KimP’s Blog

Social Networking

We did a whole lot of socialising today, and quite a bit of networking as well!

Caught up with John Connell, who we met at the Global Summit in Sydney last October, linked up with Futurlab and Dan Sutch, touched base again with Anne from Shooflypie, met Ian Warwick from London Gifted and Talented, and negotiated a deal with John Griffith from Immersive Education. Whew - and to think we were initially disappointed to have missed out on a few seminars we had wanted to attend!

Some of the really interesting concepts and “buzz” words to have come out of the Seminars visited over the last three days have included: 

• Connecting
• Linking
• Building learning communities 
• Personal networks

Describes quite well our experiences today!

BETT Day 2

Web 2.0 ers take heart!

 Some observations on a seminar: Social Technologies and Learning in Your Classroom. Blogs, Wikis Podcasting and More - Miles Berry and Terry Freedman that I visited at BETT yesterday.

Warning: these are personal, non-scientific and totally un-back-up-able observations duly noted later that night whilst tucked up in bed in the London dungeon/cupboard that is home this week.

The rather large Seminar A Hall was FULL. The seminar was sold out and there was a queue to get in. We are talking over 200 250 (sorry Miles and Terry!)people sitting and standing around the hall (based on 180 attending an earlier seminar (counted) and adding in the extra bodies standing and sitting around the back and sides of the Hall).

A noticeable lack of “suits”- everyone looked terribly ordinary as if they might per chance be teachers (we have THAT look i think) or actually involved in education/teaching/kids.

Large range of age groups were represented - from terribly young and enthused people in front of us, 30-somethings, mature/experienced 40 y.o and people even older yet. Most seemed quite interested and I’m hoping that even if everyone in the room doesn’t go out and start using these technologies with their classes or in their schools, they will at least be familiar with the definitions, the ideas, the possibilities and advantages to teaching/ learning of these social technologies. The message will be “mainstreamed” and out there.

Preaching to the converted? Perhaps - no hard evidence on the day - but there was a BUZZZZ.

As I said, unscientific, and just some observations….

Wanted: Creative Passionate People

Learning is changing - what sort of vision do we need to help navigate this change? I put forward that

creative

passionate

people

are the answer! 

CPP take the old, the tried and the tested  content and use ICT to interact with  it in new, exciting and creative ways. Students and teachers (all learners) get to take the content and work together to manipulate it, modify it and have a personal stake in it.

At BETT (British Educational Technology Trade Show @ Olympia, London) today, I came across two stand out CPP - a large organization and an individual who love what they do, want to make a difference and have stepped up to creatively lead the way.

Promethean, with their Promethean Planet  teacher website, their online Training and Develoment opportunities and their new AcivPrimary 3 software, are promoting a range of products, tried and tested that encourage both teachers and students to creatively approach their learning.

Students and teachers are supported through new learning experiences, but not directed in an over-bearing way. Users can interact with each other and the programs to create new and exciting learning experiences that combine different bases of knowledge to raise questions and solve problems together.

Shooflypie promotes big books in digital form. Students interact with these texts, with each other, and with technology to explore, develop and articulate ideas and concepts. Students use the texts on the interactive whitebord as a springboard to develop traditional storytelling skills and enrich language through other cross-curricula areas ( such as music, drama, art, design and citizenship).

Anne - the author and developer - drew upon her strengths and skills as a passionate teacher, a gifted story teller and an educator to develop creative and inspiring materials.

For students to become passionate and creative about their learning they need to be exposed to, and make use of , creative teaching practices and creative ICT applications - which they can interact with and have control over. I found two examples at BETT today!

Old Literacy / New Literacies

I have always been fascinated with literacy – how kids learn to read and write, how to best teach reading and writing – and how literacy teaching and learning has changed and developed over the years. When I first began teaching in the  eighties the “Process Writing Approach” was new and exciting; my favourite book at this time was called “Towards a Reading – Writing Classroom” by Andrea Butler and Jan Turbill and I was determined that my classroom would be a reading-writing classroom! The possibilities and the new ways forward that were revealed in this approach were wide ranging and long lasting. 

Twenty years on and we are now looking to 21^st century literacies and how these will necessarily change and develop both ‘the what’ and ‘the way’ we teach. My new favourite text this time is not a conventional book, it’s the Read/Write web - more specifically, the blogosphere. I love it that it’s not just the names of the ‘texts’ that are so similar but that the learning that has resulted from my reading of the many blogs by educationalists and teachers has had such a profound effect on my own learning and on my teaching as well.  I know that the possibilities revealing themselves with Web2.0 – the read/write web - will be far wider ranging and longer lasting than my textbook from the eighties. 

The fact that so many wonderfully talented and inspirational teachers have taken the time to share what they are doing, to offer help and support, to encourage dialogue and conversations among and between other interested parties from around the world has opened up a wealth of opportunities and possibilities for taking learning and teaching into the 21^st century.  

During my upcoming trip to the UK in January and February I am looking forward to developing further my understandings of 21^st century literacies, and what they might mean for classrooms, students and teachers. 

Old Dog? New Tricks?

You bet! This “old dog” has learnt many new tricks in the last couple of months, and it’s all because of blogging. John Johnson recommended this as an interesting exercise and so, even though I have only been blogging with my class for a few months I thought I’d give it a go! 

August – set up our class blog, what a learning curve, big thanks to Al and his miniLegends for help and enthusiasm. Spent time with my class looking at class and student blogs, what they wrote about, what made them good/interesting/relevant. Decided on individual blogs for each student, negotiated rules and expectations and began blogging.

September – learnt how to upload photos from our class files to the blog, had our first international comments, and the AllStars were off! Found out about Google Earth and the teaching/learning resources available to use with it – thanks Tom.

October – attended the Global Summit and was blown away by the presentations, the presenters and the discussions that were part of this event. Set up a Flikr account to store photos, but Flikr is unreliable at school (sometimes blocked, then unblocked, then reblocked). 

November – began work on our class wiki as part of the Game2Learn Project we are part of. Quite a few frustrations as wikispaces was blocked, unblocked and blocked again at school. Tried to determine how best to set up the commenting and editing rights, ended up leaving it open as I didn’t expect much “traffic” to the site. 

December – Worked around the blocking of our wiki – its not blocked when teacher logs on, so the kids rotated through my computer adding comments, thoughts and opinions about the Game2Learn project. Learnt about game design using Game Maker and Game2Learn project.  

There, it doesn’t look much, I admit, and it won’t be of interest to anyone but me – very low tech, but it’s a record of my earliest attempts at harnessing a tiny portion of the mighty power of Web 2.0.