STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

A reflection about

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the 21st Century

STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

Thomas Adam Johnson ict-design.org

4/18/2008

EDU 596: Teaching and Leadership Excellence for American/International Schools

A reflection about Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the 21st Century STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

At the EARCOS workshops in Kuala Lumpur, I listened to many people talk and had prepared my note-and-video-taking for other lectures, but on the fly, I slipped in to Jeff Utechts presentation. After coming home, thinking and procrastinating about writing a different paper, I found myself peripherally applying almost all of what I learned from this truly motivating workshop. Utechts speaking was inspiring in itself, but what he had to say made urgent sense. It had immediate and practical use, but beyond that, by not doing what he was saying could also have abrupt and detrimental ramifications for me and my school. Every teacher who would like to consider themselves on the cusp of contemporary tech knowledge should consider what Utecht has to say. I will break apart and reflect upon his strategies, which revolve around understanding and perception. The first point imparted in the workshop was for teachers to Understand what social networking is and how students are doing it now. We are past the days of simple email. We have witnessed the advent of online journals (web logs BLOGS). We have seen this migrate to audio and video, podcasts and VLOGS respectively. The internet has taken over our phones and is all but replacing television. And with all of these new forums or arenas for communication and display of our talent, or more often lack-thereof, come discussions and threads. The way of the future is no longer meeting on Facebook or MySpace; this is the way of the present. For our students though, we have to think of these things in relative terms. We have to understand they too have social networking programs and spaces that are appealing to their demographic. For the young student, Disneys Club Penguin has hit the ground running. The cartoon environment allows users to waddle around like a penguin meeting other people, establishing an igloo or home-base, playing fully environment-encapsulated games, and even buying, earning and selling things with penguin coins. The applicability for a teaching and learning environment seems almost endless. Club Penguin is enthralling for a five to twelve year old student and if facilitated properly, lessons in math, geography, English, social studies and of course computers become effortless for the teacher. Now, one might bring up the fact that because it is a real-time environment with live people connected to you there could be predators lurking, ready to try to lure kids to their homes. But this actually presents a safe and meaningful tool for the teacher or parent to educate the child about such dangers. With the adult there to supervise and instruct about the risk of strangers and of giving out personal information, I liken this atmosphere to that of a swimming pool. A parent would surely not throw their child in the water unsupervised and walk away thinking that everything will be fine. The parent should also consider the internet with its use in Club Penguin like the sheltered setting of a kiddies pool where the child should have instruction or scaffolding for how to act and react in the new surroundings. This brings me to Second Life, which caters more to the teenagers and adults. It is fast becoming the 3D real-time social networking emporium of choice. People can meet online in order to have much of the same user environment as Club Penguin, but the graphics are tailored much more to the Gaming Station Era which are used to a world they can move around in all directions while also having a pseudo-real feel to it. Users are not limited to the confines of the game, but can and are encouraged to create a multitude of gadgets and interfaces for other people to employ. Second Life inspires the coders, programmers and designers even more because while many people may want to use their wares, the creator has the ability to actually sell them from the computer in their own home. This environment becomes authentic for the user because online money can be exchanged for real life money. The practical use of it and the ability to understand economics, advertising, business strategies and even social and ethical behaviors is limited only by the imagination of the user or facilitator. Next on the social networking agenda, we need to consider the WIKI. Think of Wikipedia as a reference source for this relatively new online establishment. This gigantic wiki that is instituted not by one person or a small group, but by millions of users is dynamically taking shape and has become something to behold. We can say good-bye to Encyclopedia Britannica and Websters Dictionary because the technically educated user realizes they can get for free what others are often paying for. Because of this the two aforementioned resources now have to reconsider their platform and selling strategies. The age of the business is taking new shape when it comes to intellectual ownership, because of open-source and collaborative projects that often far exceed the workings of a select group of individuals who maintain trade secrets in lieu of a profit. But people might purport that a wiki is fallible by essence because one might find someone who is adding or manipulating content in a malicious way. This is easily overcome with the use of moderation. While content may be

