The future is already here

This year I decided that I wasn't going to work anymore in language schools (or frontisterio as they are called in Greek). It wasn't just the low wages or lack of job security that prompted the decision but also the fact that nothing seems to change.

Actually, that is a lie there has been lots of change but none of it forward. Responding to the growth in choice in exams students can take most schools have a curriculum that amounts to little more than doing old test papers for years on end. I just couldn't face doing that for another year as it would amount to undergoing a voluntary lobotomy.

Instead I decided that I would do just private lessons not simply because the pay is better and people treat you with more respect but also I can teach in a manner that recognises that we are in fact living in the 21st century and not recycling the 19th.

Today I will be teaching the difference between how much and how many in English and the various grammatical rules that these words represents. If I was doing that in a school this would probably mean wading through a chapter of turgid explanations that are dull and difficult for many to understand.

Afterwards, there would be the obligatory pages full of exercise designed to supposedly reinforce the alleged learning that had taken place. Of course, there are students that thrive on such an approach but they are a minority. The majority either find such explanations incomprehensible or mind numbingly boring.

The beauty of computer technology and especially the internet is that it allows us to vary our teaching approach and find alternatives that fit in with how they learn. A case in point would be teaching how much/how many.

One way would be to find a picture of a street, room, fridge etc and then use Flickr notes (click here to see a explanation) to label the image with the correct term. e.g How many apples are there in the fridge? and then get their partners to answer. The picture could then be used to teach the others in the class each person taking turns to use it to teach the rule to the rest of their group or class. Also it could be added to a class/personal blog as part of an electronic portfolio.


Alternatively, you could get students to video (using their cell phones) a classroom, road, home etc and them use Windows Movie Maker (which comes as standard with every copy of Windows) to make a presentation in which the students ask questions such as, how much snow can you see? etc.

See video below on how to use the programme.



As you can see there are just a few of the ways we can use computers and the internet as something more than a glorified course book and allow our students to learn in other ways which fit in with own style.

I've found that when students have access to the internet during a lesson teaching possibilities expand exponentially. Occasionally, this is not possible and I feel that I've gone back, something akin to being forced to use chalk and a slate.

The law of unintended consequences

I don't think I believe it either I don't think I could ever have conceived in my wildest dreams that a million people would want to see what started out as a simple, proof-of-concept project. Just over a year ago I came across Microsoft's Photostory 3 and decided to play around with this program that allows you to produce short movies using still pictures. Intrigued I made a few videos hoping to pick up skills that I could then use in class to help my students on their own projects.

Now I see that those videos have taken on a life of their own and more than a 1.000,000 people have viewed them.

Changing

I was in school today when I bumped into one of my old students. He told me that he'd set up his own blog and then went on to show me a whole bunch of interesting sites. How times have changed. Only a couple of years ago it was an uphill struggle to get my students interested in using the internet. Either they didn't have access or they considered it the sole preserves of computer geeks. In vain I tried to show them all the real cool things they could do.

Now, within a matter of months most of the students I tutor have acquired fast internet and are dying to find out how to use this wonderful tool. They ask about sites and applications, and are discovering a whole new world.

Blogging safely

It seems that there is a rapid development in the way the internet is being viewed here in Greece. Until quite recently, there didn't seem to be a day go by without some story in the media depicting the web as the devil's own sandpit, a byword for vice and iniquity. As a result parents were (are) loathed to let there children use it or even allow access at home. This stance wasn't helped either by the ridiculously high access fees that were charged until recently.

However, all this is changing and the TV is full of ads selling cheap, fast access. Indeed the internet is now being being heralded as the font of all wisdom and culture, absolutely vital for a modern life.

Of course, neither viewpoint expresses the reality on life online. Whilst having access is undeniably a plus for people learning, the old anxieties concerning the safety of younger users still remain. All the more reason then for young people and parents to be fully aware of possible dangers they face and ways to protect themselves against them. As I keep on reminding wary parents the internet is like traffic in the street; necessary but potentially dangerous, nevertheless. Similarly, just because cars and the like are a threat we don't simply lock up our kids till they reach say, 14. No, we teach them how to behave in such situations from a young age.

