Education

How “Research” helped Jobs and Woz

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Steve Jobs wouldn’t have been the serial entrepreneur we knew him to be, if not for his partner in crime, Steve Wozniac. 

I make this point to my students, when teaching them the power of collaboration, something lost in our education system that, until now favored the individual over the group; the bubble test over the team project. Common Core standards, adopted by my school (Arizona is one of some 45 states adopting them) urge us to break out of that mindset, and get kids to discuss more, debate, confront, and work as a hive mind.

So I use this example of Woz, where he describes how he stumbled over a piece of fiction about the ‘Blue Box’, and showed it to Jobs. They wondered if this device were possible, but didn’t stop at that. They snuck into a library one Sunday, and looked it up in a stack of journals.

In other words, Steve and Steve were doing their ‘research.’  Something that sounds anathema to today’s kids who like to imagine search = research. That supporting ideas will always be within a few keystrokes or clicks.

I particularly like how the Apple co-founders got started not in a garage, but a library.

Media Literacy, Sorely Needed (Don’t blame the Digital Natives!)

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Is Tool Literacy overshadowing the need for Media literacy?

I’ve registered for one of those so-called MOOCs, and the topic of Media Literacy* is the subtext of a lot that is being discussed when it comes to technology in education.

In one of the forums, the question on ‘digital natives’ (a.k.a. students) comes up, and many educators are wondering how to best engage these tool-literate natives.

Because I teach a computer and technology class I see a large cross-section of tool literacy alongside media illiteracy. This is in no way meant to blame the digital natives as much as put the ball back into the court of educators. There are no Media classes in a typical elementary school because we always thought that Media was something people opted in to learn later.

Today the very concept of what Media constitutes has been muddied. We create lower-case ‘media’ (content) that happens to hitch a ride on upper-case Media (channels), but this gets complicated when we begin to also own some of these media channels.

No wonder the kids are confused.

Educators, too. When did someone update teachers with the new ‘rules’ of creation, curation, fair use etc? This cannot be done in a one-off professional Development seminar, but has to be something done on an ongoing basis.

If our students have mixed (or rigid, or even outdated) ideas of what they could do online, if our students think that all the information in an article on The Economist could be gleaned by a 140-character summary…we have ourselves to blame.

Before we address technology in Education, we need to take a deep breath, back up, and address media literacy. (Like we have time for all this – considering our super-busy lives that involve non-stop status updates.)

* The ‘Massive Open Online Course’ for Educators is held by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at NC State University’s College of Education in collaboration with Project 24 –the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Technology with a sense of humor (and humanity)

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

So much of tech in our lives is about inanimate objects that deliver some convenience.

Maybe they animate our lives a bit: Typewriters helped us write better reports. Levers helped us move large rocks. Microphones and memory devices) helped us record and preserve important  moments.

I’m becoming more steeped in the four S-T-E-M areas, because (a) that’s where all education is headed, and (b) I run a computer and tech lab for a school where students from Kindergarten to 6th grade come to experience computers in education.

So it’s always refreshing to be able to focus on technology that is not a computer, or at least one that NOT rectangle-with-screen. I have robots, of course (a big ‘Aha’ for third graders): rectangle with wheels and sensors, and a few other objects.

But where could you take (or hide) a computer, to make our lives more interesting?

I found a great example of a ‘technologist’ who comes from an a non-tech space, and adds a layer of humanity to objects. She’s not from Silicon Valley, and I don’t believe she’s been featured in Fast Company. Bangalore-born Aparna Rao infuses technology with a sense of humor and humanity, letting us find our own meaning in inanimate objects such as a phone, a typewriter etc. The one on the left, for instance, was designed so that her uncle could send email, making him feel he was typing a normal letter on a piece of paper. But it gets funnier, and, deeper, such as when she uses a camera to make people disappear — the reverse of what we do now in our desire to put ourselves into every conceivable screen-captured image of life.

This is probably one of the best reasons why the arts –and the capital ‘A’– cannot ever reside outside the S-T-E-M areas everyone is so focused on.

This is the best example I’ve come across for encouraging schools to add some S-T-E-A-M!

