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ICT in pre-service teacher training

21 August, 2009 – 12:24 pm

A common theme in a number of the investigations undertaken as part of Education.au’s Strategic ICT Advisory Service to the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations was the need to ensure that pre-service teachers were provided with plenty of opportunities to learn about and use ICT in terms of both skills and pedagogy as part of their training.

This Hot TopICT report ‘ICT in pre-service teacher training‘ reflects this important theme and provides an overview of projects internationally, Australian-based research, and some Australian case studies.

It finds that:

The evidence presented in this paper strongly points to fundamental systemic flaws in the pre-service teacher education system in Australia in terms of developing teacher competence in embedding ICTs in pedagogy and practice.
Unless a radical approach is taken, it is unlikely that a grab bag of individual changes will make any real difference.
There are critical points of resistance to be overcome.

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, standards, higher education, SICTAS, pre-service | Comments (0)

Towards a 21st Century National Software Infrastructure for Education

18 August, 2009 – 3:51 pm

The ‘Towards a 21st Century National Software Infrastructure for Education‘ report from Education.au’s Strategic ICT Advisory Service for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) makes a number of important points and recommendations focussed on bringing together and building on existing and planned initiatives.

It suggests that “the infrastructure should be focused on connecting and enabling services from multiple providers to meet learner needs. It should deliver learner-centric services seamlessly across geographic, jurisdictional and sectoral boundaries”.

It identifies the key components of this national software infrastructure as:

• an ‘education cloud’ based on the internet ‘cloud computing’ model
• learner-centric approach to digital identity
• support for collaborative learning
• support seamless resource discovery
• support for secure data interchange.

The infrastructure should be based on a nationally agreed set of interoperability standards and governance, leadership and operational processes to ensure that the national infrastructure is developed, sustained and enhanced to keep pace with constantly and rapidly changing technology.

The recommendations from the report are to:

  • Recommendation 1: Develop a national cross-sectoral collaborative interoperability service
  • Recommendation 2: Develop a national cross-sectoral trust fabric to support secure learner centric identity and access management.

The recommendations are supported by discussion and examples of how this could be implemented.

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, innovation, standards, future, identity, SICTAS | Comments (1)

E-portfolios beyond education and training

11 August, 2009 – 8:45 am

A large amount of work has already been and is currently being undertaken around the use of e-portfolios within education and training. This investigation has sought to provide insight into use of e-portfolios in Australia’s current economic climate, where policy makers are challenged regarding how best to support and manage Australia’s workforce

The E-portfolios beyond education and training report provides case studies of a number of international examples of the use of e-portfolios to assist people in the workforce and in career development. It makes recommendations that include enhancing current national infrastructure to enable Australians to use an e-portfolio to enhance career development, lifelong learning, and workforce participation.

  • Expand Myfuture (Australia’s career exploration service) to include the following:
    • the types of e-portfolio services offered by Careers Wales
    • features that address labour market adjustment issues, particularly the needs of workers dealing with unemployment and trying to get back into the workforce
    • multiple user interfaces to support different audience
    • appropriate communications tools for collaborative reflection in professional development.
  • Fund e-portfolio trials in areas of particular relevance to Australia.
  • Fund interoperability trials between the recommended ‘Myfuture’ e-portfolio and existing Australian institutional e-portfolios.
By Jen | Posted in Educationau, future, e-portfolios, SICTAS | Comments (0)

Emerging technologies - planning for change

10 August, 2009 – 4:39 pm

Education.au has just released another of its reports produced for the Strategic ICT Advisory Service it’s providing to the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)

The Annual Report on Emerging Technologies: Planning for Change report is the culmination of SICTAS’ investigative research program. It incorporates and extends the recommendations made in the preceding reports and includes strategies and actions that support the recommendations.

The work of this report is informed by the tankettes, the symposium and submissions from invited peak bodies.
Extensive research is already available into particular technologies through such projects as Horizon. Accordingly, the Annual report on emerging technologies: Planning for change focuses on the implications of continuous and rapid technological change for learning and learners, for professional learning and educators, and for national infrastructure and policy makers.

