Graham Wegner – Open Educator

I went out to dinner with a group of “Edutwits” on Wednesday evening – an event organised by the amazing Kerry Johnson. Now, Kerry works for educationau but her influence spreads way beyond her official employment role. This dinner was a great example of that and connected up a dozen or so educators involved in a wide span of areas – project officers, instructional designers, consultants, teachers and general networkers. I enjoyed myself very much. Now the timing of this dinner capitalised on the edayz09 event, a conference focussed on elearning mainly in the VET sector. So, there were a few visitors from interstate and the exciting news was that Nancy White was the featured keynote speaker for the edayz event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kerryank/4094393623/

I expressed my disappointment that it would have been great to hear her speak as Nancy is one of those fantastic online communicators and facilitators whose influence spreads far and wide. Her work in online communities is well renown and I’ve listened to a number of her talks online and been a regular reader of her blog. She’s even remixed some of my work as you can see in her 10 Minute Lecture featured on Leigh Blackall’s then blog back in 2007. She’s an innovative thinker, an important node on my network and so, when Kerry suggested I come in this morning as her “guest” to hear Nancy speak, I jumped at the opportunity.

I also got to see how skillfully Kerry managed the Ustreaming, CoverItLive backchanneling process. The most technical I’ve ever gotten was to plunk an iRiver recorder at the front of a room at the start of the session so to see someone like Kerry run dual laptops, monitoring the conversation people were feeding in via chat and still keep track of the presentation, even with a five second vocal delay in her headset as she went. There are details about how she managed the process here.

Nancy is a very engaging speaker. And thanks to the marvels of social media, you don’t have to put up with my half baked notes (which I started to try and type in on the Notepad on my phone) as I decided to lean forward (you can’t really recline during a Nancy White presentation) and just enjoy absorbing the message. The presentation was Ustreamed and I was going to add the link here so you culd start listening in at around the 18 minute mark but Mike Seyfang has already done that piece of legwork and captured the essential audio here. Play while clicking through her slides and you have a pretty good time shifted re-experience.

This means I can spend so time reflecting on what her ideas sparked in my mind then and after I’ve had a bit of time to think things over. I do like the fact that Nancy talked about presented ponderings and incomplete gut feelings and that her ideas were conversation starters, not final assertions. Her opening poser “Is community ‘dead’?” had me thinking as I think about teh work done at my school to foster a Professional Learning Community based on the work of Louise Stoll, and the concept of classroom as learning community (based on the work of Konrad Glogowski) that I have tried to foster with my student blogging program. Actually, can a classroom be a community? After all, the students don’t get a lot of choice about how their peers are grouped and they get even less choice about who their leader (teacher) will be. Community is meant to be participants with a common purpose or interest – is learning too broad a brush stroke and a group of typical primary school students range across the spectrum in terms of how they view learning as a positive thing?

She also talked about how mobile technologies allow us to be together in some many other ways and that there are new emerging technologies that fall between or bridge the gap between the analogue and digital world – the Livescribe pen as one example. But it is a challenge to be able to show to others already using these technologies for purposes other than learning that they have huge potential as tools for learning. i think about my students’ mindset around ipods in the classroom where they can’t see past just listening to music and using it as a sort of concentration cocoon as its possible premier use in the classroom. My students view their mobile phones in much the same way – connections for social and entertainment purposes only. How can I change that?

Nancy talked through the various stages that one can learn – solo, pairs, triads, the flock and the network. I feel that many educators don’t go past the solo and will go with the flock if compelled. Nancy is right about one thing – accessing and building a network has to be lived before one can possibly realise the potential and assist others on their way. I kept thinking about a recent conversation on a mailing list where an educator was defending Education Queensland’s position that all social media tools used with students needed to be behind the safe walls of their portal The Learning Place – it was a bit like learning surf life saving in a backyard pool. Anyway, I digress.

I had never heard of the concept of triangulation before where the most innovative practice and real learning occurs at the edges, not at the top. It would certainly explain why the upper sections of a bureaucracy like the one I work for seem to be out of touch with what is happening in wider society and certainly with the pace and direction of technological change. Of course, the sweet spot of being able to be innovative and make a difference without running foul of leadership or having that success subverted into someone higher up the food chain’s claim of success is one to think further on.

