The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning, you’re not old.

I think this is such an important idea. Too many people think that they have learnt it all and that there isn’t really anything else that they need to learn. Einstein, on the other hand, felt that he knew very little and that he would need many lifetimes to have a reasonable knowledge.

For myself  I am finding fascinating new areas to investigate. As those who follow this blog will know my latest interest is in neuroscience (the science of the workings of the brain). I have recently come across the idea of connectomes which is the study of  how the neural connections in our brain work.

I watched a fascinating TED talk by Sebastian Seung in which he explains the powerful idea that we are the sum total of our experiences and how these experiences have interconnected in our brain. We are therefore more than just the product of our genetic inheritance.

The ideas in this talk are largely unproved and are open to debate. I find them fascinating though because they are firing up my interest in the largely unmapped world of our grey matter. I want to learn more. Not because I have to for some test or exam. not because I need to in order to hold down a job it is simply because I find it fascinating… it excites my interest.

I wonder how many children in schools today will be excited by what they are learning? How many will return home and tell their parent or carer that they learnt nothing at school today. School was boring. Learning isn’t… it can and should be really exciting….. it’s what keeps me young… maybe younger (in mind)  than some of them!

A friend has  become something of a game player. She seems to spend an inordinate amount of time playing others at games of “Words With Friends” and “Bejeweled Blitz“. This latter game is where you have to rearrange diamonds across a screen so that they can be “blitzed” and you can pick up as many points as you can.

She plays these games with a number of her friends on Facebook. It has become something of a personal thing for her to beat her friends. Every Tuesday her score is wiped out and she has to start a new quest. She loves it but I have a number of concerns.

My first concern is that these online games are addictive. I do not know how it works in terms of neuroscience, but I do know that all the usual signs of  addiction are there, the compulsion to play at different times of the day, the highs of wining and the lows of being beaten. She sometimes plays  the game until the late hours of the evening trying to better some fiend’s score that will be wiped out in a new competition a few days later!

My second concern is that the time spent on the internet playing these games could be used to greater effect. There is a world of information, entertainment and communication out there and yet so many of us seem to spend hours and hours playing games.

My other concern is in the gifted people who spend their time in designing these games. They have to create graphics of a high order to compete with games where graphics and animation is of a high order and where games players are used to powerful effects. They include music to create atmosphere and they have to work out a process for different levels of difficulty. All this requires a high level of programming skills showing creativity and imagination.

I just wonder what other projects these people could be doing that might make a difference to our planet. It worries me when I watched a recent edition of the BBC’s “Click Online” to see how, at a recent international congress of games makers in Los Vegas, U.S.A., highly intelligent people were talking about the world of online games and how it is now worth billions of dollars every year. There was talk of more and more powerful machines showing more realistic animations for our children and indeed us to get involved in. The social consequences of this addiction were never discussed and I did not see any discussion about alternatives to games playing as the major use of our new technology (after social networking).

I have read about the educational value of games for children’s hand-eye co-ordination and that computer games develop strategic and other skills. Surely though we need to consider whether some of our best efforts in programming and technological development lie in creating more and more powerful means for us to waste hours of time in games that will not really add to the stock of our knowledge or develop means for us to survive an uncertain future.

I loved this illustration from the article:

In this illustration books and the internet are seen as co-existing. I think that this is the way that things are likely to be for quite some time.

I do agree with Damien Walter that any revolution has to overcome the fears and negative attitudes from those who have a vested interest in the maintenance of the old technology. He is right to point out the advantages of freeing up accessibility of the written word to the widest possible audience can transform our future.

I also understand that it will not happen overnight. There will be many of us who were born into an environment of books and who have associated books as a pleasure not just because of what is written but in terms of the feel of a book in your hands.

I have recently tried to transform the majority of my reading to electronic. I have downloaded a Kindle App which I use on my android phone and on my netbook. I have read classics such as Oliver Twist as well as some excellent new works by Howard Gardner, Malcolm Gladwell and John Seely Brown. I have though missed the feel of books, the ability that they give me to wander back through the pages and glance forward at what is to come.

I understand only too well that I am living in the midst of a major revolution, that the book will become a museum object in the future and that future generations will know the printed word (which will still have much significance) through electronic means only. I am though, a child of the book and saying goodbye to it is difficult.  My generation  will die out in the same way that  the priests who chained the books to the alters of the churches of the middle ages died out when a new device called the printing press changed their world (and ultimately mine) forever.

Related articles

• Will books and the net merge? (guardian.co.uk)

I I found a link on Google Plus (the place where many of my most valuable links come from these days) to a post from Will Richardson called “Open Network”  Tests.

The idea behind all of this is to let students explore the internet in order to answer test questions on a topic. This approach has been pioneered at  St. Gregory  Preparatory College, in Tucson, Arizona.

I looked up a post by Jonathan Martin from the College. In the post there is a description of how this “Open Internet” Testing approach works in the Theatre  History Class.

Here are the questions that the students has to choose from:

1. Compare and contrast the tragedy and comedy of Ancient Greece using examples of playwrights and plays.
2. Chronologically identify and compare and contrast the three main tragedians, identify their backgrounds, contributions to theater history, and plays.
3. Explain Aristotle’s 6 elements of tragedy, how they worked at the time of conception and how they might work in today’s entertainments, give examples.
4. Identify and define two important performance festivals of Ancient Greece and compare and contrast them with two important performance festivals of today.
5. Identify the origins of theater and drama in Greece.
6. Explain what the Greek chorus was, who was involved, what they did, how they functioned,  and how did they affect plays of the time.

Here is some of the feedback from the students on their experience of taking the test:

“I liked how it made us understand the topic  more.  I also found it harder than multiple choice because you had to analyze rather than know the info.

