I am not so sure about the title, but I will take the credit for the conversation.

Son:  Dad, I don’t like riding my bike on hills, why do we have hills?

Father:  Son, we have hills so you can learn to have courage and strength to ride up them, so you learn to appreciate the view from the top of them, and so you can learn to have fun riding down them!

This was the conversation I had with my 5 year old son on our regular bike this morning.  It didn’t seem to fall on deaf ears… and I think it is original.

I have read two blog posts this week which came to me through Twitter. Both posts talk about the impact that technology is currently having on education and the possible future of education that now that we have such amazing tools at our disposal.  Including the question: ’if every student had a computer’ (can’t find tweet and lost the link – but it was a very good read).  Plus the ever-present impact that social media is having on education.  Both have potentially far reaching and deeply profound impacts on learning and as such, have piqued my interest.

I believe that learning is very much a socially constructed activity which is strongly centered around the way the individual responds to the stimulus and learns from and with others – I could extend that to ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds.  I also believe, that for the teaching profession to survive these incredible developments we must adapt our own learning and the learning of others with the support of these incredible ‘virtual’ tools.  We are not at a ‘teaching’ crossroads… we are reaching a ’societal’ cataclysm, a series of events and developments within our control which could be disastrous if we do not: a) move with it, understand it and use it effectively; and b) make some serious ethical decisions regarding how to use this in a way which progresses humanity and doesn’t see us become a world of people locked in isolated rooms interacting with avatars at screens.  Many of us may have seen the future for humanity predicted in Wall-E?  For the record however, Hollywood has a horribly poor record of getting things anywhere close to accurate when it attempts to predict the future!

The point I am getting to is the ethical decision that e-learning must be balanced, I am sure we all understand that it is equally important that our learners learn to interact with each other in the real world! I would have grave concerns if our vision is that all children had a laptop in front of them (the only difference between the classrooms of the 19th and 20th Centuries is that in the 21st Century there is now a laptops on every desk and an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room!).  This has significant impact on the environment, our health and our future as society.  My assumptions are based on a belief that if you are engaged with a community on the computer, you are often disengaged with the others physically in your presence.

This post is not about being ‘anti’ social networks and eLearning (please don’t read that as anti-social!), as I am a proponent of both… it is about ensuring a balance to protect our future and understanding that our vision for our children’s future should not be one of ‘virtual connectedness’ and ‘real-world isolation’.  I am sure we all realise this, but I just wanted to say it because, as educators, we have a moral responsibility to ensure ‘real-world connectedness’ maintains its importance.  :-)

This may be a little deep, but I’ll give it a crack. I have been thinking a lot about the link between learning and growth.

Isn’t learning one of the most incredible gifts of, and for, humanity? What amazes me and continues to build on my fascination of this topic, is how closely linked ‘learning’ is with growth. When I say growth, I do mean physical growth, but also growth as a person in a cognitive, emotional, social and ethical way (there are many others, but I have not thought at length about categories for this as yet… but this still fascinates me). I am of the view, that one cannot grow with out the strength, resolve, willingness and ability to learn.

I grow through my fascination with the world and what happens in it, I grow with my fascination about my place in this world and how this world affects me and others, and how and what I contribute to this world. As we learn – we grow, as we grow- we learn… these two things are inextricably linked. I believe that this is much the same of our children (although we don’t think like this when we are younger). The way into the future for our children is built on their fascination with the world and their place in this world, and how they interact with it.

These are important lessons to me as I explore how we shape learning and curriculum and how we shape learning growth with ourselves and in our classrooms and make learning authentic and related to the most natural ways to learn.

Great teachers are great teachers, with or without technology, but really great teachers are those who can infuse all of the skills which make them effective while supporting student learning with the use of technologies.  Let me explain…

I was working with a teacher a number years back on his appraisal.  This teacher (for the purposes of comprehension, let’s call this one Teacher A, and he is real) was awesome!  He communicated his messages brilliantly, worked so well with students individually and in groups, knew the needs of his students in the curriculum areas, knew most parents on a first name basis and really motivated his class to learn so well.  These students reciprocated and this classroom was a real ‘place of learning’.  There were two quite new computers in the classroom and the teacher had a laptop he ‘used sometimes’, but eLearning or web 2.0. didn’t feature on his pedagogical landscape  While this resource was present and the teacher new about some of the potential, he didn’t make effective use of ICT in his classroom… however, no one could question Teacher A’s reflective approach, his relationships with the learners, their parents and other staff, his effective communication, his support for school-wide initiatives, his constructivist classroom and strong learning focus.  In short this joker was a very effective, or a ‘great’, teacher.  None of his students missed out.

