21st Century Educator

I am a bit nervous making this call after reading and following Al Upton’s drama over at his blog. However, I am going to live by the old adage “easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Like Al a colleague and I are calling for mentors for our year 12 students who are about to launch a podcasting and blogging project. They are about to start a unit on Corporate Ethics in their Study of Religion unit. This is NOT a unit looking at these issues purely from one particular religious or philosophical view. We are after experts (which includes folk with life experience) to come and join the learning journey with our students. They will be blogging and podcasting their research. Anyone keen to encourage their learning and help them with their work will be warmly welcomed. The students are really excited about this activity and can’t wait to have their voice heard.

I will be launching the website with group blogs over our holiday break. If you think you would be interested please leave a comment here. I will be updating this blog with our progress. We welcome mentors from all parts of the globe. If you know someone who is particularly interested in the area of ethics please invite them along.

More coming soon - For now it is time to rest up!!

A couple of weeks ago at the ITSC conference I had the chance to meet some wonderful educators. During the conference discussions about an interesting concept for a conference began. Martin Levins announced thoughts for a conference in 2008 to look at how we can recognise creative thinking. More information on this conference proposal can be found here…. Can’t wait to hear more….

Well we are working away on a three day workshop on the Apple pro apps today.  Must say spending a conference just learning instead of presenting all day long is great!!  The workshops are going great….  Some great tips for Film and media teaching…. Our presenters are doing a great job in the absence of Marco Torres.  They have created a great wiki for our workshop which is certainly worth a look. 

Yesterday we had to come up with our plan to shoot a short film.  I have added our plan overview to youtube….  More to come on the whole process…..  Some wonderful ideas coming from these sessions - Very inspiring…..

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Below are links to various sites related to the PD Sessions I am conducting this week.

Podcasting Session Wiki

Podcasting Activity

Podcasting Activity 1 Photos Page

Podcasting Activity 1 Script

e-Portfolio Session

e-Portfolio Session Wiki

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Well as many of you know I moved on from my previous position earlier this year.  So 2007 will be a year of change (actually 2006 was a year of change as well - and now I think of it so was 2005!!).  I will be working back in the classroom for the rest of this year and working on a new project in the area of digital media technologies ready to launch for 2008 (more on that soon).

This time has allowed me to catch up on some reading…  An interesting article today in eSchool Online about a major study on the effectiveness of software applications on student test scores.  The article looks into the study results as well as presenting a fine argument about the appropriateness of the study conditions.  The lack of appropriate PD is used as the main argument for the negative results produced in the study. 

“Brief training at the beginning of the year is not sufficient. Ongoing and sustainable professional development that provides support and mentoring or coaching for teachers ensures that technology tools and resources are used in ways that lead to increased student achievement,”

The above quote from the article, I believe, sums up a greater need than simply making sure staff have the opportunity to attend PD sessions.  There is a need to have staff in the institution that are willing to learn and see change as well as staff that are passionate about the opportunities for change who are willing to mentor and coach.  Having software companies train our teachers is not exactly presenting a case for effective pedagogies and educational relevance.  These people are not qualified to meet the needs of students. 

There is also the point of how we decide what is quality educational software and not.  There is a sad case that I witnessed over and over again as a classroom teacher, when parents would spend huge amounts of money on software programs for their children who were struggling with a subject area.  Quite often this didn’t help and the students who were struggling simply needed more one on one attention from a tutor or even their parents.  Software applications promising to deliver results in such a short period of time are like weight loss fads that promise to have us all trim and terrific in 10 weeks of doing nothing more than popping a pill!

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There has been a great deal of discussion over here in Australia about educational reform.  I thought these thoughts maybe of interest to local and international readers.  Given that we are heading into an election year this year we have the federal politicians presenting their education policies….  For those that don’t know we have a separate education system for each state here in OZ.  That basically means there are 7 different curriculum boards etc…  This has always been an issue in a nation that has a fairly transient population (everyone is moving to my town - Gold Coast). 

