I will be leaving on for a trip to Europe that will start off in London, and include meetings with Cambridge University Press in Cambridge and then finish off with meetings with Alcatel Lucent’s Bell Labs in Paris. There should be an opportunity to take in the final day of the HandHeld Learning conference in London — more specifically take in the presentation by my collegues George Saltsman and Scott Perkins and the final keynote address by Ray Kurzweil.
Despite the high degree of cellular access in Europe free WiFi isn’t as available so my posts may be intermitent and totally dependent on my access.
Jason Hiner of Tech Republic’s Tech Sanity Check pulls together a wonderful history of links on the speculation over the Apple Tablet. Are we any closer to an Apple Tablet. Was a rumored mass purchase of 10 inch touch screens just that, a rumor, or will we see an Apple Tablet release perhaps in the new year? I won’t speculate but simply point to Hiners article and give you the option to make your own decision.
It is very unfortunate that Harriet L. Schwartz’s, assistant professor of professional leadership at Carlow University, post in the Chronicle of Higher Education is only accessible through a paid subscription because she makes a very well reasoned argument for using facebook in the learning environment. Its where your learners are–and most everyone else.
When my 60 something sister, my wifes 70 something parents and all just about everyone else I know is “friending” me in Facebook I guess I too will have to move from being a passive intermittent user of Facebook and meeting my social network where they are at.
Reminder to self — do not renew Chronicle of Higher Education subscription–this content should be free.
The most significant problem with education today is the problem of significance itself. Students – our most important critics – are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education.
Wesch argues that the way to judge what is significant in a classroom is to look to the questions that students are asking. For example, if the following type of questions are being asked:
What do we need to know for the test?
How long does this paper need to be?
Is attendance mandatory?
then it should be clear that assessment and not learning is what is significant. In contrast to these questions Wesch suggests that good or even great questions are those that force students to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions and see their own underlying biases–but we seldom get these types of questions.
Significance isn’t just a problem with students but with the educators and with the system as a whole. The statement “some students are just not cut out for school” is an often-heard lament that reflects just how out of touch with our learners our system is. If you exchange the term “learning” for “school” you get the statement, “some students are just not cut out for learning” which is clearly wrong. Wesch states that learning is the hallmark of humanity and it is learning is part of what makes us human.
Wesch points to anti-teaching and the grand narrative of saving the earth as just two ways that significance can be brought back into learning–but to fully understand these points a good read of the article is required.
Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University is best known for his poignant YouTube videos Web 2.0 The Machine Us/ing Us and more recently A Vision of Students Today. His EDUCAUSE keynote presentation, Human Futures for Technology and Education provides a deeper explanation of the videos and also identifies the key to his message. In this presentation Wesch explains how he and his students came to create the video of A Vision of Students Today and how he views significance as one of the major problems we face in Education today. Wesch makes the argument that what is significant for students not what is significant in the average college classroom.
The way to judge what is significant in a classroom is to look to the questions that students are asking. For example, if the following type of questions are being asked:
Will this be on the exam?
How many pages do I need to write?
Should we write this down?
then it should be clear that assessment and not learning is what is significant.
In the Vision video Wesch’s students ask the question: If these walls could talk would they say? In response to this question Wesch argues that the message the walls (educators) are sending is:
To learn is to ACQUIRE information
Information is scarce and hard to find
Trust authority for good information
Authorized information is beyond discussion
Obey Authority
Follow along
What these wall DO NOT say, but should is:
To learn is to Discuss, Challenge, Critique, and Create information
Wesch argues that to learn is to create significance–one creates significance through meaningful connections. The fundamental question that Wesch challenges us to answer is:
How can we create students who can create meaningful connections?
He points to anthropological truisms: There is no connection without meaning and there is no meaning without connection to support his position.
Rather than just offer a critique of our current system Wesch offers the following suggestions for creating significance:
Find a grand narrative to provide relevance and context for learning (addresses semantic meaning)
Create a learning environment that values and leverages the learners themselves (addresses personal meaning)
Do both in a way that realizes and leverages the existing media environment (and therefore allows students to realize and leverage the existing media environment).
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