Educating the Dragon

Copied this from Wes’ blog post. The whole idea sounded so cool. Wish I had access to some high school students to give it a go. Maybe you do!

 Got plans for Saturday, October 13th? If not, consider getting together with some buddies and shooting a 3 minute film masterpiece in 24 hours for the 2007 Insomnia Film Festival! If your film wins top votes from either the public or the professional judges, “each member of your team will receive a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, and Shake.” Wow.

Here are my six ideas for developing ICT in your classroom. They are designed to take the load of the teacher, develop the thinking skills involved for the students and be generic.

1. Peer tutoring – take skills teaching off the teacher.( having to teach someone else is great reinforcement)
2.  ICT buddy system- working with a partner on a project will more than double the learning going on, feeding ideas from one another will intensify the higher order thinking going on- plus using the computer/software/ application as the focal learning object will mean more ‘on task’ conversation and less chatter.
3. Software ‘experts’ in the class are a useful thing. ( Where Jane is the ‘go to’ girl about powerpoint and Adam knows all about imovie)
4. Teamworking is perhaps an extension of 2- but with more people =more ideas- but be careful of the ‘slacker’ in the group they can hide.
5. Make use of skills checklists, cards, mini tutorials
6. Get your groups  in 4 to work on a application and produce the cards, video tutorials, checklists mentioned in 5.

Please add more…..

For those who signed up to my twitter you’ll know I’ve been thinking about ICTPD. Well here is my full thought….. 

There is a huge difference been ‘training’ and professional development. Even so many years through the ICTPD model in
New Zealand there seems mch confusion about the two terms and they remain in the minds of most as synonymous. But that is not strictly true. Sure there is some overlap, and some need for both aspects but when training (as in the ‘how to’ aspect of ICT) is called professional development it often. In my experience anyway squeezes out the true PD ( as in the ‘considering classroom pedagogy’)  

It is often argued ‘upskilling teachers will mean they will begin to use this technology with their classes’ – this maybe true but will it have the maximum desired outcome? I think not- A class’s use of technology after such training of the teacher will remain ‘low level’ – skills oriented level. Where as the desired outcome should be  a ‘higher level use of ICT for learning’.  

Having said that if the focus is purely professional development – the teacher is more likely to be reliant on the ICT literate students to problem solve the applications.  Which may be fine for classes of older students but with juniors their use of ICT will naturally involve explicit ‘skills’ teaching.  

My thought is that the facilitators of ICTPD clusters must take a serious look at what they are providing. Perhaps it needs to be more balanced. Perhaps the balance that needs to be redressed is on a school by school, teacher by teacher basis? But having said that there still needs to be a professional development element that goes beyond up-skilling and into the heart of classroom practise.  

So I would like to leave it there for now.  

What is the most effective ICT professional development you’ve ever had?  

How do you, in your school, go beyond upskilling/ just in time training?   

What does the ‘changing pedagogy’ really look like in New Zealand schools? Or around the world for that matter?

And is there a natural desire with ICT for professional development or is ICTPD seen a ‘you must!” storm cloud of negativity?

I may have quit my course but my brain is still working overtime. Over the next weeks you may have to read through my ramblings about the things I have learnt. 

I want to talk about Explorers, I feel we are all explorers in new ICTs. We’re the ones experimenting in the classroom. The edublogosphere is filled with cases of people explaining and reflecting on their ever changing practises with ICT in their classrooms. We’re dealing with real experiences, real students, real observations. But what makes our observations valid? Are we engaging in critical thinking and and reflecting in the right way? Jane Nicholl’s work on Oral Language and podcasting is perhaps a good example. Many of Vicki Davies reflections are critical in nature. But much of our, mine most of all, observations and reflections are low level and classed by academia as ‘anecdotal’. My concern lies in the fact that we are all at the cutting edge, where today’s technologies meet today’s students. But the quality of our reflections, perhaps, needs to go up a notch as Falloon comments “ there has been little conclusive empirical research to prove” (Falloon, 2003, p. 23) that ICT enhances outcomes for students. If academia is dismissing our contribution as ‘anecdotal’ then that filters through to policy makers and curriculum designers. We have an opportunity to drag the educational perspective out of the industrial age and into the 21^st century, as noted by David Warlick , and others.

So do we need to be thinking about our practise in terms of Jonassen’s Mindtools, or Atkin’s papers? How relevant are these theoretical perspectives? Do we need to consider such things to draw our experiences out of the micro level and up to a macro level? Is that our job or is someone else going to pull all this anecdotal material together for us to present the 21^st century classroom perspective?  

If not us, me, then who?

Falloon, G. (1999). Developing exemplary practice: Why are some teachers better at IT than others? Computers in New Zealand Schools, 15 (1), 19-23.

I am informing you that I am unable to continue with the course at this present time. Unfortunately ERO is upon my school. Pressure on teaching staff has increased as Nov 5 closes in and I have been unable to secure any support for my doing this course.

It is my intention to pick up the course again, re-enroll, prehaps for 2008 or 2009. I am greatly disappointed that I am unable to continue and would like to pass on my thanks to Bruce for his support and encouragement.

Many Thanks

Simon

This is my email, minus a few details, to the post grad tutor. I am very disappointed with having to give up. It frustrates me enormously.