Click here to download a PDF with five tips by Childnet International on how young people can blog safely.

Thanks to MrsW for putting me onto this.

Making mistakes

One of the greatest street photographers has to be Garry Winogrand and I was lucky enough to come across a documentary about him at 2point8 (you've just got to love the internet for allowing us acdess to such material). In it he says;

"What I found out, over photographing a long time - the more I do, the more I do. When you’re younger, you can only conceive of trying a limited amount of things to work with. The more I work, the more subject matter I can begin to try to deal with. ____. The nature of the photographic process - it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent ____; nothing ventured nothing gained, I mean. Hopefully you’re risking failing every time you make a frame."

This just about sums up my philosophy as far as learning more about photography is concerned. Also his idea that learning is about failure resonates, especially when it come to learning a foreign language. We will fail, we will get it wrong most of the time, at least in the beginning but given the right environment we use this to get better. You go out, try your best, get it wrong and then turn up again the next day and at some point it all just flows.

Learning the ropes.

Learning the ropes., originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

Taken last Sunday. I like to think that Lydia is learning something that she likes to do. And this is what she took;

On learning

It struck me today that I've posting posting pictures on Flickr for just over a year. I went back to the ones I took this time last year and it is so strange to see what I was doing. Sometimes Flickr seems the equivalent of a visual diary. The strange thing is that the images I took then, or even a few weeks back, feel like they belong to a different era. An exaggeration I know but things have changed so quickly.

What started simply as a way of sharing family snap shots with my folks in England has evolved into an entirely different beast. I can see the learning curve that I have followed from simply pointing my modern day version of a box brownie and hoping for the best into something far more....sophisticated? Dare I use the word?

In learning so much about photography over the last year I can not help but draw parallel to my job as a teacher, that given the right incentive we can all digest huge amounts of information (in my case a 120 page Nikon manual written in jargonised Greek). Learning is built into our very fibre and yet so much of what we educators do seems to deaden this vital instinct.

Before

After

KIds blogging

This weeks installment of that ongoing saga that is Lydia's blog. Seriously though, I started her on blogging as a way of seeing if young learners could handle the technology and use it to provide anything meaningful. I feel that she has achieved both goals, with just a little help from her dad. On the other hand, I woke up a little late today and found her happily downloading games from Yahoo. She'd figured how to do that on her

Looking over the horizon

Photo by Johnny Blood

As well as thinking about cool activities we can do in our lessons it's good to look at the big picture, to think about how all this technology we are using is going to change educational fundamentals. Luckily, this week I happened to come across two examples of people who have done just that. I can't think of another era when such connections would have been possible, meaning that with the introduction of web 2.0 we have broken the constraints of geography in the same way the written word broke the bonds of time. No longer is it necessary to share a classroom, campus or era with those creating new, exciting ideas.



The first such example is this exemplary video by Michael Wesch, assistant professor of Cultural Anthroplology at the University of Kansas, on the way in which the foundations of knowledge are being reorganised by the internet. As well as being a tour de force of breathtaking ideas it is also visually stunning. By the way the music is by Deus and can be downloaded free from here.

The other is Steve Hargadon's interview with John Seely Brown on web 2.o and the culture of learning;

"I think that the amazing moment we have right now in time is to kind-of go back and rethink what Dewey really was about. I think we have to reinvent Dewey for the 21st century--finding a way to bring productive inquiry, bring the social basis of learning, bring the cognitive basis of learning all together. And I think now we can actually start to do that in a much more authentic way for kids at almost any age in a way that there's truly authentic things that these kids are doing that are being picked up by other kids and shared and built on and so on and so forth."

To hear the interview click here.

I'd like to thank The Thinking Stick, Cool Cat Teacher and Steve Hargadon for sharing these great ideas with us.