Anyway, I was glad I got to come and see Nancy for myself. I would have liked to have hung around and tried to meet her but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. Thanks again, Kerry!

A week ago, I was still in sunny Sydney with my colleagues waiting to get some taxis out to the airport after the giant prize draw at the end of IWBNet09. My group did OK in that regard – one colleague won a year’s subscription to some form of software and another won a class set of ActivExpresssions (she was from DECS Learning Technologies but assures us that our school can borrow them at some stage) – but that is a bit of a worrying trend that I wasn’t that fond of. I know the drill about conferences can’t survive without vendors and vendors pay the bills and that the vendors need to get value for their time and dollars but my parting memory of this conference is the big prize giveaway of “complete literacy programmes”, “essential IWB software” and “student polling devices”. Normally rational minded educators had played the game as well, gathering stamps in their vendor hall booklet, hearing every single sales pitch just for a chance to experience the “The New Price Is Right” atmosphere at the end.

I’ll have to admit that I only saw part 1 of Martin Levins‘ keynote as my nerves told me to go and set up for my Saturday morning session. (An unusual concept – a two part keynote over two days which meant that I never really knew what he was leading up to.) He did point to this Saturday Night Live sketch which was good for a laugh – but maybe a more powerful keynote for challenging thinking would be someone like Jason de Nys. (Note to self – reflecting on one’s own ICT journey over several decades does not make for enthralling listening.)

So what did I make of the sessions I did attend? Here is a quick summary.

Belinda Anderson – All Things Google.

Shovel an excessive amount of people into one classroom and have someone talk and demo their way through the four Google tools. Listed as a vendor session – would have been better as a workshop where delegates would have a chance to play. Belinda herself was bright and breezy but I had to squeeze out of the room to set up for my session on Effective Design.

Sally-Anne Walton – Catering for Different Learning Styles Using the IWB

I’d just finished off my session on Social Bookmarking in the same room so it was amusing to see people turning up for this one grabbing a copy of my handouts on their way in. This session proved to me that one must read the abstract as well as the title before choosing a session to attend. There was very little link made to learning styles in this session from my perspective – and it seemed to be  massive show and tell grab bag of IWB use. The first five minutes were spent talking about how to choose the right position for an IWB in your classroom and I must admit, I lost interest from there very rapidly. The presenter showed that she had embedded video footage from a digital camera on her IWB – but failed to tell us why – what were the learning goals and how did the video footage help to reach those goals? It finished on a note with the presenter’s colleague plugging a vendor’s teacher amplification system and proclaiming that the ActivStudio library was the premier place to find digital resources (what about the internet?)

I do feel a bit unsporting to airing a negative review but these are my honest responses and I’d hope that someone would make a similarly honest and challenging assessment of any of my presentations. We don’t improve if tips and tricks are portrayed as innovative practice.

Moodle On The SmartBoard – presenter not on my original list.

IWBNet09 had what were titled vendor sessions each day where the vast majority of sessions in that time period were from, well, vendors! As I’d already spoken at length with Bryn Jones about Atomic Learning late on Friday afternoon, I decided to skip his session which I had planned to attend, and went along with two of my colleagues to the above mentioned session at the last minute. I’ll have to admit here that my professional conduct here was very poor, as I started talking to Trudy throughout the session in low hushed tones. We were hushed by a gentleman in front who was genuinely interested in seeing how to embed a worksheet screengrab in a Moodle to be displayed on a SmartBoard being operated by a tablet. I should have voted with my feet and followed Dan Meyer’s five minute rule.

Enhancing Literacy Through An IWB – Kel Hathaway

Now, Kel is a very nice guy with an entertaining manner, and his session held his audience captive. But I couldn’t get past the fact that it was a literacy focussed Tips and Tricks session, one of the most proficient I’d ever seen. There were “Ooohs” and “Aaahs” on almost every turn of his flipchart page where he covered everything from Wordle to spelling with Flickr to downloading magic erasers from Promethean Planet. He’d make a great trainer for Promethean, for sure but I’m sure there is greater depth to his expertise and knowledge than what this session permitted him to cover. My notes showed my mindset as I sat through this session – How could I use this file or idea to help my kids? Can this be used independently of the teacher? How about the kids creating instead of all the various incarnations of flipchartery promising many long nights for teachers as they created these “engaging” digital masterpieces?

