Everything George Lakoff says here about the importance of framing in our conversations about Climate Change is just as true about the importance of framing in our conversations about Reforming the US Education System.

We’re wasting our breath unless the ways we speak about using Web 2 tools to support informal and formal education connect with people’s fundamental values. Values like truth-telling and practicality and the importance of following our pioneering spirit.

 Authenticity and freedom of choice aren’t “bleeding edge” values. They’re grounded in the very heart-and-soul of what it means to be an American. Doing what works in ways that were easiest for most people to access was at the heart of the original movement to create public education.

What Lakoff has been writing and speaking about for 30 years needs to be applied now to integrate social media into US “classrooms,” whether they’re in public buildings or private homes.  The American way of life is already a polar bear on a fast-melting iceberg in the sea of globalized economics.  Using Web 2 tools to teach and learn can slow down this meltdown…  It’s time to change our thinking about them from “new” to “necessary.”  They are the life preserver we’re throwing ourselves.  

FIND, USE, SHARE, and EXPAND

It’s been awhile since Steve Johnson described the FUSE process but I’m noticing that some people haven’t heard the term… or thought as carefully about it as might be useful.

It seems to me that understanding FUSE is crucial to understanding the revolution that’s going on in online learning, especially for teachers who are turning into educational entrepreneurs:

“In the Web 2.0 model, we have thousands of services scrutinizing each new piece of information online, grabbing interesting bits, remixing them in new ways, and passing them along to other services.

Each new addition to the mix can be exploited in countless new ways, both by human bloggers and by the software programs that track changes in the overall state of the Web.

Information in this new model is analyzed, repackaged, digested, and passed on down to the next link in the chain. It flows.”

It’s true that human beings are innovating and creating new things faster and faster. Maybe faster than ever before in the history of the world.

It’s also true that there’s really nothing new under the Sun. All hum,an beings are ever doing is repackaging and repurposing things in new ways for new applications in new times and new places. And that’s all we’ve ever done.

Yes, we’re developing unique “intellectual properties.” And we’ve always been making our intellectual properties on the shoulders of others. N’est-ce-pas?

The read-write-web, or Web 2.0, is simply accelerating this process in ways that are truly mind-boggling!

What seems to me to be crucial for teachers - of all kinds - who are wanting to make the transition from wage slaves to education entrepreneurs online is that we master the art of FUSE:

FIND, USE, SHARE, and EXPAND

… while remaining mindful that our FUSING has REAL VALUE to others and we need to be rewarded for adding value as we feed the flow of information from one place to another, one person to another.

What do you think about this?

I’d really like to hear your perspective on FUSE.

How are you using FUSE to shape your online teaching and learning?

What kinds of rewards are you seeking for the value you’re adding to the lives of online learners?

How Do We Promote Higher Level Thinking Today?

It’s one thing for educators to teach to tests that offer learners certification that proves they’ve mastered key facts and concepts that panels of experts deem necessary for an ‘educated’ person to know.

It’s another thing altogether to help learners exploit their native curiosity and continuously improve their higher order thinking so they are able to solve the endless stream of complex problems that everyday life delivers. It’s true, as Tony Karreer says, life is mostly an open book test.

For many years, Bloom’s Taxonomy has offered teachers and learners some useful distinctions that help break down complex tasks into structured learning experiences that allow people to build on their success.

The early taxonomy began with knowledge, understanding, and application as lower level skills and cast higher level skills as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

However, getting learners engaged - and keeping them engaged - in the increasingly busy and ‘noisy’ information environment of the 21st century seems to be presenting new challenges.

In 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl adapted Bloom’s model to fit the needs of today by employing more outcome-oriented language, workable objectives, and changing nouns to active verbs.

Most notably, knowledge was converted to remember. In addition, the highest level of development is now called create, rather than evaluate.

Recently, Barbara Clark (2007) provided an adaptation of Bloom’s work to facilitate active learning.

This circle is called the Cognitive Taxonomy Circle:

I find Clark’s tool useful when I need to respond to learners’ needs directly, actively, and specifically. I use it to help me meet learners of all ages - and all abilities - where they are in their personal inquiry, not where I am, or where I think they ought to be.

When I’m able to do this, engagement seems to take care of itself.

What tools do YOU use to help you meet learners where they are?

Some people are crazy enough to think they can change things. And then do something about it.

If you don’t try WiZiQ now, you’ll hate yourself later.

Harmon Singh, the 30-year old CEO of WiZiQ, believes the most important thing he can do to support education reform across the globe is to give teachers and learners a feature-rich virtual classroom space where they can meet whenever and wherever they need to. Inside or outside of conventional schools.

Harman also believes that the technology needs to work simply and seamlessly, requiring no downloads on either side of the teaching-learning equation.

And he also believes the cost of using the technology should be affordable to any teacher willing to translate his/her expertise into a virtual arena and share it with a learner.

So, Harman’s development team has made WiZiQ – a free, public system that teachers and learners can access whenever they need to, using any broadband internet connection in the world.

Harman Singh has a big dream, a powerful development team, and strong financial backing.

Hear him talk about what WiZiQ is and why you need to take a look at it today.

powered by ODEO

What can YOU imagine teaching in a FREE virtual classroom of your own?