This is a follow on from this blogpost on elearning and eteaching and a discussion on Vicki Davis’s coolcat teacher blog

This week I found a new buzzword that makes me wonder about where we are heading with education.  I saw the term “Teacher 2.0″ A quick google search will show you that adding 2.0 to the end of things is quickly becoming the new black in education fashion.

Where is the world going?

Does this mean we now have a student 2.0?

What happens when the 2.1 upgrade patch is released?

Once again a buzzword has entered the educational building and is beginning to enter the minds of our educational leaders and I am scared.  I am scared because once again people seem to be missing the point of education and student/teacher relationships.  It is not about upgrades it is about connections and learning.

Good teachers have and always will use whatever tools are at their disposal and work with students to achieve amazing learning.  This hasn’t changed with the advent of web 2.0 tools and professing that we need to upgrade our teachers to 2.0 is making a mockery of why I became a teacher.  I became a teacher to improve student lives and to work towards the collaboration and development of shared knowledge.  I utilise technology because it is in the needs of my students because it is the 21st century and not using current tools is not appropriate.

Good teachers will utilise technology because that is what tools are available currently to improve student learning.  ICT is the environment for learning currently and good teachers, regardless of what version they are recognise this.

I also looked back in history on quotes about teaching because I was interested in seeing if the thinking around powerful teaching had changed. I found the following:

To teach is to learn twice.  ~Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.  ~Horace Mann

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.  ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton

A teacher’s purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.  ~Author Unknown

The mediocre teacher tells.  The good teacher explains.  The superior teacher demonstrates.  The great teacher inspires.  ~William Arthur Ward

I also asked some people in my personal learning network what teaching is? I didn’t ask what teacher2.0 was, just what is a teacher ? Here were their responses:

Do you think that these skills are still needed with the advent of teacher 2.0 buzzword?

Yes of course because there is no such thing.

Good teachers seem to use whatever is available to them.  It doesn’t matter whether they have one computer or 100 they use anything and everything at their disposal.  Good teachers always listen and involve students not just in the reflection stage but in the planning, implementation, evaluation, reflection and action stage. Good teachers have their moral compass set to students.

This I don’t think has changed from 1.0 to 2.0.  I do think that again it is an example of buzzwords entering the educational vocab without any thinking as to the implications of what these terms may do to current teachers.

Teaching has never been a linear process it is a constant learning journey by giving the term 2.0 we are saying that it is better than 1.0 and that once you are at 2.0 you are somewhat improved.  I don’t think I would want this teacher in my school.

I would like a teacher which is constantly improving and always working with and for students using whatever is the best tool for the situation.  Buzzwords are allowing teachers to continue talk without taking action.  Dean Groom tonight put it perfectly when he said he wants ” staff to actually SUPPORT kids and not talk about SUPPORTING kids”

This has nothing to do with what version teacher you are, whether you are a so called digital immigrant or digital native (thats a whole other issue)

It also doesnt matter which school you are at, whether they are rich or poor, private or state, if students are at the centre and are in positions where decision making occurs then things change.

How many schools have students as key decision makers in schools?  That’s where the shift needs to occur, not with buzzwords like teacher 2.0.  I am getting more and more concerned with each day with the continuation of this tokenism in education where everything has a label and students are becoming another label in schools when they should be the reason!

Whilst it is true we live in a society which loves to label everything it would be nice to instead of creating new words we decide to broaden our current definitions.  If someone asked me tomorrow what was needed in a teacher 2.0?  I would have to respond with the same as teacher 0.0 and 1.0 which is:

A passion for learning and a passion for working, collaborating, creating, communicating and reflecting with students.

Another week and another few conferences, this weeks reflection links to the IWB conference that was held in Melbourne. The conference itself was well organised and I believe gave a good reflection of where we are at with IWB’s in Australia currently.

It was where we were as a country that disturbed me.

