RJ Stangherlin

Keystone Technology Integrator and STAR Discovery Educator

This site is for Mrs. Stangherlin's classes at Salisbury High School.

Flat World

Just finished reviewing my blog notes from David Warlick’s Flat World, Flat Web, Flat Classrooms Webinar, and am still struck by the control issue that we as educators seem unable to relinquish if we intend to prepare our students for their unpredictable futures. Undeniably this statement does not pertain to all educators, just too many. We, and I include the emerging students teachers in this statement, are trained to be the disseminators of knowledge with our students as receivers--a very passive voice approach to knowledge. We lecture, they listen. Of course they have options to participate, but we are in control. We teach the way we learned, and because it was good for us, we assume it is good for them. We often are too busy to notice that the educational landscape has changed, and that we need to change with it. Our classrooms are far too often flat, while our students live in a round world. Take social networking, for example. Students understand, embrace, use, and pioneer social networking. They’re clickable; are we? What we need to consider is that we are no longer prepping our students for an agrarian, industrial, or informational job market. Globalism’s impact has changed our economy; should it not affect how we prepare our students to enter a changing world.

If Warlick is correct--and I believe he is--that we teach in an age of information saturation and instant access to facts, then our roles as educators (deliberately choosing educators v. teachers) needs revisiting. Will we not become managers of content, teaching our students to edit and evaluate. Should we not pursue authentic real-life learning with project-based experiences. Cannot students take control of their learning environment with structured choices. Why can’t we provide authentic assessments that show us what our student know, rather than what they do not know.

At a recent meeting, I mentioned my tenth grade students’ participation in an international videoconference. We were asked to create a memorable introduction for the keynote presenter, and memorable it was. Our subject was living history, a living hero. And the students loved the rush of preparing a multimedia introduction in way too short a time frame. They took control and went with the assignment, dividing into groups based on what they could do best: research, audio/video editing, script writing, recording. They selected their teams, and the lab was a buzz of on-task excitement.

Long story short: I was asked how this videoconference connected to curriculum. Having learned a long time ago to answer a question with a question, I asked them how it didn’t. What part of the PA Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening standards did we not address. For that matter, we certainly covered a slew of NETS benchmarks as well. Were we crossing curricula, working independently. Did we not have an authentic task with an audience of our international peers. Can you hear my smile right now....

And that, as I see it, is the real problem. Nothing wrong with being tied to curriculum; much wrong if we have not yet discovered different ways to deliver it, relevant ways for lifelong learning. Why are we reluctant to embrace emerging or out-there-in-your-face-been-there-done-it technology integration. This much I do know. Years ago when I jumped headlong into technology, I knew what I didn’t know about it, and that was significant. So I made a partnership with my students. I asked them if we could share what we know. I managed the content; my students taught me the technology applications. It’s just that easy. I asked them one day how would they design an assessment that could showcase what they learned. Could they design an authentic testing tool. You can guess the rest: it went digital.

In any good argument, with self or others, there’s that “ahaaa” moment we reach for, live for. My ahaaa--long, Southernesque “ahaaa,” where each letter becomes at least two more syllables--came when I realized who the real winners were-- --who could control their learning environment, make choices, present, and publish in three different places. Then, they were invited to collaborate with three high schools from the same videoconference to present at the Megaconference Jr. twelve-hour videoconference in February, 2007. Not bad for two class periods and two study halls.

Did You Know?

Definitely worth watching.

Karl Fisch’s Did You Know?

Karl Fisch’s What If

Karl Fisch’s 2020 Vision

Jennifer Dorman’s Adaptation [with permission of Karl Fisch] of Did You Know?

Definitely Worth Visiting.

The Fischbowl

A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything

Just finished an amazing webinar with Will Richardson on A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything.  Long story short: because the web is both read and write.  The write aspect of the web profoundly changes how we learn: in social networking communities.  Richardson’s thesis is simple: today’s students are digital natives who create their own learning environments where they make global connections.  What, as educators, Richardson says we need to come to terms with is the issue of control.  Students are engaged in connectivism: building and maintaining social networks where connections hold as much [or possibly more] relevance than content.  Digital natives build communities of independent learners, unlike the way most educational systems work: on dependence [of students’ learning to teachers’ knowledge].  Richardson suggests that whether we like it or not, the web has made learning transparent, and teachers need to move forward as connectors of information inside this educational mindset. 

