Didactic Use of Technology

This week  I am head over heels with technology no matter what anybody says .
My laptop went black last week and I thought I had lost everything , actually two technicians told me it was gone for good, I was in shock !!
Somehow someone I am happy to have in my life , did the impossible , he fixed it !! He recovered my information and backed it up, and believe me, I had a lot !
Although I had " my precious" back , not all was solved . As many of you, or maybe not, I have everything personalised and all my accounts are opened automatically : Facebook, Flickr, IGoogle, Netflix, hotmail, yahoo mail, gmail, Skype, LiveBinder,blogger,  my bank accounts, etc , I know, I know ...I need to know and remember my passwords, but I have so many, that I just allow my laptop to remember them for me, much easier , right ? So, I panicked !! but thanks God for the Internet , all those 500 bookmarks were recovered ( I rarely go back to them ) , my Igoogle account gave me access to my YouTube channel, to my Gmail, Google+, and to my Blog. The websites I DO use, were all in my LiveBinder, and the passwords for all my email accounts were recovered by only remembering one password.
I had to struggle to set all my system and my IGoogle and search in English ( my native tongue is Spanish ), but I finally managed to. Now , the order has been restored  !!
Considering all this, my job and my studies, I haven't been online much , yes guilty as charged ...now, sorry for the deviation.

Well, now focusing on the question of this week , I think that we talk a lot about technologies, we are plenty of tools and resources that we can categorised as Web 2.0, but we should focus more on the methodology ,how are we going to use them with a pedagogical objective. Somehow, just present the tools to our students is not enough, we need to instruct them of to use it and what for. 

I remember some Laboratory classes in which the teacher only uses the lab to keep the students entertained but no methodology or objective whatsoever ! 

Considering that my students are teachers to be, I think , and I am trying to answer the question now, that one of the best tools I can use with them is a blog/ Padlet. My students are fourth year students of English Pedagogy. I have been trying to develop critical thinking with them by using Ted Talks and workshops, then they  work and discuss in groups, analyse certain topics, they think globally, and then locally, share ideas ,they work cooperatively and at the same time, I have asked them to keep a Padlet with the topics seen in class.

Here is an example : 

Student Padlet Example

So, basically, in my case I would choose tools that promote creativity , evaluation,  creation, reflexion and autonomous learning. I have been using Padlet, as most of my students happen to be visual , but as you can see , they can add whatever content they feel like and in the way they want. Padlet is free and easy to use.

Padlet Tutorial YouTube

Learning Styles and Strategies ,What is your recipe ?

Yet another hectic week, so I'm late with my weekly blog .
This week topic is to reflect on what do we do in class to promote different learning styles and strategies.
We all know that none of our students learn the same way, they are all different , therefore teachers been aware of that very important fact should, at least , find out what kind of student they have, and how do they learn. Sometimes we tend to forget about them and think only on how do we teach, selecting what we like in order to teach, but the focus should be in the students . As I mentioned before, if we use the same strategy over and over again, I woudn´t be doing a good work.

What I do and seems to work  is selecting some resources trying to focus on different learning styles and then let them decide what suit them best . They seem to be more willing to work with a tool, website or resource when given the chance to decide for themselves and in that wayy they feel valued and confident.
The job of the teacher is nonetheless, to supervise and to monitor that the student's choice was appropriate.

Technologies are a great source to find a lot of information, resources and activities to complement student's learning process , it seems that we can find everything we need and everything we are looking for, if we are good at searching and selecting information. That is why we need to be careful when allowing our students to select themselves.

To Teach or not to Teach Tech ?... that's the question

To Teach or not to Teach Tech, that is the question  ....

This week has been hectic, but I manage myself to come online and do some multitasking, but not to focus to do heavy reading after working long hours.
Only today I was able to watch the wonderful AITEFL Conference Evaluating Web Based Tools for Language Instruction byNik Peachey  
It was enlightening in the sense that we can feel sometimes overwhelmed by the great amount of tools available to teach Top 100 tools  , and we know there are more that are not in that list and everyday creative people all over the world are creating new ones, but during the conference Nik showed some criteria to evaluate , and choose which ones to use and which ones to avoid to enhance our teaching -learning process.

