Template -- Teachers @ Work

Marc Prensky coined the terms Digital Native, (our kids and all others under 25 who do technology; speak the lingo and just get on with it), and Digital Immigrants, (us and all others over 25 who struggle with the language, tools and the culture!). Now we are being very general here because in reality we know that, as in every facet of life, there will be those immigrants who struggle with technology and those who adopt and adapt as quickly as seven year olds.

But on the upside for those over 25, I would like to pose the question: “Who powered the emerging, new economies of the 1800’s and early 1900’s; the natives of the country or the immigrants to the country?” And . . . yes undoubtedly it was the immigrants . . .yahoo! That's us; well it could be . . . . . . BUT . . . . . . it's still all about attitude. Just as immigrants generally are inspired to migrate because of an inherent need to improve their situation and make a new life in a new country, we as technological immigrants have to be similarly motivated, with the bottom line being “if we want something badly enough and are prepared to put in the hard graft, we can have it”. Sure it will be difficult, but the will to make things happen and achieve success can overcome any hurdle; you need look no further than your contemporary immigrants for the necessary motivation.

Two separate issues need to be placed on the table here: Timing when to be an immigrant and Risk.

(1) Timing is critical, because to be successful your decision must be based on the prevailing conditions in the country to which you are emigrating.

(2) Equally critical is the need to judge the risk associated with becoming an imigrant.

· Purchasing a passport (in your case the technology) when it is very expensive or

· when you have access only to a temporary visa/ technology and the existing rules are still subject to change or

· the benefits/risks associated with having a passport (technology) are questionable at best or

· having the necessary credentials and being an immigrant to a new country, though fashionable, is of little practical advantage or

. . . all constitute a recipe for disaster unless the potential immigrant has nothing to lose in which case one may as well make the best of the present situation even if it does mean fighting against the odds.

Emigrating under the above conditions (given that you had to rather than chose to) can (if the venture does not meet expectations) eventuate in the temptation to:

· Use the nature of being an immigrant as an excuse, and blame the natives for the fact. or:

· Resort to self-pity (i.e.) “if only you were younger or had been given more of the right genetic (technology genes) material by your shortsighted parents, or

· Wish that other members of your immigrant community had advised you more appropriately, or

The reality for all teachers is that their schools will eventually emigrate if they haven’t already done so, and may or may not have issued an open invitation to all who wished to be part of this emigration program. The good news is that if you want to be included, 2004 is probably a good year to do so.

Retrospectively, if you were forcibly thrown on board the technology ship in the late 20th century (usually in the dead of night), you would inevitably and justifiably have found that the environment of the new country was simply too hostile, the technology did not work, was unreliable, did not produce many efficiencies and it certainly helped if you had "time to burn" in order to learn the arcane rules required to become a fully fledged citizen of the new country. But for the passionate these issues were not seen as negatives but rather as badges of honour, the mark of the innovator and the explorer.

We may long for the “old country" but in reality the old country has become the new country and we cannot go back. In order to be an effective citizen in this new technological era it is necessary for all teachers to adapt to the laws and rules of the new country and adopt its culture. It is also the responsibility of the citizens in the new country to make life as easy as possible for the newly arrived immigrants, without whom the new country will go nowhere, and most likely the new technologies will simply be used to underpin and prolong the first education paradigm, and the transition into the second paradigm will not happen, resulting in the loss of the benefits of that transition for years to come.

It would be reasonable to assume that the prolific supply of online units of work, DLO’s (Digital Learning Objects) and online resources will cause the role of the teacher to shift from information/unit creation to the type of clever questioning that encourages students to interrogate the supplied resources in such a way that they are able to build conceptual frameworks of understanding. The subsequent learning experiences will hopefully lead to an understanding of the knowledge, as well as ensuring its retention.

As we have mentioned previously, the 21^st century will be dominated by those who have an understanding as well as knowledge of, ideas and concepts. Having taught “knowing” for so long, considerable perseverance will be required to make the transition to teaching for understanding, so that this becomes the focus within schools.

However this approach cannot be successfully established without involving the students who also must learn relatively similar techniques. There are several reasons for this line of thinking.

Questioning needs to be strategically thought through so it builds on present knowledge and understanding. What this means is that asking questions that assume some already developed conceptual understanding, may well limit the possible learning response if that presumed preliminary conceptual understanding is not established and processed sufficiently to be applied in a (possibly) different context. The challenge to teachers then is to begin to build concept scaffolding plans that facilitate the “incremental development of increasingly sophisticated conceptual frameworks”.

