Learning in the 21st Century

WITH   KEITH COATES  FROM   TOMORROW TODAY Good Questions from Workshop What are the questions we should be asking, but aren’t? What is the most effective way to manage the schools information? What are the systems we have in place that are there but no longer contribute any value? Are we leveraging the power of the internet effectively? Why are we so scared of positive failures? Will all the staff buy in to this new way of educating? How do we harness the power of social media to revolutionise our teaching? How do we instil value for skills that aren’t measured in a matric exam? How do we get the buy-in from parents and girls? What is the most efficient way to develop short and long term plans for the school, where everybody feels a shared sense of ownership of those goals/plans .? Are we maximising  and leveraging the potential of the staff  in the way  we choose to  organise  ourselves? What is the...

In the Oct 2013 holidays I attended another Google conference at Parkland College in Cape Town and these are some of the slideshows from the workshops that stood out for me.

1. Is there anything special we need to know about your video My particular passion is the “Maths of the Real World” and opening the eyes of learners to the fact that Maths doesn’t exist in a vacuum as many of them imagine. This video is intended to give a taste of that as well as a sense of my creativity and humour as an educator. The video is primarily intended to motivate my application to the Google Teacher Academy. However, I also wanted to showcase the possibilities for basic storytelling (using free or relatively inexpensive digital media tools) in learning today. My particular passion is the “Maths of the Real World” and opening the eyes of learners to the fact that Maths doesn’t exist in a vacuum or textbook as many of them imagine. Rather, it is used actively in their lives on a day to day basis. This video is intended to give a taste of that as well as a sense of my creativity and humour as an educator. 2. Describe an obstacle you encountered in you...

LIVESCRIBE ECHO PEN After attending a ProGro Workshop on flipping the classroom, I became interested in trying to create  my own audio visual content for learning. The tool that got my attention was something called the Livescribe Echo Pen. It recorded what you wrote on a piece of paper into an animation, as well as recording the audio at the same time. It also kept everything in sync, so that you could jump around the recording to any place you wanted to go.  I was lucky enough to be able to get hold of one second hand from the Amazon Marketplace for +- R900. It took a while to get used to teaching to only a page, but I definitely learnt a a lot going through the process. Here is one of my first attempts – trying to explain  the quadrilateral family  of shapes. Link to Folder with all Lightscribe Experiments Although I could accomplish my task of creating audio visual content for my learners. A lot of them seemed to struggle to get the correct version of...

After working with Staff at  WGHS  for 18 Months introducing ICT into the classroom, an opportunity arose for me to attend a Google Apps for Education Conference (ZAGAFE2013). About 6 weeks before the conference they put out a call for local presenters and feeling brave I decided to volunteer. I was really into Google Forms at the time and wanted to show other teachers how easy it was to make a formative assessment tool at no cost,  that greatly resembled the clicker systems being sold at the time. I enjoyed the process of presenting, but a far bigger highlight was being able to meet fellow presenters especially those  on the EdTechTeam. The depth of conversation and pedagogical rigour was something I had not experienced before, but i really liked!! It felt like this was a group worth staying connected to. It also felt like the journey they were on in terms of reforming Education was something I wanted to be a part of. Two presenters who I was fortunate enough t...

Recently I have set about documenting my learning over the last couple of years with the purpose of trying  to preserve a record of how my learning occurred, together with learning artifacts from the process. The event I describe in this post was the first training event I organized for other teachers and was inspired by my experience at  EdTechConf  2011. Below is the original email invite together with the original logo above. Original Invite – March 2012 Intro: WGHS has decided to have a monthly optional meeting for those who would like to hear more about and discuss exciting developments in the field of educational technology. Purpose: Develop Technology based skills to make learning easier & less admin work for the teacher Where: Room 10/11 Focus S1: Using a safe social network to create a virtual classroom environment Tools: Edmodo Why: Free coffee and biscuits , good conversation and the chance to see something that could make your life a...

In May 2011 I was lucky enough to go to my first Educational Technology conference. The conference was organized by Tim Keller and Arthur Preston and took place at the International School of Cape Town situated in Wynberg. I had been interested in the potential of Ed Tech to improve learning since 2010 when I came back to teaching after some time working in financial services. However this was the first time I truly began to understand the latent potential and under achievement in our Educational System. It was here that I realised that there were lots of other educators thinking about the same things as me and experiencing the same frustrations. I also encountered the concept of a Professional Learning Network(PLN) for the first time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this concept alone has changed the course of my entire career. I was also fortunate enough to be introduced to Twitter. At first sight it seemed rather peculiar to me as well as a tad overwhelming. It felt a lo...