This week I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the interactive teaching and learning conference in Sydney.
Here are some of the interesting thoughts and ideas I came across during the conference:
1. When given a choice, 97% of students choose an apple device over a PC (not sure if this is an Apple is better than PC debate or an example of the power of marketing!).
Of the ninety seven percent, sixty percent choose and iPad, and thirty seven percent choose an MacBook. This is worth considering. If your school chooses to implement PC program, ninety seven percent would wish you had done something else.
2. One of the speakers made the following quote:
Writing is a very important skill that every student should master so that once they have written their exams they will never use again.
Do you agree or disagree?
3. Another speaker quoted from Mark Dean (Link to Mark’s full blog post):
PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.
4. The three foundations of innovative teaching practices:
- Student centred (personalised, collaborative, knowledge building, self-regulated)
- Extended learning (the students have shared responsibility, but also a shared participation in the decision making)
- ICT integration (the students are given the choice about how to approach the learning)
5. We need to move to a place where the students can take control of their learning.
There is a lot of technology in schools, but it is still in the control of the teacher – quoting Alan November
We were challenged to think about who owns the learning in our classrooms, something I hadn’t stopped to consider before.
6. Augmented reality is set to hit the classrooms.
Augmented reality is now available for teachers to teach the internal organs of the body. The students hold up a printed page in front of their stomach and the augmented reality software converts the image.
I couldn’t find the video I wanted, but the following thirty second video is a great demonstration of what is possible.
6. Here are a few links you might like to check out
A collection of tweets during the conference (will have lots of links to great content) https://custom.cvent.com/3F720EFB4BBC44E288982AB74FF9BEC1/files/67855f3a7f314224991fc6d9afd8a291.pdf
A link to a number of sessions hosted by the PLC staff. https://sites.google.com/a/plc.nsw.edu.au/plc-itl-resources/
I ran a few workshops on creating self grading assessments, how to choose which technology to implement in your classrooms, and how to create a social media policy for your school (including how to use Twitterand Facebook without compromising your professional relationship with your students)
