Just watched CBC Documentary Are We Digital Dummies? and have downloaded (to Kobo app on new iPhone) Nicholas Carr's What the Internet is doing to our Brains: The Shallows, finalist for the General Non-fiction Category of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Why? In one segment of the documentary, viewers are challenged to count how many times the white team passes the ball. There was a point where I lost track. The ball seemed to move to a "white" player behind the "black" player. Fixed as I was on the ball and the count, it was only when the narrator reviewed the action that I realized that my tricky brain had missed completely what had really happened. What my brain had blocked out, what a complex system the brain is, what just might be reason to interrogate accepted thinking about concepts like multi-tasking -- well, sometimes you need these AHA! moments to remember that, as we wade into new new areas with technology, we do need to be taking reality checks and depth soundings as we advance.
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Interrogating Teaching with Technology: Contexts & Concepts
Just watched CBC Documentary Are We Digital Dummies? and have downloaded (to Kobo app on new iPhone) Nicholas Carr's What the Internet is doing to our Brains: The Shallows, finalist for the General Non-fiction Category of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Why? In one segment of the documentary, viewers are challenged to count how many times the white team passes the ball. There was a point where I lost track. The ball seemed to move to a "white" player behind the "black" player. Fixed as I was on the ball and the count, it was only when the narrator reviewed the action that I realized that my tricky brain had missed completely what had really happened. What my brain had blocked out, what a complex system the brain is, what just might be reason to interrogate accepted thinking about concepts like multi-tasking -- well, sometimes you need these AHA! moments to remember that, as we wade into new new areas with technology, we do need to be taking reality checks and depth soundings as we advance.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Digital Learning and the Digital Library Page
Have you seen the new look of our Webcat? How about the Digital Library (click on tab on Webcat page)? See also on Digital Library page: Video tab (includes image banks) as well as Recommended Links and Teachers' Professional pages. Nice work, our Maryann. Thanks. We are really looking forwarding the picking up the virtual circulation this year ... but it would be precipitous of me to release any news yet of heightened expectations for a new foregrounded district location for these invaluable learning resources. Sssshhh!
While here in the Digital Library, you may notice three new features: Scholastic's Bookflix (a literacy resource, it pairs fiction video storybooks with non-fiction e-books, and it's interactive), Passport to the Internet (an internet literacy tutorial for grades 4 to 8), and Gale's fantastic new Global Issues in Context (upper intermediate to senior, it looks at global, social, environmental, and other issues from multiple perspectives: includes a truly global title list as well as such recognizable titles as CBC, Globe & Mail, Maclean's, Toronto Star, and Time Canada; Newsweek International, The Economist, USA Today, NY Times, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times; PC Mag and PC World, as well as Wired; and my favourite, New Internationalist).
Our colleagues and students are going to get access to these amazing resources. Plan to take these to the first PAC meeting of the year. Ask to be put onto the next staff meeting and/or Pro D day agendas? We are anticipating seeing greatly improved stats for usage, and I have no doubt Vancouver is one of the top districts for usage as it is. Way to go, colleagues.
While I am on the topic, thought you might like to poke around in Aaron Mueller's Master's e-Portfolio (UBC, MET) entitled Digital Libraries and Information Literacies. He offers an introductory video that helps guide you into the structures. Thanks, Aaron, for this inspirational look at your vision for Digital Library, VLN style, and congratulations on finishing that degree.
And why not introduce your teachers and students to Twiducate for social networking to enhance communication in learning. Another Michele recommendation! Do we need to do TL Studio / Digitally Yours this year at a school? Maybe we could "twiducate" ourselves, Michele convening! Just kidding ...
Have you seen the new look of our Webcat? How about the Digital Library (click on tab on Webcat page)? See also on Digital Library page: Video tab (includes image banks) as well as Recommended Links and Teachers' Professional pages. Nice work, our Maryann. Thanks. We are really looking forwarding the picking up the virtual circulation this year ... but it would be precipitous of me to release any news yet of heightened expectations for a new foregrounded district location for these invaluable learning resources. Sssshhh!
While here in the Digital Library, you may notice three new features: Scholastic's Bookflix (a literacy resource, it pairs fiction video storybooks with non-fiction e-books, and it's interactive), Passport to the Internet (an internet literacy tutorial for grades 4 to 8), and Gale's fantastic new Global Issues in Context (upper intermediate to senior, it looks at global, social, environmental, and other issues from multiple perspectives: includes a truly global title list as well as such recognizable titles as CBC, Globe & Mail, Maclean's, Toronto Star, and Time Canada; Newsweek International, The Economist, USA Today, NY Times, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times; PC Mag and PC World, as well as Wired; and my favourite, New Internationalist).
Our colleagues and students are going to get access to these amazing resources. Plan to take these to the first PAC meeting of the year. Ask to be put onto the next staff meeting and/or Pro D day agendas? We are anticipating seeing greatly improved stats for usage, and I have no doubt Vancouver is one of the top districts for usage as it is. Way to go, colleagues.