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Ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the 21st Century STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

stricken or distorted, a moderator or group of moderators can see what changes have been made to a document and can reinstate the original copy and then limit the user who was doing such things. The synergistic efforts that can be ascertained with the right framing and infrastructure can create an awesome legacy of knowledge. Students can and should be asked to add to already existing Wikis like Wikipedia and should also comprehend them on a more personal level by creating them, in order to have an understanding of how they can be used as a one-way, two-way and especially a multi-user portal. Social networking is becoming so intertwined in life that we are seeing and hearing it take roots in our classrooms past the scope of just the computer and now onto devices like cell-phones and PDA technologies. But with this entanglement, we are seeing things like LEET speak a word derived from elite (Wikipedia) being used against parents and teachers who may not be in the know about the coded language. This SMS from phone to phone could have a student saying something as simple as: Meet me for lunch ivi 3 3 + ivi e 4 1 v i\i [ #

On the other hand students might also be using it for something insidious like cheating on a test or doing something unlawful, for example a drug deal. This, of course could take place directly in front of the untrained eye, who wouldnt be any the wiser. We as teachers need to realize the potential of this new language/code and need to adapt to it as well as foster it in some instruction. I can think of many history lessons that could be given more authenticity with the knowledge that the student already has an understanding of a coded message and why it might be used. Teens arent just using coded languages to their advantage in social networking. With what first started out as an ingenious way to disperse unwanted teenagers from their physical social gathering in places like malls and street corners, this has now been turned against the adult in the form of the mosquito tone. Let me explain further. As the human ages, he or she begins to have hearing loss at certain high frequencies. With this is mind, a teenager who can hear a really high pitched tone like a mosquito might be annoyed by it if it was set about for long or time durations in their place of unwantedness. Ironically however, the teens used this idea to their advantage. Knowing full well that a certain frequency could only be heard by either them or their classmates, they have become able to send SMS messages in the school or a quiet setting using this tone with an older or harder of hearing teacher or adult in their presence not being able to hear it. I witnessed this idea first-hand in a room full of different aged people. Utecht asked everyone to put up his or her hand, asking people to lower their arm when they could no longer hear the tone. He started out with a lower frequency, eventually getting higher and higher. We all watched the hands go down in close reflection to the age of the person, generally and successively with the older people putting their hands down before the younger ones. I wouldnt have believed it myself, had I not put my hand down while looking around to see a few younger looking people in the room with their hands still up. It was disconcerting to say the least. This meme* is catching on and if we as learning facilitators dont harness it rather then fight against it, we will be caught in the tailwinds. We first need to educate ourselves about the ring-tone. And at the same time we need to say to ourselves, How can we use this again to our advantage? The tone itself could be used in science experiments or in Physical Education class with older volunteers welcomed to the group in order to do a replica of the same experiment Utecht showed us. Not only does it bring laughter to those involved but it also clearly demonstrates hearing loss and the need for the younger generation to pay close attention to how loud they are listening to their IPods and PDAs. And to take this use of gadgetry a step further I would ask that schools start to embrace the responsible use of cellphones and PDAs in the classroom as a way to continue to invigorate a class with the things they love. Simple games could be devised where teams are asked to use their cell-phones to call or SMS another part of the world to find out such things as the weather or the capital of the other users country. Studies could be done about demographics and consumption or purchasing differences. The power of cell-phone use in social studies, math or geography class is again limitless. And I might hear the argument, What are the parents going to think about their cell-phone bill?

