Is this a New Boundary????

I have just finished watching the Pre Conference Keynote of the K12Online Conference given by David Warlick. It’s called Inventing New Boundaries. It’s 10.18 am on a rainy, windy morning here in Auckland, my partner is asleep after finishing a night shift and I am sitting here in my pajamas, dressing gown and pink fluffy slippers with a cup of tea, listening to and learning from a man who lives on the other side of the world, where according to my ipod it’s 4:21pm yesterday afternoon…if this isn’t reinventing or re-establishing the boundaries of learning, then I may struggle to understand it.

David’s keynote addressed similar points as he did here in Rotorua in February, however after having been more “educated” on web2.0, the flat world and how to cross borders, I found it more beneficial. One point that comes across loud and clear is where and how we access information. He produces (after a great deal of searching) an encyclopaedia from 1961. That’s 18 years before I was born, before CD’s were invented, before programming video recorders became the bain of my mothers life, before IM, text messaging and the language that comes from these was invented. I recall an anecdote about how within a minute of Pluto being downgraded – wikipedia had been updated. How many text books, encyclopaedias in your school still have a entry about the solar system telling us, the reader, the consumer of the information that there is nine planets? And how many of the above have been updated, re-published with the correct number of planets??? Media, technology and how we access it, is changing.

I left university seven years ago with a BA in Film, TV and Media studies. I recently moved house and found all my old textbooks. I was about to donate them to a hall of residence but realized that when I was studying the media, it was print, radio or television. The idea that every one of us, regardless of age, race, sex, qualification could author and publish media for a global audience was not one that I entertained at the very least. Those boundaries of media have been pushed aside and now that 11 year old sitting in your class is just as likely to be a published film maker as Peter Jackson.

The traditional gatekeepers of content are on the verge of extinction. We as educators need to teach kids how to access the information and as David says “find, evaluate and organize” the information so that it is relevant to the context of our kids. We need to participate like our kids – being part of online communities that help each to achieve own personal goals (be warned: it can be very addictive!!), taking risks (use that inbuilt i-sight to create your own version of Madonna’s Vogue and put it online), start twittering, play a collaborative online game (personally I haven’t done this – but it’s on my short term goal list) – Become part of the world that they are living and learning in.

Information and how it is produced is constantly changing. We, like our students need to adapt to how we can access and use it. Teach them reading, writing and maths, but also evaluating skills, accessing skills, so that they become literate in their own learning environments.