Course 2 Project – Wikispaces

It is always difficult for a non-teaching COETAILer like myself to find time, sources and connections in order to complete the course projects which involve interacting with teachers and students. However I am grateful to have wonderful colleagues like Madeleine Brookes who happily have allowed me to be part of her ITGS class in order to satisfy my thirst for stepping into the world of teaching for a wider and deeper understanding of the learning process in a classroom as well as to accomplish my COETAIL course projects 🙂

For this course I sat in few sessions getting to know about the global learning project Madeleine’s class was carrying on with students in Kristin School, New Zealand under supervision of their teacher Andrew Churches

If I start to reflect how being part of COETAIL is stretching my own challenges all the while I enjoy them, would be an interesting post in itself. I gathered a lot of information only being in few sessions of this class and collected the data I needed in order to accomplish the GDoc task for this project. Students thoroughly enjoy and had very positive comments to make about this online collaborative learning initiative their teacher had launched and  although the process is slow and ongoing they are thoroughly understanding and enjoying the concepts of digital citizenship and their roles in global online learning and sharing environment. I will certainly continue to pop into these classes in order to not only enhance my own first hand ‘class’ experiences but also to share my learning and ideas from my COETAIL courses. Although WAB does not have any standards defined for its Educational Technology I studied and have used ISTE standards for the purpose of this UbD document.

Empowering the Tribe

This image from an ‘ISP’ back ‘home’ is what popped up in my head when I read Kim’s blog post about ‘Tribes’ but then I decided to use this for my 5th post which is about ‘Empowering Connections’ and the example of Wi-Tribe is excellent. Their logo says

‘Create your own world’ and that is exactly what we normally do when we get ‘connected’!

Tribe is explained by Wikipedia as being used in 12th century middle English literature as referring to one of the tribes of Israel and comes from French word ‘tribus’ which was used to describe the original tripartite ethnic division of the Ancient Roman state which ones historian believes to be squadrons of knights, rather than ethnic divisions. Now, whichever explanation may be right, the word to me has ‘powerful’ meaning. It means bringing identity to a large population and it fits well in describing what is happening in large scale across the globe today via Internet.

At my own school, WAB, we have students, behind the Great Firewall, utilising to the max, the platforms like TigerTube, WAB Blogs, Moodle we provide them to facilitate collaboration, online presence and sharing for learning and we see that they use it to the maximum. More than 50K videos in 4 years and in excess of 108000 visitors to their blogs from around the world.

China, the country where I currently work and live has recently been suggested to surpass US as an economic power but remains tightly controlled and shut behind the Great Firewall and we see that not only expats living here but ordinary Chinese too are craving for free access to the ‘Information Highway’ and resort to all kinds of techniques which keep improving at the same pace as China keeps blocking them. Many of my own Chinese colleagues and friends have active profiles on Facebook and continuously access foreign sites to verify the news and information they obtain from Chinese sources.

If I compare that to my country of origin, Pakistan, the trends seem to be similar despite the lack of infrastructure and tardy arrival of broadband technologies. The stats delivered by ‘The Express Tribune” clearly identifies this by finding that half of Internet users in Pakistan connect via mobiles. There is more information on history of Internet in Pakistan on this Wiki article and based on European and UK Educational & Research Networks Pakistan has it’s own connecting all the centres of excellence in research and learning providing access to and sharing of information at faster speeds. Government in Pakistan has realised the potential of technology and access to information in the process of education and learning as much as to launch a scheme of nationwide laptop distribution which I see being ranked more important than access to student loans, training and skills here at the website – see the sequence of link tabs.

Role of connections, information sharing and access to information via technology at our fingertips cannot be better explained than Sugata Mitra’s celebrated TED Talk. It is a bit long hence I will end my blog post here giving you time to watch it completely 🙂

Citizenship: rights and responsibilites

Wikipedia defines Digital Citizenship as “Citizenship is the status of a person recognized under the custom or law of a state that bestows on that person (called a citizen) the rights and the duties of citizenship.”

