The K12 Geek

NECC has been a fun learning experience this year. I’m about full when it comes to information absorption from all the wonderful sessions. We’ve all read about the Flattening of the Earth, how important it is that our students learn 21st Century Skills, and how Web 2.0 tools are helping to augment the learning process. Educators are now recognizing that we need fundamental change in the way we teach our kids. Unfortunately, many still don’t agree.

I had the pleasure of attending Tim Magner’s session entitled: “School 2.0: Technology and the Future of School” at NECC today. (Tim is the Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education.)

Tim effectively contrasted how our environment has changed in the past 30 years pointing to one example in the 1970s, that thousands of phone booths used to dot the landscape – but now everyone has cell phones, some having two or three. His point: that we have changed from a location-based society to a person-based society. “Look at the phones we now have – they aren’t just phones… they have maps, text messaging, music, games, and… in Japan, they are using the chips to pay for things” such as groceries at the store. Distance and location is now irrelevant in today’s society – it’s all about the person. School used to be the location to obtain information – now, in a location-independent world, we can get information at the touch of a button, any time, in many ways, any where we choose.

Today’s student is demanding more than past generations. “Our students want community, a chance for self-expression, and much more personalization than ever before,” said Magner. Whether it be a MySpace page to gather with friends to express their views in an online community, or the latest ring-tone they’ve downloaded to their phone – it’s now all about the person. Already, our email system is looked upon by our young ones as “the way to talk to old people.” Tim’s right: We’re not in Kansas anymore!

So, if school is no longer the sacred location for obtaining information and students are requiring more than simple ‘information downloads” (lectures) from their teachers, how then, do we go about changing education? Many teachers are on the side of “It’s worked this long, why do we need to change it? Kids are basically still kids, aren’t they?”

Well, no, I don’t think they are. There have been fundamental changes in how our kids now interact with this new information-based environment. Shouldn’t we, as educators, adapt our teaching methods to this new type of learner? Don’t we owe it to our children to communicate in the ‘here and now’ and not force yesterday’s out-dated practices on them? How would you like it if tomorrow your teacher computer was replaced by an old ribbon-feed type-writer? The typewriter is a communications tool, isn’t it? It worked back in the 1970s, didn’t it? Then why would we use computers and email if the typewriter can fill that need? (Sound preposterous to you? Yeah, me too!)

So make the stretch, get out of your comfort zone, and try to reach these new, plugged-in learners. Post your classroom discussions on the web and create a learning community for them. Let them have creative license and take ownership of their learning with project-based exercises. Record your classroom presentations and podcast them as 24/7 learning resources for download on their iPods.

Community, self-expression, and personalization: these are the doors into your students’ minds. Open them up, step inside, and create engaging learning experiences for them. Heck, that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it?

We’re not in Kansas any more – so we’d better get moving.

Happy Summertime to all 10-month employees out there. I’m 12-month, but just got back from a glorious (though short) vacation. This particular vacation was planned because of something I viewed on the Discovery Channel about two years ago.

Note: Photos can be found in the Gallery.
Video clips can be found here.

While trolling the TV channels to find something to watch, I happened upon some chaps about to descend “into the blue” to feed sharks. Ah! Nothing better than a shark feed to get my heart pumping and cry:

“You crazy idiots, WHY would you DO that?!”

Their answer: “SCIENCE!!” (if they could have answered me.) The thing I like most about the Discovery Channel is that I always LEARN something from their programs – and I like that. Learning is good, right?! These chaps were testing to see if sharks were finicky about what they eat. Sounds like a great experiment to me, and I get to watch!

The experiment: Divers in chain mail suits descend to a known shark habitat with several different menus for our friends Carcharhinus perezi, the Caribbean Reef shark. First on the menu: Chicken. The scientists offered the sharks the chicken, and they snubbed their noses at it. One or two sharks took a nibble, and then let it fall to the ocean floor, uneaten. If I remember correctly, the next item was beef. Again, the sharks showed little interest. Then, finally, the scientists offered them fish – and boy did the sharks eat it up!

