So call me crazy, call me a plebe but I don’t get all the fuss that is being made about Second Life! Don’t get me wrong I can see how it can be used as a good way to meet online and run professional development, I can see how could be used in education for some powerful learning activities (MaggieMarat’s presentation at NECC about students and body image was a great example) but I am not sure that I get why you would want to do more than that? Why do you want to spend your real life living in an online, virtual world? It is hard enough as a Christian to be not of this world, but in it John 17:14-16 but then to be not of this world but be in it in a virtual world, it does my head in! Also wonder about why it is exciting to ‘do’ things in world when really you are just sitting at a computer operating a keyboard and mouse. I think it is more exciting to do real things, see people and talk to them in the real world. I know, I know that makes me not a real ICT purist and with that I am very happy. I do like to meet (or at least see) people that I have an online relationship with. I think it enriches the online relationship greatly. I also wonder about the loss on inhibitions that can happen in a virtual environment. I have seen students gain incredible amounts of confidence when online and for some it gives them a voice that was previously unheard which is great, however when people feel like they can throw away normal moral boundaries, be a bit flirty, be a bit of a bully or generally behave in manner that they would never do in real life what happens then? Is that OK? Are you still answerable for your actions in Second Life or is it amoral because you don’t know the real person? I think as tools such as Second Life are embraced in education serious discussion needs to take place about educating students about appropriate online behaviors and moral consequences.

Enough confused ramblings now onto the task of Learning Management Systems and a ICT resource wiki!

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.

After our ICT development network meeting today I realised just how much I have learnt about the world of ICT, PD, web 2.0 and ICT trends just by being a member of the study tour and checking out every-one’s blogs and following leads. i was having conversations with people about topics that a year ago I would’ve had very limited ideas about. I can only imagine what I am going to gain from two weeks of intense learning about ICT with some incredibly passionate Australian educators and tapping in to what the rest of the world has to offer. I think it will be some incredible hot housing going on on my part. I am looking forward to bring back all I have learnt and trying to implement some of it into my school.

I  think I have finished my conference program and have a good mix of serious sessions about PD and leadership with a couple of “fun” hands on sessions thrown in for good measure. I have also tried my best to spend some time in the expo and given the itinerary that was mailed out to us earlier this week I am very grateful for the Tourist Day in San Antonio as I think my brain will need some down time!

Well who’d of thought that such a simple program could be used for so many diverse topics and lessons? It was very interesting to look at Photo Story and see how it could be used for my Business Management class. I decided to use it to teach my class about Viral Marketing and get the class to create their own Viral Marketing campaign using Photo Story.  I hope when I get to that topic next semester that the kids will enjoy it.  It also has many other uses and I suspect students from about grade 4 up would love it.  I am going to use it to help kick start the prep class into IT by creating a video of the Preps and what the like best about school. I will get them to take photos of one another and create a voice over. We can then email it to their Mums and Dads. I hope this will be a good way to show staff that ICT can be used even in Prep.

I am finding it quite challenging at the moment to get the staff into ICT there is so much going on at school and it is the wrong end of the term. Iwould love to have more time to get with staff and really show them what can happen. I am trying to communicate with a fortnightly newsletter which has had some good response. Also I am trying to go to as many different sub school meetings as I can and talk about IT what the staff needs are. Which is starting to have some impact but not much.  Everything is being swolled up by the fact that we are as a school possibly being reviewed this year so some staff are writing curriculum and everything is being collated and gotten up to scratch. Oh well I guess ICT integration is a long term proposition.

I am sure I will get lots of ideas when I go to NECC later this month. I am really looking forward to it and am sure that will learn so much about ICT and have great ideas for Bayside.

Well thanks to the inspiration of some fellow travellers I am going to attempt to keep a blog of my travels on the ACCE study tour. I am really looking forward to the trip and all that I can learn and hopefully bring back to my school. I am really hoping to bring back some ideas on staff training in  ICT, strategic direction setting and a raft of new tools a goodies to inspire staff and provide resources for them to help change they way that they think and teach with ICT.  ICT is such a huge field and there is so much that can be done in and with it to inspire and engage our students. I would also like to explore ways to be innovative and to shift educational paradigms of how ICT should be done. Phew I am exhausted already. Hopefully I will also get a little bit of sightseeing done! I also hope this will be a great way to keep a record of the trip and especially the conference as I am sure that I will be brain dead by the end of it. So many sessions to choose from and go to, 17,000 plus educators, San Antonio to see, people to meet. So please enjoy the journey!