Martin Levins

Julia Gillard is Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for Education and Minister for Social Inclusion.

The transcript of her (read) speech is here.

She opens with the Australian Federal government's committment to Digital Education Revolution: yada yada

Her speech starts with publicity about the Australian Federal Government's committment to the Digital Education Revolution: yada yada

There is no mention of learning here - it's all abut the marketplace and training, change the way we interact and so forth.

Innovation will the heart of the Australian economy, and must be embedded in classrooms. The ideas of Derek Robertson were mentioned here, but I'm not sure of the context.

She laments that many of our schools look like they always did, and tells that kids are digitally connected (Really?) and they have to change when they go to school.

OK Julia, we're at a conference where (hopefully) everyone gets that. Preaching to the choir a bit. Tell us where your government is going.

She gives us an example.

Apparently, Amanda is going on a virtual excursion and the interactive whiteboard allows her to connect with a geologist in Gippsland (it's not clear how an IWB does this), whereas Sam can only get to computers in the library for on hour a day, so no geology for Sam.

She goes on about future economic dependence on technology, displaying her government's view that this is all about vocation.

I think it has a lot to do with it, but it's odd that not even lip service is given to theories of learning.

Computers are only powerful if they are connected via broadband to make content available to learners. This is all about consumption and saddens me that the government is still viewing computers as a different mode of delivery of information: The Nuremberg funnel strikes again, as does the far greater scope to share classes. Is this an education revolution or an economic one?

It's the pizza model of education: it's still dough with tomato sauce, the only difference is in the delivery.

Some pork in the barrel?

AUD11.25m in 2009 for AGQTP projects, and "teaching to the digital age" advisory group will design programs and report to ministry.

To address lack of knowledge in teaching base, AUD10m will be reserved from National Computer fund for teacher development.

I wonder what will NSW Department of Education schools do?

Mitch Resnick is Keynote speaker at the ACEC conference talking on "Sowing the seeds for a creative society"

The percentage of the workforce involved in creativity is increasing (The Rise of the Creative Class, Florida, Richard)

Most schools not set up to support creative thinkers. Too often we think of education as the Nuremburg Funnel. (The transmission model)

He gets his inspiration from Kindergarten classrooms. (The play thing again. It's good to see how often this is now coming up. Kids can learn by playing - who knew?)

However, when we get beyond Kindergarten, we move to transmission again. One of the reasons for this has been that we haven;t had the right media for learning beyond the Kinder age group. Here, the link with modern ICT mediated media becomes apparent. ICT is the finger paint for those older than Kinder. This is the role of his "Lifelong Kindergarten Group" at MIT.

His "creative learning spiral" begins with imagination, to create to play to share to reflect to imagine again. If this iterative process is applied to everything, we encourage creativity. The "Maths rules" and other items normally taught didactically will emerge from a play context.

It behoves us as teachers to design experiences that will require knowledge in a syllabus, rather than teacher those items in isolation. Being clever in designing thee experiences allows for differentiation in learning styles. eg the "if my robot hits a wall, back up" is a traditional methodology, but a LEGO cat that meows when an LED on its back is covered by patting involves the same learning. However, this diversity has widened the options and provided an engaging activity for a broader group of kids. Whilst these sorts ot toys exist in toystores, they get the opportunity to understand, then control their environment, essentially constructing a world view.

Sadly, he reflects that Kinder in the USA is becoming more like the transmission approach than play.

His examples come close to the issues of Technacy in that he has made a (brief) reference to cultural and moral issues that arise when technology is concerned.

He talks about a new program called "WeDo" - an early childhood approach to be released in 2009. It's based on Lego and will be shown at the Lego booth at this conference.

He discusses and demonstrates Scratch, referring to the low floor and high ceiling concept that Seymour has talked about (easy to get into with a "the sky's the limit" approach), but also the "Wide Wall" concept where the tasks are not narrow but can accommodate a wide variety of approaches and interests.

Scratch accommodates sharing through a website which behaves like YouTube. The "Share" button in the Scratch interface connects directly with that website. (contributions to the website can be run in the website window, with new projects coming in every 2 minutes on average). Students and others can comment on the projects ad, of course learn from them, forming the "literature" of this learning.

Marvin Minsky once commented that Logo has a great grammar, but no literature; the sharing of Scratch provides.

This literature has resulted in lots of remixing (Mashups?) of shared items and subsequent discussions about IP and ownership. The website autmomatically builds attribution for remixes, with a "most remixed" project list as well as "latest project" listing.

