| Sharing the Addiction

Mar 20 2007

Posted at 6:39 pm under Conferences

My thoughts on the TUANZ conference

I attended the TUANZ conference today and found it a useful exercise. I thoroughly enjoyed the keynote presentation. Some key thoughts that I took away were:

Teachers of today will be the last to have the prerogative to decide whether or not to teach using modern ICT tools.
We are the first generation of teachers to be preparing children for jobs that don’t even exist yet.
You have to own something before you can give it away – in other words, teachers need to be using the tools such as blogs and wikis themselves to be able to give the knowledge and passion to kids.
All knowledge content is often no more than two clicks away so why are we still focusing on getting children to learn content instead of showing children how to evaluate content, establish networks and think creatively.
One of the criteria that Microsoft employees are judged against is to ‘Manage Ambiguity’. We often we spell out every aspect of what we want children to accomplish and give them carefully managed resources to work with. How is this training them to deal with ambiguity?
From the connection with the teacher in the US via Skype, I have realised that it is possible to take a workshop from a distance – you don’t always have to be there in person for it to be powerful.

I also really enjoyed the discussions I had with two other teachers at during the workshop on “The Agonies of Access” with Gillian Eadie. As a primary school teacher, I was grouped with a secondary teacher and the technician from the same school. It was really interesting to have these different perspectives. I think there are not enough chances to have discussions between primary and secondary staff.

Finally, it was my first time presenting at a conference. I put together a wiki with the all the resources I talked about during this session which I plan to continue adding to as an ongoing resource. This wiki on educational software and web 2.0 tools can be accessed by clicking here. I think the session went fairly well though I may have tried to pack too much into the short time slot.

tuanz2007 TUANZ2007

6 responses so far

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Anonymouson 21 Mar 2007 at 9:48 am 1

Hi Suzie
Thanks for the comments on TUANZ and the interesting points you raised. I have to disagree with you on one point though… You say you are an ICT Facilitator (as I have been). Well then, YOUR teachers were preparing you for a future that didn’t exist. And so did mine Something I have been realising recently as I reflect on my own career path.
Dorothy
Suzie Ashtonon 21 Mar 2007 at 5:43 pm 2

Hi there Dorothy,

Thanks for commenting on my post. You have raised a good point! I guess there are jobs around today that weren’t around a generation ago. It shows the rapid rate of change that we are experiencing.

Suzie
coming soonon 21 Mar 2007 at 10:11 pm 3

Good on you
suzie.
i really enjoyed your session and the stuff on your wiki.
I am trialing a blog with my class and look forward to the kids getting feedback – it rough but here is the beginning of something great
cheers
Paul McKendry

http://brandonroom7.blogspot.com/

Any Advice always appreciated..
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beachon 23 Mar 2007 at 12:29 pm 4

Suzie,

Thanks for the kind words and recap of my ideas in your post. I enjoyed meeting all of you and hope to collaborate in the future.

Thanks again,

Sheryl
Wesley Fryeron 23 Mar 2007 at 5:22 pm 5

You’re definitely onto important stuff with your observation “You have to own something before you can give it away.” I think often in our schools in the USA we don’t recognize the importance of encouraging teachers to use technologies for personal reasons, so they can OWN the skills like you describe here. If you don’t own it, you can’t use it well and with confidence, which is certainly needed when it comes to more creative and innovative uses of instructional technology.
Suzie Vesperon 23 Mar 2007 at 7:48 pm 6

Hi Wesley

I’d like to say that it was ‘my observation’ but I have to admit that I was paraphrasing the keynote speaker. Still, it was a point that really sunk home for me. This blog is a way for me to find ‘my voice’ and try to become a comfortable user of web 2.0 tools so that I can better use blogs in education.