TDU E-Learning Blog

An interesting article was mentioned the in the conversation that Stephen Downes had with a couple of Queensland based teachers (see link). Entitled “Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up“, the article refers to a leaked draft paper (to be released in the next few weeks) from Sir Jim Rose, with the intention being to drive an overhaul of the UK primary school curriculum.

Here is the first snippet:

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

Being interested in e-learning, it would be very easy to look at this as a win for those with vested interests in the area. However the real win is for students who will be potentially provided access to a classroom environment that supports/promotes informal social learning, the style of learning often central to the aquisition of new skills and knowledge.

I had a similar discussion with a friend of mine who is trying to decide which school would be most suited for his son. He and his wife are trying to decide between a school that functions traditionally similar to most primary schools in the area and a newly established school with a specific focus on collaborative and self-directed learning, with a larger than normal use of technology.

His initial thoughts were that there was a complete lack of structure at the new school and referred to the structure of the typical classrooms we were both members of for eight years to rationalise his position. “I like how they have access to new computers, but how do I know they are going to learn everything they need to know when the teacher does not have to cover it?” Similarly, I used our experiences as a counterpoint asking “how much did we learn from Teacher A, B, C, D etc” and we agreed that there were only a small number of teachers whom we were able to identify with and become engaged simply from the commonplace chalk and talk sessions that they presented us with.

I then (after about next beer) asked him “so where did you learn the things that you now use in your job etc?”….. “well we nutted things out between us”… or “I would work with Dad re-building engines, and now I still apply those same skills in my job operating f***king expensive machines”.

If this draft becomes somewhat of a reality, I’m guessing there will many a similar conversation between old school buddies in the UK. Its just a pity that we graviaite the tools and not what is underneath…

In the last post Steve P bought up a really good point about policy. In a nutshell I’m referring to the grey area that potentially exists for teachers and students if the institution they work/study at does not have a policy for the use of externally hosted online services and applications. Once again, what I say below is purely my own point of view and should be taken only as such.

Collaboration is the thing that for me as a teacher sells the use of online tools such as online office suites, social bookmarking, social networking, wikis etc. Luckily for us as UB we have access to a range of locally hosted and/or supported services which are at least in a test phase (ie. tUBe, wordpress). However, other institutions are not as forthcoming in providing online services to their staff and students…. so what I am going to go on about is even more relevant for them.

There will always be situations where teachers and/or students are going to want to use online services which have not been officially sanctioned by the university. For example a teacher has seen how a colleague’s students have been using writeboards to collaboratively produce short stories. The teacher would like to do a similar thing with his/her students, but is not sure whether there is scope for he/she to mandate use of the software when it is not institutionally supported/provided.

My answer to this is that teachers can encourage use of collaborative tools that provide students with the opportunity to engage in asynchronous and synchronous collaboration in order to produce the given task. However the assessment should be designed as such that students can collaboratively produce the assignment face to face and/or using traditional common media (i.e telephone, email). The content created using the collaborative tool can then be packaged in a conventional application and/or on paper for final presentation. We shouldn’t force students to use online tools for the purpose of collaboration, instead set up the environment where they have a choice and get on board because they see value. Over the course of a year there is scope for students to gradually use online applications to support collaboration and as such if only two students get on board at the first attempt…that’s great. Gradually they will spread the word through getting results, not the teacher banging their head against the wall.

Sounds simple, however computer use has been traditionally associated with aiding the presentation of work (I still remember being forced to word process assignments at Uni when I still preferred to hand write), but many of the tools mentioned earlier have been designed to aid productivity and collaboration. This is why the commoncraft videos are so good as they focus on quickly explaining the purpose behind use of the particular applications.

In conclusion students should be able to use collaborative online tools to work on assignments and still present the same finished assignments they have historically produced….but have had a choice on the process they used to produce the work. Therefore, teachers don’t need to dictate their use, but support it.