Tryangulation

Two IB courses now online

The Virtual High School has opened registration for two International Baccalaureate courses which will be offered online. The courses are Economics and Information in a Global Society (ITGS), and will be offered at the Standard Level (SL) only.

The courses are open only to students who are enrolled at IB World Schools, and enrollment is limited to no more than five students from the same school. Click here for more information.

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A new way to pretend the world is flat

Never mind flat, the world is upside down... or is it?

I've always loved maps, and in particular the different ways they approach the problem of emphasizing certain details like shape, area, topography, or human impact. That's a problem because, in order to emphasize one thing in a map, you have to de-emphasize something else: blatant distortion of reality in order to get a point across.

I've wanted one of these south-up maps ever since I first saw a similar one nearly 30 years ago. I finally gave in to temptation and got one from ODT Maps; it just came in the mail yesterday. I can't wait to think up some assumptions to challenge. 

Click here for more info on unconventional maps and to get your own.

O happy day

My blog is no longer blocked at the school where I work!

For some reason, when we got a new server, all the custom filter settings were lost, so all the computers within reach of students reverted to surfing that was "free" from blogs and other dangerous content. That's being fixed now, little by little.

Along with that good news, I get to end the week with a couple other successes: one of our teachers is taking the plunge to lead a small group of colleagues in a collaborative blogging experiment, and others have requested a beginner blogging workshop, which we'll do soon.

Exploring online communities

I've been invited to contribute to a project to redesign an international online community, and that has got me looking into different kinds of successful communities and how they got that way. Two conferences with an emphasis on community building just wrapped up in the US, and Common Craft posted a nice summary of the lessons learned. The social scientist in me was gratified at reading remarks like "community planning is a farce" (because communities take on a life of their own) and "don't start with the technology" (because you need to set your goals first). Read the rest of Common Craft's post here.

One of the conferences I mentioned was the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas. A few of the first resources to come out look interesting. One is Mukund Mohan's ten step checklist for starting your community. Among the suggestions are (2) understand why you want to have a community: is it a platform for your ideas, or for members to share among one another? (6) identify your influencers, the first few that will really help you get started. Click here to see the Community 2.0 conference blog that has several more participant contributions and links.

The other conference I referred to was the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. It appears that a lot of the presentations will eventually end up on line, so I'll keep an eye on it. I was particularly interested in a blog post by Kathy Sierra reflecting on the keynote speech she gave at SXSW. On her blog she points out the irony that, even with all the technology that enables us to meet, chat, video conference and share online, we still want to go to conferences and meet up face to face.

Communication technology can make it easier to move large amounts of information around, but it's still not the best way to help people connect emotionally, to inspire, and to create a feeling of belonging together. After reading the links about building online communities, I suggest you read Kathy's post here which includes a list of suggestions for building some face-to-face time into your online community.

To put this in the context of education and learning, I'd say there's definitely a place for classroom blogs, podcasts, video conferences, and anything else that will broaden the opportunities for students to interact with others far beyond the school walls, but there's no replacement for an inspiring, challenging teacher at your side.

My part of the world is not flat

I'm bemused sometimes by edubloggers in the western world who feel like they are up against immovable resistance to their efforts to integrate technology in their facilitation of student-centered learning. A scan of the news today prompted me to share some short stories from our local front to put things in a different perspective. But first, I'd like to mention something that I first wrote here nearly a year ago:

I’ve been to lots of places in the world, and have yet to find a country, a city, or even a mountain village in Guatemala that was not simultaneously global and local, and simultaneously jihadist (reactionist) and McWorldly (assimilationist). Somebody ought to just ban dichotomies outright so we can try looking at reality instead of black and white caricatures of it.

The same goes for where I am now, in the midst of people who crave change as well as those who worry about what they could lose if things change any more. The following stories are just some examples of the reality we work in, and should not be taken as blanket generalizations.

Foreign language education "unconsitutional"

The Turkish newspaper Radikal reports that Prof. Şükrü Akalın, President of the Turkish Language Institute (if I am permitted to translate that organization's name into English) advised the Turkish Parliament's Turkish Language Research Commission that education in foreign languages is contrary to the constitution and detrimental to the fabric of Turkish society. Currently thirteen universities in Turkey deliver some or all of their degree programs in other languages, as well as numerous K-12 schools around the country, in particular schools that offer the International Baccalaureate.

