It seems to have been conference season in Auckland lately, especially for those interested in collaborative learning. First up was the KnowledgeNET Conference at Takapuna Grammar School on Auckland's North Shore. This was amn exciting start, as it was my first conference where I was going to present a breakout session. I drew on my experiences setting up the Moodle system at Waitakere College and guided people through the steps, advantages and hurdles involved in establishing interoperability, with the aim of empowering them to take advantage of this powerful tool. I was pleased to have people approach me afterwards and say that they now realised where they had been having problems, that they were relieved that it was worth persevering with, or that they had been weighing up the pros and cons of managing their LMS in-house versus an interoperable system.
With my spot over, I was able to focus on what other people were sharing. Particularly interesting were the ways in which the Primary and Intermediate students were recording learning journeys and student voice through the KnowledgeNET system, ePortfolios and other online tools. These students were mature, self-motivated, and setting personal learning goals which they were able to review and assess themselves on. They are light years ahead of anything I have seen or head of happening in Secondary schools. Those of us in Secondary education need to seriously step up a couple of gears before these students arrive expecting to continue these fantastic learning journeys, and instead slow to a crawl.
The conference I was most looking forward to was a total geek-fest, with Google in town for the first ever Google Apps for Education Summit in New Zealand, hosted at Albany Senior High School. I have been a Google tools user since the days of needing an invite to Gmail, but have never really taken advantage of the rest of the app suite. I was aware of the potential and capabilities, but had never really had the opportunity or motivation to put these into practice. After a day of being surrounded by the capabilities and potential of the apps, particularly the sharing,collaboration and revision history of documents, I realised a couple of things. Firstly, these were the tools we should be using as we implement an immersed, blended elearning environment at Lynfield College next year. Using Google Apps would get around many of the problems we face with using shared iPads, namely that work created by students would be held in the cloud rather than on the device itself. This will allow them to access their work from any device, whether the iPad, library PC or a home device. anywhere, anytime access to their learning. Secondly, if I was going to encourage this use of tools we already have but under-utilise, I need to up-skill significantly and quickly. So I have made a resolution to abstain from the use of MS Office as much as possible for the remainder of the term, and instead focus on using Google Apps. This will both increase my familiarity and comfort with the tools, and also drag some of those in my Faculty along with me as they will have to access their accounts to see the documents I'm sending them!
The last, and biggest, conference was uLearn at the SkyCity Convention Centre and associated venues in Auckland's CBD. Over 1500 educators, plus industry representatives hawking their wares, gathered to Collaborate, Innovate and Educate. Overriding messages from the three days of the the conference were stories and having a go. Everyone has a story to tell, and letting them share it helps build successful learning relationships. How did your students get to be in the room with you? What do they already know? How can you build on and use that? Having a go was a strong message. If you wait until you are good at something, you'll never start. You've always got to start somewhere, and once you've tried it you can work on improving. But everything has to be done for the first time by someone, be a pioneer and try it. And if you are a Leader, support those people who want to try something new. Give them anything they need in terms of time and materials, but the most important thing they can have is your support to help them think through and implement their ideas.
The great thing about the uLearn conference was the way people communicated. With 1500 people at the conference, it was estimated that 70,000 people had seen the #uLearn12 hashtag appear in their Twitter stream. It was fantastic to be able to sit in a breakout, sharing the key points being shared, and picking up the same from other breakouts in other parts of Auckland. I may have gone a little bit critical, with over 200 tweets in four days, but as I picked up 40 new followers I must have been saying something people thought worth listening to. I just have to make sure I keep it up!
So, after 6 days of meeting with other educators, sharing great ideas and practice, what are my key takeaway ideas?
- Primary and Intermediate schools started "doing" elearning at the same time as Secondary. However, with more contact time between students and teachers they have made a lot more progress and gone way past the tools they are using, and now look for how they can improve learning outcomes using their digital toolboxes. Secondary needs to catch up to be able to keep developing these students when they arrive at our doors.
- Google Apps are a far more powerful collaborative tool for our students to use, and I need to get better using them so I can support my teachers.
- Where possible, since we have Google Apps, we should use this suite of tools for elearning as students already have accounts and the school is able to manage their use. When students start using alternative blogging sites, portfolios etc then managing the learning environment gets harder. This is fine if these services have significant advantages, but if they are compatible then using the Google service simplifies management.
- As we start using more online tools and services, we need to make it easier for students to navigate and access between these them. This requires a Single Sign On system to ensure that accessing the tools is never a barrier to learning, as we all know how much time can be lost when a student has forgotten the password to this particular system which is different to all the others.
- Have a go. If you have an idea on how something could be done differently/better/new, get support from your HoD/Faculty Leader/SMT and go for it. Nothing ventured nothing gained. Don't wait until you think it'll be perfect, it'll never happen.
Well, that was a restful break, and I have a few new things to think about going into Term 4. Let's make a difference out there.
