January 4, 2008 – 8:26 am
The new Rudd government have said they will mandate ISP’s to provide a ‘clean’ feed to everyone is Australia…that is one which will make children safe from pornography and violence. There is much debate in the media and blogosphere about the censorship issue.
However, in education, we have been grappling with the ‘to filter’ or ‘not to filter’ issue for sometime. Not long ago, the previous government attempt to provide filters to individuals met with some smart kids who took no longer that 30 minutes to find a way around it. As dana boyd in her presentation last year says ‘you build the walls, and the kids will fly planes over them’.
The issue is how do you get the balance right between helping kids to make a smart decision (about inappropriate material) versus a safe environment (well, it can never be 100% safe - take the playground for example) and then at what cost to education.
Already, education systems in Australia at the local and state/territory level provide filters of some sort. The decisions are made at the point of use and with varying degrees of success. One common problem is that filters are indiscriminant!! They filter the good stuff as well, and so very quickly you have to make exceptions to the rules.
I’d be interested in your views about ‘to filter or not to filter’…so write in and lets get some debate going here.
December 21, 2007 – 1:54 pm
Having just returned from Europe where I sat on a review panel for the European Commission, attended the GENIE(Global Exchange Network of ICT Educators) and EMINENT conference, and met with officials in England, Scotland and Ireland, I am left with the following impressions of the challenges we face in 2008.
Scaling change - Most countries around the world have invested millions in technology and yet it has made little difference to approximately 85% of practitioners and teachers in schools. And yet, there are excellent examples of innovative and best practice in every system I go to? Has the time come where social networking technologies will enable connections to facilitate knowledge sharing and build capacity for change?
19th century buildings, 20th Century teachers and 21st Century learning - there is an acknowledgement that technology has impacted signficantly on the skills and literacies of young people outside of formal education and what they bring into schools. Slowly, but surely across the whole sector we know we have to change….curriculum, assessment, organisational structures, past practices
Telling the story to parents and the media - recently in the UK, I was watching a morning TV program where they had experts discussing the importance of handwriting and whether cursive or print was quicker- for a moment I had to check what century I was living…but the TV presenters were absolutely convinced this was extremely important (it was in their day)…and then the next item was about the terrors of the Internet!! We need to do a better job at communicating to parents, Industry and the media that these kids today have something to offer that we can’t continue to ignore.
It is refreshing then to have a Prime Minister that I hope ‘gets’ the digital story. I look forward to 2008.
Have a Merry Xmas and New Year.
November 20, 2007 – 9:40 am
Laurence Lessig’s vodcast about the read/write web is a powerful argument for common sense and the law!!
Lessig uses three stories about 100 year old concepts which made sense 100 years ago, but don’t make sense now. And when our kids re-mix using technology that was not available to those who made copyright laws many years ago, he says quite powerfully ‘We cannot kill our kids instincts, we can only criminalise, we cannot stop them creating, but we can drive it underground, we cannot make our kids passive again, we can only make the pirates!
Please…… please have a listen to this recent presentation by Laurence on the Read/Write web.
November 12, 2007 – 9:12 am
The conference welcome by Susan Mann reinforced my view that teachers are important but we are facing quite different and complex issues for which we can rely on the past, but we must not resist the new ways of today’s world
David Puttnam reminded us, based on his experience, that 95% of students have poor experiences at school. Einstein said there is no reason why we should solve problems with the same tools that caused them
He said that the average age of teachers receiving awards for teaching was 24 years in the UK. He then asked’ How long will they remain in the-profession where change agents are not supported’?
He said that the challenge was not about technology but how technology can be used to assist students to understand their complex and interconnected world.This is the world of the digital native
He talked about how games can be used across a wide area of the curriculum. He said we most not let the disconnect between informal and formal education become a chasm.
So why is this message not getting across? Conservative media, lack of debate in community, self-servicing profession, 19th century assessment.
November 7, 2007 – 8:09 am
I came across this site Thinkfinity.org today which has been set up by the Verizon Foundation in the US. My curiosity stemmed from the very narrow debate of literacy in Australia to read/write and think, to a rich world in which technology opens up many more literacy options and a brave new world for our learners to comprehend and live.
What was interesting about this site was the vast amount of resources that they have been able to bring together for learners and teachers and to focus on the ‘unlimited’ potential that technology can bring. I was pleased to see that not only were the resources content focussed but also contained tools that were directed at enabling kids to think, hopefully at higher orders of thinking. Their lesson plans were comprehensive, but still very much instructor led, although I am sure that good teachers would never use such lesson plans verbatim!!
What also interested me is that Verizon would even do this? What a fantastic way for Industry to contibute to their own future by ensuring that learners are highly educated and have relevant skills for the 21st century. In Australia, we do not have the same sense of philanthropic responsibility….maybe there are tax breaks…I don’t know…but if education and Industry could work together in a coordinated way I am sure this would bring great benefit to society as a whole. BTW, there are some very good activities being undertaken in Australia (eg Microsoft’s PIL program, Intel’s Teach) but I wonder how we can make sure that the impact of these initiatives can be felt across the whole education and training sector.
