Photo: Fork in the road http://www.flickr.com/photos/livlem/3660944508/

I am really hoping that discussions are frank and open about what is really happening and not just about pockets of excellence as David Jakes calls them. By that I refer to the fact that conferences can be places where we talk about best practice in a very public forum. I know that in the past I have come away from these events feeling like my institution is a long way behind in what we are doing in classrooms only to later learn that the presentation was describing an outlier and not what was mainstream in the school despite what had been portrayed in the presentation.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with discussion of best practice. It is only through sharing these ideas that we all move forward. The point I am trying to make is that there are a lot of teachers out there that are working hard to try to move a fairly traditional, standards focussed school with busy teachers who say that they have little time to learn “new fangled Web 2.0 tools” to slowly come onboard with open-ended, inquiry based learning that encourages creativity, collaboration and communication over worksheets and benchmark testing. Many of these teachers share frustrations and stories over their PLN to a great collaborative and knowledgable group who they can trust and who understand how it is for them at their school. A much more public forum like a conference can be seen as a dangerous place to share these frustrations, especially when you may be wearing a name tag that identifies your employer! I think that this is one of the reasons why some teachers are beginning to find their own PLN via Twitter, Blog, email and others a more effective way to share and learn than the large conference event.

As someone who is putting many hours into the setting up of a conference, I really hope that we can highlight the journey more than the technology and share in an open and honest way the challenges that come from trying to change mindsets that have always valued memorisation and reguritation onto a test paper as the core fundamentals of good education.

Photo: Serious Conversation http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcazadi/2388418126/

Once again I acknowledge how busy you all are and trust that you are finding some time in your days to reflect on our ambitious plans for a student strand at the conference.

A very big thanks to Colin who has taken some time to put together a logo (see the sample on the right). So far this is the only one that we have. In the spirit of Daniel Pink, I would welcome any feedback or ideas about the logo.

Last week I came across a posting by Michael Stephens, who I originally thought was the Educational Director with CISCO who was coming out to the conference and has now sent Andrew Thomson in his place. Turns out it is a different Michael Stephens! Nevertheless, his post on Ten Tech Trends & Technologies for 2009 written from the perspective of a librarian, is a little easier to read than the horizon report but remarkably similar in tone!

I have attached a PDF copy for you. It might get you thinking about this connected student project that we want to run in conjunction with the conference.

What has been happening here in the last 2 days has been really significant. It is about learning, sharing and doing meaningful things with kids. It is the student element of this conference that has really got me excited. I don’t know how much an external person can garner from the reading of the conference ning here. Maybe the instructions on this wiki might be clearer. In any case, you need to imagine a group of really switched on motivated students working flat out to achieve a goal that they believe in and know can make a difference in the world. You need to see that these kids are from different countries with different cultures and that they are in mixed teams and want to stay that way.

Running parallel to this is a fantastic program for teachers and leaders who really want to try to embed connected learning into their schools. This is supported by some great presenters and leaders including ISTE’s CEO, Don Knezek and their Senior Strategic Initiatives Officer, Lynn Nolan. These guys have been great at working with the teachers here to get them to reflect on where they have come from with their use of ICT for learning and where they might best invest time, effort and energy in the future.

In addition to all of this, which I have to say is better than the workshops and sessions I attended at BETT, there have been a lot of other great opportunities for sharing and for listening to great input from switched on Educators and authors. A highlight was a live link-up with Thomas Friedman, world renowned author of ‘The World is Flat’, Friedman addressed his talk to the students here and answered questions that were some of the most reflective and best framed that I have heard. I doubt if the adults in the room could have asked better ones!

I just came from a sharing session where Jeff Utecht did a great job with this presentation.

The collective group of interested educators planning the 21st Century Learning @ HK conference next October need to decide on a theme that captures all that we wish to convey as soon as they can. It is a truism about conferences like this that once the idea is “born”, as it were, we all suddenly find ourselves rushing to catch up. Naturally, as humans, we all only see things from our own perspective. It is perfectly reasonable for a group looking to hold a conference make contact with potential keynote speakers to determine who might be able to come along prior to deciding a theme. It is also reasonable for an invited keynote to want to know the general themes of the conference, the target audiences, the themes and the conference strands prior to saying if they feel that they can offer something by attending. All this does prove a bit of an issue for the bunny (i.e. me) who is trying to coordinate the whole thing.

