Journeys in Education
Ramblings on ICT, Education, Web 2.0, Christianity and Staff PD
-
Subscribe to my blog!
Well the Study Tour is done and dusted so where to from here? On the tour I found there were three main themes that stood out for me as important to my school. They are 21st Century Skills, Collaboration and Technology as an environment.
21st Century Skills
- Critical Thinking
- Creativity and Innovation
- Collaboration, Teamwork and Leadership
- Cross- Cultural Understanding
- Communication and media literacy
- Computing and ICT literacy
- Career and Learning self reliance
Bernie Trilling at Oracle spoke of these skills and te need for the education system to change as industry and they way people work has dramatically changed. Currently we are working in a system that has not changed since the 1940’s and was an excellent system for preparing students for the world of work and how it was carried out back then. Now work is all team based, project based, global and collaborative students need a different skill set. Major companies are not employing staff because of the knowledge that they have but because of the skill set that they hold.
What are the ramifications for education? The role of the teacher needs to change. We don’t have all of the information. We need to be changing the way that we teach and what we focus on in the curriculum. Literacy and numeracy are still incredibly important and must be taught. However perhaps we need a more student directed style in the other areas.
Collaboration and Project Based Learning
Jim Carleton and Mali Bickley spoke passionately about collaboration and project based learning how it revitalized their teaching careers and their students learning. The use the iearn network to run their collaborations. All through the tour we saw many examples of global collaborations and project based learning. Bernie Trilling from Oracle spoke of the absolute necessity of student to be able to work in this format as that is the main way that industry works in the 21st century. Ian Jukes in his session at NECC encouraged us that schools should be using mainly project based learning. Another speaker suggested that every year level from Prep to 12 should have some element of project based learning. It is a huge departure from the traditional classroom setting where the teacher is the source of all knowledge and puts learning firmly in the hands of the student.
Invisible Technology
In the schools that we visited and everywhere that we went we were strongly encouraged to make technology ‘invisible’ in the classroom just part of the learning environment, as much a part of the classroom as pens, pencils and books. The should be used not for the sake of using technology but as means to communicate and collaborate. We need to not be saying how can we use technology but how can technology help us learn and help us improve our pedagogy. I think from this tour that this can only be achieved by having computers in the classroom where the students are at not stuck away in labs where technology can be easily ignored and not built in as a normal part of the schools environment.
There were many other interesting areas on the study tour such as the value of Mac’s over PC’s, interesting web 2.0 apps that can be used, importance of pedagogy, PD models, Twitter, the connectedness of students, the different ways students learn now compared to 20 years ago, the emergence of digital students rather than digital natives, importance of networking, the value of Twitter, the value of Second Life, the potential for google apps and so much more.
I feel incredibly blessed that i got to go on this tour and hope that I can actually affect some change at my school as a result of this.
Well the last days of the study were an absolute whirlwind. We boarded a very small plane (compared to all the other we have flown on) to fly into LA. It was a very smooth flight and there was some interesting things to look at as we flew over the US. Once we landed in LA (what a huge, busy airport!!) we jumped on a spunky coach to have a cooks tour of LA. On the tour we went to Venice beach, Hollywood and down town LA. It was an incredibly interesting city with some beautiful areas and some areas that you wouldn’t want to walk around at night. I saw the famous Hollywood sign and found Judy Garland signature in front of Grumans Chinese Theatre. It was then back to LA airport, via Jack in a box for dinner ( I am convinced that there is no healthy food options in the US) for the 12 hour flight back to Auckland. I was so incredibly tired that pretty much fell asleep even before the plane took off (active noise canceling headphones are a godsend) and slept for about 9 hours!! All the people on the Melbourne flight waved a fond farewell to the Sydney, QLD and NT people and then it was then onto the flight from Auckland back to Melbourne which did not go anywhere near fast enough as by that stage I was desperate to get home to my boys! I got a great welcome at the airport from the boys and I am very glad to be home after this amazing experience.
Q: How do you provide the time, training, and resources to keep up with today’s education revolution. A: Multiple opportunities, multiple modes of engagement tailored goals, vision looking ahead. Key has been every teacher having a laptop. Virginia has a teacher blogging initiative with each teacher having a blog. They have just intro’d a Ning for collaboration.
What kinds of training do they provide? Classes, Power blogging courses, ethics and cyberspace (every teacher needs to go through this course), Moodle, Google Earth, Using Inspire data, Podcasting, Inspiration and kidspiration. Details of classes here…
What are the goals? Awaremness of new tools and opportunities, Increse comfort levels and familiarity with technology, provide rationale for change towrds developing 21st century skills, change classroom practises, enhanced with best-in-class technologies.
Time is one of the biggest challenges. “money does not change education, time does. Teacher new to the system start one week earlier than the normal start to undergo ICT training. Lots of PD done through Instant Messengering. Weekly email newsletter, Technology Times blog and a podcast are the ways that they communicate to their staff. 1:1 help with teachers for iinstruction purposes not for fixing computers, after school classes from 4-6pm. Every year he meets with all of his teachers to set two technology goals for the year and to set their after school class. Summer term institue which take 2-4 days over 12 hours, mini conference days. promethean user group meetings, online moodle courses.
Top 10 Tips
1. Provide access, ensure the experience can be implemented right away
2. Provide a context and a theme
3. Provide opportunities for anytime anywhere
4. Model Innovation
5. Foster Collaboration
6. Maintain a conversation
7. Make teacher accountable
8. Provide Incentives
9. Use a Gestalt approach approaching technology as a system
10. Look at the results
Great work!!
In the newsletter actually did lessons, showed cool things, interviews etc.
Tech Times blog here..
