nth geelong network meeting: skilled stadium

My apologies for my tardiness in attending to the blog following our meeting.  

One of the major issues we discussed was around equity of access to ICT (particularly internet access) for families who were either geographically or economically challenged.  This is a genuine concern for many of the schools in our network, and it seems the only solutions will come from within our own network – rather than relying on DEECD generally to supply a solution for us.  I would welcome comments (in this forum, comments are able to be added by clicking the ‘comment’ balloon above), suggestions and ideas on how this access could be achieved.  A number of things come to mind on initial thinking: groups such as PCs for Kids could be contacted to provide families with free (or extremely cheap) PCs (this overcomes the first hurdle of getting a computer into the household); secondly the school could act as a liaison for families wishing to group together geographically to share internet connections; additionally many of the phone companies your parents may already be using now provide free (or extremely cheap) internet connections as part of their phone packages, so pointing parents to some of these may be helpful to them (the following companies may be useful starting points - Virgin, Dodo - there are many others offering good deals encourage families to look beyond the obvious companies and they may find they can actually save money by changing to a new phone carrier and bundling broadband access into the deal).

We discussed starting points also… or more accurately trying to ‘discriminate’ between the multitude of offerings out in the world of web 2.0.  There is a ridiculously large amount of ’stuff’ out there – much of it really useful in an educational sense, and much of it designed simply to waste time and/or to be diverting.  I believe the only really useful way to decide what has educational value is to ‘play’ ourselves (a great starting point is - go2web2.0 - a constantly updating list of web 2.0 tools to have a go at).  We need to consider that ‘playing around with’ (trialling) and discussing a variety of web 2.0 tools with our colleagues is an extremely useful way to consider the padagogical benefits of different applications.  My general guidelines when considering which tools to use in your classrooms or staffrooms would be to ask: is this tool likely to increase students capacity to think in new or different ways?; is it able to be monitored/administered by the teacher?; is it likely to develop or inhibit creativity (or creative thinking)?; does it extend the boundaries of the classroom from 50 minutes to 24/7 access?… are there other things to consider – add your comments via the ‘comment’ balloon above.

Personally, the tools I find of most value in a classroom setting are: BLOGS (I use WordPress - this is the platform this blog is built on, but there are many others, Blogger is a nice simple tool, EduBlogs is designed for use in schools, as the name suggests); WIKIS (i have previously used PB Wiki as a platform both for collaborative curriculum design across a year level, and as a tool for developing knowledge around particular issues in a classroom setting; WikiSpaces is another really useful wiki platform); COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENT AUTHORING (a shared space for larges groups, eg, a class or curriculum team, to collaborate on the one document, which is constantly updated with the latest additions/deletions; the best tool for this is Google Docs, sign up and have a go).

The best thing about all of these tools is that they are free – created by the internet community for the benefit of all… probably the kind of collaborative, community minded approach it would be nice to develop in our students.