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| Virtual typewriter I made in Second Life. When you click it, my blog is loaded into your browser. |
During the last week, I’ve been working with community college faculty, first at the North Carolina Community College Adult Education Association (NCCCAEA) conference and then for a consortium of community colleges who are using Blackboard. Both events were extremely rewarding to me, especially since my first two years of undergraduate study were at a community college in Dallas, North Carolina.
In yesterday’s workshop, approximately two-thirds of the 70 attendees are involved in distance learning. Virtually all of them use course management, specifically Blackboard. My job was to introduce them to Web 2.0 technologies, qualities of their younger students’ information experiences (video games, MySpace, etc.), and introduce them to Audacity for producing podcasts. It was my first time at using the Windows side of my new MacBook in a presentation and it performed flawlessly, actually holding on to some of the best Mac presentation features like zoom and Expose.
It was an especially receptive audience, with lots a VERY GOOD questions. Community college folks are especially challenged by the fact that they are teaching students right out of high school (many more of them as four-year colleges have gotten harder to get into), and also displaced workers in their forties and fifties who are entirely illiterate in terms of digital networked information. I didn’t ask, but I would suspect that they now offer remedial computer-operation and Internet classes as well as reading and math remediation. It would make sense that these technology classes be taught by someone in their fifties or sixties. I might think about that in a few years.
What really rocked their boats, however, was virtual learning environments. I introduced them to Second Life, we talked a bit about the virtual campus that Appalachian State University is using, and also some instructional applications, including business and ecosystem simulations. It was a very stimulating day for me, and many people said that their heads were spinning.
I have a question though. Is this a good thing, to spin people’s heads? I personally experience this sensation nearly every day, learning something that causes me to lose my balance — until I make sense of it. But how normal is this sensation for most people. Do they like it? Does it disturb them? Should I be careful?
What do you think?
Dave,
Good question. I think that’s why I’ve held off on Second Life – my head spins enough and it seems that it will take some time to really get into SL. Every day I am amazed how little I know. I think that’s the hardest part – the constant realization that there is so much more to learn and my knowledge is lacking in too many areas.
On another note, I recently taught adult education – Intro to Computers/Internet/word processing. It was MUCH more difficult to teach adult novices than kids. I found it exhausting – and that was a two hour class twice weekly for three weeks! So you may want to seriously consider teaching adults in their 50s and 60s. Do you have the energy and patience? I found that I did not….
David,
It depends what you mean by spin people’s heads. Are you talking about spinning like a roller coaster or spinning like a romantic ride on a ferris wheel? If you mean the first, I absolutely don’t think it is a good idea. People will become overwhelmed and get turned off. If you are talking about the second, gently pushing them past their current knowledge and thoughts but remaining well within their zone of proximal development, then I think it’s a great idea. Learning is meant to be fun and enjoyable. If it’s done right most people can easily learn to love learning.
When someone sends my head spinning with some new technology without anything to cling to, that is bad. But a new technology paired with some examples of how people use it gives me an anchor to cling to while experimenting with the new tool.
If by spinning their heads you mean giving them lots of new information then you need to also have the opportunity to do what Eric Jensen calls “thinking your way out.” In order for us to learn a concept adequately, we need lots and lots of information but then we need to think our way out by organizing the information in some way, connecting it to other information or creating something new from it. I think we get overwhelmed when we don’t have adequate time to process information before more comes at us.
We need to experience spins to know that we’re always learning, and remember what it means to learn something new. Nothing like a little frustration to help us be better teachers. When you spin things to educators with examples – then you provide just enough “velcro” to make those ideas stick.
Dave,
It’s funny that you ask that question, because I was just thinking about that exact same thing the other day. The conclusion that I came to…to save my own sanity, was that the tools are just tools. They are only effective in the hands of a master. But first, you need to me a master, or at least and apprentice.
I visited Colonial Williamsburg about three summers ago and sat for a 1/2 hour watching colonial carpenters finish several chairs in a dining room set. The use of the old tools fascinated me. They looked as good, if not better than the ones you would see from Norm Abrams “The New Yankee Workshop.”
