Educating the Dragon

This is well worth having a go, 140 character book review

Go to Dangerously Irrelevent post here , and leave your comment.

Having read Scott’s post it got me thinking about the New Zealand context, especially with the New Curriculum.

Scott McLeod’s article in ‘The School Administrator’ opens with the words:

Scott McLeod

“As our world becomes more technological and globally interconnected, it’s increasingly imperative superintendents and cabinet members understand how to best facilitate student acquisition of so-called 21st century skills. ”

Which got me thinking back to Ulearn07 and a session I was in. Someone, sometime quoted someone else (vague, I know) as saying “ 20^th century leaders are not eqipped to lead the 21^st century”. Which calls the education profession from two directions. Firstly to those leaders to upskill, which is heralded by Scott in his article. And second, let’s take a look a serious look at those Net Gen ‘kids’ coming through and what their outlook and perspective has to offer.

“School administrators no longer can afford to be unfamiliar with what constitutes effective technology-infused pedagogy.” So true, but the questiobn then arises: How do we get them to shift. I was privy to a conversation with the AP who had returned from the ‘New Curriculum Meeting” having seen the ’shifthappens’ video for the first time… She was buzzing about it. So I followed up on the conversation today to find out what the key messages were regarding the implimentation on the new NZ curriculum to which she replied. “oh they handed us a copy of the curriculum each and told us we were the school lead-teachers and were now the experts on the new curriculum with permission to write our own school curriculum.” Hmmm, I was expecting to here a little more indepth about vision and focus and what the principles behind it were etc, etc. She also went on to explain that these meetings were largly being boycotted by NZEI over the negociations about Management Units. If that is the case then the NZEI need to be held to account. Is the steering meetings for the ‘future of our schools’ really the best meeting to have people miss out on? Is that truly the responsible course of action to take? However, I digress, sorry.

Scott states ‘Unfortunately, most superintendents have received little to no training on how to facilitate good technology use by teachers and students.”

This echoes an ongoing discussion we’ve been having in New Zealand about the factr that ICTPD is predominantly ‘training’ in its narrowest sense and little is being done towards true professional development and pedagogical change.

“Your district will see a lot better return on its technology investments if instead it begins with the end in mind and then asks how the technology can help support that.” Yet again another true statement from Scott but what does that look like on the ground, in my school, your school? What does the end look like, especially in light of the new curriculum. If schools are responsible for creating their own curriculum to meet, more specifically, the needs of their students then much education of those responsible is required.

How do we know whether technology is being used effectively in the classroom? Aside from the fact my principal has never sat once through a lesson of mine in two years of developing my ‘digial classroom’. Assuming that principals do observe lessons and want to know how to assess a ‘technology-rich’ lesson. What are the criteria to look for? What does that look like? And, how can we encourage principals to value it?

“What positive resultsare we seeing from our use of digital instructional technologies?” The anecdotal evidence is huge. The ’semi developed research, such as what i’ve been grapling with is often subjective in nature. Basically, the speed of technological change is so fast and the willingness or time-constraints placed on classroom practitioners is such that formal, ‘useable’ research remains thin at best.

Scott raises some serious issues and we need to take a long hard look at the answers to those questions on school by school basis but also as a nation on the crest of ‘The 21^st century curriculum’.

Have been practising with the tools  for Learnonline from Victoria University. As part of the journal practise I had to share my thoughts about guidelines for online learning. These are my thoughts would love to here from anyone who could add to the list, just carry on the numbers:

There are several guidelines that are essential for online learning:

1.Regular, scheduled time for ‘online learning’

Whether that is morning, lunchtime, after dinner, after the kids have gone to bed or three in the morning when you come off shift. Whatever the time, it has to suit you and it has to be regular; twice or three times a week would be best.

2.Read ahead

Before coming off line, choose the next assignment, or reading or topic discussion; read it through, even print it out so you can go back and refer to it. Even if you have little other time for study, you will have it in your head, you will either consciously or subconsciously dwell upon it and when you come to your next ‘Online time’ you may well discover that you have a clearer picture about that topic or issue than you otherwise would have.

3. Use the email, use the forums

As the course progresses it is good to get your ideas ‘out there’ even if your thoughts or opinions on a given subject are not fully formed. Writing it down, sharing it with fellow students will solidify things in your own mind and they may well share some thoughts and opinions of their own, which could well help you.

4. Be nice

When sharing ideas and opinions in open forum or closed email it is much more productive for everyone if you stay on topic and treat others comments with respect as we are all on a learning journey together, sometimes your ahead and sometimes your behind, but in the end you are only racing yourself.  

Scott McLeod talks in this post about having too much stuff. It got me thinking about what stuff I’ve got and what stuff I’ve been promised.

Last year in my classroom I had:

Interactive Whiteboard

Data projector

Shared digital camera

School pads

My laptop

Webcam

Headset and microphone

This year I have (added to the above):

PRS – Classroom response units

Scanner

3 networked and wired computers

Wireless keyboard

What I have coming (next term):

3 or 4 laptops for children to access (replacing the networked computers)

Is it too much? Certainly the number of cables linking everything are too much.

How much would it cost to have all the above reconfigured for wireless/ Bluetooth do you think?