I really enjoyed the format of the test, where I could use open notes and write an essay on a certain topic. It was very helpful, and I felt as if I had a lot of more information than I would have had if I had just memorized the information.

I thought that this format was very effective, because this way its not so cut and dry right answer wrong answer, it’s more opinionated, which I like much more.

I liked the format of the test. I liked the way we got to look online for facts about a certain topic, then write an essay about it.

This test does not have multiple choice or terms that we had to define. This is more about testing your ability to find resources that you need, write a quality essay under pressure. I find I like the multiple choice and defining terms better.

This feedback shows just how much the students appreciated the fact that they could show how much they knew, how good their research skills were and then how they could present the information in a way that is an effective answer to the questions set.

It does not introduce the element of luck and chance in a multiple choice test and it does not mean that they are reliant on their memory in order to remember the key facts that an examiner is looking for.

For those of us who have always struggled with tests and exams because we did not have a brilliant memory and suffered from the tension and stress of trying to answer a number of questions in a set period of time, this new approach seems to be light years ahead and would have made a significant difference to our academic success.”

I can only hope that more schools will learn from the St. Greg’s lead and allow students to use 21st century research skills to show what they know and what they can find out and present this in a way that allows us to see what they are capable of and not what they can remember and tell us about in a stressed period of time!

Related articles

• “Open Network” Tests (downes.ca)

Yesterday, I received an e-mail that just sums it all up for me, here it is:

From the diary of a  Teacher

My five-year old students are learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said,

“Look at this! It’s a frickin’ elephant!”

“It’s a frickin’ elephant! It says so on the picture!”

And so it does…

“A f r i c a n Elephant “

I wonder how long it will take and how many children’s reading will be effected until we go further round the never-ending circle and start to give them real texts again and let them make sense of what the marks mean!

Related articles

• Google Launches Solve For X – Encouraging Entrepreneurs To Solve Global Problems Via “Moon shooting” Projects (thetechnologycafe.com)
• Solve For X, Google’s Attempt At ‘Moonshot Thinking,’ Finally Opens To The Rest Of Us (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Google vies for tech ‘moonshots’ with ‘Solve for X’ initiative (news.cnet.com)
• Google Shoots the Moon, Solves for X (technologyreview.com)
• Solve for X: Google’s Answer to All World Problems (searchenginewatch.com)
• Google Seeks to Solve World’s Problems with Solve for X (techie-buzz.com)

On Tuesday the 7th February, the second day of the second week of the second month of the year, it will be Safer Internet Day 2012.

I have written in previous posts about the need for us to promote wider internet use whilst spreading the word to all generations that use the net on the importance of safety online.

On Safer Internet Day there will be activities taking place throughout the world in schools, in the media and even in community halls where people meet to try to extend their skills in using the net. I am using the medium of my blog to pass on the word about the day and hope that anyone reading this will participate in whatever way you can in spreading the word that the net is a great place to find out things, to communicate with one another and to purchase or sell our goods but it needs to be done in a safe way.

Go to  http://www.saferinternet.org.uk/ for more information.

HAPPY AND SAFE SURFING

I loved this video. It showed an obviously biased situation of two teachers, one traditional and one progressive, preparing their classrooms, taking the morning register, teaching their pupils and meeting parents.

I understand that it painted the picture of a progressive teacher who is calm, embraces technology and understands how to communicate with potentially difficult parents, is a reflective practitioner who is aware that he is a lead learner who needs to continue to learn for and with his pupils.

The traditional teacher (who was brilliantly acted by the way) was an overbearing, stressed-out timekeeper who thinks she knows it all, shouts at her students and is even prepared to fight with parents (and has a good right hook).

Looking at the video I could see a lot of the problems that I had as a young teacher. I am now aware that I fitted much more into the model of the traditional teacher seen in the video. I am now (having reached retirement) firmly in the camp of the progressive teacher. It has been a journey though and one that is not easy for teachers, particularly in challenging areas with challenging pupils and parents.

What makes a good teacher?  I know which of the two teachers portrayed in the video I would rather be taught by.

Your comments would be welcome.

In the January edition they were promoting a new App for the iPhone called “Woteva“. This is an app that sets out to give instant translation and information for perplexed adults about the language used by their teenage offspring/relatives/charges.

I read a few of the translations in the article by Emma Soames. I was blissfully unaware that a chunder bunny was a young woman who drinks too much, that boydem is the police or chung is a pretty girl! I realised reading this that I have little knowledge of their language and indeed of their world.

It led me to do some research on the net about the use of slang by young people. It is not just in the way that they speak to each other that slang plays such an important part. They have created a form of language which is usually abbreviations and the use of various common symbols when they are communicating with each other by using text or in sending e-mails. This language has been given the term “netspeak”.

I found an excellent site called No Slang which has a translator English/slang a dictionary as well as some really interesting articles.

I feel that this is a really good opportunity for us adults to make an attempt to understand our children’s world in their terms. It follows the same path as learning a foreign language in order to begin to understand how other people think and feel. But, as in foreign language acquisition, there is more to understanding than just being able to decode. It is necessary to try and understand the culture.

Our children have developed a culture of their own which, in the digital age, is about social networking and is related to their view of the world as interpreted by pop culture (the songs, the clothes, the look) and their growing interest in each other ( sex plays a part because the hormones dictate at that phase of existence).

Understanding does not mean agreeing or promoting but it helps to create a bridge for discussion that is so often lacking in a world where we just don’t get what they are on about. How wonderful to see an organisation such as SAGA developing an APP for the older person to understand the younger generation in their terms. If anyone from their organisation is reading this can t you please  do  an Android version for us non-Apple people!