media-4

Transcriber:	Meng-Fen Lin (gracelin_tx @ msn.com)
Brief Bio:	Doctorale candidate, Instructional Technology, University of Houston MS in Computer Science, University of Houston BS in MIS, National Sun Yat San University
Date finished:	September 21, 2004
Proofreader:	Frank Tseng
Brief Bio:	B.S. in Computer Science
Date finished:	06/10/05

In education you hear people say we will have technology any time, anyplace, anywhere. But to many educators, that means except in the classroom.  We work with children who have grown up digitally. To them, technology is part of their natural world.  But we have teachers who have no understanding of the way in which technology can be used in the classroom because they have no technology.  They have no use of it. There was is very little time to practice, think about, incorporate technology as learning. And most of all , there's no way in which they can transform from education to the education they know now as to what it was when they went through school.  So many teachers, many educators, many administrators are holding on to ideation of scaffolding that was at the last century. This is the 21st century.  The world has changed.  Children living in the world of media. It speaks to them from everywhere. But when they go into a classroom, many times there are is just chuck and talk, and they are bored.  It isn't because the teachers are doing anything differently when you went to school. It is because the world has changed.  The media speaks to children but there is something the media does for children that is even better.  It allows them to be creators, producers.  It allows them to think about things and analyze. It allows them to go on field trips with people like Bob Balerd to places they may never go. It allows them to talk to astronauts. 

For teachers this same thing happens. Instead of being relegated to professional development by one person and a system who may or may not know everything there is about science. There are people from NASA. There are people from National Geographic. There are resources from many different organizations. And there are even teacher organizations that co-content and create projects like the MCI Macropolo to allow them a path, a guide, a silk Road, a way to think about using technology as media.

So how do we change teaching and learning? And how do we create the possibility that instead of just pioneers, we engage all teachers. We start with engaged learning. One of the things we must do to teach teachers is to allow them to explore the way in which they could use technology to create a learning landscape.

Now what is a learning landscape?  It is the way in which they use technology to invite children to learn, to understand, to explore. And it includes many types of technology that is not just the Internet. It is bringing together convergingent, creating many ideas that allow children to learn.  But the teacher must do this first.  The teacher must learn how to create pedagogy using resources that are available to him or her in their own learning landscape, in their own geographical setting, and their own style of teaching and learning. So teachers need access first of all. They need also support to learn the technology.

But learning the technology is not learning the four languages that I learned but didn't use. Learning the technology is not learning the piece of software, and some time we think so. It's taking the teacher, it's taking the educator, it's taking the administrator to the point where they understand what an engaginge learning is. You may walk into a classroom where wonderful things are going on and not be aware of the fact that it requires structure.  Because you need to know first of all how does it work.  It needs to have a kind of seamless interface. So how does it work and how do we use this and what are we doing today? 

So the construction of the learning landscape creates the product, the project, the objectives, and the assessment. A lot of people think when children are using technology, they are playing.  It seems like play because it is joyous learning. It seems like play because they are not looking at you. It seems like play because the teacher may be a guide on the side or the persons (assisting?) engaged in the working of with the group. That's different for a lot of us. It looks like the teacher is not working. 

[4:20]

When you first start working like that, it is very hard working.  Because you have to learn new ways of controlling, allowing, sharing and also xxx listener to be a learner.  That's hard for some of us.  But transformation of learning will change the world in such way that we could do many different things that teaching and learning have never done. One of them being that being we'll create a path for lifelong learning.

In the learning landscape, one of the things that happensed is that people say when is the technology going to get to the point all where it is at one place and will it ever be? We who change shoes, buy new cars, buy new appliances sometimes think that the things that we use in education have to last 10 years. A way of think about this scenario.

Children in my classroom were working with NASA. There was a special project in which they were able to evaluate and look at and think about the Horsehead Nebula hoursead ambulance. What it that?  It is astronomy. It’s wonderful things. There is a web site called “window to the universe” where you can look at it now. Or you could actually help the scientists look using the Hobble space telescope.  We had that in our classroom. It There is a very different difficult way of teaching astronomy. But with the Internet, the children could use that and perhaps draw in the arts from all over the cultures that proceeded us to see the way in which people have looked at the sky. But the xxxx Horsehead Nebula was an entire magazine. My children saw the Horsehead Nebula xxx six months before more most people in the whole world got to see it.

Education is empowerment. Education is knowing where Alexandra the Great really went. Not just thinking of him in a paragraph, but being able to explore his footprints, in India, in Greece.  And as he went all the Asian areas and know where the cities were. I was lucky enough to be in a full bray…..  and I have a coin of from where Alexandra the Great went. I collected it in Cashmere. The most of our children can only do that, exploring using the Internet as a resource.  The great thing about that is they don't stop when we tell them. They stop when they've gotten get the feel of it.  And maybe one of the things that we do is to change learning into seeing information and changing it into knowledge that becomes personalized.

[6:47]

Professional development is something that could be totally changed and transformed. I am talking to you in ways in that we could train teachers. Instead of  being just a teachers ,in the place where there are no experts, we canould reach into the Louvre loof . We canould go to Egypt. We canould go inside the Pyramids. We can create projects that would allow children to decide what would happen. I want you to think about the world heritage sites. You can't take the children around the world in reality but you could with the ambiguous ubiquitous computing.

What is that?  That it anytime any place anywhere. We can use wireless objects, we can use little handhelds and children can use cameras, take notes, type the little information in. What we connected with the world heritage sites and let children from another country bring their ideas of where what the treasures are, the of a place that we have already certified as the world heritage. 

