Posts filed under 'Conferences'
Simon and I have been working on the idea of co-creating a podcast for a while now, since we (kind of) met at Learning@School earlier this year. We’ve been working collaboratively online to set up a regular local podcast - somewhere we could share ideas about ICT, professional development, and any other issues arising that interest us as teachers in New Zealand. Our aims are more eloquently stated in the introduction of the first podcast. And here it is!
Edcast Episode 1: Understanding Digital Kids Part 1
Simon had the great idea of approaching Ian Jukes to see if he could record his recent presentation in Napier. Ian kindly gave us permission to do so. This episode is about 1 hour 28 minutes long.
From Ian Jukes Website:
“Ian Jukes has been a teacher, an administrator, writer, consultant, university instructor and keynote speaker. As the Director of the InfoSavvy Group, an international consulting group that provides leadership and program development in the areas of assessment and evaluation, strategic alignment, curriculum design and publication, professional development, planning, change management, hardware and software acquisition, information services, customized research, media services, and on-line training as well as conference keynotes and workshop presentations.”
Thanks to Simon for recording, editing and publishing the first Edcast. Our website will be up and running with show notes and links very soon.
May 23rd, 2007
At the International Confederation of Principals Conference in April this year, Education Minister Hon Steve Maharey spoke with Sir Ken Robinson about the need for education to cultivate creativity and innovation. Hopefully you will have seen the other video from his presentation at the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) Conference in 2006. Click here to view the video with Steve Maharey.
A quote that I picked out:
“… it’s partly that we have this very narrow view of intelligence and I think it’s because we have such a narrow view of ability, and we have such a big view of disability. This system, in a way, prejudices the talents of a lot of people. But it also, I think, marginalises some of the other talents those academically gifted have.”
I really like his phrase “a big view of disability”. We pride ourselves on having an inclusive education system, where the achievements of all are promoted. I do wonder though how many “academically gifted” students we are doing a disservice by ignoring, or not even looking for, their other talents. Do they even get a chance to discover them? Are we so keen to celebrate success that we don’t look beyond the superficial successes?
Are we the same as teachers? In what way are we disabled? Do we marginalise our own talents by subscribing to the status quo?
May 23rd, 2007
If you are lucky enough to be attending the ICP convention in Auckland 2- 5th April, you will be able to listen to Sir Ken Robinson on Monday 2nd April. I wish I was going… but I shall be away. And I’m not a principal. And I didn’t pay the $$$ to go.
If you do go, I’d love to hear what you think about his presentation entitled: Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. By the way, there are lots more articles, interviews and videos on his website than just the ones linked to previously.
March 14th, 2007
This video about creativity was shown by Marg McLeod at Learning At School. The video is about 20 minutes long and is very enjoyable.
It asks “Do schools today kill creativity?” There has been a move away from talking about the information/knowledge age towards creativity. Thus, people at these education conferences are talking less about how to deal with the abundance of information, how to be critical, analytical thinkers and move towards becoming more creative. Interestingly enough, the notion of creativity is not restricted to the traditional domains, such as The Arts, but across all curriculum areas i.e. how to be creative in science. This quote stood out from the article by Sir Ken Robinson:
“We argue that creativity is a function of intelligence and is as relevant to science, technology and the humanities as to the arts; that everyone has creative potential but that developing it requires a balance between skill and control and the freedom to experiment and take risks. Developing creative abilities calls for sophisticated forms of teaching and for relevant forms of assessment and accountability.”
“Mind the gap: The creative conundrum, 2001″
The full article can be downloaded from Amazon for a small fee, and some jiggery-pokery about your location. I find using the state code CA and zip code 90210 works beautifully. And who said popular culture never taught you anything? Speaking of which, if you haven’t checked out “Everything Bad is Good For You” by Steven Johnson, it’s well worth a read. Tonight I crack into my brand spanking new copy of “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman.
Over the last few days I’ve been preparing for the Principals’ Day for the ICTPD cluster and it’s been very easy to hunt out references, journal articles and wiki notes to supplement the video presentations. Thanks Web 2.0! Today I didn’t need to report back what I took personally from the conference, instead videos of the actual presentations could be used. The message is getting less diluted. Sure, it can be hard to find the good stuff out there because so many people are producing content, but once you have a quality starting point, there’s no holding back! The nature of referrals and recommendations are becoming increasingly important.
