Minecraft Education Edition!

So, I am officially a 2018 Global Minecraft Mentor (for Minecraft Education Edition) now. It's really odd because I didn't get it last year and I gave pretty much the same reasons for this year, but I got in!

We had our first conference call today. I was overwhelmed with the amount of work the Microsoft team put in to this. There's so many resources and everyone seemed super helpful and enthusiastic.

I feel like I'm a student again, learning about something new, and being really excited about it. I know I haven't posted in this at all in 2017, (and I've always been meaning to) but this year I will be working harder at finding, no, make that, making time to share my thoughts and experiences.

I started off going through the starter kits they prepared for us on OneNote, and playing through the Tutorial World set up. At first, it was pretty standard FPS fare - W,A,S,D, Space, left click, right click, you know the usual. I've played Minecraft before, but mainly on Creative mode with my 5 year old son, trying to create weird creations. We like to do that with LEGO, so I thought why not try it in Minecraft. But this Tutorial World very quickly covered aspects I had no idea about because it's something you'd need in Survival, like crafting, repairing, smelting, cooking, redstone, etc... It absolutely blew my mind. To think that I completely missed all this - mainly because almost all the tasks I've set in class that allowed Minecraft submissions were done via Creative mode, as they were design tasks. (design a classroom, recreate a scene from the play, etc) But also because most of the material I've watched or read online about Minecraft in the classroom seemed to disregard the whole Survival aspect.

I'm not surprised though. Survival is more like a "game". It could be seen as a distraction to the curriculum they are trying to deliver. But the more I went through all this, the more I thought how this could fit in with the whole gamification I've been trying to do in my classroom the past few years. I've always felt that when you say "Okay children, today we're going to LEARN...", that straight away, I've lost half of them. They've been hardwired to see the words "learn" and "work" as negative things. Why do you think they play all these games? Because it's the opposite of work (to them anyway) and we, as adults, tell them that it's not good for them. Thus they see the value in it!

There's also a lot of STEM possibilities here as well. Our school has been approved to be a part of NSW's Minecraft Education Edition Early Access, so I've asked a few of our STEM class teachers to participate. From just the Tutorial World, the things you can do with redstone, switches, levers and buttons, it's like playing with littleBits and Makey Makeys. On top of that, you have all the crafting and smelting elements - computational thinking, maths and science again. You can grow crops, requiring sunlight, water and dirt, the list goes on. Also, with additional tools like the slates, camera, book/portfolios, I can see how it can integrate so many different Key Learning Areas (KLAs - RE: Subjects). Instead of asking students to submit task reflections separately on Google Docs, I can get them to do it via Minecraft. Instead of typing up progress journal entries, they can do it with the book or just do a visual diary using the camera of the progress.

And the more I went on the more awesome features I found. Like Classroom Mode, I could envision myself being the Gamemaster like in Hunger Games, though I can't spawn monsters, I can still teleport people around the place, change rulesets and send messages to the server. Or Code Connection, where you can connect the game to one of 6 or so different coding applications like Scratch, and the game spawns a little bot that you can use the code to do stuff. I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface here - there's bound to be things on the internet people have figured out with this stuff that is way beyond me - but as you can see, lots of exciting learning opportunities.

Personally, I'd really like to explore the Survival aspect more, and try something related to the Tragedies of the Commons. I've done something like this in class with our fictional world, but I'd like to see if the same thing happens inside the game. I know for a fact there are some students who will be very experienced in this game and would like to see how they use this upper hand.... and if things go south, get them back together and see if they can figure this tragedy out. Is it really the survival of the fittest? Maybe the fittest doesn't mean an individual?

Of course, I'll need to start with simpler projects first. I'll get the new cohort to design the classroom, get accustomed to the login system and controls for the newbies, and also steal an idea I read from a blog post here, challenging students to survive one night and write about it.

Still 3 weeks away until school restarts, so plenty of time to plan, play and test things out... As long as I spend that time wisely!

