Technology in the Lutheran Classroom

Access does not equal success

So I often wonder how it is that we have unprecedented access to all of the worlds knowledge on the Internet, but it doesn't actually makes us smarter. Here's my thinking--

On Twitter, for the past year or so, I've been following the International Space Station observation account (@twisst18) which gives you times and dates of when the I.S.S. is visible in your area. I received my usual daily/weekly announcement--

Later that evening, I was pulling into the parking lot of my local community center when I thought, "Hey, it's 9:00pm and a clear night, maybe I'll check the International Space Station flying over head!" Mind you, since following these tweets, I have NEVER seen the ISS! So I get out the car, find a clearing where I have an unimpeded view of the South-South West sky and I stand and I wait. I waited...and I waited....and I waited, but saw nothing...oh wait, was that flashing star looking thing the ISS? I don't know! Maybe it was just a really high altitude plane?

It was at that point which I realized that even though I knew exactly where the ISS was supposed to be and when it was supposed to be there, that didn't necessarily mean I was going to see it. I had access to all the correct information, but I still couldn't see the orbiting station.

Mr. Luehmann, our 7th-8th grade science teacher, could have easily pick it out. He's used to looking at the night sky! Surely he could see it! But there I was looking like a fool, neck craned back gazing into the vast darkness called night with no moving space station visible!

I think our students have the same issue with the Internet. They have access, but don't know what to do with the information once they get it. Students lack the wisdom needed to put the information into its proper context. It is very much like the line from the epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "Water, Water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

It's for this reason that I appreciate the work of gentleman like Ian Jukes at the 21st Centur y Fluency Project. They have defined effective digital citizenship in terms of five "fluencies." The one I'm most interested in for this post is information fluency.

I remember listening to Ian present at NECC quite a few years ago when I first heard the term "info-whelm." We are drowning in it! Our students are drowning in information! We are all over-whelmed with massive amounts of content.

Information fluency is way more than just teaching students how to access information. Information fluency is about interpreting, extracting, authenticating, and perceiving. Over the years I've realized it's much easier to show students HOW to do a Google search than it is to help them make sense of the results once they get them. But I think in the end, that's what it means to be a great teacher. Showing kids what to do with it, once you've got. Access isn't the issue anymore. We've got the quantity thing figured out, now we need to work on quality.

Our kids today are living with information cups that are over-flowing. The challenge we face is not how can we make our students learn MORE (fill their "cups" with more stuff), but rather, what do I DO with the stuff that I already have! Take it one step further by asking, how can I help my students create a framework for dealing with all the info coming their way?

Thinking back to seeing, or not seeing, the International Space Station helps me empathize a little bit with my students. How irrelevant and trivial all this abundant information must seem to kids.

The skill I think students need the most is learning to distinguish the good from the bad information, the noise from the music. It is this task that I believe is the quintessential action of the teacher. You can't just do the same old thing in the classroom you did before, because traditionally, you're just "filling the cup." There has got to be something more!

Wow, all this thinking and ranting from not being able to see the International Space Station! Must have been a long week :-)

image: Overflow by Flickr user: 96dpi

Wish I Was There...

Well, ISTE 2010 has almost come to a close and how I wish I could have gone. Various and sundry reasons had prevented me from going this year, but all in all, it has been a treat enjoying conversations from afar.

AAAHHH...who am I kidding...Twitter is NO replacement for being there. Some of the best conversations I've had about education have happened in many of the meet-ups (or now Tweet-ups), and vendor parties at past conferences (especially chats with @mkratzer over a cold beverage). You can't really do that online!

For the sake of not being too melancholy and whiny, I am very appreciative though of posts like this one from @henrythiele. Henry gives a quick overview of what he saw as the emerging themes of the conference (as a side note, thanks to @kevcreutz for retweeting Henry, which is how I found his post. That's what you have to love about a PLN).

But reading exciting posts, doesn't replace talking face to face with folks you have known for years, but are just "meeting" for the first time! Because that is what ISTE Conference is all about: meeting face to face and sharing.

But alas...

It is awesome to read posts like "It's Not About the Tools" from Jason Schmidt. ISTE 2010 gave Jason time to think and write about his teaching. It's posts like this that echo so many ISTE conversations from this year's conference and NECC conferences of the past. It can also be summed up in tweets like this:

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the change in teaching that terrifies many of our colleagues and not the technology! We'll leave that for another post on another day.

So yeah, I am a bit bitter about not being able to go, but I can't deny it has been awesome to see the true power of my learning network in action. Even though I wasn't there, I got pretty darn close.

Thank you so much for those of you who took time to post, tweet, bookmark, and note-take for the rest of us! Your sharing is so important and doesn't go unappreciated!

Image above: IMG_0200 by Flickr user: ctkmcmillan

Still Amazed....

It doesn't matter how many times I've been part of a video conference, it is still exciting to watch the connective power of the Internet at work in the classroom! Our Jr. Kindergarten class this morning was able to get in touch with a year six class from Novo Hamburgo, Brazil. Maybe it was the over 5, 000 mile classroom separation, or the idea that you are making a personal connection with someone from a completely different culture or way of life, either way it was just plain COOL!

I can't underscore enough the importance of connecting classrooms. These short but effective video chats are changing the way our children at St. John see the world. As one Kindergartner remarked, "they really do look like us!" Our first grade students said the same thing as they Skyped with another foreign county....California! Well, it's foreign to use in the midwest!

There were several hiccups during the call this morning, but those set aside, the experience gave our preschool teacher a great place to start. I think the neatest part was having a 6 year old Jr. Kindergartner be the interpreter for the group. Of course her dad was there to help out as well (Portuguese was the language of the day). Everyone involved needed the interpreter and it was a great confidence booster for that student to have such an important job during the video conference.

As some of our teachers are finding out, connecting outside their four walls can be quite addicting. Once the kids know it is possible, that with a single click they can be in touch with other kids, they want to connect ALL the time.

I am beginning to be skeptical of the "digital generation" critics who say that our kids are becoming less personable and exhibiting less social skills because of the technology. With a high-speed Internet connection, a computer, and a web-cam, our kids are making vital connections that are breaking down distance, linguistic, and cultural barriers. If anything, the technology has the ability to make them more social. The trick for the classroom teacher is to capitalize on the power of a digital connection, while helping students process that experience within the context of everyday face to face interactions.

A couple of lessons learned from this mornings video conference:

1. Choose your video conference time so as to maximize bandwidth. Because of scheduling conflicts, we started our call about the same time our teachers were sending lunch count and attendance over the network. Talk about a bandwidth nightmare! Also it was about lunch time in Brazil. The dad who helped translate said that at lunch most people in the city hit the Internet pretty hard, which also contributed to slow things down on their end. This excessive traffic bumped us off a couple of times and made caused our web-cam to not show to the Brazilian class.

2. Plan ahead....
Our preschool teacher did an awesome job of having questions prepared in advance. There wasn't a lot of down time trying to come up with questions to ask. Also, she had prepared the kids in advance to be patient for technical problems. The kids knew ahead of time that their attention needed to be brought back once any technical problems were fixed.

I'm looking forward to helping them connect again in a couple of weeks!

So when is your classroom going to adventure outside of your four walls next?