gail dyer

Reviewing NECC 2009, if you haven’t already watched, listened and learned check out www.istevision.org. It was a conference where just so much happened, so many professional lives were changed and the potential of technology was recognised as a positive not as something that needs to be harnessed and controlled.

Four weeks on and thoughts of NECC 2009 keep percolating through my head. What has stayed with me? What will I be acting upon? What will be the next move into the classroom? Who will be enlisted to try new stuff? What characteristics do they need to   . . .  just give it a go in an educationally sound context!

What has stuck?

Think as far ahead as you can. I am limited by what I don’t know. The more I know the more I know I don’t know!

I know we need to be engaging our students and I know technology can support that. Things are moving so fast as soon as I imagine things they are passe.

We have the opportunity to create powerful and meaningful learning environments. Environments where;

• Feedback is timely, targeted and valued;
• Adversity is used to grow learning;
• Exploration and experimentation are the norm; and
• Learning is recognised as being non-linear.

It’s not the where of learning that matters it is the how.

• Every student should have a computing device in their pocket and be taught how to use it effectively and responsibly. (APPs be they for google or ipod/iphone are powerful and a growing number have amazing educational potential.)
• Mobile devices provide opportunities for students to be online and to have access to information and be learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
• Are schools and classrooms as we know them appropriate learning spaces for today’s students?

Knowledge needs to be deep rather than broad and once you have explored a concept in depth only then do you realise fully how little you really know.

Being able to do a Boolean Search is an amazing thing and the Google advanced search capability makes it so easy to fine tune the information being gathered.

Digital text is challenging because:

• Potentially overwhelming with amount of content available.
• Where do we start?
• How do we determine what is relevant?
• Forces us to look for significance by using primary sources as much as possible.
• Analyse and hypothesise about  . . . Am I being manipulated?
• What’s worth reading?
• Read deeply and develop the skill of synthesis

Realise and understand that originality is NOT derivative.

Web 2.0 tools are powerful motivators and provide novel opportunities for student learning, constructing and creating knowledge as well as making available effective and exciting self assessment tools.

Teachers need to let go of their need to control students and student learning, they need to use their understanding of pedagogy and knowledge of curriculum outcomes to become co-learners, co-constructors and co-creators of knowledge along with their students. They need to develop with their students a purpose for learning; authentic tasks, problem or project based learning opportunities where they see what they are doing is relevant and worthwhile.

Parents in the digital age should be in their kids’ faces and in their spaces.