On David Warlick, and Web 2.0 Roulette

"We are no longer information consumers, but producers."

David Warlick's 2007 AASB Conference video identified drastic change in the creation, presentation and use of information as marked by Web 2.0. As Warlick points out, today's student do not regard information as previous generations did - to an older generation, information stemmed from an authoritative source and was meant to be consumed; to today's Web 2.0-fed generation, information is "raw material" to be discovered, processed and expressed. Information is not to be consumed, but reproduced in new creative, compelling ways.

Warlick connected the changes of Web 2.0 to the teaching community as well. Instead of researching new teaching methods from authoritative sources, teachers are increasingly sharing information amongst themselves through blogs, podcasts and other online projects. Much like their students, teachers are also "looking to the community" for the uncovering, sharing and repackaging information.

As someone who can still remember an era before the world wide web, I stand at an awkward gap in which I know how to use a card catalog and locate hardback books in a library, but I am also experienced in online research and utilizing the web as both a research and production tool. In many ways, I assumed that much of what I was doing ten years ago during the Dot Com bubble was simply fun. What I found out later as I drew closer to college, then the job market is that I gained invaluable skills that included research, marketing and sales. Just by knowing how to use Google, code CSS and edit YouTube videos!

According to Warlick, there are brand new questions being asked that are currently without experts. Both students and teachers are searching the world wide web void for answers about the future. Where are we going? Will a popular social media outlet such as YouTube or Facebook still be relevant in five years? Internet relevancy and fame are at best fleeting, for example: Chat Roulette, a trial-by-fire webcam chat website that cycled through the 24/7 news outlets like a wildfire to two weeks, then disappeared the moment notoriety (and user vulgarity) waxed and waned. If anything, the web has proven itself rather flippant in its 2.0 trends, and the foundations of 1.0 are nearly forgotten. 

To prepare students for the future means that us as educators - who are also consumers and producers of information on the Internet - are prophets, who can accurately predict where the next web trend will lead. Simply put, we are not, we cannot, and what is left is to discover, evaluate and utilize online tools that will enhance our curriculum and benefit our students. Are we using a tool that better teaches the topic? Is using the online tool going to teach our students valuable skills? Will what they learn later become a marketable skill on their resume, even by accident?

In middle school, myself and fellow students were taught how to code HTML, or hypertext markup language, and create websites. Though HTML is now outdated, it is still the Latin, or backbone, of many website coding languages. To many students, this HTML unit was boring, confusing and not relevant. Had either we the students or the teacher had known just how valuable HTML was going to be from an information producing standpoint, just think of how many more weeks that particular unit would have been stretched. It was a missed opportunity.

Expanding further, let's think of how many other information technology, social media or other courses that are operating in such uncertainty, and accidentally become missed opportunities. Truly, there is no way to ultimately and accurately predict what will be relevant or irrelevant in our classrooms, perhaps then our best defense is to remain vigilant in what tools and fun the web has to offer, experiment in what's available, and identify what we can use in the classroom. It is a teacher's form of roulette - let's see what makes it, what is just right, and hope for the best.

Assignment: Response to Ken Robinson Videos

Video #1: Ken Robinson on Schools Killing Creativity

[Link] to video.

I was immediately drawn to this video by its title because in 1991, I was rerouted from public school to private school because my parents were told I had ADHD. Several steps were taken to combat this alleged malady of mine: I received one extra year of nursery school, and my parents paid for one year of private Kindergarten in hopes that the individualized attention would correct the problem. However, by the end of my Kindergarten year, two events stood out like a sore thumb on my final report card, summed up by the following phrase:

Does not pay attention or correct incorrect behavior.

My teacher cited to incidents. One, while completing one weekly alphabet exercise, I incorrectly placed the letter C flashcard atop a picture of a towel, despite being corrected several times. Years later when I gained the ability to explain my own train of thought, I told my mother why: "The towel was too small, I thought it was a cloth."  In my house, the term cloth was used to describe a small towel we used to wipe counters and do dishes. I did not misunderstand the alphabet exercise as my teacher thought, but I was making a very precise determination!

The second incident ran along the more traditional lines of ADHD diagnosis. While in the midst of reciting my numbers, I apparently looked to my teacher and said, "I'm going over there to play right now," and abruptly cut my lesson short to play in the corner with the faux kitchen set. In reality, I was not being neglectful of studies, I was simply bored of reciting the number sequence of 1 through 20 once again.

My parents responded to this report by placing me in a grade called Transition, which was offered by the local public school. It was designed as a grade between Kindergarten and 1st grade, and reiterated much that was already learned. It even had nap time!

But years later, when I graduated with a 4.5 GPA and went on to college, my parents began to realize: it wasn't that I had ADHD, I was simply not challenged. Add this to my love of writing fiction and art, and my parents further realized that I was looking at the world as a writer and storyteller even in Kindergarten, every time I skipped a lesson to play with the kitchenette's fake pots and pans.

With these two incidents in mind, I immediately rushed to Ken Robinson's School Kills Creativity video. A line that struck me as a theme to his presentation was: "Shakespeare was in somebody's classroom." That he was, along with many other creative masters of the past and present. Who then is in a classroom now, feeling stigmatized as Robinson put it, or otherwise unaccomplished in the academic sense?

I found it curious overall that worldwide, mankind has managed to establish an "academic hierarchy," as Robinson put it: Math and Language stands at its peak, followed by Science, then the Humanities. The Arts compose the bottom, with music and art rated slightly higher than drama and dance. And yet, when thought about enough, it is music, art, drama and dance that every culture looks to for entertainment. It is creativity that identifies and drives a culture, but we have developed an opposing academic culture to "ruthlessly squander it."

It is not a purposeful kill, in the sense that we understand the end result that is cut out. It is more of a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of students, and their creative capability.

During harsh economic times, the Arts is often the first casualty of the school budget. In my former high school, the school board as decreed a $100 charge on all elective courses - a major blow to students like myself who filled their electives with music, art, drama and dance. With four available slots for electives, a student can potentially be charged upwards of $400 just for their creative ability.

What kind of message is this wordlessly penning for these students? That creativity comes with a price? That it is not prized as much as sports, which charges students considerably less? That talent outside of the core academic subjects has no acceptable place in public schools?

Teachers do not only teach in the classroom. How students and their talents are received likewise serves as a lesson: they are either acceptable, or unacceptable. But why is there so much stigma attached to creativity? As Robinson theorizes, public schools produce university professors, who live life in their heads. Their heads are where they think.

But a creative student may express thought in different outlets, such as art, or music composition. These are no less profound, in fact they take an entirely different set of skills that must be taught, practiced and mastered. How it is considered a lesser accomplishment than someone who can express verbally or by words is astounding, given that music and art require no less training or dedication to master.

Overall, this stirred a passion within me, and I enjoyed the presentation throughout. Robinson has a very humorous way of speaking, and is prone to tangents. But I enjoyed each of his tangents, because each worked as a parable, relating back to the topic at hand: "we are educating [students] out of their creative capacities," and this will affect the future. How are education's worst problems to be combated and resolved, if they are not approached with creativity?

Creativity is the future, Robinson says, and as a former public school student who was also victimized by a misplaced academic hierarchy, I agree with him.

Introduction

This is an introductory post, testing the medium of Blogger. I am a 25-year-old Masters in Teaching Chatham student who is creating this blog for my online course, Education 618: Instructional Computer Integration.

This is not my first time creating a blog for a class, this was commonplace at my undergrad Alma mater, George Mason University. It's nice to use the medium again in a classroom setting, I imagine that this time, my brain will be contemplating the ways I can use blogging in my own curriculum.

Now, to begin.