So as EDIT400 comes to the end of its first five-week block, the time has come to review the course and have an honest appraisal of what’s happened.
I’ve created a delicious.com account for myself. Four weeks ago I’d never heard of delicious in any context other than food. Who told the marketing brainiacs they could take ownership of a word we all use, slap a little ® or © next to it and call it their own. Foods are delicious. Websites aren’t. That aside, I can definitely see myself using delicious. I now only need to remember one web address and I can have access to all my favourites. Brilliant. A real effort saver.
PowerPoint. Been there, done that. (Where do I queue for the souvenir t-shirt?) I’m sure it hasn’t changed too dramatically in the last few years. Time in Africa doesn’t seem to have hurt my PowerPoint skills. PowerPoint, like delicious is useful, and I will use it in my teaching. I’d have liked to have had a play with Prezi. I’m told it blows PowerPoint away. You can dump all manner of stuff into it and organise it however you like. Skip over bits if time runs short or have extra bits to use if there’s time available. Maybe Prezi’s the personal jet pack to PowerPoint’s skateboard.
A wiki? Sorry, way too complicated for me. The one I was involved in setting up didn’t look at all like I expected, didn’t get quality input from all the members and was, for me, quite hard to navigate. Not intuitive at all. And people’s comments were signed with their UC student login ids. I’m sorry but what’s happened to names? I am Stu, I am not swm57. I did however manage to paste up some great pictures of Joe90 – I wonder who’s got that as their UC student logon?
The video that sold the idea of a wiki to us was great. Sliding bits of paper making a list for a camping trip and, hey presto! Stu’s bringing the tent and David’s got the camping stove. Translate that into a different field like talking about websites that’d be good for teaching mathematics though and I missed the boat somehow.
As for the name “wiki”? Last time I checked it was Ruben’s surname and Māori for week, yet in this case it seems to be a made-up word that simply sounds good. It certainly doesn’t mean anything to me. I just don’t get it – the word or the place for wikis. Unless I’m going camping, that is.
This blog? I’ve already got a blog. A friend set it up for me so she and my other friends could track my cycle tour and for me to keep a record of it. Some days it was a right pain to update. On others it was therapeutic. And on some it was an absolute joy to write. I still use it occasionally, but not very much.
My favourite part of my regular blog is “What’s on the myPod” and I've added a similar section to this blog. Long before Apple introduced the iPod or Sony brought out the Walkman - that often touted marketing gem they thought wouldn’t fly but took off and created an entirely new market segment - the myPod rose to fame. We all have one. Our ancestors had one. Adam and Eve may have had the first ones. Or maybe Lucy.
The myPod is your own internal iPod. Entirely free and permanently on shuffle, with batteries that never go flat, a myPod plays the songs that go round and around inside your head. It might skip on occasion or get the repeat button stuck at times, but it’s there and it goes on and on (and on). Some days it’ll keep playing the last song on the radio or TV before you walk out the door; I’ve had days filled with the closing song from Hi-5. On others something will trigger an old favourite to play again and again.
Of late my myPod has been repeating The Mutton Birds - “A Thing Well Made”. Maybe because the song is set in Christchurch (my current home), maybe because of a veiled reference to the Aramoana mass murder (close to my old home town), or maybe because of the haunting tuba refrain. Sometimes it’s obvious why a song’s on my myPod, other times it’s not.
But, sorry, I digress…
This blog however has become more of a reflective blog. And a soapbox for airing a few views. (The nature of public blogs though naturally tempers some of my more extremist views – you never know who’s reading.)
Which brings us nicely to what I would rather have learnt in an ICT course. If I’d been asked five weeks ago I’d have had no idea, but with the benefit of some 20:20 hindsight I would have liked to have been given the do’s and don’ts; discussed the ethics; been warned of the pitfalls and dangers; seen some of the things to look out for, those traps for young players. We got the good, but what of the bad and the ugly?
My last post, on the headmaster who unwittingly ended up with masses of porn on his work computer, drew a few comments along the lines of the tragedy of it all and how sad it was that kids would Google him. Those are facts of life for the world we live in. People do Google one another. Employers regularly check people’s Facebook sites before employing them. To me these are realities of the modern age and they’re ugly.
In an increasingly technologically-connected world we are all more connected and exposed than ever before. We’re connected electronically to many, many more people, from the man or woman at the next desk, the bloke down the road, to the web-enabled child in London, La Paz or Lahore and the Midnight Oil’s cannibals in smart suits and ties. And those connections are for ever – once something goes into cyberspace, whether it be fact or fiction, it’s there for people to see. Yet short of a natty little YouTube video on “once it’s posted, it’s there forever” I’ve not picked up any tips on keeping myself safe.
As a new migrant to Digi-land I feel like I’ve missed the induction programme. Migrants to new countries get some sort of indoctrination on the culture and safety aspects of living in their newly adopted home; migrants to Digi-land, a place fraught with cultural norms, etiquette and dangers just as real, do not. I’ve been told what to sign up to, and yes delicious is yummy, but I’ve not been warned to look after myself or advised as to how to do this.
The revised New Zealand Curriculum has a vision of young people being connected – able to relate to others; effective users of communication tools; connected to the land and environment; members of communities; international citizens. As someone who hopes to play a big part in helping to fulfil the aspirations of the new curriculum I wonder two things:
One, am I being well prepared to help young people become effective users of communication? I think so – EDIT400 has given me some arrows to add to my quiver and plenty of food for thought. My students will forever be much more technology-savvy than I can ever hope to be, but at least I’ve got a greater awareness of what the beaches and cliffs, the fields and rivers, the mountains and plains of Digi-land are like and I’ve got a couple of new tricks up my sleeve.
And two: The Mutton Birds song on the myPod has the lines
'cause when a man holds a thing well made
there's connection
there's completeness
when a man holds a thing well made
He's not viewing a virtual object. He's touching it. Holding it. And that gives the connection, the completeness.
So what of the new curriculum's desire for connection to the land and environment? As I’ve blogged before, technology needs to be used appropriately. ICT can be an effective tool to help people connect to the land and our environment, but wiki all you like and there’ll be no real connection to what really matters – not only the land and the environment, but other people and communities, locally and internationally – unless you grab your tent and camping stove and get out there. I sincerely hope other parts of my teaching course devote as much time and effort to providing the opportunities and the tools for making those connections as EDIT400 has devoted to ICT.
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