Digital Immigrants & Digital Natives

“In the year we became obsessed with YouTube and MySpace, perhaps its’ no surprise that a blog of a block doing a silly dance around the world got five million hits”. – Dance, dance, wherever you may be.

Matt Harding made himself famous on Youtube since 2006 by showing him dancing in front of landmarks and street scenes in various international locations. In 2008, the new “Where the hell is matt” video was broadcasting on Youtube where Matt showed himself dancing in 42 countries in 14 months. The Amateurs talent of film making and dance give us a local perceptive of the world. 

By thinking about where the hell we are in teaching the digital generation, maybe we are Amateurs like Matt, but we could use our own “dance” to show our students the perceptive of the digital world.  Think about my own KLA which is language, maybe its time to start let my students dance in the digital world to use the target language freely! I’ll definitely post our own dance video here in the future, and I am sure students will enjoy of doing it.    

Allanahk’s posting about “A passage through the decade” , she reflected on her “year book” and think about what she thought was good when did she with her class year ago maybe no longer “thought to be acceptable practice”.  Looking back a few decades from now on, what will students that time think about we are doing with our students now in classroom? Isn’t it like when we go through our first teaching experience, we’ll be embarrassed just like looking at our pictures from the Yearbook in the 1980s and we’ll say “omg, it looks so silly” but that was what we like that time. Though technology is developing, however, still a lot of teachers using the traditional teaching approach to teach in the classroom. But aren’t we are teaching a totally different Generation from 20 years ago? It takes time to adjust to the new generation and new teaching concept, but we are ready to adapt ourselves to the new evolution of teaching.  

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The article of “Constructionism, Learning by Design, and Project Based Learning” is a very interesting one for implement constructionism in the classroom. Based on Jean Piaget’s theory “learners became researchers, investigators, and to some extent artists in designing the learning environment for their target audience”. Learners don’t get ideas; they create ideas. The classroom based on constructionism can be more learner-oriented than teacher oriented. Kayla’s class created the constructionisim learning environment and being able engaging learners,  communicate with the them and give them feed back effectively.

It gave 5 strategies of using learning by design (LBD) in the classroom which reminded me my time in my practicum. I was organizing my year 10 students doing a video shoot of a Chinese song. I was expecting some difficulties happened in this activity as students never did video shoot before. However, by giving clear instruction and allowing them to design the way of how this video should be shoot, students worked much better than I thought. The students are really enjoyed the learner centred environment, authentic tasks and the innovative assessment. You can click here to have a look at the video they did. The only thing I found I did not do well was that I didn’t give them effective feedback immediately regarding of their Chinese study in this unit. I will try to work harder to improve about this in the future.

References:  Han,S. & Bhattacharya, K. Constructionism.(N.d.). Learning by Design and Project Based Learning. Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, University of Georgia

I’ve read Miriam’s blog about “Australian Teachers ‘Tops’ at intergrating Technology” . It is good to know Australian teachers have been made great effort of intergrating ICT in the classroom and the outcomes is also great. Recent news also reported about the technology revolution in public schools in NSW and the NSW government is ready to install the “interactive classroom” in 400 schools soon.

As the technology has become more and more important each day, I think it is interesting to think about as trained teachers, what we have been taught about technology at school. Go through of the whole Bachelor of teaching course, it is frustrating to realise there was only 1 workshop about how to use interactive white board from the subject of “Professional Portfolio”. Though it is important to know all the theories of digital learning, but I think it is a pity that the Digital learning course didn’t give us a lot of chances to let us know of using technologoies -especially like using interactive white board in the classroom. 

Isn’t it a time to stop thinking about how important technologies are in the classroom but thinking how we’ve been trained as a teacher? If we have been trained in a more theoratically and traditional ways, how can we justify ourselves as a teacher to cater for the new generation who wishes to be taught in a more technology centred way?

The article of “Its not just the digital natives who are restless” by Richard Van Eck, talks about using video games to teach our restless generation-the digital natives. We’ve done quite a few discussions in this semsters about our digital generaltions, some people said students were still learning 200 years ago without technology. But it is really the time to think about that the generation we are facing now are different, the learning instruction should change to cater for their needs.

It is very interesting as in this article it is not only talks about video games it also involves about popular culture. As a teacher for this generation, I’ve tried to use popular cultures in my class and would like to give a try for using video games in the future. But how much should I use, and what is my expectation for using video games and popular culture of my students? How to intergrate games in education and maximize the potential outcome?

