Why is so difficult to change the practice of Education? Third CCK08 paper.

I think that the main reason lies on the self image that the teachers held about themselves and in the way in which the students perceive education.  I wish I knew about a practical way to shift those positions.

The teacher's traditional position.

In a traditional way a teacher stands out of the crowd, in a way that medical practitioners did some years back as pictured by Quino in his famous cartoon (Quino cartoon, page 5, Mafalda, book 9;1977). In that view teachers are considered vessels of knowledge, leaders of the future generations.  In rural places they are treated with awe and respect, the community is grateful to have them; it usually implies less comfort to go and teach sometimes in a hut.  In the cities they are held also with respect, parents try to get along with them for the sake of their kids' well being. The teacher that requires his students to send their homework to his/her email sometimes is viewed as a nuisance; most of the students don't have computers at home and parents have to cope with the expense of paying extra to cyber places.

Being a teacher gives you status, power over your learners, a position in life supported by your credentials and years of experience in the field.  It's not easy to let go of that position, of the privileges perceived and of the underlying assumptions. Stephen Downes talks about this, among other things, in his post about Reusable Media, Social Software and Openness in Education.

Students point of view on education.

On the other hand, most the students regard school and homework as an imposed obligation that they don't enjoy.

Qino cartoon. #895, Mafalda 4 (1968)

Felipe (thinking): "Well, I better go do my homework."...
Felipe (thinking): "Damn!"

They act as Felipe, they wish that something would come along to get them of the hook. I have acted like that myself.  Students come to the cyber place to do their homework and what they do is copy and paste from pages they Google, they don't reflect on what they put together. They try to do it fast to have time to add a picture to their photo blog (MetroFlog is their favourite), chat or visit their Hi5 spaces. If they happen to find a teacher that invites they to learn in an engaging way they respond eagerly but they expect leadership.  If you leave them to choose what to learn and how to go about their learning they freeze.  Talking to teenagers I've found they are confused, they know that even if they do well in their studies that doesn't warranty them a job or a better life in the future.

Matthias has a different point of view on this issues and looks into resistance in a broader way than me. Worth reading.

S. Downs puts forward an answer: "The idea that all of us, acting independently, but ensemble, en masse, can come up with something better than any individual in the group could by themselves. This is not a case of marching toward mediocrity, this is a case of the group simple being able to take into account more factors, more variables, than any given individual. The group being able to absorb more information than any individual. But for this to work, we have to have the open communication and access. We have to have the distributed non-centralized non-hierarchical model".

To teach in a non traditional way means to accept, claim, demonstrate and model that you don't have all the answers, that you are not better or worst than others, that you are only a bit different.  It also means that you are open to share what you know and have, that you are open to persuasion.

I don't have a practical path to bring this change about.  All I see is that maybe if we take responsibility of our own learning, model the behaviour we expect, provide examples, establish outcomes, set the table with what we see as goodies and invite others to share the meal we may shift the status quo a bit.

I found the following video at Tom White's blog. We are against inertia.

Despite the fact that this short article is a free roaming thought piece, I find myself with an acute feeling of the responsibility for what I write.  It's hard to explain.  This doesn't mean that I didn't feel responsible before, it means that I'm more aware of that  responsibility as a part of a learning community. I see this as a beneficial outcome.  I blame this to all the readings, interactions, talks and wonderful people I have met during the CCK08 course. Thanks to all of you.

The Official Quino Home Page can be found at http://www.clubcultura.com/clubhumor/quinoweb/

After last night's crash came Google Chrome Beta

This post is a record my first impressions with the new browser.
Well, yesterday I crashed my PC. I lost all my favorites! The explorer just left, thanks God, my del.icio.us account on the browser navegation bar.


Somehow a pop up window inviting me to test Google Chorome Beta came along and I was so shocked by what had happened that I decided to give it a try.
I knew that I would have to invest time to set any explorer back on track anyway.

Well, the instalation was fast and with no bumps, I was happy. I began to follow the tutorials to learn how to use it and to my delight I found out that they are very good. They even have video tutorials in Spanish that could be used as listening Spanish practice, it is a male voice, very clear and calmed but with Spanish accent. I could have enjoyed the videos more if they had a Mexican o South American accent. Perhaps I will use the videos for BaeL Spanish Group.

So my journey with Google Chrome was an enjoyable one until I started having difficulties. First of all, I changed the language to English just to find out that the next page I opened was again in Spanish. This was really annoying, it did not matter how many times I set the language to English... Spanish was back.
I usually do not mind the language, sometimes I do not even notice which of both languages is used by the program. I need to fix this.

In second place, as I should have foreseen but didn't, I came to my blog to find it also in Spanish!! This is really annoying because as I type the spell checker underlines every word with red. So, instead of enjoying the great spell checker that blogger has I find myself writting this post with no help to check the spelling. I hope you do not find many mistakes! I guess this has to do with my IP address but I am not sure.

On third place is the fact that I do not have the navegation menus I use. I do not have cut, paste, copy, print, etc at hand. I know a few shortcuts keys, like cut, paste and copy but no more! This is becoming a nightmare for me. I need to learn more shortcut keys!

I did not have in mind to write another post here but I am glad I logged in again before the CCK08 course starts. I see now that last night's crash will affect me more than I expected and will be more time consuming. Why? For example, now I would like to place a link to Google Chrome and I do not know yet how to go back to that page to get the link without closing this one. The pages are linked, I do not know yet how to detach them to have several windows opened as I am used to do with Explorer. If I do not find a solution soon I will revert to Explorer. Fortunatelly I wrote down the page address and I typed the link to the site. :-)

Let's see what other surprises I find today!

Well, I had a nice talk with Mbarek, he gave me useful links and helped me to install Dreamweaver. He also tried Chrome. At the end of the day I will unistall it, it is too much trouble, he already unistalled it. The good thing is that I learned how to install icons in my desktop to my most used sites though they may dissapear after I unistall.