Educating the Dragon

Please excuse my somewhat disjointed notes about the keynote:

The Place of Most Potential

What does it look like?

Kevin Rudd  is just throwing digital whiteboards at secondary schools, this is a good thing. But so much is dependent on the teachers involved. Some boards are going to be used well, some are going nowhere. It has nothing to do with the board and everything to do with school.

Some research stated (could find the source sorry) that ‘Technology made NO difference to student learning’ . Peter said that if we as educators are going to challenge this statement then we must address 3 key issues:

People.

Video- Escaslator. The biggest constraint is what people think they can and cannot do. We need to invent the new teaching. Those who invent don’t get stuck on the escalator. Blockers in a school are not blockers but they which remain unconvinced. We must not label people blockers, they are interested in teaching and want to know how technology is going to help them. They are the ones which challenge our own thinking, causing us to justify why we do what we do with technology.

Pedagogy.

How we are doing the teaching and learning. If a kid is going to read then they read. If a teacher is going to use technology they need solid blocks of time to USE technology.

NSW Quality Teaching ,

Productive Pedagogies,

Principles of learning,

Authentic Pedagogies.

Can we generically describe both inspired and terrible teaching- technology is simply an amplifier- good GOOD, bad BAD.

Quality discussion- Teacher asking questions of the students, Students questioning teacher and student to student- How you get this is to give incomplete information- make them ask questions. High level of ambiguity . Raising significance. Content can move around and be more child centred (everyone is interested in themselves) Personalizing the learning contexts, and Differentiation.

Technology.

What technology we use? IWB are the place of most potential. IWB are the bridge to make other technologies to work in the classroom setting.

Paradox of choice

Well its confirmed, sort of, I’m making two presentations on the Gold Coast on 30^th/31^st August and the 1^st September.

What I’m proposing to do is a repeat of my presentation about Talk&Write. It’ll probably be more of a ‘a journey so far’. There is much to do in the months ahead. I’m looking forward to my children Skyping with Taradale and Taranaki and hopefully Palmerston North too. No international links thus far. Though If I could link with a school
Bangladesh, the States or anywhere really that’s appearing on my cluster-map. If you are either an educational professional or have a class of your own and would like to participate please just leave a comment and we can hook up and get the ball rolling and get this show on the road and kick start this thing into high gear….. (too many idioms).

Secondly I am presenting on the Interwrite PRS system. Looking at higher order thinking. I must remember that my kids are only 7…. The Personal Response System looks similar to a TV remote. Many a joke about ‘switching boys on’ but there I go with the idioms again. Using this response system enables the class to be much more involved and reduced the ability of some kids to duck away from thinking about let alone responding to a teachers question. If you have experience of using these things I’d love to here your thoughts, good or bad.