As the snow comes piling down on brandon and manitoba in general, I find myself cooped up inside (after a nice snowy run outside, of course), I find myself going through my classmate's blogs and reflecting on how lucky I am to have had a chance to meet and learn from all these amazing people. I'm so lucky to be in #eci831 with Alec Couros (find his webpage here) and a very diverse and intelligent group of teachers and others involved in education! For example, Ms. Moffatt has a very detailed post on the nature of knowledge today, and in particular I really enjoyed the chart on some popular epistemological perspectives that are relevant today. I could literally feature everybody's blog here, but one more that I'd like to highlight is Altan's recent blog post on the quandaries of knowledge explosion. A very detailed breakdown of the various schools of knowledge is presented as they progress, ending with our current so called "digital age" and social learning. The discussion presented for thought is great, and makes me want to stop searching Google, and just staying on Blog Hub in our eci831 course! I wish I could add more! So here's my quick review of Screencast-O-matic, a screen recording tool that is not new for me but is new for many of my students, who are creating tutorials for each unit we complete in Grade 11 Computer Science. The students are writing scripts, making story boards, creating examples to use in their tutorials, coding them, and putting it all together. They will also critique one of their peers' videos while in the editing stage so that the suggestions can be added to the video. To cap it off, it seems like every parent will sign off on the waiver form, so we will be uploading the resulting videos to YouTube for public viewing. Here is a quick video review of Screencast-O-matic below: If you didn't feel like watching the 2 minute video above (yikes, it's hard to compete with those 10 second tik tok videos) I'll quickly summarize: I like Screencast-O-matic for a few reasons: 1) the watermark on the free version is not intrusive 2) it is super easy to use 3) you can record the screen and also the webcam at the same time 4) it's easy to select the screen area you'd like to record 5) You can upload directly to YouTube if you like to live on the edge or you can save the video for later editing Really, how could we complain? It's a great, free, educational tool that empowers teachers and students. Using the built in video editor in Windows or Macs, you can really step it up to the next level. I've started using it to record any demos I do in my computer science classes, this way my students (or perhaps other people out there on YouTubes) can use them whenever they need a refresher or need to learn something new. What an amazing time we live in. I feel like I've been taking all our Ed Tech for granted the last few years, but really being in this class is helping me be amazed every day what just how much is possible today. I'm going to link to an interesting post that features 92 EdTech tools. Can you envision using any of these in your own classrooms? Till next time, stay curious, and have fun! Matteo PS A special thank you to Kurt Campos, a student of mine who is clearly very talented, and created the logos for my blog at the top of every page!! Thanks Kurt :D
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Pavan Arora scaring the children, and telling us that everything we learned (because most of have been out of university for at least 4 or 5 years...) is now obsolete. Run for the hills and hide your degrees! Labor I'm going to do something CRAZY here and combine my extra post on this additional reading with our prompt for the week: "how do you take up teaching in a world where knowledge is becoming obsolete?" Of course, the title of the TedXFoggyBottom video is a bit sensational... knowledge is not becoming obsolete, but rather, it's becoming a commodity. Certainly our access to knowledge has exploded... I remember the world before YouTube was more than just cat videos, around 2005/2006.... it was much harder to learn something! You had to find a book or article about it, or track down someone who could teach you. Pavan argues that knowledge is getting updated all the time, and that the Pluto you learned was a planet is no longer a planet. We are trying to prepare students for jobs that don't even exist yet, a claim that I think goes unchallenged all too often. For example, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019), the fields that have the highest number of new projected jobs are in health care (specifically, personal care aides), food preparation and serving, registered nurses, followed by software development for the next 7 years. None of those things are new jobs. Working your way down the list also doesn't seem to yield any mysterious unheard of professions or jobs. Now, are there jobs that are dying because of technology, or changing because of it? You betcha... but we aren't seeing a reinvention of the wheel. In fact, as Trump pointed out once, cars have 4 wheels. A fun exercise is googling old ads for things we thought would exist in about 10 years, and which still don't exist 65 years later. Here is a magazine cover from around 1965. Can't wait for my flying hover car, made possible with the power of plastics! Pavan says that our knowledge has an expiration date, and that augmented reality will allow us a quantum leap in educational possibilities (I happen to agree with him there, when the tech gets good enough). However, I'd argue that if you want to master something, that still does mean you need to internalize a LOT of facts and knowledge. There are certainly professions that require a lot of updating your knowledge, but you