Edu Tech Congress Reflections

Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to attend the Edu Tech Conference at Darling Harbour.  I came back from the two days with my mind spinning. It was affirming as I could see that much of what was being discussed was already happening in my classroom. However at other times I was boggled as to how I could make these changes happen. However it was reassuring  to know  that my vision was being  backed up by the research and data provided by others.

Allan November highlighted that the revolution that we are experiencing is not  in technology. The revolution is a fundamental change in pedagogy. He allowed me to reflect on who owns the learning in my classroom, my students or I ?  He made me feel more confident in my ability to let go of control and allow a shift in who takes responsibility for the learning. 

November discussed the flipped classroom. He challenged us to consider ways to reengineer homework. I loved his phrase “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.”  He reminded us that students want choice and need immediate feedback. He encouraged us to teach our students to be reflective learners.

Stephen Heppell too, highlighted the need to make students reflective learners, moving them away from being content based learners. He encouraged us as teachers to learn about how we are learning. He told us that we can’t build better learning for students, but we can learn better with students.

I loved Sir Ken Robinson’s idea that in education we are dealing with vast rich resources of talent and capacity and as a teacher, we need to go looking for it. Ken Robinson inspired us with his concept of creativity being a function of intelligence. He challenged me to think about how creativity is intertwined with critical judgement. We need to teach the power of evaluating ideas. He also encouraged us to have greater conversation while providing open-ended collaborative task. Sir Ken highlighted the fact that the new digital technologies have given us the tools but tools are neutral - it is the task that is performed by the creator is that is creative. The technology is only as powerful as the creative capacity available by the operator.  Once again, we hear of a change in pedagogy being more critical than the technology.

Greg Whitby highlighted the importance of making school relevant to a child’s life. He challenged us to ask questions about what we are doing and why? He encouraged schools to go from an ‘ I know” environment, to a “We learn” collaborative community.Greg wants us to reflect on how structures, processes and environments either support or hinder authentic learning. What we do is not an experiment but should be founded on contemporary research and data.

Dan Haesler’s talk was engaging! It did what he wants our students to do.. be engaged. He defined engaged as a sense of interest, curiosity, and absorption. An engaged individual is able to pursue goals with determination and vitality. He made me think about how I can encourage my students become intrinsically motivated. Through autonomy - giving them choice, through mastery -  encouraging them to strive to improve and through a sense of purpose - showing them that what they do has relevance in their world.

However the thing that I think that all teachers can do without even thinking, as suggested by Dan, is not to answer the students questions. Ask them another question to get them to find the solution! This is so easily done if they come armed with an ipad!

One of the workshop I attended was about tablet technology in the classroom.  Yes the session was sponsored by an android based company, however the same message was coming across no matter what device was being used. Mobile devices are the way of the future. (Despite this,  a quite vocal congress attendee walked out on the presentation because it wasn't pushing the ipad as the recommended mobile device) I just wish the ipads were compatible with Flash! The issue of bring your own device was also the talk of the congress. But I think that the emphasis should be on what is done with the tool, rather than the tool itself. That's what i am enjoying about the past modules - it's what i can put into place!

Module 5 Multimodal Literacies

This module has taken me a bit longer to complete because it has given me the opportunity to try a heap of things In the classroom K -6. I have my own Year 5 classroom, but part of my coordinators role is to work within classrooms k-6. My focus this year has been ict and  critical literacy. This post is mostly a reflection of how my module learning have been implemented at my school.

Dragon Dictation is simple to use. We have tried to use it in the classroom with a literate Year 1 autistic child who just happens not to like to write! We have been able to get him to record his thoughts and stories which are then converted to text. 

Found that external  microphones were not needed.. Kids managed to record themselves . Even when recording in classrooms, their voices could still be clearly heard.

Kids have loved the Miss Spider series. Level of engagement  are high- a few kids were distracted by the interactive features rather than focus on the text. Cost of purchasing multiple books is an issue. Not many quality free books around. 

Our Choice interactive book is phenomenal. Good to use with a small group and project on an interactive whiteboard.  

This is the format school text books should be taking. Most at the moment seem to be PDF  versions of the text rather than rich media inserted within the text to allow for student interactivity. Schools need to pressure the publishers to give more.

I used Dragons  Jumble Dream with small groups in Years 1 and 2. They worked through these activities with complete engagement. It always amazes me how little teacher explanation is needed. Just tell them the name of the App and off the  kids go.

Love digital story telling on the iPad. I introduced  Puppetpals to a  Year 2 class. I watched a small group of children creating a story and  It was interesting to see  that they went and grabbed pencil and paper and began to script their story prior to starting. This quality of this groups work was of a much higher standard than the others who just used the app. 

It proved to me the importance of the work that needs to be done using traditional methods and then allowing the App to improve the final product.  

I also have been using My Story with my Kindergarten group. The children create a written story and then with the assistance of their Year 6 buddy, they publish their story using the My Story App. I particularly like the kinder kids being able to read back their story and record it in their book.

Eastern Region CEO have provided me with a really exciting opportunity. It involves an iPad training day for staff and students next term.

I will be exploring iMovie over the next few weeks with a combined workshop with our adjoining high school. The day will be presented by Mac1 with students  from Years 2 to 10 being taught how to use GarageBand and iMovie.  Its great to be able to combine with our neighbouring school.  A great way to share resources and expertise.Another useful app that some of my Year 5 students are trying out is iMotion HD. This app allow the students to create stopmotion style movies.

I love working with the iPads because they are so intuitive. I can takes photos, video, voice record, work with iTunes and all on the one device I can create a product and publish it. No need to download. 

At the moment, I am working with a Robotic company testing their products for them in my year 5 class (www.roboteshop.com) I am also using the Edmodo App to assist with classroom communication. I can take photos of the kids products and video them in action. Within a few moments, I can instantly upload these and  the kids and their parents have access to it all.  I'm really pleased that CEO updated their acceptable use agreement, because it makes doing things like that possible for me.

I used the "teachwithyouripad" wiki. It is  a valuable site to find good primary literacy resources. Found a number of free story chime books which I will install on our school set of iPads. It also made a recommendation for a book creation App called Build a Story . I bought it for about $5:50 and then tried it out. Thought it was great as once I completed the story, it can be emailed as a PDF file and even printed out if needed. I evaluated it using the five finger evaluation process and the only down side I found was that it occasionally shut itself down as I was working. I then lost pages that I had not already saved. It isn't cheap but I think it would get a lot of use in a early learning.

Wow Flipboard. Great potential. I find that twitter tends to be my greatest source of updated information in technology. Actually this is the only reason I use twitter. Once twitter is opened up in clipboard, a whole new world opens up too. I just opened it up for the first time and got totally lost in it- going from one story to another - one useful link to another useful site. Being able to see the article in full was so helpful. Such an intuitive app and definitely something that will become part of my daily repertoire! 

This post must sound so disjointed- I've been taking notes as I have been working through the module ....and that's what I do.... Jump around a lot. Says something about the way students must learn with these emerging technologies!