Cracking the 'Native' Information Experience

Millennial LearnersCracking the ‘Native’

Information ExperienceIn times of change,Learners inherit the earth,While the learned,Find themselves beautifully equipped,to work in a world,That no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, aph. 32 (1973)

1Monday, January 10, 2011

Millennial LearnersCracking the ‘Native’

Information ExperienceIn times of change,Learners inherit the earth,While the learned,Find themselves beautifully equipped,to work in a world,That no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, aph. 32 (1973)

Ancillaries - http://davidwarlick.com/handouts2Monday, January 10, 2011

3Monday, January 10, 2011While I was still teaching history, my grandparents moved from the house they'd lived in for more than 50 years. Because I was the only teacher in the family, they gave me all of their (ancient) National Geographic Magazines.

I am ashamed to admit that as I leafed through those magazines, I had scissors in my hands. I cut those things to pieces -- because I wanted to bring those pictures, maps, and diagrams into my classroom, put them on the wall, and give my learners a chance to learn from them.

You see, I taught in an information-scarce learning environment. The methods I used in the classroom were based on information scarcity. The pedagogies I learned in university were based on information scarcity.

Today, Flickr, the social photo album site, is receiving more than three million new photos every day. We are now teaching in information-abundant learning environments.

One of the most interesting questions in the education field today is, "What are the pedagogies of information-abundant learning environments.

http://flickr.com/

What are thepedagogies of Information-AbundantLearningenvironments?


[twitter]What are the pedagogies of “Information-Abundant learning environments...[/twitter]

Is it that he’s

‣ Smarter‣ Lives in Silicon

Valley‣ Brain’s wired

differently

Or is it that

‣ He has no ceiling.


[twitter]Do today’s child have no ceiling? ..and is this important?[/twitter]

It is an information experience that...

‣ Ignores Barriers

‣ Empowers Accomplishment


Our students play, learn & work within an information environment thatIgnores barriers & Empowers accomplishment

‣Networked‣Digital‣Abundant‣Difficult to

contain


Our students play, learn & work within an information environment thatIgnores barriers & Empowers accomplishment

..and if their information experience,

can’t be walled in,

then what does,a school look like to them,

When it tries to?


[twitter]Trying this KeynoteTweet again...[/twitter]

Culture..with customs, modes ofexpression and social institutions...a millennial culture.


Culture..with customs, modes ofexpression and social institutions...a millennial culture.

Can we harness this culture for learning

Without turning our classrooms, libraries and campuses ..into video arcades?


Crack..this ‘native’ information experience

Hack..into effective & relevant learning experiences

?


Demands PersonalInvestment

Safely-Made Mistakes

Provokes Conversation

foundation

Responsive


ResponsiveOur learners’ outside-the-classroom information experiences are responsive. They are accustomed to receiving feedback on their actions, decisions, and ideas. Video games are an obvious example of how they play and work in an environment that responds to them. If you send your player down the wrong road or through the wrong door, he dies and you have to start again. But there has to be a logical and contextual reason for it. There has to be a basis that the player reasons through to rationalize the death and plan better for the next time through.But it would be a mistake to believe that all of the responsiveness that our learners are accustomed to is immediate – or that immediacy is even the most important element of responsiveness. Many video games fail the player out, not because of a single mistake, but for committing a cascade of mistakes, some of which may have been committed minutes, hours, or days earlier. Even their social networking is responsive, and the comments they receive back are often extended across hours or days.The key to responsiveness is not time-based as much as it is relevance- based. If the response is authentic to what the learner is doing, then the influence on learning is greater.

Classroom Examples:Instructional software that provides feedback within a learner identified contextWriting assignments submitted as blog entries or wiki pages to be read and responded to by classmates or readers outside the classroomePortfolios, accessible from outside the school environment and available for comment/feedbackVarious academic (and physical) competitions (website creation, robotics, field day, competitive quizzes)Collaborative work that involves group planning, individual specialization, and a valued deliverableStudent produced learning resources (study guides or even student produced textbooks)

