Filling the Production Gap

PBS FRONTLINE's digital_nation is full of great clips and sound bytes. Addressed in that film by many of people interviewed as what Arne Duncan refers to as the "Opportunity Gap." This opportunity gap sounds very similar to what many of us are calling the "Production Gap." I have taken the important clips related to that topic from that documentary, added clips from a keynote speech by Alan November, interviews with Seymore Papert, and clips from old public domain ephemeral films from the Internet Archive. Combined, I feel it both explains and makes the case very well for addressing the production gap as a social justice issue.

Filling the Production Gap from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

View this clip on Blip.tv
View the abridged version on YouTube


While school filtration policies play an important role in sustaining the production gap because they limit our ability to engage students in tools and with information as content producers they are not the only issue. What is more important are practices of pedagogy and I think the video makes this clear. So, how do we fill the production gap? Here are four simple prescriptive steps:

1. Open access to read/write web resources (stop blocking blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking, and vodcasting sites like YouTube)
2. Create a learner-centered learning environment (tailor learning experiences to individual student interests, needs, and abilities)
3. Engage all students as content producers.
4. Provide all students with a thorough and honest digital literacy education so they understand the levity of what they post online and are able to manipulate the web to meet their academic and entrepreneurial needs.

What are your thoughts? Is the problem laid out here valid? What are the consequences of not addressing the production gap, especially for economically disadvantaged students? Would you change or add any steps to this list? Let me know.

Highlights and reflections from FRONTLINE's Digital Nation

This is by far my favorite clip from PBS's FRONTLINE Digital Nation:



I completely agree with Henry Jenkins on this point. The best way to deal with the "dangers" of the internet is by talking with students honestly, not by putting computers in classrooms, wiring them, then disabling their use.

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This clip makes me respect our Secretary of Education a little bit more:



It is refreshing to hear this message come from the top.

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Of all the clips in this program, this one probably bothers me the most.



I wonder if assistant principal Dan Ackerman realizes how creepy he looks spying on kids through their laptop webcams or how their acceptable use policy still reinforces the production gap in their school even though they have made tremendous gains using technology to help students learn.

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Another great clip by Arne Duncan:



He says opportunity gap, I say production gap. Either way, I agree, "Schools need to be places of opportunity."

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Regarless of how I feel about Prensky's notion of Digital Native/Immigrant I really like what he says about the type of learning activities students want and need to be engage in in this clip:



The second half of this clip where he says, "Schools are no longer the centers of education," is especially of interest and worthy of global conversation.

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This teacher describes a fantastic application of social networking in the classroom:

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In this clip James Paul Gee delivers what is probably the best explanation of school internet filtration policies and the fears people have that drive them that I have ever heard:

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Finally, Henry Jenkins on learning strategies needed in the age of information overload:

Social Media & the Production Gap

This is for a short 10 min presentation I will be giving tomorrow on the power of networks, web 2.0, social media, and the "production gap."

Weekly Tech Tip: Digital Media, Social Tools, and Ethics

Weekly Tech Tip:

• Digital Youth Research: Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media
• Student Free Speech: When Teachers are the Targets by Aimée M. Bissonette, J.D.
• New Report Says Adults Need to Get Involved in Teens’ Online Activities - Harvard University
• Technology Educators Decry New Digital Divide By Andrew Trotter
• The Digital Production Gap: The Digital Divide and Web 2.0 Collide by Jennifer A Schradic, University of California Berkley
  

Blog Carnival:

• Technology Transformation: The Death Valley Bloomby Pete Reilly on Ed Tech Journeys
• You Are What you Search Part 1 by Rodd Lucier on The Clever Sheep blog
• Should I be Thinking About Moving to a One to One Model? by Pete Reilly on Ed Tech Journeys
• Two Road Blocks to Transformation We Have Yet to Address by Pete Reilly on Ed Tech Journeys
• Does your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape? by Scott McLeod on Dangerously Irrelevant
• 1:1 A Wise Choice? by Julie Lachance on The eJulez Perspective
• Researchers Say the Social Web Improves Kids' Literacy (Geeks Say 'Duh') from ReadWriteWeb
• I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…) by Will Richardson from Weblogg-ed
  

Link Stew

• Study: Children Who Blog Or Use Facebook Have Higher Literacy Levels
• Willingham: Six practical reasons arts education is more than a luxury on The Washington Post
  
• Official Google Mobile Blog: Mobile Search for a New Era: Voice, Location and Sight
• Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.
• Mentionmap - A Twitter Visualization - See how Twitter users are connected
• .: Sumo Paint 2.0 :. - Another browser-based image editor that looks and feels like Photoshop
• Memoov - Animation Studio online
• New Choice Health - compare prices on medical procedures at different hospitals
• REDFLY - by Celio Corp - Device you plug a Blackberry into to turn it into a laptop. Gives your phone a full-size screen and keyboard.
• Doing What Works - Research-Based online teaching strategies
• Edudcation Week - Four Flawed Assumptions of School Reform
• Good Video Games and Good Learning by James Paul Gee
• Scott Kim takes apart the art of puzzles - TED Talk
• Shuffle Brain | Smart games for a connected world
• ProProfs - Create your own Puzzle Games

Social Networking: An Evolution in Communication Media

Wow! It has been a whole month since my last post. I hope I still have subscribers. Well, I have been busy. I have the first draft done of Wasioja Valley School's charter school planning grant application done. Now, we sit and wait for the other interested parties to add their feedback. In the meantime I am excited about some other upcoming events I have been getting ready for including teaching summer school for National Connections Academy, the NEMEN Institute in June, and various presentations/workshops at TIES.

The following is a video I just put the finishing touches on that I plan to use in a presentation to a group at TIES on May 19th on Social Networking. Basically, what I hope this video does is help us to take the long view for a moment and examine social networking from a different perspective. I feel we are too close to these trees to see the forest and an examination of social media/networking from a larger historical perspective could help inform our decisions about how schools address these new developments. I contend that the development of social networking on the internet is the present stage in an evolutionary process of human communication and that soon it will be thought of as an integral part of the internet. This film is a call for schools to encourage teachers to use these tools with students. We would not teach a student how to read and not allow them to write, why would we teach them how to use the internet without teaching them how to participate.

Social Networking: An Evolution in Communication Media from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

Click here for Youtube version.
Click here for Blip.tv version.