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Preparing our kids for the future

February 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

There’s been a wonderful conversation going on at Weblogg-ed about what our kids’ futures will require them to be. Miguel Guhlin has synthesized the original thoughts of Will’s with those of the commentors on the post.

I’m mulling over two of Will’s points in particular right now, though I suspect I’ll come back to all of them in the future.

Paper Training Students

The first is that although students will need to be less dependent on paper, we are still paper training them. This hits home, coming on the heels of my thoughts on teaching handwriting to secondary students. I feel that I need to “paper train” students — and do this well — because their secondary school success depends in part on their ability to write a standardized pen-and-paper test. At the same time, I want to prepare them for a conceivable future where paper is no longer the common communication medium. I feel that at times I’m working with a weird mix of tools and strategies, trying to meet both short-term and long-term learning goals.

I think that it’s going to come down to what several commentors suggested: kids need to know how to learn new skills themselves. I think of the different communication mediums I’ve been using over the past ten years — from email to instant messaging to websites, blogs, wikis, and social network sites. I didn’t learn how to use these in school, but I know how to learn how to use these. (In most cases, I talk to my brother-in-law who seems to absorb all things technological ahead of the curve, but that’s beside the point.)

Fluent in creating and consuming hyper-text

The idea here is that basic reading and writing skills will not suffice. I think of my observations of students’ online reading, and I agree: reading hypertext requires a different mindset than ‘basic’ reading. One needs to understand why a link is there, and why it may or may not be helpful to click through to it, and how to navigate back. One also needs to understand the architecture of hypertext environments. I found blogs quite confusing at first until I became familiar with their common features; I suspect that I need to take the time to help students recognize some of those common features to ease their own reading.

And then there is hypertext, where indeed, a very different writing style is needed. I feel like I’m slowly being convinced that student-owned blogs are going to be essential teaching tools in my near future.

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills Tagged With: , , , ,

Handwriting on the wall

February 17, 2008 By 3 Comments

Last year, in a meeting with teachers from feeder schools, someone asked whether or not elementary school teachers should continue to teach cursive writing to their students.

At the time, I told them that I am just happy with something legible, whether written, printed, block-letter, or a mix. All good copies are typed anyway, was my rationale. The Grade 8 teachers breathed a sigh of relief, wiping a lot of future battles from their schedule. A colleague from my own department, who continues to request cursive writing from her students, breathed a sigh of despair. “Where will we be when the lights go out?” was her question.

Since that day, however, I’ve come to question my earlier position. Is it really okay if students don’t use cursive writing anymore?

When we look into the future, it’s highly possible that handwriting will be replaced by some form of keying. It’s part of my job to prepare students for that future, where they will need to be able to publish written works electronically and online.

But the reality is that today, right now, students aren’t working entirely electronically. They don’t have access to computers in every class for note-taking (at least not at my school, and I suspect this is the norm rather than the exception). Tests and in-class assignments are completed using a pen and paper.

My wife alerted me to the article “Writing a Wrong” by Helaine Becker in the January 2008 issue of Today’s Parent. Although the article is a bit shy of references, there are some ideas in there that make sense, among them being:

  • Students who cannot write legibly and quickly perform poorly on tests.
  • Poor penmanship is unconsciously penalized by teachers, even when they are trying to mark only the content. This means that students who cannot write legibly receive lower grades.
  • Students who cannot write legibly may not be able to read their own notes or homework assignments.
  • Students who cannot write fluently – with automacity, according to Becker – have to focus on forming their letters rather than on sorting out and communicating their ideas. They can’t really process what they are writing.

These are some alarming consequences of poor penmanship in a world where receiving a high school diploma depends on hand writing a pen-and-paper literacy test. So until the format of that test changes, I think I’m going to include some handwriting practice in my Gr. 9 and literacy help classes.

Filed Under: 21st Century Skills, Literacy, Writing Tagged With: ,

Shifting our educational culture

February 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I share Will Richardson‘s questions about changing our culture:

So, it comes back to what is to me at least, the big question these days. Not how do we help teachers get their brains around these tools in terms of their own personal learning practice (which is still hugely important), but how do we help schools and districts to begin to reshape their culture around learning in more collaborative, connected environments? How do we get to the point where we’re not just seeing individual teachers and classrooms make the shift, but where we are seeing schools as a whole beginning to shift as well?

As facilitator of a program intended to help students prep for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test(OSSLT), I am really feeling the tension between what I’ll call ”multiliteracy” and “conventional literacy.”   In my regular courses, my goal is to support student multiliteracy because (a) it is in line with curriculum expectations, and (b) I think that students who can only read and write text on paper are not going to be functionally literate in our society.  However, students’ literacy levels are formally determined by a standardized test that is based on conventional literacy.

(Before I go on, I’ll just say that I am not opposed to standardized testing, because I value the aggregate information that is available from it.  More on that another day.)

I am wondering, though, if there is another way to handle the testing — a way that is culture-shifting.  Some of the concerns that I have with the current testing approach are:

  • Students write using pen and paper.  For some, this is not their most familiar communication medium, so they are disadvantaged.  (Clarification:  I’m not advocating a text-messaging test.)
  • Students write in the same format every time:  a news article and a five-paragraph essay are the essential written components.  These are limiting forms.
  • The same format every year means that our regular courses are being tailored more and more to meet the expectations of the literacy test.  Hours of class time being spent learning the specifics of writing a news article.  I wonder how often students will have to write a news article in their futures?

I don’t have any solutions, just questions right now.  How can our education system shift its culture to embrace multiliteracy?  Can standardized testing be adapted to support a new culture of collaboration, or is it fundamentally incompatible?  As I prepare for another literacy support session, how do I make this most helpful for students:  do I teach them to write the test, or do I teach them to read and write texts?

Filed Under: Assessment, On My Mind, Writing Tagged With: ,

Thinking about why

February 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Ryan Bretag makes a good point about asking why – not just what and how – we’re using technology in education:

In the midst of this exciting time of change, it is easy to focus on what tool … It is also just as easy to focus on the how given the various details needed and the actual fun that goes into such details.

However, skipping the why because of the excitement of the what and how is a poor practice to get caught up in for educators and it surely is unacceptable for those in roles to assist educators in such planning.

This adds another dimension to my earlier questions about evaluating technology use in the classroom. Or maybe just simplifies it.

Anyway, I’m going to confess to using technology for a “why” that has nothing to do with offering new learning experiences or assessment strategies or any other appropriately educative reason. I’m using it for the sheer excitement factor.

I’ll explain: Right now I’m teaching an after-school literacy class for students needing extra support to prepare for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT). Many of these students are there because their parents were convinced by their practice test results and a follow-up conversation that they indeed would benefit from extra help. And I am responsible for the 2-hour extra help sessions after school.

Stereotypically students who aren’t performing well on the practice tests aren’t all that excited about literacy in general. And I find that adding another two hours to their school day doesn’t usually increase their enthusiasm. They tend to show up tired, frustrated, and ready to be bored.

I tried to use pen and paper work today, rationalizing that they will have to write their test using those old-fashioned tools.

Next day I am going to use some online literacy excercises simply because a computer might make things more interesting for some students. And hopefully if they’re even just a tiny bit interested, then they might be able to get something out of this class.

We just might all survive it.

Filed Under: On My Mind Tagged With: ,