Some students have begun to specialise in making, say, characters for use in other projects, ending up as an enterprise, others have built online stories as TV-like serials (very anime like, but maybe that was just the one he demonstrated)

Further examples demonstrate a developing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, TV presenters & producers, tutors, consultants and manufacturers. Even a critic community has developed!

It's tempting to say "aren't kids clever" here, but it's really only an extension, or better, an adaptation, of his earlier kindergarten description.

(Have a look at the reflex tester on scratch.mit.edu for a Science project that could only really be done using a technology like Scratch)

Demographics of the community demonstrate a peak at 8-12 year olds, but a long tail to the right representing the adults.

Further developments include scratch boards to connect, Lego Mindstorms-like, the environment to the screen or vice versa.

Scratch is coming soon to the XO (One Laptop per Child) and other platforms, as well as mobile phones, and a use for scratch primitives used to describe behaviours in Second Life and other similar environments.

Scratch as the Lingua Franca of the robotic and virtual worlds?

ScratchEd will be launched in the next few months (send email to scratch-ed@media.mit.edu for updates) specifically for teachers.

Wraps by referring to the need for community to encourage rethinking education and learning (sometimes they're different things) and how we can use the increasing access to information to build new Knowledges and encourage creative thinking.

Just like Kindergarten kids.

John Hedberg is Dean of the School of Education at Macquarie University.

Wants to demonstrate that Marc Prensky is wrong when he says that "Technology is the new literacy and teachers are illiterate"

Saying that "I want to integrate technology into my classroom" means that you don't understand technology

Refers to the advent of things like the Mac gave freedom and unbound users from the need for experts, and the subsequent move to things like StageStruck (which he was involved in) which encapsulated experience into one universe.

Software such as Quicktime gave us the ability to merge media, and shows the Knowledge navigator video predicting how we can work now (even though it was made in 1987)

Quotes wikipedia as having 4 mistakes per page on average, compared to EB which has 3 mistakes per page (no reference given) and refer to modified Blooms and Johnston's "Meaningful Learning" drawing on authenticity and collaborative learning in a Web2 context.

There's a distinction that I think he is getting to here whereby the context defines the meaning, using a Maths example where there can be multiple answers, but only one makes sense in a Maths context (the "Find X" Maths problem)

He notes the shift in philosophies from behaviourist to cognitivist to constructivist to situational

His study for the Learning Fed last year found that Technology makes a huge difference in Primary classrooms (where interdisciplinary work rules) compared to the secondary where the Balkanisation of disciplines narrow experience (and I would say understanding)

Kids choose disruptive technologies, but tend to use them in simple ways (reinforced by the PISA report)

The Educause Horizon report predicts  move to Collective intelligence (wikipedia etc) and social operating systems (networks based around people, not technology - not really an OS, but there you go) in 5 years. I think we're nearly there now, but not at grassroots level.

He posits that large storage is needed to represent our ideas, increasingly so in humanities and addresses the consequent lack of need for content, particularly teacher generated content. Not only will the kids do this faster, but the identification and collection of data is an important part of the learning process.

The data can then be used in Knowledge Forum, wikis, concept mapping software, Mndstorms etc so that deep learning and relationships rather than simplistic recall can occur.

Web 2.0 brings new buzzwords including collaboration as opposed to cooperative tasks (small, but significant difference here - in a cooperative venture, we usually all do different things, and there probably isn't any overlap).

He asks his staff to create assignments for pre service teachers is to show the changes between successive drafts so that the thinking and learning process can be exposed.

His straw poll in this auditorium shows that 10% of participants blog themselves, as opposed to 20% who ask their kids to which is interesting. (We don't always model the behaviour that we expect from kids) Blogs can promote equity and ownership of learning, but are forced blogs actually blogs? Blogging can be a pedagogy, asking students to essentially have a conversation, involving other, maybe older students, and building learning communities.

Mashups are next, quoting sites such as Uncyclopedia, Weatherbonk, Amaztype, Howcast, then how students can build knowledge using wikis, similar to how The Cathedral School's history classes are filling the gaps in Wikipedia's Anzac and Australian Vietnams Vets coverage. (Good value this: what Alan Kay refers to as "doing" History as opposed to History appreciation)

He quoted a task whereby students are asked to find the best mobile phone plan, then given a specific request such as "I need global roaming" or "I need to do lots of SMS" to develop the concept that solutions are not absolute and are contextual..

His research with Peter Freebody from Sydney University concentrates on the meta disciplines of genomics, bioinformatics etc that require technology to even study. Here, they're concentrating on different modalities and symbologies.

So, is Prensky wrong?

His research indicates that adults are not the tech klutzes that a quick reading of Prensky would indicate.