March 12th, 2007
I’ve been trawling through more David Warlick stuff and happened across my lovely friends at Pinckney Elementary and it seems that they’ve been learning about “Telling The New Story” too. Here are their notes. It’s great to be able to read several versions of the notes taken from the same presented material. Here is another link to Simon’s notes based on the presentation in Rotorua two weeks ago.
The Pinckney Elementary guys produce their own podcast called Geek-ed, which I have thoroughly enjoyed over the last 10 odd months. They are being their own authors, musicians, artists of content.
Based on listening to their podcast, Diane and I set up our own podpals with my 2006 Year 3/4 class. My kids sound so kiwi, their little accents are just too cute. Their learning was so exciting and they loved taking part in our cross-cultural exchange.
I love how you can create and maintain virtual relationships online. I love how you can connect and start to create your own network/community, give and receive comments from others. It makes it so worthwhile when you get feedback, knowing that someone is reading or listening. I had been wondering how you compete to get your audience’s attention and yet here are examples of networks that all synchronise in a beautifully natural way.
One last thought before the weekend, I know I’ve mentioned it before, but there is value to be had from starting a local podcast featuring NZ teachers. So, hands up who wants to do a weekly podcast? Leave me a comment and I’ll get in touch. We could do it over Skype. It doesn’t need to be restricted by geography. I am excited!
March 9th, 2007
I finally got round to watching the keynote that David Warlick gave at Learning@School07: “Telling The New Story”. As noted before, I missed this because I was setting up my room for the podcasting workshops that I ran.
I have busily taken seven pages of notes during the video. Seven pages!! So here are some of the main points picked out from the keynote:
- We can’t clearly describe the future, so how can we teach children for the future? What do they need to learn today for an unpredictable future?
- Moving the education system we currently exist/work within from a factory, industralised model to something creative, responsive, where information flows and is adaptable.
- We are moving from an industralised age to a creative age. We need scientists, mathematicians and technicians and the creative class e.g. artists, musicians, authors
- Information is increasingly networked, responsive, digital and flows without containers (away from solid state texts)
- Students must learn to be collaborative and co-operative so they can take part in a globalised economy
- Information must compete for the attention of its audience, much like the way products compete on a shop shelf. Therefore, we must teach students how to compellingly express their ideas using sound, images, animation and video.
- Teachers can no longer be gatekeepers of information. The defenses have been broken down. Teachers must educate students to ethically access information
- Students are viewing information as a raw material to access/process
- The notion of “literacy” must change. Students are currently more “literate” than their teachers.
This quote that I picked out from the video also resonated with me:
“… that’s how easy its become to be part of this global conversation and that’s what its all about. It’s becoming a global conversation where we all have a voice and we all have a story to tell and we all have something to teach. We can all be authors, artists, musicians… It’s why I tell audiences that while we continue to do the great job we’ve done for years teaching kids how to be good effective, responsible consumers of content - you know, readers and learners - we need to spend just as much time teaching them to be good, effective, responsible producers of content.”
To read what other people are saying about this presentation have a look at David Warlick’s Wikipage.
These ideas are just highlights of my seven pages of notes. I’m very keen to share David’s presentation with the principals in our ICTPD cluster. At just over an hour, it’s not too long and there’s so easy to listen to. In fact, I have come away re-affirmed and re-invigorated.
March 9th, 2007
I have had lots of positive comments about this Web 2.0 video that I used in my podcasting presentation last week at Learning@School. Several teachers have emailed me to ask for the link and mentioned they’d like to use the video in their feedback to staff about the conference. Is definitely worth watching and hopefully will spark off valuable professional dialogue.
March 2nd, 2007
I’ve had a chance to go search out some resources on David Warlick’s blog/wiki/website. I’ve flicked through the PowerPoint that he provides on using Gaming in Education. It was good to see James Paul Gee, author of the article about gaming in education from the TKI ICT Community site, was part of a video produced by Orange County Department of Education.
I particularly enjoyed these quotes picked out from the video by David Warlick:
“The worse thing a kid will say about a homework assignment is that it’s too hard and the worse thing they can say about a video game is that it’s too easy.”
