GlobalSummit06 – Seymour Papert

Posted on October 19, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Back to another day, and I am feeling inspired again, because the day started with a few key reflections of the events of yesterday. I felt the strong energy of the group, and the wonderful sense that attendees were genuinely reflecting, cutting and dicing – not just accepting words as received, but using them to further discussion and move in new directions.

Our online link to Dr Seymour Papert was also inspirational for the focus points that he provided us. [Dr. Papert is the inventor of the Logo computer language]

What a great thing to see this leading thinker up on the big screen, and to hear his thoughts flowing in response to questions being presented.

Seymour urged us to move our thinking from HOW to WHAT. Not how students learn and how to teach, but what children learn and what to teach. How can kids learn things in better ways?

As to our how our technology future is looking? Seymour offered four key points:

Every kid must have a computer! It is ridiculous to waste further time to debating this. Every knowledge worker (with the exception of our students) finds that technology is the proper medium for thinking work. If knowledge workers have computers, then why don’t kids!
Shift from HOW to WHAT to learn.
Recognise that it is global forces that drive change in education. Look to the forces in the global scene, rather than relentless educational debate to find the focus for future learning initiatives.
Stop talking to the computer industry, and do not accept their economic agenda to spend more in order to buy bigger and better. We should be setting the pace and saying what we need. The $100 laptop project shows the clout that we can have if we wish to really make a difference.

Through all this Seymour urges us to focus on the fundamentals (not ‘back to basics’) . Now more than ever we need to return to the fundamentals of HARD THINKING – the real issues that are below the surface.

It was great to hear these important concepts articulated by a global leader. Literacy, mathematical thinking, digital thinking ……….. or we could say that literacy remains an enabling mechanism for effective Cognitive and Metacognitive engagement …… hard thinking…… real learning.

People laughed at Seymour Papert in the sixties when he talked about students using computers as intruments for learning and for enhancing creativity. Not any longer!

Knowing Knowledge – George Siemens at Global Summit

Posted on October 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Knowledge is changing. It develops faster, it changes more quickly, and it is more central to organizational success than in any other time in history.

Our schools, universities, corporations, and non-profit organizations, need to adapt. We need to change the spaces and structures of our society to align with the new context and characteristics of knowledge.

Knowing Knowledge book site – and email request page

Knowing Knowlege available in pdf format

Knowing Knowledge – .pdf Files for the book Knowing Knowledge:

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3

Color images are also available on flickr: Knowing Knowledge Photoset

…and if you are interested, you can contribute to the wiki and correct the errors of my ways: Knowing Knowledge Wiki

Knowledge explosion – future directions!

Posted on October 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Robert Cailliau, co-developer of the WWW, acted as Provocateur for Session 1. His aim was to explore emerging trends in a connected world and to delve into concepts of knowledge explosion and the ability of an individual’s brain.

I enjoyed listening to his session, in particular his ‘take’ on ideas and issues that have significant relevance to our work in education. He has, of course, an in-depth and longstanding understanding of ICT and ‘informatics’.

He asked

How will people cope with the world as it might be a decade from now, if that means ever more informatics and ever more ‘intertwinglings?

Interestingly he focused on science as a research tool, and the relationship between science and common sense. He suggests that the use of common sense in daily life is the norm, but the scientific approach focuses on observation of facts, formulation of hypothesis, predictions, hypothesis etc. He also recommends that scientific methods should be the basic tool for all thinking. We should use scientific methods and common sense in all subject matter, not just in science classes – BECAUSE – thinking is very ‘effort-full’.

However, Robert seemed to focus on science research as an empirical tool and did not include qualitative research processes, evidence-based practice, and evaluation as a process approach of change. Measurement tools of social research can enable thinking and conversation in order to create deeper understanding of our actions and our learning endeavors.

Robert reminded us that knowledge is increasingly becoming more difficult for the average brain to understand – things we know that the average person cannot grasp – e.g. quantum mechanics. There are things that cannot easily be explained, discussed, etc

Overall the audience was following his words closely – and his reference to SecondLife and other tools from a Web 2.0 environment was good to hear. However, his ‘take’ on SecondLife was rather skewed I thought. OK, only a few hands went up to the question ‘who has an avatar in second life’. Robert said that people go into interactive virtual worlds in SecondLife because

People don’t like the real world
Imagination is better
It can now be yours to build!