The first issue that I would like to share some thoughts on is the argument of having 1 national curriculum.  In this day and age there is a need to have a nation wide curriculum that is designed and created by a national representation of educators.  While I am a fan of having a national curriculum I certainly can’t see our politicians getting it right.  In fact it bugs me that decisions on education and what/how students will be learning are made by politicians who have little to no experience in the field.  If I hear or read another article quoting a politician saying that “In my day we did….. and it worked well.”  That just rings alarm bells with me.  Sure maybe there are particular things from the past that we should look at in education reform, however, students today and the learning environment (just to name a few) are completely different.  You are not going to make an impact by changing the school system to something that resembles a system of the 1950’s.  The chart below tells us so much on what effect school is having on our students.  I grabbed this off the US Apple Education site….  I don’t think students here in Australia would be too different to this….

Better still, why don’t these national political committees that are setup actually ask students what they want and look at how the students are best learning.  However, I guess that wouldn’t be popular because the students can’t vote!!  How about addressing the problems of the increased number of young enthusiastic teachers (the ones that connect with students) who are leaving the profession in droves.  Perhaps that may answer a few questions around educational reform? 

Some weeks ago I was angered to read an article in our paper that suggested that we needed to bring back streaming of classes based on academic performance.  Our state education minister believed this was a great idea and was going to extend the bright minds of our state and help the students who are struggling.  What annoyed me more than the fact that the research done in this area actually proves this is a failed method of teaching, was that the only other opinion sorted by the paper was that of the chairman of the Parents and Citizens group!!  Oh my we are going to let parents and politicians tell us how to run schools.  Imagine for a moment what that would look like?!!?!?!? 

When I hear the thoughts of national standarised testing coming into this country I also cringe.  All we have to do is look over to our friends in the US and realise that these systems only create students who become good (or not so good) at recalling facts.  Once again, an idea from our politicians.  When will our decision makers realise that a complex system such as the educational process will not fit neatly into a little box.  The workers of the future need to have skills that are much more demanding than being able to recall facts. 

I am going to expand on this further in the near future….  Thoughts????

On another note…  Still looking for a new job….  On the bright side, I have more time for study and my blog!! 

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Getting ready to head off to ACEC.  I fly out tomorrow morning (6:30am flight - Ouch) to get settled in and setup for my presentation.  I am presenting at 2:30 on Monday in the Rainforest Room.  Just puting the final touches to my presentation….  Still a tad nervous about it all but I will just give it my best shot and see how folks respond.  The presentation has evolved some what since the writing of my innitial proposal.  I guess that is just the nature of the topic and the rapid pace in which things are changing. 

I am looking forward to meeting as many people as possible and getting an opportunity to see what others are doing in the wonderful world of EDtech.  Trust everyone has safe travels up to cairns.  Those who can’t make it, I trust you will be following the blogging going on through hitchhikr.

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Sitting down at Starbucks (yes Dave Starbucks is in Australia) working away on the ACEC presentation.  Just came up with an interesting idea - Thanks to a comment from Dave Warlick.  I am working on a Podcast that goes through the steps of creating a blog and podcast from scratch.  Something that teachers could use as a tutorial to get them started.  I then plan to demonstrate it live in person from my presentation area.

The good news is that there is going to be free wirless for all conference goers this year!!  Also just added a neat feature to my phone that gives the option to send photos to flickr with a menu option that pops up once you have taken the picture. 

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I am placing some finishing touches to my ACEC presentation (Australian Computers in Education Conference). I have added some graphics here that I am using in my poster presentation to help explain some of the concepts of using Web 2.0 (particularly podcasting) in learning programs. I have tried to answer the How and the Why questions around Podcasting and then tried to tie that back to web 2.0 tools in general. It is important for me to give the impression that this is something that is worth while integrating into classroom practice.

First of all the how… I have two diagrams here. “Preparing for a podcast” is my attempt to give an overview of the thinking that teachers must do before attempting to implement podcasting as a learning tool.