Stay tuned :)

Some random thoughts

I was watching a video on the Genius of Tyrion, and one of the points they made was how he always tries to empathise with his adversaries and find out what they WANT. He'll do this either by asking directly, "What do you want?" or by other means.

Anyway, it got me thinking, how would I respond if Tyrion asked me that question? I guess I have the same desires as most people; wealth, health, knowledge, power, respect, etc... As a teacher, I've realised that I've been getting my students to ask themselves this, but never really asked it to myself.

So after some thought, I've come to the conclusion that I want to be the best teacher ever. (Very humble, I know) And as many people who set big goals in these terms (eg, best football player, best speller, etc...), it mostly comes down to dedication, persistence and hard work. But to be the best teacher... How would you do that? I guess it depends on one's perspective on what being a "good teacher" is.

For me, having a class score well in tests isn't the ultimate goal. For me, to be the best teacher, it would mean that any students you have will be the best students (in terms of whatever the goal you want them to accomplish is). But then, to have the best students, they would need to have had great teachers along the way to get them there. So in the end, to be the best teacher, you'd need to be in a school with all the best teachers who work together for a common goal - the students.

I think I read an article that elaborated on this (in a much more easy to follow way!) during university, and it really rings true. You can't really be the "best teacher" alone. If you were, then you would be lying to yourself because if you had the "best class", that'd be the accumulation of all the hard work teachers before you, the foundations they laid for you in order for them to be where they are. It really is a heavily team-based task. One weak link/wrong turn along the way and you can lose a handful of students for the rest of their school lives. Or worse, for the rest of their living lives.

I've come to realise that I've been looking at it wrong the whole time. To be the best teacher, we need to work as a team. But then you have to jump over the hurdles of politics, red tape, and the other usual office obstacles.

Hmm.

I guess on the bright side, I have something to work with. A more refined goal. Now, just like I do with Starcraft, basketball, CS:GO, working out, etc... I just need to think of the mini goals to take me in the right direction and checkpoints to measure progress.

Though, I feel that to do this, we'll need to dramatically change the way we look at schools, teachers, students, learning and teaching. Just a hunch. (Just kidding, there's plenty of TEDTalks that address this and lots of various articles if you Google it too I'm sure!)

Anyway, random thoughts of the day, over and out.

Fictional Class Country - Students learning from doing - Teachers learning in order to teach! Observations and reflections.

For the past two years, I've introduced a Class currency as part of the Government unit to the year six classes I've had. At the start, it simply served as an additional classroom management strategy, to compliment the Classcraft elements already in place. However, as we were also doing a modified version of the PEO's role play activity, Parliament of Wizards, where we transform the class into a fictional country, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to use this currency to add some mathematics into the mix.

We started it out by first having everyone receive an equal amount every week. They had expenses such as desk rent and fees to use iPads and computers. Just like in the real world, nothing was free.
As we progressed and we started to create jobs. At first I created these jobs to get it up and running. Usual classroom jobs such as messengers, lunch collectors, book hander-outerers, etc, were the first to be taken by selected students and earn an income. I started to create more such as secretaries, cleaners, librarians, IT specialists, etc... We then introduced an income tax, where the money collected from these taxes will pay for the class elected representatives of the fictional Parliament. These representatives would then need to create and pass bills and use some of this money to benefit the class. For example, the Sports party would suggest using it to run a soccer competition, and the money be used as a prize pool. But one problem I had was that I was running out of jobs, and also I had to keep printing more currency because 99% of the income was coming from me!

The next year, we were able to transition to this a little faster, as I was able to take a lot of what I learnt the pilot year to improve on it. A few students the previous year created a business to sell sweets. This was really interesting to me, because in essence, these students were spending real money, in order to gain fake money! The reason they did this was to accumulate enough money to purchase the desks they wanted, in order to be able to sit together once again (and permanently for the rest of the year!). It made me think about the aspect of value. To me, it was just like Monopoly money, play money for a role play task in class. But for some of them, they saw enough value out of it that they were willing to spend their pocket money in order to gain this currency. Even though it was due to ulterior motives, it still did fascinate me that this even occurred!