The point being, regardless of the tools, the wood in the hands of a master will yield beautiful furniture or homes.
I think the analogy works with educators. Master teachers make beautiful connections every day with students. Building relationships, experiences, and activities that spark imagination. Master teachers create “thinking” students. They’ve been doing that for years, regardless of the technology.
Does that mean heads WON’T spin? Heck no! It just determines for how long and in which direction they spin.
And…I’m not their yet 🙂
Excellent question!
Spinning is good. It is up to the ‘spun’ to do something with it.
Adults often seem to fall into two distinct camps, those that want a single solution to their tech question and those who want all the options so they can figure it out on their own. The students I work with have fewer problems with the inherent changes in technology. They started on Facebook, moved to MySpace, then to Bebo and will undoubtedly move again.
Creativity is spinning. Education that is engaging has to have elements in it that make students uncomfortable at some point to push them, otherwise they’re just hearing what they already know.
David,
I just listened to a podcast from the Canadian public broadcaster on the ideas of Jerome Kagan (http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/calendar/2007/02_february.html -audio no longer available). He is a Harvard professor emeritus of psychology. He talks about the dance between our need to make sense of the world and our attraction to new things. In his studies of infant temperaments, he’s found that about 20% of the population are highly reactive to new stimuli and will find it highly disturbing. About 40% of the population find new stimuli to be pleasurable and want more. I would say people that come to your presentations are mostly in the 40%. Seeking out new ideas and wanting their heads to spin a bit.
Cheers,
Brian
Road Trip: Spinning the wheels of education, not the heads
I used to waste too much of my time as an ICT educator finding the latest and coolest web apps for my students to use in the classroom/home… I was still practicing our craft in the traditional sense. The teacher as expert – holder of the keys.
If we are to truly understand the true potential of technology, we need to recognize that it is not going to help us do old things in new ways, -but new things in new ways.
At our school we have created/creating communities of learning where teachers, students and parents are able to learn together. We are all discovering and sharing new ways to learn, collaborate, contribute and communicate. We are all teachers.
This shift not only takes pressure off the teacher, but provides ownership and meaningful engagement to the student; a handing over of the keys.
If students or fellow teachers find something useful, and have proven so with a practical application, then my head and those of others will not spin from confusion, but from imagination.
It doesn’t end in our school community either. Everybody is encouraged to join, create and contribute to social networks where they will reach and be reached by others. These themes vary widely from hobbies to travel, music, sporting idols… and yes, even academics.
The key point here is that education in the 21st Century is increasingly centering on the experiences gained in the journey and not the sights at the destination; ergo, skills-based vs.content-based curricula. We must shift if we are going to develop proactive citizens and not reactive ones. Unfortunately this might spin a few heads.
Paul McKenzie
I think it depends upon the head you are spinning. What spins my head, as the educational technology specialist at my school, is different from what spins my teachers’ heads. For many of my teachers, it takes much less to get them spinning.
I started on my Web 2.0 journey a year ago, most of them are just beginning. I have to remember not to get too far ahead of myself when I show them new things. Del.icio.us might be old news to me, something that rocked my world a year ago (and still does), but it is still new and exciting to most of my colleagues. I’m just getting into ning and haven’t even started to try Second Life (thoses still spin my head).
I guess my point is, yes spin away, but pay attention to the bodies attached to the heads you are spinning. You don’t want to spin people out of control. You might call it differentiated spinning.
-Elizabeth
Your question about whether it’s “a good thing, to spin people’s heads” reminds me of an excellent Young Adult book, “Enchantress from the Stars” by Sylvia Engdahl. A teenager stows away aboard her father’s space ship and interacts with people from a much more primitive civilization. She gives them a tantalizing glimpse of a world, possibilities, they will not experience in their lifetimes. As a Boomer, I feel that way sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of the 21st century technologies I may never fully understand. I’m glad I know that they exist, I’ll explore what I can, and I’ll encourage my students to go boldly into that future I can only imagine.