Thought provoking trip to the Dowse

So with my head full of ideas from research I had been skimming about at risk adolescents and literacy I took my ten year old and his twelve year old friend down to check out the Dowse this morning.

I want to digress here and comment on the value of quality early childhood education... Jon's centre was five minutes walk from the Dowse and it was quite common for a couple of the teachers to take the older children for an afternoon walk to check out what was on. While we re-enforced his interest by always letting him show us what he had liked when we went there for coffee, I do think the credit for his expectation that going to galleries and museums will be interesting (meaning he is a charming companion, appreciated by all his older relatives) goes to the learner centred approach of his ECE teachers - the old Jesuit saying ...give me a child before he is five rings true in this case. However I was particularly impressed by his enthusiasm today as it was the alternative to not being able to get a booking at Laserstrike!

Given it was his trip I stood back and just let them go for it. After enjoying watching them problem solve a number of exhibits in Believe it or not we headed into the graffiti exhibition. A couple of things about this exhibition struck me - I realised that as my older children value this as an expression of art I looked it at with slightly different eyes. I also wondered about what the impact of being valued by middle class socially and economically successful (in the traditional sense) young people meant to a culture of art that used to be decidedly fringe.

Then with the ideas of the 21st century learning being literate in visually rich environments ticking over in my head, some of the messages of the exhibition pieces stood out in stark relief - particularly messages about why would we want walls to be grey, why would we want things to look the same, and that by constantly blanking out graffiti art we were practicing inter-generational repression. There were some other political statements that had me standing there thinking "is that really how we (the parent generation) appear?" And in the meantime these two kids I was with just totally related to it as art they understood.

If you had asked me before I went in I would have probably said this kind of art was "other" the work of kids on the edge and at the limits of social acceptability. I've spent quite a bit of time with the marginalised in our education system and society and in this case my identification of other is recognising the cultural discomfort of another lens. I had to put some effort into my viewing. One example was when Jon asked me if I had seen the board with blood on it - no - well actually yes, I just hadn't recognised the clever depiction of concrete grazes on skin! And as another example of cultural dissonance - Jon asking "Can we buy one, Mum?" The skateboard decks weren't for sale but he negotiated hard to try and get a poster size graffiti screen print. In this case it wasn't what he wanted to buy what was actually pretty cool but the fact that it was for sale in the context of a major gallery.

A story has a beginning, a middle and an end - or does it?

I've commented before on the new literacy tasks our children need to get their heads around when engaging online. Well Saturday I was hit again with how their world is different from ours.
Jon is a very skilled cartoonist and writer and has also been exploring gaming animation. He had made a birthday card for one of his friends on Friday and the elf he had drawn on the front was the kind of good that makes a suspicious mother ask if it was traced. "No Mum - I sketched it!" You can imagine the offended tone!
Saturday morning I walked into his room while he was playing Dark Chronicles (I think) on the PS2. He was in the middle of a storyline and not happy to be interrupted. As I stopped to watch what was on the screen it hit me that the "warrior prince" interacting with his avatar was clearly the model for his birthday card drawing. Somehow that computed with some stories he has been writing recently which are like variations on a first chapter of a book. I thought he'd been just exploring options until it hit me on Saturday that in the quest games he plays there are multiple variations on the entry point and he was in fact creating a story for a gaming world, not a book world.
That is kind of a mind blowing thought really - when we as adults tend to think if stories as linear with a beginning, a middle and an end, what does that mean to how we support children's learning? What could it mean to the future of books and story as we know them. A friend and I were discussing it the next day and both believed that the magic of a good story/book will always be with us - but it made me wonder.

A fresh start...

I was contemplating a fresh start with a new blog and but then when I came back to this one I realised that my posts from two years ago are still relevant to the things I want to say. So I thought I'd just start with a new post and a new commitment to writing.

There are a couple of things on my mind today - both to do with history and change.

Last night I had organised a "farewell" for a site we were about to decommission. Several people have commented to me on how interesting the short presentation I gave on the site's history was.

Several years ago our Masters class in education research had the good fortune to have Dr Neil Dalgliesh do a workshop on historical research. It captured by imagination and one of my regrets is that I didn't get to do his full paper as he was on sabbatical the following year. The consequence of that is I have always reviewed files and records with some respect and quite enjoy tracking back the story of a project through it's file.

