final reflection; a shift in thinking

This course has been interesting, even a journey, albeit an unexpected one. I expected to review much of what I already know: blogs and wikis, and to get some tips and pointers and little tricks. I didn’t expect to be thinking about schools in libraries rather than libraries in schools, or libraries as being more than the physical space they occupy as in our chat on Tuesday.

I didn’t expect to be thinking about how we can use Web 2.0 tools, not just to enhance our regular ways of teaching, like what my group did for assignment 3, but as a new way to approach teaching & learning, a way that synthesizes all this information, access to information, ways of managing and amalgamating that information and creating new ideas, products and content. My group incorporated blogging and vlogging into lit circles, and by doing this, we became more aware of multi-literacies and how technology can meet different learning styles.

But I hadn’t made the leap of understanding that I did when I watched the Stephen Heppell video the other day. Listening to him discuss metacognition and how we can work with the twenty first century learner or we can choose to ignore that Google exists and continue to teach as we have for years.

Putting Heppell’s ideas together with Lana saying how she teaches a few kids in each class to be organizers of the wiki (leaders and teachers), and Lisa saying how she wants to do cross curricular collab in secondary, and Lisa also wondering what would happen if she collaboratively planned a unit with her students using a wiki, created a big shift for me. I have know since my career began at a little alternative school in Vancouver, that teachers are not all knowing beings who share their knowledge with students, but that teachers are facilitators of student learning. But for teachers to collaborate with students to create new learnings had not occurred to me until yesterday.

Digital natives do not just access information like we digital refugees or immigrants do, they take information and ways of using and accessing information, and recreate it into something new. They create content and share it. They create, share, and connect.

Digital refugees and immigrants are so concerned with privacy and may make statements like, ” I don’t want my photos on the web.” But digital natives don’t have this concern. Sure, this can be problematic, but could it be today’s equivalent of your fourteen year old leaving the house in a mini skirt and crop top? You can’t control who sees them out of the house, who whistles when they walk by, who may behave inappropriately. You can only teach them how to be more aware, what to do in different scenarios. The internet is the same. 

How can we be effective teachers if we don’t work with or even understand the students’ culture? If you can’t figure out how to use email, how can you effectively teach students to be information literate? How can essentially illiterate teachers help prepare their students for the future? That doesn’t mean that teachers need to photograph themselves every other nanosecond and post on Facebook, but it does mean we need to gain better awareness of our students and how their learning is different.

Last Thursday, one classmate asked, “How can some students in my morning class look at Facebook and their email while the instructor is talking? Can they multitask that easily or are they just rude?” Both, maybe. if the instructor isn’t engaging you, why wouldn’t you do something that is? Especially in university where we are paying hundred of dollars per course, aren’t students entitled to the education they want? And doesn’t this also apply to our elementary and secondary school students?

The past two years I have regularly complained about students who question me, who demand to be entertained, who tell me what they like and what they don’t. But what I am realizing as I write this, is that they aren’t asking to be entertained, they are asking to be engaged in learning about things they care about and in ways that make sense to them. That’s what I ask for as a student, so why wouldn’t my students? And as digital natives, aren’t they wanting, demanding even, to learn as digital natives and not like the obedient, cooperative, and submissive students of yesteryear? I have done some students a disservice in not understanding about their culture and the way they learn. This is probably the biggest thing I will take away from this course, so I am glad it is my last one for the certificate.

Create. Process. Collaborate. Question. Recreate. Reflect. Share.

I am most engaged when examining, creating, and reflecting with peers. I am most engaged when choosing what to learn about and how I will share that learning (I chose this blog for example). I automatically tune out in lectures. I am not an auditory learner and neither are most of my students. 

Create. Process. Collaborate. Question. Recreate. Reflect. Share.

That’s what I need as a learner. That’s what my students need. That’s what my fellow teachers need too.

If web 2.0 is user created/adapted content, sharing and connecting, then schools and libraries in the twenty-first century should also be user created/adapted content, sharing and connecting.

In our text, Ward’s article, “Learning from games and gamers,” it states that Harvard even offers classes in Second Life, a virtual world. Virtual libraries also exist in Second Life, and even the Vancouver Police Department recruits new officers there. These few examples point out that we need to start shifting the way we understand and approach teaching and libraries, in order to serve our clientele effectively.

where to now?

In his Learning About Learning series, Stephen Heppel discusses how students learn better if they reflect on their learning and how they learn the whole time they are learning (developing their metacognition). Teachers learn how their students learn and how to teach better. Students need assignments that meet their needs as twenty-first century learners. For example, you could assign a child an essay and risk them cut and pasting or copying off the internet OR you could assign them the task of finding an essay on the internet and improving it or critiquing it.

I have done this many times, the former not the latter. I am guilty of giving my students assignments that do not reflect the digital culture they live in. Teachers I know, myself included, worry about plagarism because of all the easy and free access to information, and try to have all these checks and balances so kids don’t cheat. I need to shift the way I understand my digital native students and the way they learn.

I am currently an enrolling teacher on Vancouver’s affluent westside. I have applied and interviewed for a 0.78 libary/resource position at an inner city school where they have needle clean up before school and at recess. The job has some prep and some resource and very little collab time, so my goal is to educate and change this. I have debated this long and hard, and I could wait for a cushy job to come my way, or I could take this position (if offered, just waiting to hear) and try to positively change the TL and library role in this one school. Anyway.

Plan for next year as a TL in a new school:

• meet with admin, discuss goals, get her on board
• start connecting with colleagues who are interested in collaborating and build those relationships
• build a good relationship (hopefully) with the tech teacher
• develop presence around the school: attend/present at PAC meetings, assemblies, staff meetings
• join/chair relevant committees: Pro D, Library, Budget, Literacy, Computer, Learning Resources…
• meet with individual staff and poll them on what the like, don’t like, want, etc. for the school library and the role of the librarian
• advocate for better computers (they were rated the worst in Van elementary schools), smartboard 
• meet with parents (although parent involvement is low) and get their input
• meet with students and ask them what they like, don’t like, want to change about the library
• meet with admin and library committee, to begin looking at library policy based on information collected, work towards a collaborative policy over time (plan for pro d next year), try to do this using a wiki
• build library website and blog
• build wikis to use with classes I do prep with (so it won’t be just a book exchange), and build on units teachers are already doing
• collaboratively plan a unit using a wiki, start with one group, teach small groups at a time since there are only 4 computers in the library
• include the use of video and podcasts with students (media release forms)
• present successful ways to collaborate with the TL at staff and PAC meetings, as a way to gain support and some more teacher converts
• join TL groups for professional development, attend workshops, build connections and relationships in the greater TL community
• help fellow teachers create their own blogs, wikis

Plan for next year as an enrolling teacher (current position grades 2/3):

• continue to use class blog for information to students & parents
• develop wiki with students, teach a few to be organizers (Lana’s idea), work with small groups at a time in collab with TL, focus on one unit such as Canada or Communities
• teach them how to edit, post photos, create links, create and post video, etc.
• present class work to parents, PAC, staff
• offer to help other staff build their own blogs & wikis
• continue to use and learn about web 2.0 tools as professional development as a digital refugee