PowerPoint of presentation necc2008_handout
Predators and Cyberbullies: A reality check
Safety Issues: protecting students from predators, protecting students from each other, protect them from themselves. Easier to protect students in web1.0. How do we protect our students from online predators? Your chances are higher of being harassed by an 8th grade girl rather than an adult male.
If you don’t tell your children that you love then somebody online will. It is the students who are at risk who are more likely to have trouble on the Internet. www.cyberbully.org
Cyberbuyllying shouldn’t be treated too differently from how we treat normal bullying. Mankato district Cyberbullying guide.
One of the first things that we should ask teachers is what is on their myspace so if/when parents google them what would show up??
Students need to know the potential ramifications of what is on the Internet www.archive.org can use the wayback machine to get a snapshot of the Internet so things are never really removed from the Internet.
The dangers are probably mostly from the students themselves. Myspace unravelled A parents guide to Teen social networking
The danger of web2.0 is not from others online but from what they put out online.
We confuse content with format. We don’t ban magazines because of the inappropriate ones neither should we ban the web 2.0 tools.
Filers are not effective in protecting students. Can get up to 91% accuracy. Need other controls. Most students not getting i9nto trouble at school they are getting into trouble at home. Students can now bring in their own mobile devices with the Internet which we can’t control or block.
Schools need to be proactive they need to be educating students AND parents. Mankato has a resource page for parents on their website. Screen products carefully and keep away from fear based products as research has shown that they don’t work.
Schools should allow kids to make mistakes from which they can recover. We must show that we are practicing due diligence
Think b4ulink
3p’s protect your privcy, property, appropriatatly
Create low temptation environments eg layout of computer rooms, your activity maybe remotely monitored, filtering software.
Education can be enhanced with the internet.
Need to make educators responsible for blocking an unblocking the sites not the tech staff.
Great session valuable resources!!
Had a fabulous night last night at the Mexican market. It was a very colourful interesting place with an incredible amount of shops that have pretty much exactly the same content…cheap Mexican souvenirs. However it was very interesting as the cheap Mexican souvenirs were pretty cool!! We had a great dinner at a (surprise, surprise) Mexican restaurant with fabulously gaudy decor and a very impressive mural. We had a guitar trio come and play and sing for the group it was fun!
I have really been enjoying all the restaurants here and the atmosphere of the river-walk. It is very vibrant and dynamic, the people are friendly and the service is very good. Although some variety from tex-mex would be lovely!!
The drinks have been excellent especially the Fiery Red Leather a new drink invented by a good friend of mine.
Well today is the last day at NECC. This morning I have attended a special session with Mali Bickley and Jim Carleton the Canadian keynote speakers which was arranged just for the members of the ACCE study Tour. It was interesting to hear a bit more detail that they have given and they are really doing cool thing educationally. They have found with ICT integration it is a case of Ready, Fire Aim. In other words don’t wait until the circumstances are right and you have all the knowledge just jump in an have a go with what you have got! They gave us lots of info on global collaboration and how to do it rom really easy to really complcated and the benefits to the children of globally collaborating.
The next session I attended was a really productive session hosted by Chris Shamburg he used Audacity to show us how easy it is to create an audio story and give appropriate legal recognition. He sourced his files that are allowed be used from cdmixter. He hosts the podacasts on blip.tv. It was a very useful session.
Science Leadership Academy, small public high school in Philadelphia, 1:1 laptop school. We work best/learn best when it matters to us. Kids may not know what matters to them yet. There are some tenents of what school 2.0 should be: caring institutions, grammars matters, we teach kids not subjects, student centred (it’s not about us), Inquiry driven: what are the questions we can ask together? They need to be authentic questions, passionate and it has to matter, Metacognative -we need to think about thinking, technology infused – ubiquitous, necessary and invisible, understanding driven and Project based.
What is the road map and how do we get there – pedagodgy is everything, progressive teaching using 21st century tools, (Read John Dewy) technology Overload and how to prevent it,what’s good is better tan what’s new!!! The best tool is the one we all agree to use together! Technology needs to do 5 things in the classroom research, collaborate, create, network and present. Tools don’t teach but the do change the way that we teach. Can technology be the tail that waves the pedagodical dog? What are you goals what tools get you there? Teachers don’t ask I wnat to do a blog project? – The need to ask what they want to do and and what tools shoulds should I use.
Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe influenced strongly the schools curriculum design. Every teacher uses UBD, the teachers use project based learning as the ultimate form of assessment. Transperant learning!!
Focus on reading, maths and science. Two year sustained model to equip teachers to integrate ICT across the classroom with increasing apptitude. TRC Kansas Technology Rich Classrooms.
Great video e.g. of what a mentor should do. US National ANthem
Links
What an inspirational session with these two Canadian educators who have taken the risk to step out int iCT when they didn’t have the skills to help reinvigorate their teaching and help to engage students learning. They began to make a class website with the help of a friend. They then decided to adopt project based learning using iearn. The focussed on children in Sierra Leone and collaborating with them and getting understanding of child soldiers, they have also been focussing on an environmental project to help reduce our carbon footprint. This was great to see, especially as they were IT gurus to start off with they were just ordinary teachers learning along the way and doing extraordinary thing. They also weren’t a huge technology school, but what they had they used well. The MyHero project was very interesting. These projects were global, collaborative, social, child driven, trying to make a difference and using technology as an environment for learning.
UNESCO ICT Competency Framework
UNESCO have put together as framework for identifying skills for teachers in ICT from a global perspective. It gives a good guideline for where we as teachers need to be heading with our PD and skill level for 21st century learning skills. ISTE has their own NET.T standards but they have much overlap but UNESCO have more global perspective.
