21st Century Educator

I have started finding the time in my days to get writing on here more often. I am looking into some areas of formal study that will relate to my employment as well as my areas of interest. I received a suggestion yesterday from one of my readers that started the thinking along the lines of preparing our teachers for effective teaching in the 21st century. I write programs that are evolving into work programs that utilise technology in many different ways. My challenge is to write something that teachers will use and not feel like it is all too hard. That led me to thinking about developing some ideas that can help teachers see the value of these new tools.

If we think back a few generations of education there has been an evolution of tools beginning with the slide rule to the calculator to the graphic calculator to laptops, PDA’s etc etc. My first reaction to this is that teachers should just understand that it is part of the deal and they should just move with the times and make sure they keep up. However, if we take a step back and look at the evolution of technology tools in schools we have now entered an age where there is a new tool being marketed to education almost daily. The rate of change in technology is increasing and it is impossible to keep up with the change. It is not reasonable to expect a teacher to keep up with every new gizmo that is introduced into education. Someone like me and probably most that read this blog naturally keep up with the change and updates in educational technologies because it is a passion and interest. That is just never going to be the case with all our teachers. I have met too many innovative amazing teachers instructionally that just don’t have any interest in technology. Some of these great practitioners see technology as a distraction to getting their job done. I remember a teacher at my previous school who I regarded as a wonderful practitioner. Her students were truly inspired to learn and do better; however, technology was something she couldn’t see as a benefit…. I remember showing her how to delete emails off her system – She thought that was the only skill she needed!!  Made me laugh at the time but now as I reflect on it, I actually believe that the constant change and influx of technologies into this teachers world was only ever seen as something that needed to be handled as simply as possible (hit the delete key!!).

This brings me to some of the thoughts I have been having on the need for reform in the minds of our practitioners. Reform that comes in the way of helping them to see benefits as apposed to distractions. The example left by one of my readers was a school district that decided to go for a 1 to 1 laptop program. The PD consisted of teaching teachers how to open the laptop and turn it on. That is probably more PD than some schools give in that situation. However, as this reader mentioned it is time that we start proving to great teachers that this is a tool that will enhance their teaching and learning. In fact it is not the tool that does it, it is the teacher that uses the tool. I use the analogy of a carpenter and his tools. You could give me the greatest hammers etc etc but I am not going to build a house anytime soon. However, the tools in the right hands of someone who is skilled in the use of the carpentry tools is what will make the house. Many of our teachers have great skills in teaching and communicating and it is our job to make sure that they begin to see and use the latest tools. When a good teacher can see first hand what the tools can do I think we are on our way to having teachers teaching for the 21st century. A good teacher can’t help but use a good tool. The tricky bit is convincing them that it is beneficial.

I believe the next key lies in the fact that these practitioners are great at teaching the students of yesterday because they are comfortable with the tools of yesterday. It is important to teach them the basic skills involved at using the tools. However, I don’t think it is worth doing this until you have them onside in regards to the earlier point. Once a teacher can see the benefits in using a tool they will be much more willing to learn the necessary skills. Forcing a laptop program on teachers without demonstrating and convincing them of the benefits is going to create a culture of reluctance amongst many staff, particularly our experienced and skilled practitioners.

The third key lies in the way we construct and write our learning programs. This is of particular interest to me at present. As much as there is a part of me that desperately wants to say that we should have technology tools used everywhere and anywhere, I know that is not necessarily good teaching practice. In fact I believe the key is understanding that these tools only enhance a good learning program. The test that I am giving myself is simple – “Can this learning program be a good learning program without the technology?” In other words if I didn’t have access to the technology tools would this still be a valuable learning experience for my students. These tools should be seen as something that makes a good learning program a great one. They enhance what is already great teaching and learning experiences. I am not saying that with or without will make no difference. I believe enhancing learning with tools that our students are already using is always going to make the learning more effective. However, a learning program that attempts to take a good practitioner out of the picture and replace him or her with technology will ultimately fail and will not be a positive learning experience for students. I actually think a worthwhile activity would be taking some of the work programs that teachers have had for years and helping them discover the tools that will enhance them.

I am going to work on some more ideas in the coming days. This is still very rough, but I think that is the beauty of the read write web. Rough ideas get smoothed out as people contribute to the ongoing conversation.

Just taking some time out down at the local starbucks checking email and proof reading a 70 page document for work. Grabbed a coffee and jumped online to take a break for a moment and noticed a massive hit of spam on my blog. I tried setting up a graphical user login field but that actually mucked things up and I lost a whole heap of comments and no one could comment. It stopped the spam but also the ability for folk to comment. So I took it off and just wanted to see what would happen, well it didn’t take long for the spammers to hit me again. Does anyone know of an easy way to block the spam on a word press blog. I just about had enough marking 30 - 40 comments a day as spam in the moderation panel!! Help please?!?!?!