always start with a very large base of knowledge that is mostly unchanging. Math is still math. Mechanics still fix cars that still have moving parts. Now they swap out computer chips too sometimes, but the base job is the same, for example. Carpenters are still building houses out of wood and concrete, not zeros and ones. Sure, the tools they use are cooler and fancier, but the base job remains intact. Computer programmers have been coding since the 1950's. I've heard the prediction that computers will be coding themselves in 5 or 10 years... speaking to a former student of mine (find him here) doing his Masters in Computer Science has put my mind to rest. We are far away from that if he is to be believed. Technology IS creating new jobs, and changing old ones, but I feel like the headline always gets over sensationalized. Does the technology available to teachers nowadays have massive potential to change what and how we learn? I'd say YES! However, you don't spend 10,000 hours becoming an expert at something by not committing anything to memory. At the same time, I'm not saying that YouTube isn't the best thing since sliced bread, because it is. I see the power of social networks, and the GREAT potential of all this knowledge we have at our finger tips. What is a teacher to do? I would argue that learning how to learn is and always was a very important skill to have. As teachers, we can now offer students the ability to choose their own curriculum and learn whatever they want. I have experimented with this in my Grade 12 Computer Science class, which is completely project based. Students write me a proposal for what they want to learn, I provide them with resources and they also identify their own online resources (my school is nice enough to always allow me to spend money on the students if they need books, programs, parts, whatever) and the students learn whatever they choose to learn. There is a lot of dialogue, reflection, and documenting that goes on, and most students seem to enjoy the process of choosing what they learn. This is the power of the technology and knowledge (YouTube) that we have today! One of my favourite videos of all time is actually Derek Mueller's "This will revolutionize education" (Derek Mueller has been on various TV shows, including Bill Nye Saves the World. He has a successful YouTube channel and a Ph.D in Physics Education--Love the way he explains things). I've always loved history (even though I haven't studied nearly enough of it!). I believe there is value in examining the past, and what Mr. Mueller does in his video is investigate why the teaching profession has failed to live up to all sorts of wild claims about how a new technology will change education forever. He then discusses a bit about where we are going, the power of social learning and YouTube, and what he thinks is the best way forward for educators in our tech-driven world. Worth a watch, it clocks in at around 7 minutes. Derek Mueller laying down the law. One of the things that strikes me the most in the video is when Derek says "...we are not limited by the experiences we can give students. What limits learning is what can happen inside the student's head ... No technology is inherently superior to any other ... researchers have failed to investigate how to use the technology to promote meaningful thought processes ... so the question really is, what experiences promote the kind of thinking that is required for learning?" (Derek Mueller, 2014, 4:10-4:49). He goes on to list some recent research where these processes are being investigated. His video isn't all doom and gloom! At 5:30, he discusses why we need teachers at all in the YouTube world, where I suppose one could say, knowledge is obsolete. He basically says that a teacher's job is to inspire and challenge students to want to learn. They guide the social process of learning and keep students accountable. He believes that YouTube will revolutionize education, being the gateway to knowledge, and accessible at any time by anyone with an internet connection. And this post has become too long. End it here. Love to hear what you guys think. Curiously yours, Matteo Works Cited
Arora, Pavan. (2014). Knowledge is obsolete, so now what? YouTube video, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWR5YXm2mRg on October 4, 2019. Mueller, Derek. This Will Revolutionize Education. YouTube video, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c&t=2s on October 4, 2019. United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2019). Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved April 24, 2019 from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/home.htm and https://www.bls.gov/ooh/most-new-jobs.htm Flying Car picture retrieved from https://alexandruduta.com/tag/1960s/ on October 4, 2019. Ah, well, an awkward topic indeed to discuss. But something that I occasionally find does happen in class. I try to make up projects that aren't easy to Google, but alas, cheating seems to happen anyways. Whether it's students "helping" each other by copying and pasting their own code, lately I've been finding it more and more important to go ethics and responsibilities, and the value of schooling. I do encourage a level of cooperation in my classes, I like to see students explaining things to each other, and being good citizens and helping out a brother or sister in need! Manitoba has a whole ICT curriculum that is supposed to be taught by all teachers. My informal findings is that very few teachers even know what it is, and if they do, they certainly don't have much time to spend on it. Click the picture to go to the LwICT continuum website If you don't want to go reading a bunch, the continuum stresses the importance of...
