Forum themes were regeneration and recovery; skills/learning and preparing learners for a global society; all focussing on education and technology. The bias was towards early childhood, schools and VET although there was a HE presence.

The forum was arranged with plenary sessions then breakouts between Ministers and experts. I attended a mix of the two.

The forum was opened by British PM Gordon Brown who launched a new scheme to fund computers and broad band access in disadvantaged households following some convincing evidence of the benefits.

Themes emerging from the forum included:

* A determination by countries to maintain high levels of investment in ICT’s for learning despite the GFC
* A strong view that the full benefits of ICT wont be realised until teacher’s confidence and practice are enhanced. Teacher competency standards (eg. UNESCO ICT Competency Framework) and drivers licences were regularly cited as priorities.
* Redesigning assessment to fit a 21st century skill set was seen as vital

The UK is concentrating on an holistic approach to child family and education, digital inclusion, engaging parents and on-line assessment.

The USA is looking to a national education technology plan, content interoperability standards and search, and effective benchmarks.

Europe is very active in developing public private partnerships, classrooms of the future research and student engagement in maths and science.

India is developing a national open school to complement IGOU whilst China has a new project to deliver broadband access to 95% of its schools.

All are placing more emphasis on skills and further education (our VET) Developing world issues include dealing with the 72 million young people who don’t get any schooling, low bandwidth and institutional strengthening.

The World Bank, UNESCO and SEAMEO discussed various strategies to improve teacher capability, improve participation particularly for girls and investment in the early years. Many developing countries have skipped use of computers and gone straight to hand help devices.

Imagine being responsible for education in Nepal. Third poorest country on the planet, few roads, largest mountains and a population speaking over 110 different languages. I met that person and was in awe of his passion, energy and insight into what needs to happen.

As far as tactics are concerned I loved the Philippines’ strategy for remote islands delivery called ‘text to teach.’ This involving preloaded video on a mobile which can be uploaded to a screen in the classroom.

There was an analysis of the Korean success story in embedding ICT in learning and teaching. The key principles were stated as:

* Political will and leadership
* Continuity of policies and programmes
* Stakeholder participation including parents, students and industry
* Sustained investment in infrastructure and capacity building.

I have notes from other country presentations including Lithuania on higher education reform, Khazakstan’s modernisation programme; a report on progress regarding Malaysia’s 2020 strategy; Finnish, Norwegian and Singaporese initiatives and activities of the Qatar Foundation. DEEWR Secretary Lisa Paul gave an Australian report. Some of the plenary sessions are available at www.latwf.org

There were some great presentations and workshops including an international collaboration on notschool.net the programme education.au is facilitating in Australia. UK and USA researchers (read students) and mentors (read teachers) now have a successful international on-line collaborative network.

Futurelab UK gave a presentation on their 3 year project to consider what education might be like education 25 years from now www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk I am wading through the reports and will blog on it soonish.

There was a major discussion around assessment and embedding generic skills. The 21st Century Skills Assessment Project managed by our own Barry McGaw gave a progress report being a year into its 3 year term and now includes Australia as a member country. www.atc21s.org.

There were also commentaries on developments in assessment from Finland, Singapore and UK as well as initiatives from the international testing agencies regarding PISA, TIMSS PIRLS and ICCS.

GENIE is an informal group of education networks that has been in operation for some 5 years. GENIE was initiated by education.au, Europeanschoolsnet, BECTA UK and CoSN USA. GENIE is used to swap ideas, programme initiatives and to discuss issues of common interest in a no holds barred environment.

At this GENIE meeting which coincided with the forum we also met with a wide range of philanthropic trusts regarding future collaboration.
A meeting at CoSN’s conference in Washington in March will hopefully confirm some specific arrangements.
At the end of GENIE we met Tony Blair to discuss his global citizenship project as part of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

 I then recall my late wife talking about how she was corresponding with colleagues back in the US of A using her university computer. Didnt think much of it at the time. I then had the pleasure of using an IBM intranet system that required programming skills and which gave real meaning to the work ‘cluncky’   Many managers would wait anxiously by their machine each morning to receive the daily prognostications from the big boss. Ho hum.

I still recall running a rather large education department when, in 1995, I still had no reason to have a computer on my desk or so the IT manager said. At the time we were struggling with setting up an executive information system. I think they are still looking for one! In the good ol nineties we used our Commodores, a phone and sometimes a fax to deliver distance education. Worked pretty well I thought at the time. In that era I was a board member of the now defunct Open Learning Technology Corporation, the forerunner of education.au limited. At the OLTC we had long discussions about ‘connecting up’ education systems across the country. Yet 15 years later its still not possible due to firewalls!!

In 1996 I did some consulting for the UK government and bumped into a group of education people at Cambridge who showed me this email thing. I found the whole experience both intimidating and exciting at the same time.

In 1999 I had my first internet system paralleling an old intranet. Thank heavens for Y2K!

In 2002 I had, sadly, to sack someone for inappropriate use of the internet. In 2007 we hosted an Australian workshop series by Jimmy Wales the inventor of Wikipedia. I rate Wikipedia and search engines like Google as some of the most extraordinary, and important world events of my lifetime. Last year I met Tim Berners-Lee whose vision for the world wide web remains both exciting and undiminished. If only governments would free up their data and get out of the way!

Now one of my biggest challenges is controlling my email and my propensity to look at it all the time. I think its an addiction.

What’s next? Bring on artificial intelligence, we need someone or something to do the HB pencil stuff and read all those emails, postings, twits……..

