#UWinDig

I had the opportunity to read the article Teaching in a Participatory Digital World by Dr. Michele Jacobsen, and to listen to Henry Jenkins talk about, in a short video, the potential that communities have when they participate in digital collaborations to change their students’ experiences in education.  Some things that really stood out about the article to me was that educators have no idea how to navigate the digital world or use social media platforms.  It’s scary to me to know that students aren’t being taught how to properly and safely use anything in the online world.  I know it is unrealistic to expect every teacher to start being active online, but I can hope for maybe one day.   One thing that left me totally flabbergasted was that every student in my high school placement owned and used phones religiously, considering that during my placement I had multiple occasions when I had to ask kids to put their phones away.

Before reading this article, and even before this digital technology course, my views on social media or the online world were very skewed in one direction.  I am a very old fashioned person, where I never wanted to be online because I thought it was pointless.  I need face-to-face conversations and meaningful, personal relationships to thrive in this world, which social media could not offer me and thus I deemed it incompatible with my life.  My ideas about social media have all changed since the start of this course, and after reading this article, to a more reasonable understanding.  Digital tools are available to us as educators to help us increase our productivity when it comes to teaching students and to assist students in their learning process, not as a hindrance.

In the article, Dr. Jacobsen talked about how the greatest benefit to online social learning is student interaction. Social learning is the basis of learning content through conversations about problems.  One of my teachers had a saying where if a student didn’t know an answer, first ask each other, then the internet and then ask him.  Of course, there is a time and place where the teacher needs to lead the discussion about a topic, but in doing this strategy we were forced to learn from one another or learn how to find information online.  I think this teaching strategy would have been way more effective if there was a place online that we could, as students, collaborate our ideas to come up with solutions, or if the teacher showed us techniques on finding information online.

As I was trying to figure out how I was going to present my thoughts on the key ideas from this article and video, I was wanting to try a twitter essay.  However, as I was explaining the article to one of my friends, I realized that I had way too much to say about it so the character cap on Twitter wasn’t for me.  Thus, I made a podcast/rant about many topics the article talked about.  I struggled so much making this video though because I had so much to say.  It took six attempts to make sure it was a reasonable length so as not to lose the attention of whoever watched it. I think my first video ended up being over 20 minutes long and I didn’t even realize it!  If you notice, I am not in this video simply because I am not interesting enough to look at while I talk, so I came up with a quick solution.  Everyone loves to watch a fire, hence the yule log every year during Christmas season, even I enjoyed watching the fire while I spoke.  Sit back, grab a blanket and hot chocolate, and enjoy my soothing voice over a hot fire.

PS.  There is a bonus video (labeled bonus video) that I didn’t want to include in the main video.  It contains a cool idea that some of you may like on how we can make a more unique online society for students.

Main Video:  Learning in a Digital World

Bonus Video!

After listening to the podcast Questioning Learning from Hybrid Pedagogy, so many answers to questions about education throughout my life started to pop into my head, it was an epidemic of epiphanies.  Before I share some of those questions, and some answers to them, let me first tell you about this podcast that cleared up the kerfuffles in my mind.  For starters, the woman of the hour, Amy Collier, was interviewed by Chris Friend about many exciting and interesting topics including learnification, “not-yetness”, learning outcomes and many more crucial topics about our education system.  Amy started to talk about what learning outcomes are in the education system today compared to what she thought they can evolve into.  Outcomes nowadays try to measure our “understanding” of academics by making us spew our memorized knowledge about something onto a piece of paper, then getting judged on how much “stuff” we regurgitate.  If the tone isn’t clear enough, I’m not a huge fan of this type of learning outcome.  However, Amy talked about a new way to think about understanding and learning outcomes by asking questions like ” What would cause me to be amazed at what my students can do?”  This is where outcomes can become more inspirational and creative.

Going back to my own education, I have suffered too long under boring and monotonous teachers that don’t challenge the students understanding.  Where the class structure is always the same – lecture, homework, lecture homework.  In my own experience, this destroys the ability to create an innovative classroom environment where students ask the questions  “why does that happen?” and “Is there another way?”  I know many others have been through the same gauntlet and I hope that one day, me and other educators, can change how students are taught.

When trying to come up with a visual to portray my thoughts, I had some serious issues.  I didn’t know how to use any artsy program online and there was no way I was going to draw, at least something remotely recognizable.  That’s when I came across a huge box full of stickers, markers, paper, and any other type of scrap booking essential in my house that I had no idea I owned (thanks to my wife).  Thus, started my adventure through arts and crafts heaven.  Et Voila! Perfection!