Historically, we humans have experienced an impulse to write; we have found the materials to write; we have endured the labor of composition; we have understood that writing offers new possibility and a unique agency…It’s time for us to join the future and support all forms of 21st century literacies, inside school and outside school. —Kathleen Blake Yancey
Writing with a quill
The above quote is from a report from the National Council on Teachers of English on 21st Century Writing. Yancey starts with a historical overview of teaching writing to provide context for how writing today differs. One of her observations is that writing is now everywhere. Web 2.0 tools make it possible for everyone to create and share their writing. Publication is easier than at any prior point in human history. This isn’t just blogs and wikis, although those are important tools (as Natalie discussed in her post on teaching writing with wikis). This is also about writing in social networks like Facebook and MySpace.
Recently, Facebook was swept up with a flurry of “notes” where people shared 25 things about themselves. That used to be a writing exercise in school; one professor quoted in the New York Times explained that she gave a similar assignment to college students. 15 years ago, she said people didn’t write unless the work was assigned to them. Now, people are “assigning” this work to themselves.
Think about what that means for teaching writing. People are actually motivated to write and create, even if they resist doing it in school when forced. How can we tap into that natural, intrinsic motivation with students?
Yancey’s report also talks about the shift in how people are learning to write. She describes a process of “social co-apprenticeship” where people learn to write in an informal learning community with peer support. It isn’t the relationship of expert and apprentice where one person clearly has authority over the other. The power balance is much more fluid; it’s a network, not a hierarchy.
Two boys at computer
Elementary teacher Alice Mercer has discovered a new tool to build a learning community with her own students: threaded blog comments. Take this example with a 6th grade class where both threaded and unthreaded comments are used. She posted a writing prompt in her blog post so students could respond in the comments. She’s teaching students to evaluate each other’s writing and give good feedback, so students reply to other comments. Normally on a blog, new comments are just added at the bottom of the list. With a full class, it’s easy to get to 50 or 60 comments; students would need to scroll through all of them to match replies with the right comment. As an educator, you know that feedback closer to the original work is generally better. Mercer added the new feature of threaded comments, and you can see on her blog how much more intuitive it is to follow the conversations. Student feedback is shown right under the original comment, like a discussion forum in Sakai. Suddenly students are able to really see each others’ feedback and have conversations. They are actively doing the “social co-apprenticeship” that Yancey described.
We have all these great tools for supporting literacy. April shared a plethora of online reading resources, and that’s only a fraction of what’s available. We have blogs and wikis to teach different styles of online writing. We have threaded comments to support learning communities (including on this blog, as of today). We have assistive technology tools that even push us to rethink what we mean by “reading” in the first place.
So how are we doing at incorporating these tools? Are PLS courses adapting well enough to this new environment? I see that motivation to write shown in blogging and Facebook notes, and I wonder whether we’re really doing a good job building on that intrinsic motivation in our participants and their students. If you have suggestions for how we can improve teaching reading and writing in our courses, leave us a comment!
Of course, if you just want to try out the new threaded comment feature, that’s fine too—we’d love to hear from you.
Christy, thanks for the opportunity to try out the new threaded comment feature on this blog. I attempted a response from the Facilitator’s Zone, and my response was rejected. So, I am trying again. Of course, I had not saved what I wrote, so I am reconstructing my response for this attempt. (I should know better by now!)
First, I loved your thoughts on 21st Century reading and writing. Reading and writing are everywhere, and as instructors (K-12 and beyond) it is important for us to recognize this. We need to revise our notions of how we define reading and writing. Reading has become much more than the traditional concept of reading that included mostly reading of textbooks, novels, newspapers, and worksheets. Many of our students at all levels have extended their reading far beyond this traditional and narrow definition of reading, and I suspect that they are reading much more quantitatively than most of us ever read at comparable ages.
Writing, too, is everywhere. Writing has become much more than writing letters (snail mail) and assignments in school. I received on my Facebook page lists from some of my Facebook friends of the “25 things about me” that you mentioned. It was fun for me to learn more about my friends in this way, but it also was a reality check for me, as I would not have considered in the past sharing this kind of information in writing with so many people. I realized that I am in the midst of a paradigm shift in both education and in the real world in terms of information sharing, and to keep up with the shift, I need to stay informed and move with the shift as my comfort level allows. The paradigm shift has definitely expanded my comfort zone!