Contrast this with this fictitious appraisal of Teacher B (who doesn’t exist!).  This teacher was a leader in ICT and also learning.  Teacher B was rarely seen without a laptop or around a computer, a real proponent of IWBs and computer ’suites’ for skill learning.  This teacher claimed to base classroom programmes around strong pedagogies, perhaps mistaking the word ‘pedagogies’ for ‘opinions’.  The word ‘reflection’ was used often by this teacher, but the evidence of it was sparse, and it certainly did not inform this individual’s practise.  There was no outward support for School-wide initiatives, and a prevalent ‘I know better than you’ attitude… clearly not an easy appraisal to do!  Teacher B had some interesting class blogs and websites, focussed largely around ‘knowledge-type’ work or ‘busy’ learning tasks… a website on bees was informative and creative, but largely designed and created by the teacher and only certain kids had the right to contribute.  While this teacher used the tools well, (although one could argue not in a constructivist manner) the grounding in quality practise and focus on quality teaching and learning was less evident… I certainly don’t get the feeling of a ‘learning classroom’… despite being surrounded by computers, cameras and an interactive whiteboard.

The point to these two short parables is a simple one… as stated above, with or without technology, a great teacher is a great teacher.

However, imagine Teacher A with the vision to use the best tools available through technology and develop a real eLearning element to their practice.  What sort of learning environment could be possible?  Imagine also the traditional classroom barriers being ‘blown away’ through such tools as those available through web2.0 and the use of transformational learning and teaching?

Anything’s possible…

I will leave you with these two quotes that I found on Twitter

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read & write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, & relearn.  Alvin Toffler

Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.  John Cotton Dana

I read with a great deal of concern two new outcomes from recent news reporting on issues to do with national interest.  The first is to do with international ratings agency Fitch, saying it was worried about New Zealand’s high debt levels and reliance on overseas borrowing… frightening enough (whose footsteps are we following in here?)  However, I won’t go into this in detail – there is another media ‘bone’ I will briefly address.

The second pressing issue ‘bone’ that our media dog is onto, is that our fit and outdoorsy national identity has gone out the window with the revelation that we are now the 3rd fattest nation in the world (only Mexico and the US are ahead of us).  I am unsure of the accuracy of the study or the point in placing a hierarchical order to it… as if winning something like that is something to be proud of.  This does however raise some very interesting discussions for our Nation.

As per previous interventions, such as the ‘anti-smacking’ bill, we seem to have governments who place legislative measures on the nation rather than dealing with the actual problem.  Another popular measure are those endless multi-million dollar ‘hard-hitting’ advertising campaigns, where the only outcomes involve advertising agencies becoming better off than the rest of the nation… not fewer kids being hit, fewer people dying of smoking related illness, OR fewer people dying at the hands of speeding, and/or drunk drivers!

I firmly believe that to sort out the issue of obesity, we do not place further sanctions on Schools, remove the right for junk food retailers to advertise or any other archaic attempt to change the ingrained habits of poor diet, poor lifestyle and poor parenting.  All such attempts will serve to strike at the branches of the problem, not the roots!  Find the problem and deal with the problem, whatever that may be… and if there is a causal factor which is parental, genetic, ethnic or gender related… deal with that, and don’t waste our time on changing the laws for everybody!

Hopefully that may mean we can save up some money in the national coffers too!  Now, anyone for some folate in their bread?

I have just had a wonderful meal with family… and during the evening the topic of technology came up for discussion.  Having an interest of sorts in this topic, I decided to put in my ten cents worth… not two cents, as that denomination has been removed from our kiwi currency .  Interesting discussion, we all spoke of making pencil cases and spatulas and one of us even made a step ladder during our technology classes at school (it may interest you to know that the experiences of technology in the curriculum spanned over a generation).  Wow!  It was mind-blowing to think that our experiences of technology were exactly the same despite the generation gaps, there must be a heck of a lot of ‘technology class’ spatulas hanging around New Zealand kitchens… I need Richard Till to get hold of this fact, so he can work it into his TV show!

I would hope that ‘technology’ learning has come further than the design and creation of kitchen implements in recent years… sadly though, I know that it may not actually be the case!  I remember only two years ago working in a ’structural technology’ class where they were learning about lighthouses!  When I quizzed the teachers on why this was being done, I was told that it was because of technology skills, processes and designs.  At the time I was unsure what ‘technological skills, processes and designs’ would come from making a lighthouse in a day and age of GPS, and illustrated my contention by presenting the GPS argument, only to be informed that this GPS technology was not accessible to the children!  A quick survey of who had cell phones readily pointed out that this technology was very much accessible to the children!  Needless to say, they enjoyed building their lighthouses.  :-)

This statement from the New Zealand Curriculum Framework Technology document tells us the purpose for Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum is to:

- Achieve Technological Literacy through the development of:

• Technical Knowledge and Understanding
• Technology and Society
• Technological Capability

structural, control, food, and information and communications technology and biotechnology. (Oh dear, the door is open for another generation of making spatulas!)

In technology, students learn to be innovative developers of products and systems and discerning consumers who will make a difference in the world.