He then asked

Will education cope with people who are increasingly disinterested in the real world?

Oh dear – a very bad representation of the potential of SecondLife environments, and no recognition of the valuable education uses for which SecondLife is already being used.

So finally, because we will have to save the planet…keep learning and developing…we can only do this with

Real knowledge, good tools, and good leadership

Technology Connected Futures

Posted on October 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

I am attending the Global Summit 06, hosted by Education.au, and reporting and reflecting on sessions over the course of the next two days.

The conference program has a telling quote from Marchall McLUhan which sets the framework for the Summit discussions. I’ll share it with you here:

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools”.

A great quote, and good setting for the Global Summit.

Our first Keynote address was delivered by Keynote: Andrew Cappie-Wood, Director General NSW Department of Education. He reminded us that education is about engaging young minds in stimulating curriculum, amongst other things to develop decent, thoughtful, resourceful students. He also highlighted that the intent and the use of ICT isn’t different across the different states of Australia – but that there is a tendency for comparison and competition. Bragging rights!! Are a common problem as people show ‘how good we are’.

Since ICT is just part of the competitive advantage Andrew said ‘lets hear the brag!’ We heard about email for students across the state, and ‘leveraging the size to engage in ‘efficient’ procurement and system architecture’.

There are many key drivers for the system for ICT to deliver quality education to everyone everywhere.

Imperatives in action are:

Demography
Community expectations
ICT developments in personalized portals, personalized learning etc
Federal rollout of national education system will be strongly underpinned by ICT – ICT will be the binding that will hold this all together
Digital Divide – Capacity to take up innovation is lagging because of staff capability
Digital Draw – to facilitate change – e.g. ICT tools such as interactive whiteboards

Change is expotential – and technological changes are providing challenges for safe working environments. The example was YouTube, and the question was asked as to what we do to effectively respond and adapt to challenging technologies. There are superb opportunities, and many factors that will influence our adoption. There is no future for us without ICT in an increasingly global world.

How can ICT improve our educational outcomes? I would have liked to hear Andrew go beyond the generalized summary of ICT potential and infrastructure developments and get closer to the social networking imperatives of Web 2.0 beyond a brief mention of change with a YouTube example in the last minutes of the address.

‘All Your Own Work’ in a Web 2.0 World

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

I attended an a full day seminar organised by ALSANSW looking at the issue of Plagiarism in light of the NSW Board of Studies unit “Working with Others” soon to be compulsory for testing in Year 10. My task was to provide a context for thinking about plagiarism which included an understanding of the Web 2.0 world of students and teachers.

Apart form ‘showcasing’ Web 2.0 my aim was to encourage teachers and teacher-librarians to re-examine what it means to create a community of enquiry for themselves and for their students…by participating in new forms of information organization and sharing…..like social bookmarking, wiki, and blogs. We have to recognize the level of social networking that kids engage in more and more, and the fact that information seeking will sometimes take place via instant messenger, myspace or other social ways.

With Web 2.0 the purpose and function of learning as defined by teachers needs revision. Maybe……..

The purpose of learning should…

Be informed by connections and communication
Promote open sharing of knowledge
Allow for individuals making decisions on their own

The function of learning should be….

About being a member of the community of practice
Recognize that all spaces are learning places

Perhaps Web 2.0 learning is defined by three things:

Focus

On identity
Who we are in society

Framework

Multitasking multi-modal environment
Virtual learning mode

Future

Personal integrity and social contribution
Individuality and creativity

A very interesting day, with some curious interactions and comments afterwards. The one that made me chuckle was “we are never going to use these [Web2.0] technologies”.

Hmm, a bit like the network meeting I organised back in Term 4, 1995. Some ‘system’ representatives came along – because I had organised a chap who brought his own computer, and who could access Ozemail at $5.00 hr and show us ‘THE INTERNET’. Yes, these visitors said to me “Judy, you shouldn’t have organised this – this internet business will never happen in schools!”.

OOPS! How about Web 2.0 then??

