Module Five Blog

This is my concept map:

I would say that my teaching and my preference as a student is more on the dynamic side.  I have to admit that I will scan a syllabi and an embedded static announcement and then move on.  It doesn’t stick with me.  When dynamic technologies are used, I am more likely to remember the information and act on it more quickly. 

Until I did the concept map, I wasn’t really thinking about how I share information or encourage my students to share information.  This made me think about two things.  One is creativity and the other is collaboration.

Creativity is needed in the world.  To me, creativity is the ability to step outside of a situation and use thinking skills that look for the not so obvious answer.  Outside of the box thinking is a direct product of creativity.  All too often, though systems of education and learning stifle creativity for conformity.  Conformity allows all children to learn the same thing and be tested in the same manner to assess the same standards of learning.  Then, when these same students enter a global, flat world where they are expected to think and show/share their knowledge, they are lost.  Why?  They can conform but they cannot creatively think about situations and come up with diverse possibilities to solve problems or even create new possibilities.

Sir Ken Robinson in a TED Talk discusses how schools kill creativity and why this matters:

Creativity allows student to think outside the box and find possibilities that may not have existed.  Creativity allows tinkering.  When you can take something apart and see how it works, it is easier to not only use the thing but also know how to manipulate the thing.  This is true in writing.  If you know the basic structure of a sentence or paragraph or even essay, you are better able to rethink how to present effective ideas in those constructs.

What about collaboration?  The model of conformity and the nature of high stakes testing makes knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge an individual sport.  Students are expected to learn what they need to effectively pass a high stakes test and move on to the next level; thus, starting the cycle again.  What about collaboration?  Again, the global, flat world will expect that students can effectively collaborate across modalities.  Emails don’t cut is anymore.  Students must be comfortable with using different modalities to communicate (Skype, Twitter, IM, etc).  We no longer live in a world where communication is a phone call away.  In most instances, communication must be a keystroke or mouse click away.  It’s faster and cheaper.  It allows collaboration to be flattened and easier to accomplish.

Global problems are not solved by individuals.  Rather, they are solved by people collaborating – thinking and working together to find and test solutions.  Sharing knowledge (Shirky calls cognitive surplus) is the most effective way to global collaborate.  In another TED Talk, Shirky gives an example of such collaboration:

What happens when we not only share information but we also share technology?  Shirky’s example of Ushahidi supports his ideas that collaboration can lead to global sharing of knowledge and information.  Student who are only taught conformity will not be able to collaborate on this level.

Static systems are needed.  In a world where communication can be disrupted by weather, we have to know that a phone is just as effective as a tweet or an IM.  In the bigger picture though, dynamic systems are the systems that are changing not only the world but also how we think and act in the world.  While we need skills to navigate static systems, it will be the dynamic systems that will allow us to change our world.