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Ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the 21st Century STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

I would disagree in return that parents might already be paying a hefty cell-phone bill, but with written permission and explanation from the teacher about this new practice and before such projects, I think most parents would eagerly like to see technology being used for educational purposes. I might also warn the teacher who may want to implement this in his or her classroom that like most things, novelty will wear off and there should be certain plans set in place if this structure was going to be adopted often. Coming full-circle and turning finally to the idea of the social network of the physical system in the classroom rather than online, it was brought to my attention that collaborative learning often far exceeds the individuals experience of learning. With this said, a technology teacher might use a classroom with ample computers for everyone differently than may be assumed. Students would be asked to partner up in order to share a computer. The learning of two minds with one teaching another, and the both learning from one another as well as the teacher works two-fold: faster and better learning, as well as physically socializing in a cooperative setting under the learning umbrella. With this last strategy in mind, it is often easier for a teacher to move more quickly, because if two students are working together on the same learning application, where one student may miss or misunderstand a certain skill that is being asked for them to apply, the other student may fill in the blanks instead of the teacher. Another note to the teacher about this learning strategy would be that he or she should keep close contact with the learners in the class to see that in fact the dynamics of the pairings are working properly, i.e. one partner is not always doing the work while the other does nothing. As always the teacher should try to mix up the pairings so that no two students are always finding themselves continually working with the same partner. The next practice that Utecht described as urgent was to Take control of your and your schools online presence Utecht describes a phenomenal new trend; since the dawn of all of these social networking forums, people have been assembling together websites and putting a lot of information online they may not have considered the ramifications about. For example, how many times have we seen the forum chats that look something like this? Man1: Oh yeah Woman2: Yeah Man1: Go to hell! You get the point. These forum chats and arguments can be traced and tracked and are often used against a future employee or student. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social networking in places like MySpace and Facebook where incriminating evidence like photos, notes, walls and other such confirmation of the actions and attributes of said parties are not what the University or prospective employer might want as features of their candidate. This is happening so much that a new job market has been created, one in which finding and then cleaning up your online presence is all a new type of company will do. Reputation Defender is such a company that will search out your presence online, whether it is through something you have put out yourself or through something someone else has made of you, possibly without your knowing. Utecht describes ways these companies are battling this idea of a bad online presence through not only the dismantling of bad press but through the fabrication of an ideal presence. He also describes people now going to lengths to create and maintain websites and blogs that promote a CV. He also suggests joining such collections as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Del.icio.us, and Stumbleupon, to name but a few, in order to have a professional appearance while also becoming connected to the networked world. Utecht goes so far as to say that teachers might want to consider the demographics of their students and even create an account in Hi5, SecondLife or Club Penguin in order to institute something which they have control of instead of allowing a mock-presence the students establish in order to make fun of or slander someone. In regards to schools, they need to consider the fact that the Alumni section of the school website may not be enough to maintain a healthy relationship with past and present students. Professional and especially editable and

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Ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson

A reflection about Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the 21st Century STUDENT NUMBER 720026373

2008

controllable groups need to be formed and maintained by a responsible administrator, not a student or group of students who might use it to malign or demean the schools profile. The student may not do it wittingly, but they may fail to check back with what is happening with the group they may have created. An example given by Utecht was from a group that was formed by a student of his. The group created had a slightly feminine name. The name however, had a sexual double-entendre. Since the student had not checked to see what was happening in her group for quite some time, when Utecht stumbled upon the group he asked her about why she would administer such an improper group. She stated that she hadnt thought about this group in some time and she hadnt intended it for that type of use. This memetic device had taken on a life of its own, and whether through the intention of the original user or creator, or with the perceived or misconstrued end result, it proved to have the power of the people. With Social Networking being what it is today and with the likes of the Army, Navy and most US Presidential Candidates realizing its impact, we also need to realize these will be the first places future and prospective students or parents will be doing their research about a particular subject, person or school. What the discussions and forums have to say reflects on the individuals and organizations and if a reputable school-body wants to remain that way, they need to be able to delete or defer any defamation or unwanted mentioning. Utecht explains it simply and elegantly, If you dont take control of your social presence, someone else will! * A meme (pronounced /mim or mm/) consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted
verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. (Wikipedia)

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Ict-design.org

Thomas Adam Johnson