gail dyer » Uncategorized

K to 12 Online Learning Conference . . . will you be there?

gaildyer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:28:15 +0000

I am so excited and so daunted about pulling together a presentation for this conference.
As a techno-moron marshalling my skills to put together a multimedia presentation that will engage viewers and listeners has been a challenge.

The Conference program looks to be a great one and I can’t wait to see and hear what colleagues from around the world are doing.

I hope you all will attend, how easy just login and learn at your leisure.

Literacy for a brave new world

gaildyer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:13:06 +0000

What does it mean to be a reader or even a literate person in the 21st century? What challenges face teachers as they explore the complexities of new literacies in literacy instruction? What role does the learner have to play in developing his or her literacy skills?
In working with students from diverse backgrounds, students who use new technologies; including blogs, wikis, playing and making digital games it has been a puzzle as to why their BST/NAPLAN (Basic Skills Test/National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) writing results have been consistently above state average while they achieve below the state average in their reading results. Working with them on a personal level it becomes obvious they are not lacking literacy skills. It is just that their skills are different.
It was re-assuring to read the study by Leu et al (New Literacies for new times: preparing students for the 21st century, 2005) which found no statistical correlation between online comprehension and reading comprehension scores on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Equally reassuring are Green and Hannon (Demos Report, 2007) who in their research have found “Children are establishing a relationship to knowledge gathering which is alien to their parents and to their teachers”.
WHY was it reassuring?
The new technologies centred on the internet including social networking and digital games are not a passing fad. By 2006 more than one billion people were reading on the internet and since the uptake of the new technologies is exponential, by 2011 more than half the world’s population will be reading online.
In the history of literacy there has been no other technology for reading, writing and communicating that has been embraced so rapidly by so many people in so many geographical places. Consequently, there are wide ranging implications for literacy.
The linear way of reading fiction books and the rigid content of textbooks are losing their relevance in the growing online context. Books are never going to be irrelevant because there always has been and always will be people who love the comfort and emotional attachment to the printed book. However, the speed, the amount of knowledge and diversity of interests are better catered for by the internet and new technologies.
Jakob Nielsen, dubbed “the guru of web page usability” by The New York Times, has spent the past 15 years gauging habits and screen experiences of computer users. He charts people’s online navigations using eye-tracking tools with the aim of mapping how vision moves and rests.
Mr Nielsen’s research reveals people scan hundreds of pages using a pattern vastly different from any learned at school. They read in an F pattern … extremely fast and only one in six reads a web page linearly.
Educators would do well to open their minds to findings from Nielsen’s research and incorporate some of his web usability ideas into the teaching practice, particularly in light of research such as that from The Rand Reading Study Group (2002). The study concludes that “accessing the internet makes large demands on individual’s literacy skills; in some cases, this new technology requires readers to have novel literacy skills, and little is known about how to analyse or teach those skills”.
Recent studies by Coiro et al (Handbook of Research on New Literacies, 2007) and Leu et al (Teaching with the Internet K to 12: New Literacies for New Times, 2004) also conclude:
• Reading online is more complex than reading offline.
• New skills and strategies are needed to read online.
According to Kinzer et al (Theoretical models and processes of reading, 2004) “new literacies are continually new literacies. Increasingly, the task of a literacy learner will be to learn how to learn, not simply to master a fixed set of skills that remain static”.
The new technologies demand new forms of critical literacy, critical thinking and analysis of information. Fortunately students currently in Years K to 12 have been completely sensitised to digital technologies, and are receptive to that new literacy. Technologies are fully incorporated into their lives. Many students in this group are using new media and new technologies to create in new ways, to learn in new ways and to communicate in new ways with new people. Moreover, research is showing that using new technologies in education “improves both comprehension of the lesson material and student’s interest in the topic” (Brady, More than just fun and games, Applied Clinical Trials Nov. 2004). Klopfler et al (Using the technology of today in the classroom today, 2009) believe there is enough evidence to conclude that new technologies have the capacity to “facilitate and leverage deep learning”.
Educators must adapt to the 21st century … almost 10 per cent of the century has passed us by and still there is resistance to this concept.
In The Horizons Report (Educause, 2009), there is a “call for formal instruction in the key new skills including information literacy, visual literacy and technological literacy”.
But what are they? How and what then do we teach to cater for the fluidity and constant updating of content that occurs on the world wide web?

