‘Journey to 21st Century Learning’

[Paul White]

Add notes for Sharon Cottle and Mark Ferguson's session ‘Journey to 21st Century Learning’

[chillers]

I think the student's comments raise the two main issues on me:
1) Teachers feel obliged to use laptops but may not be using it effectively.
2) The development of resources (e.g on line texts etc) is very time consuming for staff and capacity needs to be considered. The advice that you need time to train and develop resources and identify software first before implementation is well taken.

[Mark Ferguson]

Thanks for the comments Paul. I think the other key point that you touched on in your post is appropriate use of the laptops. It is very easy to use the laptops in your lesson, but find that you have lost sight of the learning outcomes. It is crucial, for example, if the students are to create a video as an assignment that they show their learning in the "product" and are also given a chance to show higher order thinking skills in the outcome. This feeds back to how essential it is for Departments to have a chance to look at incorporating the use of laptops into their schemes of work before the major part of the implementation.

[Dianne Mckenzie]

An important part of the use of technology in education is the use of assesment rubics.
Before the assignment is set the teacher figures out what concepts they want to asses, creates the rubric and then the students have the opportunity to understand the objectives and create work that meets the criteria, instead of being sidetracked by the bells and whistles.

The rubrics ensure the teacher also figures out if what they are actually asking the students to do is possible, achievable and realistic in the time set. Scaffolding for both teacher and student helps everyone to learn and facilitate learning.

[Dana Dukic]

Developing resources is the part librarians can help with. Librarians are experts in information management and all kinds of researching and they can quickly set a collection of reliable and suitable online and offline resources.

[Dianne Mckenzie]

Has anyone seen this website - GenYes? http://www.genyes.org/
Generation YES programs provide youth the opportunity to improve education through technology.