Provokes ConversationThere is very little that millennials do alone, and it is, to some peoples reckoning, counter intuitive that today’s youngsters are actually more sociable and skilled socially than previous generations. They are together at school, at the ball game, at band camp, at the mall, and at home, through their IM, text messaging, and social networks. They are more like room mates than mere friends. They are constantly engaged with each other and they never say goodbye – because the conversation continues, even when they are no longer physically together or even in the same state.Beyond the availability that they have with each other, through the information and communication technologies (ICT) that they assume to be a part of their experience, many of their activities demand communication. The very nature of Facebook, Beebo, and MySpace is conversation. You are posting your updates to be read and responded to. They comment on their digital walls, upload photos and videos for comment, and discuss their homework through their social networks.Many video games also require conversation. Operated over the Internet, players are encouraged to form themselves into teams or guilds, plan and implement campaigns, form economic cartels, and even push the games into unintended functionality, such as machinima (http://bit.ly/o5lm7).

Classroom Examples:Online collaborations across classrooms and even age groupingsAsk students to read separate parts of a chapter and then sequence and outline the context as a teamArrange guest speakers either in-class or virtually, but, after a short introduction, have students interview the speaker rather than ask for an extended formal presentationAssign homework that asks students to collaborate through theirsocial networksAsk students from geographically different places to plan, together, virtual field trips through Skype or other video conferencing software

Google and what it represents has turned us into a question-asking culture. We love to ask questions at a rate of more than a hundred billion a month, through the top ten search engines.3We ask questions, because we know that the answers are available and often no further away than our pockets. Our demand for high speed access to the answers has increased, even during recession years and among previously reluctant demographics.4But, for our students, it goes much deeper than posing questions out of curiosity. Consider that many of the video games that they play come without user guides. With a sense of context that they receive from introductory videos and conversations with friends, they find themselves thrust into an alien world with almost no guidance. How do you approach an experience like this? You approach it by asking questions:•What are the goals of this game? •What are the rules? •How can I use the rules to accomplish the goals?The game constantly presents barriers to accomplishment that the player has to question his way around.

Classroom Examples:Presenting less than a minimum of content in lessons, requiring the learner to question out the necessary details – growing a more big-picture awareness.Starting a new math topic with a word problem and facilitating question asking and answer exploring conversationsMaking assignments with authentic audience and goal, but not including specific instructions or rubric.

Demands Personal Investment It is our tendency, as a generation who grew up outside and fashioning our toys from scrap lumber and straightened nails, to see the games our children play and to think, ”Instant gratification” – and there is certainly much of that present in our learners outside-the-classroom information experiences. But we also must consider that they are willing and eager to invest hours, days, and even weeks into the play of a single game because they want to reach a certain level or attain a quantity of wealth.

There is a need to invest oneself in the endeavor because there is value that. It is perhaps not something that we value, but there is worth none the less. This is evidenced by the growth of Gold Farms, where youngsters play games in factories (of sorts), earning digital powers and currency (digital assets), which are then auctioned off on eBay by the company. People pay a thousand dollars for a character who has already been played to a certain level of power.5

Classroom Examples:Researching and developing a plan to address a problem of the community and then presenting the plan to the governing concerned governing bodyUsing a classroom wiki to have students contribute their notes and organize them, in collaboration, into study guides for the testAsking students to create a multimedia presentation for younger students on a topic of mutual addressing

There is little about how children experiment with identity. Much of how we raise ourselves comes from pretending. This is probably more true among boys than girls as we, in my time, pretended to be cowboys, soldiers, astronauts, and sports stars. We pretended to be heroes, because it was the heroes that our information experiences (TV, radio, movies, etc.) held up to us.Our children, today, are growing up in such a dynamically responsive information experience, the possibilities and potentials for experimenting with alternate identities is actually beyond our imaginations. There are basically two ways that identity enters into how our learners spend their time outside of the classroom, in their ‘native’ experience.1) The first involves building on and from their own identity through their social networking. Children mostly present themselves through their MySpace or Facebook profiles, within the constraints that we recommend for the sake of safety, constraints that children seem to adopt and even take for granted. But it is still their profile that they populate and mostly their real-life friends who the interact with. But their social networking and fact that their friends can respond, affords some interesting opportunities for children to express themselves, even veering into specific aspects of their identities.2) The second type involves what we might call fantasy identities. These are the characters or avatars that children play through in their video games. Sometimes, the character is painted by the game itself, with little opportunity for the player to personalize. However, with many games, the gamer is free to express herself with enormous flexibility of avatar building. This is especially true of virtual worlds and MMORPGs, where the player’s accomplishments and growing wealth become a visible part of the avatar.The central question, from an instructional view point would be, “What will classmates remember you for clothed in some part by the curriculum being taught?”

