Future Vision Project Post #2: One Long Hmmmmmm

When the flag dropped and we bounded out of the gates into our first blog posts, I ran right into the topic of research. How can we research better? I wanted to know. As I dropped into my pace through the course, I found that a new topic kept poking out from the sidelines. The practice of online sharing just refused to be ignored; so I figured I might as well have a look at it.

I begin with a glance at the good old Points of Inquiry. As I peruse it's gleaming points, I find myself wondering: is this model outdated?

We are asked to begin at the top of the star and work our way around (clockwise, naturally) to reflect.

Likely, the model is still relevant but I'm going out on a splinter of a limb here to suggest that perhaps we will not be working our way around the star for much longer. Investigating is perhaps beginning to intertwine with expressing and constructing. Reflection is ongoing. I can't seem to usurp Connect and Wonder from it's throne but as evident in the process we've engaged in through this course, our initial connect and wonders must be reviewed and often revised.

Our vocabulary has also begun to shift. Take the word, share, for example. "Share" is not given a point on the star. One might argue that it is implicit in the "Express" point, but sharing has become a crucial part of our language and are way of viewing the trade and transfer of ideas and information. "Share" needs to become part of our classroom process. Sharing out to a classroom, a school, a district, a classroom across the globe or the web public in general, must become a regular occurrence if we are in fact teaching and learning with a Web 2.0 lens.

In the past, teachers focused on an academic model of research. The internet has blown that model into a whirlwind. No longer are we limited to academic sources. Even within this course, most of us are finding the richest most relevant articles on blogs and websites like Edutopia. Truly this is a pretty amazing time to live through and teach through as so many of our "cannons" become uncannonized. The rules are changing very quickly. The skill of research was once primarily needed for those entering college or university. Now, research is a necessity, a day-to-day skill.

How is education addressing this shift?!?!?

Okay.

Breathe.

I don't feel equipped to tackle some of these issues. Aside from the lack of resources provided by our Ministry of Education, I don't feel I have enough time with my students or collaborative time with my colleagues to do justice to the task at hand. Nonetheless, I don't believe I'm allowed not to try.

While I have often found myself worried about and limited by privacy issues, I'm finding some ways to address skills of collecting and sharing while sidestepping these road blocks. For instance, I found a nice little article that discusses the importance of list making.

Read it here. 

Done?

Good.

In the article Twitter is used as the platform. I'm not going to put a class of grade 4 and  students on Twitter. That is not an option in the reality of my school. BUT, we can make lists in other places and other ways. Destiny Quest give us list making options for books we want to read, books we are reading, and books we've read. Beyond that, students can compile lists of resources around a given topic. This is certainly a good place to start.

Similarly, at the elementary level, I am not prepared to share student work on a blog for a larger audience, but I am excited about trying the Book Creator app on my iPad to create a class book with a grade 2 class. We can share our book with other classes in the school. (A number of other book creation apps can be found here.)

So yes, I've established that there are ways to share in the elementary world, but I find myself wondering, how does this link back to research and how can sharing make us better researchers?

As I continue to write and think, I'm popping on and off my blog to review ideas on other sites, to check my email, and to look for new resources.Yes, my investigating, connecting, expressing, and constructing is all happening in one messy ball of right now. Suffice to say, I just came across a new new image.

 

It's pretty. Sure. But it's also pretty powerful and pretty crazy.

It suggests messy.

It suggests a system in which creation, sharing, and research are given equal importance.

I suggests projects structured to allow for personal exploration that allows for conversation, in which copying is not an issue as ideas are shared and then further developed.

What, I find myself wondering, does this look like in a grade 4 classroom?

Is this, I find myself wondering (again, with the wondering), possible in a grade 2 classroom?

Pintrest says yes!

Frighteningly (for me, Queen of the Scatterbrained), organisation becomes central to success in these learning paradigms. A quick glance at the above image shows us that the potential for excitement is equal to the potential for chaos. Particularly, as the 'rules' as we know them seem to be shifting. For example, blogger Shawn McCusker suggests that "It's Time to Change How Student's Cite Their Work." McCusker reasons that if we are using a Web 2.0 platform for presenting (ie sharing), students should be embedding links throughout their project. In this way, the (McCusker says) the links reflect the process of construction and also allows for better sharing of orignal sources with the audience, which is hopefully made up of a students' peers.

Reshaping these rules to meet the needs of our student is going to take time, thought, plenty of trial, and a fair amount of error.

Suffice to say, these are some of the ideas rattling around in this old noggin. It will be interesting to see how they rearrange. Then rearrange again, before shaping into some kind of a cohesive whole that might be considered a final project.









An Idea Shared from http://www.edudemic.com/share-your-ideas/Points of Inquiry from
Connected Learning http://connectedlearning.tv/infographic