Jun
23
Wikinomics and The Cool Cat Teacher
June 23, 2008 | Tagged schools and Web 2.0, Wikinomics |
I am truly amazed that I got a response from Coot Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis. I thought only my colleagues would be reading my blog because they had to. Getting a response from an important person is exhilarating! This is powerful stuff.
I am continuing to “get religion” on Wikinomics as I continue through the book. As a teacher, business has never grabbed me the same way meta cognition and Heidi Hayes Jacobs has, but the book presents the astounding changes that are taking place because of the web and open source.
As a teacher, it make me wonder how much of this new thinking is being taught in schools. There are many teachers who have yet to expose themselves to Web 2.0. Will everyone be able to make the change? And what of all the workers who have been taught skills that are no longer desirable in their geographic location? If they keep getting taught skills and not strategies then they will never catch up because they will have to be re-trained over and over again.
Shouldn’t we be teaching the strategies our students need to be successful in the wikinomic world or are we still stuck on content? Many of the state standardized tests are fact based - not strategy based. The issues related to education are vast. Thank you, Vicki! You made my day.
Comments
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[...] teacher, who just started their blog (and doesn’t seem to have posted their name), discusses the challenges of teaching children the skills necessary for a wikonomy. (S)he also remarks at how [...]
Thank you for the amazing compliment! I’m not sure if you realize that the people at Wikinomics (see above trackback) have picked up on this post and your reflections.
Thank you for the compliment and welcome to the blogosphere — you’ve entered in grand style!
Good luck and I look forward to seeing amazing things from you!
I really like you comments here and I completely agree. With all the things changing in the world it sure seems that education is the same as it was in the 50’s. Here is a post I wrote a while back you might find interesting.
http://choirteachers.blogspot.com/2008/06/future-of-internet-part-1.html
It talks about this book and two others
Wisdom of Crowds
and
The Tipping Point
Congrats on your new blog & comments from “important people.” I think you may find that flattening is part of the new way of thinking. So good ideas and good people get noticed much quicker.
Twitted is a great example of this. Anybody can follow anybody. I’nt it great?
Make that Twitter.
This is quite amazing! I’m getting comments from all sorts of people out there in the blogland. At the moment, I’m trying to find the balance between my computer, as magnet and time-sucker, and the rest of my life which includes 3 children, a husband, 3 books, the Sunday New York Times, and a little bit of exercise. TV has completely fallen by the wayside.
Back to Wikinomics and schools…
I’m a writing teacher trained in the Lucy Calkins Teachers College paradigm. It’s a lot of process which takes a lot of time. If people cannot write in a compelling and correct way, they will not necessarily be successful in Web 2.0 pursuits. So the question becomes how and when does the learning of English language arts (including mechanics and conventions) take place in this new way of thinking? Every single person connected to a school has some sort of paradigm about what schools should do. Administrators often try to appear as if they are doing it all. The limited time that teachers have to plan what will go on in the classroom gets spent on “accountability” or communicating in old ways instead of the new way.
It’s all got to be from the bottom up. The kids will have to teach their parents how to go to the Wiki to get class information, how to edit documents in Google docs, how to use RSS, etc. It’s democracy in action if we can hold the commercial aspects in check.
I so agree with your comments and those on the Cool Cat Teacher blog. I’m just a beginner, but am so willing to learn with my students. The question is: will policies, administration, and curriculum support the future into which we need to venture?
I also ordered the Wikinomics book. Thanks.
I am very new to wiki, etc. Also, I teach writing with Lucy Calkins. I would love to combine the two. My 2nd graders love anything to do with computers. They are in a Title 1 school and most do not have computers at home. Fortunately, we have 1 hour of computer lab a week, plus 1 hour of a mobile lab in our classroom a week. Also, we have 5 computers in our room. Any great suggestions on combining both?
I think we need a study group to explore writing process and “wiki-cation” (wiki education.) The most important kind of writing our students can do is reflective in nature. I think as I explore this kind of learning, I am going to start with students writing reflectively and responding to what others have written. It would be the natural extension of the writing workshop way of creating partnerships in the classroom. When you have a partner your work becomes validated. Instead of exchanging their writer’s notebook, they can blog each other. Then, others can join in as learning groups expand both within and outside of the classroom. Students still need to practice a type of thinking sometimes called habits of mind.