Classroom Examples:Find ways to link students to specific persons or concepts in the curriculum and repeatedly remind the class of the relationship.Ask individual students to become the class expert on some aspect of the course or class. This would be an ongoing assignment where they might build some sort of information product, encyclopedia of information about their topic. The student would be come the focal point for any conversations about their topic or where the topic is related in some logical way with another topic of study.

Measuring instructional gain has almost always been a part of formal education, and perhaps never so much as today, because of political pressure and an information environment that makes measurement and reporting somewhat more efficient. But instructional measurement, from a schoolie view point has almost no intrinsic to today’s learners.The measuring that happens in video games does have meaning, because it is what they talk about. When discussing games, they want to know how many experience points you’ve earned, what level you are on, what position you hold in your guild, and other measures.

There is a wide range of measurement schemes that appear in the ‘native’ information experience. For social networking, it is attention, the number of responses you’ve gotten to your Facebook status, the comments on your blog. In video games, it may be a simple as points, or it could be as integrated into the game as gold or other currency, experience values, levels of difficulty, magical or warrior powers, permissions, protections, property, and much more.

Perhaps the central question we might ask is what type of measure for success might we appropriate, imagine, or invent that our learners will want to talk about outside of the classroom.It should be stated here that there is not shortage of schemes used by teachers to establish reward or point systems in the classroom, often with huge success.

Class Examples:Make the construction of some sort of information product for the class, class written textbook, Wikipedia-style wiki, etc. and give points based on the level of contribution.Establish levels of access to information related to curriculum, and facilitate relationships where learners with higher levels of access (permissions) become valuable to other learners.Encourage students to contribute to or write publications such as books, anthologies, collections of poetry, and then publish them through one of the on-demand publishing companies and have the librarian add the works to the formal collections. Then organize book signings.

Guided by Safely-Made Mistakes One of the defining qualities of most video games is that you are forgiven for making mistakes. In fact, you are rewarded for them, because you walk away with some new piece ofinformation – knowing something that did not work.

It is also relevant to recognize that there is an interesting new sense of playfulness today, probably owing partly to the integration of video games into the culture of our youth and young adults, butalso to the increasing access that we enjoy to expressive technologies. Video editing tools like iMovie and MovieMaker have contributed greatly to the astounding rise of YouTube. People are investing enormous amounts of time and skill into building something that has little or no practical applications, but brings joy and laughter to thousands – or millions.

Classroom Examples:It is difficult to itemize specific example. Giving learners permission to make mistakes has more to do the general attitude of learning work in the classroom. It is a classroom where mistakes are invited and even celebrated. “I’m glad you said that. It’s wrong, but here’s why and here’s why and why it is important.”

It is a classroom where the teacher regularly says, “Surprise me!”

foundation

Responsive


Content is becoming increasingly responsive to our needs. The phone book (left) and digital Sports Illustrated (right) are examples.

Each hints at possibilities of fully interactive learning resources -- what follows the textbook as we know it...

This relationship becomes even more pronounced when the reader is empowered to create the content and its behavior.

foundation

Responsive


But, when the author or programmers work is published and its users can "respond" back, the relationship between author and reader return -- except that it is...

Two way

and

Highly instructive

Scratch is a programming language that enables children to write video games and other applications. The process involves math and it immediately assesses, because if there is a mistake, then it doesn't "work."

foundation

Responsive


We've known the power of responsiveness for a long time. We've long tried to capture the immediate gratification of many video games to improve achievement.

foundation

Responsive

Traction


Traction

foundation

Responsive


In traditional schooling, the traction points are the text, teach, and bell schedule. These are the hard places that learners could push and pull on to accomplish learning.

When do Traction PointsWhen do Traction Pointsbecome barriers?


What are the new traction points?

Hyperconnected learners find each other for hard places against which they can test and grow their knowledge, ideas, and skills.

foundation

Responsive


Learning happens when we push off of something or pull toward it. We need a hard place to test our knowledge and ideas against. In the past it was the textbook, teacher, technology, and the bell schedule.

