Experiencing Just How Flat Our World Is

Last Saturday, I was able to experience firsthand just how flat our world truly has become.  Through my Personal Learning Network, I heard about the Flat Classroom Conference that was happening in Qatar.  I am amazed and inspired by the fact that they were able to have so many schools from all over the world participate in such an excited project.  Some of the student reflections have started to appear online and it is incredible to see the personal growth that they went through as a result of this experience.  

Leading off the conference was a Question and Answer session with the author who inspired the teachers who created this project, Tom Friedman, who wrote The World is Flat.  However, Tom Friedman was at his house in Washington, D.C., and was speaking to the conference via Skype.  In addition to all of that, Steve Hargadon, who was in Philadelphia at Educon 2.1, created a virtual link up for other educators who wanted to participate in the conference and listen to Tom Friedman.  As a result of all of that interconnectedness, I was able to listen to Tom Friedman (in D.C.) answer questions from students all over the world (in Qatar) via the web.  

As I mentioned above, Educon 2.1 was also going on at the same weekend.  Also via my PLN, I was able to watch presentations/conversations from this "unconference" in Philadelphia.  

I am running out of superlatives to describe how excited I am about this age of hyper-connectivity we are living in.  The impact of all of this on education is just beginning to be felt.  And if this past weekends activities are any indication, the possibilities are endless.  I can't wait to get started teaching and incorporate all of this into my classroom.  

My (Borrowed) definition of 21st Century Literacy

I know that I am way late in getting this out, but it has been kind of crazy around here lately.  As I mentioned in my previous post, the whole discussion about what it means to be literate in the 21st Century has been incredibly rewarding for me.  Throughout the process of trying to follow the conversation, I came across a post by Ryan Bretag about his own definition of 21st Century Literacy.  I really identify in a number of ways with his definition: 

Literacy is a group of evolving skills and skill sets as well as a form of knowledge needed for thoughtful, meaningful, and effective communication in socially relevant contexts.  

I like that definition for two main reasons: the use of "evolving" and "socially".  

Evolving

We have barely entered the 21st century and already people are providing definitions for what it means to be literate in this century.  I believe that it is important for all of us to keep in mind not only just how much has changed, but also the rate that things change as well.  As such, we need to make sure that we are changing right along with it.  Making sure that we are fluid, relevant, and timely is critical to ensuring that we are adequately teaching 21st century literacy skills for our students (throughout the 21st century).    

Social

I think that sometimes the focus is too much on technology and not enough on the social aspect that the technology allows.  I love this quote from Michael Wesch: 

This is a social revolution, not a technological one, and its most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in an almost limitless variety of ways.

Our students today already use these technologies to socialize with one another and it is only a matter of time before education fits into that picture.  And having the definition for 21st century literacy focus on socially relevant situations is becoming more and more important.  

Classroom 2.0 Badge

The Great Debate: 21st Century Literacy

Throughout the edublogosphere, much has been written lately about what exactly it means to be literate in 21st Century skills. There has been a number of terrific posts that run the gamut of trying to define it, to others who are done with it.

For someone who is trying to come into his own as a fully networked teacher, this whole conversation has been an excellent learning process for myself. I made an attempt at, but was extremely frustrated with trying to follow the discussion on Twitter. Unfortunately, I missed the discussion once it moved to Eluminate. I have been following the conversation via blog posts. However, this whole process has challenged me in trying to create my own definition for what it means to be literate in the 21st Century, which I will get to later.

My initial reactions while reading through the various definitions of 21st Century Literacy was that it was all just semantics. Literacy is such a broad term and it is difficult to pin down a precise definition, especially when there are a number of school subjects that need attention and new adaptations start getting bandied about like media literacy and information literacy. Most of the early posts I read incorporated these rather recent nuances to the field of literacy definitions. I thought that these definitions paint with a large brush and leave out the individual subject areas. I have been thinking a lot lately about what Dan Meyer meant when he said that there isn't a Web2.0 tool that helps him teach math. Sometimes we get so caught up in the flood of new technologies that we forget that we still have to teach geometry.

I also have a problem with the 21st Century label because we are trying to put a definition to what skills are needed for success in this century that we are only 8% into so far. And with the rate that technology keeps changing how we do all sorts of activities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make such blanket statements.

And then I came across a post from Learning is Change about how all of us as educators need to come together and agree upon a list of tags to make the sharing of ideas, lessons, and concepts much easier.

