies to work with.  300 children became computer literate in three months with only one computer.  Language, furthermore, the English language was not a barrier even though these children didn’t know any English before getting their hands on the computer screen. This experiment concluded that primary education can happen on its own and that it does not have to be imposed.  Many children learn best when exploring, thinking, and learning on their own and within groups of other children (collaboratively).  The children were learning just as much by watching their peers explore the computer than by using the computer for themselves.  Mr. Mitra ended his presentation by saying that he believes our society as it all wrong when it comes to piloting educational technology in the schools.  Most piloting programs start in the affluent schools and leave the poorer schools out to dry.  Research has indicated that the “remote schools,” see a much bigger jump in test scores than the affluent school districts when given the necessary technology.  Mr. Mitra believes that remoteness affects quality of education, educational technology should be introduced into remote areas first, values are acquired (should not be imposed), and learning is a self-organizing system.  What I took from his presentation is that he believes many children do learn more or at a faster rate on their own or collaboratively instead of having sometimes useless information thrown in their face.  Machines also should replace teachers if the teachers can not effectively help the students grow and learn.

Next was the foreword entitled, “21^st Century Skills: Why they matter, what they are, and how we got there,” by Ken Kay.  Ken Kay is the President of the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills in which he is a firm believer that our current educational system needs to be refined and reflect actually what is going on in our society/world today.  Our children are not prepared for the “real world,” or work force and do not have the necessary skills needed to compete on a global market.  Mr. Kay believes we need to reconceptualize and revigorate public education to meet the needs of a changing world.  After reading his thoughts, I could not agree more that we need to prepare our students for a world that is now dominated by technology and global competition.  US schools for the most part have not adapted to the changing world.  Innovation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, flexibility, adaptability, leadership, and cross-cultural skills are all imperative to have and our kids don’t have many of these skills.  Ken Kay’s adamant stance that the starting point is the end and how outcomes/results need to be decided before we can even think about how we need to get there, reminded me of a previous educator/class.  Grant Wiggins was somebody that I learned about in a previous class, for his vision on Backward Design.  Backward Design is when the results and outcomes are decided and then you decide how you are going to achieve these outcomes.  What steps or what is the process that would most effectively allow your students to achieve these desired results?  I think it is a great idea and way to attack some of the issues we are facing in terms of our students falling behind in the global market, because we must first decide what we want/need them to understand/learn and then create the correct recipe for meeting these goals.  Ken Kay gave his example of the framework for 21^st Century learning in which there is a heavy emphasis placed on four areas and there are four areas that will help us gauge and lead our students to mastering those four desired areas.  The final skills/goals of his framework are for students to master:

1. Core subjects and 21^st Century themes
2. Information, media, and technology skills
3. Life and career skills
4. Learning and innovation skills

Well-measured Standards/Assessments, effective Curriculum/Instruction, Professional Development opportunities, and positive Learning Environments will help our students master these areas.  As Mr. Kay says, “vision needs to turn into commitment for outcomes.”

Finally, I read chapter 13 in Bellanca and Brandt entitled, “Navigating Social Networks as Learning Tools.”  This chapter focused on the rise of the virtual global classroom and how as educators we need to not only embrace this change in our society/schools, but take the necessary steps to improve and incorporate technology into our classrooms.  The “tectonic shift,” is what the offers allude to when talking about the future.  Instead of shying away or denying this change, we need to model technology and prepare our students for the technology/network driven world.  Network literacy was once thought to be a nice bonus for some or only needed for those headed into computer driven jobs, but now everyone needs to be technology literate.  Teachers, parents, and the community all need to help model safe, effective, and ethical ways of learning and using the web/internet.  While there are many great things about having so much information at your fingertips, there are many dangers or pitfalls if not used correctly.  Sharing is a common on the internet with such programs as Youtube and blog pages, but many students do not realize the public nature of some of their actions and they are not educated into the severity of how powerful words can be.  We have seen a rise in cyber-bullying and shared pictures/videos that have caused many tragedies many times indirectly.  The Global Classroom is the new landscape of learning and teachers need to educate themselves and their students in order to help these students succeed in the future. 

Article #2 stood out the most to me, because of my shared beliefs with Ken Kay.  Our schools have always been about teaching students core subjects (such as mathematics, English, science, history, etc.), but now our students need much more.  They need to understand technology, life and career skills, innovation and 21^st century themes.  Some areas/themes that Mr. Kay gave that I think should be required in our schools are global awareness, communication and collaboration, media literacy, initiative and self-direction, etc.  It is a shame that so many schools and school districts have not woken up to the fact that our society is completely different from what it was ten years ago.  We need to change our curriculums, educational goals, and standards to reflect these changes.

While I agree with some of things Sugata Mitra alluded to in his video presentation I also have some questions for him and disagree with some of his thoughts.  For one, although his research basically summarized that the children all learned how to use a computer on their own and they didn’t need any guidance, I hesitate to believe that allowing children to just learn on their own over the long haul will be very beneficial.  For one, there are so many children in our schools that have IEP’s, learning disabilities, handicaps, behavioral issues, and so on and so forth.  Are you telling me that these students would pick up on a foreign language and learn how to use all functions of the computer without any supervision/guidance?  While many children may be able to learn the basic functions of a computer on their own given adequate time, I have my doubts about them gaining a high-level of competency by just being allowed to explore on their own.  I agree that children need to be able to explore on their own and with other children, but I also believe it is important for children to have some guidance and be challenged by teachers who can help the students critically think and solve more complex problems.  Curious as to what type of research is out there regarding if students learn more on their own, or do they learn more with some sort of guidance/teaching?

I believe the views all three of these authors/speakers regarding Technology are spot on.  They all encouraged the US to have our educators, and students become more technology savvy and incorporate technology into our classrooms.  The days of a pencil and paper are fading fast, and being pushed aside by computers, Ipods, cell phones, and other forms of technology.  On a global level, the US is starting to see that we are not as prepared or knowledgeable as we need to be to compete in the global market.  It starts in our classrooms!