December+1,+2008

=Faculty Heads day at "The Country Place", Kalorama=


Where? The Country Place, Olinda Creek Road, Kalorama (Melways Reference: map 52, K11) http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-37.822633,145.373583&spn=0.015865,0.027466&z=15
 * When? Monday, 1st December, 2008

Kevin to bring:** multiple iRivers
 * Faculty Heads to bring:** headphones (with built in microphones)
 * Marie to bring:** the V.A. data projector (and perhaps a video camera and tripod to film Andrew?)


 * Faculty Heads need:** to have //Audacity// loaded onto their machines in advance


 * Also:**
 * 1) What do we need to do between now and 1st December as regards to Faculty Heads and their blogs? Dianna was kind enough to walk them through the registering process. Whether they have done anything with them since then is another question. Ideally, they would have had an 'explore' and know how blogs 'work' prior to the day at Kalorama and be comfortaqble in using them as a journal about the day as it unfolds. Is this expecting a bit much of them? What sorts of prompts/help should we give them over the next week and a bit?
 * 2) Also, on the 1st December, we should replicate one other feature of the approach/model used at Toorak College for the Powerful Learning Practices meeting: we should get the Faculty Heads to do a few specific/'prescribed' things with their blogs. For example, get them to send an email to Kevin with a link to their blogs (the content of these blogs at the end of the day effectively become the feedback about the worth of the day). Later, we could show them how we have made, in our own blogs, links to their blogs. Alternatively/additionally we might show them how we have used //Delicious// to bookmark/link to their blog reflections. This I think, would help further crystalize their awareness of the potential audience for their reflections (and provide a sort of non-threatening accountability for what they post/articulate).

Any thoughts on these suggestions or about any other issues relating to the planning of the day?? Here is the place to add them!!

= = =Proposed Agenda:=

First session (9:15- 9:45am) - The Blog
==Staff will use the blog that they have previously registered and activated as their running journal to reflect on the day's learning as it unfolds (for the sake of all using the same sort of Blog, we have agreed on [|Edublog]).  ==

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Have a brief look / 'walk through' some of the links that Dianna has provided to good educational blogs ?


Are we adequately equipping our students to confidently and competently navigate the complex and changing world in which they find themselves now and in which they will find themselves in the future?

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It has been 10 years since the introduction of laptop computers for students at Whitefriars College. What was the original vision for how their introduction would enhance learning? To what extent has this vision been realized? In what areas have we met, exceeded, or fallen short of the original vision?

**Q:** Why is it that incorporating various ICTs, including Web 2.0 technologies, into the learning environments we create for students is even more imperative in 2008 than it was in 1998?


 * A:** Because the world has changed and continues to change quickly, profoundly and irrevocably! The educational paradigm of the past one and a half centuries is no longer adequate to prepare students for the world in which they find themselves.

see http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com/ for myriad examples of the profound effect of **human online networking** on politics, business, media and journalism and entertainment

What are the implications of all this for us as teachers and for our students?
 * A vision of students today**

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 * Have you been paying attention? (Darren Draper)**

You might be forgiven for thinking that the focus today is on the technology but, in actual fact, it is on the **learning**.

Our assumption is that if we, as a school, are to get staff to use technology as a means to an end (that end being to really improve student learning), a few prerequisite conditions are needed:
 * staff need to have a clear idea of what concepts, understandings and skills are likely to be most important and what are merely peripherally important or not important at all for the students we are educating - i.e. to have a clear idea of what 'big ideas', understandings and skills are the most useful, the most readily transferable across learning disciplines/domains, and the most crucial for students if they are to become confident, capable learners who are willing and able to find out information for themeselves, to ask critical, insightful questions and to thrive in a changing world
 * staff need to understand the potential of the technology that we are supplying to excite students in a learning process where they can do more than just 'lower order' thinking (typically characterised by merely rote-learning to answer "What", "When" and "Where" questions) but can also exhibit higher-order thinking (typically characterised to positing and answering "How", "Why", "Why not?", What if?" questions) and habitually analyse, synthesize, deconstruct and reconstruct/create
 * staff need the chance to engage in 'rich play' themselves: to develop their competence and confidence in regard to using technologies, before they will start to see the potential of these to challenge the thinking of the students in their care
 * Faculty Heads, in particular, as educational leaders in the College, need to be able to 'tick the boxes' relating to themselves in regard to the aforementioned assumptions: they need to have a clear idea themselves of what understandings and skills are most important for students to develop [and be able to justify and articulate this idea], understand the potential of ICT to help foster the development of these understandings and skills in their students, be experienced themselves in the appropriate uses of the technology, and therefore confident about the 'how' and 'why' of using ICT to foster learning, before they will be able to effectively model, mentor and inspire the other teachers in their faculties to develop the same assuredness.

These dot points are ones that we will need to reflect on, time and time again, well after today has run its course. Hopefully, the blogs we each create today are useful vehicles for this reflection and ongoing professional growth.

There will always be doubters but the proof of the pudding is in the eating!
 * What If? (Karl Fisch)**

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There may once have been a time when teachers were in complete control of their students and their learning. But nowadays, any teacher who believes that that is still the case is, like the commander of USS Montana, deluded. As Darren Kuropatwa puts it:  "What's happening now through the use of social media is that everyone, kids and adults, is choosing what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and they are deciding for themselves when they have mastered the material sufficiently."

Sometimes, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. A few years ago, [|Jean-Claude Bradley], a Chemistry Professor at Drexel University, completely did away with lecturing his classes. Previous to that he podcasted every class and published it online and made it available through iTunes. He keeps it centrally organized on a wiki. Now, instead of assigning reading from a textbook, he assigns audio and video podcasts of his lectures. His classes are given strictly as workshops where his students work with him, and each other, more intimately; they're learning more deeply than ever they have before.  Later this morning, Andrew Douche will talk about his own journey. His experiences of the huge shift that web2.0 technologies have allowed him to make as a teacher, and the potential unleashed in his students, buttress the evidence of J-C Bradley.

Initially, the audiences of Jean-Claude and Andrew were just the students from their respective classes. Now, their on-line podcasts are getting hits from all over the world. People have "taken" these classes not for credit but because they wanted to learn. The "Bradley experiment" was a precursor to the [|MIT Open Courseware] initiative that has since been replicated at other universities. In short, given a world where anyone can find the resources online to learn about anything they want just because they feel like it, the implications for educations in terms of what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess it are enormous.

Today we aim to give Faculty Heads insights into how various ICTs can be used to engage,empower and improve student learning.

In the next session, Andrew Douch will talk about his experiences in using emerging technologies including podcasts, mobile phones, discussion boards and IM to connect his students to their learning, and the profound effects this has had on his students' engagement and learning outcomes.

In the remaining sessions, Faculty Heads will get down and dirty and will complete some simple, practical activities with myriad applications in student learning programs. These activities, in addition to the blogging already begun, include: Best of all, these activities should help us realise, if we haven't already, that we can do this stuff, have fun in the process, and use some of it to create stimulating learning experiences for our students. Include 10 mins for blogging at the end (10:30 - 10:40am)
 * producing a podcast
 * developing and contributing to wikis

Session 3 (11:00 - 12:30) - Andrew Douch
Include 10 mins for blogging at the end (12:20pm - 12:30pm)

Plenary session (3:45 - 4:45pm)
feedback on the day...

Other issues worth broaching (or discussing/'teasing out' further): http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/
 * the relative advantages and disadvantages of using external blogs, wikis (i.e. individual student or teacher creations 'out there' on the worldwide web) versus the equivalent versions created in Workspaces on the College intranet
 * the use of WFC workspaces as site for professional discourse:
 * as Dianna has suggested " our own [WFC] blog and wiki sites to set up discussions about issues to with teaching and learning. I mean, b   logs as a reflective discussion about ideas as well as an attempt to document process about trying a new idea or activity;   wikis as a collective forum to document what faculties teach and why they teach it, as well as problems, pitfalls, tips. I   n other words, stuff that doesn’t go on the Student workspaces about teaching and learning but is on the Faculty spaces so that each Faculty has a set of shared understandings about topics, student learning and teaching practice....s   o, the blogs and wikis are used to define, refine and develop professional practice at Whitefriars."
 * some students have already taken up the running in this regard. For example, see [|the environment committee workspace]
 * Sharepoint-based workspaces can look every bit as professional as the most slick websites anywhere. See for example, the State Library of Victoria website [|Ergo]
 * other web2.0 tools that faculty heads might be inspired to explore. eg "23 things"
 * another website that gives useful tutorials on web2.0 tools: http://sites.google.com/site/web20wednesdaychallenge/
 * Further ideas on using of Web2.0 with classes so that students improve their engagement with and their reflections on their learning. e.g.:
 * http://adifference.blogspot.com/2006/06/next-movement.html#comments
 * how we should best use Faculty meeting times to foster the sorts of discussions about learning that are so pivotal if we are to invigorate real curriculum evolution and foster deep learning in our students