On camera, or on Mic, don’t over-produce your subjects

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I am never comfortable whenever someone freezes that smile or his head angle for a picture I am about to take. It’s become the done thing to strike a pose. Not sure where this comes from, but I get the feeling it’s got something to do with a celebrity culture –and perhaps the media uproar when someone is caught looking less photo-ready.

I’ve also worked with PR people and know there is a solid reason to make sure the room is set up well so that the Big Guy (or Gal) acts natural. Controlling clothing, lighting, messing with hands or tapping on a table etc. There’s a good post about this by Paula Lovell, with a related discussion worth following at a LinkedIn group.

Gerard Braud is a pro at this and I’ve even sat in one of his media training workshops some years back at an IABC conference. He knows what he’s talking, so if you do have a client or am planing to put someone on camera, this is a great place to start.

But I have some comments about looking too ‘produced’. It’s not what the pros may say, but think about this:

  • Why should a CEO or thought leader always look like he/she never makes mistakes, and is flawless? Given the big push for transparency in communications in general, business and government in particular, wouldn’t the target audience prefer to see someone who looks slightly more human than studio settings permit?
  • A videographer or photographer could over-prepare a subject. Isaac Pigott makes a good point that the confidence from being who you are trumps all other external factors. That’s why teleprompters are scorned so much, today.

I my new profession, Education, I also teach children to present ideas and ignore the technology as much as they could. Yes I use cameras – video and DSL. I also put them in front of a microphone –corded and a ZoomH4N. It is possible to train them too much; it is also possible to let them come up with the most amazing things, unscripted, warts and all. I know what you may be thinking. They don’t have stakeholders to convince.

It’s a long shot from a CEO interview or podcast that I used to do until recently, but I’ve found some striking similarities in making them come off ‘as they are’ not as we want them to be.

If you are an educator, I write about these education issues at Voices-On.com

And then life threw me a lesson plan

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

For more than a year, I have been making a transition from corporate communications to education. I have been given an opportunity to be a computer teacher at an elementary school in Scottsdale, Arizona.

It’s an amazing time to be joining a profession that’s getting lots of attention. And scrutiny. From the recent schoolteachers’ walkout in Chicago, to the just out Nations Report Card, among others, the story is not exactly cheerful.

Meanwhile, as knowledge acquisition is moving an 120 miles-per-hour, pedagogy is ambling along.  I can see this through the lens of our two children, as new engagement tools emerge, and curricula change. Analog classrooms are trying to adapt to digital natives. Britannica now has an app for the iPad and other tablets. Classrooms are being ‘flipped.’ We can’t continue to do the same old, same old.

If there’s a simple lesson plan for my career, it’s this: push students to the edges. Focusing on ‘core’ areas, but also widen the aperture. Knowledge of ‘computers’ without context of where they are used, is meaningless. Often it’s the topical things we introduce in class that make planned (not canned) lessons relevant. One study last year found that students who did “science-related activities that are not for schoolwork” performed higher.

TO KICK OFF, I re-positioned the computer class as a Technology and Computer Lab, in which students will engage in subjects from space exploration to search engines.

Being the school’s robotics coach helps. This is a program established by the FIRST Lego League. Students can step out of their comfort zone and take risks, even while engaging their math and design skills.

Each day, the lens zooms in and widens…

 

Learning through customization and personalization

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Would you be ok to have your child interviewed to be admitted to Kindergarten?

I know  of parents who have prepped their children for that face-to-face admission evaluation process widely used today by Charter schools. Hard to argue with this if we really want a revolution in education.

So, what if students are required to qualify to be admitted to school? Many schools resort to a lottery system, since there are a few hundred openings but a few thousand applications! But in addition to this, there’s the student interview. It’s a bit like applying for a job. One Pennsylvania charter school, Tacony Academy, has this requirement:

“each student must complete an Independent Research Presentation and present the results to a panel of teachers and administrators.

 The Independent Research Presentation should be science related and either follows Scientific Method, the Question-Answer model, or the Problem-Solution model.”

This kind of motivation tells a school how to better customize a program to the student.

Speaking of which, Ken Robinson makes a great observation as to why education should not be served like fast food.