We need to take ownership of terms like elearning and make them more specific. We also should be teaching our students to come together on terms to use so that all of their work can not only be found later, but also grouped according to topic, theme, or even skill level.

In order for us as educators to move forward and take action, we need to paint a picture with the definition of what is literacy in the 21st Century. And that brings me back to the post by Jen about taking action. Being that I am such a newbie to this Web2.0 scene, apparently, this discussion comes up quite frequently and nothing much is ever actually accomplished. This reminds me of the United States right after the Revolutionary Wars with Great Britain. There were a variety of opinions and ideas taking us in all different directions, and it was difficult initially to accomplish much. But through it all, a great nation was formed. It is my greatest hope that we can recreate that revolutionary success in the field of education.

The war on attention span

Let me first go on the record as saying that I am really geeked up (both literally and figuratively) about all of the connectivity and collaboration possibilities of Web2.0. With that being said, there also are some potential downsides to constantly being connected 24/7 and I feel that it is something that we as educators should discuss with our students.

We have been hearing for years about how this new generation of students has the ability to multi-task. At first, this was seen as a good thing, with the thinking being that they could get more done because they can do many things at once. However, recent studies have suggested that this generation's multi-tasking is actually counterproductive. They tend to not finish tasks on time or at all because they are constantly doing so many activities (or web-apps).

On a related note, I came across this story about the new work ethic that is going to be needed for success in the Information Age. It talks about how hard work is no longer the most important aspect of a person's work ethic. With the rise of so many popular web applications such as You Tube, Twitter, email, Facebook and so on, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay on task and get everything done that you need to, whether it is for work or the teacher.

I can't agree with this more. Ever since I finished student teaching, I have been trying to grow my PLN through a variety of means. I have joined social networks and Twitter, increased my list of blogs that I follow etc. In this time, I also have discovered that I have become less productive. I keep a list of digital projects that I am currently working on or want to work on for my digital portfolio, and as the days go by, the list just keeps getting longer and longer. (Now, this also has to do with the fact that I keep coming across such great projects via my PLN too.) This is similar in a lot of ways to my love of travel. As the saying goes (paraphrasing), "The more countries I visit, the more my list of countries that I want to visit grows."

The article quotes David Brooks of the New York Times:

"Control of attention is the ultimate individual power," he wrote. "People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."

All of the ed tech evangelists talk about how we need to start having our students engage with all of the new technologies, and I agree with them. But at the same time, I also believe that we should give them coping mechanisms that provide a way for them to structure their time so that they can be as productive as possible without getting lost in all of the web-apps.

One of the solutions that I thought about for myself is creating a daily calendar that list the time allotments for each of the tasks that the individual needs to accomplish that day, including the digital tasks. I know that it's not groundbreaking by any means, but it could be helpful for students to see visually how their afternoon/evening is laid out for them so that they get everything accomplished that they need to. I think that this will help because it will limit the amount of time that they spend doing one task and it hopefully will keep them focused throughout. It is also important in this scheduling process to pencil in "fun time" as well so that it is not all work and no play (makes Jack a dull boy). But going back to the article again,

In one generation, we've gone from a total separation of "work" from "non-work" to one in which both work and play are always sitting right in front of us.

So I think it is also very important for the parents and the child to work together to come up with their own individualized definition of what "fun time" actually is. As I mentioned above, I am currently experiencing a war on my attention span and I am going to try out this possible solution and make a daily calendar of what I need to do for the day. We'll see how it goes.

Intimidation Part II

My last post tended to ramble a little bit and I think that I missed the point I wanted to make. So here goes round number two.

For the past few months, I have been working on creating my own Personal Learning Network (PLN). I subscribe to twenty-something blogs related, both directly or indirectly to teaching and business education. I also started using Twitter and mainly follow the same people there whose blogs I subscribe to. The main reason for all of this activity is to become more connected with teachers all over the US and the world.

But those connections cannot happen without action on my part. I haven't posted to Twitter for a few days now, and it's not because of the holidays. I just flat out don't know what to say. I feel very intimidated writing knowing that these very distinguished educators will be reading what I write. With Twitter, I feel out of the loop because I am not currently teaching. I feel something like a fraud. I also don't have a lot of classroom experience to help my form my opinions and thoughts on the various topics that come up in discussion either on Twiter or blogs. I have the same feeling with commenting. I read an excellent post by Chris Lehman and I clicked on the comments. I had some thoughts in my head on the topic, but then I just closed the tab to comment. I know that I need to just get over it and start writing, but I am having a hard time.

