Learn to unlearn (Chris Betcher - ACEC 2010)

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Chris Betcher, in this keynote presentation, talks about the importance of learning to unlearn, and seeing the writing on the wall. He argues that the world that the education system was designed to serve, is no longer the same world, and the system no longer works. This presentation was an energetic call for education reform, which echoes many of the other presenters at the conference.

He looks at what Google has done since 1998 and the influence they have had on everyday lives of people around the world. Could we have predicted what the world would be like, 12 years ago?
What will the world look like 12 years from now? What are we preparing the students of today for?

Looking at education, Betcher referred to a statement by Papert: "We need to produce people who know how to act when they're faces with situations for which they were not specifically prepared" (Seymour Papert). Education is preparing students for things that we cannot predict will happen. At the moment education creates conservative learners who do not question the fundamental aspect of what school is, who follow the curriculum and live within the current confines of school without question.

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Teacher beliefs and their influence on learning (Michael Philips, ACEC 2010)

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Michael Philips started by looking at some of the barriers around teachers not adopting technology as part of their everyday practice (including being able to access computers during classtime). Philip's findings, while based on a small case study, offer some key indications as to how beliefs and planning are intricately connected. It may well offer some insights to those practitioners involved in teacher development.

He explored some the 1st and 2nd order barriers, in particular ones that challenge beliefs about teaching and learning. Second order barriers are less tangible and visible.

Examining teachers' beliefs is problematic as it involves inference. Philips asks why we should be looking at beliefs around the adoption of the use of technology. Belief systems have an onion-like structure with core beliefs being the most difficult to influence. There is also a difference between the espoused and enacted beliefs of teachers - with discrepancies occurring between the two, but with one having a strong influence on the other.

Philips looked at teacher planning to work out what the relationship is between beliefs, planning and practice. His assertion is that there has only been a small amount of research conducted where the focus is on lesson preparation which he argues has an important relationship with successful teaching practices. He went out to a private school in Melbourne to conduct the case study.  He had two females and two males in the study. He found that teacher's espoused beliefs about the sue of technology are not necessarily reflect in their enacted planning practice. There are many factors that may cause this discrepancy, including self-efficacy of ICT literacy.

Technology transforms learning and teaching? (Christine Jager, ACEC 2010 Day Three)

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Christine Jager begins the conversation by looking at the promise of digital technologes and asks if they lead to increased teacher efectiveness, and improved student achievement.

Christine has been working in the Middle East with education institutions for a number of years, and has found many teachers to be defensive, and competitive (a teacher wanting to look better than a colleague because of the test scores students are achieving). The teaching is traditional and teachers are seen as the catalyst to learning - if a student fails it is seen as the fault of the teacher.

She looks at John Hattie's research (Visible Learning, 2009) to help consider ways of measuring performance / effect (including Key Performance Indicators, standards-based evaluation of performance, and student achievement gains). Hattie has looked at 800 quantitative studies from around the world (83 million students from around the world), and he ends up listing the 28 aspects of learning and teaching. From his analysis he discovered the use of computers would mean "a change in the conception of being a teacher...it necessitates a different way of interacting and respecting students". Hattie identifies that feedback, a student's prior cognitive ability, and the trust build by teachers with their students were paramount to effective learning.

Putting the control into the hands of students can be concerning to students as they are not sure what this would actually look like in practice. The most important thing is what the students bring to the learning situation, followed closely by what a teacher brings, as well as the influence of home, peers, schools and principals. Putting technology into schools is only a small part of the equation. When teachers see learning through the eyes of the student and when students see themselves as their own teachers, that's when you get the most effective outcomes.

Christine's presentation was well-informed, had time for audience participation, and discussion, and raised some key questions, while also suggesting some suggestions (in part sourced from the NZ National Curriculum).

Passionate about learning - (Gary Stager, Day 3 ACEC 2010)

Seymour Papert - Image via Wikipedia

Gary Stager was the first keynote speaker of day three of the ACEC 2010 conference. A passionate speaker Gary Stager questioned why we are still asking questions around whether technology enhances learning, and asserts that of course it does, and we know how to do it. What Stager has to say pulls no punches, and I could see some of the audience bristling. However, his examples and his conviction are unquestionable. He is well worth listening to if you are keen to reform education and curricula in a way that really puts the student at the centre. One peachy example that I really enjoyed is: "School is the only place where you group people according to levels of incompetance and manufacturing date".