For a number of reasons I had access to some wonderful archival files about this site. By putting together the pieces and some use of the Wayback machine I was able to pay tribute to what had been one of the very first education websites in New Zealand. So early was the site that the first discussions weren't even considering the internet as an option. It beat our Ministry of Education site by almost two years.

In the rapidly changing world of IT we dont often look back and reflect on the journey we have travelled or just how rapid that journey has been. The "quaint" early comments and questions from the feedback surveys on the prototype site were only 13 years old! Several of us were looking through the files later and exclaiming over the amount of handwritten notes. The question in my mind is that as most of us in IT are constantly looking towards the "next best thing" we forget that in the future others may want to know how we achieved what we did. What is all in a day's work for us is contributing to rapid social change and yet so much of our electronic world is disposable.

I'll leave my second thought for next time...

Where technology meets history

Living and learning with digital natives
Today was ANZAC day in New Zealand and Australia, the time when we remember our war dead and those who have served in the armed forces.
One of my new interests is digital scrapbooking and due to a New Zealand designer developing a heritage ANZAC day kit, I went looking for information and images to put a page together about two of my great great uncles (Claude and Thomas) who died in France.
What started as a personal family history challenge rapidly became a shared experience. Jonathan is a fairly typical seven year old boy with an interest in soldiers and heroes and he was soon sitting beside me to look at pictures of the battlefields, the graves, the saved photos and clips.

We found a photo of one uncle (Claude) on the Cenotaph site and found the exact dates and where they both were killed. As we read the story of the Battle of Messines it was clear that Thomas was probably killed in the first wave of the German counter attack and that was why his grave is unknown. There was a moment of stillness on Jonathan's face as the information all processed together to form a whole that communicated more clearly than words what a deep learning moment he was having.

Once I finished collaging the pictures and stories for my purposes we did a print copy for Jonathan to take to school with some handwritten notes on the bottom of the pages (He had difficulty reading the ornate Vivaldi script I had used.) We went over the pictures so he was sure he knew everything that was important to share, then he looked at me and asked "why did they have to go and fight in the war Mummy?". What a good question ... a question that has so many layers of answers...but one of the reasons he asked it was that he now felt connected to these two young men. He understands what an uncle is, Claude's neice - my grandmother is still living and he still remembers going to see Thomas's nephew - my Grandad at the funeral home 3 years ago when he died. So he had made some connections about family, about death, about sadness. And for a little while today war was real - it was about us - not some distant fighting in Iraq or Afgahnistan, not high tech weapons that destroy at a distance, but a young man going "over the top" if he even got that far - having survived one day of fighting to loose his life the next.

Could he had that moment of insight without the half dozen websites and search engines we used? I dont think so ... I have heard the stories of Claude before and while they have been meaningful the research we did today was at a different level. We could find answers to questions as we asked them and although there is still some paper research I'd like to do it has been the internet's power to bring information to our fingertips that has triggered the journey.

There was nothing horrific in the images we saw from 1916 and 1917. Compared to the nightly news stories of shattered victims of suicide bombers it was pretty tame. Yet for a moment today I was led to reflect that World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars and 92 years later a child is still asking "why did they have to go to the war, Mummy". And one of our most modern pieces of technology helped a modern family make a different kind of connection and relationship - one with the past.

The opposite of Prensky

Marc Prensky talks about us as adults realising we are immigrants to the digital native's land and not trying to keep up with the technology. The kids are way ahead of us. Looking at these photos the obvious conclusion is that Jonathan (7) is showing his Grandad (70) something on the computer.

In fact what is actually happening is his Grandad is teaching Jonathan how to distort/edit pictures in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I dont think
my Dad will ever stop looking for something new to learn and at the moment he is doing a University of the Third Age online PS CS2 course through Cambridge University. This story started with him first working out which of the tools were available in Elements and then showing me how to improve some old photos I had scanned which where begining to discolour.

