Category Archive

Today I’ve arrived in Melbourne for the 2008 Interactive Whiteboard Conference at Firbank Grammar School in Brighton, Melbourne.  It was a fairly last-minute decision to come, along with two other colleagues from my school; a decision helped by the recent increase we now have planned to our IWB rollout for 2008.

For me, this is my 2nd IWB conference, the first being two years ago at Castle Hill when we knew little of the tool and were looking forward to installing our first one in the library.  I’ve now worked with an IWB for about a year.

The hope for myself then, is that I can take myself further and go away with ideas to use the IWB to encourage even deeper and more effective learning in my classroom, rather than get the starters (although that’s where my colleagues are at, and we’re taking some different workshops accordingly).

I also hope that this conference is also about more than just the board.  Castle Hill was great two years ago because it had a broad spectrum of content that looked at a range of applications of technology in the classroom.  It was in a workshop led by John Pearce at that conference that I signed up to Edublogs and started up what is now Learning Curve (it didn’t have such a catchy title then; which means you’re now thinking “good grief, what on earth was it?  Surely it couldn’t have been worse!”).  I was introduced to blogs, wikis and podcasts – things I have used since and seen the difference they’ve made in the classroom.

Finally, I hope I can continue to stregthen existing, and make some new connections out of this experience.  I’ve already met up with colleagues I was introduced to at Castle Hill, and hope to meet some more people sharing the same journey.  The networks are what really helps us as professionals in feeling supported, encouraged and motivated; not to mention broadening and extending our own learning.

The K12 Online Conference has started.  I downloaded the pre-conference keynote without any problems (maybe it was because us Australians have own daytime when many other participants are sleeping), and now, almost a week since said keynote was uploaded, am finally getting around to reflecting on it.

I’m pleased another Australian, Graham Wegner, alluded to the hype surrounding this keynote.  I was a little caught up in the hype myself.  Then I was a little scared that I might have been the only person watching it (during my holidays, even) thinking, “huh?  What’s the deal here?”  It’s not that David Warlick didn’t make some good points.  I did, however, have to watch it a second time and trudge through it, scrawling down notes as I went, in order to get the most out of it.

So what were key things that struck me that I had to write down?  Here are some:

• The borders that define education as we know it have turned soft… or they’ve turned transparent… or they’ve gone away altogether
• I was probably the last generation who could look at his father and see his future
• We are preparing our children for a future which we cannot clearly describe
• Our classrooms are flattening
• The best thing we can teach children today is how to teach themselves.

As I wrote these down, I really felt my own thoughts were being affirmed – especially about preparing children for unpredictable futures and teaching children how to teach themselves.  I’ve been engaging in discussions at our school for quite some time about teaching skills and that children need to know how to learn, because once they leave school, no one will do the learning for them.

Yet teaching children how to learn simply isn’t enough.  It has to be about teaching them how to learn within the world they live in.  It isn’t good enough (to borrow one image from Warlick) to show children how to gather the hard-copy data from the old encyclopedia.  Information today is far more overwhelming, multimodal, fluid and dynamic than the old set of books on the shelf.

This is where Warlick’s discussion around the digital native proves useful.  Don’t think for a second that the digital natives simply have new tools and, consequently, a new vocabulary that surrounds them.  These new tools have completely reshaped the world as we know it.  It is not a stable world.  The Viet Nam war was the first time many people have the theatre of war brought into their living rooms each night during the news.  Now the theatre of war appears on YouTube.  For Warlick, those who are the digital immigrants need to work on losing their accent.  I found a perfect example of the accent on a Facebook group for Australian Prime Ministerial candidate, Kevin Rudd:

Facebook is such a terrific vehicle for communicating with people and listening to what you have to say that I’ve decided to start a group to do just this. Please take this opportunity to contact my team and me by writing on this “wall.”  (emphasis added)

Take note, digital immigrants: the digital native would never have put the word wall in inverted commas; they are unnecessary for the digital native.  The wall is a common Facebook feature, and in facebook, everyone knows what you mean when you say wall.  We know that Kevin Rudd doesn’t want us to find a nice clean piece of masonry and graffiti it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not seeking to make a judgement on a politician one way or another, it was just a good example that I found on the net yesterday.  I don’t want to dampen his spirits, either – he’s making a good effort.  But we as teachers need to make an exceptional effort to ensure that our classrooms are the social, connected, networked places that the rest of the world is to these children.  I think David Warlick is right when he suggests that the future “haves” and “have nots” will be those who are connected and networked, and those who aren’t.

There’s more to this than comptuers and technical hardware.  There’s more to this than new classroom spaces.  What it requires is a complete reformation of the way we learn.  We truly and brutally need to ask and answer:

• Who is learning?

• What are they learning?

• When are they learning?

• Where are they learning?

• Why are they learning that?

• How are they learning?

Old strategy being used in answering a contemporary challenge.  If we’re serious about it as well, our answers will reach beyond the four walls of classroom and the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Tags: k12online07, k12online07pc

One of the discussion topics that often made its way around our group of Learning Technology Support Teachers/Coordinators was the matter of students being competent in technology skills and the skill level that was required of teachers to allow them to use technology in their classrooms.  A few years ago too we had the additional focus (which has disappeared now in primary schools) of the Computing Skills Assessment for Year 6 and its implications for classrooms.

While this conversation took place, the evolution of using technology for learning continued.  We’ve developed clearer understandings of why we use computer-based technologies in our classrooms in the first place, and the technology skills are increasingly becoming an intrinsic part of the bigger picture of learning.

