Presentation

My presentation on 21st Century Learners is on today. Should be interesting. Some notes on this presentation are on my Wiki. Feel free to add some more as we are all keen to learn.

Also heard that my funding looks likely now for stage 2 which is very exciting.

21st Learning

Today I was at a Ministry of Education sponsored on 21st Century Learning Environments.

I really liked Jane Gilbert's presentation on knowledge and what that means. It sits very close to mine. The idea that knowledge is not universal seems so obvious but so alien to what happens in schools. It still is all about knowledge acquisition and so little about meaning.

Until we reconsider the meaning of knowledge and its transmission schools appear to be stuck in the constraints of the modernist thought.

There is a lot of talk about IT but little about what that means. The here and the now. But still the drivers are against this.

Visitors

This morning I will be running a workshop for a group of education visitors from Vietnam. They are visiting New Zealand to gather ideas about New Zealand education system. I am looking forward to finding out about their system.

some notes about the presentation are on my Wiki.

Future teacher

Last week I attended a discussion with other educators on what secondary education would look like in 2027. This discussion was part of the Secondary Futures project.

When asked to describe what the inspired teacher would look like in 2007, I drew a computer. At present the dominant practice in schools is still around knowledge development and information retrieval. I have seen nothing over the last twenty years that tends to suggest a change to this dominant practice.

Sometime in the next twenty years with the advances in technology and the lowering costs it may become economic to replace the teacher with a computer if the expected outcomes are as low level as they are at present.

Are we like the Blacksmiths were at the end of the 1900s.

"These new car things won't ever take off. You can't pat a car."

I do wonder if the only people listening to the importance of teachers are us educators as the world rapidly develops forward and leaves us behind. The reasons that people gave for teachers are for the social needs, the human contact, the collaboration, etc

And these people did not use Bebo, myspace, Web 2.0 and so on.

Leadership in Education

I have been asked to do a workshop on leadership in education.

This has meant that I have spent sometime thinking around what are the most important issues for educational leadership at the beginning of the 21st Century.

I believe there are two major strands

1. Connectivity - I believe that connectivity between people is becoming of greater importance. The rapid growth of myspace and bebo is testament to how important this and Web 2.0 technologies are obviously critical here as well. However in schools we also need not only to think about digital connections but visual, spatial and personal connections as well.
2. Sustainability - Environmental sustainability is obviously important based around concerns about global warming and resource depletion. So sustainability includes education about sustainability as well as making our schools environmentally sustainable. But there is a bigger issue here as well, which is what is sustainable educationally. With the amount of information exploding exponentially and access to that information becoming cheaper what is sustainable in our schools. Or does the notion of 'schooling' become redundant as we move through the 21st Century?

When I get things worked out I will post my workshop for others.

I have just read Will Richardson's blog on 'technology as the devil'. One of the challenges of moving into using the new technologies is to make staff start using these the ideas. There needs to be a method where staff are supported in their learning.

At Whangaparaoa College we have operated on the idea of building a small number of staff being trained at a time. As this number grows we find that we build closer to a critical mass. Staff start wanting to be part of the 'trained group' and then start trying things.

It takes a while to grow. Sometimes years which just means with technology that we just ha ve to keep teaching new stuff all the time to out teachers.

One or two heros on your staff just going over the top can make huge change.

Collaborative Learning

I have been working with First Class software at out school to learn how to use it as a collaborative tool in our school. We have introduced this as a way of developing digital resources and having collaboration between learners.

Like any new software the major issues are often at the start around permisions and all those other little glitches to make something work.

Is it something inherent in digital technology that it won't work straight away or is it because I am a digital immigrant being now 50?