Learning Technology Forum

Posted on August 10, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Wednesday and Thursday this week saw Learning Technology teachers from primary and secondary schools in the Parramatta Diocese gather for a two-day forum.

The presentations from this forum will be made available via podcast – and I hope provide the links for you when they are available .

The forum was opened by Kevin Jones, and as Head of Curriculum he was able to provide some clear insights to ‘set the scene’.

Kevin focussed on the beliefs that underpin/enable/epitomise 21^st century learning, and the approaches that will enable (if not ensure) quality 21^st century learning. Some of the key points were about the beliefs that must drive our understanding and the staffroom approaches that help us be more effective.

The Beliefs
Learning in the 21^st century is about

student “centredness”.
Student ownership
Student choices
Student responsibility

The Approach

Collaborative work practices (staffroom approaches) will help us meet the learning needs of our students.

These practices must include use of technology that enhances collaborative work practices for:

Programming Organisation of assessment
Marking to standards
Evaluation
Cross-curricular approaches

As Kevin explained, “Our approaches and practices have to reflect our beliefs about individualised learning”. “We need to think about our own approach” “We need to think about what our current practices indicate about our beliefs about learning”.

Then we will engage more effectively in how to use the tools.

I followed with a presentation on Engaging the google generation through Web 2.0. For this session I drew from the article of the same title published in SCAN, Vol 25 No 3 August 2006.

So What’s Changed? – Reflections on Education.au Seminar

Posted on August 5, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

So what’s changed?

The experience of attending the Education.au seminar last friday was just fantastic, and for me ‘what’s changed?’ is a lot! I only got into blogging in May this year, after hearing a presentation of Stephen Abrams at a SirsiDynix Roadshow event in Melbourne in May. This presentation set my mind going on Web 2.0 – and was a neat follow up from being shown EPIC 2015. The context was set, and blogging began.

All the while I was reflecting about the learning environment of our schools, and realised that in blogging and reading blogs I was learning at a faster rate than I had ever done before – and enjoying it!

In a sense the Education.au Seminar showed what personalised learning is all about, and engagement with and through technologies is what kids are about. They are naturally moving into and around in this environment- but our education platform isn’t there yet. By getting into the blogging around this event we began to create a collaborative social network of our own educators – something we need to do much more of if we are to understand and create frameworks that empower our students. By becoming a blogger myself this year I am now able to operate differently in this environment and can create… where before I just knew that something was missing.

It is good that we have an organsation such as Education.au pushing the agenda here in Australia. We need more of these seminars. And I read with interest what Fang wrote about the evaluations. People that came to the seminar were in different headspaces – and for those that these technologies were ‘new’ or ‘newish’ I can well understand that they would have wanted clearer directions on ‘what next’ or ‘how to’. That’s our job too as we blog with each other, and in fact this heyjude blog was created just for the purpose of helping me learn and find out, and to help newbies along as well.

But some people need clearer help, and I did find a few months ago that running an ‘Introduction to Blogging’ course was a great experience for me! And people came along, keen to learn, but not quite ready to do it all alone. Two hours later lots of blogs were launched and some a going great guns. As it is with our students, we have to help learners learn!

I found the ideas covered in the seminar interesting, sometimes with conflicting opinions, but all part of the evolving dialogue. I had FUN. I met some great people. I heard some great ideas.

I found some of the concepts conveyed by Phillip Adams to be obvious for educators, but perhaps a bit novel for some of the others? It would be interesting to know really. But I couldn’t quite agree with the whole ‘media as a way of presenting a common agenda’ thing. I can’t see how warped or biased media, or conservative media or any other kind of controlled or semi controlled media is better than open communication of the blogosphere. It is not media that determines the quality of what is being presented. Didn’t media help create some of the most restrictive regimes in the world? Aren’t there still places in the world that try desperately to restrict freedom of speech in order to maintain some kind of social control?

So the new media of social software is here and is already influencing peoples ideas. I don’t believe it is any more dangerous than ‘traditional’ media ever was. What is dangerous, and has always been dangerous, is mass hysteria, mis-information, cultural bias, cultural chaos.

