Copenhagen, Denmark
Robyn Treyvaud <AU> (Page 1 of 3)
Being at a Conference brings with it a set of responsibilities- listening and thinking and translating what is heard into a context, in this case, the Wesley one, but also the Australian landscape, as far as ICT and education is concerned. While I can speak of one with confidence, the Australian position is a little more "murky".
We cannot expect to just transplant ideas and strategies, but we need to translate what we see and hear into our own experience. This means listening, thinking, discussing and debating. (Jenny Little, www.hardfun.com.au)
These aspects took place in a number of settings: the conference itself, the reception, dinners & lunches, on the bus, at a social excursion and finally at the banquet.
As a presenter at the Expanding Learning Horizons conference next week, I also critically evaluated more than just the content. So much of it was irrelevant to my experience, and yet I found myself assessing the presentation on a number of levels: content, use of technology [most of it was PowerPoint] innovative ideas and finally, and most importantly, passion!
Of all the papers I attended, the Australian educators, those at the coalface, and not from some university, had the most to offer. This view was shared by many of the international delegates. On more than one occasion, Danes, Americans and some Europeans commented on the fact that Australia seems to be way ahead of everyone else and Australians who have been attending these conferences for the past 10 years, believe that a fair estimate is that we are probably 10-15 years ahead of the many of the countries represented at the conference.
At the outset, the organisers welcomed me warmly. At the welcoming reception I met a number of the organising committee and with another delegate asked questions as to why there were so many participants from Ghana.[ 3 pages ] and Nigeria [ 2 pages ]. He answered, initially, by saying that I would not be seeing any at the conference?it transpires that they use a legitimate purpose, like the conference, to leave their country and seek political asylum in another. To this day, they are probably languishing in a black hole at Copenhagen airport.
On the first official day of the conference I was fortunate enough to join a group of 4 delegates and a member of the International Organising Committee, who was to be our guided tour leader. What that meant was, that Raymond Morel would go through the planning process of the committee and how they had structured the presentation of topic papers, papers, panels and demonstration sessions. His advice was to go through the book of abstracts, select key words that had relevance to our experiences and interests and " move about freely".I realised very early on, that educators overseas are only just addressing many of the issues that we had been grappling with, and to some extent have
resolved. Rodney Earle, from the Dept. of Ed, at Bringham University, Utah raised what he thought were some gems:
ICT is not a stand-alone subject and the focus should be on pedagogy and curriculum is the vehicle. He went on to list some of the constraints and barriers: access to hardware; time for professional planning; technical and administrative support; training
and expertise; resistance of teachers. He claimed that visionary leadership and support were critical factors in breaking down these barriers. Paul Nicholson and Geoff White from Deakin University presented a more rigorous paper " Teaching for Quality Learning Online: A layered Design Model for Higher Order Thinking". They believe that the majority of contemporary online instructional programs can be readily classified as transmissive, with an implied view of learning as passive rather than interactive and engaging - attributes that are considered desirable in environments designed for the promotion of higher order thinking. They argued that the lack of clear pedagogical models for online learning is a critical limiting factor in the development of quality teaching online models. As a step towards overcoming this barrier, they presented a model they have developed to facilitate higher order thinking.
Providing a rich environment for active learning requires:
Collaborative opportunities and experiences
Cognitive scaffolding
Making judgements and interpreting data
Accommodating multiple perspectives
Choose an appropriate course of action
They had 4 layers that need to be addressed:
1.Basic design layer: what technology will be used
2.Interactive layer: email, download, engagement
3.Expertise development layer: scaffolding, mentoring, metacognition, peer review and critique
4. Evaluation layer
for 4 years, into the use of virtual portfolios. The personal portfolio provides the student with an electronic home from which to link web course material,
to link privately to other students in collaborative learning experiences and to the instructor for assessment and feedback in the learning process. It was
used for 2 research projects by College students and while the context and usage did not specifically link to our setting, I was intrigued by the possibilities.
Website: www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcourse
Helen Barrett was one presenter who was at the coalface, and who was passionate about the use of ICT to enhance the portfolio development of students both at school and in a teacher education university in Anchorage, Alaska.
www.helenbarrett.com
www.elctronicportfolios.com
While creating an electronic portfolio can seem daunting, it becomes less arduous if viewed as a series of 5 stages, each with its own goals and activities and
requiring readily available software.
Barrett maintains that reflection is at the core of the development of a portfolio and without it the portfolio becomes " just a multi-media presentation, a digital scrapbook or a fancy electronic resume." She was also most the intellectually generous person, with her presentations online for easy access. I was at the session for Virtual Portfolios and was sitting next to Barrett. She was using her laptop to convert her presentation to a pdf.file and then hyperlinked it to her site. This is together with other presentations, workshops and article that she has written on the subject. I spoke to Helen the next
morning on the bus, travelling to the conference centre and there is perhaps an opportunity for her to visit Wesley if she comes to Australia in the near future. She was genuinely interested to hear about our situation here at Wesley and we have agreed to keep in touch.