Perhaps, for those of you who may not have participated in a webinar, I should give you a figurative screenshot.  Think of a webinar as a videoconference without the video.  What you see is a screen that the presenter controls [content] with audio via teleconferenciog.  But that’s only the beginning.  The sidebar discussion [imagine a chat room smaller screen insert] is often as exciting as the presentation, and just as lively.  Then picture many of the participants also Skyping [yet a second chat room, but separate from the webinar host].  Let’s count: webinar, sidebar, Skyping.  Add to that taking notes and blogging.  About this point you are losing your Digital Immigrant status.  And to this most students would add texting with cell phones, working on facebook, myspace, or fanfiction, and editing their wikispace.  Definitely Digital Natives.  This is our community.  This is how they learn, or would, if we let them. 

Richardson believes that within the next five years, the face of education will change exponentially.  We seem to have choices: move with it or be moved by it.  I think of our group as change agents, working collaboratively to provide the best possible education for our students.  With that in mind, here’s Will Richardson’s webinar wiki:

A Changing World

Some statistics.
*1 billion people on the Internet
*China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world.
*China has more honors students than we have students.
*Name this country
*“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today.”—Richard Riley, (Former US Sec. of Ed.)
*57 million blogs, 1.7 million posts a day.
*We can all be community journalists.
*Millionaires in virtutal worlds.
*Mark Zuckerberg, the soon to be teenage billionaire
*The problem is not change...we’ve always had change. The problem is the speed of change, and that change is cultural now. Because of that it feels like our kids are leading the way with technology

Many more questions than answers.

The Web is Changing How We Learn

*Learning is not about acquiring knowledge as much as it is about building networks. (Articulated by George Siemens.)
*We are at times teachers and at times learners. Our roles shift with each interaction.
*My blog, Weblogg-ed is an example of network creation. It’s where my most powerful learning has taken place. Here are a couple of examples: “Dear Kids, You Don’t Have to Go to College” and “Owning the Teaching...and the Learning.”
*The power of being “clickable” is that teachers can find you. (Google search)
*My good fortune is that I have potential teachers visiting from around the world.
*Our kids are already creating their own networks. Fan Fiction is one site where “affinity groups” meet.
*And like it or not, MySpace is another example of kids creating their own networks.
*But so are student role models, (Meg Cabot)

*Millions and millions of people are participating in the new social networking services. (Wikipedia)
*But we can help our kids to start creating their own networks as well and work with people around the world. (Nata Village)
*Wikiville (John Bidder) is another example. And Skype is a tool that we can use to maintain our networks.

*And networking doesn’t just have to happen through text. (ClipBandits)
*We can also build networks in virtual worlds. (Second Life)

The Web is Changing our Assumptions About Knowledge, Information and Literacy

*It’s not as much about content anymore as much as it is about context. Knowledge and information used to be scarce...that’s what our was built upon
*But today, I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere providing I have access. Knowledge is no longer scarce. (MIT)

*And we tend to look at knowledge as hard or unchanging...but these days, knowledge is soft. It’s constantly changing. (Wikipedia)
*In this world, we cannot only seek information, but information seeks us. (Pageflakes)
*But in a world where anyone can create and publish information, how do we know what to trust? (Dove Beauty)

*How do we teach our students (and ourselves) to make sense of a much more complex literacy regarding who to trust as authoritative sources. When we can be manipulated or be the manipulator.
*We can no longer be “just” readers...we must be editors as well.

*And reading is no longer a passive, linear activity that deals simply with text. How do we read multimedia and hypertext? (A Tank of Gas)
*In this world, we must read with an ear for writing and responding, engaging and interacting.

The Web is Changing our Assumptions about Classrooms and Teaching

*If teachers are no longer the arbiters of knowledge in the classroom, our roles need to change.
*Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can find other teachers who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)

*We can also connect our students to other students around the world so they can learn together. (Flat Classrooms Wiki)
*And in a world where all of our students can be content producers as well as content consumers, we need to re-envision the work we ask them to do.
*Our students can teach in powerful ways. (Pre Cal)
*As Marco Torres says, students’ work ”should have wings.” (Buckle Up)

We Need a 2020 Vision for Education

*How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can get around our efforts anyway.)

*How do we change? How do we re-envision teaching for a vastly changed world?
*How do we the use of these technologies in our own practice?
*It starts with one small step

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Let’s take that one small step.