The final day of these events is always grueling.  Usually made the more so because the final day usually follows the conference dinner the night before and ACEC2010 is no exception.  Before the final keynote presentation there was lots of auditorium chatter about the excessive exploits of the delegates at the dinner.  I did not attend this dinner so can only speculate on the excesses, but there was evidence of plenty of sore heads and a finish line mentality.

Gary Stager gave the last keynote (you can watch it here.) and said in advance that he was going to be controversial, and he was in equal measures both controversial and entertaining.  He provided no solutions but posed lots of questions.  In one particular salvo he stated that Schools in the form of organization and systems get in the way of what computers can truly do for students and as a result we celebrate the mediocre student outcomes as the work of genius.

Time and again at this conference presenters and delegates alike have all agreed that what is powerful in student use of computers is that content is king.  I am not sure that I have heard the word e-learning in any presentation.   Students need to create content and produce new material of their own and publish it.  This is such and obviously elemental statement it begs the bigger question, why are we not succeeding at this?

Chris Betcher in his presentation said that school should be like Mythbusters, what a great idea, it should, what stops us from creating these kinds of learning environments universally in our classrooms.  I know that some do, but these enlightened ones are the rare exceptions.

This has been my first ACEC conference, but it will not be my last, I thoroughly enjoyed the stimulation that the keynotes and breakouts provided.  As I have said no answers, no solutions but lots of challenging questions that I am going to convert into solutions and answers for our students in New Zealand.  Perth 2012 and the next ACEC conference can not come soon enough.  I may even throw my hat in the ring to share back to the community.

My planned final session was not appropriate for me  and so I walked out and went to the plenary hall to see what was going on in there.  The presenter, who I have no idea who she was was presenting on creating collaborative learning environments for students, something that I have a lot of experience with.  It was a good presentation and at the end of it asked a question and shared information about my own ventures.  All very urn-remarkable, except that as I was leaving I bumped into Albin Wallace.  We had last met in Prague in 2008 when I presented a paper at the IFIP conference with Helen Hardie.  It was such a surprise to bump into him as he is based in London and is at ACEC2010 to present his own paper on day three.

Time and again over the last couple of days the presenters and keynote speakers have all moved away from the shock of the new type approach, i.e. new tools, toys and tricks, the bling of ICT and peeled this away to ask us to look at empowering students and  teachers alike.  It is as though the last several years have been a process of removing the layers of an onion to get at the heart of what e-learning is.  This is an interesting point, because in recent years we have liked to precede words with i or e to give them cachet of techieness or educool.

Today has been a continual mantra of its not the tools its what you do with them.  Sylvia Martinez started the morning by challenging us with the statement that if what we are currently doing with ICT (the purchasing lots of kit model) and it is not working, then do not do more of the same.  We need to look at how we are using the ICT tools in our class and ask what is effective.  For me this was a bit of an ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ moment.  If just putting equipment in a room and concentrating on training staff how to use the equipment is not having an impact on learning, then we need to concentrate on the e-learning model.

This brings me neatly to the point where I can start to allude the much longer post I need to write.  For many teachers there is much confusion over what this e-learning thing is.  To which I am going to say from now on, drop the ‘e’ and you will have a clearer picture.  Now lets pick a tool identify its educational potential and use it well, once this has been mastered, we can add another and so the L4YER C4KE can  be made.

Written offline - 7 April - Hotel has no Internet!

After a grueling day one at ACEC2010 with two keynote presentations and seven breakout sessions, a common theme has made itself abundantly clear.  The key to e-learning success is not based around increased capital outlay on the latest and greatest technology, rather successful integration should be based on a rather more mundane and fiscally more attainable target, sound pedagogy.  However, therein lies the problem.  Schools are finding it easier to purchase new technologies that promise to deliver the e-learning nirvana of integration rather than attack the pedagogical issues of delivery.  Alan November reminded us of this early in the day, saying that we need to ensure that the plan for teaching and learning that currently exists within schools is the right one, before we layer on the technologies, which can then mask the inappropriateness of the underlying pedagogy.

Whilst this message is not new to me, it has made me think all day long about the approach that I should be taking in a school as a facilitator.  I am working on a post as alluded to in a previous post based on a conversation that I had whilst flying over the Melbourne and reflects the kinds of conversations that I have regularly in schools as a facilitator.  The conversations are loosely based around the following kind of statement:  “Well we have purchased the equipment, now what? What is e-learning and how can I make it work in my class?

The opening morning has gone well.  Alan November in person this time and not via Skype as at LATS10 expanded on some of the ideas that he shared with us earlier at Rotorua.  The basic thrust from all of the presenters is not about the technology but what you do with it.  Alan asked us to consider the content of what we are teaching and whether by simply adding technology to that equation we are creating a genuinely engaging learning environment for our students.  What we need to capture is student voice, they need to be the creators of content and we need to become the facilitators of student learning.  The three other sessions in their own way to a lesser or greater extent echoed these views.

I am currently working on my L4yer C4ke post, which will deal with some of these issues, issues that have been kicking around in the back of my head for a few months now and were kick started with a discussion that I had on the way over yesterday.  Now that we have got the tools and access to the Internet, what do we do now?

More on this and other thoughts about the ACEC2010 later.

Written offline on 6 April. Uploaded when WiFi at conference allows. Uneventful trip via Sydney only negative point was sharing my seat volume with a guy whose shoulders spilled over three seats! Made negotiating meals a tad tricky, but as this was only on the Sydney to Melbourne leg, it was not too bad, if this had been a long haul flight I would not have been too pleased at the prospect of sharing my allocated volume of space with someone. Despite the physical detractions however I was free to think more about my ‘Augmented Reality” project and how I can adapt the already existing apps for an educational purpose. I have a clear vision of the how it would work in the classroom, I am now just joining up the dots with the various free tools that are available for this to happen and mashing them together into an easy to use end product for teachers and students alike.

I arrived back in New Zealand after a family trip to Sydney yesterday.  I now find myself in the departure lounge of Auckland International once again en route to Melbourne, via Sydney.  This time I am working.  I am off to the ACEC2010 conference.  The programme has catered for many tastes and I am really looking forward t my breakouts and will be updating this site regularly throughout the conference, WiFi permitting.  Roaming data charges are far too prohibitive for me to contemplate.