I think it is excellent that we now have blogs and wikis available to us in our online classes. I think, however, that we need to move away from the notion that we “must” use the blogs and wikis in a “traditional” way by creating “assignments” for them. I envision using a blog in a course simply for participants to have the opportunity for conversation. Does everything have to be “graded”? A blog could be utilized in an online class for participants to extend their conversations beyond the forums and “chat” about . . . well, . . . whatever they want to say. The blog might, and hopefully would, include discussions related and connected to course content. But the blog might also contain other topics that participants would enjoy discussing. The benefits of this would clearly be that participants would be able to network more naturally than in “required” posts to other participants in the forums. This would also be different from the Break Room where instructors are “expected” to initiate discussions about (sometimes) meaningless things simply to generate conversation.
We need to get away from the practice of attempting to “fit” the new technologies into our “old” concepts of what comprises “education.” By using the blogs in “nontraditional ways,” for example not for graded assignments, we would be participating in the paradigm shift that is happening before our eyes. It would be terrific if the blog could continue beyond the weeks of the course for those who would like to continue to network with those they have learned to know in the course.
This second attempt has turned out to be much longer than my original intended post, so I think I have said quite enough at this point.
Becky Grube
Hi Becky,
When you see the blog posts within the Facilitator Zone, that tool is basically just an RSS reader. Just like Google Reader, if you want to comment, you need to do so at the actual site rather than from within the aggregator.
So what’s stopping you from using the blog in Sakai to extend conversations from the forums? It doesn’t have to be graded, as you said, so there’s nothing Course Development needs to set up in the course. We create the stuff that gets linked to the gradebook, but you can do anything else ungraded that you want.
Why don’t you try to extend conversations in the blogs in your courses for the next couple of sessions? Then you can share with us how things went, what worked well, and what didn’t. You could even do a guest blog post here to report what you learned from the process and teach other facilitators how to do the same.
I do agree with the idea of extending the work past the end of the course. That’s one reason for continuing to use external blog and wiki tools even though we have similar tools in Sakai; an external blog or wiki can continue to be a resource long after the course is done. But blogging within the “walled garden” of Sakai can be a stepping stone to using a “real” blog, hopefully making that transition a little easier for people.
With the paradigm shift, what do you think education will look like in 20 years? Will anyone be learning with formal sequences of classes with graded assignments or accredited schools, or will we have an entirely different model? Will there be a market for courses locked within an LMS like we have now, or will content all be open and entirely different business models be needed?
Hi, Christy!
I would love to experiment with my next Sakai classes and attempt to extend the discussion to a blog. The problem is that in the CM course that I am facilitating beginning this week, there is not a blog set up in the course. At least I cannot see one there. Would you stick one in there for me?? The course begins on Tuesday with the New York teachers. I would be happy to let you know if anything happens in the blog or not. If you can’t put one in the course, I could create a Ning blog and see what happens with that. Let me know if you can put one in the course or not. Thanks!
Ah. OK. I was wondering why the external wiki was being used in the course that I am taking (Net. Gen.) as a student, when there is a blog already set up in that course. Now I know.
You asked, “With the paradigm shift, what do you think education will look like in 20 years?” I love to speculate on that. We have been researching “informal learning” in the Net. Gen. course and I am inclined to think that learning will be more along the lines of what we now call informal learning. The reason I think that is that with the opportunity to learn 24/7, anywhere, and any time with technology, I cannot imagine that “structured schooling,” as we now know it, will be the norm . . . in fact, I am thinking that structured schooling as we now know it will look like a dinosaur to us at that point in the K-12 setting. It is beginning to look that way in higher education as more and more colleges and universities provide online courses. Teachers, even now, are no longer the “keepers” of knowledge. Knowledge can be obtained with the click of a finger on the keyboard. Teachers of the future will be facilitators, encouraging and coaching students.
I visited the MET School in Rhode Island last summer at the Alan November Conference. It was an interesting place. High school students plan their own curriculum and are responsible for their own learning. They participate in apprenticeships in the community in their areas of interest for part of the school day. Most of their learning is done via a computer in the school setting. They work on projects, and collaborate with others to learn and achieve. Teachers coach and assist students in accomplishing their goals. If students want a “course,” and if a teacher is willing to teach it, the course is developed collaboratively between teachers and students. The students were articulate and very interested in learning. They complete their high school in 3 years. All students are from what we might describe as disadvantaged backgrounds. Almost all students go on to college. What an exciting place this school was! This is an example of, I think, what schools of the future might look, sound, and feel like. Students will be excited about learning; teachers will be excited about learning, too!
