This time of year always brings more time for thought process, and mindful being. As I wrap up my virtual experience for NECC09 and explore my new connections, many thoughts come to mind and remind me why I am an educator and why I moved into IVC and distance education. 

After our presentation for NECC 09, I was left with concern that I had not really demonstrated the power of IVC. This of course was based on the gauge of audience reactions during the presentation. Now granted, it was a 30 minute session and how much can you interact with a group in person in 30 minutes. Well here is where I argue my point. 

IVC, social media, social networking, and the likes will not make us better teachers, educators, learners. Like any technology tool, we need to first be able to know what we want to communicate in order to teach/ learn. We also need to understand our audience. Thus it is based in the content and how best to communicate it to the audience and their needs. So. how best can we use technology to communicate? Again it all depends on what and how we want to communicate!Trying to use technology to teach first is like trying to drive fast with just the chassy and body of a Frerari, but without the engine. (Or in our case, a sprint sled without the sled dogs!)

Mobile Learning Institute shares a great video about 21st century teachers, and how important the content is. In fact, Larry Rosentock even describes his school as a Liberal Arts school and not a technology school, for that very reason. It is about the content. 

Furhtermore, after hearing Malcolm Gladwell's speech at NECC09 and the "Brick and Mortar's school debate", I could not but further think that we are missing the boat here. Gladwell clearly ended his presentation with the same concept, it is not whether we teach school within or outside the walls, it is what and how we teach in the schools. (Every reason to not have 8 hr day schools, year round and on Saturdays, but more important to recognize that our passions in learning will drive us to learn on our own in school or outside of school 8 hrs a day, on Saturdays year round. Again it is all about the content.) 

Reflecting on this in terms of IVC, social media, networking, web 2.0, I once again realize the need for my audience during my presentation to participate in the importance of the content beyond the IVC presentation, in the realm of Ning or twitter. This immediate feedback from my learners lets me know as a teacher if we have hit the target and we were succesful. (Did I even choose the correct thing to measure here?) In real life this would have been through body langauge, side conversations and personal networking through introductions. However the presentation was virtual, thus I had to heavily rely on my web 2.0 tools: twitter, ning, etc. to gather this input.  Here is where the problem lies, did I incorrectly assume that my audience was ready and willing for this level of interaction beyond IVC or even with IVC? Again, back to the content being King. 

In the end it all comes back to best teaching practices. As a teacher, I greatly rely on my skills and learned experiences in the classroom for being a succesful teacher. But what I walk away with is that learning and education happen best when we begin with content (standards) and what our audience is ready to learn. Then considering how we will know if we or our audience has learned it (assessments) and then how best can we teach it and/or how our audience can learn it (what tech tools will work best). I will continue to fall back on this core teachings from RISC as I delve further into the realm of technology, NECC and IVC. I do what I do because I see how we can move beyond our classrooom walls, but still have a base for our learning within our classroom walls, all strung together by content and our passions to learn through adventure and exploration. 

Kigluait Adventures: Adventure, Discovery, Learning for Life! 

Catching up on Ted Talks, and blogging, I see many connections between much of the related topics I enjoy discussing.

Iin particular, I saw two deep connections between two Ted Talk. The first one was about the expectations of Cell Phone usage and the second was about expectations for cheating. The connection between the two made be think greatly of culture in a school setting.

Dan Airely's talk shared many of the experiments he did on exploring how willing people were to cheat. What he found was that when the community around the person was willing to cheat, the person was more willing to cheat. 

Exmaning this in a School climate, one can easily see this in a school setting. If the teachers/ administration is lenient on school rules and policies or they themselves participate in a minor form of "cheating," than so will the student body. This being evident in the form of role modeling. No brainer here.

So what if the expectations in the classroom or school were consistant and clear. In which all teachers and student leaders modeled a consistant set of positive behaviors beneficial to the school setting for learning. We would have a school culture of quality. This comes through loud and clear in Ron Berger's book, A Culture of Quality. 

There have been many research experiments demonstrating this very point. One I am remninded of is a teacher that was asked to teach a classroom of Gifted and Talented students. At the end of the course the students were tested on state exams and they did exceptional. To be expected, right? What the teacher was not told was that these were students that were actually tested to be in the remedial class. 

So how is this applicable? What if we had the expectation that technology was part of our school setting? What if it was expected that part of students learning was sharing their learning back to the community? What if the expectations for students and teachers was to be a community of learners, creators, problem solvers and communicators through technology? What would our society look like 5, 10, 20 years down the road? 

So this is where I see the connection with Renny Gleeson's talk about Anti-Social Smartphone Users.  Many of our cultural behaviors are based on what is acceptable as a society, whether they are postiive or negative. If we begin by setting a particular behavioral expectation in our home and school setting, for example cell phone use, we can begin to make a societal expectation or change. Especially if we are aware of the particular behavior and expectation and reasons for the behavior. 

So how to begin this culture of change or expectation? I think that  Dan Airely's talk suggests a solution. Airely says that we should test our intuitions (perceptions of what could happen in the future based on our actions), even if they are difficult to do. Why not test the intuition of your school climate or classroom culture? What if every teacher trully beleived that every child could learn and wanted to learn? 

Why Videoconference? Well this is the exact question my partner and I asked ourselves when we began Kigluait and Teaching WOW.

We trully believed it was and is a phenomenal means of learning, sharing and using knowledge and culture from all over the world. 

CILC's monthly newsletter posted a brilliant article for the use of Videoconference and using it in the right way. Now one can argue much about what the right way of using videoconference is, but one cannot argue the positive effects it has on audiences. And what is further, one cannot argue Tammy Griffis eloquently stated point of increased acheivement connected with virtual field trips. Furthermore her connection to the idea that the more focused our learning environment is (connected to learning standards) the more useful videoconferencing becomes, thus increasing higher orders of learning.

However, my partner pointed out an excellent point about one of the ideas in the article. Ms. Griffis, as well as many, often state that videoconferencing provides "other opportunities are available to them, other than those in our small community." This is very much so true. However, so often this statement implies that students need to move away from their communities to find a better life- which is a very troubling ideology when looked at from a perspective of the overall health of the country's, or world's, social fabric.

Our background is teaching in small, very rural, Alaskan Bush villages.  These are the type of places that you have to take small, 4-6 seater, prop planes to get into.  Very economically and socially challenged!  A perfect place to expand horizons through distance education!  But it is a shame if in doing so we promote the students leaving the community.  That is exactly the wrong use.  And ultimately, as has been proven time and time again in Alaskan villages, leads to the further degeneration of the community.

Instead, it is such a better use of distance communication technology to open up a new world to students that exposes them  to what they can do in their own communities to make them better places- exposes them to what they can learn and create with these tools to make their own fresh opportunities in their own home towns.

So thanks to Ms Griffis for extending the conceptualization of videoconferencing one step further than a "talking-head show" to using it as a specific tool to meet student learning goals. But let us push further still and see the even larger learning picture of our communities, states, continents and world by sharing with one another our environments or sense of place. Learning is authentic, sharing, communicating and building on ideas to solve problems, explore, acheive etc. Why not have a live, interactive audience beyond the classroom walls?