TUANZ 2007

After a great deal of anticipation on my behalf the TUANZ2007 conference came to Nelson at last.

It was a very much an ICT packed day as, as I was checking my morning emails Beth Sullivan from Horace Mann Elementary School in Binghamton, New York skyped me. It was very close to their school home time but the children were keen to chat and ask questions. Beth and I have been emailing and chatting for a while about setting up a collaborative jig-saw puzzle wall display. I was able to record & edit the conversation and made it into a short podcast on our Podomatic page with some photos taken from their blog. It was a great session and the link holds promise of a flourishing conversation. ImageI had been chatting with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, the keynote speaker for TUANZ, for some time and was looking forward to hearing her speak. Sheryl is the one who has given me so much encouragement and self confidence to speak up!

There were a couple of key points from the day that particularly stuck in my mind. Sheryl will put up her on-line hand-out at the end of the conference tour that will help elaborate my thinking but in the meantime here goes (with a little bit of extra Allanah thrown in for good measure)…

  • Children are born these days with a chip in their head. They are hard-wired differently from us!
  • Watch it, do it, teach it! The person doing the learning is the person who is holding the pen, or the mouse!
  • Technology will not replace the teacher, but teachers who use technology will replace those that don’t!
  • Teachers need to be multi-literate, not teaching children but helping them learn.

We can use our global connections to help us do these things. The teacher is the one to mentor or role model the technology use. Children managed to safely walk across the room carrying a pair of scissors. With modelling they can be taught to safely and constructively use the web. Don’t be frightened of the technology- work with it.

ImageThis photo for me says a lot about the power of collaborative learning. You can de-construct the coffee into its single components but how much better it is when those disparate parts come together. The students in our class are like the post-it notes. When we work collaboratively with blogs, wikis, podcasts and whatever our learning is so much better than it was when we worked in isolation. We learn from each other and with each other.

Thanks Sheryl for the opportunity to learn with you.

3 thoughts on “TUANZ 2007

  1. Pingback: HVWP Tech Team ‘06 » Blog Archive » A Flat World

  2. Pingback: Using Technology to Tell Stories » Blog Archive » Flat World 1:1 Learning

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