Category: Schools

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Calling all IWB users

I don’t normally make requests like this but if you are reading this and you teach using any sort of Interactive Whiteboard, I have a small favour to ask…

I am currently in the middle of writing a book about the use of IWBs in schools. I’m actually co-authoring it with Mal Lee, an ex-principal and one of the most knowledgeable guys around when it comes to interactive whiteboard research. Mal and I are trying to finish the book over the next few weeks (we have an actual book contract with the Australian Council for Educational Research… with a real deadline and everything!) It aims to be an overview guide looking at the appropriate pedagogy and logistical considerations to think about when you become an IWB user. We are trying to keep the book as brand-agnostic as possible, even though we are aware that the majority of readers will be on either a SmartBoard or an Activboard. The real focus is on pedagogy, logistics and other practical classroom considerations.

Here’s where you come in…

I would really love to include some highlights in the book with short examples from teachers all over the world about how they work with their IWBs. Mini case studies if you will. They don’t have to be long and involved, but if you teach regularly with an IWB I would love to hear from you with respect to the following questions. Don’t feel you have to answer all of them… in fact they are really just prompters to get you thinking. I’d be happy for you to write about any aspect of teaching with an IWB that you feel is relevant or important to you.

  • In what ways has an IWB affected your classroom and how you teach?
  • What do you see as the three biggest advantages of teaching with an IWB?
  • What advice would you offer to teachers just starting out with an IWB?
  • Describe the process you use when you develop teaching resources for your IWB.
  • How do your students respond to the IWB?
  • What is the most innovative thing you’ve ever seen done on an IWB?

Remember these are just starting points. Anything you want to write is fine. No more than 500 words please.

Since you know I’m planning to include these in the book, I will assume that if you write something then you give me permission to include your response in the book. If there are any special conditions you’d like to ask for, please let me know. I’m not in a position to pay you anything, but naturally I will give you full credit for your contribution. If you do want to write something, I’d need it within the next week.

If you’d like to help out, please send me your contributions to [email protected], or just add it as a comment at the end of this post if you’d prefer.

Many thanks.

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Conversations for Change

Here’s an interesting thought about the nature of communication through conversation…

Michael Wesch is a professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and the creator of several well-watched YouTube videos about the nature of web 2.0. I’m sure most of the edublogosphere has probably seen “The Web is Us/ing Us“, “Information R/Evolution” and “A Vision of Students Today“. All of these videos have done the rounds of the web in a completely viral way, and if you haven’t yet seen them, you should.

In an interview with John Batelle from Searchblog, Wesch was asked about the videos and some of the ideas he was exploring by making them. It’s an interesting read, but I was particularly struck by one of his responses in the comment section at the end of the interview, as he was counter-responding to a long string of blog comments from multiple readers…

“The Web speeds up the process of rebuttal, reply, and revision and calls forth a different approach. The radically collaborative technologies emerging on the Web create the possibility for doing scholarship in the mode of conversation rather than argument, or to transform the argument as war metaphor into something that suggests collaboration rather than combat”

… and this…

“Even now, as I am answering multiple questions with one long comment at the bottom of a blog post, the structure of the medium is in some way affecting how I am responding. On a forum I would address each question individually in separate threads. These seemingly minor differences are important because all human relationships are mediated by communication. If we change the way we communicate, we change human relationships, and since society is ultimately based on human relationships, those seemingly minor differences can have a profound effect on society, especially if they become dominant or very popular modes of communication.
I can’t see into the future, but what gives me hope is that there are now more people than ever capable of creating and contributing to how these communication structures might be built, and even more people capable of contributing to a serious conversation about the implications.”

This seems to be a common theme, this idea of conversation as a means of evolving shared knowledge. Again, I’ll use the phrase “Learning is a Conversation” as I think it sums up this idea that by engaging in an ongoing conversation we eventually start to spot patterns, see the big picture, and construct our own way of thinking about the world.

This is especially important in our school systems, where conversations between teachers and teachers, students and students, and teachers and students may be the only really effective way to evolve the sorts of ideas and knowledge needed for a 21st century education.

We now live in a world which has fundamentally changed. The idea of learning as a finite body of knowledge which can be transferred from the information-haves to the information-have-nots is no longer tenable. Schools cannot continue to be places where learning is simply about remembering facts and definitions. Information is no longer scarce… Google changed all that. The real task of learning is now to effectively engage with ideas, to discuss and debate, learning about them through ongoing conversation. By engaging in learning as a conversation we can start to get real traction from the neverending stream of ideas around us, expanding our thinking in agreement or argument, encouraging our learners to be critical and creative thinkers.

And as we change our thinking through these conversations, perhaps we become capable of changing our world; which is perhaps what schools ought really be about in the first place.

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Where there's a Will…

Will RichardsonIf you read blogs about education with any sort of regularity you will no doubt recognise the name Will Richardson.  Will’s blog, Weblogg-ed, has become somewhat of a keystone in the edublogosphere, not just for the things he writes about and the thinking he does about education in the 21st century, but also because he is just so darn prolific!

Thanks to the jungle drums of Twitter, I was really excited to hear that Will is coming to Australia to deliver a talk entitled The Why 2 of Web 2.0.  I don’t know Will personally at all, but we have bumped into each other a few times in various chat rooms and UStream sessions.  He was one of the founding ideas-people behind the global K-12 Online Conference (although his commitments at the time required him hand it over to others to run).  His has been a seminal voice of the blogosphere for a long time, having written several books on blogging and the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom, spoken at conferences all around the world.  Will is pretty well respected in the edublogging world.

Given all that, I’d certainly like to meet him and hear what he has to say.

If you are interested in education and the way it applies to 21st Century learning, then try to get along to either Brisbane (May 7) or Sydney (May 9).  I’ve already booked my ticket!

No doubt some of us Sydney bloggers will get together and try to get together with Will while he’s here.  How about you?   Join us?