Mar 14 2009
…. pass the attitude adjuster, small size, OK?
As I relax into my weekend, I think I’m more content due to some recent connected learning developments. A few new North Coast Region DET contacts after last weeks Quality Teaching conference and leaders are responding, collaborating and even asking for or offering more answers. Great stuff.
Try this quick quiz, dead easy it is.
To date, which scenario has had more impact on DET NSW connected learning?
a) “Extrinsically imposed employer/political pressure because web2.0 connected learning is coming via massive and never seen before financial investment, “ready, fire, aim” style.”
OR
b) “Intrinsically lets engage because I actually want to personally take deep individual ownership and walk the walk in my learning and leadership life?”
I am seriously curious as to the main motivations and attitudes behind the current positive DET shift we are seeing.
The answer will have an enduring impact on the up take and embed rate of any transformational change DET expects.
If teachers understand why? with real purpose, learning will stick bottom up b) style but if its DET mandated and imposed from above, learning will be reduced to box ticking a) style.
ICT has been in schools since before I arrived in 1985 so it sure isn’t new. With this massive injection of edrev largesse we need to do something fundamentally different this time so we see transformation for kid’s futures. If I was cynical, web2.0 tools are not new or difficult skills to learn, I’d be leaning to a) above. Luckily I’m not.
There is a palpable sense of major urgency within DET, almost panicky misalignment, amongst higher up DET bureaucrats charged with specific fields of the wide gambit of connected learning responsibilties.
Elements of ICT rollouts still have elements of “left hand/right hand” as different DET departments push their connected learning project barrows as if riding the carnival dodgems at side show alley.
Whoops, sorry L4L, didn’t see you coming so soon, you must have got some real super polly fuel to get here so quick.
Hey CCP get outa my way you old timer, I’ve got a modern web2.0 tool suite to deliver but L4L has just cut me off, again!
Oy! shut up down the back there and stop running off course, none of you will have anything if we don’t get my paradoxically improved bandwidth and restrictive filters in place”
As Sharon Strzelecki says, “Play noicer, please, guys”.
If leaders themselves have no metacognition of or deep personal engagement with the changes they are pushing, then teachers will quickly sense the superficial lip service.
Can’t blame them, but hey guys this web2.0 stuff is NOT new and maybe we should have been playing the web2.0 game a tad longer than just now?
Playing connected learning catch up may lead to enduring pain if all the components do not align. We don’t want our dodgems spinning wildy in circles as DET jumps on the back to spin our wheel and get us going again.
Idealistically scenario two is my personal carrot response.
It’s the one I’m trying to promote at my place through DIDOW. Trying hard to create the individual need of why transformative participative learning (web2.0 if we must!) is stronger by raising awareness and changing attitudes, in baby incremental steps.
Early days but so far I think its working. I’d rather teachers know the why and build their own PLNs so they can feel the networked learning difference themselves.
This is what all school leaders at all levels should be doing now. PLN’s only take a technical day or less to set up. Even our most tech shy participant was heard to comment “RSS feeds of my delicious links into netvibes was really easy” Language unheard of only weeks ago. They also understand how their own PLN will organically grow if they contribute, share and teach others.
No one wants another DET mandated brick in the wall on connected learning initiatives. Groans heard at previous School Development Days (SDDs) has been loud as top down mandated attitude adjustments wrapped as “policy” has been force fed on the troops. It is so obviously just DET ticking DET boxes for DET motives and no real professional learning ever occurs.
Stop it DET and start trusting us to professionally learn for ourselves, just give us some time to engage. A place to authentically share our professional learning via eportfolios will be welcome too. Carrot or the stick? It’s your call DET NSW. I know which way my kids respond.
L4L are planning teacher think tanks, the blinkers are off and learning barriers are coming down. Laptops for Learning (L4L) bulletin 3 was again informative clbulletin03 and may answer more questions. At least I found it more easily than edition 2 in the DET NSW intranet, someone must be listening at DET HQ?
Now if only the counter intuitive web1.0 portal, excessive DET filters and lack of RSS feeds can be sorted, I’d be a happy camper indeed.
There is critical infrastructure work to be tackled on these issues if DET is to be taken seriously as a web2.0 player. That’s what worries me in the longer term about transforming our Public Schools ICT and connected learning initiatives. I still can’t sense the bigger picture alignment as earnest project managers furiously micro manage their little boxes of a far larger picture.
Wish you well in your local and/or general attitude adjustment missions.
Ours is on track and staff are asking, doing, engaging and experimenting with all that we’ve been given so far. Some of the tools we are learning are posted below.
