Dealing with Technology and Education

I've been very quiet with this blog in the last few months. I've been very busy between school work, BEd program, MEd program, family and others. However, there's always time for dealing with technology and education. I'm still working on designing a suitable questionnaire to be used with high school students and first-year college students based on their technology use and how that might have changed their learning strategies and academic performance, any help is well appreciated. Indeed, I commented this with Silvia Tolisano, and she suggested that I should request help via twitter and my PLN. It's a great idea, because I might be able to have students from other countries take my standardized learning styles test and my technology insertion questionnaire.
One of the things that keeps me alive in education and technology, is the firm belief that the future is our present and dealing with new generations and even harder, educating them to solve yet unknown problems in globalized environments is very difficult. But nothing is impossible, especially when creativity kicks in.
My education and creativity guru is Sir Ken Robinson. I saw his RSA Award receiving speech video about a month ago, it's a short animated video (little over 11 minutes). The animation significantly enhances the already remarkable message about Changing the Education Paradigms.
There's nothing more important than keeping fresh in our minds, why and how we are educating people.
Take a look at the animated and original videos:

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms


Original Receiving Speech


In his last book, Sir Ken Robinson writes about The Element, which is the inspirational and creative passion that makes us what we are, or what we would like to be. I recommend you to read it, you'll certainly enjoy the life experiences depicted there.

People and Devices: Online 24/7

Every single day, 350+ million users access Facebook, a slightly less number of users communicate by 140-character messages via Twitter, and others exchange info, feelings and messages via hi5, MySpace, MSN Messenger, etc.

It is easy to understand the explosion in Social Media in the last few years, Communication is innate and inherent to humans, and language is its highest expression, and humans have perfected it.

I started on Twitter last year, and ever since I’ve tweeted over a thousand times, and for sure I’ve read over 100,000 tweets already. Growing in Social Media is as exponential as bacterial growth, unstoppable.

Demographics depend on the type of Social Media you are inquiring about, but in general terms most internet users have experienced it in one way or another.

However, one thing is certain, kids love social media, and they are the fastest growing demographic group showing presence in these websites. So, how does that translate into something to be used in education?

Well, it is necessary to be able to get into Social Media as well, as teachers and administrators, we must be facilitators (unintended rhyme) and not scared away from it, and less of all…forbid it.

Digital Natives are anew generation, and as much as we want to categorize them as ADD or ADHD kids, they are multitaskers. I’m sure there will be a significant change in appreciation in the still valid idea that women are true and efficient multi-taskers, and men aren’t. In the near future, kids and teens will have to be occupying that perception.

How’s the behavior of our kids’ and teens’ right now? We can certainly verify it by watching this video and identifying our son, daughter, niece or nephew:

M(2) Video

The report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, indicates numbers that are completely true. Usage of media has increased to 10 hours and 29 minutes in 2009, discounting the multi-tasking time (29%) we reach to 7 hours and 38 minutes a day.

So, kids are “working” a whole shift in total media (Tv, internet, music, games, etc.) Wouldn’t it be productive for teachers to insert knowledge acquisition and learning enhancement activities in such shift?

What does that indicate? We have to adapt! Adaptation is a human characteristic, and one that we need to use a lot in this case.

How will be the Web of Tomorrow? Simple answers: more portable, smaller, easier to use, ubiquitous, and easier to integrate to any of our daily devices and appliances.

I always go back to Sir Ken Robinson and his TED conference when dealing with questions about Education, and this time is not the exception. Creativity in Education is something we must constantly go back to as a reference point, but also as a stimulus for learners and teachers.

2010…Resolute

2010 is a year of hopes, more than the current one. I don’t remember most of my expectations this same day a year before, I’m sure they were important but I just can’t remember them. The only one I remember is that I wanted to go back to university, as a student.

On March, I started a BEd and an MEd, both programs separately in the same university, URP in Lima, Peru. I had started the same MEd a in 2008, but for personal reasons it remained inconclusive. I had had a taste of it and I wanted it back. I did my best even though I thought it wasn’t going to be possible to carry on both programs, 50+ hours of work a week, a wife and two kids.

I guess I was lucky and fortunate at the same time. My family has been a tremendous incentive in my new educational stage. My two kids know when I’ll get home late, and they come to the lab and visit me during their recess time, I work at the school where they study. that gave me a different connection, something that didn’t happen before. We talk about the university classes, and I included them in one of my last presentations when i prepared a video of a moment of creativity.

One of them is more into the plastic arts, the other is more into high tech. He downloads games, and chats since he was 5. He handles electronic devices by intuition and my wife requires his assistance to change the ring tone of her cell phone. Does that sound familiar? Digital Native vs Digital immigrant?

We were planning to go camping for 4 days to celebrate the new year, but my friend (the organizer) had to be taken to the ER due to intense chest pain. He was diagnosed with Angina Pectoris, a sign that you might get a heart attack (Click here to see an animation). I saw him yesterday after staying overnight in the ER. He has to take it slow, and so do I. Apart from the fact that the camping with the kids had to be rearranged, it made me think very seriously about myself.

I’ll turn 35 by the end of February, I’ve had that number in my mind for quite some time. That is the mark where I was supposed to start living a serious and organized healthy lifestyle. I guess I’ll have to stick to that deadline, because I don’t want the dead line.

For the rest, I’m very compromised to finish university and pursue a new turn in my career, and the events for the coming year will tell in what direction that turn will be.

Happy New 2010!

Creativity

I've been working in education all my life, and I didn't notice it until I became a teacher. A few months ago, I heard something that gave me professional peace, I felt selfish until that moment, benefiting from educating others while I was learning in the process. "Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track", is the title of a book written by Russell Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg, I haven't read the book yet, but I listened to a synopsis via podcast. The book is in my wish list in Amazon, so the next relative coming from the US will bring me a copy of it.
What I rescue more of it is the motto: "The Objective of Education is Learning, not Teaching". no I don't feel as selfish for learning as much, or more, than my own students through my process of teaching.

Open publication - Free publishing - More teaching

I've been preparing a lecture on creativity and Joy Paul Guilford's work on the Structure of Intellect and his 3 layered cube, and while preparing it, I've learned a great deal of expertise, creativity is incredible and so magnificent that we must turn to mother nature before we can do something creative.
I found a countless number of extraordinary TED talks about Creativity, here are some of the few ones that made me feel that I want to create something:

Interactive Classrooms

I finished my lecture about Interactive Classrooms and that made me think a lot. How much has my teaching style changed in the last 12 months?
A year ago, I recall using the SMART Board only. But that took me to the Web 2.0 world. From there on it was all a snowball reaction: bloglines, gmail, delicious, reader, blogger, wikispaces, twitter, tweetdeck, etc, etc.
My students are far more technologically driven and demanding than 12 months ago. However, there is something that Sir Ken Robinson said in a 2006 TED conference, "Are schools killing creativity?". Believe me, I fight with that thought everytime I start a class. My hope is to engage students in dialogue, interactive and collaborative work, with somebody next to them, or a continent away. Distances are no longer an impediment. Is our personal creativity and effort as educators our sword against the killing of creativity?