The answer is actually quite simple. We have great tools at our fingertips. It is simply a matter of thinking outside the box and drawing upon the wealth of resources that are available online to engage, motivate and inspire our digitally savvy students. As a start point Web 2.0 meets Reading 2.0 is an amazing collection of Web 2.0 applications collected and collated by esessions an educator out of Alabama. It is a good site for teachers to go to start exploring Web 2.0 applications and reading.
The other resource is the taxonomy of reading capabilities developed by Luke and Freebody (1990). The Four Resources Model was developed as a means of responding to the complexity of reading and the changing and challenging demands in order to be a successful reader in today’s world. Whatever developmental point students are at, all four roles need to be taught systematically and explicitly. The roles are not a linear progression nor are they developmentally based. They are actually a set of skills that are interlinked, interdependent and necessary to be fully and functionally literate. The roles are just as appropriate when applied to multiple digital contexts as to the print context.

Students want to be part of the online conversation in an online world it gives meaning and purpose to their learning. We have a responsibility to engage our students as well as to develop discerning, critical users of the new technologies as both consumers and creators.

Four Roles/Resources of the Successful Reader
Roles/Resources What successful readers know and do
Code breaker
decoding the codes and conventions of written, spoken and visual text Understand
• the relationship between spoken sounds and written symbols
• the grammar of texts
• the structural conventions of texts
Text user
understanding the purposes of different written, spoken and visual texts for different cultural and social functions Know that
• different types of texts have different purposes
• these purposes shape the way texts are structured and formed
Apply this knowledge in using (eg comprehending, creating, transforming) text
Text participant
comprehending written, spoken and visual texts Make meaning by drawing on
• own experiences and prior knowledge
• knowledge of similar texts
Text analyst
understanding how texts position readers, viewers and listeners Is aware and can identify how
• texts are not ideologically natural or neutral but are crafted to represent the views and interests of the writer
• information, ideas and language in texts influence reader perceptions
• texts empower or disempower certain

Reading obsesses me . . .

gaildyer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:09:22 +0000

Our students read, they are taught to read using the Four Resources. They are read to, they discuss books, the storyline, the characters, the structures, the language used. They are scaffolded through modelled, guided and independent stages of learning.

They write extremely well!!! We provide them with scaffolding, experiences and the opportunity to play with words and structure. By Year 5 they have been achieving above State Average results in their writing.

They read to access information in print and on computers. They can read fast but they don’t read like we do. They rely very heavily on the visuals, the images are where they gain most meaning.

Our students are from cultural backgrounds where the normal way of conveying stories is by oral means.

Recently I was sitting in a workshop and the professor said. (People from) “oral cultures don’t see the point in logic / literacy games. They do not get it as they take language at a literal level and do not make inferences from the written word.” Example First Nation people in southern Canada only know bears to be black or brown. They have never seen white bears, therefore white bears do not exist.

Always we lament our students inability to draw inferences in this passage or that . . . how do we work on this one if it is hardwired in?

Mobility, ubiquity, online all the time.

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:28:03 +0000

NECC 2009 Birds of a feather gathered around the common cause of iphones and the exploration of educational uses of APPs and more.

What I learned . . .

kids want to be online all the time and given the choice of an ordinary handheld and an iphone or ipod the majority will choose the iproduct

many apps can be used for educational purposes, by end of July Classroom 2.0 will publish a list of about 300 Apps they’ve reviewed.
educators are now writing Apps specifically for educational purposes
qr code is really powerful and has exciting potential in the educational context

Promethean Winners realise potential

gaildyer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:54:40 +0000

Walking through the Exhibit Hall the other day we met these two teachers from Chicago. They were really excited because the girl on the right had just won a Promethean Classroom.

She was over the moon! She was so enthusiastic about winning Promethean because she was aware of the company’s all encompassing philosophy of sharing knowledge and creating rather than controlling knowledge and shutting the world out.

Privacy is no longer relevant

gaildyer — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:19:20 +0000

Craig Bellamy

In recent times the line between public and private has become very blurred to the point of non existence. Young people, young teachers, students all use social networking spaces to air their thoughts, their feelings and their lives.

More and more I hear comments about there being no privacy anymore. All is public!! The most recent comment was as I was sitting in Kevin Amboe’s session on Wiki’s for Writing Workshops at NECC 2009.

