ONLINE EDUCA 2009 an impression

Over 2000 participants from the world of Learning and Technology attended the 15th edition of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2009. More than ever before, the largest European conference on Technology and Learning celebrated interactivity and innovation. Share, innovate and succeed were this year’s keywords – and that’s exactly what participants did, both off- and online. The best way to stay focused an informed this year was with Twitter, making good use of the conference hashtag.

Blog headlines made some sessions, such as the Online Educa Debate. Knifes were sharpened in a packed room when psychologist Aric Sigman, author of 'The Spoilt Generation' and 'How Television is Damaging Our Lives' (naturally) defended the following motion: “The increasing use of technology and social software is damaging students' minds and undermining the benefits of traditional methods of learning." Opposing this motion with a vengeance was Donald Clarke, who seemed to enjoy a bit of personal Aric Sigman bashing, accusing him of cherry-picking - I wonder whose cherry he was talking about. In the end Donald won the debate with a surprisingly small margin.

Not just the old and wise men and women from the field of technology enhanced learning had their chance to speak up; the School Session featured six kids (ok, taller than me) from the Humboldt Gymnasium and the Nelson Mandela School, to talk about their use of technology. It's tough being a student in a Berlin school; if you are lucky enough to have a few working computers in school, chances are that you have no access because as we all know the Internet contains many awful sites. Most B erlin schools have also banned Facebook as the #1 online evil. At the same time teachers expect students in secondary schools to access their homework and their research online, without venturing deeper into the topics of plagiarism, reliable research or how to use Creative Commons. "Creative wie bitte?"

Social Media Are More Than One

Let's start by saying that media is plural, so the title of the below presentation is wrong and should say; "What Are Social Media". Besides that, this is another presentation where I like the quality of the information (including sources!) and love the interaction of words and pics. It makes such an immense difference. This is by the way the conservative version of the presention, the original one is called 'What the F..K is Social Media?' I prefer this one, when using it in schools - educators usually are not too keen on the f-word.

What is Social Media?

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

SCHOOL FORUM

The speakers are lined up and ever more parties are joining the School Forum, the first Berlin platform on learning and technology for teachers and headmasters. 22 days and counting! Check out the website for the full programme and join this pre-conference School Forum of Online Educa Berlin - if you understand the German language that is!

Education & Technology Quotes

OK, quotes are corny, I agree. It may also be unimaginative, using someone elses thoughts. POn the other hands, don't we all do the same day in day out? These quotes are interesting and I like the way they are visualised. That is something I miss so often in so called 21st century education talks. Talk is of collaborative learningk, project work, away from frontal teaching, using attention-grabbing material - but often these presentations are wrapped up in the most boring slides, filled with wordsoup and avoid from any catchy visuals.

Education & Technology Quotes

View more presentations from Tony Vincent.

An Obvious Model

According to Rob Eissler, Texas Republican legislator, classrooms will have to change . He sees the coming generation as a whole different species; “Their culture is different, and so is their mode of communication. Rather than have us force kids to the old way, we need use their way of learning and communicating.” And so a new Bill has been drafted and accepted, which should push the move from paperback to electronic book. But is the next generation that different? Our means of communication have changed; we have different tools and learn to use those at a younger age. And yes, schools need to participate and supply and use those tools as well. It starts with the support of the school management; the principal has to support the teachers, and supply the tools as well as the technical back-up. Then it’s a matter of learning new skills, for both teacher and student. Nothing is impossible - as long as we desire to do something, see the need for it; this is where motivation kicks in. Hopefully Mr Eissler has thought about how to get the teachers to use the electronic tools. That brings us to the third requirement: training. If the teachers aren’t trained, they can’t train the students. Obvious? Yes. In order to maintain these skills and use them regularly in their teaching practice, there has to be gratification; the students learn better, show an increased motivation, research and present their projects, in short become independent and self-assured learners. Wouldn’t that be an ideal world?

Knight in shining Armour (1)

I just spent three hours working on a proposal. It's off the cuff, I'm inspired and just keep writing, doing the odd bit of e-search in between. I am hammering away on my conclusion with a silly little smile stuck on my face ...hahaha, how witty I am. Then disaster strikes. I press the shift key for too long, I don't know what on earth happens, but the file is gone. AWOL, or should I say AWOB, Absent WithOut Backup. I cry, I scream, shout, hit my laptop, shake it and twist it, but to no avail. The document is lost forever. I vow never to touch a keypad again. That was last year. Only now I find this knight in shining armour who helps out digi-damsels in distress. His name is Brian Kato and his version of Excalibur is a program called RESTORATION. It promises to restore files which are deleted from the recycle bin or deleted while holding down the Shift key by mistake. Thanks Brian, does it also work after 10 months...? Click here to get RESTORATION: http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php

Oh and charmingly, this program has another function that makes it almost impossible to restore all deleted files. You can use it after deletion of confidential documents, embarrassing files and so on. Now surely a knight in shining armour has no embarassing files in his castle?