I do feel like a pariah for feeling unsatisfied with IWBNet09. A quick look at the tweets from the #IWBNet09 hash show that many people thought it was great – and queried my less than enthused demeanour. I guess I wanted to spend more time talking about the learning and actually “pushing the boundaries”.

Session summary:
John’s forte was the development of Learning Games, based on Powerpoint and some more sophisticated Flash based content. He took attendees through some of the games including “Battle Of The Sexes” (useful only in co-ed schools), “Millionaire” and several others. He also talked through the use of these games as templates for students to create their own versions, easily tying these platforms to whatever learning was current in their classroom. There are a number of examples on John’s website at My Interactive Classroom. He also talked through his pedagogical stages of IWB use – which you can find here in a comment on Lauren O’Grady’s blog.

Presentation format:
John let his games do his talking for him by getting audience members involved in the games. He was witty, informative and flicked onto a new example before the audience could get bored, which is an excellent tactic for any classroom.

Summing up:
In my mixed bag experience at this conference, John’s session was a standout.

I got back Saturday from the National IWB conference (referred to as IWBNet09 as the event is run by IWBNet) tired and glad to be back in quiet old Adelaide. I went with a group of colleagues from my school along with Dr. Trudy Sweeney and Cate Berden from Learning Technologies in DECS. Our main goal was to get some sort of idea about the national picture, to gauge how we are travelling as a school compared to others and bring back leading edge ideas and experiences to share with our staff to keep our own technology use moving forward. I was quite excited about the two day conference, having volunteered to be a part of several presentations but hoping to catch enough other leading practitioners in action to help inform my own journey as an effective educator.

But now I’m back, I find that as a conference experience, IWBNet09 was not what I was hoping for. For me, there is still too much focus on fancy equipment, software solutions, too much basic click’n'drag demos. I’m sure that people could say the same of my own presentations – I was reasonably happy with the flow of my Effective Design presentation (much better than than the ramble I presented at CEGSA) and I think that choosing to cover Social Bookmarking in a presentation format was not the best idea. Talking at people for fifty minutes about the benefits of online bookmarking isn’t ideal – but only having nine people in the session meant that questions were freely asked and I could track around my initial pathway to address these ideas.

I’ll pick through my notes and publish my take on some of the sessions I did attend, but I guess what I felt was missing was the conversation about student learning in the classroom and how teachers are using technology to help facilitate that. I kept wishing for more in the sessions I did attend, with the exception of John Short who tied some pedagogical purpose to his Powerpoint Learning Games. I suppose when one attends a conference that purely focuses on one piece of technology, then said piece of technology takes centre stage. I think that I’m more interested in a conference centered around learning and technology’s potential role – and not the other way around.

(Starts with foreboding music)

“Spoon feed me”  – that’s the expectations of the teachers who are on holidays.

The Assessment villians – no one knows how to assess technology, exams and numbers don’t tell a kid what they have learnt , grades are good for politicians, kids are good at playing school.

Got to ask the right questions to get the right answers (shows scene from Bueller’s Day off) and we haven’t moved on in the context of school.

What we need is pedagogical leadership – teaching is about feedback and making connections with students, learn from the wisdom of the crowds.

Need to exploring virtual communities, not just read blogs, your peers may not be in your school, share your stories online.

3 R’s – realism, relevance & resonance.

Knowledge on the web is “healed”  – information is always “in flux “.

Conferences and f2f  is about affirmation and connections to people.

School + Home + Mobile + Internet + People = Learning Environment.

We can’t measure a person’s success by their exam results.

What can I do with (Insert technology here) in my classroom? Teach a teacher one or two new tools and you will expand their repertoire by up to 50%.

Game based learning  – Wii,  DS, PS3 etc.  Consoles that connect to the internet go beyond games. In gaming , reputation is authority. To succeed in World of Warcraft, you have to be able to access and contribute information.