I have mentioned in my previous posts, that I have come to think and agree that the new literacy should be teaching to code  :

Mitch Resnick , Let's teach children to code

App teaching kids to code

and

Professor Richard Noss in Technology Enhanced Learning :http://www.tel.ac.uk/

With all that as a backup, I will say tonight, that if  I am asked to tech or not to tech, I will go and teach  tech in my class and will inspire others to do it, starting with my students, how am I going to do it ? I am not sure yet, but I will.

To finish I will quote Rt. Hon Michael Gove "Almost every field of employment now depends on technology.From radio, to television, computers and the internet, each new technological advance has changed our world and changed us too.But there is one notable exception.Education has barely changed ".

So, our mission as educators is to  : 

• Connect
• Share
• Analyse
• Assess
• Apply
• Personalise
• Engage
• Streamline
• Include
• Know
• Compute
• Construct

Electronic Literate

Well it has been a while since I haven't blogged, but now I started another adventure . I was invited to participate in a PhD project of a fellow colleague in Newcastle University, it is entitled :

Transformative learning’: The developmental processes of L2 teachers as effective users of online resources for language learning and teaching. 

I liked the idea from the beginning , being able to share with other teachers and learn together and eventually form a community sounds really appealing . 

The question of how electronic literate I consider myself has been pondering my head . To make sure, I took a test, but to my surprise the terms and the content were already obsolete ( it mentioned MP3, what is that ?? ! ) and well, according the results, I am quite good in the field. 

As a second language teacher one has to be innovative, one of the ways of keeping up with the times and with our students, who seem to one step ahead of teachers all the time related to technologies, is by the use of technology in the class. 

We live surrounded by technology and most of our students were born next to a computer and can not recognise a  "diskette" if shown one, or have never looked for information in a library like we did.

 

Unfortunately, I might be very fond of using technologies in my classroom and I am certain my students would really appreciate it, but there is a program to follow and colleagues to work with that might be reluctant to make the transition from paper to digital. When the curriculum is organised centrally and not locally to meet the needs of our students,  and when teachers have cero o very little influence on it, the only changes that you can do as a teacher are in the way you present activities and material. In our case, the program indicates the methodology and the way the students will be assessed. To think of anything else will be out of the question.

On the other hand, I don't consider my students digital natives, although they were born in this era, but the only know how to move around Facebook and are not even able to set a good privacy setting. There is a lot to learn, one might think they will be comfortable using technologies, but they are more engaged in been presented technology than using them themselves . 

 In my context, to achieve my goals with these 21st century students, I am doing my best. I teach trainee teachers , therefore I share my digital literacy with them so they can use it in their own lesson planning and classes. It is also a good idea ,especially working with young people, that they can see the importance and the benefits of incorporating technology in their practices  

Here , there is a video of what I try to teach my students, they need to make a change : 

 

  

Technologies, Reading and Writing

This week has been very hectic, working in the final assignment , the artifact, and reading the last material.
What called my attention the most this week was the article Is Google Making Us Stupid ? by Nicolas Carr. What the internet is making to our brains is something that we often ask ourselves, but we are rarely able to answer.
Our attention span is getting shorter everyday as we live more and more  immersed in the new technologies, that is fact. I can see it in myself,and I definitely witness that in my colleagues and students. The idea that we skim through different websites and platforms seems quite right.
What worries me and I agree with the author in this point, is that we are losing the ability of deep reading. We are not able to keep our attention in long heavy texts. The author states that we might be reading more than in the past by updating statuses, twitting, searching for information, texting, etc, but the content of the texts we read are generally light, compared with the classic literature or any literature people used to read before technology was massively available.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoXs2tTXX5bKUje3sxH7XeuOc1ZPEfsNAFI1HC_EvpVLZo1GN-36lWTYgmKbPCnWdijOvvHJiLYCmdBzM6sYa6m_ZBv7COPcKVaZznygz_Tcvwsqgp3ZOdrb7bwCaFr99YSKeJdLHT_Txg/s0/

Of course, a lot of people want to read books will still read them, either the paper version or the Kindle type.