So, to make a long story short: some sharks DO care about what they eat – and humans are not on their menu.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that I’d need to see this first hand. After a year of wanting and waiting, I earned my Open Water Scuba Certification, then planned the trip to the Bahamas with the dive shop that helped with the scientists’ feeding experiment: Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas.

Since the wife and I enjoy cruising so much, we found a cruise that stayed in Nassau up until the wee hours of the night so I could make sure I didn’t miss the ship. Long story short, last week I was on the boat, 8 miles off the coast of Nassau, ready to take my giant-stride into the blue with my new ‘friends.’ As soon as my eyes (mask) cleared the top of the waterline, I saw them: three six-to-nine foot Caribbean Reef sharks off my bow about 20 feet away. I must say, it was an eye-opening and heart-pounding experience.

As we made our way down the reef / wall, these beautiful animals swam amongst us, along side us, in-between us, and above us. I think they were as interested in us as we were in them. Here we are with funny suits, masks, fake flippers, making all sorts of bubbles – and they silently and effortlessly glide through the water. It was beautiful. Every now and again, one would come close – within 3 feet or so – and take a look into our eyes to see if we meant them harm. It was a bit scary – but worth it.

After a 30 minute or so dive, we made our way to the surface, and at our 15-foot safety stop, we noticed that they followed us up to keep an eye on us, again, swimming by close, but with no aggression whatsoever. The captain then moved the boat to our next destination: the shark arena.

The Shark Arena is a small patch of ocean bottom, about 50 feet under the sea. It is a circular area with a sandy-ish bottom. We were instructed to descend and form an inward-looking circle on the perimeter of this area. So we did. The captain, donned in his mesh suit, then dropped down into the middle of us with a few boxes of fish. The sharks smelled the fish as soon as it hit the water and anxiously followed him down, encompassing him in a small tornado-like ball as he moved.

Once on the bottom, our fearless feeder would open the box, spear a piece of fish, and hold it up for the sharks to take it off the spear – all within a few feet of some very statue-like divers (me included!) The sharks twisted and swam around us, brushed up against us and batted us in the masks with their fins every now and again to get to the prized fish. They had no intentions of biting us – just the fish.

Yes, there was one time in which I thought about breaking for the boat – but I really didn’t feel as though I was in danger. They were intent on the fish, and any bites to us would certainly have been because of our lack of following directions or simple stupidity of trying to ‘pet’ one of the mighty animals.

I cannot express the feeling of watching these animals in their own habitat, face-to-face, fin to fin, eye-to-eye. They were so powerful, streamlined, and beautiful. I’d recommend it to anyone. Thanks Discovery Channel, for making me want to learn more about the earth we live on, and the creatures we live with.

Lifelong Learning is a wonderful thing! Get out of your Comfort Zone and try it today.

Note: Photos can be found in the Gallery.
Video clips can be found here.

If you thought you could now purchase DRM-free music tracks from the iTunes music store and share them online with your friends, you’d better think again. Apparently Apple is still enclosing your personal information on the DRM-free tracks. So if you upload your purchased track on the web, and someone finds you doing it (the RIAA for example) your identity is still in that file.

That means they can track it back to you — and perhaps,
hold you accountable.

ars technica reports:

With great power comes great responsibility, and apparently with DRM-free music comes files embedded with identifying information. Such is the situation with Apple’s new DRM-free music: songs sold without DRM still have a user’s full name and account e-mail embedded in them, which means that dropping that new DRM-free song on your favorite P2P network could come back to bite you.

Some say this raises all sorts of privacy issues – but does it? The lack of DRM is to make it easier for YOU (the purchaser) to use those tracks — not for you to easily pirate them. Pirating music is still against the law, so, in this author’s mind, I’m not against it. If anything, it should be a powerful deterrent to those who might try to break the law.

If someone wants to try to get away with stealing, then why shouldn’t their username and email address be free game for all? What’s the difference between this and those columns in the newspaper about folks who haven’t paid their taxes?

What’s the big deal? If you don’t want your private info on the net — don’t steal music!