Vleva congres: Roger Blamire from European Schoolnet gives his view on eLearning needs

Nice man, with a suite (no tie).

This is a live blogpost, so forgive the possibly quick sentences and crooked words.

European Schoolnet (30 European Ministries and regions), not part of the European commission. So, interested of working with regions, so Welsh, Flanders, Bask, who knows might also include Roma ... people, get in contact with Roger.

He gives an overview of European Schoolnet (e-safety, school networking, interoperability (! like Surfnet I guess but then European!).

eTwinning: 100.000 schools are ready for eTwinning. It is about improving learning by the use of technology.

Lists some of the inhibitors to eLearning

• disparity in curriculum and various cross-curricular approaches
• difficulty to assess these skills
• difficulty to shift culture of teachers , training of teachers (! chance for funding project)
• lack of new pedagogical models (! chance for funding project)
• parents expectations - more technology but conservative approach to school organization.

the rise of informal learning as an excellent learning outcome (also gives teachers much more time to focus on the extra's, not the basics). (note: all for that! more learning out of class).

Roger gives two examples on mainstreaming eLearning

iTEC: classroom of the future: it was a scalable, large, mainstreamed practices that worked (1000 classrooms), which helped in getting funding. The program is completely online.

core: scenarios of future classrooms, high reactivity (rapid prototyping, with speeded up feedback loop), it is scalable and the teacher is at the center (teachers own the activities, choose the technologies, a bit like out of a toolbox (!) and social networking).

second example: EUN-Acer netbook project . Looks at one to one computing in a number of countries.
This example was clearly company pushed, but interesting: understand how learners and teachers use netbooks in various educational contexts. An interesting issue here is privacy, what about the learner privacy and ethics... who is in charge of children’s lives if they work at all times on it?
Learning, work, spare time... the boundaries blur.

Games become part of the technology driven schools of the future (paraphrases Obama). The effect of educational games is important and substantial, so it is a trend to follow and research up close. He has 15 recommendations on games for education.

roger (dot) blamire (at) eun (dot) org
or twitter: @rblamire

2010 Horizon Report on K12 education is out, and free for download

Education and technology leaders, policymakers and key stakeholders in educational institutions need forward thinking information addressing opportunities for teaching, learning and creative expression. The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). This annual report provides a rich set of topics, examples and resources for use in considering new technologies that hold strong promise for K-12 institutions in the US and globally.

The nice thing is: you can add your own comments to the document, really nice!
http://wp.nmc.org/horizon-k12-2010/

Accompanying the Report is the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition Toolkit, developed by CoSN in partnership with NMC, which helps to facilitate conversations among education leaders around issues discussed in the Report. The Toolkit includes a Discussion Facilitator’s Guide with leading questions to stimulate thinking and discussion and a Presentation Template of PowerPoint slides with notes. A post-event feedback form is also provided. Use these free resources to help maximize the impact of the Report and help education stakeholders better understand new applications of technology and better plan for their successful implementation.

What is covered? The critical challenges for k12 education, the upcoming educational formats, the adoption curve that is envisioned to embed new innovative educational techniques in K12 education... so lots of nice and relevant topics.

• Read a copy of the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition.
• Arrange for a conversation around the Report using the Toolkit.
• Request the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition Toolkit, which consists of the Discussion Facilitator’s Guide and the Presentation Template/PowerPoint.
• Hold a conversation in a format that works best for your educational entity.
• Offer CoSN your feedback using an online form.
• To participate in the accompanying K-12 Wiki, find out more information about the Advisory Board, or other work products, visit the NMC website.

Meaningful and Powerful learning... how to get students engaged by Kevin Roberts

It always seems strange to me how new educational ideas first start of really big, chaotic debates that need to be discussed amongst a lot of people for a good deal of time.... to end up being a simple set of seemingly obvious ideas that can be rounded up in just a couple of minutes. The only thing is, only a handful of people can fit big chaotic discussions into a simple set of ideas. Kevin Roberts is such a math teacher guy.

In this prezi-driven video Kevin Roberts who put the prezi presentation together for the ASB un-plugged conference 2010 that took place in Bombay this February. If you are into mathematics check-out this great math-made-simple website made by Kevin and his colleagues. It has loads of information on math topics and documents. Kevin really knows how to use Web2.0 tools to engage 21st century learning for k12 and other students.