“Games are effective not because of what they are, but because of what they embody and what learners are doing as they play a game”. I can’t agree more with “choosing a suitable game” in the classroom. Different games might be very suitable for certain subjects but not for others. For example, the game “Uncharted Water” by Koei Japan might be a great game for teaching geography in class as it is about sailing over the world, students need to know major cities in the whole world so they can fulfill each tasks. However, how to use this game in language class or even math class would be a challenge for teachers. There seems no such a game that can suit for all subjects area, it is really important to think about what outcome do we expect by using games in the classroom and choose it carefully.  

Chapman (1999) suggests that there should be increasing emphasis on the learner “situating” themselves in the world of study, to explore the possibilities in other worlds, and the view concepts and constructs from other perspectives, even take on multiple roles. Early genre of educational games have been largely replications of traditional games genre with learning variations, such as Tic-tac-toe games with question answering interjected into turn taking and more recently quest style games where progress is dependent on progres through the course material. 

However, on the other hand, I thought most of the educational video games are not as interesting as commercialised and enternainment video games. To students, there are big no differences of doing a cross world puzzle on worksheet and using a computer. They are fascinating about the commercialised video games which created a fantastic but not real world that they never experienced. o make real progress educational game genres needs to benefit and leverage on the evolution of entertainment game genres.

Like in the end of the article said “Will we continue to learn from the past? Will we realize the potential that DGBL has to revolutionize how students learn?” I think the answer is “yes”, but we need to find a better way to implement the DGBL in classroom – perhaps with better games choices.

References:

Eck, R.(N.D.). Its not just the digital natives who are restless. Retrieved on 24, Oct, 2008.

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0620.pdf

Uncharted Water, Retrieved on 25,Oct, 2008http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncharted_Waters 

Chapman, M.L. 1999. Situated, Social, Active: Rewriting Genre in the Elementary Classroom. Written Communication. 16(4): 469-490.

 Picture of the Uncharted Water.

Suggested Attribution: http://download.tkgame.com/d/file/down/media/yxdh/2006-08-31/4175c686292fac37cf51d9b700a2cdcb.jpg 

Picture of “Uncharted Water” IV, one of the six main characters.

Suggested Attribution: http://newphoto.1t1t.com/usr/04/56465/1107331688_8.jpg  

This article talks about the boundary of engaging and educational games with commercial games.

There is one very interesting point by  Ip [2006] arguing against the potential of off-the-shelf (COTS) commercial games because of their close nature,” has identified two pedagogically important components of any game: the underlying simulator and the game goals. In the common sense of computer games, the in-game simulator is the mechanism which generates responses to the actions taken by the players. In role play simulation and many other games (e.g. chess, football), however, the responses to players’ actions are provided by other players.  Yet other type of games, such as golf, depend on the real world to provide the feedback”.

 Digital games are an important medium that supports a high degree of interactivity and collaboration. Educational games differ from entertainment games largely only in purpose. That is, there is a shift from playing the game for social and personal entertainment goals to learning and educational goals.  We can expect that there will follow an evolution of genres to reflect this difference in purpose. While the current focus of game players is largely on entertainment,  a move to provide games with a focus on education will require the transformation of game structures and game design patterns into genres that support the values of collaboration, community building, distance learning, skill practice, and complex challenges.

 However, as a teacher, how to give feedback to students when using computer games in classroom? What should be considered as the valid outcomes by using computer games? Or even to say games. Do we always need a winner when playing certain games in the classroom, or without a winner is ok? As feedback is very important for studetn’s future learning progress, it is really important to start thinking about how to give feedback when using games in the classroom.

I also found that some students can get be emotionally upsetting when playing games in my language class, especially when the game aim is about “Winning”it. I think it is better to use games that is no obvious winning or losing in the end.

 References:  Albert Ip (N.d). Boundary Characteristics of Games, Simulation, Drama and Role play learning Environment . http://elearningrandomwalk.blogspot.com/2007/07/boundary-characteristics-of-game.html

Game enviornment , and

 References:  Albert Ip (N.d). Boundary Characteristics of Games, Simulation, Drama and Role play learning Environment .

http://elearningrandomwalk.blogspot.com/2007/07/boundary-characteristics-of-game.html

Suggested Attribution: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek

In this week’s lecture of “Education students with special needs”, we spent a lot of time talking about bullies at school. The lecturer mentioned using technology as a new medium of bullying at school. She didn’t give us more information about this issue, but after that lecture, I couldn’t stop wondering about cyber bullying which is the unwelcomed side-effect comes with new technology, how can kids do to deal with online bullies?

