Learning@School11: The gift that keeps on giving

The week of the Learning@School11 Conference in Rotorua was one marked by huge events unfolding in Christchurch – and it was rather odd to still be travelling to attend a conference that week, especially as flights were in disarray (not to mention the people).

But, despite the tragedies unfolding for my colleagues, I was able to grab moments to appreciate what L@S11 had to offer. Here are my top 3 highlights:

• Powerful language for learning: Joan Dalton and David Anderson explored the way in which the language (including body language) that we use needs to reflect the pedagogy that we espouse. If we are to prepare students for a networked, connected, collaborative world, then peppering our relationships with instructions, closed questions, and imperatives will not foster the sense of community that we know is so important. Great anecdotes illustrated their message; the story of the student who was failed for producing a blog that showed collaboration – sorry, make that cheating – drove home the point.
• The ‘a-ha!’ moments as I met folk from my Twitter PLN – some old faces (not literally, people;-) and some folks who I only knew by their avatar but who already felt like old faces.
• The networking and conversations – everything from social networking for educators to the idea that risk on the internet is normative and should be re-framed as a challenge to be addressed rather than avoided (whole new post needed on that one). Great, mind-expanding stuff.

Roll on ULearn 11 (but not too much rolling for those down South)

#eqnz

The Christchurch earthquake – and the tragedy unfolding in its wake – has stunned us all. But, in between the stories of bravery, local heroism and national response, there have been occasional moments where something has caught my attention because it is odd or unusual.

For me, it was the moment in Parliament on Tuesday 22 February, when Bill English asked people to stay off the phone lines and use texting instead. And it was the moment when a bizarre email from a friend made me think something had happened – and Twitter was my first source for immediate news. Both were, even at the time, in the midst of the devastating news, an odd reminder of the way technology is part of how we communicate.

This infographic from Mashable highlights the way online networks are now firmly centre stage during times when news is breaking; when the person in the street is at the heart of the story; when good, and bad, news travels faster than ever before.

If anyone still doubts the power of an online community, a social network or 140 character messages to have real impact on people’s lives, they have only to look at the messages coming through on the day of the earthquake, and still streaming through in the days afterwards, to be persuaded otherwise.

 

My Principal tweets: A report on leaders and social networks

We know that when leaders get involved in professional learning – when they walk the talk – their staff and community are much more likely to follow and be inspired to join in.

The report  - School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies, and Realities in 2010 – highlights the importance of school principals getting hands-on experience with social media tools, like Facebook and Twitter, in order to understand how it might support collaborative and networked learning.

The key findings of the report include:

• Principals who have active and personal experience of social media are far more likely to be strong advocates for its educational potential, and for e-learning in general.
• Many principals believe that there are possibilities within social media – but their schools do not have a strategy for its use.

The report recommends three key actions:

1. Greater active involvement in social networking is required for school leaders – and sites like EdWeb, ASCD Community and Google for Educators can provide a context that offers obvious benefits quite quickly if Facebook and Twitter don’t strike immediate chords.
2. Models of good practice are needed to show the potential of social networking in education
3. School policies need to be more effective and based on real-world contexts. They should extend beyond whether sites should be blocked to incorporate students and community in authentic digital citizenship conversations.

Schools look to their leaders for guidance and inspiration. What are they seeing at the moment?

Original link for report: http://www.edweb.net/fimages/op/PrincipalsandSocialNetworkingReport.pdf

43 decisions: Setting your privacy settings on Facebook

43. That’s the number of decisions you potentially have to make when you review your Facebook privacy settings.

And even if you’re a ‘digital citizen’, who fully understands the implications of your choices, it’s still hard.

Many young people find it much harder – and that’s why they need the support of parents and teachers.

This privacy chart for teens is part of a Parents’ Guide to Facebook. It steps you through each decision that you make as you set up or review your settings. And A Parents’ Guide to Facebook can be downloaded here.

And once you’ve done that, run the Scan for Privacy from reclaimPrivacy.org.

Because any platform that asks you to make at least 43 decisions about what you want to share, and what you don’t, needs to be handled with care.

Hands up for invisible tech

Steve Braunias, a keynote speaker, gently mocked the inoffensive little pun in the title of the NZ English teachers’ conference last week – but we WERE ‘enthusENG’, and for many of us, the focus was elearning.

Workshops ranged from using Digistore for planning to exploiting creative affordances for presentational tools to support the teaching of multi-media texts.

But one of the most startling, oft-commented-upon aspects – and it really shouldn’t be –  was that the venue was able to provide hassle-free connection, hassle-free technology, whip-smart students to address the few problems that arose and fast-as-you-would-wish-for broadband.  Christs’ College (as shot on my other blog) is also a Mac school (something that this author was most grateful for).

The connection and easy use of technology should not be remarkable – but it is. Many teachers and presenters know well the feeling of planning for a workshop or lesson, with almost near certainty that there will be a technological glitch. We make back-ups, prep offline versions, prepare handouts and get ready to wing it, preying to the tech-gods that all will be well.

So it was an absolute pleasure to be at Christs’. A well-resourced school it may be (and some would say that they can, of course, afford to provide such resources) but this should be an expectation that all schools should have.

Introducing the government’s broadband initiative, and the National Education Network (NZ). It may bring a handful of false dawns (for after all, schools still need to provide the gear, the support, the infrastructure, the effective teaching and learning…) but it should be a step in the direction of ubiquity and invisible technology.

Image source: Techiesouls, ‘Blue Computer Speed’