He talks about Seymour Papert who is a strong advocate of using technology in education - and in fact points out that having conferences about computers in education, is like having conferences about pencils in conferences.

Stager goes on to assert that we are using pre-Gutenberg technology which reinforces the dominance of the front of the room - engagement isn't something you do to others, and education is not about delivery. He also suggests, that kids need to have productive contact with adults. We can use the kids to use computers to express themselves in ways that have never been imagined before. We need to be asking questions around what do the kids do with the computers, as knowledge is a consequence of experience.



Gary Stager's ACEC 2010 Video from Gary Stager on Vimeo.


Seymour Papert on Generation YES and Kid Power from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

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In the clouds (John Pearce, workshop, day 2, ACEC 2010)

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I think this will be my final session of the day. It's a hands-on workshop called In the Clouds. John Pearce has a PBWorks resource site that looks at various cloud solutions. We started by having a discussion around what cloud computing comprises and what the benefits are.

The terms and conditions around some of the applications were also considered by the group. If a school sets up something like Google Apps, the account is tied to the school, which means that the work is not going to be portable for students. Also, at the end of the year, usually servers are re-set so students lose their work - somewhat against the ethos of cloud computing!

The hands on part of the session encouraged participants to explore:

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Etherpad
• Edmodo
• Evernote
• Social Bookmarking
• Concept Mapping

Zoho and Google Docs are very similar, but Zoho has more functionality. Google, however, is set up more for education.

Etherpad has now been taken over by Google. The source code from Etherpad is going to be shared however. It is a superb synchronous tool for brainstorming or writing policy etc together. Contributions are colour-coded and names are related to colours. It has a 'timeslider' function that enables the re-visiting of the whole experience. A lot of the functionality is similar to Mindmeister, but in document form as opposed to mindmaps. There is a paid option for a tool called Primary Pad which gives a 6 month free trial where you can set up your own pads.


Edmodo is microblogging for education. As a teacher you can set up groups, and a code is generated that students use to work together.

The interesting thing for me was watching how people interacted during the workshop (mainly one person, one laptop - lots of backchanneling). Some people were watching the slideshow and videos and some were answering questions / contributing. I think it may have been rather more engaging if we'd been given a few things to explore, and actually set up a couple of things - or just collaborated on a ready set up resource. I was able to write this blog... :-)

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Keynote follow up with Sylivia Martinez (ACEC 2010, Day 2)

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In this discussion session with Sylivia Martinez (which was a follow up from her earlier keynote session) people asked questions about issues that came up in the keynote, and also shared examples of what they are doing at their schools.

Sylvia has kids from the age of 10 to 18 years old to peer-assess, teach and so on. The students can act as teacher aides as well - who can, for example, help set up a class of 20 students around a media project. She has found that when teachers see the students helping out, that is when they become convinced that students helping is a great idea. These initiatives cannot just be free labour, there has to be something in it for the students, such as upskilling, confidence, payment, and other associated academic benefits such as a head start on a certificate, or cross-crediting for other courses.

There was a question around security. Some of the schools define a new level of access for students who are providing tech support somewhere between students and teachers. After an apprentice period some students may then need to be give a higher access. In other schools, the students do not require special access - there are lots of things things that students can do without requiring special access. It shouldn't be a fight with IT, so if necessary the students can do other appropriate jobs. Sylvia pointed out that all the kids know how to get around the filters - setting up barriers throws down the gauntlet. One of the first thing to do is to ensure that students involved in initiatives like this know what is a reasonable expectation of them in role.

Technology isn't a subject, rather technology is a discipline of using the tools in an appropriate way to achieve something else.

When assessing technology literacy what are we testing? Vocabulary? There is a need to have an assessment that tests the authentic use of a tool. Authentic assessment can be taught to students, where students can ask other students the steps that were taken in a project, where they found resources and so on. A student explaining to another student can uncover a lot of errors that a multiple choice test would not uncover.

Sylvia suggested following up on the work that Martin Levins is doing with students in Australia.

The story of a career (Adam Elliot, ACEC 2010)

Cover of Harvie Krumpet

Adam Elliot was the second keynote speaker at the ACEC 2010 conference. He spoke most entertainingly about his life and his career. It was a story of a struggling artist who spent four years making Harvie Krumpet - a short animation movie that in 2003, won the Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film.

He initially wanted to be a vet but did not get the math and science grades necessary. The careers advisor was not very supportive and Adam ended up at the St Kilda craft market.