For the purposes of trying to give as much information as possible to the invited keynote speakers and the teachers we will soon be calling on to submit papers, Here are as many details as I can put down about the conference from the discussions held so far: (feel free to disagree via comments if I have left out or misinterpreted.)

• We are focusing on powerful learning using what is available to students in 2009 and beyond. Attendees should come away with enhanced understanding of how students in their care can be extended and supported to learn and succeed in the 21st century.
• The majority of our students are from privileged homes. They are surrounded by the latest technology and, for the most part, have access to telecommunications networks that many others dream of. They expect to be able to use information and communication technology for every aspect of their lives.
• Most of our teachers, librarians and administrators see the need to use ICT for learning across the curriculum. Most are able users of digital learning tools themselves. They do not need to be told the “Why”, they appreciate good examples of “What and How” in their own context.
• We really want to involve Administrators or Senior Management Teams of schools. This is important as some teachers feel that they cannot effect change in schools without SMT hearing the same message as them.
• We want to see students at the conference. This might be in presenting workshops, being part of discussions or even being on hand to assist and comment.

OK. I could probably put more points down but this is a start. Use the comment feature to add more if you wish.

How do we go about trying to distill these points into a clear theme and some clear guiding notes for keynote presenters and teachers proposing workshops?

How about borrowing a title from Jim Collins and coming up with “Good to Great: The Journey of International Examination Success AND Connected Global Citizens”

Would really welcome feedback.

Image: EduCon Wordle by christopherl

together educators next month, that we are clear as can be in spelling out what we hope to get from the

invited speakers at the 21st Century Learning @ HK Conference.

As I have said to a lot of the keynotes that I have made initial contact with, it would be great to get some data from around the region that provides pointers toward the sort of tasks that students in well-equipped schools with motivated teachers and access to abundant technology and high-speed broadband should be doing.

As an exercise in thinking out aloud and in the interests of trying to get feedback from any readers, here is an initial brief overview of some guidelines for Keynote speakers (which will potentially be refined for other workshop leaders) which could be put to them prior to deciding to come.

1. The background of Regional International Schools as Schools that are well resourced and have a lot of technology in classrooms, very able and motivated teachers and kids who consistently perform well above average. We are also fairly free to follow creative, internationally focused curricula which do not impose a level of adherence to standardized testing. Accountability is to the parents who pay a lot to send students to the school and not to external quasi political organizations.
2. Background on the Conference, the need to reach School Administrators, Classroom teachers, ICT Leaders, librarians, and get everyone on the same page WRT the needs of 21st Century Learners.
3. The reason we are inviting keynotes is to support school Administrators in particular who are in the frontline when it comes to parents who need convincing of directions that we are taking their kids which are not familiar to them. In some cases they may also have a few staff members who need some support in adopting strategies that support 21st Century Learning.
4. The specific aims and objectives need to be worked on but, in short, we know that we want to know about putting it into practice and overcoming obstacles.
5. I want to suggest a theme of “Learning for Leadership” but this may not be popular with the committee.
6. The challenges that we all face are those of getting a clear message to the community that the textbooks, blackboard and examinations method of education is not enough for students going into a world where rapid change and constant learning and experimentation with new technology is the norm. All educators have to be clear that their ultimate role is a lot more than treating students like they are in a certification factory.

OK, this is starting to become a bit of a ramble but I hope you can see where I am going with this and that you might be able to give me some help in shaping it up as a document to give to presenters.

Photo: Clarity by micamica

Later in that year I finally got to meet up with a few colleagues at a meeting arranged by Graeme Deuchars at German Swiss International who did a great job of getting us all into a room but it was only a small group of mostly large international schools. There was no culture of regular meeting up and sharing in the majority of Hong Kong English Medium schools.

It was a long way from this when a group of us gathered at Kellett School last night for a session of sharing around the free and open source software Scratch, which the logo team at MIT are now making available to the Educational Community. Clive Dawes was our very able and gracious host but teachers from various schools attended to share and to learn.