Prof. Akalın added that Turkish entries in the Eurovision Song Contest should not be performed in English, but that ship has already sailed since Turkey won the competition in 2003 with an English language song.

The YouTube Wars

Prof. Akalın was probably pleased last week when, for a few days at least, we lost our access to that Eurovision winning song. In response to a satirical video that was offensive to the memory of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, a Turkish court shut down any access to YouTube.com. The offending video was uploaded supposedly by Greeks wanting to antagonize their neighbors, and it prompted a war of offensive and counter offensive videos and endless (and pointless) comments.  It is against the law here to insult Atatürk, but since the offenders were "out there" somewhere beyond prosecution on the Internet, punishment was levied on Turkish Internet users instead.

The story is even sadder as I remember attending a conference in Athens last fall with several Turkish colleagues, and we were pleasantly surprised at the warmth of so many Greeks, including several who spoke with us in Turkish.

Some children long for a boring day at school

Another recent Radikal story focuses on two of the 170 million child farmworkers worldwide. Fatma, age 12, and her big brother Nevzat  work eight months a year migrating from one region of Turkey to another, working in tobacco, cotton, hazelnut, tea, and sugar beets. Fatma explained to the reporter that she'd like to stay in school and realize her dream of becoming a doctor, but her family desperately needs the money that she and her siblings can earn. During her breaks she reads in the shade of a tractor, and hopes to make it back home to sit in class before school ends for the summer and the family leaves again to work in the cotton fields.

The more things change...

Without putting guilt on anyone, I just wanted to share today how the world isn't always flat, and that there can be dramatic differences from one place to another. Yet in spite of those differences we can have the feeling of "I've seen this before" as we see different outcomes of basic human nature in the face of hope and fear. How we act on our hopes and fears has everything to do with the way we educate --or withhold education from-- our children.

A different kind of multitasking

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

-- Alvin Toffler, post-industrial futurologist.

Can we 'unlearn'?

A recent post by Will Richardson on The Steep "Unlearning Curve"  suggests ten things that we need to unlearn as we adapt classrooms and education to global changes. Here are a few items from his manifesto:

• We need to unlearn the premise that we know more than our kids, because in may cases, they can now be our teachers as well.
• We need to unlearn the idea that learning itself is an event. In this day and age, it is a continual process.
• We need to unlearn the notion that our students don't need to see and understand how we ourselves learn.

I've used the word "unlearning" myself, often when suggesting the very same changes as Will. After reading some of the excellent comments on Will's blog I might agree that this is perhaps not the best word for what we want to say. I was gratified that one of the comment writers in fact reminded Will of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society, a favorite author of mine, and that might actually enlighten us here.

We sometimes use negative words (unlearn, deschool, deconstruct) in the context of a process that seeks a positive outcome: recognizing where we have learned (and taught?) the wrong thing, and finding new words, thoughts and actions that correct the wrong and move us forward.

Will (and many of his commenters) are basically saying, "This is what's wrong with schooling" but with words that also carry the seeds of the solution. When talking about our spirituality we often use words like "reflect," "repent" and "reconcile" to say that we were on the wrong track, and we want to change. In both cases, this process requires self awareness, humility, and a recognition of our responsibility to ourselves and those around us as we seek what Illich calls conviviality.

Maybe that's not such a new idea, but it's the hard ideas that bear repeating.  Thanks Will.

(By the way, Will is author of an excellent book I just got and have started sharing among our teachers.)

Did you know...

Most of us know in a general sort of way that in a few years today's students will enter a work force that is very different from the one we know now. Most of us also agree that, to  better prepare these students, we need to do some (or many?) things differently. I just watched a video that might help the next time you are arguing advocating for change with parents or a member of the board.

The video Did you know created by Karl Fisch gives some statistics that can remind you to think harder about what we’re teaching and why. Here’s just one quote to give you an idea:

According to former US Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

Far more than Physics or Literature or Mathematics (although these are important), and way more than blogging, PowerPoint, smart boards and teleconferencing (although these are also important), our students need to learn from us how to learn. Go ahead and assign scribes to  create classroom wikis and podcast your asynchronous debates, but make sure they learn how to learn. Teach them to create knowledge and to communicate it effectively. Let them watch you as you keep learning.

Scott McLeod has reproduced the Did you know video into several different formats for you to  download. Click here for a list.  Click here to see the video on YouTube.

25 June 2007 update: Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod have released a new version of the video to correct some errors and respond to critiques like the comment here. I have updated the links in the post.