“Kids will go to bed early when they are studying for a test, but they’ll stay up late to achieve the next level in a game.”
Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media MIT
From my online activities this morning I have some book shopping to do (or library lending):
“Got Game” by John Beck and Mitchell Wade
“The Kids Are Alright” by John Beck and Mitchell Wade
“Growing Up Digital” by Don Tapscott
February 27th, 2007
Learning@School, once again, was a great conference. There’s something different about this conference to uLearn. I wonder if it’s just that it’s at the start of the year and people are fresher or see more opportunities to implement ideas in the coming terms? With uLearn in the holidays in September/October, perhaps people are starting to become tired and think that Term 4 doesn’t present many opportunities to initiate new programmes. Perhaps there’s not the motivation/energy to get excited at that point in time? Anyway, Learning@School07 was very enthusiastically received by everyone I talked to.
First up I went to see some primary teachers presenting on TalkandWrite with Skype. The software allows you to interact with a piece of text over a Skype connection. The schools involved were sponsored by Sitech and had access to $1000 tablets which the students could use to write on. The younger students hand-wrote rather than typed, as it was easier for them. The older students discussed and edited the work by typing on the piece in a different colour. The students were in two different schools.
I was quite excited by the technology so went to search out cheaper options for the tablets. I found a Dick Smith branded one for about $80. I wonder how good they are? Either way, it looks as though both students could type in different colours. I’m going to mention to some colleagues that they should give it a go. As always, you have to ask, what is the purpose, what difference does this technology offer to the students’ learning. I’m still wondering if there is a significant difference between doing this and getting students to peer conference via traditional means.
On Thursday I had my presentation and it seemed to go very well! We had a 90 minute session in the morning, which was mainly me speaking, and then a lunch break. The session after lunch was a hands-on session and I was excited to see people come back early from lunch to start playing with the software. We were looking at Garageband to record podcasts and as there were PC people there too, I mentioned Audacity. A couple of people who had their laptops downloaded Audacity so they could practise straight away. It’s great that at ICT conferences all the networking etc is ready to go, and those people really benefitted from being able to download Audacity and play around with it rather than Garageband.
The only thing that I’m really disappointed about is that I missed seeing David Warlick do the keynote on Thursday morning because I was setting up my room for the breakout sessions. People were really buzzing about his keynote (and later, his workshops) so I am going to download his presentation notes from his website. Apparently, his keynote will be made available on the Learning@School website soon. Funnily enough, we both showed a Web 2.0 video in our presentations and I discovered that David Warlick runs the Education Podcast Network which is the main portal I recommended that teachers in my workshop access Educational podcasts through. Hopefully sometime in the future I will get to see David present in person.
Rotorua was as lovely as always and the new Energy Events Centre was a fantastic location to hold this conference. I managed to catch up with current colleagues and touch base with a number of new ones from around NZ. It was particularly interesting listening to the guy from Telford Rural Polytechnic discuss tertiary distance learning and the difference it is making in Otago. Working across a large physical area and smaller population presents challenges and opportunities we don’t have to contend with in the city.
A leisurely drive back in the sunshine on Friday afternoon capped off a couple of busy days. There’s always an incubation process needed after a conference so I shall put up more ideas/thoughts after some thinking time.
February 24th, 2007
I have been putting the final touches on my presentation for next week’s conference “Learning@School07″ and was researching to find easy ways for teachers to deal with the technical side of podcasting i.e. hosting and RSS. Some friends suggested PodPress which seems to be a plugin for WordPress but to be honest, that’s probably a bit technical for your regular teacher. I know that teachers will just want something easy and quick to use. I went and did a search for free podcast hosting and turned up switchpod.com and mypodcast.com. Switchpod offers a small free service but mypodcast.com looks fantastic - much like podomatic.com and as easy as using Blogger.
I’d really love to initiate some sort of regular local podcast something like Geek-Ed, where we’d have a panel of teachers/facilitators to discuss topics. The podcast could work as a way for diverse people to interact, perhaps some cluster lead teachers would like to share ideas and ease into presenting. It could be a way we measure changes over time, report for milestones for the cluster etc. I’ll have to bandy the idea around next week (along with my brand spanking new business cards!) and see how interested people would be at doing this.
February 16th, 2007
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