Saturday, March 13, 2010

Notes from IDEA10 Conference


IDEA10 Conference (Melbourne, 11/12 March, 2010)

Katrina Reynen (DEECD Innovation, Vic)


No longer acceptable to have 2 lessons plan – 1 for technology; 1 without

teachers still focusing on blockers that prevent them adopting technology

digital education is about bringing people into classroom – not about Blackboard, LMSs, etc



teachers have not yet made the pedagogical shift



consultants report that teachers learn from each other (more than other occupations?)



employability skills = skills you need to succeed in work, AND be happy in life!!! eg collaboration, teamwork, etc



“be the connectors” (the conduits!)


Dr Larry Fruth (SIF Association) [SIF = systems interoperability framework]

Emerging Technologies to Address the Information Generation



“the global need to address 'global citizenship'



the teachers are the digital divide (or at least the purveyors of it!); kids use the Internet when they get home, not at school



LEARNING DESIGN = PERSONAL + ENVIRONMENT + SOCIAL



technologies promote converesations about teaching that didn't occur before!



Gordon White – Shared Service (ACT) in response to Larry:



interested in getting each student a unique personal identifier (eg an ID number)





SESSION: What Technology do Teachers Want?

CHAIR: Dennis McNamara


Panellist 1: Andrew Douch (Wanganui Park Secondary College)



5 questions to ask when evaluating new tech?



1) does it save time? Or is it quick/

2) does it enable me to do anything I couldn't do before?

3) Can I just pick it up and use now?

4) Desire path (students go where they want to go) eg phones and Facebook are things students want to do anyway

5) ?



Which tools answer these 5 questions?


referred to kids being part of a learning community, but should that be 'network



Pannellist #2: Dr Shirley Reushle (USQ)


sees herself as both 'technologist' and teacher

does what teachers want reflect what students want?

teachers come with “diverse values and beliefs”



Teachers want tech that

• supports and enhance learing

• make job easier

• easy to use (intuitive?)

• stretch imagination



teachers want:



• time

• safe places to practice (sandpits)

• JIT learning



Panellist #3: Harriet Wakelam (eWorks)

“there is a casual disrespect for content” (quoting Frank Furedi)

despite new technolgies fundamental needs of students don't change



the job of technologies and systems people is done when everything is done and it works seamlessly in the background



Question: if you use web 2.0 how can you keep copies of stuff outside the web?

Are eportfolios the answer? As long as they all talk to each other (ie interoperability)



how do we convince the media and wider society of the value of an open approach?



“a good teacher leaves their ego at the door” (Shirley); “teachers need to loosen up a bit”



education is being democratised (Douch) cf From Blogs to Bombs; the nub of the problem: the locked down/centralised/controlled systems v individualised/personal/decentralised/democratised nature of much of today's web



There is no privay anymore (source of quote?) - we need now to deal with the new public nature of private lives.



RESPONSE TO ABOVE PANEL

Can what teachers want be built?

Michael Kirby-Lewis (UNSW)



UNSW has moved from single LMS focus with a 3-4 yr cycle; now multiple technologies and continuous adoption/evaluation; focus now on the pedagogical needs rather than the tool



You are never going to keep people happy with one solution (therefore should TAFESA keep Janison and Moodle???)



David Appleby (Westone)



Moodle in WA has been adopted by school teachers (Janison was resisted) because they don't need the whole course up at once, they want full control over their content- ability to edit and contextualise. (This is Moodle's greatest strength.)



How come Moodle has been successful?


* OS, uncontrolled, non-system approach
* OU (UK) spent several millions of dollars on it!!! ????





SESSION: WHAT INFRASTRUCTURE IS BEING BUILT?
CHAIR: Dr Nigel Ward


Rodney Spark (eWorks)



estandards: “realising the full potential of elearning”



estandards has aided the development of LORN stuff, Toolboxes, accessibility (still content based), mobile content



estandards in training doc: http://e-standards.flexiblelearning.net.au/docs/2008-commonly-used-elearning-apps-v1-0.pdf This is a diff kind of standard – having some agreement about a commonly used tools – not interoperability type standards.



Bruce Rigby (DEEC Vic)



Ultranet - http://www.education.vic.gov.au/management/ultranet/default.htm a student centred electronic learning environment that supports high quality learning and teaching, connects students, teachers and parents and enables efficient knowledge transfer. It will establish a schools environment for the future that improves the educational outcomes of all Victorians.



James Dalziel (Macquarie)

ALTC Exchange http://www.altcexchange.edu.au/



looking at how research data can be stored/categorised/tagged/described so it can be found quickly



Moodle has community around it – thousands of tech people are part of it; passionate community of teeachers contributing to an iterative process.