21st Century learning outcomes  – Planet /People /Participation – Syllabus learning outcomes.

Don’t use anything you can’t assess.

I had the chance to attend a MasterClass for leaders presented by Teaching Australia, a group who have produced documents detailing professional standards for teachers and leadership. The session was led by Professor Mike Gaffney, and the MasterClass was a sort of face to face entree for a book “Leading Schools In The Digital Age“, co-edited by Mal Lee and himself. What follows in this post are my notes from this MasterClass.

Mike Gaffney (Australian Catholic University) opened with a warning for us to beware of ICT gurus, as most educators fall between these people and those who are referred to as “technological luddites”. He then introduced the main speaker for the morning.

Graham Speight is the principal of Rosetta High School in Tasmania, an innovative school embracing the digital age. His school have never had problems getting computers (referred to as “boxes”), has turned everything into a “project”. Can’t have a five year plan for technology integration because everything moves so fast – it needs to be person-to-person, with interaction and the technology follows behind. Staff have to be comfortable with the concept that everything is constantly moving.

Referred to the concept of space – virtual space, intellectual space and physical space for students. Talked about three stages of implementation – ADAPT > ENHANCING > ACCELERATED LEARNING. Key quote “It’s all about thinking.” Referenced the use of Renzulli’s Triad. Talked about the concept of personalised learning, in their case through the use of StudyWiz (Tasmanian company online learning system), students demonstrating their achievement through exhibition. School also established a partnership with Dataworks. Interestingly, Graham mentioned the use of interactive whiteboards, but that most teachers have moved through and past IWB. Maths and Science teachers were still the biggest users but others have moved onto other ICT possibilities. He also said that this year is the last time his school are doing printed reports – through StudyWiz they are reporting all of the time.

The big focus is Project Based Learning where students participate in one of two programs – “Make It Big”, a program that is diverse to capture kids who may normally have dropped out of school and “Make It Real” for the majority with focus on community service, personal challenge and future work related. When new staff come on board, they are very daunted so it is important to have good induction processes. Why projects? Because projects have an END – a timeline, responsibilities and outcomes.

Graham listed issues that need to be dealt with in his school environment (including others!)

• technology access for kids at home
• teacher burn out
• never getting to finish anything
• unblocking YouTube and MySpace
• cyberbullying episodes
• network management
• keeping it all heading in the right direction

When dealing with cyberbullying, it is important to have a protocol with police. As far as personal student technology or any other emerging issue, if it’s a reality – we must deal with it.

Mike Gaffney wrapped up the session with a look at Michael Wesch’s “Vision Of Students Today”. (Still am surprised at how many leaders in our system have never seen or heard of this or any of the Wesch videos). Final parting point – our schools have pockets of innovation with some teachers for some students – how do we approach the goal of systemic transformation?

Here in South Australia, if you teach in a government school, you have 41 weeks of active teaching duty for the calendar year. Well, it was until about ten years ago when the state government decided to bring our system in line with the eastern state public systems by dispensing with the 41st week. The cynics pointed out that this was nothing more than a cost saving exercise and the teachers were delighted about not working with students right up until Christmas. But there was a catch.

In order to earn the privilege of an extra week off in the face of a public already convinced that teachers got too many holidays, the government invented some hoops for its teachers to jump through. This became known as the “37 and a 1/2 hours requirement” where accredited professional training and development to the minimum of 37 and a half hours had to be recorded and presented to the principal for verification before signing off early for the summer. The 37 and a 1/2 hours had to be done out of school hours in a teacher’s own time so conferences and training done within the school day could not count. Teachers who failed to meet this requirement had to report for duty in what was formerly the last week of the year, sometimes to the local district office if the principal had their hours and had commenced their break!

Principals were also expected to ensure accountability in this system and asked to see certificates of attendance so that they in turn could not be accused of not playing this new game. This varied from school to school in its stringency. At my wife’s school when this was introduced, only training aligned to the school’s identified priorities could be counted – too bad if you had an interest or membership of a professional organisation that fell outside this parameter. On the other hand, I actually read the book “Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” and had it counted by my then principal as official PD good for about 15 hours. Oh, and he lent me the book as well!

