I was at Inglewood today presenting an overview to staff on what's happening in the eLearning Landscape. There is so much going on to talk about in a short session and overwhelming i'm sure for those who are hearing some of this stuff for the first time. A message I tried to get across to teachers was not to get hung up on learning how to 'do' all of this technology stuff themselves but to be aware of what was out there and how they can enable their students to use this in their learning. This means things like - accessing appropriate resources, curriculum design and teaching strategies. Teachers sit on a wide continuum of capability & confidence in educational technology and its unrealistic that all should be able to become IT whizzes - there is just not enough time and also that's not what its all about. Its about equipping our students with the skills for learning in the 21st Century which means a change in shifting 19th Century teacher mindsets. Many of our students are quite confident & capable technology users, this is where the teacher/student roles change and teachers need to let go & let students take the lead in the classroom. I like this section from Hargreaves Educational Imaginary which talks about the roles of teachers & students. This point about teachers roles hit home to me yesterday when during our workshop session one teacher asked 'Well what do we do? What do teachers do?' If we don't need to learn all this ourselves but our students do... I guess this comes from teachers who have always mastered their 'subject' matter before they teach it to their students. Now its not just content knowledge - trying to fill a students head with all the important stuff thats going to be in the exam, but skills & processes are really important too.
These presentations can be downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/rache65 as there are a few links embedded in them. The following are the two videos we watched.
Shift Happens
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
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