Twitter

My first Tweet:

Ironic, as this post is about how Twitter is more than a procrastination tool!

Having been on Twitter for quite a few years, I'm still amazed at 1: how many people don't use it; and 2: how many people don't understand it.

While I freely admit to being all over social media, and a voracious consumer of content on Facebook and Instagram particularly, Twitter is probably my most active platform in relation to education.

When I ask people 'are you on Twitter', I either get the "ain't nobody got time for that" response, or "I have no interest in seeing what Kim Kardashian had for lunch."
Of course, both are valid arguments, as Twitter can be a very powerful time-wasting tool (as with any type of social media), and there are a plethora of boring people posting idiotic and inane content.

But Twitter can be a very powerful educational tool as well. Here are a couple of examples:

Twitter as a search engine 

There are so many people on Twitter now that it can now produce a dramatic spread of ideas and perspectives. When teaching Digital Literacy, what better way than to show students how many different points of view there are?

Consider this. Put 'World War Two' into Google and you get some pretty standard results: Wikipedia, facts and statistics, related news stories. 

Put it into Twitter, and you get an amazing array of stories (from all sides), images, blog posts and a whole lot of interesting stuff that would help you explore the more human side. For example, from that search, here's a list of the '10 definitive songs from World War Two'. 

Twitter as a teacher resource/idea bank

Educators are one of the biggest groups of users on Twitter. So it makes sense that there would be some good sharing on there. Everything from lesson plans to multimedia to advice from experienced teachers (and inspiring thought leaders!). 

There are two simple ways to do it: You can follow the right people and check in with them regularly to see what they're doing (here's a Tweet about the SAMR model); Or you can use a hashtag to find specific material (here's what's in the #mathchat stream).

Of course, there are other great uses for Twitter: as a PLN, as a backchannel, as a discussion space, or even as a writing challenge.

If you don't know how to use Twitter, or you don't have an account, I suggest you give it a go. There are plenty of helpful resources out there to help you get started. Here are a couple to try (funnily enough, all found through Twitter!):

Getting started with Twitter by Twitter.

I'm an educator, what should I tweet about? by Craig Kemp

Twitter 101 for Teachers by Mrs T

Twitter 101 by Stretch Education

Are you using Twitter? How are you using it? 

"Highly Educated Useless People"

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) have released a report that predicts big changes for the Australian workforce. Much of it deals with the impact of automation, emerging technologies and increased computing power (and affordability).

For those of us that work in the field of educational technology, this is not a new idea. Many of the smartest people I know have talked about this for years. I posted last year about Ian Jukes' keynote at the EduTech conference, where he talked about this very thing. Yong Zhao also has some great insights to offer about entrepreneurship and the need for change.

In their 2011 book, "Literacy is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age", Andrew Churches, Lee Crockett and Ian Jukes talk about 'Highly Educated, Useless People', attributed to the minister for education in a 'high-profile' (but unnamed) country. These are the people that pass all their tests and do well at school and then graduate with no useful, real-world skills at all.

To me, this idea highlights one of main problems in education currently. When we focus on facts, testing and a one-size-fits-all approach, we are certainly producing the kind of people that would be good in factories or typing pools...

One of the Typing Pools by Scottish Government Under CC BY-NC 

...but not the kind of people that are going to be able to keep learning, be flexible,  create their own solutions, create employment opportunities, and create new ideas and industries (notice the key word here?). As highlighted in the CEDA report, these are the kinds of skills that people are going to need to be able to overcome the challenges presented by an automated, computerised workforce.

If the world is starting to realise the importance of innovation and creativity for a changed workforce, when will the education sector do the same? And what's the change that is necessary? What do we teach? What can we let go? I believe that we don't really need to teach facts and figures any more, Google's got that covered. But surely all people need at least some basic literacy and numeracy knowledge. And they need to know something about technology, given that it will be their direct competition in the workforce. But how much is essential content? Is there essential content? The CEDA report emphasises the need for schools to ensure they are "...instilling competencies rather than the retention of specific knowledge." (page 15).  Is this the right approach?

Or is it more about how we teach? Can we look at a more personalised approach that (alongside those 'essential skills') allows students to pursue areas of study that they are interested in? This will involve huge changes in teaching, school structure and policy; but if the information in the report is correct, these changes are absolutely necessary.

Robots by Justin Morgan Under CC BY SA 2.0

I'm aware that I'm a little broken-recordy in this, but I truly feel that we are doing students a disservice pushing them through a school system that is designed for another age. So this is my call to arms. If you're a teacher, you can change from within (I talked about that already). If you're not, make some noise. Because surely you don't want your children (or I guess we're looking at grandchildren now) to be useless people?

It's not actually about ICT...

For the past 18 months, I've been teaching a course called 'Learning with Technology' to pre-service teachers. There are many ideas that I have included in the course (quite possible too many for one semester!), but the big message that I hope they all get is that I'd really like to see a day when this course didn't have to exist at all.

You see, as soon as you start talking about ICT (technology) on its own, people immediately focus on the gadgets and the apps and the games and all those things. But what ICT should be is invisible.

Invisible MacBook Pro by Mark Norman Francis via Flickr (CC BY NC)

The first thing that you notice when you walk into a classroom shouldn't be the fancy iPads or Chromebooks or whatever, it should be the kids. Engaged. Motivated. Learning.
Sure, that seems to happen more often when ICT is used (and I will explore this in further posts), but the ICT is not the reason. It's just the tool. Good teaching, good planning and relevant content is more likely to be the reason.

I tell my students that they should always start with the learning. I like the questions that we used to use to frame our planning around the Quality Teaching Model (whatever happened to that?!):

• What do you want the students to learn?
• Why does that learning matter? 
• What are you going to get the students to do (or produce)?
• How well do you expect them to do it?

And shouldn't that be the question we're always asking? Not 'how will they use these iPads?'; or 'how could they use this game'? 

Something for us all to think about...