What I can say for certain, is that my country Chile, has very shocking low rates of reading comprehension, which can be explained by the use of the technologies or any other fact.  I have always heard my teachers saying that you needed to read to be able to write. Reading is a passive ability, and writing is an active one, one in which you are supposed to produce. Thus, the quality of what we read will influence how we write. Therefore, if we are reading a lot of information ,and we are not able to choose what to read online , as Carr suggests, then we are reading a lot garbage ! 

Take for instance the popularity of the http://knowyourmeme.com/ ,http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/lolcats, http://failblog.cheezburger.com/, http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/,  http://www.engrish.com/, Your Grammar Sucks, just to mention some of the most popular sites online

that show a great variety of spelling mistakes and simple bad English, because that is the way people write on the internet. The amount of acronyms and abbreviations been used online and for sms and chat are  far beyond my knowledge  !. As these is what my students are using and watching, I use them for educational purposes .

The modification in the cognitive process that the use of new technologies produce, is also seen in the famous Bloom's Taxonomy, known worldwide for educators . This classification had to be updated to meet the new teaching paradigm. According to Bloom , the cognitive based domain consists on six levels. This was reformulated not only by changing the nouns into verbs, but also by changing the arrangement of the categories. In the past it used to go from the simplest to the most difficult or from the lower to the higher level thinking, placing knowledge in the base of pyramid and application on top. Now, it looks as it follows :

ghttp://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/images/1/1e/Bloom_1.jpg

What are we educators called to do ? ...
Change  ! Change the way we teach, change the way we plan ,and the way we see our students and the teaching learning process.
 If we believe that Google IS REALLY making us stupid, then let's do something to change that , or use the technologies to our advantage. Make use of  the skimming and scanning reading techniques that our students are already using to navigate online, to read essays, articles, books, so they improve the reading comprehension abilities, etc .
Now, there is no excuse not to read, because we have reading material all over the" walls"( literally ) , what we need to develop is the ability to choose what is worth  deep reading  and discuss, and what is worth reading and correct !

Some food for the thought ....

Trans-human ..Human, What Will You Become ?

This week content and topics are very appealing to me. Talking about  Trans-humanism is something that is almost opposite to my vision and mission of life. Trans-humanism refers to the movement that is in favour of the development of new technologies to enhance human life. In my opinion, to enhance/ improve by means that are not natural , is something that I find, to say the least, questionable.

The idea of overcome human limitations such as lifespan, body functionality, cognitive capacity, etc. acting like a sort of "God" over human nature, can have several implications, and instead of altering and going beyond evolution as it is known, seems a very selfish act to be performed by humans. As seen in True Skin.

Likewise Trans-humanism, I believe that human beings are " work in progress", but that progress must be done not in the physical or material sense, but in the inner-self. I find it arguable to talk about  "redefining the human", when humans have not still define themselves. Have you ever wondered, who you really are ? Why are you here ? What are you called to be ? . This is not a religious post, those are really the questions that I have been trying to answer over the years. The real enhancement is what I called " transcendent ", when you transcend as a human being, you do it from the inside out, knowing the role you are playing in this planet and living in harmony with it.

Have you ever read John Livingston Seagull ? I have, and that book made me realised I wasn't that crazy at all, I just was not part of the flock, the people that lives just to eat and work, I wanted to make a difference, just like Jonathan, flying higher and reaching my full potential . I don't need technology to do that for me, I just need to have the passion , which is what makes you do things, and be free.

