Can’t you see it? It’s the fact that you’re asking for a report which provides the evidence; in the same way that SCITAS is preparing a report for some poor bewildered bureaucrat in DEEWR.

Most of this change is based around encouraging the guys who produce reports to create an interactive space where they are SEEN to be talking and collaborating. You can’t expect children to collaborate when there is nowhere they can see their teachers sharing the preparation of their courses. (reports,etc).

As they do, the engineers of the Next Generation Networks can start to do the clever stuff like federated Sign ons (to similar applications), etc.

Why don’t you do a Google on ‘Internet Protocol Suite’? You’ll notice (on the wikipedia page) that education.edu.au only plays in one corner of the application level. That’s a very small and shallow sandpit.

There are really 3 approaches you can take with disruptive devices
- ban them like the Harvard professor did with laptops in his lecture theatre because he was sick of seeing unresponsive blue-illuminated faces
- tolerate them but try to make your lessons so appealing that their beckoning is mitigated
- use them, whatever they are, to increase the student’s engagement with whatever is going on. The latter can cause huge pressures on the teacher though

Thanks for your comments. In relation to Simon’s comments re me.edu.au, we’d love this to become the defacto facebook for educators including students, but in Australia the states/territories take responsibility for student well being and services. Therefore, we are not the decison makers on such issues….but we have had signficant interest in me because it is easy to use and you become productive in seconds.

Re Alexa’s comments on FB. I have heard that employers are searching FB as part of the checking process for new applicants. Don’t know how extensive this is and whether as you suggest, some may actually look positively on their activities. danah boyd would say that those kids at risk offline will be at risk online and so I actually think we need to be careful in labelling all kids when a small percentage are actually doing inappropriate things.

Garry

The great pity is that education.au have had such an opportunity, for so long, but the broadcast paradigm has its inhabitants rooted in yesterday. Each blog in this domain is a private broadcast channel, where any reader can get an idea of what its inhabitants think, individually. But nowhere is a reader pointed at an interactive space, where “we” (or even “they”) might develop a general consensus of what needs be done, and when. No where is there a place where a joint strategy (between other domainal inhabitants) might be hatched.

The truth of the matter here is that the older generation has been dumbed down by years of sitting in front of the box. Probably because they’re exhausted from trying to get small people to live in a rapidly receding world = delivering an education.

Come on Garry. When are you going to start using this stuff? When is me.edu.au going to be something which every student is offered?
When are education.au’s inhabitants going to stop reporting on what’s going on, on their blogs, or writing another report for a .gov.au dept (for 25c), and start being a bit sociable?

Rule No !. We learn from what people do, not from what they say or report. All I learn from these blogs is how remarkably unimaginative, and how locked into their old routines, education.au’s inhabitants are.

…. change in education is caused by the shift to more open networks and new connections.

Teaching is the process of engaging within (established or institutional) networks. Learning is the process of engaging between or across (e or I)networks.

Conceptual networks are frameworks we use in order to develop an understanding of firstly, an area of general knowledge and then, specialised expertise. It’s how we go about selecting the ideas which we choose to connect.

Social networks are a framework of tools chosen by people to connect with other (locally or globally) in attempts to develop knowledge and share an understanding, as a group/team/committee, and (hopefully) with a larger community of interest.

In the most people’s past experience we received our information largely in books, radio and broadcast TV formats; media which required a producer between people. Today we get information in similar formats, delivered through internet protocols, and increasingly produced by more social(able) networks.

What happens when influential media tools shift from the old (teaching) institutions to new learning communities? Teachers are mediators, enablers and amplifiers. Governance is altered. This shift will dictate the shape of our future institutions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am similarly positive about the report’s proposed direction. However I have some concerns about how easy it will be to implement, and whether it will be enough to help Australia compete with other countries. My comments are in a report for the MBS Center for Ideas and the Economy (http://works.bepress.com/kwanghui/12/)

Best rgds

kwang

Thanks for your comment and its true that this paper really does set the sails in the right direction for a more open, collaborative and responsive environment. The trick will be in its implementation and I hope they do see that there are organisations which they have invested in that have been doing this for sometime.

Garry