Group items tagged

From the Executive Summary quote; "The Horizon Report series is the product of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. This volume, the Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, is the second in a new series of regional and sector-based reports, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education. The hope is that the report is useful to educators worldwide, and the international composition of the Advisory Board reflects the care with which a global perspective was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries, questions we all face in K-12 education, and it was with these in mind that this report was created."

The Horizon Report is a product of the international not for profit New Media Consortium. Since 2002 they have been presenting a series of reports under the title Horizon reports generated by a dialog between an international group of educational leaders. "This volume, the Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, is the second in a new series of regional and sector-based reports, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education. The hope is that the report is useful to educators worldwide, and the international composition of the Advisory Board reflects the care with which a global perspective was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries, questions we all face in K-12 education, and it was with these in mind that this report was created." A must read for all teachers.

This paper describes the findings of an exploratory, qualitative case study and examines problems and impediments faculty members encountered in blended learning environments in Turkish Higher Education system. A total of 117 faculty members from 4 universities responded to 8 interview questions. Findings were based on content analyses of interview transcripts. The results show that faculty members' problems with blended teaching resulted in the identification of three inductive categories: instructional processes, community concerns and technical issues. The eight themes emerged from these three categories include the following: (1) complexity of the instruction, (2) lack of planning and organization, (3) lack of effective communication, (4) need for more time, (5) lack of institutional support, (6) changing roles, (7) difficulty of adoption to new technologies and (8) lack of electronic means. This study indicates that teaching blended courses can be highly complex and have different teaching patterns, which, in turn, impacts successful implementation of the blended college courses.

"The ACCE is the national professional body for those involved in the use of information and communications technology in education. This includes educators who teach computing / information technology subjects as well as all educators who strive to improve student learning outcomes through the powerful use of ICT."

A national professional body for ICT and eLearning in Education.

In a heutagogical approach to teaching and learning, learners are highly autonomous and self-determined and emphasis is placed on development of learner capacity and capability with the goal of producing learners who are well-prepared for the complexities of today's workplace. The approach has been proposed as a theory for applying to emerging technologies in distance education and for guiding distance education practice and the ways in which distance educators develop and deliver instruction using newer technologies such as social media.

Professor MacFarlane discusses many issues which ring true to me. In particular: - lack of vision for what education could be like with new technology (around 4 min mark) - the web2.0 and technology revolution is great for the 15% of people who have a good life anyway because of their suituation and culture (5:30) - others don't benefit from the access to the technology - they need help (6:00) - no change in classroom over last 20 years with computers and in danger of no change in next 20 years (7:30) - instruction vs. construction (8:30) - expect learning to change with introduction of technology (10:30) - but hasn't really done so - student self-directed learning is separate from school work i.e. at home and not related to school (14:30) - much of what kids do on computers at home is trivial (16:00) - the ones that do have good experiences are the same 15% (16:30) - kids that are missing out have a computer at home probably but no access to the community that enables them to have these experiences (17:10) - doing something by themselves does not really benefit them - it is being part of a community that had benefit for learning - what are we dong for these people? (19:10) - talking about missing pedagogical model for how to teach (22:00) - teachers are expected to use technology to provide innovative learning but no model against which to do so, some don't use it at all, some use it inappropriately - there maybe some individual examples but not overall (23:00) - schools bad at connecting with their communities in a learning sense (26:00) - talks about chinese online writing community and how they comment, collaborate (34:00) - community (47:30) - communitites aren't formed when people are brought together in schools etc. - need to have a common problem or interest (48:30) - Plant's definition? - in education the problem is because assessment is done individually (49:00) - so forming groups and sharing ideas is not attractive for students - worried about not getti

Is a lack of PD a barrier? Professional development is a barrier, although I think they can teach themselves much of what teachers need to be learning to be able to modernise their classrooms. The worst thing a teacher can say is: "who's going to teach me how to do that?" Teachers are teachers and should be able to teach themselves what they need to know. If they can't then they probably shouldn't be teaching. You want a teacher who can keep up. There are networks of other educators out there that can connect you with new skills. Professional development doesn't have to be something that is done to teachers - it can be just ongoing conversations they're having with other professionals that they're learning from every day.

Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning. A Commentary by the Technology Enhanced Learning phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (UK)

In this issue we present articles that push the boundaries of research on digital cultures, teaching, and technologies in fruitful and generative directions.  Researchers and practitioners in this issue present case studies and analysis of practical classroom use of copyright literacies, learning management systems, mobile/cell phones, social video, Twitter, and Google Reader.  The articles demonstrate how the affordances of digital culture have shifted our understandings of how pupils learn as content can be accessed, designed, and shared.  Despite the affordances of digital culture, teaching and learning-with and through digital technologies-requires effective pedagogy.  Digital technologies are not 'teacher-proof' tools; they require thoughtful and thorough integration into pedagogy, in a manner that reflects carefully articulated instructional and learning goals

Looking at the New Directions for school leadership and the teaching profession discussion paper, the only evidence presented to support the assertion that Victoria's education outcomes are not improving is the report "Challenges in Australian Education: results from PISA 2009: the PISA 2009 assessment of students' reading, mathematical and scientific literacy" Specifically the New Directions paper focuses on reading literacy, where in 2009, 14,251 students were given a two-hour pen and paper comprehension test. To get an idea of what types of competencies the reading test is assessing we can look at the sample test , with questions range from comprehension about a letter in a newspaper, the ability to interpret a receipt, comprehension around a short story, an informational text, and interpreting a table. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to want our students to be able to accurately perform these kind of tasks, these tests are not a true or accurate representation of the skills and competencies our students need in today's technology driven world.

There isn't really such a thing as "educational technology" - there is technology, used in the context of teaching and learning.

"Blogs and Twitter aren't the only social tools out there that can help you keep up with the latest and greatest developments in educational technology. Pinterest is rapidly becoming a favorite tool of educators all over the nation, and many have amassed some pretty great collections of edtech-related pins that teachers and students alike can use to explore new ways to learn, share, teach, and grow. While it would be nearly impossible to highlight every edtech pinboard out there, we've shared some of the boards we think stand out among the crowd here. Many are maintained by major educational websites, key figures in edtech, and well-known bloggers, but others were created by teachers just like you who simply want to share resources and tips with others in education."

The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) came into being on 1 January 2010. The Commonwealth Minister for Education has outlined MCEECDYA's priorities for the Institute in a Letter of Expectation. AITSL provides national leadership for the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in promoting excellence in the profession of teaching and school leadership.  

"AITSL provides national leadership for the Commonwealth, state and territory governments in promoting excellence in the profession of teaching and school leadership. AITSL has responsibility for: * rigorous national professional standards * fostering and driving high quality professional development for teachers and school leaders * working collaboratively across jurisdictions and engaging with key professional bodies. "

Australian group with teaching and leadership focus.

Challenge to educators re integrating educational technologies. From another Diigo group.

@tomwhitby "Dell Computer has sponsored four education Think Tanks over the last year, or so, and I have been fortunate to participate in three of them...Each of the groups is given four to six general topics of concern in education to discuss for about forty-five minutes to an hour. Since the members are all invited guests, they are usually intelligent, passionate, and well-versed in aspects of education specific to their profession....Progress is being stymied by the 6 "P's". By this I am not referring to the military expression "Proper Planning Prevents P*ss Poor Performance". I am talking about Poverty, Profit, Politics, Parents, Professional development, and Priorities preventing progress in Public Education."

The report centres on the application of emerging technologies to teaching, learning and creative expression. Horizon Reports, now published in six languages, are regarded worldwide as the most timely and authoritative sources of information on new and emerging technologies available to education anywhere.

"ICTEV's 2011 conference aims to put you in touch with educational colleagues who will enthuse and inspire you to integrate technologies in your learning and teaching. The technologies you will hear about and explore on the day will allow you and your students to be in touch with other educational communities (schools and professionals) across the world."

Event for Victorian Educators, Sat 21 May 2011.

" The Computers in Education Group of South Australia is a professional association of educators that promotes and supports teaching and learning with Information and Communication Technologies and the study of Information Technology as a discipline. "

LinedIN home page for CEGSA, useful for South Australian teachers.

A post that is rethinking acceptable use policies (AUPs) in schools. "In all of our efforts to teach students safe, appropriate, and responsible technology use, are we forgetting the more important job of teaching our students empowered use" A iist with a lot of links to AUP discussions

Video version of a report produced by Education.au's Strategic ICT Advisory Service on using technology to enable collaborative learning. An education.au project funded by the Australian Government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.