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

What is powerful:  Collaboration around the design of the curriculum?  Or collaboration around the implementation of curriculum?

I am not trying to dichotomise this concept, but rather look at the individuality of Schools and consider what is the most powerful way for us to collaborate around curriculum.

Let us consider collaboration around curriculum design.  Every School is an individual and unique place, based on its own values and beliefs as well as its own paradigms.  We all look at this through a different lens.  Curriculum design therefore needs to reflect this, while the framework may be shared, the individual school’s curriculum should reflect its values and beliefs and those of its community.  This said, when is the right time to design a curriculum framework?  Given that age old saying (and possibly another one of those ICT-PD Cluster cliches) ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, unless we have the grounding in pedagogy, purpose, understanding of our learners and their paradigms (which can be argued as part of curriculum design anyway)… then the change brought on by this ‘fast-tracked’ approach and development will not be as significant as we hope – or it will be the ‘first order’ change, which is fine… but not really the change we hope to implement.  So would it be best to start looking at curriculum design once we (our teachers and communities inclusive) have a better understanding of 21st century learning and can have wider and greater involvement and sharing of this process?  This gives rise to another concern chipping away in the back of my mind… if a select group designs and asks for this to be implemented, what are the chances that we are going to see quality changes at the classroom level?  Are we in danger of having a 21st century framework that will be implemented the 20th century way?  Collaboration around curriculum design must therefore be inclusive as well as based on sound understandings of pedagogy, purpose, and understanding of our learners and their paradigms. Learning and curriculum is too complex and dynamic to fit into a nice neat box in a ‘cut and paste’ fashion.

The second part of the question is also highly relevant.  For 21st century curriculum, it is fine for different schools to have different curriculum design (in fact as I argue above, this should be encouraged), but the power in curriculum collaboration is in the shared implementation and exploration of learning with the curriculum.  This can look so different and be so powerful, especially with the tools available to us now with ICT.  The point here is that, while framework and design can look different to every school, implementation and exploration can be collaborative, dynamic and synergistic (creative collaboration) meaning that we are working together on the stuff that matters… learning.