So back to the point - the second year, I encouraged students to create businesses. At the start, many of them stuck to selling lollies again. However, this started to become not worthwhile for them, as the competition drove the prices down. The returns just wasn't worth the real money investment! So we started looking at what types of businesses exist in our community. They saw that it wasn't just goods, but there also were services. Students started to be more creative; some created items, such as duct-tape wallets. The previous year had a group of students do the same thing, but this time it was a little different. One of the students was a big Steve Jobs fan and using his skills/knowledge in Apple marketing and design, he somehow made students WANT his particular brand. He even tried to patent his design! Other students used their skills in IT, website creation, arts and craft, etc, and offered these as services to their classmates as well.

This second lot also were more active in the elections for representatives and in adding to the class constitution. They were constantly holding meetings to try and pass bills and the week building up to the next big election would have the two major parties furiously campaigning to try and get the majority votes come election day. Both years I ended up keeping the system going for the remainder of the year as so many of the students enjoyed it so much. Students not only learnt about Government, persuasive skills, poster/website/video creation, budgeting, tax, business but also were able to learn other "non school-based" skills through experience. They needed to work on people skills, gaining trust to build strong political and/or business relationships, for example.

The second year also saw a few future entrepreneurs, creating businesses, selling them off and buying others. Some would group up and pool their money to start one, some would go around trying to investors. But I still found myself too tempted to intervene to try and keep it more in line with the "vision" I had. Perhaps I just wanted to play too?

Now this year, using all the things I've learned so far, I've decided to do it again. This time, I've got a few other classes on board. We all use the same currency, so it's kind of like the EURO. However, each class is free to run their country the way the class teacher or students want. Some classes had really high income as the pay there was just very generous. On the other hand, some classes had very low income, as they made it a little more difficult to earn the currency. This made cross country trading and business a little difficult, and in hindsight, I shouldn't have had everyone use the same currency. Having different currencies would be another great way to look at exchange rates and the notion of value even further!

For my own class, we have an exchange system of sorts. They can exchange Classcraft gold for the currency. But the exchange rates change weekly depending on how much is bought/sold. I am also trying to "sell off" a lot of jobs so that eventually, only a few people will be actually getting income directly from me. This should prevent me from needing to constantly print more currency.

Finally, I've been trying to study a little Economics in my free time, as I realised this is something that could help me improve the system. Thank you to Crash Course for their easy to follow and entertaining videos! John and Hank Green used to host a lot of the episodes, but as they started branching out to cover more and more subjects and topics, they inevitably got more people to help! I never picked Economics up in high school so I've really had no idea, basically learning by doing - just like the students! A lot of the times when watching the videos, particularly about inflation and deflation, I find myself thinking, "Hey, that's what happened to us last time when so and so ...!"

Here's the first episode for Crash Course: Economics, if you want to see what it's like.

I've noticed that the increased focus on the economy of the country, has created more thought by the students when thinking about the constitution and introducing new bills. They realise that they can't please everyone, and everything has a compromise. Should be interesting to see how this year's system develops as I think this is the most comprehensive version yet! I'd like to write it all out as a system for other teachers to follow (if they want to), but I still feel like it's not quite there and it's still in its alpha stage.

Overall though, it does seem to be improving every year, and this year I think I have everyone at least somewhat engaged in the experience. They all know that they have a voice and the power to make changes in the class. It allows a lot of students to break out of their shells; I can see some of them being killer marketers, salespeople, business managers, designers, etc... This year, more than ever, I'm going to really try hard to intervene as little as possible, because I think if something goes horribly wrong, it's a great experience to learn from and try to pull the country out of it. I mean, at the end of the day, it's not a real country. It's just a game. And like any other games, it should encourage you to take risks, learn from mistakes without any real life repercussions.

