Papers for the symposium were refereed and then made available for reading prior to the conference to facilitate discussion. Following the symposium there is to be opportunity for revision of papers based on the discussions and the revised versions are to be published in a book following a further round of peer review.

The symposium program was split into two broad sections of two days each in which the focus was first on teacher preparation and then on development of leaders. The program was a full one with a succession of presentations and small working groups that produced notes in shared documents during working sessions following one or more presentations on a subtheme. The working session on the final morning collated that material into recommendations that will be made available more widely following some post-conference editorial work to produce a coherent document.

Although many of the symposium participants shared an interest in the educational application of ICT that did not dominate discussion though it did influence and inform it. Ken Kay for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills was a presenter and ideas from that area influenced thinking around the tables as did ideas from AITSL, the NSW Institute of Teachers, and education systems, mostly from NSW, that were represented. The final document, when it is available, will be a useful prompt to thinking about future development of our programs.

I presented a paper that was co-authored with my younger daughter, Hannah, and provided an intergenerational perspective on the development of educational leaders – Successful succession through shared leadership: Preparing a new generation of educational leaders. The paper looked at leadership succession from the perspective of a millennial female looking to balance work and family while preserving opportunities for career advancement. Issues of work-life balance and opportunities for part-time workers to engage in shared leadership were discussed with a positive audience response.

On the final afternoon of the symposium I was able to participate with other attendees in site visits to Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre, MLC School Burwood, and the NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation. MLC, which has had a 1:1 laptop program for several years and favours openness and education rather than a locked down filtered network, was particularly interesting. More and more schools are moving to 1:1 computing and, regardless of the outcome of the pending federal election, we need to be thinking more about what differences in teacher preparation may be needed to respond to this trend.

I was invited to deliver a plenary presentation on the challenges of implementing problem-based learning (PBL) in the university environment. I developed the presentation around the idea that implementing PBL is itself an experience of PBL as we seek to solve the problem(s) associated with designing and delivering a course in a PBL mode. My presentation drew on some ideas from Howard Barrows who argued early in the history of PBL that there is a spectrum of approaches that can achieve at least some of the goals of PBL. That understanding makes it easier to begin working with PBL by adopting an approach that works incrementally toward a full implementation rather than insisting on an “all or nothing” approach. My presentation slides are available on Slideshare.

Because I was going to be there for the entire conference I took the opportunity to submit a paper (written with colleagues, Jerry Maroulis & Romina Jamieson-Proctor) describing some of the initial results from a project on which we are working at USQ. The project has collected data from students and staff about access, attitudes and capabilities related to the use of ICT for learning. The paper focused on results from the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying which were likely to be of most relevance for the audience at this conference. The presentation slides for this paper are also on Slideshare.

The principal focus of the conference was on Engineering Education but the inclusion of Research in Higher Education element ensured that there were some papers of broader interest. One of particular interest described the development and testing of a system for automated social network analysis of Moodle discussion forums. The system is still in development but is capable of generating visual displays of levels of participation in networks based on incoming and outgoing messages. A system of this sort may have applications for research as well as for monitoring levels of student engagement in course discussions. It will be interesting to see if this, or a similar system, becomes available for use at USQ.

Although the conference schedule was busy I did manage to find some time to look around and to capture some images. A selection of those can be found in my Malaysia 2010 gallery.

I was digging around for material to support a few comments about the value of professional conversations among educators when I came across a paper in which Meister (2010, p. 883) cites Barth (1990) as having argued

that teachers make decisions hundreds of times a day; yet they are excluded from important decisions that directly affect them, which produces feelings of inefficacy and isolation that erode the profession. Furthermore, because teachers are not closely involved in the decision-making process, they are not committed to the goals.

My own experience as a classroom teacher (8 years) and school principal (9 years) resonates with that. Implementing any change in a school was difficult, if not impossible, if the teachers were not willing parties. Only occasionally would they need to actively oppose; most times passive resistance, doing the least possible, would render an unwanted change largely ineffective. On the other hand, if teachers were on board with a change they would go well beyond the call of duty to ensure its success.

Life as a university academic is very similar in respect to change. Top down, compliance-driven processes seem to predominate. The academic response is typically to do the least possible to produce superficial compliance. Meanwhile, for those things that they value and for which they have some sense of agency they are prepared to commit vastly more effort.

Life is so much easier if we are prepared to believe that most of the time, most people are trying their best to do the right thing. Trust us until it is obvious that there is a problem and then deal with that rather than try to forestall every possible deviance by regulation. Even when we do make a wrong move we are mostly happy to learn how to fix it and move on.

Reference

Meister, D. G. (2010). Experienced Secondary Teachers’ Perceptions of Engagement and Effectiveness: A Guide for Professional Development. The Qualitative Report, 15(4), 880-898.

He lines up the conservative/republican (in US terms) block with the traditional approach based on teachers doing their own thing in their own way without regard to any concerns about teaching and learning. The liberal/democrat block is aligned with the currently common approach to management by objectives and compliance. The third way is aligned with libertarian paternalism and accepts the inherent complexity of teaching with the expectation that teachers will find their way through by making decisions that incrementally improve teaching.