The report’s recommendations highlight the Australian Government’s crucial role in providing strong and visionary leadership and coordinating development of policy and programs to support the integration of ICT in education and training. The focus is on how to leverage extensive work at national and jurisdictional levels to provide benefits for all users of education and training across Australia.


Recommendations

  • Implement an ICT in teaching and learning continuum so that learners’ new media literacy skills and abilities are augmented as they move through the education sectors.
  • Task a national body to support national collaborative partnerships to reduce fragmentation of effort, and make best use of the existing and future investments made in ICT.
  • Commit to providing ongoing resourcing and funding to maintain, sustain and enhance a technology rich environment for the education and training sector.
  • Develop and implement a national approach to software infrastructure that minimises the barriers to effective use and sharing of resources, and maximises access.
  • Address the complications of Australian copyright law in a way that encourages sharing and exchange of resources in the education and training sector, including the implementation of Creative Commons across Australian education and training.
  • That the Australian Government take a leadership role in collaboration with jurisdictions, sectors and educational institutions to develop a national professional learning strategy based on sound research into good practice.
  • The Australian Government take a leadership role, in partnership with other education authorities and entities, in implementing and maintaining the ICT competency framework for teachers as described in the ‘Raising the Standards’ report, but look to apply this to teachers in each of the education sectors. A key component of the described framework is teacher standards. The Government should undertake to task AICTEC, through its advisory bodies to develop teacher ICT standards for:

·        Pre-service teachers
·        Practicing teachers
·        School leaders
·        Teacher educators
·        VET teachers
·        University teachers.

You can access all the SICTAS reports from http://www.educationau.edu.au/SICTAS

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, social networking, innovation, standards, future, wikis, higher education, Twitter, SICTAS | Comments (0)

I love twitter and the random proximity of tweets

26 June, 2009 – 11:21 am

Twitter, one of the world’s fastest growing social networking/microblogging services, gets some good press and some bad press. It’s a timewaster, pointless, full of mundane 140 character tweets about what people had for breakfast, say some. Personally I love it. I’ve posted before about Twitter and now I’m totally completely in thrall (well at least till the next big thing - probably Google Wave).

Why? Why does Twitter work for me?

1. Professional learning

Lots of people and organisations use Twitter to post resources, information, news, projects, comments, opinions, questions, reflections, ideas, suggestions. I’ve chosen to follow the people and organisations that are relevant and of interest to me - at the moment there’s about 250 of them.  Those that don’t delivery quality, relevant content get ‘unfollowed’ - those that remain have proved their worth. I no longer have to seek out information - fantastic, insightful, relevant, well written information comes to me via 140 character tweets filtered by people and organisations relevant to my own interests. Smart, innovative thinkers, people who question and wonder, are using Twitter and I’m able to participate, consider and ruminate along with them.

2. Immediacy

I’m getting that information ‘as it happens’ rather than waiting for Google or some other search engine to index it, and then for me to discover it - assuming it’s somewhere in a format that is indexed. I don’t have to rely on an algorithm to find me what it thinks I might be looking for. I don’t have to find relevant resources by looking through hundreds, thousands, millions of search results which may or may not be relevant (and who does that - it’s all down to the top 20) - it’s coming from my trusted sources and I can act on it immediately. When writing reports and doing research, this immediacy and authority of information is fantastic: you can be taking the latest thinking from trusted sources into account in your research right up to the last minute.

3. Networks

It’s enabled me to connect with people networks here in Canberra that communicate via Twitter and a range of other social networking services: and that’s another interesting thing - Twitter does not act alone in the social networking space. The people networks in Twitter often also have presences on Google docs, Ning, discussion lists, and other places and Twitter provides a kind of rolling commentary on what’s going on across that space. From following Canberra-based tweeps (people who tweet on Twitter), many of whom work in or with government agencies, I’ve come to ‘know’ a number of people quite well, what they think, what they are doing, and their areas of interest, as well as initiatives, projects etc they are involved in, as well as challenges, ideas, opportunities. In a government town, this is useful.