Next thing he distorts my mother's nose in one photo! Jonathan thought that was very funny and wanted to know how to do it. So they went to work on a photo of him. He actually got quite tense about the distortion of his face - on reflection we think it is because he is at that age where the line between pretend and real is still pretty thin. So the next step was to give him control of a photo with both him and other people in it. These two photos were taken at the point he had gained enough confidence he only needed some verbal prompts.

As the main teacher of software/hardware in our house just listening to the interchange between them was fascinating. The language Jonathan had to understand and the connections he had to make between fine motor control of the mouse and what was happening on the screen. I had never really thought before how disconnected the mouse is from the focus of your eye. I guess it is a little like touch typing where you are relying on a kinesthetic memory of the keyboard. But I cant imagine many people would consider teaching a 7 year old to touch type.

Anyway by the end of the session he had a new skill he is keen to keep on practising and I hope my Dad was reassured that his ability as a teacher was still strong.

I meant to comment in my last post that the wireless laptop has been quite transformative in our house in bringing computer stuff back into the traffic spots. We have had computers in "public spaces" but increasingly they have been in the quieter public spaces. My laptop tends to live on the breakfast bar or a coffee table and is quite common for all three children to come in and show me something they have just found on the web or negotiate to play a game on it. (Our other next best computer beats it on RAM and processor but not graphics card) 

Some pictures are worth 1000 words especially when you know the story behind them. Easter Saturday morning I got up about 7.30 and wandered through my silent house in search of my morning caffiene. I noticed as I went past that Jonathan was out of bed so expected to see lights and hear the television but no...
My quiet little mouse was exploiting the opportunity to play one of his games on my new laptop (more RAM better graphics faster processor than his hand me down desktop) He has actually sat up slightly for the photos compared to how he was when I walked in.
And what was he playing ... the second day of the school holidays and on my light speed machine? An old version of Reader Rabbit First Grade with a number of tasks related to classification, spelling, rhyming and maths. I actually sat down to watch him play for a while (once coffee was in hand of course) and discovered not for the first time that for him playing computer games is a lot like watching TV with a parent - the better for a shared conversation.

That relaxed time in the morning had several outcomes...

First later that day we had a bit of an ergonomics lesson at his desktop - making sure the seat was the right height in relation to the keyboard and that his feet had a footrest (the old bathroom turtle step is recycled)

Second I was inspired to think about what a game that reflected his own environment and culture would look like. New Zealand is a pretty small market but he was actaully struggling with the American word pronounciation at times in the spelling game (let alone learning American spelling :) ) and while sure there is some value in him being able to classify North American wildlife it would be nice if at seven he was thinking about New Zealand species.

And last but not least it was interesting that the game he chose to play was this one. He had a number of far more sophisticated games in the graphics and entertainment sense but this was the one he chose to spend his time with. 

Missing the obvious

Sometimes you get caught unwares...you assume so much about your child's competency that they take you by surprise with something they dont understand.

A few months back I noticed how Jonathan was having to learn a different structure when he typed in a web address from the writing he was doing at school. Its pretty tricky to be seven and learning that there are always gaps between words, a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a full stop at the end and then discover that a url has a totally different writing convention. Jonathan has his own google homepage with all his favorite sites bookmarked or showing as RSS feeds. He finds that a lot easier than a browser bookmark index. But yesterday he was trying to find a site and wrote its name with gaps between all the words and needed reminding that we have different rules for web addresses.

The question that caught me out though was him asking for help with a site joining form. He still has difficulty getting his email address right. When I went to look at the form it was for a site he already belongs to. We talked past each other for a little while with me trying to clarify why he needed to join a second time and him trying to explain that he needed to join on this computer. I realised that he didn't understand that his membership was held on the host site's server and all he needed to do was put in his user name and password and he would be recognised whichever computer he was on!

If you think about it ... that isn't the easiest thing in the world to understand. If he wants to play one of his own games he needs to have the CD and the basics installed on each computer and each computer will save only the games he has played on that unit (we have 6 computers in our house and he plays on four of them) But if he plays a game on the Net he can go back to it from any computer and start where he left off...but then that depends on the game and how the site manages its members.

It makes you think about multiple literacies and the different complexities of the world our children are growing up in. And it is a timely reminder that our children still need adults to interpret the world for them.