[twitter]It takes traction to do anything. It takes traction to learn![/twitter]

Even when they’re out sick, students work on their blogs. - Carol Barsotti

I’ve got 6th graders coming in during their lunch and after school to add articles to their blog and respond to their classmates’ articles.

- Al Gonzalez

My students are floored when, as they say, “Some random person from Texas commented on my blog.”

- Brian McLaughlin

In 15 years of teaching, I have never seen anything come even CLOSE to motivating students to write - like blogging does.

- Mark Ahlness


Students love to write in their blogs, not because of instant gratification, but because of deferred response that is both dependable and relevant. They know that someone is going to "read" their writing, not just "measure" it.

[twitter]The responsiveness in blogging is not immediate. It is relevant.[/twitter]

Households earning < $20K with high speed Internet

25% to 35%

Senior citizen households with high speed Internet

19% to 30%

In one year the percentage of households earning $20K - $30K with high speed Internet

42% to 53%


foundation

Responsive


We all want information in all of its forms -- not just e-mail but we want information that moves, flows, and glows.

Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right.

Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection...

The country is aiming for ... 100 megabit per second -- for all by 2015.

A h m e d , S a e e d . " F a s t I n t e r n e t A c c e s s b e c o m e s a L e g a l R i g h t i n F i n l a n d . " C N N Te c h 1 5 O c t 2 0 0 9 : n . p a g . We b . 1 7 D e c 2 0 1 0 . < h t t p : / / b i t . l y / h W i R c q > .


foundation

Responsive


..by July next year, telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all Finnish residents with broadband lines that can run at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second...100Mb internet access ... available to all Finnish residents by 2015. (Johnson)

http://personalizemedia.com/the-count/

How much are people actually talking online?


foundation

Responsive


[twitter]You can see this little counter at... http://personalizemedia.com/the-count/[/twitter]


A different species of Learner who communicates through his tenticles...

Ft. Edmonton

‣ Grade 2 students from Westglen School Visited Fort Edmonton.‣ Returned & researched modes of

transportation of the time.‣ Using MS Paint they made an image of

one of the modes.‣ Grade 4 students from J.A. Fife School

visited Fort Edmonton.‣ Used MS Paint to draw a background

for the grade 2 drawings.‣ Hired grade 10s in a hypermedia class to

animate the pictures.


foundation

Responsive


The objective of the work was learning about prairie life in 19th century Alberta by producing graphic illustrations of how they traveled.

The nature of the work was conversation/collaboration. Conversation and collaboration are not easy, and the deep and productive collaborations necessary in a technology-rich, information-driven, and increasingly global environment is especially hard.

The students' collaboration was handicapped by asking them to communicate through classroom walls, school campuses, and through age differences. The students were challenged to be resourceful.

[twitter]You can see all of the animations here - http://fortedmonton.jasperplace.ca/[/twitter]


foundation

Responsive

26Monday, January 10, 2011I used that setting on my camera that take multiple shots, and this is the only one that came out nearly clear. I’ve seen it before, but, out of curiosity, I Twitpic’ed it this morning

to see if anyone knew what it was. Here’s what I learned.

There is a Civil War memorial near Fredericksburg, VA that is a twenty foot high stone pyramid. It was built in the 1890’s by a railroad company to commemorate the Confederate

victory there in 1862. It is right next to the auto-train tracks. It’s far away from where the National Park Service wants you to look at it, across a ditch and the railroad tracks. It

might be possible to get closer to it, but I have never tried. I think Amtrak has a fence up and the pyramid is either on Amtrak or private land.1

This information was contributed to RoadsideAmerica.com by Willie Zaza in June of 2001. Someone else added this later.

It’s known officially as Meade’s Pyramid. It stands 23 feet tall, is built of granite, and was erected in 1898 by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, who originally just wanted

a sign. The railroad vetoed that idea, so the Society built a 17-ton pyramid.

What I find interesting is that I learned of this, in less than ten minutes, by way of Jo Fothergill, from her home, in New Zealand.

Who says learning has changed!


foundation

Responsive

Total Searches of the Top Ten Search Engines

2008 -- 80 Billion / Month2009 --113 Billion / Month

150 MillionQuestions an Hour!


How do you approach an experience like this?


foundation

Responsive


Many of today’s video games come without a users guide. Players learn to play the game by getting in and pushing and pulling on the hard places so that they can learn the goals, the rules, and how to work the rules to accomplish the goals.