I will try to update the blog with any more interesting observations and development as we go. If you have any suggestions please feel free to leave a comment below!

Sorry for the big wall of text! If I remember to post more frequently, I could keep it more succinct. (But then again, I'm not very good at keeping things short... yet!)

Robot domiNATION?! and the notion of CONTROL.

So I went to an IT course last week (it's been a long time, but I am now the IT Coordinator for the primary school that I work at!), and I mainly went because it was about WiFi optimisation, troubleshooting and other setups to help your school's BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program. Unfortunately, a lot of the things I actually went there to learn were not explained as they were told by the big wigs upstairs- that they were not to disclose that information. So to make a long story short, the course ended up going through various online classroom tools (such as OneNote, Google Classroom, Google Forms), which I am already familiar with, so it ended up being a rather disappointing two days.

I did learn a lot of information about how WiFi actually works, about the different frequencies and channels, etc, but I could've learnt all this online.. and for free.

However, they did show some cool videos at the start to get the motivational juices flowing. One of which was very interesting! I couldn't find the exact video, but the theme is similar to this:

In the video they showed us at the course, the actual figure was that in "15 years time, out of the current 4 billion jobs available worldwide, 2 billion of them will become obsolete as robotics/AI will replace humans to do those tasks."

I started doing some rough searches around the web (since I knew most of the tools they were covering at the course) and it lead me to some great tangential learning experiences! Most of the things I found online made links with the Industrial Revolution, and then I started looking up about Luddites and then about the impact the IR actually had on the entire world. And it really does seem like this rise in technology will be the next IR. There's no way around it, we will all need to adjust, retrain and relearn to be a part of it. Otherwise, we'll just be left behind.

This lead me to thinking about my son and also the year 6 class I'm currently teaching. All this stuff isn't just wishy washy scifi stuff. It will directly affect them. In 15 years they will be 26. If they decide to go through tertiary education (if it even exists in 15 years..), it'd be around the time they just graduated with their degrees and possibly a few years of work experience under their belts. So, it begs the question: "What are we preparing these kids for? Are we preparing them for this big global change?" 

Jobs that are highly regarded such as doctors, are even predicted to be one of the first to be replaced. They also showed us a TEDTalk by Sugata Mitra where he gave primary school students the equivalent of the British university entrance exam and a computer. They were able to score an average of 75%. If a computer can help an 11 year old take a university entrance exam, why are we testing our kids on this knowledge? The great Kevin Honeycutt once said, "If you can Google it, then it shouldn't be in an exam," and I thoroughly agree. We need to start looking at ways to facilitate the students' learning so that they know how to utilise it to their advantage. They all know how to consume it. Probably (most definitely), they know how to do it better than us. But instead of guiding them on how to use it enhance and extend their learning, we're just trying to control it.

Which brings me to the next point. Control. Many teachers have told me their concerns for devices in the classroom. Main concern being, students goofing off and/or being off task. The main message I get from this is, they want total control of the class at all times. Teachers still want to be the director of learning - the what, the when and sometimes even the how. This must be widespread, as in this very course, they also showed us a few tools to "control" what the students can see on their device. Even ways for teachers to see what students are doing on their device. They might as well just scrap devices from their school and go back to pen and paper. There's an abundance of wonderful resources (and of course some not-so-wonderful and some just downright shady) on the world wide web, yet here we were, being shown on how we could force them to only use a particular site! Such a wasted opportunity of wonderful learning possibilities!

Control can also be debated about for all other industries, I mean the current model of education was created due to the demands of the Industrial Revolution, right? Keep workers in check, obedient and follow instructions to a tee. And we all know that in modern times, none of these "worker bees" ended up being a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Gabe Newell (sorry too much CS:GO these days!) Even Thomas Edison was told by his teacher that he should "look for a job where he can use the virtues of his pleasant personality"! Maybe this robot revolution will force a new model of education as well then?