I have tried to answer some basic questions and also outlined some questions for educators to think through. The next diagram is an overview of how I see5 steps to producing an educational podcast. Remember my aim here is podcasting a learning experience. Almost like using it as a reinforcement tool of the learning. This diagram gives some more food for thought and questions for the educator to think through.

To answer the second section of the presentation – The Why Podcasting. I have decided to do a deeper look into developing higher order thinking. 21st Century education is about encouraging those higher order thinking skills that students so desperately need to develop. This diagram is an attempt to demonstrate how producing a podcast addresses all levels of thinking (in this case Blooms Taxonomy has been used). I have suggested the questions to be answered and then given an example based on the learning program I teach about sound and music.

I would like to welcome some feedback on these ideas. This is a poster presentation I am giving for the ACEC conference. It is the first time I have presented a poster presentation. Actually, it is my first presentation at a conference like this!! All the feedback and ideas I can get from readers would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance….
The ACEC conference has been added to hitchikr with the tag acec06. Still trying to drum up interest in blogging the conference with hitchikr.

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I have been wanting to upgrade my blog to wordpress V2 but I haven’t got the courage to do it as I am too scared 18 months of blogging will disappear!! Anyone got any ideas on how it can be done easily? I have been using wordpress version 2.whatever for some projects at work and think it is great.

I have been on the road quite a bit lately, working with different schools and presenting to principals in New Zealand. I get to do a lot of thinking while on the road, but very rarely get to write or post anything worthwhile on the blog. I have been interested to read a number of articles recently about how we need to teach kids to think with higher order thinking skills. I have linked to a particular article I read some time ago from the Melbourne age. Some ideas on how technology can help students to develop these higher order thinking skills….

1) I think we need to see students learn through discovery. Allowing them to experiment and have a go at something. Letting them work out how to get something to work or solve a problem. Students traditionally don’t like reading instructions, which is not such a bad thing as the problem can still be solved through experimenting and trial and error. Hopefully, students will learn that instructions are there to make the process easier and quicker, however, I don’t believe following instructions actually develops higher order thinking skills. These skills are developed when the student is made to think through ideas and concepts that will all work together to solve a problem. For example, why do we think we need to teach students how to use a software package? Why not tell the students to produce example ‘A’ using software ‘B’ by the end of the lesson by experimenting with the software. Some students will go straight to the help menu, but in my experience many will click around the screen trying different things. Many of them are accessing prior knowledge of other applications they have learnt and are attempting to apply it to a new situation. Unfortunately, schools are too busy to allow the time for this type of learning to take place. I think our prep teachers got it right when they integrate such a high level of experimental play into the curriculum. This is actually the beginnings of higher order thinking skills.

2) Writing with technology has recently lent itself very nicely to having students higher order thinking skills developed. When students are introduced to the world of blogging they are launching themselves into a whole new audience. They have a new audience to write for, it is not a traditional audience, in fact there are new skills required to write to a global social network audience. Students need to apply what they know about writing to different audiences and almost create an appropriate genre for their blogging. If the engagement and interaction with the audience is happening, hopefully students will be challenged by their readers to, apply, justify, and reason their thoughts. I use to write comments back to students that would challenge their opinions – Basically, inviting or requesting further justification.

3) Simulation is a powerful learning tool that I believe is not harnessed enough in learning. Technology allows us the ability to simulate an event with all the required parameters with out too much trouble. A basic example of this is sim-city or rollercoaster tycoon. I had students last year that were hooked on these types of games. I believe with very little guidance from the teacher students can begin to analyse their strategies for the game or for particular parts of the game and then see if they can improve their strategy. Future lab in the UK has some wonderful examples of this with the use of GPS technology and a simulated African wildlife adventure.

Just a few thoughts that I have finally got down here. It is interesting to note that while we have so many experts calling for students to be taught to be critical and higher order thinkers we have an education world that is speeding toward standardised testing that does not test these skills in a manner that is at all accurate for a 21st century world. We have the research and the skills from quite old research such as Bloom, Gardner etc, however we have policy makers that believe we can assertain the brilliance of students for the world they moving into by making them sit tests.