There is a strategic alliance between knowledge and the development of conceptual frameworks. Establishing knowledge precedes understanding. In education, where the expected output is that students will understand, it is critical to identify the degree of knowledge, experience and discourse that is required in order to build a successful conceptual framework. In tandem with this it is important to know what the conceptual framework is that you are aiming towards, so that the necessary underpinning knowledge, discourse and experiences can be strategically provided.

It should be noted that the table below is a generic one, and usually individual learning processes do not follow this very staged approach. However, the provision of this infrastructural framework does provide students with a useful peg on which to hang their individualised learning processes, and also allows for teachers to provide a realistic teaching framework.

Stage 1	Stage 2	Stage 3	Stage 4	Stage 5	n^th Stage
Knowledge, discourse and experiences that will underpin concept 1	Concept 1 introduced based on developed knowledge, discourse and experiences	Concept 1 presented in a range of contexts	Revise first context, knowledge discourse and experiences. Add new knowledge underpinning concept 2	Concept 2 based on developed knowledge, discourse and experiences	Knowledge and experiences that will . . . . . .

If the end result we expect to achieve is an understanding by students of the concept of day and night in different parts of the world, and that they would appreciate the associated idea of time zones, the individual concepts we would hope to establish in this process are:

Stage 1	Knowledge, discourse and experiences that will underpin concept 1	Observation: The sun appears to move, it rises in the east and sets in the west. A brief look at experimenting with shadows as a measure of this movement.
Stage 2	Concept 1 introduced based on developed knowledge, discourse and experiences	Discussion: The apparent movement and the difficulty of knowing which object is moving when there is no reference point. Examples provided and principle demonstrated (toy car paced in front of a rotating background and filmed to show the car apparently moving against the changing background scenery).
Stage 3	Concept 1 presented in differing contexts	Students asked to look for examples in everyday life when driving, or on the bus. Students asked how they could tell when one object (the bus/car) was moving when travelling at a steady speed. Discussion re the difficulty of knowing whether the earth is moving or the sun is moving when both are “apparently” moving at a steady speed. Discussion: Is there a reference point we could use to help us judge which is actually moving?
Stage 4	Revise first context, knowledge, discourse and experiences. Add new knowledge, discourse and experiences underpinning concept 2	Revision of previous work. Information made available to students on how we know that it is the earth that is moving using reference points such as stars (how do we know that they are not moving with the sun?). Research carried out using the information resources. Class Debate on the “earth centric” versus “sun centric” model using a mock court (the sun centric people are in the dock and stand accused of heresy).
Stage 5	Concept 2 based on developed knowledge, discourse and experiences	Experiment reproduced to show sun centric model. Open question “To what extent does science rely on our trust, given that we cannot carry out the experiment personally” (Can we really know at a personal level that the sun is not moving, or do we rely on “trusting implicitly” those important scientific people who say that it is the earth that is moving).
nth Stage	Knowledge, discourse and experiences that will . . . . . .	. . . . .

One issue that arises here is that it will take a considerable amount of time to teach this one “minor” topic to students if we wish to a use the “conceptual scaffolding” approach to embed the overall concept rather than to just say “people used to think the earth was stationary and the sun moved, but now we know better because . . .” The amount of actual knowledge we can deliver using this process will be reduced considerably BUT the students will have a much better chance of understanding the concept, and being able to apply and use it to develop additional conceptual understandings that will form a truly solid foundation. The question then becomes “What are the foundational concepts that students require at various levels (not ages)?”.

The development and implementation of scaffolded conceptual frameworks within a curriculum can be delivered by identifying what core competencies students need in order to be successful citizens in the 21^st Century. Core competencies are required rather than specific skills, because the diversity of life experiences encountered by each individual will determine which skills will be required by any one student and hence we need more generic “competencies” rather than specific skills.

The key here is to identify enabling competencies as opposed to those that are specifically skill based. In the past we have focused on providing students in education systems with skill sets specific to particular needs, hence the demands on departments/ministries for the provision of myriads of skills identifiers or achievement objectives.

The consistency of these competencies is considerable and provides departments/ministries with a direction for further curriculum developments within the framework of the second education paradigm.

The need for all citizens to develop lifelong learning skills in order to maintain a learning culture throughout their lifetime will take considerable resourcing and time but the choice not to do this condemns society to being unable to catch the Knowledge Wave.