October 12, 2007 – 9:45 am
Michael Furdyk, Co-founder and Director of Technology for TakingITGlobal.org, spoke at the ACEL conference today about his own experience of growing up a Gen Y over the past 10 years.
Michael has a wealth of interesting experiences like being able to work on his internet business as part of his school prgram and this led to his entrepeurship and interest in building interactive and social online systems. He was making $50,000-$60,000 per month through internet advertising at the age of 17.
His latest venture is TakingiT Global as site that encourages kids to get involved in global social issues. Its a great example of using the internet as a viral marketing tool to raise issues and get young people involved in the social issues. The internet as a political platform. One collection is the largest student digital art collection. Its worth a visit.
He shared a quote from the Partnerships for 21st century learning that ‘Today’s education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how the students live and how they learn’
October 11, 2007 – 8:40 am
I am at the ACEL conference in Sydney today listening to Pete Senge, Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The conference theme is about re-imaginging schooling.
From Wikipedia
School education occurs at a very important time…when kids are very open and transformative. However, the current insitutionalised learning, based on the industrial model very quickly transforms students into conforming students. He spoke of the internet being as revolutionary as the assembly line in the 1900’s on which current school models are based. So his argument is that we have the opportunity to transform the prevailing model of schooling as the assembly line is increasingly irrelevant. He said that schools based on the indutsrialised model were not about learning and when public education is under pressure, they go back to standards.
21st century schooling must be about change. If we don’t learn about climate change, what might the future look like? Problems like water are global and profoundly impacts on kids. Peter’s three principles of learning are:
- learning is what the learner wants to learn
- learning occurs in the lives of the learner
- learning is about thinking and doing
Schools will never radically re-invent schools…the press won’t let you. We the people need to radically change schools.
October 2, 2007 – 10:15 am
Howard Rheingold spoke today about the new critical literacy required by students because the function that in the past resided with people in authority (eg the librarian) has shifted to search engines…….but the results are not always accurate and the sources are not necessarily authorative.
A fear that critical literacy might incite radicalised students rather than students who conform is not justified because students are now exposed to media and much socialisation outside of the school and home. The moral panic about student use online is not helped by knee jerk reactions like banning access to social network sites in home, schools and the workplace. The current federal campaign is resulting in young kids being fearful of using the internet at all. A sad reflection on current policy and an opportunity missed for parents as well.
So how do we enable students to have critcial literacy skills? Enable them to have a public voice first. This is a world in which students can participate and contribute to public life. This means they need to understand the concept of audience. What is appropriate and what is not?
Youtube and myspace are two examples of how students participate and contribute to public life. Some good and some not so good!! These kids are not passive consumers of online material. A key point here is that your digital footprint is longlasting and so any indiscretions may come back to haunt you for sometime to come. Its lessons like this that we need to teach our kids!!
I’ll link to the podcast of this talk as soon as we make it available.
September 28, 2007 – 3:07 pm
I have had sometime to reflect on the recent visit from the UK of Owen Lynch and his colleagues from Ireland, Jimmy Stewart and Tom McMullan. We visited some schools in NSW and Victoria. In particular we visited Belmore South Primary School on the fringe of inner city Sydney. As their website says, ‘we are proud to be a school who can boast a population that comes from many and varied cultures’.
What was evident at this school and many others we visited was that first and foremost the focus was on good learning and teaching. We saw a true learning organisation in play. Distributed leadership and an environment of trust and support for trying new and innovative ideas. Teachers learning alongside the students and the technology an integrated part of the learning process.
A critical issue is how to make this pocket (and others) of excellence systemic? So what would education look like if we were successful at creating a scale of change that became systemic. Interesting question? Not sure I have any answers yet!!
September 18, 2007 – 4:50 pm
I have been very lucky to be travelling with a UK delegation this week that is visiting Australian schools and Departments as part of their investigation of emerging practices and issues with the use of ICTs. Owen Lynch, former CEO of Becta, with some Irish Colleagues (Tom McMullan and Jimmy Stewart - former and current CEOs of C2K in Ireland).
Schools that focus on teaching and learning, cultural change and collaborative leadership seem to make the greatest impact in integrating technology into contemporary learning. One interesting aspect of our visits is to see a shift from ‘canned’ content to open and free tools to support learning. Thanks to Derek Wenmouth who pointed to this excellent list of learning/working tools from the Centre for Learning and Performance technologies. I quite liked the categorisation of what these tools might be used for. This seems to be one of the potential barriers to uptake of new and emerging technologies, that we are not sure what these technologies might be used for.
I saw great practice that has local impact. Wouldn’t it be great for teachers to see themselves as part of a broader community and share their experience with new and emerging technologies. This is potentially the only way we can scale such signficant change within the education industry. Collaboration must be internal and external and in fact should be global.