I have also read some contradictory tips about what to write on Twitter. The tips mainly centered on not writing about what you are doing, i.e. I just finished eating dinner. I also found out ny lurking on Twitter that a lot of teachers post links to helpful articles or tech tips. I did that for a while, but I recently stopped because I found that I was researching earticles to post to Twitter and that it took away time from other things and that using Twitter usually doesn't require research. Also by lurked, I have found that some/most of the people I follow do include updates on what they currently are doing. I have been considering posting on that as well, but again the intimidation creeps in and I think that what I am doing is really insignificant to the others that I follow.

The other cause of anxiety/intimidation when I write online for my PLN is that I don't believe that I will contribute enough to the conversation. In order for these other educators to want to include me in their PLN's requires me to contribute thoughful, meaningful contributions to the discussion at hand, and I don't think that I have enough knowledge to do that.

I guess that in order to get over all of these fears, I just have to go out and start doing, whether it is tweeting or commenting.

Intimidation

Ever since I finished student teaching, I have had some time on my hands. I have used that time to create and add to my Personal Learning Network (PLN). In hoping to add to my PLN, I joined Twitter. Over the past six months, I have heard a good deal about it and how useful/addicting it can be. I was initially skeptical because I thought that blogging was helpful, but didn't necessarily see the point of micro-blogging. I see that the power of Twitter, following other people and having others follow you, is essentially just like your own little PLN. Also knowing that a good amount of my students probably use it, I thought it would be helpful to be knowledgeable about this emerging way to connect with each other.

So I made up my mind that I was going to give Twitter a shot to see what is was all about. The signing up process was very quick and easy, but then came the hard part; the content. As I was considering joining Twitter, I also read up a lot on it, such as the do's and don'ts. One of the don'ts that stuck with me was to not just state what you are doing i.e. just finished dinner. I kept reading about making sure that you are providing value to the people who are following you, because who really cares that you are getting a cup of coffee. So after I started following the same authors of my blog roll, I now had to ensure that what I was posting was of value to these veteran Twitterers. I have a hard enough time coming up with ideas to blog about, let alone ideas to constantly post to Twitter. I know that I struggle as a writer getting the ideas and thoughts in my head onto paper, or the computer screen. I hope that one of the many benefits of blogging is to strengthen my writing ability, and I hope that Twitter does the same for me, albeit in a much shorter, to the point method.

As I have been using Twitter for a few days now, I have noticed a slight change in my behavior online. On my iGoogle page, I added a Twitter gadget to keep with my notworks tweets. Normally when I go to my iGoogle page, the first thing that I check was my Google Reader for any new blog posts. But suddenly, I am now scrolling down past my Reader box and going right to my Twitter box. The good news is that Twitter is living up to its billing as a tremendous place for resources. I currently follow about 20 people and I am having a hard time keeping up with it all. The good part is that a number of the people I follow are tweeting about links they find interesting. So I click on them and check them out. And then I read my Google reader. This is starting to take up a lot more of my time. In just a short time, I think that I am starting to suffer from some of the downsides to Twitter which is hyperconnectivity. Wes Fryer wrote an excellent piece about it the other day.

People on both the pro and con sides of hyperconnectivity say it will influence people’s health. While those who fear it say it will cause stress-related illnesses, those who welcome it say the flexibility it offers may improve mental health.

I’m with those who predict more health-related problems with hyperconnectivity than helps. Look how we’re struggling now to keep up with email, SMS messages, blog posts, and other news-related media streams? Discipline is hard. I think digital discipline is only going to get more challenging in the months and years ahead.

From page 132:

HYPERCONNECTIVITY WILL CREATE UNREALISTIC WORK EXPECTATIONS AND STRESS, AND INTRUDE ON LIVES - Many people see hyperconnectivy as a threat. Among the hundreds of elaborations provided by the respondents, only a few people perceived that blending work and personal time would tilt people’s lives toward more time for family, friends, and personal pursuits.

This finding has BIG implications for our need for both digital discipline and digital dialog.

I can't agree with this more and I believe that in addition to teaching our students how to connect with the world properly, we should also teach them how to disconnect with the world as well. The only good that came of this is that when I teach digital discipline going forward, I will have a real life story to go along with it.

I realize that I have only been using Twitter for just a few days now, and that I will start to get the hang of it and will stop being so intimidated.