TIES Conference Breaks Another Record

The annual TIES Conference, held once again at the Minneapolis Hyatt in December, broke an attendance record for the 2^nd year in a row, with roughly 3,800 attendees!  Congratulations TIES on another fantastic conference!   ROI was there in the exhibit hall, promoting the ELM resources and reaching out to media specialists, librarians, and school technologists.  This year’s conference theme was “Fast Forward: Transforming Pedagogy with Technology.” I attended the Tuesday morning keynote, presented by Mimi (Mizuko) Ito, a Cultural Anthropologist with PhDs in both education and anthropology. Mimi’s presentation focused on “connected learning” and how young people can make the most of today’s abundance of information and social connections.  She shared a personal story to demonstrate the changing dynamics in learning.  Her son and his classmates created a petition for a Minecraft elective at their middle school and it got approved.  So now her son’s middle school offers a class on Minecraft (which Mimi stated is like “Legos in an electronic world.")  The agenda of connecting in school and out of school is not new.  Today’s technology makes project-based and inquiry-based learning more available. The connected learning model knows that young people are readers.  Young people read books and the volume of media engagement has changed.  On average, kids aged 8-18 clock 7.5 hours of media per day.  They connect for entertainment, education, and they connect socially.  Gaming is the entertainment medium of our time.  Virtually all teenagers are gamers and almost all teens have mobile phones.  The average number of texts per day for girls is 100 and for boys it is 50.  Mimi and colleagues performed a digital-youth study that involved hanging out and messing around with kids and technology.  The study included interviews, questionnaires, case studies, observation, and fieldwork. A newspaper headline detailing the first study results reads, “Chill out, parents: Time online teaches kids important skills, study finds.”  Friendship-driven learning and participation is apparently an important stage to learn lessons about getting along with peers.  So how can we really start to mine the learning that young people are engaged in already?  Mimi laid out three high-level design principles: 1) build connections to the wider world, 2) meet learners where they are in their passions and interests, and 3) build connected maker spaces.  For someone with a 7-year old who is very into games (Wii, iPad apps, iPhone apps, online games), I was somewhat reassured that he will turn out alright.  For me and my generation, these electronic resources are tools, but for the younger generation we must remember that they act as a baseline for everything else. I was able to squeeze in one more session while at the TIES Conference, and the session titled “How to Make (Re)search Meaningful” piqued my interest.  Presented by Jean Oswald, a Library Media Specialist with Mahtomedi Public Schools, this session offered many tools and resources for teaching better searching.  Jean stated that if we don’t teach, these students will Google it and miss out on many resources.  In order to make this effective, schools need everyone on board.  We tend to assume that students know how to search.  Teachers in the elementary grades need a shared vocabulary around the skills of searching and need to teach some basic search skills.  The Internet makes for self-sufficient searchers, not better searchers.  And due to technology, plagiarism has some far-reaching ramifications. Jean shared a 7-minute video that was very interesting.  The video, “Beware of Filter Bubbles,” was from a TED talk given by Eli Pariser. Each of us has our own unique filter bubble which is a unique collection of information.  Instead of human gatekeepers of information, we now have algorithmic gatekeepers.  The internet is not going to keep us all connected if they keep us in our bubble or “world of one.”  I recommend watching the video. Google has recently changed its algorithm for search.  Hummingbird is an algorithm that looks at chunks of information and how it relates to your interest.  So, you will get what Google thinks you want.  As an alternative, Jean suggested the following search engines…

• Oolone-  great for visual learners.  Takes you into visual pages rather than a list of links
• instaGrok – another visual search that bubbles things out into a web
• KidsClick! – created and cared for by librarians
• WolframAlpha– results are computated on curated research, not searching the web, science background
• DuckDuckGo – also an app, no advertising and protects privacy
• Sweet Search – curated by librarians