We live in a world where, through technology, the line between work and leisure have become very much blurred. We are able to take work home or even on the road. It enables productivity, when an individual suddenly gets a burst of inspiration, instead of during certain set timeframes. It has even enabled more and more people to make their leisure, their work! But with our current linear approach to education, I find it difficult to see how this will help the students to prepare for, even this current trend of work culture, let alone the upcoming 'revolution'!

One final note about this future of robots and AI world domination. There have been a few characteristics mentioned that humans still possess where robots/AI do not or can not replicate accurately just yet. The four mentioned are:

1. Creativity (Lateral thinking)
2. Empathy
3. Super dexterity (for labour requiring high amount of precision)
4. Entrepreneurship (Risk taking)

So it's not all doom and gloom. Just get ready to embrace the change and be excited to learn new things. We, as humans, still have traits that can benefit the world. I don't claim to have a solution as to how we can prepare the students of today for the world of tomorrow. But I do know that education will need to change in a big way, as it is a crucial element for a child's survival.

Sorry for the few readers that do visit for the lack of posts. I have been so busy trying to adjust to full time teaching the past few years (got my permanency, yay!) and finishing my accreditation (almost done!). I do plan to continue posting ideas/rants/commentary/learning experiences/etc... I always tell myself I'll post more regularly, then forget for a year or two, but I'll definitely try to remind myself more often this time! (I even made a Sticky Note on my second monitor that reads "anything worthy to post today?" Well not yet, but.. NOW I've done it! :))

In hindsight, that 2 day course wasn't really a waste of time, because without attending, I wouldn't have come up with all these thoughts!

I have given the task of creating a "future job" to my class as an end of year mini project. If I get some interesting ones (and I'm pretty sure I will... very interesting mob this year), I will share them here.

Question of the day: What drives you to teach everyday? (Please don't say something clever like "my car" or "my wife" or "my chauffeur" or.. you know what I mean)

We are still alive!

Almost a year since the last entry and hoo-boy has a lot happened!

Firstly, the world didn't end so the year started off better than expected. :) - Although this storm happening at the moment is pretty intense...

An update on the iPad situation at our school. It was VERY popular, and the children loved it. (does this surprise anyone?) The principal and deputy principal bought another set of 20 iPads for the library, with which I was to teach K-4 classes twice a week. (The first set of 30 were for years five and six only.)
They are also trialling a 1:1 iPad system, and one lucky teacher will be receiving a class set all to themselves!
I found apps that allowed students to create to be the most effective and engaging. I was also able to integrate Minecraft into lessons, (eg, Thinking about what buildings may look like in the future, and collaboratively designing them within the Minecraft universe.) and although these were pretty successful, unfortunately students continued to play this game during the classroom teacher's lessons and so it was requested that it be removed.

Other apps which students loved to complete tasks with were, Educreations, Toontastic, Splice! and iMovie.

However, with such limited time per class to use the iPads, I feel that the novelty still has not worn off. It will be interesting to see how the 1:1 trial class goes. I'm guessing that within the first week or two the students should get 'over it' and they simply see it as another classroom tool.

More updates to come!

iPad session reflection

Just wanted to quickly write this up before I forget. A few days back I was with a year 5 class doing team teaching with iPads. It was their first session, so I went along with my 'lesson plan' which I had prepared for all the other introductory sessions. One of the activities for these sessions was a 'wikipedia game' (an idea I got from the Extra Creditz show on Gamifying Education ), where students start on a wikipedia page for a particular topic and have to find their way to the wikipedia page of a different particular topic via the use of links embedded in the information only. The first exercise was to get from "chair" to "whiteboard", and it was quite amazing to see the different strategies and methods all the students used to get from "chair" to "whiteboard". The average amount of links was 7, and the record set at the school was 2!

