Unknown unknowns

That’s part of the famous Donald Rumsfeld quote which I think fits very well as the title of my blog post when talking about future of learning.

We as a specie have at least realised now that the learning and knowledge is also subject to evolution! and that we have been unable to break ourselves completely from the chains of the industrial and battlefield preparation style learning processes, mechanisms and theories in practice since times Byzantine empire and in essence we have been following the same model intrinsically while making superficial changes – a sort of ‘S’ in SAMR model!

The reading material for this course provided me with intriguing concepts to ponder on and although I have followed and am aware of MOOCs and Badges the Connectivism

theory is new and it engrossed me in the reading and viewing material I could find online. ‘Learning may reside in non-human appliances’ is a fascinating principle of this theory and puts some understanding of technology in education into perspective. I am currently trying to evaluate this theory to classify it in my own mind as an evolution or a revolution! First thoughts are that it may be an evolution which has the potential to bring about a revolution in learning practices and understanding of knowledge.

I think that having the lines of thought and work being done for ‘connectivism theory’ may also bring about the push towards R of the ‘SAMR’ model which we desperately need in the education sector. We may start looking at education and learning from a completely different angle and perhaps start to emphasise on learning of essentials in the early stage developing into innovational, personalised, project based learning model later in the ‘schooling’ of our generations. The following video I found and Sugata Mitra’s ending comments echo my thoughts here.

COETAIL course is in some way elaborating the modern ways of learning and how we can grow out of our ‘classroom’ model into a more personalised self paced learning model. I see the connections with my how my own learning and knowledge has and is developing through this course with what I am actually learning. Amazing. Simply amazing.

I loved the phrase from George Siemens’ article and would like to use it here to end this post.

“The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.”

Craft Academy

Isn’t the title of my post a nice way to sum up the learning of week 3 Course 4? 🙂

As much interesting it was for me to read about development of methodologies surrounding learning models in years of the past it is equally exciting to know the various thoughts and strategies linked to the learning models of today.

When looking for an appropriate image for this post on compfight I came across this one and it struck me as the most suitable one. The learning methodologies of today are like a book page flipped after heaving read through the previous ones. It sums up my feelings not only about the progression of this course but also of the teaching methods which reads like a story and with every page flip of the book we discover how it has and is still evolving.

Having first hand experience of game based learning with Minecraft being the most favourite application of my daughter as well as having seen the widespread use of Minecraft at my school for last three years I can safely inform the reader of this post that game based learning has way more benefits than we understand at the moment. It seems to be the learning methodology of present but honestly I think we are still learning ourselves how this can be a big ‘game’ changer. Watch the video created by an elementary school student at my school below about use of minecraft in mathematics

I am now myself looking into and following the new classcraft learning adventure and observing hoards of teachers now willingly adapting these new approaches to learning.

I am hopeful that with easy access to Internet and online video platforms flipped classroom practices will now be encouraged and supported by leaders in education. I wish I had been going through my schooling in this era as I can identify myself as a learner who is more receptive to this style of education than the traditional ones I went through.

‘L’ is for Learning!

As I read through the various approaches to learning, the common word I found is “Learning“. Be it project based, problem based, challenge based, place based, paper based or activity based! and that is what I believe to be the crux of an educator’s goal. We want the learning to take place in our learning spaces. We want our students to learn and do that in a way where they understand their learning styles and adapt to different methods to suit those learning styles. We as educators are always discovering new methods, testing them, refining them and then presenting them to the learners as another extra tool in their arsenal to choose from.

It is amazing to see how old these approaches to learning, except challenge based learning, are and in how many ways they have the been tried and tested, sometimes successfully and at other times failing miserably. Wikipedia says it was John Dewey who coined the idea of “learning by doing” back in 1897 and the”problem based learning’ technique was developed in 1960s at McMaster University Medical School in Canada. It made me wonder why these approaches to learning did not become widespread phenomenon and why only now they are being recognised as a ‘useful’ and pragmatic approach in comparison to the conventional paper based and directed learning styles. A page about PBL on Buck Institute of Education‘s website starts explain PBL by saying “Project Based Learning’s time has come” and that summarises my point of view on this topic i.e. the theory was developed way way before the circumstances were right for it. Says something about John as well as world’s religious adherence to industrial method of education. Reading through the history of “challenge based learning” it seems that Apple decided to give a new ‘touch’ to the theories of the past in approaches to learning and modify them enough to call it their own invention!

