Alan Hird, Director, Professional Learning Team at the Department of Education, Employment, and workplace relations (DEEWR) spoke about the relationships that have been developed to govern the DER. He spoke particularly about the Australian ICT in Education Committee (AICTEC) which is taking responsibility for determining the priorities for the spend of the DER. AICTEC is establishing a sub-committee to look at professional development. This committee called ‘Teaching for a Digital Age’ will take carriage of professional development priorities. Alan indicated that a survey undertaken by Monash University in 2006 indicated that approx 20% of teachers want to know how better to interact with parents, and more recent survey indicated this had grown to over 80% of teachers.
But teachers want is not necessarily a top down approach. They are looking for support to enable a grassroots up revolution as well. A revolution that helps then to ‘connect’ with the community, their kids and engage them in learning that is authentic and relevant. This is not a one size fits all approach, in fact its very much about personalised learning.
Thanks to Derek Wenmouth, who linked to a resource ‘100 helpful web 2.0 tools for every kind of learner’ where the authors have arranged tools according to learning style. We need more of these types of resources that help students and teachers choose the appropriate tool for the appropriate learning situation. A web tool wizard for teachers and students.
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