I got hold of this presentation thanks to John Mack from Australia, who is a great connector and networker. His tweets provide lots of good information and links.

The movie made by Kevin takes about 9 minutes. It starts slowly, but gains speed as it moves along. It puts forward ideas on how educators might make use of all the new technology to get students thinking more responsibly about the use of these technologies, and how to nurture learning skills that can last a lifetime. Kevin even links it to the digital blooms taxonomy, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

Please, make eLearning simple! The eLearningQueen does it…in a Survival Book

Sometimes you just want to read a fun book about your profession. Fun, exciting, a good overview is all I need at times. So what a great find I had, because the eLearningQueen (= who is a Dog, who has an human assistant: Susan Smith Nash) manages to do just that! Read this book (this is the link to the free version, which will only be here for a limited amount of time!), it gives a nice, light and fun overview on eLearning.

Even the (sub)title is fun: “Elearner survival guide: Everything you need to succeed in the wild and wooly world of mobile learning and e–learning, and hybrid college, K–12 and career courses.”

Susan writes with wit and clarity, her blog is captivating and … I am jealous (in a good way) of her writing and learning skills. So, I will take what she wrote and how she wrote it with me, to contemplate on what I will do in the next couple of months.

What does Susan tackle in the 295 pages of her guide? She tackles all the topics in fluent and short paragraphs, and linking it harmoniously to relevant research.

• She begins with what eLearning is, and covers some of the known terms (e.g. push<=> pull);
• There are also hints on what study skills we will all need to succeed in eLearning (self regulation, checklists, practical steps, collage credits, free online software training,…and twelve very useful sanity-saving tips)
• Chapters 3 and 4 cover writing skills, dividing it into technical writing and research writing tips.
• Mobile learning and Web2.0 are covered in short, but very understandable paragraphs. In this section Susan also looks at practical adaptation in a k12 (teenage students) setting.
• Getting personal with looking at profiles of eLearners and careers.
• Now, and this part I truly LOVED immensely (because it linked me to some persons from my past, which… I did not take into account in the last couple of years). Susan managed to clarify to me that personal hero’s of whatever discipline can be linked to eLearning: picking up examples from the wonderful poet Maya Angelou , and the great political activist and anarchist Emma Goldman – need to read ‘Living my Life’ again, a.o.
• The last chapter focuses on institutional challenges and eLearning, or what they mean to the eLearner, which is also very relevant if you are linked to an educational institution.

So, I am very grateful to Susan for this unexpected book treat, I will ponder on what she wrote, and how she wrote it for my seclusion week is coming up. This means I go home, buy everything to last me a week (at least), cut off my internet connection, log-off my phone, leave the door bell ringing, push all humans out of the house… and do whatever I want, when I wanted, completely disconnected… for one week. Time to meditate about where I am going, and looking whether my passion is indeed still fulfilled with the work I am doing, at the place I am doing it. I have radically changed my life a couple of times trying to synchronize my professional life with learning passions and up until now it has worked. Professional satisfaction is crucial for me, for it takes up most of my waking hours. But fine-tuning is still needed, so meditating is a good path and eye opener.

Dutch presentation on new technologies for education (post partly in Dutch)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to give an introduction on new learning techniques that can be used in secondary schools (at the Pleinschool in Kortrijk). This was a great opportunity to see how far I could go with teachers that were not accustomed to using TELearning in their projects or classrooms. Although some of them did use new media (soundwalks, theater video) most of them had no prior experience using new technologies.

The presentation gave an overview and focused on user friendly tools (exelearning, articulate set ...), but also gave possibilities linked to social media.
After an intense presentation, the teachers were inspired to dive into some of the shown techniques and they were enthusiastic (which definitely made my day). Along the presentation we uploaded life to flickr, youtube and ustream allowing the teachers to see the full potential and impact of some of these tools.

The great thing about this particular school (Pleinschool in Kortrijk) is that it has a great variety of students and is located across three campuses. This makes it all the more essential to develop tools that attract different learning skills and that are pleasing to a variety of students.

For those interested, you can take a look at the PowerPoint, but it is in Dutch. The examples might be interesting (example in Dutch = "voorbeeld" or abbreviated "vb".

Nieuwe Onderwijstechnieken presentatie Pleinschool Kortrijk

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