So for many teachers, the 37 and a 1/2 hours has become a game to play – not for fun but to cynically satisfy the government’s needs. I have heard of teachers going to workshops or cheap events to “get their hours up” which is sort of self-defeating if the process of Professional Development is to have any meaning. We all know that seat time and a paper certificate does not ensure that the participant has actually learnt anything of value and become a better practitioner because of it.

By the way, I don’t have any problems getting 37 and a 1/2 hours of official PD to qualify. This year I had at least 50 hours of conferences, training events, seminars etc. and that did not include anything I did online. I’m not really sure how this scheme can recognise anything except for “traditional” modes of adult learning/training/PD. How many hours have I logged with my blog, reading the sharpest educational minds from around the world in my Reader, participating in online events (K12 Online etc.), listening to others, watching others etc..? Unless you have a principal who gets it (whatever “it” is) then all of this online interaction and networked learning is not real, not certifiable and does not qualify as proof of improvement as an educator. 

The powers that be that created and continue to perpetrate this sham have missed the point. As my principal pointed out in our leadership meeting on Tuesday, “The most powerful way for educators to learn (and grow) is from each other.” My network is the biggest collection of “each other” that I could ever hope to learn from – any system that fails to recognise this as a manifestation of the most powerful learning available to its fleet of teachers has really missed the boat. 

I’m not much of a contributor to mailing lists but I do read through some of the postings on the Oz-teachers list. There seemed to be very little about the recent ACEC08 conference in Canberra on the open web so I read some recent reflections with interest. One aspect of interest that came through in some of the reflections was an annoyance with delegates who chose to backchannel via twitter on laptops during some of the keynotes and presentations. Without directly quoting any of the responses, there was an opinion posed that these educators were lacking in professional respect, that they weren’t paying attention to what was being presented and that their activities were distracting for other delegates.

Anyway, I thought I would throw the latter half of my posting here for the wider edublogger community to ponder at their whim.

I am one of those educators who will always have his laptop open (wireless availability and battery life permitting) and use the web to connect to points of interest that a speaker might be mentioning, pulling in resources that come to mind when something crops up, making notes, trading ideas with any backchannel that exists and yes, delving into my RSS reader if the presentation becomes irrelevant to my learning. I do this quietly, without fanfare and certainly am unsure how this activity can become a distraction to others. This methodology has actually made me a more attentive participant at any conferences that I’ve attended.

Although I did not go to ACEC, I would say that any ICT conference that has a mobiles off, laptops off policy is not one that I’d bother attending.

However, this is just my opinion. What do others think? Laptop backchannelling – the way modern educators make conferences relevant or just plain bad manners?

Are those of us who are laptop-toting social media addicts helpful to the future of professional learning or adding a complicated layer that just scares or annoys others?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468148654@N01/1952967614

Although, like Lauren O’Grady, I felt a bit underwhelmed at the sessions at the National IWB Conference, one leadership session that I found very valuable was held by Mal Lee, Digital Schooling Consultant and creator of IWB.net. Here are my notes from the session with my thoughts in italics.

Author of a book “leading a digital school” which was due out this week. Mal was also involved in the 2003 research into IWB’s at Richardson Primary School, Canberra, ACT. His talk was about achieving total teacher usage of digital instructional technology – preferring the term DIT to ICT. (Not sure if I like the term instructional – has a lot of connotations about methodologies being used. Where’s learning?)

It doesn’t matter if the technology is there if it is not used. The paper based mode has been maximised (Treadwell says that it peaked in the mid-60’s) and it is time to move to a new paradigm. This move should also enhance the prductivity of the nation. In developed nations, the majority of teachers use technology for preparation but only a small number use technology for instruction. Singapore, Korea, UK and NZ have significant investments in this area but Australia hasn’t done so – now there is a big divide between the home and classroom, and between the proactive and the reactive teachers. The onus is on schools to address the human and technology variables simultaneously, not one then the other.

The Variables.

