Treasure Mountain began with a bang. Dr. Ross Todd spoke about the Learning Commons and I've come home with 300 pages of reading for tomorrow!
How energizing to be part of this historic research retreat in Edmonton with some of the finest minds in Canadian School Libraries. I have lots of thought on this event to blog about, but tonight I want to reflect on Todd's comment, that it is time to stop teaching kids how to find 'stuff' and move to how to kids use 'stuff'.
As well, he spoke about the error of believing that technology is the be-all and end-all. It is a tool.
This combination of commentary from one of the North American Leaders in School Libraries led me to reflect on the serious engagement my students are having using their choices of technological tools. These tools engage them but are we moving beyond finding stuff to using stuff? Is it the tool that is engaging or the creation? I know that the products are outstanding, and the attitudes shown are beyond that, but is it the tool that is leading to the highlevel engagement?
Writing a blog, a wiki, a voice thread; creating a podcast or vodcast as a way of collecting information is empowering for students. (And perhaps you could argue that XBox is too). Unlike paper and pencil, these tools open up new ways for students to interpret and publish their information. They can chunk it and change it and own it in a visible way that Word or handwriting did not allow. Instead pf cut and paste, or linear paper and pencil report writing, studetns have power to create and change and make interesting choices, all components of excellent learning. When building a mixture of multimedia tools, the students own creativity and return to it again and again. Creative projects are the projects that the artists do not want to finish, because it never does finish. A piece of art can always be added to, a story can be retweaked, a persuasive writing will find more points of view if the product can facilitate that. If the web tools were the be all, students would not be adding to their school product, long ago marked, still at 9 or 10 o'clock at night. Yet this iswhat I see when students are involved in choices about what they learn and how the produce it. If the tool was the power, students would have created their own tool (wiki, blog, voicethread, animoto) and created a product for their personal recreational use. Traditional styles of production lacked of manipulativity and hindered the creative product, ending more about finding the material and publishing it andnot about using the learning to create. which builds intellectual engagement. Tools that put product creativity into the hands of the student in design and ease of language manipulation are the kinds of tools that allow students to use 'stuff'. When we make them accessible 24/7 through cloud computing and secure portals, students will be doing more 'homework' than they thought reasonable. The broad access to a worldwide audience leads to self imposed student accountability.
The tools are the bridge we are using to build creative intellectual engagement. There are others we use that we know do the same thing (such as taking the insect project and casting it in play form instead of a research report or worksheet. The play bridge is a facilitator just as web 2.0 tools are a facilitator,and will change rapidly with the changes in resources and increased access to technology.
The future is overdue. Let's make it now.
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