-Higher order thinking skills -creativity and thinking -Horribly named "21st century skills" (this would make a great blog post some other time) -Digital citizenship (part of this is ethics and responsibility) -constructivist learning (and gradual release of responsibility) Etc. I do show many of my classes websites like StackOverFlow... and general internet searching skills. Since I think I am leaning towards option 1, and having my kids make YouTube tutorials, it'll be more important that ever that I ensure that I cover ethics and digital citizenship. It's never fun having conversations with students when you find clearly duplicate code, or code they aren't really able to explain. Other times students can explain it just fine, as they've gone and actually done some research or reading on the internet... this is something I encourage and WANT to see. I think the importance of going over ethics cannot be understated. I won't want students to eventually find themselves in some sort of trouble over it, and obviously it's also the wrong thing to do as well. What do you think? Stay curious! Cheers, Matteo A big week is upon us! In deciding what my major project will be, I've basically given thought to two things: 1) Having my students use YouTube in my computer science class to upload tutorials and summaries of their learning (which is actually something I ended up doing anyways this year...) 2) Learning how to play the accordion. Onto the options! OPTION 1: Student YouTube Tutorials and Videos So, in this option, I would have students create tutorials using any method they prefer. I have shown them how to use ScreencastOmatic and then create a voice over with their phone later. Some have opted to type their comments in Word or a similar program. Page one of the brief (and very rough!) brochure I made explaining the project to the students. They are to create summaries of their learning each unit, and create a video that basically would supposedly teach someone all the important elements of the unit, and include some coding examples (or at least this is what I am thinking). For now, I've had them upload their Scratch Tutorials (Scratch is a kid friendly programming language that I have my grade 12's go out and teach in some local elementary schools). I'm also considering having them also frequent sites like StackOverFlow (click the picture to the left to see!) to answer other people's questions. I haven't created a rubric or any marking guides yet, because I actually wanted to get some input from my students, which I will do tomorrow! Your input would be appreciated though if you have any ideas or suggestions! OPTION 2: Learn the Accordion This is very self explanatory. I am a classically trained classical guitarist, but I haven't played at all since I was about 24. Life, you know, it gets in the way of the music! A friend of mine purchased a used accordion for me a few years ago, and I really want to learn how to play it! I've tracked down a few promising channels and videos.... let's see the line up (click the picture if you want to see the video)! The first one below simply has the most views, so it seems promising.... The second just seems like a good alternative to the first, it's a bit newer which is what caught my interest The last option seems attractive because she claims to do it in 7 days... so it might be a good crash course.
Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't take a stab at talking about the article I posted up on Twitter. A few standouts: 1) Mr. Walsh seems to thinks all teachers will be leveraging AI to some extent--I don't think this will be a thing. It's kinda like how most teachers aren't leveraging any of the tech we have right now, why would AI be any different? Sure, some teachers might (not even sure what exactly that would look like to be honest, as I don't get AIs really). 2) Just for the record, I don't think teachers are going to be replaced by AIs anytime soon either--the job is just too complicated right now. 3) I do think Deepfakes will be a problem, and that worries me as someone who has enough videos on YouTube to probably make a good deepfake. Not sure what a deepfake is? Check it out! The biggest standout for me was: "...we do have a responsibility to coach kids and the next generation on taking steps to safeguard their own data, understanding risks to their online reputation and knowing how to protect their digital identities" (Randles, 2019, p. 14). This is something that as teachers, I'm sure we could all do more of. Someone made the comment to me that we should encourage students to put their BEST work on the internet, and if they do that they shouldn't have any major issues down the road. I couldn't agree more.
Curiously yours, Matteo Works cited Randles, J. (2019). Mike Walsh discusses AI, 5G networks and our relationship with tech. ISTE: Empowered Learner, 10-14. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/category/empowered-learner Just a quick little video to briefly showcase some of the relationships I have with social media. Twitter and YouTube are definitely my top spots. I don't tweet a lot, but I do enjoy stealing ideas from teachers who are far better and more clever than me on Twitter. YouTube is a hub of education, not really "social media" per say, unless you count the (often wonderful) comment sections! Nonetheless, I think YouTube has probably made the biggest impact on education... there is literally a how to video for ANYTHING on there. I have students use it all the time, all in a gambit to get them to take control of their learning, and to make them into useful, productive, and self-sufficient little people! I also enjoy staying up to date with my friends on SnapChat, it's crazy how easy it is to communicate, share some laughs, and just basically be there via videos, voice, and whatever on a platform like SnapChat. A friend is never too far away, literally no matter how far they actually are, they are sort of just there, in your phone. Can't wait until we have those implanted into our eyes so we can go hands free. Of course, these are the positive effects of social media on my life. The negatives would be... you are sort of always connected. It's far too easy to waste time. Faaaar too easy. Students experience this, but, so do teachers, or at least I think they do! Probably the most terrible thing I can think of regarding social media is it's capacity to "remember everything"... as in everything you share online is there forever. Countless times we've seen the story played out in the media... somebody famous said something silly/ill advised/something they no longer believe x number of years ago, and it gets puked out from the past to tarnish some present moment. This is something we really need to address with students, is the horrible capacity of the internet to remember everything, but, more importantly, how some people can't wrap their minds around the idea that people do, and can grow and change over time... and some opinion you held for 3 days 15 years ago may no longer apply to what you believe today. Last negative about social media: it's pretty damn hard to have any privacy nowadays. If you have a phone, credit card, or social media accounts, you literally are tracked everywhere. Below you'll find a video just posted on MSNBC, where they interview Edward Snowden on privacy. What amazing timing, as I write this it literally came up in my YouTube feed. Thanks, Google! OK, internet people, stay curious! Cheers, M Having just come off of two days of "professional development" within my division, this article in particular interested me. Of course, Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) was a word that was tossed about. There are many definitions, but to put it in my own words, I would say a PLN is a group of learners who pool their resources in order to solve a particular problem. Whether the problem is "how do I make sure my students understand this particular math concept", or more broad like "I want to get better at making computer science interesting for my students" is up to the group. Members may float in and out of the group. These ideas may develop formally, informally, or as a result of in group discussion. I've heard people compare it to a mentor and student relationship, but this is plain wrong. A PLN really is a network of learners.