They Ask Questions‣What are the goals?‣What are the rules?‣How do I use the rules to

accomplish the goals?Provokes Conversation

foundation

Responsive


Make a wanted poster about one of the Renaissance or Reformation leaders (names drawn from a hat):

1.Poster MUST be on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. (10 points)

2.Mug shot - We need to know what they look like! (10 points)

3.First and Last name of your historical figure. (5 points)

4.Birth Date and Year of Death. (5 points)

5.What country were they born in and where did they do their work? (10 points)

6.What are they famous (wanted) for? 5-8 complete sentences, in your own words, for full credit. (30 points)

7.A fact that you found interesting OR a quote by the person. (10 points)

8.Print out or photocopy of your sources with info highlighted. (15 points)

9.Your name on the bottom right corner. (5 points)

QUESTION-PROOF

THE ASSIGNMENT


This should not be, in any way, construed as an indictment of rubric-style assessment. However, we should be cautious, in our use of all forms of assessment, that we do not damage learning for the sake of assessing teaching.


foundation

Responsive


What kind of barriersmight I plant for my studentsto question themselves around?

How am I paying attentionto those questions, at thesame time that I am asking...?

So, does grammar matter?


foundation

Responsive




foundation

Responsive


An important part of our learners outside-the-classroom information experiences is based on identity. It may be a building of their own identity, experimenting with alternate identities, or it may be the cultivation of fantasy identities.

Ian Fogarty, a Biology and Physics teacher in New Brunswick, doesn't ask his students to use their lab manuals. His students write their own. One team wanted their lab manual to be interactive, so they paid a classmate to program the flash, in return for chocolate milk.



foundation

Responsive


Students post their class notes in the classroom blog each day, collaboratively producing a study guide for the class. Responsible learning...



foundation

Responsive


What is the purpose of School? The purpose of school..

..is to not get caught being wrong!

- High School Student




foundation

Responsive

foundation

Are we becoming

more playful?

http://bit.ly/ffrVSv



[twitter]ImprovEverywhere videos can be found here: http://bit.ly/ffrVSv [/twitter]

Second largest Web Site on the Internet

Oct 2010500 million pageviews

Since Aug 2008, #2 Search Engine

January 2009 15 hrs of video uploaded per minute

March 2010 15 hrs of video uploaded per minute



foundation

Responsive



[twitter] Top 1000 web sites, monthly report - http://bit.ly/ePvbXL[/twitter]

Of all YouTube Views & out of a 24 hour Day< 100 : 29.59% 7.1 hrs100-500 : 23.03% 5.5 hrs500-1,000 : 9.43% 2.2 hrs1,000-10,000: 24.81% 5.9 hrs10,000-100,000 : 2.69% 40 min100,000-500,000 : 1.73% 5 min> 1,000,000 : 0.33% 4 minKarbasfrooshan, Ashkan. “Context is King: How Videos Are Found and Consumed Online.” TechCrunch. 30 Jan 2010. Web. 23 Aug 2010. <http://wp.me/pNaxW-AsV>.

Can learning be more playful?



foundation

Responsive






foundation

Responsive

DIY


"The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next."

-- Sherry Turkle

T i n ke r i n g



foundation

Responsive



How can I make the learning experience “talk back” to the learners?

foundation

Responsive


How might the learning experience sidestep critical information; requiring learners to need, search for, invent, and exchange knowledge?


foundation

Responsive


How can the learning experience inspire value in learners’ work?



foundation

Responsive


How am I daring my learners to make “Mistakes” that can feed the learning dialog?Demands Personal

Investment



foundation

Responsive


Our Business?Making our children future-ready

Being education today..is not so much about what you’ve been taught!

It’s what you can teach yourself...



..it’s not what you can be trained to do!

It’s what you can resourcefully accomplish.



..it’s not just the shoulders you can stand on.

It’s the team you can move up the field with -- to reach the joy of something brand new...



It’s not a “Race to the Top!” It is joyfully

masting...The Future


..and sometimes that can be as

simple..

Surprise Me!





foundation

Responsive

Thank You!

David Warlick

Handouts:http://davidwarlick.com/

handouts/


Cracking the 'Native' Information Experience

Education

Transcript of Cracking the 'Native' Information Experience