4. Serendipity

As you follow more people serendipitous discoveries occur: like reading headlines as you flick through a newspaper, the Twitter feed throws up ideas, comments, sources and resources that send your thinking in new directions. The potential of microblogging services to enable innovation purely through the random proximity of tweets as they flow past a user will, no doubt, be a PhD topic of the future.

5. Time saver

Some people argue that Twitter is a time waster. I find it to be the opposite. I have it running in my browser and just monitor what’s going on. Obviously I suffer from continuous partial attention disorder and have multiple connections running in my head simultaneously. I take notice of some tweeps more than others, and as I scan I take notice of some words more than others. Also, as much of the material I’m interested in is new, novel or innovative, if I was searching for it, I wouldn’t know what I was looking for. Now it finds me.

6. Broader than education

While I follow a lot of individual educators and educational organisations, I follow a range of others types of people too: those that work in ICT more generally, librarians, politicians, a few cultural organisations, a couple of IT news agencies, organisations like Creative Commons, libraries, and general news organisations like the ABC. This means that my knowledge of ‘what’s going on’ is broader than the education sector, but still relevant to my area of interest. This is good: the less siloing of knowledge and information, the better.

7. Bigger than Australia

People and organisations I follow are both from Australia and places other than Australia - such as the UK and the US. For me, they need to be English-language tweets as I don’t have time to use a automatic translater. But that, I’m sure, will become a service available one day, and enable a social networking between cultures regardless of the tweet’s original language.
Twitter, or any microblogging service, is not for everyone, any more than any other technology service. You have to have a reason to use it and a continuing reason to find it useful.  For me, I find it very useful in my professional life.

I use it from my laptop, and not from my phone or mobile device - though many can and do - so I’m only connected when I’m at the computer. As I telecommute it also prevents any sense of isolation developing: I’m connected, I’m networked.
I also find it fascinating that every person’s experience of Twitter (or another microblogging service) is different. Each tweep will follow their own set of people and organisations; a different set will follow them.

Twitter is not one-size-fits-all: every person creates their own network. Everyone to their own.

You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/girtbysea

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, social networking, Twitter, SICTAS | Comments (1)

Heading into the cloud: cloud computing and education

23 June, 2009 – 2:17 pm

Cloud computing is another buzz word spilling into the education sector and IT press.

What does it mean for a teacher, for education, for a school?

In simple terms cloud computing enables you to access software applications, hardware, data and computer processing power on the web, rather than loading software onto your own computer or school server. That is, using the ‘cloud’ means using the internet as your own personal computer, processor and storage environment, accessing it with any internet-capable device, from any physical location 24/7/365.

It’s always on, always available, accessible from anywhere.

The term ‘cloud computing’ is synonymous with the terms ‘Software as a service’ (SaaS), a hosted service, or utility computing. And for anyone who wants to work from multiple locations – such as different campuses, home, conferences, and while travelling – cloud computing makes perfect sense. Use a free open web service for collaboration with colleagues (groups.edna.edu.au), a bookmarking service for saving and annotating online teaching resources and articles (delicious.com), a mindmapping tool for brainstorming (www.mindomo.com), Google docs for calendars, document sharing, photo sharing, and Facebook (www.facebook.com) for keeping up with friends and family – the range and sophistication of the web software available is amazing.

Using any or all of these services is a simple matter – register for free, agree to the terms and conditions, and then use the application. You don‘t pay, you don’t sign up for a plan, you (usually) don’t have to download anything, or pay licensing fees. For an individual, this is web heaven.

What does it mean for education? Read More »

By Jen | Posted in Educationau | Comments (2)

Too rude? Blogging and tweeting at conferences

23 February, 2009 – 10:55 am

At a recent national conference about new technologies, education and the way forward - sponsored by government - the conference convenor began the event by telling people there was wireless internet access with some power points to plug laptops into at the side of the room, but she would prefer it if people didn’t ‘check their email’ during the conference, but paid attention to the presenters, as they had useful things to say.