My current understanding of PLNs, how they are formed, and what benefit they serve, and to whom, was a topic of my master's degree. I am 100% just speaking off the cuff here, My opinion is that they are rarely successful when created by top-down mandate. I think they require an interested group of teachers or learners gathering together informally over a common goal that interests them AND is relevant to their current practice or interests. Trust, Krutka, and Carpenter (2016) echo a similar sentiment: first by discrediting the current state of top-down professional development approaches utilized by most school divisions as deficient and of not much use to teachers. They later float the idea that "informal learning opportunities allow educators to co-construct knowledge for their practice in collaboration with peers, colleagues, and other individuals who are situated locally" (p. 16-17). The authors also note that this type of PD has not been studied well, and that online learning spaces are further adding to the informal nature of PLNs (Trust, Krutka, & Carpenter, 2016). The studies' findings are interesting. I'll note there was a wide variety of teachers who taught a wide variety of subjects involved, and that the study was qualitative in nature. Trust, Krutka, and Carpenter (2016) report that teachers mostly met their PLNs in person, but also that a fair share met online via Twitter, Edmodo, blogs, and other platforms (p. 22). Reasons for joining a PLN ranged from "curating information, exchanging opinions, and [staying] current on research and best practices ... [teachers] learned about and implemented specific teaching strategies, while others redefined their roles and aims as teachers" (p. 23). While we can all agree that these findings are certainly encouraging, my issue begins with the lack of any quantitative evidence within classrooms themselves. I see this paper as an interesting prestudy to what should be a larger effort investigating, say, the effects of teachers learning new strategies in PLNs and implementing them in their classrooms. Did their students performance increase? Would students report that they had a better experience in class? Do not get me wrong... I very heartily believe that if a teacher develops a new appreciation for a subject, or a new want to continue learning so called "best practices", I think this is a GOOD thing that PLNs do. I think people gathering together and learning more is GOOD, as I'm sure we can all agree. But it's also important to know how much of a difference that time utilized actually did for students. Seeing as time is limited, while my idea can seem a bit harsh... why would I use my time doing one thing when perhaps it would be more effectively placed elsewhere? This is where solid research can help us, to save time and grief. Many educational studies are worthwhile and useful, and present ideas that definitely warrant further investigation. Too many stop short of measuring real world effects, always opting to investigate people's opinions (which are fluid, and not always based in reality... I am certainly guilty of not always being based in reality). I have this exact criticism for a paper I am currently writing and have already presented on... my response to myself would be to complete another study on the same topic, but this time implement a quantitative tool as well in order to measure student difference before and after the "treatment" so to speak. Feel free to comment. Remember, stay curious! Works Cited Trust, T., Krutka, D., & Carpenter, J. (2016). "Together we are better": Professional learning networks for teachers. Computers & Education, 102(2016), 15-34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.06.007 Well, it's been a while since I've taken the time to actually post content to a blog! I'm usually out there reading blogs, not creating them! Perhaps it's time for that to change! For today, I'd just like to post a link to a (better) website than mine, outline 3 reasons why computer science should become a core subject! Now, I'm not sure if I think it should be a core subject just yet, but the article does outline a few good ideas on why it might be important! Find the article below! Happy reading! https://www.gettingsmart.com/2015/09/3-reasons-coding-should-be-a-core-subject/ |
AuthorMy name is Matteo Di Muro, the original Prairie Boy, and I've been teaching since I was 14. I currently teach mathematics and computer science in Brandon. I try to keep on learning things, and I'm getting onboard with sharing with others, hence this site! Archives
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