Dot Learnt

How do we educate students about technology when technology is ever changing and always advancing?

In 1965, Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore stated, “the number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.” His statement set the pace for the growth of semi-conductor technology (computers getting faster and faster and smaller and smaller) for the next half century, and the exponential growth of new technologies shows no sign of dropping off. So what does it mean to educate students in a world where their future careers probably do not even exist yet? In the article Achieving Techno-Literacy, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine’s September Education issue, author Kevin Kelly offers some up some of the ‘technological smartness’ that he has been passing on to his children:

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Much of my work these days focuses on building, deploying and managing online education communities in both the public and private sectors. As a result, I often get the question, “What makes a successful online community?” To which I typically reply, “Measuring the success of a community online is not that different than determining the success of offline communities”.

Think about the communities you’ve been a part of over the years—your family, your neighborhood, your high school sports or music team, the buddies you hang with at the local pub, the people you make pots with at the local ceramics studio, the parents you have coffee with after dropping your little ones off at school, the people sitting in the adjacent workspaces at the office… More often than not, you probably joined these communities due to a shared location or interest. But, what made them work? What made you a part of these communities?

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During a recent lunch with my friend Sid, we started talking about our first encounters with computers. While I never had much exposure to computers in grade school, I remember vividly the day my father proudly unwrapped our first Mac Classic. Many a suburban afternoons after that were spent playing Brickles, the Oregon Trail and Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego.

Sid, on the other hand, grew up in a small town in North Africa. While he didn’t have a computer at home, he longed for Thursday afternoons when he could go to the library for three hours of unfettered access to his community computers. “When I was a kid, I loved building things, but I couldn’t afford the bits and parts required to do things like make an engine. What was so great about the computer is that I could create things like games (with code) and didn’t need any extra money or parts… I didn’t have a diskette or memory card. So, each week I had to start from scratch! I memorized lines of code and worked things out on paper in-between sessions”. His eyes lit up with excitement recounting the experience—the look of a true amateur (one that does things for the love of it, rather than for compensation).

His story reminded me of the wonderful research done by Sugata Mitra:

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Last week I finished Lighting Their Fires: How Parents and Teachers can Raise Extraordinary Kids in a Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World—a quick, entertaining and thought-provoking series of anecdotes from seasoned elementary educator Rafe Esquith on the important lessons we must teach children beyond 1+1=2 or the state capitals (i.e., time-management, focus, smart decision-making). Upon closing the book, a quick survey of my bookshelf made it plain and clear that it was time to hit up Kinokuniya for another stack of books to occupy the table space next to my ritual morning bowl of oatmeal. So, off I went…

For those of you that have not been to Dubai (or Japan), Kinokuniya is God’s gift to the bookstore. Imagine miles and miles of texts in all languages from all parts of the globe—a selection that puts Borders, Barnes & Noble and the Strand in categories lower than amateur. A brilliant experience, the only tricky part is figuring out where to begin. As I sifted through the new arrivals, bestsellers, books about the region, award winning books and fiction, I judged covers, read book jackets, tried first chapters… Two hours later (nearly midnight) I had yet to find “the perfect fit” and a quick look at my husband’s eyes made it clear he was beyond ready to go. Without further ado, I admitted temporary defeat and went home vowing to come back over the weekend.

What can I say? For a gal that enjoys reading everything from business textbooks, to curricula-writing guides, to chick lit, to Sartre, I have a wide appetite for genres. Yet, when it comes to how words are presented and sentences constructed, I have definitive (and picky!) tastes. So, needless to say, selecting books has traditionally been tough… until Hunch.com entered the scene!

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As more and more companies, government offices and school districts realize that maintaining a social media presence (via Twitter, Facebook, etc.) is no longer a “nice to have,” but an obligation; websites like Mashable have all of a sudden become the Ms. Manners of modern day communication. Do you have bad Facebook manners? Ask Mashable! Feeling lonely on Twitter? Mashable can help you!

While we adults figure out how to mediate and moderate our online personal and professional personas, let us not forget to discuss online etiquette with our children. As this ad on Kitchen Cyberbullying painfully reminds us—“Think of the consequences of your text before you type it!”

Typing, texting and tweeting aside, as we learned in kindergarten, it takes two kinds of actions for a meaningful conversation to take place—talking and listening. The funny thing is that when it comes to social media these days, there is a lot of emphasis placed on how to talk and relatively little placed on what it means to listen.

How to listen to social media

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Do you have a designated study spot in your home? Do you focus intensely on one study task or problem before moving onto another? Do you try to find teachers that teach to your visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning style?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, I recommend that you check out the recent New York Times article, “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits” before delving deeply in this fall’s course materials! The article points out that much of the common wisdom regarding “how to study” is coming into question or just flat out wrong!

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This weekend, I took myself on a ‘busman’s holiday’ to Portland, OR. I am in graduate school earning my masters in education with a teaching credential in physics, and on Saturday, I took the train from Eugene to Portland to tour Portland’s educational offerings.

My first stop was OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The experience was delightful, and although I could not spend very much time at the museum – only three hours, including a 50 min. IMAX film and a submarine tour – I left wanting to go back with friends and play all afternoon! Hands-on science museums are gems, and there are too few of them: OMSI in Portland and the Exploratorium in San Francisco are icons in a very small class of museums that provide students the opportunity to dig into science, investigating their own interests at their own pace: much the same way that science professionals work, but the polar opposite of science as it is taught in school, through a structured, time-constrained curriculum.

The next day, I visited the Oregon Zoo, a small operation with very nice enclosures and a large educational operation. Walking through the exhibits, I was able to tour from Alaska (polar bears) to the Serengeti (lions) in about thirty minutes, with stops in Asia and the Amazon on the way. It had been many years since I had last been to a zoo, and the experience of seeing african wild dogs scampering though the grasses and black bears lumbering up hillsides awakened a sense of wonder that even Planet Earth fails to inspire.

The weekend left me asking: what place does a museum visit or a zoo field trip have in the 21^st century classroom?

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Welcome to dot.Learnt—a group blog written and edited by members and guests of Bon Education.

Bon’s mission is to help schools, universities and organizations use digital technologies to achieve their learning goals. Therefore, we spend half of our time in the field working directly with educators, students and members of the private sector to build organizational digital literacy and robust online learning communities. The other half of our time is spent working with technology companies and publishers to create digital education products and curricula that reflect the needs and realities of the field.

Most of our work takes place in the Middle East, some of our work takes place in North America and a small amount of our work occurs in Asia. Therefore, this blog is a reflection of the thinking and learning we do while traveling and interacting with humans and technologies across the globe.

We welcome you to post comments, challenge our assumptions and explore with us.

Namaste.

Anna Batchelder

Chief Education Officer and co-Founder

Bon Education

@bon_education

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