Again, as I expressed in my last post, I feel and am starting to confirm it through the reading material in this course that technology is only an evolution in terms of teaching methodologies and support techniques. It seems to be a new support system which has helped bring forward some new methods, and in this case some old learning methodologies developed years ago. Suddenly, educators and researchers realise how the learning methods developed ages ago can benefit the learners when supported by technology. Sir Ken Robinson, in his TED Talk speaks about the different ways in which people learn and how we should respect and adopt them. He puts forward his thoughts on this topic in a very eloquent way and I agree with him totally that the educational model needs to change, incorporating all the methodologies which have been put forward including the PBLs and CBL and balance between all those methods should be found with each method’s recognised strengths and weaknesses. A teacher’s job should be to assist and guide the students in choosing the right tool and method according to the learning goal and student’s own personalised learning style incorporating technology where applicable.

Defining Technology Integration

Ubiquitous: That is how I see successful and effective Technology Integration no matter which model or framework you follow.

Do I get the A+ for this post Kim? 🙂 Probably not yet, unless I expand on my statement. Right?

This first post for this course 4 of COETAIL has brought me back to my thoughts I expressed in course 1. Remember, we had to express our understanding of information technology, BLOOMS and SAMR, 21st century learning etc. and my blog posts were full of my own interrogative dialogues about my own views. I think Course 4 is going to see me expanding on those narratives and coming to a conclusion, my conclusion. It remains to see how my course mates and my instructor see my understanding and help me improve on it. Improve I shall, via my own research, work, experiences and more importantly by peer and instructor feedback for life long learning is what I believe in.

I would like to start talking about understanding of instructional technology by connecting to my first COETAIL blog post. I found this interesting YouTube video which, in 5 minutes, takes us through some of the highlights of educational technological evolution of the past century.

What I found most interesting in this video is how the advancements in communication and media technologies were associated and tied with their impact in education and how at every milestone moment the limits of those impacts were prematurely judged. I am also amazed by the images of classrooms used where you do not see a redefinition of learning spaces till the later years of the first decade of the 21st century.

Connecting back to my thoughts expressed in first course I believe that in past 30 years there has been a fast paced evolution in the computational and media technologies with visible large scale impact on communications and information sharing. That in turn has brought about an evolution in our ideas and approaches within learning and teaching practices. All the frameworks being designed, tested and used are an attempt by education sector to catch up with this ‘evolution’. For me the key word is ‘evolution’ and I see this current phase of evolution in the same way printing press enabled the knowledge of a single person to spread out in the world in form of a published and printed book. There were challenges then, there are challenges today and there will be challenges tomorrow.

My approach and understanding in implementation of technology integration in educational practices is always geared towards its effectiveness in personalising the learning experience for every student and to fire up the creative and higher order thinking skills in them as well as providing a mechanism for instant and effective feedback from the teacher. SAMR, TPACK, BLOOMS or any other new framework for understanding such processes will fit in fine as long as we keep our goal in sight.

1001 Nights

Yes, that is the name of a restaurant in Beijing which serves great middle eastern food but that is not why I mention it as my blog post’s title 🙂

The art of story telling is probably as old as we humans are. As I expressed my thoughts on the use of imagery in story telling of old times I can continue to expand on the techniques and strategies which old time story tellers used and how with time we have developed them especially in the 21st century how the technology has improved the way we tell stories. I do not see it as a change because our essential underlying goal is still same. We have only developed innovative ways to use the methods and technology available to us today in the best possible manner to enhance our abilities in this skill.

To me digital storytelling has various shapes and forms and not limited to the

conventional way of our understanding. It is not only when special apps are used but usage of any form of imagery and all that falls under the heading of visual literacy to then create a story to connect with your audience and share your learning is digital storytelling for me.

At Western Academy of Beijing media and digital storytelling is engraved into the technology integration and the proof lies in the fact that for last five years our media server has been used with nearly 50000 videos available online created by students to relate their learning journeys. From early childhood to high school our students create wonderful narratives using techniques learned in the lessons and by themselves. Here is a wonderful example: