I think so because of where the focus is; it\u2019s on who carries responsibility for using the technology. Teaching staff have done a fairly poor job over the last 20 years in adopting technology (remember that this is a broad stroke statement and not a comment on those individuals who do some truly remarkable things in a classroom). Maybe it\u2019s time to stop banging our heads against the wall for teachers who don\u2019t, won\u2019t, or can\u2019t get with it. Stop putting pressure on the overworked, on those too overwhelmed to actually consider upskilling, on those too old for this new fangled stuff, on those who won\u2019t make any sacrifice in the long holidays they have, on those for whom the same old same old has sufficed for the last umpteen years, and leave them alone\u2026\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to teach. Let them just teach.<\/p>\n
But, how about putting the effort we waste in shepherding unresponsive teaching staff to PD into making self directed, self responsible, self contained learning machines out of the students. Give them the transferable skills to administratively look after their learning, their notes, their portfolios, to research better, to develop maintain and share a personal learning network, to be critical of data sources, to know what to do when things go wrong, to make technology as much a part of their learning process as a pen. Julia Gillard (bless her cotton socks) spouts on about a digital education revolution and throws some money at some hardware and a bit of infrastructure. Pointless. Nice, thanks for the laptops, but pointless. The same excuses will be trotted about again and again. The same old PC Vs Mac war will erupt again the same old poor me from primary teachers will flare against senior teachers, and around and around we will go. So how about a school where kids have laptops. NO not a laptop school a regular traditional good school, but kids happen to have laptops. Teachers don\u2019t have to give up anything (yet) administrators don\u2019t have to find money to send teachers to PD that they don\u2019t even want to do, ICT coordinators won\u2019t need to get so many grey hairs so soon and yet ICT might just get a chance to strut it\u2019s stuff.<\/p>\n So \u2013 what shall we teach these laptop owners? How to express their creativity through the applications available Go on – add to the list<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think so because of where the focus is; it\u2019s on who carries responsibility for using the technology. Teaching staff have done a fairly poor job over the last 20 years in adopting technology (remember that this is a broad stroke statement and not a comment on those individuals who do some truly remarkable things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16,17,5],"tags":[7,23],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom","category-education-2","category-ict","category-pcs-apple-macs-and-anything-else-techhy","tag-education","tag-laptops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoldgeezers.photos\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHave them do this independently of the teacher, without making it an interruption to the teacher\u2019s teaching style by having it as just another thing on their desk, like pencils, paper and text books.\u00a0 We refocus who we concentrate on \u2013 all the school ICT integrators who\u2019ve been banging away at teaching staff and admin workers and school leadership for years and years now \u2013 forget them, if they don\u2019t want to join in leave them behind. Let\u2019s try leading the revolution from where all revolutions come \u2013 bottom up. Governments can throw money our way, they can sound bite the term \u2018digital education revolution\u2019 all they like \u2013 they can\u2019t make one \u2013 they can\u2019t lead one, they don\u2019t get it. Governments don\u2019t start revolutions, they live through them, or in most case they don’t. Hmm let me<\/em> eat cake.<\/p>\n
\nGovernments should be working at the extremities \u2013 training new start teachers better and assessing school leavers in a totally different way \u2013 but that\u2019s for another blog post.<\/p>\n
\nIf we claim some of the KLE teaching time to show students how to research efficiently, to be critical of information sources, to maintain file structures and documents with proper tags so study becomes more structured and less daunting, to form PLNs to work in collaborative ways with peers to produce material in multimedia options and not just printed paper based \u2018essays\u2019, to establish links to current data sources, to do all the cool brilliant things we know should be done with ICT, then we have started the revolution.<\/p>\n
\nHow to aggregate via RSS useful, current and appropriate information
\nHow to develop a PLN
\nHow to construct a digital footprint (positively)
\nHow to search the net via the right tools the way that gets the best results
\nHow to present their school work in a creative way<\/p>\n
\nHow to connect with their peers to share work and ideasHow to develop a Twitter following
\nHow to construct a self reflecting e-portfolio
\nHow to choose the right software for the job
\nHow to blog your homework
\nHow to think about how you learn
\nHow to\u2026<\/p>\n