The beauty of education

Sometimes I miss being a teacher. For instance when I read that Apple has offered an educational desktop machine at a lower price point than the rest of its desktop line. Apple has replaced the 17-inch polycarbonate education iMac with a new, low-end 20-inch aluminum model and it's a beauty.

Let's have a look at the technical details, straight from Apple Mecca: The new model includes a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a SuperDrive, and the NVIDIA 9400M graphics package. It sounds good to an untrained ear like mine (I may pretend to be a Cyberella, but when it comes to hardware I'm a total softie), yet it turns out that - compared to the higher-end iMac "Core 2 Duo" (Early 2009) models, this model has a slower processor and half the shared level 2 cache, a smaller hard drive, less RAM (and half the maximum RAM capacity), less shared DDR3 video memory, and no support for internal Bluetooth. Boohoo!! And catch this; it ships with a keyboard without the numeric keypad. Now how about that? This model is for educational institutions only - but by the way it does not come with a numeric keypad. So perhaps we shouldn't look at the specs but only at the visuals...

e-Learning?!

"What is it you do?" You organise e-learning conferences?? So that's like.. people learning at home... with computers or something?"

"Well, no it's rather Technology and Learning, or technology-enhanced learning; think Web 2.0, open educational resources, digital natives versus digital immigrants - although forget that one, that's old. It's more like - there's a digital comfortzone and you are either inside it or outside."

"A digital comfort zone?" Next thing you'll tell me is you want me to be some sort of Cyberella?"

" Well, first of all Cyberella is the EU-term for girls in the field of technology - although if you Google it, most Cyberella sites have nothing in common with the EU but everything with sexy cyberchicks. Secondly, as long as you think that Twitter is only for birds and the Web for spiders, you can stay in the suburbs of the digicomfortzone and ask your children to keep you informed...."

Usually something like that is the end of the discussion, at which point I still haven't managed to explain what e-learning is. So it's official; I dislike the term e-learning. It's too broad, too generic, too vague and I will try not to use it anymore. Instead let's call it TE-learning for Technology Enhanced, or New Learning - why not? It's a warning to all those reluctant teachers out there; New Learning involves new technology - even if new is not so new at all - but let the kids explain that to the teachers :-)

The Internet is Guilty

I'm a member of many networks, from dedicated networks such as Classroom 2.0 to monsters like LinkedIn. I have a Hyves page (yes, I'm originally Dutch), a Facebook Account, and Twitter. I have several blogs, three of which are completely neglected. I love to read, but when? All we have time for nowadays is a quick scan through the latest news. Not by reading papers, but newsletters and blogs. My friend R. calls it grazing. I also have a job. And a family. It's way past midnight and I managed to update one of my networks, not by communicating with others but by updating my bio. I've been on LinkedIn for years but have never done a thing with it. Now I found many old friends and colleagues, from Hilversum and London to Atlanta... if they join my network, I'll have even more people I know I will neglect. Is this the time when everyone feels guilty about not having enough time to do all the things you want to do and know you could do, but never will be able to include in your schedule? Are we never making the most of the Internet, and does it slowly dawn on you that you will never be able to - that we're not kitted out for it? Not have two brains, four hands, 48 hours in a day? I guess my contacts (there was a time when I simply called them friends...) will just have to wait until I am a Silver Surfer, sitting on my retired behind on a lovely beach with wLan - yes, of course the whole world will be wireless by then, it'll be as common as using the sidewalk, like Prof Dueck from IBM likes to reflect. So, in about 25 years I'll be bombarding my friends with emails and entries, updates on my wonderfully quiet and peaceful life, about the latest novel I read, or the tweets my grandchildren sent me. See you then!

Dumbing Us Down

'Dumbing us Down' about institunionalised education was written by John Taylor Gatto in 1993 . Rather dated, even though it was updated ten years later, yet what he wites is still so relevant. It is saddening that school has the ability to destroy children’s natural curiosity, teaches children how to sit still and listen to the teacher. Yes, frontal learning is as alive as ever in most classrooms. Yet, handing all responsibility to ‘the family’ would not work for a lot of kids and parents – Gatto has this ideal picture where children learn best in an informal setting, but kids need people on the sideline keeping a close eye on the learning process, whether these are parents or school teachers. The more I think about these things, the more I see contemporary learning as a process where experienced learners support starting learners… informal learning doesn’t mean that there is no more teaching involved - because teaching happens whenever learning takes place - it may just not always be intentional. Perhaps we should speak of intentional teaching versus random learning. At the moment I have five kids in my kitchen trying to bake a cake by themselves – no three, my ten-year old and his friend just left for the supermarket because they realised we didn’t have enough eggs in the house. They wanted to do the baking, I only told them to do it by themselves (but I do sit at the table, keeping an ‘ear’ on things…) Random learning with an intentional edge. In the end self-propelled learning all comes down to motivation and fun and there is no reason why teachers should have a different perspective...