However, with this particular class, they didn't seem too interested. Perhaps it was too hard for this particular group? Although the lessons with iPads were only with year 5 and 6 classes, and the other year 5 and 6 (plus one year 4 class in a 4/5 composite class) seemed to relatively enjoy it... One particular student did the ol' "type up 'whiteboard' in the search column of wikipedia", to which I told him (like I did to all the others who tried this in previous classes) that it did not follow the rules and so this cannot be allowed. To this, he was quite upset because he tried to reason with me that since both his way and the game's way essentially gets you to the 'end point' that this should be fine. He was questioning why does he have to do it in a certain way? At the time I was slightly taken aback and fired back with the usual "it's not the way you are supposed to do it, so you are wrong!" response. After seeing this result in the student become completely disengaged with the activity, I went home to try and reflect on this activity and perhaps its execution.

After re-watching the Extra Creditz episode, I have started to consider that the topic itself was not very exciting. I mean a CHAIR and a WHITEBOARD!? Like WOAH slow down dude...Also if I wanted the activity done in a particular way, I think next time I should explain WHY I would like it done this way. Thinking back of the first class I did this with, I told them that since the class will be ultimately creating their own wiki page on Antarctica, this game should get them more familiar with how a wiki page could look like and how it could work. Therefore that class was given a sense of purpose. Hmm, now thinking back to the last class, the purpose I may have implied to that class would have been, "it's a competition, so WIN!" Meaning, that could be why the less interested students just tried to complete it as quickly as they could. (This is also another topic I want to write about in a future post.)

Another thing I have noticed during these iPad sessions is the amount of students who are into Minecraft. I have been following Minecraft Teacher's blog and have been interested in this game as a learning tool, but I never really got around to checking the game out. It made me start looking at the various sites dedicated to the game, even downloaded a free version of the game on iPad (which I know is nothing like the actual version out now) and when I revisited the Minecraft Teacher 's site, I noticed a post called Structured vs Unstructured. I thought it was a very interesting read and it got me to reflect on what kind of learning environment I prefer. I can see the pros and cons of both, but I guess, the best way would be to combine the two, although to get that 'perfect balance' might be a bit difficult, and it would really differ from class to class... Hmm...

Just some final thoughts/observations/notes, I've noticed most of the students (and teachers), seem to want to use the iPad for its apps. I get requests for various apps that can help various things. Also the lack of flash makes teachers not warm to it because a lot of the websites they want to use with the class are flash based. (and the apps that enable you to view flash content, are not free...). Moreover, from just looking at the classes in general, most of the students just want to play games, or hop on YouTube so it would be great if I can find a way so that these children can play these games but make it a learning experience at the same time. I can think of a few ways this can be done (because ultimately we're always learning something, especially from our hobbies), but I just find it hard for them to do this within their class' curriculums.
Finally, I just wanted to point out this excellent site I stumbled across whilst doing some research in preparation of these iPad sessions. The most awesome thing is, that all this was done by a year 9 boy! I just love seeing stuff like this... moments of the students teaching the teachers! I am trying to keep an open mind in my own iPad sessions, and even discovered a few whiz kids in year 6! (Making them my tech support guys to help me fix any bunged up ones :))


FINAL NOTE (I promise!): I am half tempted to set up a private Minecraft server just for students, and not be involved at all, and anything can go. Will it end up like Lord of the Flies? Will people create chaos, just because they can? Will they try to create some sort of agreement amongst each other? Or will people just stop playing there because, well it's the internet and they don't have to deal with that crap. Funny, how I am just foreseeing chaos no matter what. I just can't see it being a place where nothing is stirred up lol.

Phwoar.. I just learnt Kung-Fu - Being plugged in

It has been a very long time since a proper post, but I have been busy trying to graduate, work and take care of the wifey. Now I will be busy working, taking care of wifey AND (drum roll) a new baby boy.
Yes that's right, this noobie just got himself a nublet.

