My brief, to present at a Year 11 conference about online tools, has accentuated, in my mind, how far away we are from providing the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) at school students need in a networked society.
Your input, via comments at a previous blog post, twitter and yammer proved invaluable but also challenging, when one considers the realities for kids in our schools. Year 11 will have virtually no opportunity, in their day at school, to use a computer or the many tools available online. During this presentation, I acknowledged that the student delegates will just have to use all this stuff at home.
One kid pointed out, that even if they had DERNSW laptops, software could not be installed and many of the sites, especially social media and collaboration tools, would be blocked anyway.
I was surprised at how little they knew of the tools discussed. The students were unfamiliar with all the tools, except iGoogle.
On a positive note, the delegates were enthusiastic about what they could do at home. They were particularly keen on Wordle, GAPMINDER, Slideshare, Evernote, Prezi and Wolfram Alpha.
The Future?
The big question in my mind: will opportunities for innovative pedagogies and practice emerge from the Australian Curriculum?
Keith Lyons
Darcy
I am pleased late night football gave you the opportunity to write this post. I am hopeful that the curriculum can stimulated connectedness. Your post emphasises for me the absolute need to personalise learning for each pupil and to invest time in this process.
As ever, thank you for a thought-provoking post.
Keith
Darcy Moore
Keith,
Most reviewing the Australia Curriculum from a NSW perspective are concerned that the quality does no match that already in place here. However, my concern is more to do with lost opportunity to design a genuinely innovative, connected curriculum. The irony is that curricula are about content and we know this is problematic. What should every Australian know? How to actually learn, access knowledge, think critically, stay up to date, create and design are essential. I fear we will end up with something that would have been great in 1992.