Thanking you in advance…..

Brett

Blogged with Flock

Ok so I am good at procrastinating - What educator isn’t?!?!?!  I started a masters in education degree a while ago.  Needless to say I have only completed 1/8th of the entire course.  I met with one of the lecturers from the uni yesterday and he conveniently mentioned the need for me to get moving on my m.ed studies.  However, I am not sure where to lead the study.  I don’t want to produce a bunch of work from my study that is generally either useless or simply a re-hash of someone else’s work.  Obviously, I want to relate my study to what I talk about here on my blog as well as the work I do each day in writing and presenting learning programs that are enhanced through the use of technology tools. 

Basically I am asking my reading audience to throw me some ideas.  What areas of tech in education do you think require some further thought and close study?  What would be useful to other educators?  I would plan posting my work on this site to share with others in a way that may be of some use to someone besides myself.  Leave a comment on the blog here or email me

Blogged with Flock

In this episode I go over the  cool new things I learnt at  a recent Apple seminar.  Click here to download Episode 20.

Please note that this is an enhanced podcast and is best viewed in iTunes 

Show links….

Profcast

Hitchhikr

Seedlings at Bit by Bit 

technorati tags: applepod06

The Apple podcasting seminar in Brisbane yesterday eventually got on the way after the 3 presenters were arrived late care of a delayed flight due to fog.  A great presentation that demonstrated the power of Garage Band 06.  Of course there was some discussion on the use of podcasting in the classroom, but I think the show stopper (for me at least) was the introduction of a great little app called profcast.  I tried to record the session so I could podcast it but I decided to leave that as the presentation contained a great deal of visual content.  In stead I am working on an enhanced podcast to show off this great little app.  At the moment this app seems to be something that is being used in higher education, however, I think there are some great k-12 uses for this app that I am going to experiment with. 

Stay tuned for my next podcast that I will be using this neat little app and going over some of the great things I learnt yesterday.   

Tech tag: applepod06

shirt

I had to blog this picture…. A message that I think I was sending to teachers when I was at school. 

Blogged with Flock

What we teach is sometimes dictated to
us.  How we teach though, should never be
dictated to us.  Many have heard the term
in relation to teaching students “Engage me or enrage me.”  As I develop learning programs for schools
and face the challenge of not only writing them but also teaching many of them
I have started a list of ideas that are becoming food for thought when writing
a learning program and deciding what activities to include in a program.  This is my table of engage V enrage.  What can we do that will engage students and
what can we make sure we do not do in order to avoid enraging them.  Imagine having this at the top of every unit
plan or learning program outline? 
Perhaps a third column entitled “engaging activity for this unit.”

Would anyone be interested in adding to
this list?  Perhaps I could produce a
wiki that starts developing this idea.

Blogged with Flock

Just installed flock.  I needed to see how all this works and just how student friendly it is.  A colleague told me I had to use it and see how it works. 

What do people out there that use this program think of it?

Blogged with Flock

Just found a great recording of a Marc Prensky seminar that was recorded earlier this year in Adeliede Australia. The education.au group had him present on using games in education. I had read a little about this idea and concept but never really got into it. Marc Prensky gives a great overview of the ideas in using video games in education and presents a very compelling argument for educators and parents. I have downloaded all the files including his PowerPoint and combined them all as one zip file. You can download the zip file here. The presentation has been broken up into 13 different mp3 files. Could be a great companion on the iPod for a long drive somewhere.

The education.au group that hosted this presentation, host a number of great events each year around Australia. I will be attending their next event in Sydeny entitled “So what’s changed? Technology, expectations, connections and collaboration…” I have added this event to HitchHikr using the tag edau2.0 and will plan to blog from the event.

Download Prensky’s presentation (Zip file with 13 mp3’s and PP). Tell me what you think by commenting here on the blog.

Tech tag: edau2.0

Just letting people know that I will be presenting at ACEC 2006. I have decided to accept an invitation to present a poster session on podcasting in education. I am focussing on creating a model of a learning program that integrates podcasting that could be taken by teachers and implemented into any learning program.

I have never done a poster session before and will be doing some research on how they work and looking for some ideas on how to best present a poster session. The conference looks like it will be a great event. Hope to see you there. If you are planning on being there let me know. I have added the conference onto Dave Warlick’s Hitchhikr site with the tag acec06. Now I am just hoping the conference will have wifi working in all areas. Can anyone help me out with that one?!?!

I will post more about my presentation in the coming months. In the mean time, if you have any idea how poster sessions work or what makes a good poster session, please let me know.

Tech tag: acec06
acec