I’ve done a little bit research and found this interesting article “Sending Cyberbullies into Space” by Julie Mcglone. Mcglone addressed the issue of cyberbully happens in Australia high schools. The “intent of hurting” in cyberbully may lead to social isolation of a students more easily than “face to face” bully because of the 24/7 nature of the medium. Recent US study has shown girls are among the worst offender in cyberbullying. Dr Campbell, a psychologist and teacher specializing in anxiety disorders in young people, says she was surprised at her recent study that most of the online girl bullies are not face-to-face bullies. Also reflected in figures on girls who were bullied pointing that the “fact that cyberbullying is creating a whole new social problem rather than simply extending existing behaviour.”

However, the very frustrating thing to know is that many kids have been cyber bullied decided to keep it silence. Despite the prevalence of cyber-bullying, many teens don’t realise how common it is. Another research shows one of the reasons kids don’t want to tell their parents about cyberbulling is because “parents may restrict the internet use.”

I think it is very important for educators to be aware of the cyber bullying is going on and affected our students’ lives. We need to let them know they can become inadvertent cyber bullies, how to be accountable for their actions and not to stand by and allow bullying (in any form) to be acceptable. We need to teach them not to ignore the pain of others. In Julie Mcglone’s article, there are a few tips given as practical solutions for kids dealing with an online bully. I’ve also found a website called “STOP CYBERBULLYING” which is very helpful for educators and parents to look at. It is important to make our students feel comfortable reporting any incidents that may related to cyber bullying so we can stop it ASAP just like other kind of bullying.

References:

McGlone, J. (2008). Sending Cyberbullies into Spaces. Retrieved on 08/10/08 from

http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/news/technology/cyberbullies.php

Stop the Bully Retrieved on 08/10/08 from

http://www.stopcyberbullying.org

Washington, R.(2008). Parents often Unaware of Cyber-Bullying. The New York Times. Retreived on 08/10/08 from

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/parents-often-unaware-of-cyber-bullying/

The Article about K-12 and the internet is a very interesting topic to look at during my practicum. Internet should be pictured as a natural resource to support k-12 learnings in education, however, the truth is a little bit frustrating. Even in public school’s faculty, the DET blocked a lot of website, including most of the video website like youtube,it is really awkward even for teachers like me who wants to show a students a video on youtube related to Chinese culture, however, I can’t do it.

In my prac, I was just keep on wondering, how can we log on education while most of the websites are blocked in school? And I was also wondering what is DET’s criteria for websites, say, which one should be blocked, and which shouldn’t? Obviously it doesn’t mean we could show a video from youtube to our students because it is from a “blocked” website, but if we could, why block it? Some teachers are just feel annoyed by this and reluctant to use internet in class to students because “they are blocked”, how can we suppose to do with this problems while living with our X-generation students?

As the article stressed “the only way children are going to find resources that address their driving questions is by using the Internet”. “The Internet is the only mechanism that can provide the diversity of opportunities for discourse needed in K-12 education”. I think the right way is to apply more effective ways to supervise students’ use of websites in school not just simply block them..

Resources: Soloway, E. et al. (2000). K-12 and the Internet. Communications f the ACM 43(1), 19-25.

 read Ming’s blog about “Knowing my target audience ‘Gen Zs’ as a learner/teacher“. What she said about knowing our audience (which is our students) as the Gen Zs are very interesting to think about. And mentioning about how to handle with the new technology, I will never forget my first practicum experience in Kingsgrove North Highschool when I tried to do a Powerpoint presentation and use the project, however, I couldn’t set it up by myself.(I thought it was not hard, but proved that I was over-confident about myself that time). Ming talked about using smart board, I am aslo really interested in how could it work, and I think we should have workshop from our uni to teach us how to use technology – especially new technology at classroom!

Ming also mentioned “interactive aspect of Computer Technology use rather than just another PPP” is a really good point for me to think in my next practicum. It is all about how to interactive technology into teaching, not just how to use them.