Second School Forum

Last December, at Online Educa Berlin 2010, nearly two hundred teachers and head teachers defied the cold and snow on December 1st to gather at the second School Forum and hear about rich learning environments.

The forum opened with a presentation by Duane Sider, Learning Director of Rosetta Stone, on ‘Digital Natives: How they Learn and How we Teach’. Russell Stannard, principal lecturer at Warwick University in England and instigator of www.teachertrainingvideos.com, found that teachers are often willing to use new technologies but do not know where to start. Young learners are generally more comfortable with web tools and other technologies than most experienced teachers. Highly anticipated was the presentation of Sugata Mitra, the Indian professor of ‘Hole in the Wall’ fame. The inspirational professor spoke about just how well children can learn independently, when in groups and when motivated. Sugata’s most recent project involves experiments with what he calls the Granny Cloud: two hundred British grandmothers who have, for the last two years, offered children instructional support over the Skype communication system. According to the professor, a ‘motivational granny’ is all children need to learn effectively within a Self Organised Learning
Environment (SOLE).

Besides the presentations, a wide range of interactive demonstrations revealed useful and exciting tools, projects and resources for teaching. A small group of primary school children effortlessly used an interactive whiteboard to demonstrate their e-twinning platform. Other demonstrations showed virtual experiments and online games, learning management systems, personal learning networks, interactive language software and educational platforms. The teachers programmed robots and tried out different learning tools, both open source and proprietary. The forum concluded with a lively discussion between the presenters and the audience, showing once more the need for rich learning environments in which teachers motivate and facilitate, and learners collaborate and share.