Who Needs a Board Room?

I played around with a site called Scriblink. While the idea of an interactive virtual whiteboard that welcomes collaboration is enticing and exciting, this software falls short somewhat. Its shortcomings are not its features, but its interface. It uses mouseovers that can easily jump to a function that you weren't looking for, the text editing is just that - text without any formatting save for color, lines and shapes that are basic, and a way to import images but you can't really do anything with them once they are on the board. Where it shines is the "free" tool. That's how I made the "WOW" text. I could see using JUST that tool while working with others. The shortcoming there is that you must be skilled with a mouse (or even better - the touchpad!). I used the latter with some practice.

Despite the fact that this is not the greatest web-based application out there, it raises several key questions. First, is a truly interactive collaborative digital space that far away? Second, what implications (or possibilities) does this hold for the classroom of tomorrow? I like to think that walls that keep us physically inside our classroom do not exist digitally, so there ya go. Meeting rooms might not be needed, or at least not at the size and importance that they once had. There is a ton of space out there on the Internet... pull up a kiosk sometime.

Therefore, while Scriblink might not be the digital tool to expand our technological horizons, it might be the grandfather (grandmother?) to the application that is. I wonder if the inventor of Pong ever envisioned the video games of today...

Oh Shift!

In our T.E.A.M. survey (you can't imagine know how much I love filling out surveys), it was asked how I felt after watching "Did You Know 2.0" on YouTube. I watched it, and I felt many emotions. I was surprised with predictions like China being the number one English speaking country in 10 years (but whether that is based on total population or a relative percentage I don't know), and how today's learners will have 10 to 14 jobs by their 38th birthday. I guess gone are the days of working in the same job for 20 or 30 years. Our economic environment has changed greatly, and it seems to be moving faster than ever.
The video demonstrates how powerful the Internet is as a medium to reach people, as a resource for children of all ages.

Education has always meant to prepare students for the world they would soon inherit. They are the policy and decision makers of tomorrow, and each day we give to them we do truly build and invest in our futures. How can we prepare our students today for the challenges of tomorrow without knowing what will make them "21st Century Literate?" How can we integrate skills into our curriculum that will be relevant to jobs that do not exist yet? I guess the fact that many of us are thinking about this helps plant the seed of educational reform to some extent. Call it a subconscious pedagogical awareness of sorts.

The most powerful quote to me was Albert Einstein's:

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

My own daughter, who is not even two, knows the computer as a source of information. She enjoys watching her favorite Disney channel characters singing and dancing using online video sites like Youtube. She doesn't fear technology - she embraces it. She will grow up in a world - an on demand world where information is all around her. My hope is that she will be able to differentiate the useful from the useless. I also hope that she will guide the wave of knowledge and not be swept up by it.

Teaching the American Evolution

Well, the new semester of T.E.A.M. has officially begun, and I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Mark Weston, our new mentor. He challenged us with this notion of educational revolution, and asked if we believed it to be inevitable. Of course, I said yes. My philosophy is that our classrooms are true extensions of the world around us, therefore if the world is constantly changing so shall our classrooms. New social situations, economical environments, life skills, technologies, instructional models, facilities and our ever changing population make education an inheritantly dynamic setting.

That being said, I challenge with the comparison of revolution vs. evolution. Revolution is defined as a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly. Now "suddenly" is a subjective word, and I think it should also be based on the change that it is relavent to. Evolution, on the other hand, is defined as a gradual, peaceful, progressive change or development.

Getting back to Dr. Weston's question, I believe that change is inevitable based on the reasons I mentioned above, but I challenge that it's more evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't believe that it is realistic to think that there will be this dramatic shift in education. The basic principles are there, but the media, resources, theories and practices will change, or evolve. I believe that whatever change in roles that teachers and students alike will go through will be gradual.

Today's teachers are increasingly taking the role of facilitator, helping students along a path of exploration and self-discovery rather than depositing information into the minds of students like putting money in a bank, but the change has been relatively gradual.

In the fourth grade, we study the American Revolution, where the colonists (founding mothers and founding fathers) decided to seperate from British rule and be free. They fought a war over it, risked it all and won (obviously). The life of a colonist was much like it was before, but they had control over their own decisions and their destiny. Perhaps the education revolution won't change too much of the day to day, but rather the big picture and the direction taken... maybe allow educators to play a greater role in educational policy and have politicians stick to politics.

I look forward to interacting more with Dr. Weston.