So what skills do teachers still need to possess and develop?  Do they need to be competent in word processing, spreadsheets, Web 2.0, etc., or do we expect more?

The Department of Education in Victoria offers an epotential Continuum that allows teachers to assess their technology use for teaching and learning across several key areas, and offers ideas and resources for improvement.  Unfortunately most of it is locked away under passwords, but it still could be useful for identifying needs for professional learning.  I like how it provides a “bigger picture” approach rather than “pigeon-holing” skill development into types of software (e.g. database, email) or specific tools (e.g. digital cameras, data projectors).

Our school’s undergoing a process of revisiting how we learn in our different Key Learning Areas (Human Society and Its Environment is the first focus).  We engaged in the second of a series of very worthwhile staff meetings examining more closely the principles that underpin the HSIE curriculum, the mandatory content and skills outlined in the curriculum foundation statements and the information skills process.  Today we then progressed further to look more closely at how we plan for learning.  The conversation has been exciting and challening; and I’ve made one of my many contributions to the discussion through the medium of Technoblog.

So, after much discussion today, it’s become a lot clearer on what we’re going to expect on paper to guide teachers through the process of leading student learning through a unit of work, and I’ve sought tonight to “tidy up” and re-present the fruits of that conversation for further reflection and sharing.  Part of that involved revising the program unit template, which subsequently prompted me to produce a sample so people could get a sense of what it would look like in action…

… and boy, was I challenged.  In ten minutes, try to rewrite this term’s HSIE unit to incorporate cooperative learning strategies, higher order thinking skills, the information skills process, key assessment tasks and student work samples, and a balance between enough detail to guide teachers, while not so much as to restrict them in their teaching.  I now know why there’s money to be made in writing learning programs for a living and selling them to teachers.  If you can do all that, you’re doing well.  The worrying thing is that not all the “commercially available” programs do all that.  There is something to be said for putting in the effort and drawing on your professional learning community.

Today I started listening to a recording of the book From Good to Great by Jim Collins.

There was no particular reason to why I wanted to get my hands on this other than curiosity. I’d read several references to the book in material written by our executive director of schools, and just wanted to know what on earth all the talk about hedgehogs and buses was about and what on earth it had to do with the leadership of our system of schools. I suppose if I wanted to critique the ideas, I really could not do it without being properly informed; which meant learning more about Collins’ work.

So I got my hands on a copy of the recording from one of my favourite book stores (I could have bought the book, but I think I’ve got enough to read, what with trying to get through The World is Flat) and started to listen to it today in the car. Collins suggests that his book can be applied to any apsect of work or personal life.

If the beginnings of Collins’ work is anything to go by, he’s probably right. In the little I’ve listened to so far, I’ve been taken most by one of the earliest comments he made, namely:

Good is the greatest enemy of great

Suprisingly enough, I agreed with this statement from the get go. Not from my school experience, but from my experience elsewhere. The hardest thing is not to bring yourself/your classroom/your organisation up to a standard where you’re satisified, but to take it beyond that level. “Goodness” can be a comfort zone. Too many times people settle for good, and cannot see themselves out of it to move further forward to greatness.

Collins also goes on to talk about (something along the lines of – I’m sorry, I don’t remember verbatim) the need to relentlessly believe that you can succeed, while at the same time being able to honestly (and even brutally honestly) acknowledge what holds you back, what needs improvement.

It just seems to make sense.  Now I’ll have to listen to the rest of the CDs to see if I agree with the rest.

Imagine if we could empower every single student in our classrooms to relentlessly believe that they can succeed…  Now that really would be empowering…

Firstly, a request for leniancy: If this post starts sounding disjointed, it’s probably because I’m writing it in between parent-teacher interviews that I’m conducting tonight and tomorrow.

Parent-teacher interviews are often the signal that the end of Term 2 is here.  Normally, after committing yourself to so much time and energy writing reports, marking assessment tasks and preparing portfolios, not to mention about seven hours of parent-teacher interviews, the one thing you look forward to is a nice, relaxing break.

It seems, however, that those in the computer world (often already known for their warped sense of humour) think it would be a good time to hold a conference or two for those technology-interested and focussed teachers who want to learn more.  I’ve shared the school holiday offering I’ve been made aware of on technoblog.

So, what to go to… if anything?  Well, I have to say each of them grabbed my attention.  Two of them overlap, however, and I’m not sure about spending too much time in conferences and forums given I want to dedicate time to really planning Term 3 in my classroom.  So I’ll give the Catholic Education Commission’s Learning with Web 2.0 forum.

It will be interesting to see how I find it.  I have to say the workshop offerings suggest a target audience that’s a little less familiar with Web 2.0 than I am.  Not that I’m an expert, but I got a good introduction from a Teacher-Librarians Professional Development day last year hosted by the Parramatta Diocesan TL Network.  Judy O’Connell will be presenting (amongst others), but I think I’ll give her social bookmarking presentation a miss, given I’m already familiar with some of the tools; primarily from participating in a workshop by her on exactly the same topic at the same TL PD Day.

One thing I’m thinking of doing is producing a podcast afterwards to share some insights from the forum with staff via technoblog.  Perhaps I can take some portable recording equipment (there are several inexpensive mp3 players nowadays that include voice recorders) to capture live the thoughts of others.  Maybe I could even find a minute or two to interview some of the presenters from Parramatta who I know?