Learning Conversations

There are some wonderful creative examples of ICT use in UK Education at Stephen Heppell’s Be Very Afraid site . Common themes seem to be authentic, project-based learning, audience, ownership and media literacy. I also noticed that almost every student interviewed had developed great interest & a sense of value of the specific topics discussed  (in History, Science, Music etc.). For example, these Year 5 students developed a real interest in Vikings and their place in their local history. Like this writing class, their project involved an initial excursion to develop ‘real-world’ links. The use of mobile phones to capture media as part of the interesting Year 8 and 9 multiculturalism project at Lampton HS also emphasised ‘authenticity’, involving ‘life like’ tasks which require decision making and exposure to real world information, and also allow students to generate their own problems to solve (CTGV, 1990).  Other projects, such as the ‘100 faces in 100 places’ project, followed a more participatory model of authenticity (Radinsky et al., 1998), involving real community members and activities that potentially become an integral part of the community.

CTGV (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt) (1990). Technology and the design of generative learning environments. Educational Technology, 31(5), 34-40.

Radinsky, J. et al (1998). A framework for authenticity: Mutual benefits partnerships. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA.

Image above made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence. Photo avaliable here

This recent video (see below) considers 20 ways to use an iPod (and other mobile devices) in education. It’s interesting to consider new technologies like this and where they currently fit into the ‘Hype Cycle’. Will iPods (with associated applications) and other mobile devices follow technologies such as blogs and become well accepted amongst the education community as potentially powerful learning technologies (depending on how they’re used, of course)? If this does happen, will schools opt for cheaper ‘class sets’ of iPods rather than purchasing more expensive laptops or less flexible desktop arrangements?
More importantly, it’s interesting to analyse videos like this one and explore how many uses might approach Hedberg’s (2006) ‘generativity’ level of ICT use (see Table 1 on p5) ie. use of ICTs to encourage “learners to construct their understanding of phenomena” (p5) as distinct from presentational and representational uses of learning technologies. A couple of uses approaching this level were flagged in the Youtube clip (see below), although there were many others that seemed to replicate traditional instructionist approaches. One interesting example shown was the use of a mobile device to capture, view and review video footage (eg. of your own teaching).

Hedberg, J. G. (2006). Searching for disruptive pedagogies: matching pedagogies to the technologies. Paper presented at the Curriculum Corporation 13th National Conference. Retrieved 6/8/09, from http://cmslive.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/Hedberg_Paper.pdf