ACEC (Australian Council for Computers in Education) 2010

Last week I was fortunate to attend a day of ACEC's Digital Diversity Conference 2010 here in Melbourne. The day started brilliantly with Alan November as keynote speaker. I will post the link to his website here but I'd also like to provide you with some of my "jottings" from the session.

http://novemberlearning.com/blog/

• education is the only industry that hasn't changed it's processes due to technology e.g. bell times and timetables are still mostly the same as 80 yrs ago!
• teachers provide the framework for learning BUT NOT the understanding. Students get the understanding from their peers, their social networks.
• give students the tools to create the content.
• there must be immediate feedback.
• digital responsibility is to shape knowledge, to leave behind a legacy and be capable of adding value to the world.
• never give grades as that signals that the learning has finished. Instead get students to post/publish their work online and let others comment and provide feedback.
• we should be teaching critical thinking- showing students how Wikipedia and Google work (e.g. Search Engine Optimisation). Teach students which search engine for which problem- teach them how to filter e.g. transport site:gov will only return websites linked to transport provided by the government or tibet demonstrations site:ch will only return searches from Chinese domain websites
• the most important role for teachers is to empower students. Teach the students how to create an assessment rubrics and to design assessment tasks.
• Alan suggested that in every class you teach you assign an official scribe to take notes and then 5-10mins before th end of class everyone edits these and ensures they are correct. If there is time you can discuss them before they are published to the LMS for everyone in the class to access.
• he suggested that teachers attending P.D. sessions should always take a student or two with them as teacher training MUST involve children.
• assessment should be real-time (continuous over time) for the rote content.