While I am on the topic, thought you might like to poke around in Aaron Mueller's Master's e-Portfolio (UBC, MET) entitled Digital Libraries and Information Literacies. He offers an introductory video that helps guide you into the structures. Thanks, Aaron, for this inspirational look at your vision for Digital Library, VLN style, and congratulations on finishing that degree.
And why not introduce your teachers and students to Twiducate for social networking to enhance communication in learning. Another Michele recommendation! Do we need to do TL Studio / Digitally Yours this year at a school? Maybe we could "twiducate" ourselves, Michele convening! Just kidding ...
Monday, December 10, 2007
More on Jamie McKenzie
I did want to highlight for you the item in the blog below about being invited to go to Nootka to talk with Dr Jamie McKenzie, the former superintendent of Bellingham, now retired and working as a global consultant on technology and learning. His work underpinned a lot of what we were doing in the two-year district technology planning process for the 2006 Tech Plan. He works with several school districts here in BC which is why he was passing through Vancouver. All of our ICT Task Force committee members were familiar with his work.
Nootka VP Andrea had made an independent connection with McKenzie through her search for ways to enhance the school's capacity to build strong technological foundations for teaching and learning and her own course work, so he had asked if he could drop by as he was in the area. I was lucky enough to be invited by TL GS who is taking technology workshops I have been offering.
Nootka's Thrive program students made a lovely presentation -- twice, in fact, because I came in later, where they demonstrated and discussed online tools and programs that work well for learning. These students amply demonstrate that learning abilities are enhanced and activated by technology. Funding from outside sources also enables this group's learning. Amazing stuff, and McKenzie was the first to say so. Here's their webpage: http://nootka.vsb.bc.ca/thrive.
As we consider the future directions for building for technology in Vancouver schools, I would love to find ways to have more input from McKenzie, and he has an engaging presence too. It would be great to find a context to connect more formally with him ... as you can imagine from my position as disciple, McKenzie is also a very big supporter of the notion of school libraries as "hubs" for learning and TLs as support for technology integration in schools. McKenzie is a name that my merely mentioning brought on paroxysms of TL envy!
One interesting aspect of the discussions was on the recent trend amongst those who promote technology, a trend which casts students as "digital natives," by virtue of their having been born into the tech-rich world, and many educators and adults in general as the "digital immigrants." He has no time for this notion. Students may navigate with ease but they lack the capacity, without the guidance of educators, to apply the skills and understandings of the many literacies -- visual, critical, media, cultural, even traditional, to begin the multiliteracies list -- and need to have ongoing support for their learning. Anyone can learn technology -- but with the right support and investment in their learning, it becomes a tool for thinking, constructing knowledge, working collaboratively and more globally, and creating meaningful products.
Not one to mince words, he writes:
Those leading the digital surge are quick to exile older folks to a dust bin of irrelevancy simply because they were born before the iPod. Their point of view is harsh and ill informed. Their stance is unsubstantiated by evidence and is little more than digital delusion. They are guilty of "arcade scholarship" - analysis that is superficial and cartoonish.
This recent (Nov 2007) article in its entirety can be found here: http://www.fno.org/nov07/cov.html
Nootka VP Andrea had made an independent connection with McKenzie through her search for ways to enhance the school's capacity to build strong technological foundations for teaching and learning and her own course work, so he had asked if he could drop by as he was in the area. I was lucky enough to be invited by TL GS who is taking technology workshops I have been offering.
Nootka's Thrive program students made a lovely presentation -- twice, in fact, because I came in later, where they demonstrated and discussed online tools and programs that work well for learning. These students amply demonstrate that learning abilities are enhanced and activated by technology. Funding from outside sources also enables this group's learning. Amazing stuff, and McKenzie was the first to say so. Here's their webpage: http://nootka.vsb.bc.ca/thrive.
As we consider the future directions for building for technology in Vancouver schools, I would love to find ways to have more input from McKenzie, and he has an engaging presence too. It would be great to find a context to connect more formally with him ... as you can imagine from my position as disciple, McKenzie is also a very big supporter of the notion of school libraries as "hubs" for learning and TLs as support for technology integration in schools. McKenzie is a name that my merely mentioning brought on paroxysms of TL envy!
One interesting aspect of the discussions was on the recent trend amongst those who promote technology, a trend which casts students as "digital natives," by virtue of their having been born into the tech-rich world, and many educators and adults in general as the "digital immigrants." He has no time for this notion. Students may navigate with ease but they lack the capacity, without the guidance of educators, to apply the skills and understandings of the many literacies -- visual, critical, media, cultural, even traditional, to begin the multiliteracies list -- and need to have ongoing support for their learning. Anyone can learn technology -- but with the right support and investment in their learning, it becomes a tool for thinking, constructing knowledge, working collaboratively and more globally, and creating meaningful products.
Not one to mince words, he writes:
Those leading the digital surge are quick to exile older folks to a dust bin of irrelevancy simply because they were born before the iPod. Their point of view is harsh and ill informed. Their stance is unsubstantiated by evidence and is little more than digital delusion. They are guilty of "arcade scholarship" - analysis that is superficial and cartoonish.
This recent (Nov 2007) article in its entirety can be found here: http://www.fno.org/nov07/cov.html
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