Changing Education

I was reading George Siemens blog comments on changes in education. He cites David Wiley that says that the changes needed for reform in education would require actions similar to the ones carried out by Luther against the Catholic Church. I like the image and I think it is great comparisom, but I think a softer approach might work or not. I guess, we educators are too idealistic and naïve sometimes. Let me share with you some ideas I had on the subject. I had a very interesting conversation with a friend yesterday [we have a face to face study group on Connectivism and the use of technology in education (yes face to face is cool too)]. We were talking about the needs of incorporating technology into teaching. We discussed where we thought resistance to do it stemmed from and how to overcome it (you know: the old beaten to death subject). She asked about the idea of the institution adopting a blogging platform to all the students like the one mentioned in a text we were discussing. First I said, it was a top down thing and I would not agree with it. Then we pondered the pros and cons and I agreed with her that it might give web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis more credibility and promote the use of tools by faculty and students. So my question is this: Is giving freedom to teachers to use web 2.0 tools enough? Shouldn’t institutions and people in position of power such as supervisors and coordinators learn about them and start using them to promote change/adoption?

Astronauts and Hermit Crabs

I was thinking a little about a presentation I am planning on mobile learning. Reading literature on the topic, I felt comfortable with the idea that mobility is less about tools and more about the learner. As a learner I am trying to think about how much paraphernalia I can leave behind. Long are gone the days I believed I needed to buy the latest technology to allow me to go ahead on my learning. The analogy of astronauts and hermit crabs (that I used to illustrate this post) was one I found while reading the article Nomads at Last published in The Economist. Thinking about my learning, I am more of a hermit crab now. I sill do not have a laptop and all I carry is my pen drive or my MP3 player wherever I go. I am now starting to upload some of my files to the net, so I do not have to rely so much on my home PC. Therefore the hermit crab figure fits me perfectly because although I am not carrying much, I cannot yet afford to be away from my desk top for too long. I still have to go back to the comfort of my old shell or have to stop to get connected to desk top PCs in other places. I see all this as kind of really anthropophagic in the way people adapt to their surroundings. I am lucky to have a PC available wherever I go, so being a hermit crab is not that bad and is the way I found to adapt to my ecological surroundings.I am also curious to discover what the next step to evolution beyond the hermit crab morphology should be.

The Power of Networks for Learning

I have just finished reading an article on how networking can be important for a manager´s career. This article made me think about the importance of networking for educator´s professional development as George Siemens suggested. As a teacher I have learned a great deal from my networks, from being conneted. My network keeps me current of new tools, trends, courses, and events. The list is endless if one stops to think about all the information we get through Facebbok, Yahoo groups, aggregators, blogs, wikis, and so on. As educators, we sometimes get really busy teaching and planning our classes and neglect network building and connecting to our peers in the teaching field. By doing this, we many times stop learning. This last realization made me ask myself a very relevant question: If as educators we do not continue learning, what kind of message are we sending to our students?