What I do agree with is the need for mediation, and learning to select, process, evaluate, and synthesise through knowledge and wisdom, based on strong, kind, ethical democratic values. We need to help our students to be caring and ethical, and to use knowledge wisely. I don’t believe traditional media is as good as Allan cracks it up to be. I think that is why the journalists created EPIC 2015 – they understood that the changing communcation landscape had huge implications for how people will engage with information with each other and around the globe.

I was thrilled to meet James Farmer, though I have to say that I hoped to hear more stuff from James. I think that his presentation was a good one in that it allowed those who were newish to these ideas come to understand the ‘stance’ that we need to take if we are going to re-focus our minds to working with Web 2.0 more fluently and effectively. It was important to talk about and promote Edublogs.org etc. James, thanks for all the work you have done on this. But I REALLY wanted to hear more innovation from James – but thats just me and where I am at with my own learning.

I was thrilled to meet all the other guys too, and to see the great team in action. I would love to be ‘up there’ with them all running and doing and managing and inspiring others.

FutureLab stuff was nice too – but I don’t get very excited about these types of global hookups. Anyone could have showed the videos (yes, they were cool!) and anyone could have read the words to match the slide. At the SIRSIDYNIX roadshow, we had a similar thing – a powerpoint designed by Stephen Abram, but presented by someone else. I got more out of that with a live presentation, than I did with bad lighting and a voice rattling off a content dense paper – even though I do know it was good and packed with information and ‘quotable quotes’.

In future, best to have a focus on the person – proper video conference stuff – or forget it! Anyway, I thought I was going to see a live person. Funny how we like our technology to work well, isn’t it?

At the end of it all, I am fascinated by the work that FutureLab is doing – but it is ‘way out there’ and really just points the direction rather than telling us how we NOW, right now can do things in school.

On that note I would have loved to hear from a real practitioner – grass roots stuff – talking about kids and how they and the teacher are using social networking tools to transform their learning and teaching.

How about that for another seminar?

Well done everyone! 🙂

I can’t wait to hear the next batch of presentations at the Global Summit 2006, and hope to meet some of the participants from this seminar there again.

If I can, I will be blogging live again! 😉

Education au – FutureLab – Annika Small

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Our last presention came to us from Anika Small, the CEO of Futurelab UK.

In a previous post I said

The paper from FutureLab looks at Social Software and Learning and the ‘shape’ of learning as a result of the transformation in the new technology environment of our students.

You might like to check out (another) FutureLab’s blog here. [OK, for those who read this earlier, I grabbed another group – thanks to Stefan for pointing this out – but will leave the link here anyway]

Annika’s presentation is so packed with ideas and information that I can’t even begin to summarize it. For anyone wanting some clear ideas, gathered in one spot, you are not going to be able to past the podcast of this session. For schools it represents a thoughtprovoking listen.

A question from James Farmer about the sustainibility of the technology-intensive approach that Futurelab is able to undertake raises some important points. Annika’s response is that sustainability is actually underway as students find social software to engage in their social networking. They are already incorporating this into their lives.

A good point – yes the social software is there, but the reality in schools is that not all students have the same level of engagement with social software. Schools also have very different levels of technology available. However, I believe the future is staring us in the face, and that teachers DO need to understand the learning needs of students. Certainly the work coming out of Futurelab is providing a really good idea of what we need to do.

Bottom line is that we teachers have got to commit – NOW!

Annika encourages Australian educators to subscribe to their newsletter and communicate with her at Futurelab.

Hello world!

Posted on May 22, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Starting from nowhere! is how it feels to launch this blog.

However, the need to know, understand, and be part of the transformation that is the Web today seems to me to be almost dramatically urgent. What is worst is that here in Australia the dialogue, or passing conversation, has hardly begun.

Yes, there are some good OZ blogs sharing educator’s thoughts and experiences – I will add these as I go to help inform our develoments. But overall, out here on the Web, there are so many blogs, wikkis, lenses and many other places to find information, that it is easy to be challenged about what we are doing in education in the use of digital tools in the changing digital world.

So I will start at my own beginning, and hope that some will join me in the fantastic roller-coaster ride to a new Web world!

I really just want to urge all educators to do cool things! Time to chuck our preconceptions away! Time to undertake a journey of discovery. Time to influence the shape of things to come.