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For any other ridiculous math nuts out there - the newest Mersenne prime has been found! Coming in at 13-million digits long, and requiring 75 networked computers to locate it. Forget horsepower, we're talking major processing power here!For more information, check out this news site!
While I have to admit it has crossed my mind that some districts and administrators might be slow to appreciate the value of web 2.0 tools, it never occurred to me that they might choose to block the applications and the sites that host them rather than learn how to best deal with the concerns. However, this week I read a post by Wesley Fryer on his Moving with the Speed of Creativity blog. In it he addressed how some schools have misinterpreted recent educational legislation and are being overly cautious. The schools are worried that they need to save and document every bit of information being created inside their walls in case of litigation. Apparently, this isn't quite the case.
In my reading of the post, I interpreted the quote from lawyer Scott Bauries to mean that if we are using web 2.0 tools with our students and the government needs to access it, that the courts will get it from the third party site hosting our activities, the school itself doesn't need a copy. So, there's no need to be overly conservative and cut ourselves off from this useful and growing set of technological developments. We should be able to embrace them and use them for our students' benefit.
Now, if one's district has blocked these sites because they don't want students to waste time or be distracted from whatever their assigned computer-based task is... well, that's another matter entirely. Surely though, with honest discussion and open minds, opposing parties can reach some sort of agreement that will allow teachers to take advantage of these new opportunities and still placate the concerns of the administration.
As teachers and future teachers we know it's great to have resources to draw on for new ideas. One way to do this is by social networking. It's alot like asking the teacher down the hall what ideas they might have, or swapping activities with colleagues at a conference, but the scale is much greater.One such site is Technology Integration for Secondary Teachers. This site has some cool ideas and links. One of the links is to a free word art site you can use to create trendy content-related graphics. Another is to NBC's On-Demand news archive - in L2 we could use that to pull up recent reports about countries where the target language is spoken. By discussing current events overseas we can engage in conversations utilizing all of ACTFL's 5C's as well as sparking meaningful interest for our students. We could even post links to videos on a Class Portal and open up a discussion board.
It's also just a nice idea to have a place to discuss what does and doesn't work with other professionals trying to bring their classrooms into the digital world.
Life is changing. Knowledge is changing. Learning is changing. Everything is fast paced. So today's learners of all ages have had to change too.
Today's learner is like a solitary musician.
And you're probably asking yourself, "Where did she come up with that one?"
A musician starts not knowing how to play, or even hold, his or her instrument properly. However with time, plays a scale, then some exercises, eventually some Tellemann perhaps. Eventually, with diligence that same music student becomes proficient enough to play complex and difficult pieces with ease ("Tarantella" anyone?). However, no matter how good that musician is, he or she is playing alone.
When put into the musical network or ecology, first let's say a quartet. Well, now there's opportunity for melody and harmony, point and counterpoint, call and response.
What if the group is larger? An orchestra maybe? Now you can have many voices/parts playing, swooping, flying, far beyond anything the one musician could have done alone, creating new worlds for the senses. Have you ever heard Holst's "Planets"? Yet, each musician is playing his or her part, using their own knowledge and skill, their own specialized expertise on their instrument to contribute to the greater whole. "No one is capable of possessing every form of knowledge or every form of understanding in that field" (Siemens, "Connectivism", slide 12). Musician A may be a virtuoso when it comes to her trombone, but she may not have a clue how to get the proper sound from Musician B's flute. They rely on each other to contribute to the beauty of the whole.
That is today's learner. There is increased call for specialization; it isn't good enough to just be a jack-of-all-trades anymore. However, none of us can "know" everything. So we network, we learn not how to do things, but where to find them. We rely on each other and the resources we all add to the greater community to find what we're looking for. For example, I don't remember much about chemistry, but I know who to call and ask. I don't remember most of the dates of the battles of the Civil War, but I know my brother has some great books, or how to Google the information and measure the sites for reliability. I don't have to know things the same way my grandparents did. My paternal grandmother can still recite all of the American presidents in chronological order - I don't know if I can even name the majority of them. However, I can quickly and easily find that information.
Times have changed. So has how we learn.
As I poke around the applications and options, I wish I had made a blog instead of a googlepage when I studied in Spain in the summer of 2007. There are so many more options here it seems and I could have gotten feedback from my friends and family directly instead of the communication going in only one direction or having to take place via email.Oh well. Live and learn!
