I mentioned a PBS documentary that was airing in the US called New Learners of the 21st Century. One of those interviewed was John Seely Brown who has been researching the role of emerging technology and learning particularly the aspect of play and collaboration. Brown and Douglas Thomas have recently published a New Culture of Learning in … More A New Culture of Learning
The Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) is a professional organisation for technology leaders working in school districts across the US. CoSN also brings together peak agencies from around the world to engage in dialogue on schooling in a digital age. This year I was invited to speak at CoSN’s annual conference: Mastering the Moment: A … More CoSN Conference
Living in a digital age, it’s hard not to focus our attention on technology. Every newspaper has a section devoted to it and there is always worldwide interest when Apple launches its latest gadget. What we seem to miss in all of this is the social revolution that is taking place. Like the French or the counter-culutral revolution of the … More Viva la revolucion
On his blog Stephen Downes discussed the shift from thinking education is something that is provided for us towards the idea it is something we create for ourselves thanks to a myriad of resources accessible via the internet. I’ve mentioned the Khan Academy before but it exemplifies Stephen Downes’ point – learning on demand. The … More Learning on demand
I had a wonderful experience this morning at 3am with around five thousand educators from across the globe during Cisco’s Virtual Forum for Education Leaders. (To watch speaker sessions, you’ll need to register. Videos will be available for six months). It is amazing how quickly technology is developing to allow ‘just in time’ collaboration and communication. As one of the contributers to … More Cisco Education Leaders Forum
Interesting discussion on talk-back radio about the value of books in an increasingly digital world. It was sparked by the revelation in the SMH that the University of NSW was discarding thousands of books, journals and papers some dating back to the 1860s. According to the university, it’s in response to a demand for … More Symbols of knowledge
The rapid development capacities and expansion of wireless networks continually reshape the world. We now expect connectivity wherever we are and if you’re like me, am frustrated when we can’t get access to the net. We understand the power of wireless at this level but this is only the very beginning of a whole new way … More BYOT
My thanks to Mike O’Brien from Cisco for the link to an upcoming PBS documentary – Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st century. PBS will screen the documentary this Sunday in the US but there are some excellent extended interviews with Dr Nichole Pinkard on re-defining student literacy and Dr John Seely Brown on … More Digital Media
I thought I would do a video post reflecting on what for me are the three key themes that emerged during my recent professional learning experience. Hopefully, the posts over the past few weeks from Canada, US and Scotland capture the current challenges, ideas and trends across school systems. Two things resonate across the globe … More What I’ve learned
I joined a 1000 educators recently for the annual Quest conference in Toronto. Hosted by the York District Public Schools Board, this conference is widely regarded as a ‘must attend’ event in Canada with a large international contingent. Researcher and author, Don Tapscott gave the opening keynote and mapped the issues with precision. He spoke … More Quest
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