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Why school?

Will Richardson, in his recently delivered TEDxMelbourne speech, outlines the imperatives for keeping school relevant in a world of abundance.

Five realities that we have to face if schools are to stay relevant

1. Content is everywhere - why do we still ask questions at school that could be answered in an instant given access to technology? Schools continue to restrict access, especially to mobile devices, but in the 'real world'.
2. Teachers are everywhere - students can ask questions through a blog written by the author of the book they are reading , learn how to do almost anything through YouTube and build their own PLN.
3. Data is everywhere - systems will be made which track individual progress and deliver the best, most personalised curriculum to that student to allow them to learn most efficiently.
4. Networks are the new classroom - learning can be accelerated when students follow their interests and connect with others using technologies.
5. We can do it anywhere - mobile technologies allow learning to take place anywhere at any time.

We don't really need school to do school if we define school in the traditional sense. 

The value of school is obviously well beyond the 'measurable' knowledge gathered through narrow content focused tests. Building relationships, learning from others face to face, sharing real experiences in sport, music, drama and everything else that happens in schools will always be valuable - but the sit down learning?

Teachers need to be master learners.

Emerging technologies we need to know about

The post below from EmergingEdTech contains a list of trends in education technology which all teachers should be familiar with. Each of the first 8 listed trends are being discussed currently at some level at my school and I think the final two will soon join the agenda. 

The list below is pasted from the original source and provides a multitude of links to other posts and resources well worth exploring

1. The Flipped Classroom: This is not a technology in itself, but rather a technology-enabled teaching technique. This spring I posed the rhetorical question, “Is Reverse Instruction Education Technology’s Perfect Storm?” and my passion for spreading awareness about this powerful idea through presentations and articles continues to grow. I am by no means alone in this, as attested to through expanding media coverage, and the recent publication of books like Bergmann and Sams “Flip Your Classroom”. If you’re not versed in ‘the flip’, I hope you’ll check out “8 Great Reasons to Flip Your Classroom (and 4 of the Wrong Reasons)…,” and the other resources in our Flipped Classroom article category to learn more.
2. The Apple iPad and other tablet devices: The iPad has proliferated at a rate far surpassing any other technology introduction – television, the personal computer, the DVD, you name it. Education was already pro-Apple before the niche defining tablet was introduced, and schools and teachers are all over it. Posts like, “15 Favorite iPad Apps As Selected By Teachers,” and “Using The iPad As A Digital Whiteboard (Plus 4 Cool Free Apps To Try It Out),” continue to draw the lion’s share of traffic here on the site. In the coming months and years we can expect to see more ed tech conferences focused on the iPad (like this one coming up in November). The iPad and other tablet devices are gradually becoming ingrained in all grade levels, all types of schools, and all academics disciplines.
3. Smartphones: We cannot continue to ignore these ubiquitous devices. The vast majority of students in high schools and colleges have them (but IMHO, students in younger grades really shouldn’t). Whether we choose to embrace their potential in the classroom (where they’re great for interactive polling, tweeting, research, and more) or simply leverage them as remote learning content access devices for use outside of the classroom, we should be planning for how to make the most of their availability and powerful capabilities. Get more ideas here: “10 More Resources For Getting the Most Out of Cell Phones and Smart Phones in School,” and here “Embracing the Cell Phone in the Classroom With Text Messaging Assignments”.
4. The Gamification of Education: There are many reasons why this idea is gaining momentum including the, “… Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Learning Benefits” that it can deliver. The Khan Academy is using it, TechChange is leveraging gamification (and many of the other ideas in this list) to facilitate social change, and higher education is working to embrace it. In “Tailoring the Classroom of the Future With the Fabric of the Past,” we are reminded how the concept has been around for years. Students love rewards and other gaming mechanics, they are engaging and inspiring. Educators – get your game on!
5. Emergence of free online courses and the move towards providing credits and credentials for them: If you pay even the slightest bit of attention to the education media, you can hardly miss the mention of MOOCs (“Massively Open Online Courses”) in one article after another over the last few months. Of course, MOOCs are just one option for learning – not all free courses are MOOCs (and not all MOOCs are free). A particularly intriguing aspect of this discussion is the move to provide formal credit or credentials for these courses, which seems to be picking up traction. This week alone, we saw these news pieces about groundbreaking innovations in this area: “A First for Udacity: a U.S. University Will Accept Transfer Credit for One of Its Courses,” and “edX Offers Proctored Exams for Open Online Course”.
6. 1 to 1 and BYOD initiatives: The 1 to 1 device concept is also expanding daily. Many educators feel passionately that it makes a lot of sense (teacher Mark Pullen made his case in this article). There can be no argument that putting a laptop or tablet in every student’s hand in a classroom can provide a powerful learning tool, but of course, careful training, planning, and implementation are essential to success and to the wise use of the funds required to do this. For the many schools that are budgetarily challenged to pull this off, there is always the BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) approach. While my post this summer about the downsides of this tech concept garnered a fair amount of controversy, I have come around to the idea that with the right approach, proper support, and logical classroom objectives, it can be a very functional way to put tech tools in our student’s hands.
7. Student Response Systems, polling apps, and other synchronous tools to increase interaction and engagement in both online courses and ground courses: Again, we have an idea that can be so engaging and that overlaps with some of the other tools and techniques in this list. Smartphones and tablets can work as SRS tools, and a history of responses can provide learning analytics that help teachers focus on which topics need the most reinforcement (an idea that also happens to go hand in hand with the flipped classroom). SRS’s have been around for years and they have been gradually gaining popularity as a classroom tool, but what I find to be ‘emerging’ about the concept is the move towards using more common, less proprietary devices to access these classroom interactivity and assessment apps, and the growing number of innovative applications like Lecture Tools andLearningCatalytics (more on these exciting apps to follow here in the coming weeks!).
8. Cloud apps for file storage, notetaking, and more: While Internet tools like YouTube and Google Search have been useful cloud apps for years now (although not commonly referred to as such), other cloud apps are seeing explosive growth, encouraged by the increasing tendency for computer users to have multiple devices from which they want to access their own personal content. File storage tools like Dropbox and note taking apps like Evernote have become wildly popular because they excel at letting users get to their digital ‘stuff’ from whatever device they have in their hands. This idea has really taken off over the last year, and cloud apps like these are beginning to appear with some consistency in lists ofteacher’s favorite software applications.
9. OER (Open Educational Resources): While OER has not necessarily seen the increases in popularity and adoption over the last year that some of the technology-based ideas above have, it continues to hold tremendous potential, and only more so as the quality and quantity of offerings continue to improve. OER is a transformational idea that can play an important role in changing the nature, availability, and costs of educational materials, content, and tools. Stop by the OER Commons or check out “Learning about OER – Open Educational Resources” to learn more.
10. Learning Analytics: We round out this list with yet another technology that has really begun to gain momentum over the last year or so, and is clearly focused on enhancing learning outcomes by leveraging data. After seeing the phrase pop up repeatedly in ed tech media, we started our investigation with the article, “How Are Learning Analytics Being Used in Education?” A month later we delved into “Exploring the Khan Academy’s use of Learning Data and Learning Analytics”. Learning Analytics may only be emerging from its infancy, but the growing number of institutions and organizations working to deliver and leverage the concept positions it as one of the top technologies that can help to deliver on the promise of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of instruction through the thoughtful and informed application of information technologies.

