February 3, 2011

I put this round up of sites that gave me pause this week for my practicum students.

The thread that connects these pieces involves rethinking the role of educators, both inside and outside the classroom. It is important to note that whether you work directly with students in formal settings or loosely through your personal and professional networks, the way we approach a dynamic and ever-changing world is critical to our success. I know it’s a big concept, almost abstruse. First, I believe it is important to formally recognize that our growth as individuals is a matter of becoming, that is, in an Aristotelian sense, a recognition of our potentialities and moving them toward a higher level of actuality.

Attempting to control our situations as opposed to being aware of the dynamic nature of them introduces a greater potential for disappointment. Leveraging the advantages (and disadvantages) placed before us, recognizing the flow, being open to, and listening to others, in a sense, permits you the opportunity to influence the situation through your ideas and actions. In other words, attempting to control others in our world at best leads to complacency. Real innovation, real meaningful change, requires a non complacent world view, one that recognizes that things work best when we are aware of the myriad of relationships and resources and the dynamic paths they take us on.

For educators, the topics below offer a place to begin rediscovering what we know and think about learning design, networks, experiencing information, volunteerism, instructional technology and educative roles. I hope you enjoy.

DESIGN
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 20:04)

SOCIAL NETWORKING
Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown
Practices are still evolving, but here is some brief, and often contrarian, advice that comes from our decades of experience studying networks and the way people act within them:

1. Express more vulnerability.
2. Mix professional and personal lives.
3. Provoke.
4. Promote others.
5. Actively seed, feed and weed.

It is important to remember that these tips work best when one is open to letting the context help guide decision making. Read more here.

INFORMATION EXPERIENCE
Check out Qwiki–A mix of animation, images and facts read aloud about people, places, things. Think of it as a video-based museum exhibit. Ask about Leonardo Da Vinci, “or your most well-traveled friend about Buenos Aires: this is the experience Qwiki is attempting to deliver, on demand, wherever you are in the world… on whatever device you’re using.”

COGNITIVE SURPLUS & VOLUNTEERISM
Would You Volunteer More If You Could Do So in Your Pajamas?
Sparked.com–a site that allows professionals to turn their spare time into social good. How it works: when an individual volunteer signs up, he or she lists their skills and the causes they care about most. Sparked then culls challenges from nonprofits that require those skills, and users can choose which ones to take on. The challenges can be anything from critiquing an organization’s tagline to redesigning an entire website. “Sparked is a skill-based platform….We appeal really well to professionals who have years of expertise who are also incredibly busy.”
Read more here. From Jessica Roy–GOOD

TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
The received opinion is that technology, like any other “solution”, will only work if it is integrated in the social structure. It must become an integral part of the lives of the people. There are remarkable exceptions to this rule. Few communities have had problems with embracing telecommunications technology, i.e., movies, radio, TV, or fixed and mobile phones. If you allow people a chance to hear, view, or speak [with] other people, they will grab it with both hands. All these communication technologies have caused revolutions in the lives of people all over the world (e.g., Charles Kenny, 2009). But in general, it is true that an externally supplied solution only works if it can be integrated in the life of those who receive it.
–Excerpted from Rob Van Son, The question is not whether, but how ICT can be useful in education. Educational Technology Debate. Read more here.

EDUCATOR ROLE
That’s one reason why it is frustrating when people identify the role of the teacher as the central factor influencing the success or failure of a student’s education. Leaving aside any influence of external factors, such a statement begs us to question what aspect of the educator’s role it is that is so vitally important. And while the likely answer may be that they all are, or that it depends on the individual student, it seems clear that continuing to treat them as a single role, to be performed by a single person, increasingly defies the reality that is today’s educational system.
–Valuable points to consider from a master informal educator–Stephen Downes, Huffington Post (seriously?)

Your feedback is always welcome.

View more presentations from Christopher Sessums.