I have been asked by a school I am working at, to help with using iPads in the classroom. Mainly this will be for stage 3 students (grades 5-6). So I went home and started looking up some useful apps and errm, uses, of the iPad in a classroom setting and of course whilst doing this, checking my emails, tweets, facebook, youtube and forums. In the background I had a playlist of podcats and songs chugging away as well. Suddenly, it dawned on me.
I am not getting ANYTHING done! (gasp/shock/really?!phwoar!!)

Well actually, I still was, but in my own multitasking ways. I had my Diigo bookmark bar saving every relevant page for me to check on my iPad in bed later. I made a playlist of the new videos from the channels I'm subscribed to in Youtube, also to view on my iPad in bed later. I had facebook Sims Social app open on my second monitor (because it is so depressingly slow, it is a good game to play whilst doing other things) whilst waiting for some of these iPad in classroom videos to load.

So I guess I lied. In the end, I did get a lot done, but the problem for me is, I'm not sure how much of this information will be digested by my memory. If I got rid of the so called 'distractions' and solely concentrated on one task, it may as well help with the amount of information retained afterwards, but is it more effective?

We have phones, tablets, computers and now even TVs that can display websites, videos, emails and more. Isn't it more effective then, to do it all at once, save/check for later, bookmark/tag for reference etc, all the while doing other menial digital tasks? I mean, sure, I won't retain or recall most of the information I find, but do I really need to memorise it all? I just need to pull out my phone, push the bookmark link, and voila! Instant information. (unless you have a bad mobile provider or terrible, terrible wifi)

This is of course all subjective and varies from person to person. But I was just thinking about it the other day, I wake up, wash, dress, eat and leave for work. During the drive to work I listen to various podcasts (usually on games that I currently play). I normally arrive early so I grab a coffee, and goto smh.com.au for morning news feeds. During breaks, I check facebook or twitter for any interesting posts and also address any important emails. After work, I listen to more podcasts on the way back, arrive at home, get changed, eat some food, depending on the day do some exercise, turn the computer on and prepare for any additional work. While doing this, as mentioned above, I will be multitasking with other 'leisurely tasks.' Normally when all this is done, I would play some games for an hour or two, go up to bed, flick the iPad on, and watch something before falling asleep.


-Some (kind of) random thoughts whilst I was thinking about this-

Come to think of it, I never watch TV anymore. Only reason I would turn the TV on, is to play the PS3...
or watch a blu ray.

But there are still times, where I feel like all this information is too much. Sometimes I step outside the house and leave the phone inside, so I can be 'unplugged' for five minutes or so.

I wonder how it is for students? Maybe they are more used to this because they grew up with it? Though at the same time, they go to school and in some cases, force fed even more information. And if this information feels irrelevant to them, their minds may put it at the back of the queue.

In most schools, there is no social bookmarking, there is no google or wikipedia. Mainly because these devices are prohibited. So the students who can absorb and recall the most info will be at an advantage.

I feel that we are at a stage it is not about what you know, but how you use that knowledge. Information is everywhere and most of it freely available. Information is no longer a skill, but a tool. The new age is about creation of content, rather than consumption of it.

Though not a direct connection, this video gives an example of just how YouTube is driving this innovation.

Sorry for the very scattered structure of this post. It is being written whilst (you guessed it) I am multitasking with other things! I've come to the conclusion that this is the only way I will be able to put any thoughts down in this blog because in the past I have always tried to 'make time' for it, but I never get around to it.

Will be experimenting with alternate ways to post in the future (try it via smartphone or tablet perhaps?) and see which way/s feels best to do so. I have been making notes in my phone for any ideas I have been getting for the blog since last year, so this page WILL be getting many more, frequent updates.

So to the few who do read it, what do you think about being plugged in? Do you feel it is too much? Do you think it is not enough? Let me know in the comments below.