Map of the decade

An interesting discussion with fellow students ensued when presented with these future predictions.

The collective intelligence description

In a world of infinite information and diversity of opinion we will not drown, but harness our dormant 
potential to be more together than we are individually. Crowdsourcing platforms and aggregators of insight will be part of the planks that create the reality of a global brain, expressing our destiny
brought discussions about the importance of teaching students strategies for dealing with all of the information they now have access to. Information literacy skills along with 21st century skills of collaboration, communication and safe/responsible use of information were topics which were raised.

Other groups focused on the reputation economy, with the importance for future employment of students monitoring carefully their online postings. Augmented humans was another area of interest with a concern being raised about the changing nature of learning should all information be presented through new tools such as wikitude and Google goggles. What happens to student wonder and the quest to search for information?

ICT in Everyday Learning: A Toolkit for Teachers

Recently published in a Scootle newsletter, the site with links below should prove to be a very valuable resource for teachers and school leaders. Based on the TPACK framework it provides many examples of strategies that teachers can use to better integrate technology in the various subjects.I think it could be a really useful resource for restructuring our digital literacy curriculum and aim to use the resources in the Technology link to create something which can be embraced and embedded by the wider teaching team.

If you are looking for resources and ideas to help you integrate ICT into your classroom, the ICT in Everyday Learning: A Toolkit for Teachers  website is a great place to start.

The website contains learning activities, assessment tasks and teaching and learning sequences aligned to the Australian Curriculum in English, mathematics, science and history, to demonstrate the use of ICT in the classroom.

The activities are designed for Foundation to year 10 and are supported by resources and information about ICT tools and devices. The site also features a section on how to drive the implementation of ICT in your school.

The project was funded by DEEWR through the ICT Innovation Fund. Education Services Australia worked with professional organisations and universities to identify relevant content and develop the professional support materials. The materials were trialled in 20 schools across Australia in March and April 2012 and teacher feedback was very positive. 

The website can be accessed through Scootle (www.scootle.edu.au).

E-learning week 5

• What is meant by digital literacies?

Digital literacy is the ability to read and understand information presented in digital form. It may be a website, a shared document, video, audio file or image library. People need to use the same skills that they would have traditionally to demonstrate literacy, (e.g. spelling, comprehension and sentence structure), but with digital media there are often multiple text types included.
I found this reference to Lessig's idea of remix which helped to explain why this sits at the high end for complexity in the digital literacy matrix
http://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1-literacies-on-a-human-scale/lankshear-and-knobel-remix-lessig/

• What opportunities and challenges do digital literacies present for educators?

I am particularly interested to learn from other teachers whether digital and information literacy are taught as stand alone subjects in their schools or if the skills are taught through the normal curriculum areas - embedded? We currently have students undertaking two separate courses one focused on the information literacy side taught by teacher librarians and the other on the digital skills side where students are given direct instruction on useful skills in the essential programmes.

• How important are the various new literacies?

I saw Jason Ohler give an amazing presentation on the new literacies at a conference I attended last year. He has conducted some very interesting research in this area and in particular the power of storytelling and art being critical elements in the discussion.