James' Concerns:



1) Connection with Web 2.0 and LMS/SSO will probably not happen

2) broad uptake of LORs still not there

3) lots of duplication of big bucks infrastructure projects



Desires:

1) have nationally hosted cloud of apps that teachers can try on demand

2) open content and CC – increased use of



Greg Black (formerly ed.au now Education Services Australia)


data shows that a very small percentage of teachers are actually using technolgies in a way that makes a difference



SESSION: IF IT IS BUILT WILL WE PLAY? (Chaired by Jerry Leeson)

Olivia O'Neill (Brighton Secondary School, SA)



* Brighton has wireless across the school!!
* moved from low risk behavour to high risk
* have eliminated IT Coordinator position
* have adopted 24/7 laptops for kids ($350/yr)
* have used Alan Noble (Mr Google Australia) create an LMS called Gee Whizz; incoporates curriculum, content, student management





Colin Warner (Glenn Waverley Secondary School)

use ICT to transform teaching and learning practice

video shown full of shots of students in front of computers – this will not help those who oppose this approach

“connectivity into the home” - ????


'3 strike rule' – if a teacher experiences 3 tech failures they're gone forever



SESSION: HARVESTING EDUCATIONAL FLORA



Panel Chair: Stuart Tait (Learning Fed)

Paula Bray (Powerhouse Museum)



* Use of Flickr; everything CC licensed; users create mash-ups; re-use (and notify the museum)- great example of the benefits of sharing/giving/OER approaches/CC licensing
* have learnt that one size does not fit all!! as applied to licensing and copyright!!




Liam Wyatt (Wikipedia) wittylama.com
Handing out Paints


* “if you handed out paints on the street there'd be a lot more painters'! And then if you ban painting then you'll have lift off!
* Use wikipedia as a starting point for your research, not an endpoint
* everything on wikipedia is royalty free




QUESTION: we have heard about the huge success of Moodle (OS), Wikipedia OS)l iTunes Ed Store (free), Flickr (free). Why bother with systems, interoperability, standards, when free or OS stuff is already out there and in use.





DAY 2

SESSION: International Perspectives on Interoperability

Chair: Greg Black



includes things like import/export portability of UGC



Dr Rob Abel (IMS Global Consortium)



Lowering the barriers for the Next Gen of Teaching and learning – Now



* in terms of LMSs we are at the bottom of the evolutionary tree
* new IMS base assumption – the cloud is basic infrastructure
* new approaches (Common Cartrideg, LTI, etc) enables importing oof content into LMS, and other applications like Facebook – as long as the platform supports LTI
* we need the 'app store of education; or the iTunes of ed?



Peter Croger (Croger Associates)

Why is interoperability important?

* Interoperability is about the ability to work together; it's about connecting and sharing
* tensions that need to be balanced (good slide – need to chase it)
* Amazon, Apple, Google etc are not interested in working with ed directly – they go direct to customer. So 'standards work' is operating in a world divorced from the really big players



REMOTE PRESENTATION EVOLVING LEARNING – Gilly Salmon

(facilitated by Prof Philip Candy, USQ)



- the 'tree of learning'; an accout of the history of learning; Erasmus was in a sense the father of pedagogy (“On the Method of the Study”)

– the oldest Tweeter is 104


* pic of japanese school bus (pcs on board) [check this slide!]
* this is an Age of Transition
* predicts a renaissance for voice – iTunes, voiceboards, podcasts




Evan Arthur: “the Internet is a standard”



SESSION: Reflections on Technology Impact

Preety Agarwal (Learning Fed)



Scootle – repository for school resources



James Dalziel – LAMS

* world's leading learning design system; 80+ countries
* offers list of pedagogical approaches and advice on how you might use them in practice (a 'Pedagogical Planner')



Peter Higgs (Tasmanian Polytechnic)

Sagrada Familia (Barcelona); began in 1883 and is still being built; open source (ie publicly funded) < > parallel with the standards movement



SESSION: SHARING OUTCOMES, EVIDENCE AND ASSESSMENT

Chair: Nick Nicholas

Dr John Ainley (ACER)

thinks students and teachers will adopt the CoP model for mutual learning and support (would be nice if this is true)



Allison Miller

VET: 3000 RTOs, 200 of which are TAFEs that deliver 80% of the training

myapp (UK): students have access to data shared betw training org and govt


Heather Watson (Learning Fed)



* driver: whole new cohort of students with diff expectations
* all of the new national curriculum will have potential to be delivered digitally



Is the infrastructure in place now to share this kind of information?

Heather: infrastructure exists to share resources (ie inputs), but not outputs? She says if teachers want good resources in a hurry that they do go to LORs......

Standards people do the work so we don't have to.

Things have to be designed so things can be changed at a moment's notice; so flexible standards! ( a contradiction in terms?)



NATIONAL DIRECTIONS FOR DIGITAL ED AND RESEARCH

Evan Arthur (DEEWR)

Reflections:

we are an enormously long way from 'being there'; ie daily and ongoing effective use of ICT in classrooms

the complexity of what we are trying to do

Work has to happen on standards because

1) ed is a collective activity (philosophical)

2) the only way we can achieve 'scale' (practical)



Rodney Sparks

2 themes:


1) evolution – things in state of constant change; towards what? How do we accommodate tech that doesn't exist yet?

2) Sharing – web 2.0 exploits human desire to share

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