I was struck by this at the time because it completely misunderstands the way mobile technologies are currently being used at conferences - as a way of disseminating knowledge and communicating with a community of people that care about the same things: your professional learning network. That someone with that kind of thinking about technology was running that kind of conference did not bode well…
So what happens - can’t attend a conference? someone might be live blogging. Someone else might be tweeting. Others might be taking photos and uploading them on flicker. So people perusing their mobile phones, PDAs and laptops may in fact be the most attentive audience members in the room. They are listening, summarising and posting to the web for others to read.

It’s not the same as being there, but there is a usefulness in a savvy person posting the core messages of the presenter. Watching the tweets go by in a browser-based live updater is a bit like scanning the headlines in the newspaper: you get a good sense of what’s going on, without the detailed explanation, but you also can get added commentary from the audience members and that community that cares.

Live blogging and tweeting has caused some discomfort at some conferences where the idea of someone doing something while a presenter presents is considered rude by some.That is, not paying full attention. But they are: that’s the irony. Those that are sitting in rows, stony-faced staring back at the presenter are not necessarily engaged: they just have their eyes open.

There’s a couple of good discussions on this topic: at Graham Wegner’s and at KerryJ’s blogs.
Although I haven’t presented at a conference where live blogging or tweeting was wide spread, I can only imagine that it will improve my presentation skills. Not just the 20 or 30 - people in the room are going to hear what I say - potentially hundreds or thousands more will find out about what I think. And if I’m bad: I can imagine that the tweets may not be complimentary.
It is good then to see that the National Library Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 to be held in March is “encouraging” blogging and tweeting, and tellingly says ‘Bring your laptop and participate’. So the laptop is now seen as method to engage, rather than the use of it in session suggesting disengagement. Yay. Along with a pod of mobiles and PDAs I guess we’ll see a whole lot of blogging going on.

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, blogs, innovation, future, SICTAS | Comments (15)

Education.au report on Collaboration in Teaching and Learning published

18 February, 2009 – 2:07 pm

Education.au is providing a Strategic ICT Advisory Service to the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The report on Collaboration in Teaching and Learning is the first public report from this service.

The report focuses on the information and communications technologies that enable collaborative learning to happen online and includes school education, vocational education and training, and higher education.

The report:

  • briefly describes the theories that underpin collaborative learning, the skills that are necessary for its success, the implications of collaborative learning for teaching practice, for students, and the spaces in which learning occurs.
  • recognises the challenges in enabling collaborative learning including providing professional learning for teachers, knowledge, information and identity management, and managing continual change in tools and technologies.
  • found that effective collaborative learning using ICT is dependent on services and skills that are not specific to collaborative learning, but are essential for the provision of ICT more generally
  • makes four recommendations that complement existing initiatives and priorities of the Australian Government.

Recommendations

  • provide access to post-secondary education options for remote and regional Australians leveraging the investments being made through existing broadband initiatives
  • extend the digital education revolution to the VET and university sectors
  • task a national body to work through national partnershiops to reduce fragmentation of effort, and make best user of investments made in ICT in education at a broad level, and collaborative learning in particular
  • embed new media literacy skills into Australia’s national curriculum in a consistent way, independent of specific technologies


By Jen | Posted in Educationau, social networking, innovation, standards, privacy, future, just in time learning, wikis, higher education, digital natives, learning spaces, indigenous, early childhood, national curriculum, identity, Facebook, SICTAS, information literacy, iwb | Comments (2)

On the horizon for 2009: the Horizon School?

23 January, 2009 – 1:08 pm

Already I’m feeling a little weary. It’s only January and it seems that already there’s more technology on the horizon that may need to be integrated into teaching and learning.

The Horizon 2009 report, produced by the New Media Consortium and Educause, has been released and its focus is on emerging technologies and higher education.

Within the next year they are of the view that mobiles and cloud computing are the next big things. Given the rate of organisations to change, and pedagogies and assessment modes to change, this seems to me to be a bit on the fast side.

In the next two to three years the technologies to watch are ‘Geo-everything’ and the Personal web.