The conference consisted of presentation after presentation about how these IWB tools can change the way you teach and change you as a teacher. There was session after session on IWB files and the use of these tools for teacher improvement.
The worst part about all of this was that presenters main selling point on these digital worksheets was that you can use them over and over again. I heard “there is no need reinvent the wheel”
Of course we need to reinvent the wheel ! We  have been needing to reinvent the wheel for the last 50 years and here we are after many years with IWBs in our country saying it is not necessary.
I thought at first maybe I am being cynical so I asked a presenter about how these digital worksheets are used in the classroom and the answer I got was “I am not sure, I am just showing IWB files” What is the point of that?
You need content and context regardless of any presentation, it is that context that allows teachers to gain a window into the planning and implementation.
Now is it just me ? Or is there something wrong with this? Again nobody is talking about students, the very real reason we are in schools each day. I did not hear anyone talk about how these tools improve students learning or how students felt about these as a tool. I did see many a teacher showing us how they used the technology but was so sad to see that as a country we are still not seeing student generated content beginning to expand our horizons.
To me whenever we are looking at planning or any type of futuring we need to think about:
•    What do our students need?
•    What can we learn from students ?
•     What do students have to offer?
•    What do teachers have to offer?
•    Why are we doing this?
•    What is the right environment to do this in?
•     What tools do we have at our disposal ?
This conference reminded me again that for the majority of schools out there technology is still a “pull down experience”  Students and teachers pull down information, IWB Files and resources.  We need to work with our students and our schools so that technology and education is a  “push up experience”  I ask people to challenge this notion after checking the differences between upload and download limits in their schools and see if we really do value content generation as much as the pulling down of information.

People need to look outside of the IWB tool for educational possibilities. My goal in education is that kids learn to understand and defend themselves, work towards achieving what they believe in and being able to contribute to the wider knowledge bank.   I would love to hear others educational goals !
Interactive Whiteboards had/have the potential to put students at the front of the classroom for the first time possibly ever. Yet we are stuffing it up ! I cannot believe we are still promoting IWB’s as the answer to your teaching issues instead of promoting IWB’s as a tool for students to have control in the classroom.

So where to from here?  I cannot whinge forever about this.  We must make a change in this, otherwise we will end up with the status quo as the status quo forever.
We do need to reinvent the wheel and the wheel begins turning with students giving feedback and ideas to their learning.  As teachers we get so annoyed when leadership initiate change without telling us, yet some of us do this to students each day.  I would like people to reflect on this:
•    Do your students know the focus of your session before they walk in?
•    Have you asked students where they see the opportunities for technology in their learning is?
•    What content have your student created in the last two weeks?
•    Have you asked your students who their learning audience is?
I would love the answers to these as I think that to move forward we need to keep these things in mind.  IWB’s are a great tool which can empower and engage students like never before but I believe we are at risk of losing all these benefits because teachers, leaders, systems cannot let go and allow students to control the tool and make it work in their learning contexts.  Moving forward I would love the next conference I attend to have students presenting to teachers and talking about their needs so we can begin to match the keys to the locks.
IF there was such a conference where students ran sessions and teachers learnt would you attend????

Well I have been travelling around and meeting wonderful educators.  During my time in Sydney I got the opportunity to shadow Chris Betcher at his school and will blog my reflections on this soon, I also got to go Geocaching.  This was something totally new for me and I will admit when it was explained via skype before I got up to Sydney I thought it was a bit lame.  I mean how hard could it be?  You put in coordinates and your gps tells you where to go and you get there.  It seemed from the outside just like using whereis to find a friends house, not that hard or interesting.  Boy was I wrong !

My adventure started when I met up with Chris lunchtime on Saturday.  Our first obstacle occurred when Chris realised that he forgot the printed information for the caches at his work on Friday.  Never fear I said, I have an iphone and we logged onto www.geocaching.com and used the iphone to download the coordinates, by this time I was in nerd heaven using multiple devices whilst being outdoors and making purposeful use of all the toys I collect.  So we were off with no spare hands Chris had his GPS and n95 in his hands and I had my GPS and ihone in mine, people must of thought this was a very strange sight seeing two adults almost tripping over whilst looking at multiple devices.  By this stage we were on the right track we had narrowed it down to a 5 metre radius according to the GPS.  So the rest is easy right?

Wrong !

I did not realise that these devices are not perfect, I also didnt realise how hard it is to look for something which you dont know what it looks like.  These challenges were thrown up and yet we moved forward looking for clues and the more I looked the more I wanted it.  I am not sure about other educators in the ICT world but not too much challenges me anymore, if I want to learn something I search and find the answers.  Geocaching allowed me to search but also gave me the drive to keep looking eventhough I did not have a PLN to go to for help, it made me an inquisitive learner once again where I was responsible for my learning and couldnt just go google the answer and make it all better.  I had to work for it and let me say it was a wonderful feeling when we found the cache.  I think Chris thought I found Santa by my excitement but it was wonderful to be able to achieve something and have that ah ha moment through inquiring and piecing together clues.  It took me back to some of my teaching lessons and made me reflect that we do sometimes give our students the answers too fast and that finding things for yourself is the most empowering thing that can happen to you as a learner.