How does hits translate to digital world, in my opinion, is simple and straightforward. No change. How you go about your life in real world is exactly same as you would do in the cyber world.

As soon as we understand this it becomes easy for all parts of our society to relate to their responsibilities and the role they have to play in bringing up our young generation. In our capacities of parents, friends, peers, teachers, school administrators and other staff as well as businesses we all have same duties and rules to follow when it comes to electronic and digital media as we would do for our general interactions.

When looking for an image to put in my post I came up with this image about ‘think’ and I realised that if you take away the Facebook, Messaging, Twitter and Blogger icons you could insert statements like ‘speak to other people’, ‘take pictures’ etc. because the rules listed are same. Aren’t they?

Another aspect of this topic is that I always feel when ‘Digital Citizenship’ is mentioned it is always understood and explained in terms of ‘safety’ and ‘rules’. Even the Wikipedia defines Citizenship in terms of obeying the laws and knowing your rights. I wonder why we do not think of it in terms of how ‘I can understand the context and environment in a way that will help me to make myself a better person and share my creativity with my fellow citizens and to benefit those who are in need’.  This short video (below) from Family Online Safety Institute talks about Digital Citizenship on the same lines as my thoughts in this paragraph. It is interesting to read the comments by viewers on the video. As one of the comments goes ‘Digital citizenship. What a joke. Its an excuse for governments to regulate the internet. Don’t let them.’  I feel that if we always link Digital Citizenship to the concept of rules, filtering and don’ts we will fail to involve our young generation in a positive and constructive discussion and this responsibilities, as said before, lies with all of us and not only school and teachers.

Copy Right!

I thought on so many lines which I could write about when it comes to this topic. Kim’s link to Larry Lessig’s TED Talk did speak about how the past relates to future when it comes to laws which are incompatible and have a hard time keeping up with fast paced innovations.

It also brings to mind ‘Napster’ and all what followed – commonly known as P2P revolution. but the image above represents what came to my mind instantly when thinking about (c)opyright. I currently work and live in China and this country is known to be ignorant of words like copyright or intellectual property and it has a profound effect on the perceptions and minds of people who belong to this land or have spend parts of their lives here. It slowly becomes acceptable to observe and be part of the erosion of these concepts in our life. We indulge in purchase of knock offs and copied/cloned

articles of merchandise  in the multitude of shops and on Tao Bao. At the same time we consume a huge amount of entertainment media at zero cost when in other places in the world we would have to pay an appropriate sum of money to compensate for the work.

The discussion to have with not only students but also adult is a difficult one. The respect and worth of someone’s work needs to be explained in practical terms not only by words but also by actions, examples and better yet with a project which involves creation of content or a product by the students themselves.

When the efforts, time and even money is spent in creation of an object or content the realisation of the effects of ‘piracy’ becomes clear. As Larry rightly says in his TED Talk that extreme cannot be fought with extremism. There has to be a right balance to allow the creativity flourish and the respect of intellectual property given where it’s due. A parody of Gangnam Style by WAB‘s Grade 10 students was made about 2 years back and it earned them due praise as well as a great discussion on copyright and remixing.

At WAB we have a thriving ‘Broadcast Team‘ which covers and livestreams WAB events and is totally run by students. Students not only learn the creative arts of filming and commentating as well as handling the tech gadgets involved but also respect of intellectual property and an understanding of copyright. We had several speakers and theatrical productions where student teams sought appropriate licensing permissions

including rights to record and broadcast live to Internet audience. Librarians work hard with students to instil the understanding of copyright, fair use, acknowledgements, citations and at the same time water the seed of creativity in students.

