Beyond Podcasting: Flat World

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

UNpurposely disconnected and Theoretical Rationale, pt.I

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned: it has been a month since my last posting. Oy. I've been tagged in a Meme that I haven't gotten to yet - but I will, I promise! I could give a number of excuses, but the moral of the story is that I am trying to finish my Masters' project (one more chapter to go - W00T!), and simply have not had a chance to be online much. Well, not for anything "fun" anyway.

I thought I'd share a bit of my work for you - if you are interested. And if you aren't? Umm...tough? Stop reading? No - please don't. Feedback would be nice. :)

Anyway, this is my Theoretical Rationale behind a Read/Write French Curriculum. This is part one of three (or four, depending on how long this is). If you use it, please quote it. It is copyrighted through the University but attributing it to this blog is alright with me.

Please comment on this - and let me know what you think! Here it is:

One cannot deny that in the past century, more change has taken place than in any other. While this change was heavily technological, these changes affected most everything else; from commerce to healthcare to recreation, technology has drastically and forever changed the way the world interacts.

Interestingly enough, the theoretical rationale behind the creation of a technology-embedded French curriculum comes from a journalist, not an educator. Friedman, the author of this interesting work, talks about three eras of what he calls Globalization. The first era, Globalization 1.0, began when Columbus set sail in 1492 and continued through 1800. Friedman writes “…in Globalization 1.0, the key agent of change…was how much brawn – how much muscle, how much horsepower, wind power, or, later, steam power – your country had and how creatively you could deploy it” (Friedman, 2007, p.9 ). Globalization 1.0 united the world in a competitive way that, until 1492, really had not been seen before.

Similarly, Globalization 2.0 also changed the way the world interacted. Globalization 2.0 spanned the years from 1800 through 2000 (not including the years of the Great Depression or the World Wars). Friedman says “[t]his era shrank the world from a size medium to a size small. In Globalization 2.0, the key agent of change…was multinational companies” (Friedman, 2007, p.9). These years, which also included the beginning of the dot-com era where cross-world communication became possible in minutes rather than weeks, began to allow for cross-global collaboration in the workplace.

Work Cited:
Friedman, T (2007). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Picador.

Technorati Tags:
(dis)connectivity, Beyond Podcasting, education, Flat World

Friday, January 25, 2008

The Power of the Network, Part II

Last Tuesday, I asked those who read this blog to comment on my post and tell me where they were from. I also told my Twitter network about the blog post. Before the end of the school day, I had 9 comments from various places. It is now up to 14. Not too shabby for a quick shout-out blog post.

Here is what this tells me. Slightly over a year ago, I decided that I ought to have a blog for my presentations, so that people had a site to go to when they had questions. This blog was created for the people in those sessions - all of whom were in Michigan. Of the 14 comments, how many were from Michigan? Two. How many of those Michiganders had been in my session? Zero. That's not to say that my original readers aren't still around, but it is intriguing to me how the readership of this blog has expanded.

Secondly, it tells me that my personal network of people has substantially grown. Several of the comments mentioned that they followed my blog in a reader, but others mentioned that they found me through Twitter. Very few teachers my age have networks outside of their own schools. It is definitely an advantage for me - and for the other teachers in my school, as I bring back everything that I learn!

Third, it is a humbling reality check. What we post - whether or not we think it has any impact - is being read by someone, somewhere. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. My psychology classes just completed an "online text" on a wiki. At first glance, I was so proud of them! In many ways, I still am, but they don't seem to understand that their audience is a global one. Four groups (that's 8 kids) blatantly plagiarized some/all of their wiki. How can we prove to students that people really are reading what they post - and that it could include the original author of the material? I'm still hashing out how I want to handle this with the next batch of kids - stay tuned for that.

As I begin my Masters project, I am keenly aware that at no other point in time have we ever had such power in our networks. Equally, I am aware of the discrepancy between the learning styles needed for the mass collaboration era versus the industrial revolution-style training that is occuring in our schools. As we are helping our students prepare for their future, are we showing them the "Flat World" that Friedman spoke of - where knowledge is the new global currency? Or does it look more like this: