Andrew Greenlees has a wonderful blog post on this free Web 2.0 product. Go there now:
Andrew has some great posts on all things IT! He is the teko guru here at TIGS and we would be lost without him!
Monica Watt has asked me to consider what an ideal or ‘dream’ library might look like in the 21st century. Well, I’m not a librarian, however after attending the Learning Technologies 2008 Conference two weeks ago, I have some ideas about what type of 21st century learning environments will create the setting for meaningful student engagement with any kind of learning process.
However, before we can answer Monica’s question, we need to ask more questions:
A library today is quite different to what it might have been several years ago, as users needs have changed significantly.
If we dont know the answer to this question, then a library runs the risk of being unnecessary, redundant.
Essentially, a library should help facilitate information access and processing. Yet today, most information is accessed online using computer technology rather than via print, and the ways in which this information is accessed and shared is changing minute by minute! So, libraries need to be adaptable and flexible to remain or become relevant to existing and emerging users. I think a library needs to focus more on teaching users how to process information, and this means providing the skills needed to process information in a predominately Web 2.0 online environment. This may be require a paradigm shift for librarians as the focus moves from information itself, to information pedagogy.
The 21st century library should foster 21st century approaches to learning.
explains that networks and connectivity lie at the heart of all learning today. Watch this YouTube video :
to understand what learners today face in terms of information overload. Are we teaching students the life skills they need to be capable of filtering and processing all this information? How can we help them safely and purposefully negotiate the complex information networks and communities they encounter online? How can a library help them do this?
In their own time, our students use ICT to search, access and share information, predominately for the purpose of online social networking. This has accelerated to the point where it is almost out-of-control. Perhaps a dream library is a network of information that enables students to learn how to search for, access, share and use information wisely, ethically, intellectually, skilfully, and most importantly, in meaningful ways.
circles the same issue I am raising (also published in CSLA Newsletter). He asks:
“What is the ideal school library? How do we create a space that allows students to be constructive with the information and ideas stored there? How can creativity be archived for others to build upon? We need to go well beyond Dewey to access the answers.”
Bogardus, an American school librarian, reflects on how Gen Y students access and share information online, in much the same way as a gopher builds mounds: erratically and haphazardly, with play being the central focus. He refers to their use of MySpace.com to illustrate this point:
“I wonder if our students’ hunger for content and self-expression often lead them to adopt my gophers’ model. Students will invest days on their MySpace page if they feel it will have an impact on their dating life, but often overlook the connection between the pursuit of knowledge and the eventual lasting contributions they will be able to make to their future family and community. As librarians, we can help build bridges between the tunneling for information and personal success. Our best work may be realized when we work one-on-one with a student and connect the classroom content to this student’s own goals and aspirations”.
It seems easier to know what a dream library needs to do in the 21st century:
It needs to equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to process information using the technologies they need and wish to use in their daily lives. The role of the library needs to be active, rather than passive - it needs to direct students to make good choices in the consumption and distribution of information. It needs to help students filter and process, to link authentic learning experiences with the technologies they play with and need for their life ahead of them.
Tony Wagner in his article The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–And What We Can Do About It
lists 7 essential skills for 21st century survival:
1. Critical thinking & problem solving
2. Collaboration and leadership
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepeneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analysing information (I would like to edit this for our purposes: access, analyse, filter and process information)
7. Curiosity and imagination
A dream library should develop and implement pedagogies that help our students achieve these life skills. A dream school library in the 21st century needs to be more than what we have come to expect from a traditional library. It needs to be like a 21st century classroom: a dream classroom, that focuses less on delivering content and more on helping our students learn how to effectively learn with, and manage, information and technology.
Wow! thats a tough one! That requires a few questions to be answered first. And then perhaps another post!
Learning Technologies Conference 2008
Friday 7th November
Jo is actually, or rather virtually, ‘JoKay’ - a character in the online community ‘Second Life’. Created back in the 90s, her character is now infamous in the online community and she has a huge following of Second Life ‘gamers’. I wonder if you can call it a game however, as Second Life is a virtual life that anyone can live through a constructed ‘avatar’ - an online identity chosen or created to suit just who it is you choose to be!
JoKay is one of Second life’s most successful citizens - a virtual entrepeneur! She has created her own nation/realm called ‘JoKaydia’, merchandises her own range of products, and is a real estate landlord! She runs educational conferences, organises hot air ballooning events and much more than you can imagine, for an online community of people.
Perhaps these skills are the result of risks that can be taken in a virtual life. Maybe this is the value of such communities? After all if you fail, what can be lost? Well, real dollars at the very least, even if your ‘real’ identity remains intact! Yes, Second Life has an economy based on real US dollars! Not even virtual is free!
In terms of the value of Second Life for educators, JoKay tells us that:
- The whole architecture of JoKaydia is designed with network learning in mind
- The fun and play in Second Life connects and engages learners
- Learners have to engage to participate
- Learners can engage in action learning tasks and can collaborate to achieve tasks
- There are educational spaces in JoKaydia where people can meet, collaborate and hold events. Jo has held several such events
- People organise community events where people can engage in a shared experience as well as fly all over
JoKay is as real in the virtual world, as she is in real life!
She owns several islands in JoKaydia and rents them out to virtual tenants. They pay her in real US dollars each month! She also owns a merchandise store where citizens of Second Life can buy products such as T-Shirts etc!!
Jo and JoKay merge in mixed reality events where the community gathers for realtime live events, and they stream the audio and some vision of the event into Second Life to share with people from across the world.
Jo also uses Flickr, Twitter and Facebook to provide an online presence for her character, as well as the 3D presence. She has a huge following who twitter to her incessantly
This looks fun but scary at the same time - I wonder… how does an avatar transform your sense of ’self’ when you find yourself in a virtual body, moving through a virtual world, talking to virtual friends (Jo says many of her virtual friends are also real friends in real life!), spending real money in a virtual world(!), living actual time as virtual time?
Perhaps the reason why Gen Y kids love virtual online worlds is that here, risk-taking is safe. Some say we have robbed this generation of the real-life experiences gained from taking risks and learning from consequences. We have controlled their outcomes at every turn, created soft landings for them. Perhaps they revel in the sense of control they can assume in constructing a new virtual identity (I wont say fictional as Second Life is far from fictional), and the lessons they learn, albeit virtual-risk, actual-safe!
Is this the future? A kind projected life memory, as ‘real’ as the past is, in our minds and imagination?
Will people one day live their lives more virtually, than actually? Will virtual become actual? Suddenly the Matrix is looking very ‘now’……
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
I am convinced that video conferencing is the way of the future! The technology has progressed so significantly that it seems quite simple, accessible and affordable. What excites me is the way it opens opportunities to develop and access new learning communities for students, anywhere in the world.
I would like to use it in 2009 to establish a photography network for my TIGS photography students and those from Wanganui Park Secondary College in Victoria. I am curently investigating ways I can work with photography teacher Kerry Short to get the project up and running in Term 1 2009. Students will connect with students from another school to collaborate and learn in an online community through video conferencing, engage remotely with like-minded students through discussion boards, blogs and online galleries and maybe even collaborate using a wiki.
Kerry and I can access and share each others expertise with all students to expand knowledge, information and ways of learning. This is exciting!
The Polycom demonstration showed how different video formats can now talk to each other and showed an interesting desktop solution. I’ll investigate the options at the exhibitors stands later today.
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
An ePortfolio: a “digitised collection of personal information”
An ePortfolio is a good way to connect industry workers to educators, to recognise the experience, skills and knowledge needed in the workplace.
In education it can be used for:
1. SET plans - learning plans about goal setting
2.xUniversity graduates - CVs and research evidence
3. VET - competency achievements
How to create an ePortfolio:
- Record, aggregrate and fasten artefacts
- Publish and present
- Invite selected audiences to view and comment
- Personal reflection and comment
They are trialling an ePortfolio project whereby IT workers can be nationally accredited via RPL and ePortfolios. They have established connections between:
- Industry
- Educators
- Project sponsors
- Learners
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework website has lots of information on ePortfolios. Its focus is to evaluate the effectiveness of the EPortfolio tool.
5 processes are involved in creating an ePortfolio:
1. Collect
2. Select
3.Reflect
4. Project
5. Present
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
He asks us to drop the e from eLearning!
He offers us a model for growth rather than control, that shifts emphasis from institutions to communities. It is a Learning Relationship Management model. See his blog for details:
Things to contemplate for the future:
1. Mikeseyfang: intellectual property
2. rss: the value of this
3. iPhone and iTunes and the direction this technology is taking us!
4. Self publishing as a lifestyle: through blogs, wikis, social networking sites etc
5. Identity and authentication: who are we?
Thought provoking stuff!
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
Karen talks about how we can get the most out of networks in the classroom.
She is witty and entertaining and provides a light-hearted approach to her topic, and tells us that Gen Y isnt the only ‘logged on’ generation. Grey nomads are some of the best users of the internet: they have the time to learn everything they can, they willingly share information, love belonging to communities and love new technology. They may struggle with the technical aspects but engage with and use the technology to its advantage.
Karen shows us how she has used an online learning management system to create a learning community of Business Studies students.
Her humour creates a nice window to shed some stress in relation to the serious nature of what we are trying to achieve here at the conference.
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference, Sunshine Coast TAFE
Friday 7th November 2008
A few facts came out of this workshop that suggested that blogs are increasing in use:
1. Weblogs are online diaries and a means of facilitating discussion through ongong commentary.
2. The blogosphere doubles in size every 6 months
3. One new blog is created every second
4. 27% of internet users say they read blogs
Other than these snippets of information, it was hard to follow this session…..
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
This workshop was delivered via videoconference.
Nancy White started Full Circle to provide assistance to business through internet technologies. Her research and specialization focuses on how technology creates learning in communities.
Stewarding technologies for communities is all about learning together. During her research technologies have changed rapidly and she realizes the need to focus on pedagogies – the way people learn with technology, rather than the technology itself.
She outlines different ways of perceiving communities:
• Learning communities
• Knowledge Networks
• Communities of Practice
• Online Communities
Communities involve me, we and many:
Me: the individual (personal identity, interest trajectory
We: communities (bounded membership group identity shared interest
Many: networks (boundaryless, fuzzy, intersecting interests
These ideas have opened up new areas of understanding in relation to technologies:
Technologies enable people to:
• Discover and appropriate
• Build communities
• Create identities
Key roles in forming communities:
• Community leaders
• Technology stewards: people with enough experience working with communities and enough knowledge of technology to support the community in using the technology. Selecting and configuring technology as well as supporting its use in the community. This role is about guiding learning, noticing things and making them happen now for individuals.
• Network weavers
Read her great book “ Digital Habitat: Stewarding Technology for Communities”: an ecological view of technology in communities
Important polarities of communities:
Togetherness – Separateness: shifting engagement from the group to the individual
Interacting – Publishing: conversing, experimenting, practicing, learning, planning and the tools and processes used to publish
Individual – Group: designed for groups, experienced as individuals. Does not imply homogeneity: need for customization when individual outcomes are required. Multimembership requires attention to both.
Orientations - selecting appropriate tools to support a community:
Develop community activities oriented to:
• Meetings
• Open-ended conversations
• Projects
• Access to expertise
• Relationships
• Context
• Community cultivation
• Individual participation
• Content publication
Steward the activities to nurture the community so that the technology becomes less of a focus and the community becomes the point of practice. Consider carefully the point of the exercise: what is it the community needs to learn, practice, collaborate on?
The technology should become invisible. Building communities is what its all about!
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
The best thing about the demonstration was the YouTube video they showed called: Ask Gen Y.
This video provides an excellent glimpse into the key events, images and technologies that have shaped the world that this generation of young people have grown up in. This is largely a complex, competitive, hyperconnected world where boundaries are collapsing by the minute, blurring the difference between real and virtual lives and ways of living; services and providers; users and creators, participants and observers.
Watch it here:
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Thursday 6th November
This is a catchy topic and Gary addressed it through the challenge of considering how we might address the needs of 21st century learners in Australia, and what education.au is doing to get this process underway. The general message was that we are way behind and need to be active in doing something NOW!
Gary’s session explored:
• Hyperconnected worlds
• Risk-taking and risk-sharing
• 21st century learning and the lag in policy implementation
• The National services education.au offers
MCEETYA has just published a paper about the learning needs of our students. This report recognizes Australian students as global citizens, and as members of the Asia Pacific region, and discusses the importance of Asian literacy. It also recognises the complex problems that students face today, and the role that ICT technologies play in their life.
The report also recognizes:
1. The digital divide: the haves and have-nots and the need for equity of access
2. That education extends beyond the school gate, and that students are currently learning in very different ways outside of school
3. Students’ need to develop critical skills – cross disciplined thinking in our networked world
4. Students’ need for values and skills: resilience, ingenuity, tolerance etc
Gary also discussed the key points of the Cutler Report on Innovation and ways in which the government has supported (or not supported) innovation through education.
He also noted that more people now have Broadband internet connectivity: 98% of connection time in 2006-7 was for personal use.
Kids today are able to do lots of things that they couldn’t do a few years ago. They are both consumers and users of technologies. They are the mash-up masters – they are hyper-connected. They are in control of their use of the net and all of the services and spaces they access and master.
Risk profiles on the internet are shifting. Innovation and creativity involves risk taking. In our world of fear, we are less prepared to take risks and we, as educators have learnt to become risk-adverse! We have removed the risk factor for our students. They are not learning from mistakes.
He asks: how, as teachers can we move that risk dial back so that our students can learn through the process of making mistakes?
How can we help students develop internet citizenship? Risk and opportunity go hand-in-hand.
21st century learning: change is not happening quickly enough!
Its about:
Fun, motivation, engagement
Intrinsic motivation: about life, curiosity, having degrees of control, undertaking challenging and collaborative tasks
Engagement: involved in relevant active, cognitive processes
21st century learning equips students with basic skills for life:
1. Skills for learning: negotiated, collaborative, interactive
2. Connect with local and global communities: flexible, anywhere, anytime
3. Flexible and Personal: anywhere anytime, personal programs, any technology
His organisation is currently developing thinktanks and blogs related to a national ICT Strategy
Get involved! Have a say!
Go to the education.au website to find out about these and acces lots of resources and information
http://www.me.edu.au/FusEd
Is a collaborative site for contributing to innovative ways of using technology in education, however currently the link does not seem to be working
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Thursday 6th November
Videoconference
This is a fantastic initiative that demonstrates how a structured and fully supported eLearning network for teachers can create paradigm shifts in pedagogy.
2Learn.ca is a professional development, non-profit educational organization established to help teachers use video technologies to support teaching and learning in Canada. Teachers are trained to use the technology and helped to setup conferenced events.
Teachers are supported at all levels. The team provides workshops, professional speakers and events for a provincial group of schools and teachers in Canada.
The program works with a cascade model, that provides release time for teachers to attend PD activities. They teachers contribute to this program, through ongoing evaluation and responses that help the organization develop training solutions emergently. Teachers must also provide learning opportunities for other teachers in their schools to facilitate the cascading model.
Teacher leaders for the province schools undertake the training needed to learn the technologies, and then take these back into their school communities.
Classroom teachers are given leading opportunities to train and lead their schools in various technologies. This empowers these teachers to the point where they empower other teachers in their school, leading to very effective ICT learning environments.
The key to the 12 year old program is that teachers are encouraged to lead in an area of personal passion. They don’t have to know everything.
Each year they have had a different focus:
1.Curriculum use of internet resources
2. ICT embedded curriculum
3. Grass roots projects
4. Improved broadband: SuperNet, led to multimedia in classroom
5. Videoconferencing in classrooms
They have established a great free website of resources built up of all of the resources they have accumulated over the years. The database is an aggregation of thousands of sites.
The portal focuses on theme based units of study: a teacher teaching that theme can engage in ICT units of work that are fully supported. Teachers can ask the organisation to make an event specific to their programs. This will be posted for all, on the site.
The key to this program is the professional development support that is scaffolded at all levels.
A new initiative is an online community website called 2LearnTogether. This site will connect teachers, learners, resources and events. Forums will help people to engage and establish relevant learning environments. This forum will be moderated and monitored so as to meet privacy issues, via access limitations. The software for the site was Dolphin, an Australian product.
Have a look at their site: its a great resource:
http://www.2learn.ca/
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Thursday 6th November
Simon showed us how he teaches and uses video streaming technology when demonstrating techniques and skills with his stone-masonry students at TAFE .
He also uses VeMentoring to expose students to professional industry experts.
Simon builds strong networks through his teaching. His teaching is student-centred and focuses on creating interactivity between students and himself, and employers in the workplace.
He has used ning.com to develop an interactive learning community for his students and has posted photos of the class members on the front page. Each member has their own page. Students have varying degrees of input into the site. The blog post keeps them informed about their work and things like how one of the students who now lives in England is going.
He embeds videos from YouTube about stone masons into the site, and from one of these, he has established a great professional contact for the class.
Simon regularly checks out who visits the site through Google Analytics
This provides him with some interesting feedback.
This workshop showed us a real application of how social networking can engage students in the learning process. Simon’s class were a challenging bunch - they werent interested in writing and reading, but preferred ‘doing’. Once they began participating and contributing to the ning class site, their focus changed and most of them eagerly contributed to the class online community in very meaningful ways.
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Thursday 6th November
Anne adopts the role of storyteller in her confronting and entertaining workshop.
Whilst she pitches her presentation toward adult educators, it has relevance for all educators.
Anne takes us into the future to the 2015 Learning Technologies Conference, and describes an isolated and ‘endangered’ group of educators - the last remaining ‘tribe’ of educators.
She provides us with a definition of ‘endangered’:
“threatened by predators and changing environments; few in numbers”,
and shows us a number of other endangered species:
- Printers (Anne pushes a paperless environment)
- Swimming pools, car manufacturers
- Educational services
- Bankers
- Chimney sweeps (for fireplaces)
Anne explains how her 2015 future-world is shaped by 2008 events happening now,
- The changing nature of work: only 70% jobs are now full-time and permanent
- The new trend for part-time work for women
- 200,000 jobs predicted to be lost during the next 12 months
- Learners have changed and their needs and expectations have changed
- Effective Learning Management Systems (LMS) are available for students online
She names the predators responsible for the crisis in education:
- Educators who continue to use digital technologies in boring, pedestrian and irrelevant ways that do not engage students: eg. powerpoint shows, use of IWBs as data projectors, printing materials etc
- Managed informal sharing and discussion groups: we can do all of this without the ‘big guys’, in more relevant ways
- The IT department: they block and restrict access
Anne describes some key identity issues that put educators at risk:
- Decreasing numbers of young educators: an aging population
- The role of educators has fundamentally changed (but have educators changed?)
She finishes her presentation with a whimsical response to this question: What can we do about it?
- Create sanctuaries
- Lobby
- Set up a Save Vocational Educators fund!
Whilst amusing, its also sad! And thats the whole point of her presentation!
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Thursday 6th November
This is a mind-bending session that explores ideas that link technology with psychology.
In his workshop, Howard asks:
How does technology intersect with polarity or opposite ways of thinking/being?
He mentions some possible polarities to illustrate his point:
- Masculine and feminine
- Introversion and extraversion
I think he is suggesting that technology can shift our way of thinking and being, and can alter previous ideas about ourselves and our personas, enabling us to interact and develop knowledge about ourselves in new ways.
He seems to be saying that technology allows us to exchange information to reduce the distance between ‘opposite’ ideas of ourselves and others.
Perhaps he is referring to the ways in which we use technology to explore aspects of ourselves in ways we may not have previously been able to. For example, when we create avatars online, we can choose to reinvent ourselves and experience opposite ways of being, acting and interacting with others, in virtual worlds closely aligned with reality.
As a counsellor he recognizes that young people often interface online in a more extraverted manner.
Howard refers to Twitter and its potential to develop an exchange of information that furthers our sense of knowing and connectedness. He sees a significance in these new ways of ‘knowing’ and relates them to very traditional ways of knowing - ie intuitive knowing. Twitter has the potential to carry information faster than most other ways. He likens it to being a passenger on an ‘indian train’! During the US election, Twitter was used to exchange information and forecast news.
Twitterers can break news to the world faster than traditional media sources can. I remember when China was devastated by an earthquake in May 2008. Twitter was recorded as beating the media in breaking the news to the world. The following article points out however, that whilst speed is the issue here, quality of journalism isnt.
article: Twitter didnt beat the media: it was quicker
I think that perhaps the point of all this, is that networks like Twitter enable instant connectivity to cyber spaces where our identity and persona can be stretched to the point of our imagination. Exchange of information is potentially lightning-fast, personal and instant. Our fellow twitterers are at our fingertips.
Thursday 6th November
George’s workshop has prompted me to ask the question: What is the purpose of our teaching, or, why do we teach?
If our primary motivation is to prepare young people for the world they will encounter when they leave school, then we need to be thinking now about our current effectiveness. What do students need to survive in the 21st century? How can we help them learn the things they need to know with technology that is available, affordable and accessible.
On the other hand, if our motivation is to instill a lifelong love of learning in young minds, then we perhaps need to look at how we deliver learning content and how we provide learning opportunities to engage students and allow them to immerse themselves in their own learning processes.
George’s presentation points us in the right direction to think of ways to achieve both of these things: to prepare and future-proof our students, and to empower them to steer their own learning experiences.
He claims that deep knowledge and effective learning occurs when students are connected through networks.
If we understand how and why connections form we should be able to understand how to shape better ways of educating students. If we focus on networks we can create a streamlined process of learning from design to delivery of content. Knowledge is what we seek to teach. Knowledge resides in how we connect things together. Knowledge is a pattern of connectivity – a way of engaging with and navigating networks. Knowledge is a way of engaging with the network connections.
Three levels of connection are needed for learning to occur:
1. Neural: how our brains form thinking is through neurons firing to make a pattern of connectivity. Its not the image of the person that forms the memory, but the patterns in which the neurons fire.
2. Conceptual: how we define the subject matter to form a conceptual map. An expert’s understanding leads to contextual understanding that a novice cant.
3. Social/external: Technology has amplified the significance of social networking in forming connections needed for learning to take place.
Understanding is dependent upon the breadth of our knowledge: how and what/who we connect to deepen our understanding.
“Connections are to learning as atoms are to the physical world” (Siemens)
There are many technological tools that are now available to make connections for our students: this is exciting. Education is an exciting crossroad.
To understand connections and the patterns they form leads us to understand how people learn, acquire and acccumulate knowledge.
George claims that if we can monitor someone’s thought patterns, the process of forming connections and the patterns they make through this process, then we can enhance learning for them.
“Learning opportunities are determined by how we interact with knowledge and others” (Siemens)
Siemens challenges educators to ask:
“What happens when the tools of control shift from educator to learner?”
The content and the tools of technological learning put the control in the hands of the learner: eg in his lecture some people are blogging (me included), googling, twittering, emailing, typing etc whereas traditionally, learners are held captive by the teacher/lecturer.
Technology can free the learner, empower them and allow them to make choices.
As students increase the number of connections through technology provided by institutions, they assume increased control of the learning process. It seems to me that if that is so, then outside of school, students have almost total control of how they learn, yet as they ‘power down’ when they walk through the school gate, they reluctantly have to relinquish this control, let go of the learning process. This highlights a key deficiency of educational institutions today.
Did you know that the extra 40 plus million voters in the 2008 US election were largely encouraged to vote via interactive connections, online?
Technology amplifies the ability to connect with other people in learning communities.
“Our views of knowledge and learning dictate the shape of our institutions” (Siemens)
George urges educators and institutions to view students as clients and themselves as providers.
If you are in business, when a client’s needs shift, you must shift with them or your business collapses. It makes sense that if our field is about providing and delivering learning and knowledge to students, then as the requirements of these students shift, our delivery methodology (pegagogy) must shift to accommodate their new needs.
Learning networks cater for 21st century learning needs.
A learning network is a group of people and data sources somehow linked. The connection provides an opportunity to learn with someone else (Eg a library, forum, blog). You don’t have to be a contributor, but can participate by the nature of the link or connectivity.
George describes the chief characteristics of networks:
- They vary.
- A social network is a type of learning network but the tasks are not explicit.
- A learning network is task-focused and specific, intentional.
Sustained participation occurs in varying contexts (Klein: Sources of Power) and determines the value of connections and networks.
Sensemakers are people who shape our views of the world: newspaper editors etc. Institutions have traditionally performed as sensemakers.
Today we have to make our own way through complex fields of understanding. We need to become our own sensemakers to negotiate new knowledge, situations and contexts. This is critical for our students.
George’s message makes me understand that this needs to change.
Our students need to be able to ‘make sense’ of their world. This is how we can best prepare them for their future. Enabling them to take control of the learning process and to participate and engage with technology in relevant ways will encourage a lifelong love of learning that extends well beyond the classroom walls.
I cant help but ask: isnt that what we seek to teach?
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Wednesday 5th November
No wonder all previous attendees I have spoken to at the 2008 conference rave about previous conferences. The quality of presentations so far is fantastic. Mind you, this is my second workshop!
Kerry’s presentation resonates with me and encourages me to reflect upon the things I see as important in my role as Director of eLearning.
She asks:
“In our rush to adopt new learning technologies have we become too focused on HOW to use the technology instead of WHY?”
Kerry explains that if we are to use technology wisely, and to the benefit of our students, we should “enhance (our classroom) delivery, globalise (our) classroom, create meaningful learning activities and equalise learning opportunities”
This might sound theoretical. However, I am inspired to unpack these points, and propose that, whilst they describe what we should DO to effectively embed ICT into the curriculum, they also underpin 21st century learning outcomes: enhance learning, globalise learning, create meaningful learning, equalise learning.
Kerry has developed a system for Blended Distributed Delivery: a method of embedding technology in programs built around students’ needs, rather than desires of teachers to use or ‘play’ with technology. This is a very useful starting point for educators: a real model to build enriching ICT-centred programs that meet the needs of students through curriculum development.
She describes two key choices that teachers can make to blend technologies for the best possible outcomes for their students:
1. Synchronistic (same-time interactions such as face to face lessons,tutorials, online conferencing, workshops etc) modes of delivery,
and
2. Asynchronistic (flexible-time interactions such as video streams, podcasts, blogs, wikis, email, phone, toolboxes etc) modes of delivery.
The key to all this is that blended learning environments cater for the needs of our students and will increasingly do so!
“Students should not have to power down to come to class”
Young learners want to be engaged with new technologies: it is how they learn best. They need a range of technologies at their fingertips. It is our role as educators, to cater for these needs through our design and delivery of the programs we teach.
Kerry also discusses the benefit of project-based learning tasks - another of my passions. These tasks provide students with the “opportunity to do, rather than just hear about the subject of study. That is the key to active learning strategies”
So much research now confirms how 21st century learners need to learn in ways that traditional classrooms and programs cant match. I think its time we understand that our role is to provide them with the best possible, the most relevant means of learning available.
Kerry gives us a useful strategy to commence this process - an excellent scaffolded model of how to build a blended distributed delivery program.
Mark provided us with a valuable resource list of great websites.
In this workshop, Paul explains how he establishes connections for students living in remote communities using video conferencing.
He uses video as a tool to remove the barriers of remote learning. The visual connection allows students to connect with the classroom (called a meeting room) in ways that are meaningful for them.
He has developed a highly intgrated system of learning using range of toos and strategies: video, telephones, desktop computers, lecture rooms etc.
Paul demonstrated the ease with which the user can set up a new meeting room (video conference). He setup 4 feeds that appeared in 4 separate windows on the projected screen, in an impromptu conference to show how easy it can be. We saw:
1. Mobile phone camera capturing live video of us in the lecture theatre
2. Live video of Dave Sobey, in Adelaide
3. Live video of a classroom in Adelaide
4. Live video of himself talking
He also showed and demonstrated how he can also use video production techniques to create rich content for classroom delivery. By setting up video cameras in any number of ways (eg pointing at the teacher, pointing at students, capturing the screen) a range of resources can be used and developed in the classroom.
Whilst this looks great, it seems to me that this technology is quite complex to setup. Most teachers would need a lot of support combining the various elements needed. It is quite IT-support dependent.
Service providers such as Tandberg are providing the technology, software and support needed to create equal opportunities of learning for remote students. The technology they develop and support looks fantastic. I’m not sure how affordable it is? Such opportunities are provider-dependent.
I wonder how he can videoconference/capture live interactive whiteboard feeds?
Carol’s energy and passion for the content of this workshop had us all champing at the bit to get back to our workplaces and try out audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing and Skype.
This workshop explored the differences between these three different forms of online conferencing.
Online conferencing is used to provide learning environments for students who are off-campus. The online conferencing classroom can provide for multiple students from a variety of remote locations. However, because the ‘classroom’ is effectively a computer interface, the teacher needs to adopt new pedagogies to be effective in the management of this classroom model. Learning in a remote location whilst sitting alone at a computer screen is not an ideal way to learn fro most people. The technology enables access only; it is the teacher who develops the learning environment to bring the various users (students) together in an effective learning community.
Whilst audio conferencing is relatively simple technology that’s been around for a while, it is dependent upon a ‘bridge’ operator (service provider) who enables the whole process.
Web conferencing is more complex, but offers the user exciting interactive options that facilitate student engagement beyond voice. The visual interface provides the teacher with what resembles an interactive whiteboard, where student responses can be noted and group comments documented. This opens the way to collaborative learning opportunities and can create a more dynamic learning environment for students, if used to its advantage. There are loads of good applications out there such as ivRoom, palBee, lluminate, DimDim etc
Video conferencing seems to be the way of the future however. It looks great and offers consumers a range of options. When introduced a decade ago, it was expensive at the top end and raw and clumsy at the bottom. Carol explained that current solutions are both affordable and accessible. Video conferencing does not have to be a high end solution to be successful! OoVoo, Skype, PalBee and iChat are some examples of applications.
Whilst it looks like TV, its important to note that if students use it like TV, they may fall asleep! An effective teacher will create a dynamic learning community: they will engage students and monitor their active participation and contribution to the online classroom. They will also pull apart what they might normally ‘do’ in the classroom and repackage it for the online elearning environment. This is a real skill that may require a bit of practise.
Carol threw loads of information at us, challenging us to consider useful ways of using these technologies in our teaching, and asking us to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each conferencing technology, when setting up online learning environments. All in all, an exciting, informative and thought-provoking session!
A grey drizzly sky greeted me today when I stepped onto the tarmac at Maroochydore airport. I’m up here to attend the three day Learning Technologies 2008 Conference. Since my arrival at Mooloolabah TAFE for this afternoon’s workshops, drizzle has turned to heavy rain! Nonetheless I am excited about today’s workshops and the conference.
I’m anticipating a big learning curve this afternoon as the workshops I’m attending are:
and