After a short geek break to the apple store we were off to Darling Harbour where we were in search of a mico cache.  Again on screen it didnt look that hard the only obstacle I saw was that the harbour was teeming with people there for the boat show.  So we got to our destination and searched high and low for something and had no luck.  We sat down and decided to re look at the clues and then again that brilliant “ah ha” moment occurred where we both worked it out.  We were on the wrong level, here we were whinging about that fact that the freeway was interfering with our gps when it must be up on the freeway.  Again like schoolkids we jumped up and started climbing up to find the cache.  We got up and I started to walk faster excited again at achieving a goal and sure enough it was there and again I cheered excited by the learning, the challenge and the achievement.  The feeling was great and the view from up there was even better.  The onyl sad part was that we had ran out of time as I was hooked.  Hooked on the learning, the adventure, the challenge and all I wanted to do is find out more.  I suppose it brought to life the name of my blog because as a teacher I was an enthusiastic learner and it felt wonderful.

So my question to everyone is…..

Why are we not sharing this experience with kids?  I knew nothing about it but there must be schools out there exploring this natural use of technology.  If there is I would love people to respond and tell me about it.

My next question is:  Who wants to come and explore geocaching with me in Melbourne because I would love to pay the excitement forward to others.

Thanks Chris for showing me around Sydney and for introducing me to this great sport where I am now hooked.

I found this video on Fulltimecasuals blog and it really made me reflect on the discussions we have been having at Oz/NZ educators and through twitter on copyright and intellectual property.  I think it is a great conversation started and would love people to add their comments below.

Last night I made time to attend the weekly oz/nz educators flash meeting. This is a fantastic meeting where educators meet to discuss elearning issues, innovations and developments. Last nights meeting was hosted by Chris Betcher of http://betch.edublogs.org/ and centered around the discussion of copyright and interactive whiteboards. In my new role I will be posting more about IWB’s so I thought I would focus this post on copyright. If you are wanting to revisit the meeting from last night you can view the replay here .

In regards to copyright the discussion centered around the lack of information regarding what students can use and cannot use in their work. Jo McLeay cited a video on youtube which looks at copyright with Disney .

Educators spoke about how they were increasingly encouraging students to make use of creative commons work through sites such as flickr. The discussion went on to remind educators of the importance of attributing work from creative commons and cited John Connell’s blog in the UK as an example of the consequences of not attributing CC work. I spoke about how at Caroline Springs we try to get students to create as much content as possible through the use of camera, illustrator and garageband and then for students to CC their work and push their work up for the global society instead of always pulling information down.

So where to from here???? This topic made me think and I went back to school to search for policies in regards to attribution of Creative Commons work and I couldn’t find any. Once again I found that disparity with my own practice with my student mentors and the greater practice of the school. I then started to look for definitive information that we could implement in regards to the appropriate way of attributing creative commons work. Well let me tell you it was quite a search but alas I found answers.

I came across http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/ which is currently under development by the Copyright Advisory Group (CAG), a committee of the Schools Resourcing Taskforce (SRT) of the Australian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). The completed site, scheduled to be available in late 2008, will provide a comprehensive guide to copyright issues affecting Australian Schools. On this site there is a wealth of information for schools looking to guide them in regards to copyright issues. Of particular interest to me was the information sheet which looked at resources for schools in regards to creative commons licensing. This sheet became my mini bible for the day as it gave specific examples on how to attribute work licensed under creative commons and gave a great list of websites where such work can be found and used by students.

I am interested in hearing from others on what policies they have in their schools in regards to copyright and attribution. I have only touched the side of the iceberg in this post as I need to further think about the issue myself and would love further food for thought. If you are new to creative commons I have posted a video below which explains creative commons in their own words.

On Friday I was talking to about 100 year 8’s at school about promotion for their sustainability inquiry.  The students were shocked when I suggested youtube as a medium to do this by.  The funny part was that they were shocked I knew what youtube was.  I really shocked them when I told them I also have a facebook, a myspace, a twitter, use msn and skype.

However we spoke about what content they look at on youtube.  What I found amazing what that every student there had seen a video called “Old Greg”  They had not only seen it but memorised the whole dialogue about 7 minutes worth.  I have added a small excerpt of Old Greg here if anyone has not seen it.   

Now I started thinking about the amount of learning involved in memorising 7 minutes of dialogue.  It is a heap of learning.  Now I am not suggesting we all start dressing up as man fish and start teaching our students but old greg did give me some food for thought about how to engage and motivate the students.  This engagement needs to happen, but engagement alone is not the answer as it needs to be purposeful.  It is wonderful that our students are engaged with old greg but imagine if we could get the same amount of energy, time and devotion from our students with maths?  Could be great!

The students in year 8 have also obviously been thinking about the power of comedy and youtube to promote, as a group of students has developed a trailer for their sustainability project.  I hope you enjoy it.