This document discusses the potential for networked learning with students. It argues that schools should foster student voices, connect formal and informal learning, build learning communities through networks, and promote democratic conversations. Examples are provided of primary, secondary and third-level initiatives that exemplify these ideas, such as a primary school blog, a secondary school media blog and hashtag, and a third-level online learning community. The document advocates for transforming education to better bridge school and life through more open, networked and collaborative approaches.

1. Open to possibility:
Networked learning with our students
Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 cogdog
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
#TACCLE2 Conference
17th October 2014

2. @catherinecronin
#taccle2
slideshare.net/cicronin

3. Schools are places where people
learn to ‘do democracy’.
Keri Facer (2011)

4. “I don’t think
education is about
centralized instruction
anymore; rather, it is
the process [of]
establishing oneself
as a node in a broad
network of distributed
creativity.”
– Joi Ito @joi
Slide: CC-BY-SA catherinecronin Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 yobink

5. voice dissonance networks
democratic conversations

6. voice dissonance networks
democratic conversations

7. The voices of children have been
missing from the whole discussion.
Jonathan Kozol (1992)
Savage Inequalities
Image CC BY-SA 2.0 maureen_sill

8. Image CC BY-SA 2.0 marfis75
sound
presence
participation
power
agency

9. Youth Media Team @YMTfm

10. The ways in which new technologies are used
in school to silence or empower, to control or
to engage, has the potential to… shape student
expectations about how democratic practice
and civic engagement should play out in the
socio-technical spaces of the 21st century.
Keri Facer (2011)
Learning Futures
“

11. voice dissonance networks
democratic conversations

12. Networked Individualism
Social
Networks
Internet
Mobile

13. 2005 2013
Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 2005-2013

14. Image: CC BY 2.0 davitydave

15. There is a divide between formal and
informal learning.
Students navigate the dissonance
between these – with or without our
support.

16. Seamus Heaney Lightenings viii - video by Eoghan Kidney
vimeo.com/4831035

17. voice dissonance networks
democratic conversations

18. Networked Teacher
Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros

19. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students

20. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students
Physical
Spaces
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces

21. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students
Physical
Spaces
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces

22. We proposed the idea of a Third Space where
teacher and student scripts – the formal and
informal, the official and unofficial spaces of
the learning environment – intersect, creating
the potential for authentic interaction and a shift
in the social organization of learning and what
counts as knowledge.
Kris Gutiérrez (2008)
University of Colorado, Boulder
“

23. People live their lives and learn across multiple
settings, and this holds true not only across the
span of our lives but also across and within the
institutions and communities they inhabit...
I take an approach that urges me to consider the
significant overlap across these boundaries as
people, tools, and practices travel through
different and even contradictory contexts and
activities .
Gutiérrez (2008)
“

24. Image: CC BY 2.0 dlofink

25. Open practices give us and our
students opportunities to cross
boundaries of geography, culture,
institution, term, education sector,
community, and/or power level…

26. Individuals, students and educators,
can be nodes in a network.
Groups and learning communities
also can be nodes, e.g. via #hashtags.

27. voice dissonance networks
democratic conversations

28. #edchatIE
#TACCLE2
Images: CC BY Pam Moran; Irish Typepad; cicronin

29. PRIMARY
@msokeeffesclass
SECONDARY
#CCCmedia
THIRD LEVEL
@CT231 #ct231 #icollab
Images: CC BY Pam Moran; Irish Typepad; cicronin

30. Third level: #ct231 @CT231
ct231.wordpress.com

31. Third level: #ct231 @CT231

32. Third level: #ct231 @CT231
http://www.scoop.it/t/ct23
1-student-showcase

33. Third level: #ct231 @CT231

36. #icollab TAGSExplorer
thanks to @mhawksey

37. #studentvoice
Openness...
“
I learned a lot more about writing to the public. Before
this I would have been less likely to express my views to
a group of people online whereas now I would not have a
problem in doing so.
By posting publicly it opened up our world to other
academics or people who are just interested in the
topic... I don’t think anyone would have thought that the
author of one of the works we were researching
would get involved.
“

38. #studentvoice
Social networks...
“
“
Before studying it, I used Facebook and Twitter mainly
just for keeping in contact with people, but since have
discovered they both have much more to offer.
They are places to discover new information and boost
your knowledge. That both education and socialising
can be rolled into one.

39. PRIMARY
@msokeeffesclass
SECONDARY
#CCCmedia
THIRD LEVEL
@CT231 #ct231
Images: CC BY Pam Moran; Irish Typepad; cicronin

40. Secondary school: #CCCMedia @jamesmichie
www.chalfontmediablog.blogspot.co.uk

41. Secondary school: #CCCMedia @jamesmichie

42. Secondary school: #CCCMedia @jamesmichie
www.chalfontmediablog.blogspot.co.uk

43. Secondary school: #CCCMedia @jamesmichie
http://storify.com/jamesmichie/friendship-the-digital-self-and-instant-gratificat/
elements/50a6426e0e4c64ad6b1da246

44. PRIMARY
@msokeeffesclass
SECONDARY
#CCCmedia
THIRD LEVEL
@CT231 #ct231
Images: CC BY Pam Moran; Irish Typepad; cicronin

45. Primary school: @msokeefesclass

46. Primary school: @msokeefesclass
kidblog.org/msokeeffesclass/

47. HE – primary school collaboration
@msokeeffesclass
https://storify.com/catherinecronin/msoke
effesclass-visit-to-nuig

48. Primary school: @msokeefesclass

49. “I learned how to learn.”
- student (age 11)
http://storify.com/catherinecronin/msokeeffesclass-visit-to-nuig

50. Youth Media Team @ymtFM
Photo by ictedulit All Rights Reserved, used with permission.

52. Coder Dojo @coderdojo

53. 4
contributions
to the dialogue

54. #1Foster student voices
http://ictedublog.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/youth-media-team-at-feilte/

55. Image CC BY 2.0 vramek
#2 Connect formal & informal.

56. #3 Network as learning communities.
Slide: CC-BY-SA catherinecronin Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 yobink

57. #4 Build democratic conversations.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Drriss & Marrionn

58. CC BY-NC 2.0 Idrose

59. Transforming education in such a way is a scary
proposition. It won’t be quick, it won’t be easy, and it
may not be immediately successful. However, the
current model is even more frightening than this kind
of change. We can’t continue to let the gap between
school and life grow ever wider and crush students’
desire to learn. I hope that you join me in this fight for
fundamental redesign of school.
Nicholas J.
2nd year secondary student

60. “We have to build our half of the bridge…” Colum McCann
Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Tim Haynes

61. Thank you!
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
about.me/catherinecronin
slideshare.net/cicronin
Image: CC BY 2.0 visualpanic