Dear Eric Schmidt: If I may be so impolite, our track record isn’t great, either.

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Interesting to see the debate ensure, now that Google has stepped into the debate on falling education standards.

Google chairman, Eric Schmidt lectured the Brits saying “If I may be so impolite, your track record isn’t great,” noting that education in Britain was holding back the country’s chances of success in the digital media economy. His abrasive comments were made at the Edinburgh International Television Festival:

“The UK is home of so many media-related inventions. You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice… Yet today, none of the world’s leading exponents in these fields are from the UK.”

Ouch!

But here’s the problem, Mr. Schmidt. While it might be shocking to not teach CS to students at a young age, isn’t it terribly frightening that we’re not doing enough to teach/inspire students how to read? This includes how to spend more time in a library and not in front of screens, how to look deeper and wider about a subject on ‘platforms ‘ that don’t have hyperlinks and cool info-graphics. The problem is not in the UK, but in the US!

This may sound odd coming from me, because I do promote digital literacy, integration social media into knowledge sharing etc. But I work with kids, too. I can see where we are headed. Down the cliff! I have heard people brag about how their Johnny is sooo good at computer games, and loves Angry Birds, but these same parents don’t even own a library card in the home.

It is not just low-income children who can’t/don’t read. After investing some $6 billion in such ambitions programs in the US, the nation that is producing tablets and eReaders, and the coolest reading apps, has essentially flatlined in reading scores.

Time to lecture to the home team, don’t you think, Mr. Schmidt?

Teachers should be “more than talking heads”

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

You may have heard of Nolan Bushnell. No?

He founded Atari, and is perhaps one of the fathers of the video game industry. (He was named by  Newsweek as one of the  “50 Men Who Changed America.”)

He makes a point about education that is true for communicators: that the learning environment is toast, and we are competing for the minds and hearts of an audience that has moved far beyond what our established systems can cope with.

I just got done with an article for publication on why the marriage between newsletter publishers and readers is on the rocks. While researching this topic I came across a common thread between education and business communication. We are trying to pry open the new cannister (attention) with an old set of tools.

The competition for the  minds of kids is not sufficient. We have to have more than talking heads, says Bushnell. (He recommends abolishing classrooms!). The one-to-many distribution of information is fraught with problems.

  • Pace is one of those problems
  • Class size is the other.

These are connected. Altering the pace means altering the class size, he says.

I’ve conducted many webinars and workshops. Virtual and face-to-face. I can see from where he comes. The moment I become the talking head in front of a cool PowerPoint template, I lose the audience. Sure I have their attention, but I lose the connection — between my brain and theirs.

Watch Bushnell’s presentation, and even if you have issues with video games, try to see the meta discussion here. I have problems with the lure of instant gratification and the goals of education. But new media is not something we can keep locked up in a dark room. The academic response to Wikipedia has moved quite a bit from horror to skepticism to adoption. I have seen how teachers have inspired students to create a literary project using a Wiki. Social learning is here –another topic worth exploring –whether we like it or not.

But if I put this aside, I could glean some great ideas from some of what he says here.

Thanks to my friend Manoj Fernando for pointing me to Bushnell

Crowdsourcing a textbook, Wikinomics experiment in the making

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This is not the textbook approach to writing a textbook.  But then again, it’s a book on the topic of ‘Management through collaboration‘ so it would be a missed opportunity -dumb, almost– not to tap into the collaborative potential of social media.

Charles Wankel, calling himself ‘author and organizer’ describes this task as “a new authoring structure,” a 640-page book that will be “produced using an immense network of coauthors” –926 co-authors to be precise.

The web site, features a deep list of academics from all corners of the world (Botswana, Bangladesh, , Greece, India, Turkey, Slovak Republic etc)

It’s a social media experiment on a grand scale. The authors are supposed to contribute via an invitation-only wiki. They were sourced via LinkedIn. The book has an accompanying blog that for the moment, however, is not well updated. But it is indeed a demonstration of the principle of Wikinomics. The idea that mass collaboration will become the new normal, where ‘static, immovable, noneditable items will be anathema…”