In the next three to five years we’re looking at semantic aware applications and smart objects.

If we add these to the technologies from last three Horizon reports we’ve got a lot of technologies to look out for:

  • social computing
  • personal broadcasting
  • The phones in their pockets
  • educational gaming
  • augmented reality and enhanced visualisation
  • context aware environments and devices
  • user created content
  • social networking
  • mobile phones
  • virtual worlds
  • new scholarship and emerging forms of publication
  • massively multiplayer educational gaming
  • grassroots video
  • collaboration webs
  • mobile broadband
  • data mashups
  • collective intelligence
  • social operating systems

How these will all fit together and make sense in a teaching and learning context, assuming they are taken up, is the challenge. How we learn how to teaching using them, assess them and are clear about what it is our students need to learn and have to learn are also questions.

I see some repetition in the nominations over time which suggests to me that maybe technology is not changing as fast as it sometimes seems. Themes that are emerging and perhaps it’s more useful to focus on them rather than this year’s nominations in isolation. The themes I can see here include mobile computing (of various kinds), immersive/interactive online environments, people creating content, and people networking.

Under these headings is a vast array of possible tools, technologies and applications.
It would be great to have an Horizon School where, as technologies and tools are identified, they are showcased, proofed, trialled, tested, have pedagogies and assessment processes developed around them for all levels and for different purposes. And all of this would be free, and online and you could download it and use it - rather than each of us trying to make sense of it all on our own.

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, innovation, future, SICTAS | Comments (6)

Obama - a man of the 21st century

19 January, 2009 – 2:41 pm

I can’t let pass without comment the fact that the leader of the United States of America - one of the largest of the world economies, the so-called ‘leader of the free world’, has had to fight hard to keep using his Blackberry.  It came as an extraordinary revelation to me that the incumbent US president - and those before him - did not have a computer on their desks, did not have a PDA, did not have their own email accounts.

My question is: how did they ever get anything done? How did they form and maintain relationships that were not mediated by others? How did they find out stuff for themselves?
It is a relief to find that Obama has not given into pressure to get rid of his Blackberry, nor seems too worried that any communication can be used against him. It means that Obama will be able to talk to whom he wants, when he wants, outside the control of others. He can Twitter and email, browse the internet and look at any information provided by anyone or any group that’s available online.

He can make up his own mind.

Obama, along with our own Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, has a Twitter feed. While Twitter can be used only as a broadcast mechanism, (people follow you, you don’t follow others) Obama, Rudd and Turnbull  also ‘follow’ those that ‘follow’ them. This has enormous potential benefits for politicians - if they choose to use it.

What this means is that I now have a direct (on)line to the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Australia and the leader of the Liberal Party opposition.

I’m not suggesting that Barack, Kev and Mal are likely to read all my tweets (well, any…), but I’m sure staffers will be casting their eyes across them (and those of the thousands of others that they follow) to look for issues, concerns and problems raised - issues that are unmediated by professional media and bloggers but delivered direct from an ordinary person to the powerful.

There is real potential for those in authority to engage with the concerns of ordinary people (well at least those who are online and web-savvy). In a time of global financial crisis, knowing where people are hurting in a timely fashion - before real damage is done - could be telling. Getting people at the chalkface to tell you directly via Twitter (and similar services) what’s really needed in schools, TAFEs and Universities may be different to content provided by those who do not have the same day-to-day experience.

It also tells us something about those individuals. Obama’s twittering was clearly part of a the overall campaign strategy. Rudd’s is a ‘telling us what he’s doing’ feed probably managed by his press office (not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, but it’s not really Kev). Turnbull uses Twitter to engage with others in conversation - his personality and interests are on display and it’s clear he is following up on comments and problems tweeted by constituents and is developing a community of followers - not just numbers of followers - and that’s the point of all of this.

That Obama will have a Blackberry now secures the place of the mobile device as the gadget of the 21st century. Its influence and relevance is assured.

Obama has got a Twitter feed. The influence and relevance of microblogging is assured.

By Jen | Posted in Educationau, social networking, Twitter, SICTAS | Comments (4)