Garry’s Rambles

Stephen Downs’ post regarding Mike Seyfang’s post regarding Gerry White’s presentation to the CEGSA conference …phew thank god for the RSS aggregators as they filter the rich information world out there. Mike’s post regarding his experience in connecting to a large secure and ‘locked’ enterprise WAN illustrates why perhaps teachers are reticent to explore and experiment with new and emerging technologies given the difficulties that Mike had…and Mike knows what he is doing!!

Gerry, former head of education.au and colleague spoke of the concept of ‘openness’ and this applies to many facets of how technologies are used today. (Not sure if Gerry’s presentation is available) Web 2.0 services are more open and collaborative and yet our educational systems are locked into the ‘fear’ of the litigator. As Mike suggests the response to this fear is more complexity for teachers and students in simply doing things that they have access to at home.

Are there better models for reducing the risk of litigation, improving safe access and ultimately using the technologies as they we designed to be used as collaborative tools for knowledge building and sharing - core learning activities. In the meantime, there is a grassroots interest in the use of Web 2.0 technologies by teachers. I am convinced that good teachers are developing great ways to use technologies to engage, motivate and improve the learning process. In some cases, teachers need to go around the system hurdles. We know students are pretty good at this as well.

In looking at the CEGSA programme and the recent Catholic Education Conference, I see many teachers (current and past) sharing their enthusiasm for the web. Let’s see more of this.

I hope Mike is not too scarred from his experience!!