What we do know from the much quoted McKinsey report on successful education systems is that valuing teachers to the extent that it is seen as a high status profession in the community is THE crucial element of success. Other related conditions apply of course like excellent pay and conditions, high quality pre and in-service professional development, substantial autonomy and an educationally meaningful accountability framework.

My report card for Australia would go something like this:

• Status- too low but some improvement recently
• Conditions- okay but insufficient to keep the best teachers teaching
• PD- the evidence for good practice is there but the practice is woeful
• Autonomy- yes in higher ed but poorly resourced; drowning in process with VET; and lets see what the national curriculum and assessment process brings in schools
• Accountability- A big ‘F’ but with new institutions to measure and monitor in each sector we are in for an interesting time.

Again happy world teachers day. I will definitely be having a shiraz and trying again to remember the 60’s.

The conference included showcases by schools on how they have applied open source generating substantial cost savings and flexibility in applications.  Also notable was the extent to which open source has been taken up in developing countries - necessity being the engine of invention.

There is a link on the OpenEdge site to both the Prezi (above) and the video taken on the day.

I summarised the latest programmes from around the world and posited a series of challenges for educators and policy makers. Interestingly, much of the feedback at the session focused on teacher frustrations with site blocking and the lack of technician support when problems arise.

My presentation is embedded below, and also available online here.

These cases are reminders of the urgent need to educate site users, and young people in particular, of the importance of safe use of social networking sites and the internet generally. There are some excellent resources available like the Australian Communications and Media Authorities cybersmart site 

http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/

My greatest concern is the tendency of many schools to simply ban the use of social networking sites and parents to assume that what their kids are doing is appropriate. I know that schools are pressed to do so many things these days but the importance of the internet in our daily lives is such that safe use issues cant be ignored. The Commonwealth government is providing resources to schools to deal with cybersafety. There are some great models out there like Superclubs Plus. Please stop banning and start educating!

Parents are a vital part of the equation. Engage with your child in their net life. Talk about safety and privacy. Help them see the benefits and how to avoid the dangers.

We have all heard of the huge potential power of the web and collaborative processes like the wikipedia phenomenon and so on. But recently I have had first hand experience and it blew me away!

With colleague and collaborative tools guru Kerrie Smith I had the task of developing a strategic research and policy paper on the complex and vexed question of pre-service teacher education. There was little money and even less time to complete the paper.

So we web 2.0ed it. We started with some traditional desk top research some web 0.0 phone calls to mates across the world then it all happened. Kerrie tapped into existing on-line groups with an interest in the area, established some on-line chatter, ran a series of on-line surveys of teacher academics, teacher mentors and pre-service teachers, created some case studies and in a trice we had high quality opinion and in depth commentary from over 500 people with a direct interest.

Naturally this didn’t follow scientific research method. But the data obtained resonated strongly with previous research by education.au and others and gave us a wealth of insights which we have turned into policy proposals that are radical and very exciting. 

Welcome to web 2.0 a different world.

The outcomes in terms of movement to formal learning (mostly in the VET area) and employment are quite incredible. Notschool.net is a scalable and sustainable model of intervention with huge personal family and public benefits. The founders Jean Johnson and Jonny Dyer are quick to point out that any activity in Australia needs to be tailored to Australian conditions and that is exactly what we propose to do.

Interest from a national roadshow last week with Jean and Jonny far exceeded our expectations. Now its down to getting a project together. The company has appointed Mark Tranthrim-Fryer mtranthrim-fryer@educationau.edu.au to work with interested parties to, hopefully, having a programme up and running by the middle of 2010. 

The visit is the culmination of a series of informal discussion that have been held with Jean since 2006.

Notschool.net is an internet based virtual on-line community that offers an alternative to conventional classroom-based education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, can no longer cope with school or with complementary provisions such as home schooling or specialist units. Reasons for young people’s inability to attend school include illness; pregnancy; bullying; phobia; itinerancy/homelessness; reluctance to learn; disaffection; exclusion; drug abuse and; sexual abuse/ family violence.

The aims of notschool.net:

• To re-engage young people in learning
• To rebuild confidence, self-esteem and social skills
• To provide an accredited pathway into further education, life-long learning and further qualifications

A key national objective is to ensure that all young Australians receive a comprehensive high quality education. In this context there are considerable efforts being made to maximise the numbers of young people receiving 12 years of school education or training. Whilst school retention rates are improving there remain a significant number of young people who leave school well before year 12. In this later cohort there is a group who, for a host of reasons, are unable to attend school even prior to the statutory leaving age. Education jurisdictions systems and individual institutions have a range of programmes aimed at disaffected youth. However there is a group who either miss out on these programmes or are unable to effectively engage with them.

In the United Kingdom this group of young people not at school totals over 100,000. In 1998 an action research project was funded to establish a new programme to address the educational needs of these young people. After several years of trials and evaluations notschool.net is now an established ongoing and highly effective programme to re-engage young people with learning. By 2007 notschool.net had over 1000 participants and with 96% achieving some form of formal accreditation. Notschool.net operates as a not for profit private organisation.

Education.au Limited has been developing a proposal for an Australian version of notschool.net for the past year. Next week Jean Johnson and Jonny Dyer will visit Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, and Melbourne, and participate in a number of seminars and workshops.

Useful Links:

http://www.inclusiontrust.org/notschool/

http://www.edutopia.org/jean-johnson

http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/profiles/jean-johnson.html

Videos

http://www.heppell.net/bva/bva2/notschool.htm

http://www.heppell.net/bva/bva3/notschool.htm

http://www.heppell.net/bva/bva4/notschool.htm

http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/index.html

Look about halfway down the page- Stephen Heppell, and then Jean Johnson