Maybe that was the reason why I was not impressed by Robbie  and you may hate me for that . Most of  the edcmooc classmates were very moved by the story of this robot, they found it so human like , but I didn't .Robbie had no memories, they were generated and they seem to be a mirage. The essence of human relationship is something that I was debating in the Forums as well, the robot refers to its colleagues as friends, for me that's work, Robbie had a job, but not a real personal life, or what I consider to be one. In this point, after reading some comments , I saw how cultural differences  determine the way you see life, and its components. In my country, most people works to live, but they do not live to work, therefore we don't give it the same importance. I can spend 12 hours at work, and sometimes I do, share with my co-workers all day, but still they are only acquaintances. My friends on the other side are few, but the connection is much stronger, they are the ones that wait for me when I come home, to hang out over the weekend,etc... the ones who care " if  I go to space and never come back " . This film reminded me a lot to Bicentennial Man, and don't get me started with the Oedipus complex we have discussed in the Forums, and platforms with some of the participants.

Gumdrop on the other hand, was my favorite movie this week. This is a very Utopian vision of a very integrated robot into society. She was cheerful, the inflections of the voice ( something very important for me as a teacher trainee ) showed real emotions and feelings, there was also a lot of body language. The fact that the robot was a "she"  , seems to have caused some debate, robots are supposed to be neutral in gender. In my opinion gender is part of our identity, and if the creators wanted it to look more human, by giving the robot a gender, you give it part of the identity. We all have roles to play and those roles defines us, therefore for me gender is important.

To sum up, this week films and contents have been very interesting and controversial to me. I agree to the use of technologies to some extent, but I do not validate the abuse of it, especially when it threatens humanity as we know it. I still have faith in humankind.

Some food for the thought ...

#EDCMOOC Week 2 : Second Hangout Reflections

This week has been all about being human, or non being human in #edcmooc. Well , reasserting the human.

To start with, I will try to answer a question about Professor Fuller's Lecture on Humanity .

Q1 : Why does Professor Fuller say (almost as a joke) that education is ‘a dying art’?
When Professor Fuller refers about education as a " dying art " is when he compares it with the Paideia in old Greek or the paedeuctics . When we talk about this term in education is to refer to the act of pedagogy, sort of upbringing of ideal citizens; meaning education is not only teaching new contents , information but also teaching values and attitudes; to form individuals intellectually, morally and physically prepared to interact in a society, be members of a society, contribute to the society.  

 In terms of education, some of us are still using this approach, but definitely other factors are taking the lead. If we discuss the MOOC experience from that point of view, I would say that as we have seen, e-learning is using tools which keep some " real human" interaction to make it meaningful to the student, one of this ways is by using video in their lectures. EDCMOOC is doing it, actually today we had our second hangout.


Well, when I was watching I was wondering about what was missing to be 100% engaged, because I have to admit that despite the fact I was paying attention, I found myself checking FB's updates, and reading my e-mail, as they were only acting as " talking heads" , I didn't have to keep looking at all times.  Well, I guess it was that,something else needs to be added to the video, charts,  like when they were showing the stats of the survey :
 


 , something else more than the Professor's " talking heads". We have a program where I work, all Professors that are not teachers by profession, they have to take this Pedagogy for Higher Education, where the curriculum is focused on giving them the basics on pedagogy such as , how to teach, how to evaluate, how to plan, and how to communicate. I know that we are discussing here online teaching, but I think we should keep that mind, especially when it comes to " communication " , because here is when we have to make the difference : are we really reaching our audience ? Remember that " language " and its forms of expressions are varied, and here it comes the use of the new technologies, we have to make it effective, creative to grasp student's attention. We, teachers can not become unnecessary, we must be present, guiding, giving feedback , reassuring, showing the students the different choices and make them to decide.


Therefore , the challenge of education in the future and currently I would say , is to reach our students, know them, know their reality, plan according to that, and when we do, keep in mind the type of methodology we are going to use, keep education " human" .

Here is a link to my Flick assignment in case you'd like to see it, comment and eventually fav if you like it :
Flickr assignment