1. Teacher Acceptance. This is anyone who teaches in your school as the teacher is the most powerful person in the education equation when it comes to technology. In NSW, all secondary kids will have a laptop under the DER scheme (they don’t get a choice, and it will be an el-cheapo) but whether they get used will be decided by the teacher in the classroom. So, they need to see the educational value and how it assists their teaching.

2. Working with the givens. We teach classes, not individuals, have to manage that class operating in classrooms with physical limits, a crowded curriculum that limits the time to go off elsewhere like a computing room – so the tools need to be in the classroom.

3. Teacher training & teacher development support. Teacher release within the school is the most valuable, give them time to do things. Amazing statistic – 64% of UK classrooms have an IWB, Australia has got 5%.

4. Nature and availability of the technology. Needs to assist teaching, not oblige change, integrate with teaching. IWB’s were designed by companies started by ex-teachers while most ICT tools were designed for other purposes. Not a fan of laptops in schools because of the high tech support needed, one private laptop school now wants to get rid of them – the future will probably be some iteration of the iPhone.

5. Teacher acceptance of IWB’s. (Can IWB’s change pedagogy or just entrench it?) The important feature of the IWB is it is a digital facilitator (not the native software) and now there are early signs that key areas (IWB + broadband) can improve literacy – quoted Balanskat 2006 (can’t find link via Google). IWB numbers have grown from 70,000 in 2002 up to 603,000 in 2008 with predicted numbers reaching 1.371 million by 2012.

6. Appropriate content and software. 85% of Australian schools are severely restricted by filters, and that means less access to Web 2.0 tools.

7. Infrastructure. The best bandwidth available is what’s needed – Korean speeds in schools are around 100MB while Australia does well to get 1.5MB. Technology needs to be operative 100% of teaching time even though education has unusual demands – peaks between 9 – 3, 5 days a week.

8. Finance. Successful schools have leaders who go out and find the money. Must consider Total Cost of Ownership which includes teacher PD but schools are still funded on a paper based model. The average school budget commits 2.7% to ICT but 85% to staffing. If schools have a chance they must capitalise on the DER funding.

9. Leadership. This is crucial in order to unlock time, money, to put pressure on certain people and overcome hurdles. Australian preparation of principals is not geared towards this future – but they are the architects of the digital school.

10. Implementation. It is a historic pattern that we are focussed on equipment, but department restrictions can be a problem. Eventually schools that have their act together won’t want to play by their department’s rules.

Mal says that he disagrees with Peter Kent’s eTeaching pedagogy, just believes in good teaching. He believes that we have reached a decline in teacher preparation time thanks to technology (or has it just shifted that preparation?) He doesn’t care what brand of IWB schools buy – that will depend on the user.

Overall, an interesting session that allowed me to compare his advice with my own school’s journey. I don’t think I agree with him about the potential of laptops in the classroom but much of what he said made sense to me.

What does traditional Professional Development look like? (workshops, conferences, staff meetings, seminars) The features of this approach (which many teachers still view as the only way to update their professional skills and knowledge) seem to be:

• With an expert
• A set time, place and duration
• Handouts with step-by-step instructions
• Responsibility for learning lies with the facilitator (as in if they are good,” I learnt a lot from that presenter today.”)
• Everyone in the session experiences the same journey
• Obtain a solution / formula / approach that can be used tomorrow, a pre-constructed toolbox
  “small picture” solutions or “big picture” gospel
• Delivered by local “experts” or well known international “gurus”
• Top down

So, what’s the alternative? What differentiates contemporary professional learning from the traditional? Which new (and not so new) approaches should educators be seeking out? So could this mindset look like this?

• Anyone or anything is a source of learning
• You build your own toolbox
• Equal partnership with others in learning
• Professional/ Personal Learning Network as a source of professional dialogue
• Apply inquiry learning principles to oneself as a learner
• Sharing from but beyond your own classroom
• Learn by teaching others
• Small bite-sized snippets “just in time” (video clips, screencasts, mini-tutorials)
• Continual learning and re-learning (free ranging)
• Zoom in and out between “small” and “big picture”
• Learning through networked discovery (as in many ideas / concepts are discovered through connection, rather than strategically planned for)

How’s that look for starters?