OK, here goes….live session with James, which is pretty cool! Nice to see the man, and get an overview of things.
So James started out commenting on what peopole say. “People say that pedagogy matters – technology doesn’t matter”
As he says, technology does matter! Th
e type of environment we work in makes a significant difference. We have operated in a hopeless utopianism…..put them into the discussion board, and then it will happen!!
If we want to engage students we should think about what the word engage means. A thesauras will give us words like captivate, rivet, involve, immerse, fascinate, engross. These synonyms tell us just how to engage teachers and learners.
Some wonderful ideas from James! From my point of view James didn’t raise anything new, because we have canvassed these ideas in the blogosphere. Having said that, James did present the sort of discussion points that allow us to raise these issues with others – and in my case, with teachers who need to develop their ideas about what technology is around to
help us engage our students. So the image of the ‘Victorian’ computer lab is a really clever juxtaposition. Yes, it is kids in rows, being told what to do! and when to do it!
Computer labs are the wrong kind of engagement, but still so prevalent. So the use of discussion asynchronous discussion boards do not meet the communication needs of our students who live by sms, MySpace, uTube! Teachers are often still in 1994 technology mode, while the students are experimenting and absorbing new things.
So James says we need to focus on personal preference and personal presence! Empower people to present themselves! in an online environment. This is just so important for our students. Use of social constructivist pedagogy – and new tools, such as those based around weblogs, do this very well. James introduced edublogs.org, and explained that in under a year they have grown to 16,000 blogs. Check these out and see the various things available.
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