Kevin Amboe said he expected his young daughter to be up on the web and out their organising her life on Facebook and commenting through her blog. Will Richardson has said he would be disappointed if his daughter did not have a web presence. Employers today look for a web presence as a guide for employability.

Mark another of the presenters today commented that he felt it would be safer for his child to be out there on the internet than walking through the local park.

Creeps and undesirables lurk everywhere, we need to teach our children and students how to deal with them both physically and internetly rather than locking them away in inpenetrable towers.

The inpenetrable towers block out so much that is good and exciting and fun to be part of. A world I don’t always understand but I do respect the young people’s need to be part of it. To us it is technology. To them it is natural they were born to it.

Nobody can stop the young people of today from getting through all the blocks that are put in their way. What a challenge? What a skill! I could never hope to be half as good a hacker as most of the young kids I know.

A case in point. At our school we use a really cool social networking / problem solving game. It can be played in beta or paid for. For payment you become a full member with treasures at your fingertips.

One of our 11 yo really wanted a membership but his parents wouldn’t allow it. He wanted to be a member so badly he persevered until he hacked into the site and became a member.

Does he get rewarded for skill and initiative or sanctioned for willfully tampering with another’s property?

The world is changing, the world is changing so fast, way too fast for many of the older generations to understand. A young person’s social mores are not what the older generation understand. Do older generations have the right to impose our will and sanctions on something we don’t understand.

Rather than funding technocrats to shut down something that can be amazing shouldn’t we promote teaching practices which ensure we are developing responsible students who are so engaged and motivated by the authenticity of what they are doing that they do not have the time or inclination to abuse their use of the internet.

Footnote

It was really interesting in the session on one to one laptops attended yesterday the majority of those present felt people who saw themselves as EXPERTS in technology should be kept AWAY from SCHOOLS. Technocrats were cast as control freaks preferring to use technology to shut people out and control rather than develop an inclusive caring and respectful learning community.

Get over the limitations of the technology

gaildyer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:33:31 +0000

Sitting listening to people question Will Richardson’s presentation on Network Literacy I just had to say it.

When we understand that it is the quality teacher and the quality learning environment that is important not the technology then it might be that we move on and get over the hurdles people continually put in the way of the future of learning and providing our students with the best opportunities.

A word on Leadership

gaildyer — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:24:25 +0000

Time ran out at the Conference yesterday before comment could be made on this component of making sure we prepare and provide for our students as citizens of the 21st Century.

As a school leader with well in excess of 10 years experience it is obvious the role of the school leader is becoming more and more complex. It seems like almost daily we are called upon to undertake additional administrivia drudgeries. This part of the job is not why I became a Principal. When I stepped into this role it was to be an educational Leader.

The quality of the educational leadership is pivotal to the success of a school as an effective organisation.

A successful leader focuses on student and staff learning and well being. They promote positive relationships throughout the learning community.

It is the leaders role to:

develop a culture of shared leadership
promote collaborative collegial relationships
actively research and promote constructive change and innovation.

I like Tom Carroll’s view: in previous eras “schools saw themselves as organisations focused on maximising teaching effectiveness . . .

21st century schools must be communities that maximise learning effectiveness“.

The next generation of leaders need to focus on just that.

South Western Sydney ICT Conference

gaildyer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:59:13 +0000

21^st Century Pedagogy Conference 2009

The “c” Generation

connect, communicate, collaborate, create

The conference today was an interesting experience. The session I presented went well . . . it was a compilation of the previous few blogs. The blog was simply there as a reference point for the Case Study presented about Belmore South Primary School.

Kim presented a really good practical session, so much work and then the Internet connection let her down. At least the whole presentation is on her blog.

The venue was excellent Fairfield RSL

Research, question and take it slow

gaildyer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:42:56 +0000

ICT becomes embedded into a school culture when there is effective curriculum and instruction, ongoing professional development, authentic assessments and a culture that embraces the learning potential of all its members.

Everything technological seems to be synonymous with speed. The best advice possible is to take it slowly. When making critical technology decisions choose carefully the steps to take to make sure it is right for your context at the time.

Research; use critical thinking skills: examine assumptions, gather data from many sources, envision alternative scenarios, then make an informed choice.

Technology planning must be approached intelligently to make the most of tight resources and high expectations.

Eating-the-elephant-that-is-ict-and-eating-it-one-bite-a-time,this is a great video in support of the above.