I believe that if we continue to educate our next generations the joys of remixing with respect of original content and understanding of ‘livelihood’ for the creators of content we will be successful in striking the ‘balance’ Larry speak about in his talk. At WAB this is being done beautiful despite the DVD shop next door which sells all the latest released of Hollywood at 3US$ a piece and the one next to it continues to flourish selling fake Samsung Note phablets for 200US$ 🙂

The story of Adam, Eve and the garden of…

This video, I found, while looking for resources online for this week’s post is mind blowing! I was surprised at the mediocre applause at the end of Alessandro’s talk compared to the one for Eli’s titled ‘Filter Bubble’ featured in Kim’s post about this week’s work and I could not stop wondering if this was because it is only I who didn’t know about the depth of issues discussed by Alessandro? or is it because the audience in that TED Talk didn’t realise the gravity of the situation as well as he did? or is it because of his Italian accent? 🙂 I would like to think it’s his accent but I am more inclined to believe that the audience didn’t actually sense the seriousness of what he revealed by way of the results

from his experiments. I think we have truly and wholly become a ‘consumer’ and ‘feel happy’ society! The chemicals in our brain which shoot off at the thought of a new iPhone and Apple Watch numbs the sections of brain which should be seeing the link between the matter of privacy Alessandro touched upon in his talk and the ‘new’ features from iOS 8 which would now obtain, record and use our extremely personal and considerably important data from integrated health monitors.

The topic discussed in last week’s blog post and this week are intertwined in so many ways. I cannot stop thinking about how our understanding of ‘privacy’ online relates to our ‘digital footprints’. Does the discovery about how tech companies and governments use the algorithms and ‘big data’ to target us for their own financial and security gains define our use of the cyber world? and what information we leave behind while interacting with the Internet! At least I do for my part. Since the advent of Web 2.0 technologies I have been reading, thinking and embracing these technologies with caution and understanding. Even then I know that there are so many ways that I am leaving ‘important, personal and trackable’ data behind me in this vast and unerasable world of 1s and 0s. For example the current professionally oriented and well designed website of our dear Kim Cofino is vastly different from the very basic and personal website of hers back in 2008!

Digital footprints and Privacy are two important links in the chain of ‘digital citizenship’ we ought to be unraveling for our young generations who are living and breathing data 24/7 and conveying the underlying message in Alessandro’s talk about autonomy, freedom and huge cost of our privacy we may have to pay for the temporary benefits we get when we pour our personal information out into the ‘big data’!

Living in the Information Age

Last week, at a conference I attended one workshop of Darren in which he discussed the Digital Ethics. We watched this video (below). It created a stir among the participants. I heard expressions like ‘creepy’, ‘dangerous’, ‘oh wow’. There was a sense of ‘insecurity’ from the teachers in the room about social media.

When discussed, most people expressed unease in knowing their students via social media and the kind of complicated situations it can lead to.

My point of view on this topic are in line with the thoughts I touched upon in course 1 and that is about considering technology as a wonderful tool and means of fulfilling our thirst to discover, create, share and celebrate ‘knowledge’. The key principle to observe is to consider technology and cyber world as an extension of our real selves and to come forward in our online interactions similar to the real life. What is unacceptable in our daily life stays unacceptable in virtual life. If we approach the information age with this mindset I see only positive outcomes and it stands true for students as much as it is for teachers.

I have been an avid user of technology hence did not classify myself as a ‘digital immigrant’ even though I am not ‘technically’ from the age of ‘digital natives’ or maybe I totally missed the point of Marc Prensky. I am more inclined to conform to the conclusion of C. Brown & L. Czerniewicz in their research on the topic of digital natives and immigrants where they write ‘It is crucial that we as educators, as academics and as educational technologists reject deterministic and exclusionary labels and actively change this discourse’. Another conclusion by Gerald Haigh on this study that I find interesting states ‘Use of technology varies with age, but it does so predictably, over the whole age span. And secondly, although younger people are more likely to be positive about technology, there is evidence that a good attitude to technology, at any age, correlates with good study habits.’.

 I reluctantly joined Facebook in 2008 but since then have developed my use of social media in line with my real life and it has been a wonderful experience enriching my knowledge and life. My current digital foot print, thought I am not convinced of it’s accuracy (I believe it is more than that) came out to be:

but that is just based on the questions this digital footprint calculator asks. It may be right 😉 in which case I have to do more creative writing in my blog posts 🙂