RSS in Plain English via Commoncraft
Social Bookmarking eg Del.icio.us in Plain English via Commoncraft.
Independent learners may prefer this online Time4 module. It is one of the best and simplest self tutorials and covers all the topics you need to establish your own Personal Learning Network (PLN).
Sue Waters, the edublogger, also has PLN starter advice with great links to all the basic tools.
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Good post, Tony.
The grassroots spread of these tools is so much more likely to have a longer term impact if ‘leaders’ encourage their ’spread’. It will be interesting to see what the take-up is like on DET 2.0 tools. I hope they are riotouosly successful but wonder about the efficacy of ’starting fresh’ when so many successful platforms exist for free already. I am not certain exactly which tools will be available but certainly am unlikely to duplicate what I already have operationg for my PLN.
In 2006, my classes were cutout of their blogs due to the SIBE changes and I was told ’shortly’ the DET blogging tool would be available. My school will be trialling this shortly, 3 years later. The lag is just laughable when other options exist.
I’ll just repeat, ‘if the leaders don’t get it’ we are in trouble. I’d like to be able to ‘follow’ leaders of our system on Twitter (or elsewhere) and be privvy to more info about what is going on. That’s really what I’d like to see, without too much lag (along with some RSS feeds from DET sites).
Darcy
As always I sincerely hope our circuitous echo chamber may at some stage actually provoke engagement by DET NSW higher ups. More power to presentations like yours at Region and Bridge St. Top stuff.
However, there is only so many times our senior DET leaders can be spoon fed “band 1 web2.0 tool days” before they do something about walking the walk and engaging with real world connected learning of their own.
DET higher ups learning for life & digital empowering starts when they are prepared to let go of their ancient control or hierachy mindsets “I’m the teacher at the “top” (leader) I must get it right all the time.”
They’ve all been reared on this and are successful products of it. Who cares if kids are more technically proficient? Leaders are still the ones who must lead connected learning by deep metacognition and engaging with it themselves.
If Rees and Rudd (well their apparachiks anyway!and now B.O.S. I note) are tweeting why can’t Coutts Trotter and Wilson and all RD & SEDs be connected (smart?) enough to engage with professional twitter accounts at least. It sure ‘aint rocket science.
I guess it reflects their unbased fears/ignorance of what open fluid digital networks ala Shirky really mean. Here comes everyone alright.
I just wonder who’ll be left in the digital wake, bobbing around flotsam style, for there will be laggards, losers and lost opportunity and I don’t want any of those to be DET NSW.
But I’m not too inspired yet by what I’ve seen or heard (or NOT heard in web2.0 spheres!) from DET higher up land.
World systems are racing ahead and their leaders are teaching me more than my own. I’d kinda like mine to be a 21st century learning role model as well so I could brag to others about how FAB they are with proficient web2.0 engagement. Nup, sorry, can’t do that, yet.
I feel supported and valued by my immediate school executive in what I am trying to show our staff but I wonder what other “higher ups” are doing to walk the walk? Not much it seems, sad indeed.
Thanks for the echo Darcy, they have to do more. I am brewing another possible “web2.0 leader engagement” approach, more later.
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I really want to see the SEDs, RDs, and higher up the chain connected in this way too. I suggest it, in written and verbal form during my presentations.
Very few leaders, in any commercial or public enterprise are using these tools or have this attitude atm. I really think that Obama’s presidency will help publicise the effectiveness of these concepts to the largest possible audience.
Want to run ‘a book’ on how long before the tools are available?
Off to work…
Good thread on this- sorry I only just picked up now (but thats typical of us ‘Higher ups’). Got to say I agree with all of this (guess thats why I was keen to accept the challenge of working on the Connected Classrooms Program). Personally one of the greatest challenges encountered in the release of applications is the over engineering and extended development release time frames. The adoption of Rapid application Developement and committment to its principles ie beta release to market and grow from the market- including supports- is culturally the biggest challenge in terms of change management. As previously put by Darcy- it will take some momentum to move teachers from their existing web 2 tools onto the DET offerings- we (thats ITD) need to be more responsive /receptive and understanding of the sophisticated practises already out there. The next few year will be a wateshed in terms of Central V locally open application adoption.
Tim
Yes the “change” challenges are many. Conversations and questioning of the staus quo (disruptive debate) will assist but the glacial pace of reform will become the real digital divide. catching up from that WILL be nigh impossible.
My daily work senses the current overwhelming frustration DET teachers have with the ICT already on the table, let alone the impending changes. Ubiquity may then allow us to force attitudinal change, lets hope so.
2009 to 2011? Watershed years indeed.
Thanks for your contributions.