Or what if children are using global ways to think about the environment. We worked sometimes in very specialized ways. Teachers get to go many places the children can't. So if you were going to go into a rain forest, or if you were going to the jungles of Peru, how would the children be able to participate?  We have guides who would do that. We have people who have created information in ways in which children could make decisions, ask questions, and begin to explore. Not just learning but creators.  That is the new facets that happens. With ubiquitous ambiguous computing, as they think, analyze, process and create ideas, sometimes you get product you never asked for.

[8:29]

I did a project called xxxx Bay and it is all about crafts and the way in which we use the environment. I have visitors to my classroom. So we showed them our maps, we show them our resources, we talked about seeingn and measuring times and tides types of ties. But the children did something that I have never seen before.  They pulled out journals, they pulled out books.  And this is before Oprah. They actually enjoyed learning in such a way that they created poems, books and stories. And they give them to the visitors.  So one of the things that technology allows us to do is to know that we could give away that information. You know the information that we turn into a  knowledge and that learning is a gift to be shared in many ways and in particularly in global ways.

I am able to speak to you from across a digital divide.  But the digital divide I am speaking to you from is from a classroom versus places where there is a lot of technology.  There are many people in global situations where I'd go who have little or nothing.  But …. winkless goods is are the  most important thing that pass cross these technologies that we share. The way to cure diseases, to test water, to understand, to take the knowledge, and share it in many different way is really important. 

What When we talk about digital divide, we must also think about the content.  Is the content reflective of the way the world is?  Sometimes we give children universal knowledge which actually means we have not given them anything at all.  Do you know who Darcy Dorothy Coleman is?  You probably know who he is in your heart Amelia Earhart was. But Darcy Holman Dorothy Coleman was the first black flyer and she actually had a license and … stormed all over the United States. Sometimes children have to see it to be it. 

When I taught a special project from the Smithsonian called the seed of change. Some of my Hispanic children learned for the very first time of the majesty of the culture of the wonderful things that existed in pre-Columbia era. They knew that there wasere something, but they weren’t be able to define the cultures. So by using technology, we brought two old worlds together, not a new world.  There was not a new world.  Now think about it.  Those kinds of developments that have to do with metallurgy …. they were in Africa, they were in Japan. They were cultures that were discovered long before aAuthor and the his knights. How to create technology which at that time was metal. People went to the librariesy of Alexandria and ….. . They went to learn where the idea were. So in creating a content to share what is going to be on on the Internet, we must also use every kind of tools, every kind of technology, GIS kind of things, but include the whole world in our learning. We can’t  just have one view. How exciting would it be to use one topic and to allow children from all over the world, as in global school net, to share their learnings.  What a small world that will be?  Kids with the tiniest fingers could reach out to the world using technology as a tool and change the world for the better.

[11:54]

In using technology, we need to develop stakeholders.  The community needs to understand what the technology is. One of the things we could do as educators, as administrators, as community people, is to explore the technology in new ways. You have seen the book fair.  How about a technology fair?  What about a technology round table that brings people together to think about, to share, to seek, what the technology is in the community and what the new ways are of sharing technology. 

And it was parents.  In schools perhaps we use technology to contact them. One of the things that happened to me was a student in my classroom won the first computer I ever had.  But do Tthe teachers have the technology, does the school haves sufficient technology to deploy, to share, to do the wonderful things we're talking about. Sometimes a lab is a pencil down the hall.  It is a little difficult to use.  Because the time constraints makes it difficult.

We say in American, there are 95% of schools wired.  But wired to what?  And how many classrooms actually have technology?  Have the parents done an audit to see what there is and what may be needed?  And do teachers have the tools to take it home?  There is very little time in the school day.  All of the world, as I work with teachers, the time that they have in the classroom is precious.  So do they have the tools to explore, to think about, to create in ways which to make it possible for them to understand it in an ubiquitous way?

And then the fair thing is we must remember new technologies.  While we're thinking about technology as Internet, we will look at distance kind of education, there are new things coming down the pipe. There is a project called the virtual cave.  I don't know if you have ever been into one, but it is fantastic.  We don't want to think backwards.  We want to think forwards. The virtual cave that you stand inside that is an environment and you change it.  Perhaps one day one of you will take that virtual environment and bring the xxx Lge Marbles marvels  back to Greece. Or create the trap trip down the silk Road that will allow the children to explore the three dimensional parts of what it is that they are seeing have seen. The virtual cave could also be an environment in which we explore the human body. And then there is the ……

Teaching whether weather could be one of the most boring things about without technology I that you can think of.  But the xxxx? you could put your head down and see the physical part of the country that you are looking at. And see the xxxx vectors and the systems as you they pass. We may not get to that immediately.  But we need to think about that.  At the meantime, children will xxx gleefully find the hardest and the cool coldest part of a playground. Look at weather systems, collect information from parents, and people who know what the history was of the weather in theat area. And perhaps connect the class room with the as they are experiencing some type of weather that they can share.

Technology brings a face to communication.  We have done some types of videoconferencing. Do know the iGrid? I sat in the access center in Washington DC and I saw faces from all around the world.  We could see each other in real-time. But that is Next Generation Internet. Remember as we work in the new technology, we must also look forward. We must also think of new applications. Perhaps the children we are teaching now will think of the new applications because it is not just PowerPoint.  It is using PowerPoint, HyperStudio as learning to use the to nuance of new the technology to push it to the point where technology is invisible and but a tool.