You asked, “Will anyone be learning with formal sequences of classes with graded assignments or accredited schools, or will we have an entirely different model?” This is four queistions in one, Christy!
Formal sequences: If learning moves in the direction of project-based learning, I cannot imagine that there will be “formal sequences.” Learning will become very interdisciplinary. Learning will become “just in time.” If students need it, they will learn it. This is already happening in business. I am sure you know this. I can lead you to several websites if you are interested.
I think young children will still learn how to read, write (type?) and compute, but even this learning will be very different. It will, hopefully, be more student-centered and individualized. (We can learn from other countries such as Finland about teaching these things. ) We need to take into account children’s developmental readiness for learning. Not all children need to be on the same page, on the same day, at the same time. It goes against all that we know about how humans develop! It seems to me that some children are “diagnosed” as having learning problems too early only because they do not “fit” into the present structured sequence of school. They simply have not had the opportunity for their little brains to develop in ways that would allow them to learn the skills necessary for reading, etc. I am digressing.
You asked, “Will there be a market for courses locked within an LMS like we have now, or will content all be open and entirely different business models be needed?”
Well, here is a quote for you:
“Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often viewed as being the starting point (or critical component) of any elearning or blended learning program. This perspective is valid from a management and control standpoint, but antithetical to the way in which most people learn today.” (from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/lms.htm) There you go. Something to “munch” on!
The article goes on to list some of the problems with Learning Management Systems. Read it when you have time, and let me know what you think! (This article, by the way, has a 2004 date.)
We could say that a LMS is simply an online traditional classroom. . . Well, maybe I wouldn’t go that far. . . But it is close! The only difference is that you can add links and connections that take the student out of the system and into other “worlds,” so to speak.
Speaking of other worlds, how about Second Life? Now there is an interesting opportunity for learning! Do you have an avatar? Many universities are getting on this bandwagon even now! Perhaps future PLS classes will take place in Second Life and we will all have our own avatars.
Ok, Christy! I have “blogged” long enough. You certainly have provided lots to think about, and I will look forward to other comments from you after you after you read this rambling.
How do you think teaching and learning will evolve 20 years from now? I would like to hear your thoughts on this question, too!
Hi Becky,
I just added the blog tool to your section of CM. Starting in June with the revised version of the course, all CM sections will automatically have that tool.
Whether we use an external or internal blog really depends on what we’re teaching in the course and how we’re teaching it. If it’s mostly a reflective journal with peer feedback (like CM will be post-revision), then Sakai’s blog tool works fine. If the course content requires the creation or use of multimedia, like Net Gen, then the external blog makes more sense. There’s a good explanation of this in the DFS course in the Key Info for Topic 3-D under “Public & Private.” You can access the DFS content in the Resources in the Facilitator Zone.
I do have a Second Life avatar, although it’s been a while since I’ve logged in there. I agree that we’ll see more virtual worlds for education in the future, although I’m not convinced that Second Life will be the actual platform in use. The learning curve with SL (and probably any virtual world rich enough to be really valuable for learning) is steep, and right now it’s not realistic for PLS, especially with 8-week courses. I think we’ll get there eventually, but not when 10% of our students are still on dial-up and so many people are stressed just about switching to a new LMS.
Although my Looking Back, Looking Forward post was only set 10 years in the future rather than 20, I think you can see where I envision things heading.
I like the idea of a more individualized PLE rather than an LMS, or at least exclusively an LMS. For all that George Siemens wrote in 2004 against the LMS, he and Stephen Downes still used Moodle in their Massively Open Online Course (MOOC), CCK08. But it was only one tool of many, and everyone participating could use the tools that worked best for their PLE. It was a very different model from what we’re doing now, and it will be interesting to see how that develops in the future.
Christy,
Thanks for adding the blog to my course! It will be nice to have that option in all future courses. I will try it in this coming class and see what happens. We’ll see if there is any interest.
I’ll take another look in the DFS course at the information about the blog. It has been some time since I read that.
I agree that the learning how to get around in the Second Life world can be challenging. It took me a while until I learned how to do something as simple as dress my avatar.
Dial up would make SL very difficult, if not impossible, to access! I can see why this is not in the near future for PLS. I find the whole concept fascinating, however.
I personally like the idea of a PLE. Sometimes, an LMS can be confining. The flexibility of the PLE as you described it would be to my liking. I went back and re-read your “Looking Back, Looking Forward” piece. I like your ideas about the PLE! I think you are on to something! I’ll check in with you in 10 years, and we can see how things have developed.
Becky