Tonight we have a meeting for planning the 21st Century Learning conference set to happen next October in Hong Kong. At the same time, there is a Dartfish seminar at German Swiss International which is taking teachers through the use of video analysis for analysing and correcting sporting technique. We have just had a series of workshops here in Hong Kong by Jamie McKenzie which were well attended by regional schools.  Jamie plans to return in March of next year for another set of workshops.

What all of this says to me is that there is a wind of change blowing through the Hong Kong educational community surrounding the effective use of ICT for learning. It is a welcome breeze and one that looks to bring about a powerful change to the landscape here.

I for one, am looking forward to being a part of it.

Photo: Wind Farm by Zonifer Lloyd

BTW, I loved the format of the presentation that Chris did here. He speaks of it in this blog posting. This is also the link to follow if you want to see his slides. Well worth a visit.!

In this environment, very little PD funding is allocated to workshops or conferences around using ICT in the classroom. The vast majority of PD funding is allocated for IB workshops, reading, language and ESL support programs based around traditional approaches. Having attended a great many of these myself, I can assure you that they are a long way behind still in embedding ICT in the workshops. Even the IB, which every school in the region seems to be rushing to take up, has very little use of ICT in the workshops showing teachers how to teach via this “new and updated” curriculum.

Given this low priority for ICT in the region which is changing but sooo… slowly in spite of investment in the hardware tools, it is quite a risky venture to try to host a conference in Hong Kong unless we can attract some of the bigger, truly international schools in the region to Hong Kong.

As per the Shanghai initiatives, we would need around 500 or so teachers to make the conference viable. Give that we were able to attract 200 or so in May, I am sure that we can do this easily. We need a venue. This should be no problem as there are a number of large schools in HK with good wireless access.

I would also consider changing the format as I feel that we know the big picture. I think we need to be moving onto the “digital artifacts”. I would set it up with some streams with one being students and teachers showing what they are doing. Real “in your face stuff”.

I would like to pitch for it for Hong Kong.

Comments??

It was a great opportunity to come and share ideas in an open environment full of keen people wanting to see open source applications take off, both for their livlihoods and for the betterment of others.

Unfortunately, I was late getting there due to commitments with Trailwalker training.

My first thought when I arrived was one of “Oh My God!” when so many people were milling around a board with tiny file cards stuck to it to see if they could find an appropriate session and its correct room. Fortunately I spotted one on Open coursware for education so that was me away!

It turned out to be an open discussion forum so it was great as I was able to contribute and network a little, even if I really did not learn very much. I did pick up very quickly that people were just coming here to share and enjoy and that there were not a lot of hidden agendas.

Next I chose a session on twitter visualisation.  I took some rough notes which I have copied below but I found a better post on this session Another Barcamp bites the dust fromYelotofu.

For what it is worth, here are my notes:

Twitter session.

Napoleon from http://www.webwednesday.hk/ This looks interesting.

Mentioned a tool called flowgram http://www.flowgram.com/ . This seemed to be the tools that he used to do the presentation on.

Showed some good presentation tools for twitter. Twitscoop, tweetclouds twitscoop twitstat twit(url)y, etc.

Some good tools to track what is going on in the world.

Perspectv was a good look visually at what is going on in the world and what people are talking about.

The we feel fine site Cool!

There is lots of info that can be gleaned from this site. Looks great!

My next session was a Drupal session.

I have to say that this one was more on technicalities and less on application so it was not as good for me.

Drupal Session

Started with the groups.drupal pages.

Talk about the Knight Drupal Initiative.

I have seen this and would love to learn more.

This guy has developed themes. They look pretty good. The theme is about a presentation layer.

There is a theme engine. This handles the styles etc.

The final part of the day were the start-up Lightening talks! Each person with a start-up idea had 4 minutes to pitch it to the audience. The winner gets an Xbox 360. I wish I had of put my name down earlier as none were as good (naturally!) as an idea that’s been brewing in my mind for months! I did get some contacts so I may still manage to pull this off!

Finally it was to the pub for some free drinks!

What a great day!

Now if only we could get a successful grass-roots conference idea going for Education in Hong Kong!

There’s a challenge!