Educating the Dragon

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.

Well gee, I can’t say I haven’t had an interesting week. Have spent much of the last couple of weeks researching Higher Order Thinking Skills, writing assignment one and putting together my power point presentation for the Digital Deco ICT conference. I finished it on the Tuesday night…… Smiled quietly to my self for 24 hours and then promptly dropped said laptop off the kitchen bench, trust me, they’re not really designed for that.

I then spent all of Thursday panicked that I’d lost my assignment and power point presentation, and that I’d spend all night Thursday redoing it. Fortunately for me a guy called Andy from East Coast Computers came over, took out the hard drive and managed to pull the two documents off. Yippee.

It is only then that the real fun begins. I arrive on the Friday all ready to go, memory stick in hand and the promise of a borrowed laptop.

PRS is a great system…. Classroom response unit. Unfortunately there were a couple of features involved in embedding in Power point that I over looked. There can only be ONE asked question per page NOT the 2 or 3 I had planned, also the Question when it comes up creates a ‘toolbar’ across the top. Couple these two together and you have a rather wonky presentation document with custom animation going off when it shouldn’t. Ahhh!

We were only given an hour so, yep you guessed it, I didn’t get finished. Not only that but we barely got started on applying Higher Order Thinking to a curriculum area. Doh!

Finally I have a deligate say quite openly “I am bored now,” – I mean how should one respond?

Just for the record I, for one, was not bored, Freaked, yes, disappointed, yes, embarrassed, certainly.

Twas a chapter of disasters from start to finish.

Chrissy, on the other hand preformed incredibly well. Her wonderfulworldofwikis presentation was an inspiration to all who attended. She even had someone who created her own wikispace for the presentation she was giving immediately after. Go Chrissy.

Btw I have to mention that she called Vicki the “Wiki Queen”- well in made me smile at the time- probably just one of those ‘had to be there things.

I blogged about it ages ago, Vicki Davies commented and David Warlick showed interest too.

It finally happened, in little old
Flaxmere, New Zealand. The Kid’s Conference.

Kimi Ora, Flaxmere Primary,
Iron Gate and Peterhead came together to showcase what they have been doing with ICT over the past couple of months. We had groups of children demonstrating how Google SketchUp, Art Rage and PowerPoint worked, we had some working with a green screen and my kids showed off their Talk and Write work with Taradale Intermediate School.

What a buzz, kids sharing with kids, teaching each other and enthusing about the possibilities of these applications and tools.

Sitech were on hand to add their input into proceedings and provided additional hardware so thanks for that Kevin.

But it was the kid presenters who really made the day. I was so proud of them all. There enthusiasm for it all practically brought tears to my eyes.

Just a thought from the day, part of a discussion I had with team members down there.

We were talking about how important it is that ALL levels of education jump on board with the new move to Web 2.0 otherwise I’ll enthuse my 7 year olds and get them thinking about broader contexts and incorporating technology use in their work but then they have a further 11 years of School 1.0 to have all that drained from them. Fortunately that is not happening in Flaxmere as the whole Cluster is part of the Sitech Champion Schools Programme, dedicated to teacher PD in the area of technology, so as teachers across the year levels become up-skilled our kids will continue to have those technology opportunities in their learning. (for other pictures from the conference click here)

I sense they are quite privileged in that regard. Are other areas in
New Zealand/ around the globe experiencing what we are in Flaxmere?

Here it is, my second effort after “Why teach technology?” into the TeacherTube zone of inspiring teachers to investigate the Pandora’s box that is Web 2.0.

I was culling my folder entitled “Web discussions” where I store past posts and bits and pieces I’ve cut and pasted for use later on. I came across the words included in me second video presentation; I think I got them off Durff’s Blog, if it wasn’t from there it was someone similarly thoughtful, observant and insightful, but it sounds like Durff to me. Anyway here it is entitled: “School 1.0 v School 2.0 “On your marks…””

Teaching Sagittarian will laugh at me as I still am unable to embed my own videos and Miguel of Around the Corner will no doubt roll his eyes at me as, yes, I used PhotoStory3 yet again. I’m not sure this presentation is going to give Vicki Davies the ‘chills’ like last time, but them I feel this is more of a Die Hard 2 moment rather then a Godfather II. What do you think?

Download: School 1.0 v School 2.0 “On your marks…”

Teaching Sagittarian check this out, I DID IT! (Thanks to the new embed feature for WordPress on TeacherTube )

Here is my response to Vicki’s question ‘Why teach technology?’ It’s my first go at uploading to Teachertube. Technology teaching is the equipping of students today for the environment tomorrow. Yes, the future is unclear but if they leave us armed with the tools, shortcuts, and critical thinking skills then they will be prepared for a lifetime of learning and change.

Ps. I wish someone would teach me how to embed vodcast and podcast into my blog. I look like such a newbie, but I just can’t figure it out.