Teachers and Tablets

One of the things that I noticed in the exhibit hall this year was the presence of several news organizations. PBS is here every year of course, but I was interested to see NBC, C-SPAn and others.

This year’s keynote is sponsored by NBC, and Lester Holt introduced the keynote speakers. He used this opportunity to pitch a new endeavor of NBC called NBC Learn.

We began with a short video giving an overview of the program.

NBC Learn includes:

* Archives on Demand (on demand archives of news footage available for teachers and students.)

* IQ (pulls a variety of resources into some sort of collaborative network which blends some of the social network tools such as profiles and tagging to

“NBC is training the next generation of digital journalists” — Brian williams

This is an interesting point given some of the changes in the area of blogging, social networking, and the changing business model of news papers.

I was expecting a typical keynote address, but when Jim and Mali walked out on stage, they sat down on a couch around a coffee table and Lester Holt began interviewing them. It’s like watching a segment of the Today Show live.

Jim talked about starting off and not knowing much about technology. Learning how to do the tech as he went along was highlighted. This point connects with an earlier talk, and I begin to see a theme of “teachers as learners” emerging.

Lester asked about more reluctant or nervoud colleagues, and Jim pointed out the role that students played as support structures for many teachers.

“again, I was learning along with them” Jim re: his work in Sierra Leone

Some of these projects take on a life of their own. It’s non-linear. The kids take charge of these things. — Mali

Mali related a story about a collaborative project between their students in Canada and another group of students in Hiroshima. They were asked to send paper doves “peace pigeons” to the Japanese students in honor of rememberence day (commemorating the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima) Students rushed to pack up the doves in a box and fed exed them over to Japan overnight. Before sending, the students asked to include small paper Poppies which are used in Canada to commemorate Memorial day.

Lester pointed out some connections to traditional curriculum — history, language arts, etc, but what struck me was the emotional impact that this activity must have had on the children involved. After talking with the students from another country and after seeing your “peace pigeon” in the hands of a japanese student, the american students must have been profoundly changed. The Japanese students, also must have been somewhat different people as a result of participating in the project.

These changes are something that happens within the students. Teachers can set up the circumstances that allow them to happen, but they don’t MAKE them happen. How can you design objectives around these types of changes? How do you test for them?

On a similar note, Mali relayed a story of a young boy who wrote a an essay called “My Hero” for a project on a website. The story was about a truck driver who had saved the lives of many people by sacrificing himself, driving off the road rather than swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid some oncoming kids who were drag racing. He did this without the knowledge of his teacher, but when word of the essay reached the truck driver’s widdow, she turned up at school and asked to meet with the student. The results of such projects and lessons are not cognitive or rational, but this does not mean that they aren’t powerful or important.

The abilty to expand a child’s world view to the extent that he or she is truly a changed individual strikes me as a huge piece that is often missing from traditional curricula.

I was struck by Mali’s description of the work that had to go into preparing the students to make this collaboration effective. The American students had to brainstorm about some of the cultural and sociological differences. Mali explained that the students in Sierra Leone were orphaned as a result of the civil war. She prompted her students to speculate about what that might mean for the African students and to brainstorm about what they might be able to do to make them more comfortable in the interractions. Correspondance began very simply with superficial questions like “do you have any pets.” These interractions evolved to more personal communications such as exchanging poems on Peace.

Jim just made a great point about how he initially felt that technology was de-humanizing. He points out the irony in the change that technology has brought to his curriculum. He contrasts the deeply human connections that the technology has forged with the prescribed way that he used to deal with curricular topics such as “caring” where there was a particular time in the year to “learn” caring. Students would produce a poster and he would check this item off in his curriculum guide. “When you have begun a relationship with a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, that doesn’t just stop at the end of the curricular unit.”

Tags: NECC

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