As more and more educational processes occur online and student collaboration gains grounds, teachers need to re-think the kinds of activities that students engage in. Derek Powazek has a few suggestions:
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Gaming and Educating
This clip is from the SXSW 2009 Interactive Conference. If I wasn't presenting last week at the ADETA Conference, this is where I would have loved to have been. Maybe next year.
ADETA09
The adeta conference concluded on Friday and I was quite surpised by how many people stayed late in the afternoon on Thursday to see my presentation on mobile learning. It is a hot topic and I hope they weren't disappointed. Aside from the apparent gathering momentum of twitter in education, one of the things that pleased me most about the conference was the prevailing attitude among a significant number of educators. For a lot of these teachers, there appeared to be a realization that technology in the classroom needs to be about more than just a way to deliver remote content. Quite a few presenters seemed to echo our own mobile learning theme that if students can acess content from anywhere at anytime, then what are we doing with them when they are actually with us in class (do they even need to be in class?). The problem seems to be that the teachers who hold these beliefs do not know where the next step needs to be. The exhibitors and administrators at the conference still seemed to be hung up on the content delivery paradigm. The momentum for change appears to be there, we just need to figure out where to direct it.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday Mutterings
While we are still digesting the after effects of teacher convention and presentations by the likes of Alphie Kohn and Stephen Lewis, we've come across this little gem of a blog posting:
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Stephen Lewis At Father Lacombe
I was lucky enough to hear Stephen Lewis at Father Lacombe High School in Calgary today. Mr. Lewis was invited by the student population to come and speak on the United Nations' Millenium Development Goals, as part of the schools on-going desire to further the work of former Sudanese student Simon Atem. Two years ago, Atem participated in the online student video organization Quantum Shift's student activist project. Other students at Father Lacombe filmed Simon talking about his desire to raise money to build a school in his Sudanese village after graduation. Released on www.quantumshift.tv, the "Simon's Project" quickly made an impression, where it was the fourth most viewed video, and helped Simon raise a significant amount of money, as well as earning the attention of several key individuals and aid agencies that are now helping Simon build his school and improve local conditions.
On his own, Mr. Lewis is a passionate and engaging speaker as he talks about the many challenges facing Africa, but his talk was most impressive when set against a backdrop of high school students looking for ways to help their fellow students around the world. Simon and several other former students at Father Lacombe are a part of Sudan's Lost Boys generation. As both the students and Mr. Lewis pointed out, the problems faces by Africa regarding the rights of women, the spread of AIDS, rapidly escalating food prices, barriers to education, war and corruption, are very real and dramatic, and will only be exacerbated by the financial crises.
Though the problems seem insurmountable, and are indeed large, as Mr. Lewis responded to one student who asked if he ever thought of giving up, the answer is in believing that we can make a difference. Father Lacombe High School, a school that is perhaps in the midst of its own renaissance, can attest to that.
On his own, Mr. Lewis is a passionate and engaging speaker as he talks about the many challenges facing Africa, but his talk was most impressive when set against a backdrop of high school students looking for ways to help their fellow students around the world. Simon and several other former students at Father Lacombe are a part of Sudan's Lost Boys generation. As both the students and Mr. Lewis pointed out, the problems faces by Africa regarding the rights of women, the spread of AIDS, rapidly escalating food prices, barriers to education, war and corruption, are very real and dramatic, and will only be exacerbated by the financial crises.
Though the problems seem insurmountable, and are indeed large, as Mr. Lewis responded to one student who asked if he ever thought of giving up, the answer is in believing that we can make a difference. Father Lacombe High School, a school that is perhaps in the midst of its own renaissance, can attest to that.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Closing Conference Conclusions
So the Alberta Teachers' Association Science Council's Science Teachers' Conference concluded this weekend. It was held in Calgary for the first time in recent memory, and myself and my colleague Brian were part of the organizing team.
The first takeaway of the weekend was that being on the other side of the registration table is a vastly different experience. Problems arise and need to be dealt with, and the overhead view is quite different from what you get moving session to session.
The second takeaway is that volunteers are important. Organizers and programmers can design a wonderful set of speaker sessions but without enough volunteers A/V material doesn't get delivered to the proper rooms, giveaways never get handed out, and speakers don't get picked up at the airport.
That said, the conference was a fantastic experience, even though I only managed to make one session - that of University of Calgary professor Dr. Leslie Reid. Dr. Reid related her attempts to redesign her undergraduate geology course to move it more inline with Assessment For Learning and Focus on Inquiry methodology. These are the same things that many Albertan teachers are trying to do, except that Dr. Reid is carrying it out with 400 students in a university lecture hall.
Instead of attending sessions then, I spent most of my time talking with fellow conference-goers like Frank Jenkins, who helped define large parts of the Chemistry curriculum, and with whom I briefly chatted about the early efforts to reform high school science in Alberta during the 1970s. Bernie Galbraith, who received the ATA Science Council's Long Service Award, was in a similarly reflective mood.
A first for the conference was the organization of a Science Education Leaders Day where Science Alberta's Hyacinth Schaeffer and her group of Fort McMurray teachers talked about their efforts to create a school culture conducive to science education.
Next year, the goal is expand the circle of conversation, hopefully drawing in more post-secondary voices, as well as more French Immersion sessions and First Nations, Metis, and Indigenous perspectives.
The first takeaway of the weekend was that being on the other side of the registration table is a vastly different experience. Problems arise and need to be dealt with, and the overhead view is quite different from what you get moving session to session.
The second takeaway is that volunteers are important. Organizers and programmers can design a wonderful set of speaker sessions but without enough volunteers A/V material doesn't get delivered to the proper rooms, giveaways never get handed out, and speakers don't get picked up at the airport.
That said, the conference was a fantastic experience, even though I only managed to make one session - that of University of Calgary professor Dr. Leslie Reid. Dr. Reid related her attempts to redesign her undergraduate geology course to move it more inline with Assessment For Learning and Focus on Inquiry methodology. These are the same things that many Albertan teachers are trying to do, except that Dr. Reid is carrying it out with 400 students in a university lecture hall.
Instead of attending sessions then, I spent most of my time talking with fellow conference-goers like Frank Jenkins, who helped define large parts of the Chemistry curriculum, and with whom I briefly chatted about the early efforts to reform high school science in Alberta during the 1970s. Bernie Galbraith, who received the ATA Science Council's Long Service Award, was in a similarly reflective mood.
A first for the conference was the organization of a Science Education Leaders Day where Science Alberta's Hyacinth Schaeffer and her group of Fort McMurray teachers talked about their efforts to create a school culture conducive to science education.
Next year, the goal is expand the circle of conversation, hopefully drawing in more post-secondary voices, as well as more French Immersion sessions and First Nations, Metis, and Indigenous perspectives.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Foucault vs. Education
We've attached a link to an article applying the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault to education. Much of it is taken from his work on the underlying philosophies of prison systems, Crime and Punish, and it's somewhat scary to consider how similar the two institutions are - however, if you remember that the purpose of education is (considered by some) to be the development of the individual while that of prison is the rehabililation (redevelopment) of a corrupted individual, the analogies become much clearer.
There's certainly lots to consider about the subtle effects of the school system, but one of the immediate take aways is the suggestion that increasing persistance and sophistication of surveillance of students will result in an arms race between students and the administration. As schools take ever greater measures to observe and monitor their students, those students reluctant to be a part of such doings, will resort to greater and more underground efforts to avoid detection. Thus, there would appear to be a natural limit to how much policies such as lanyards and closed circuit televisions can curb student behaviour.
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