My own experience over the past few years has been of increasing focus on compliance with bureaucratic systems as a means of assuring quality. At times it feels like a headlong dash back to the 19th century and hierarchies of command and control rather than moving forward into the 21st century and networks. Managers sometimes seem to be locked into a Theory X view that assumes the worst of everybody rather than assuming that most people, most of the time, will be doing their best.

All of this runs counter to the need to support development of sufficient variation in approaches to provide the basis for evolution by selection of more effective approaches. Requiring compliance to any system is a dead end strategy that assumes this is as good as it gets and leaves no scope for improvement by tinkering around the edges.

There is some benefit in ensuring that certain basics are in place but there is also room for some variation that provides scope for the next improvement to emerge.

I was co-author on two presentations at ACEC. The first was a paper reporting on the survey of TPACK preparedness that Romina Jamieson-Proctor, Glenn Finger (Griffith) and I conducted with final year students in 2009. That paper won a ‘highly commended paper award’ which was presented after the keynote on Thursday morning. The second was based on the work of doctoral student Kitty Ho and reported some results of her study of ICT use by Home Economics teachers in Hong Kong.

The conference proper began with a reception in the trade expo area on Tuesday evening but I opted to attend the Leadership Forum which ran from lunch time on Tuesday and discussed the implications of the Australian Curriculum for ICT in schools. The forum began with input from the manager of curriculum at ACARA, Evan Arthur (DEEWR) and Don Knezek (ISTE CEO). The draft documents of the Australian curriculum include ICT among 10 general capabilities and describe a continuum with 5 dimensions and benchmarks at years 2, 6 & 10. Evan Arthur noted that the Australian government had moved to provide equipment and connectivity for ICT in schools but that curriculum and pedagogy were also required. Don Knezek spoke about the move in the USA to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and especially engineering education in k-12 education. This was a theme that Don and others had addressed at SITE in the previous week. The focus in this US effort is not so much on ICT as on high level (21C) skills that use ICT. Discussions in the forum tended to focus on whether ICT in the curriculum should be represented as a general capability, a discipline area or both. On Thursday I was also able to attend a lunch time meeting of a reference group established as part of an Australian Council of Deans of Education project to secure some of the funding available under the recently announced ICT Innovation fund associated with the Digital Education Revolution.

Wednesday (Day 1 of the ‘real’ conference activity) began with welcomes, some awards and a performance from the drum line of the Australian Youth Band. By the end of that there was no excuse for not being awake for the first of the series of keynotes.

1. Alan November began by inviting participants to turn on their mobile phones and respond to a question about the origin of the mass in trees by texting a code to a number or selecting an option from a web page. Most of the audience selected an incorrect answer which was shown to be consistent with performance of Harvard graduates and US school children on understanding of photosynthesis. His point was the disconnection between school learning at all levels and understanding relevant to the real world. His presentation went on to challenge preconceptions about how education works and included provocative claims such as that the delay in feedback means that homework has failure designed in. The remaining keynote/plenary presentations provided a variety of perspectives on ICT in education.
2. Michelle Selinger presented snapshots of projects from around the globe that addressed digital equity in developing countries.
3. Sylvia Martinez presented on the “92% solution”, so called because her GenYES project has used students, who represent 92% of the people in a typical school, to facilitate teacher learning about ICT in the context of their own schools and classrooms.
4. Adam Elliot told the story of how he produced his Oscar-winning animation, Harvie Krumpet. Other than the brief mention of digital technologies toward the end of his presentation there was no obvious connection to ICT but it was a powerful and vastly entertaining story of success through perseverance and small steps which may be a metaphor for changing education in response to ICT.
5. The presentation by Gary Stager on Friday morning was vintage Gary, beginning with a walk down memory lane about the glory days of Logo, laptops at MLC, and Gary’s links to that. He progressed to challenging and provocative comments about ICT in education, pronouncing the debate on 1:1 over and characterising interactive whiteboards as pre-Gutenberg technology that reinforces the dominance of the front of the room, suggesting that some teachers doing brilliant things with IWBs is not sufficient reason to give every teacher an IWB and that, on that argument, we should give every teacher a chainsaw because some teachers would do brilliant things with a chainsaw.
6. In the final keynote, Chris Betcher spoke about ‘change, creativity, curriculum, community’ from which my take away message was the question: “Could education be more like Mythbusters than Who wants to be a millionaire?“

In selecting breakout sessions I tried for a balance between those presented by teacher educators and/or researchers, and those by teachers grounded in schools and classrooms.

Paul Newhouse based his presentation, which won the best paper award, on research that he has been conducting in WA on assessment of performance in subjects such as PE using video and other digital tools. There were several presentations from a group at UNE who have been working on measuring learner engagement while working with ICT and another on the interaction between teacher beliefs and their planning for lessons. Each of these prompted thinking about how the ideas might be applied to my teaching and research at USQ.

The school-based presentations that I attended shared some common themes around 21st century learning (based around authentic problems/projects, supported by a variety of ICT, collaborative knowledge generating rather than regurgitating) and an evident trend, at least among the schools represented at ACEC, toward 1:1 programs – currently using laptops but with frequent discussion of smaller mobile devices. I came away from each one wondering how long teacher education can continue as a largely ICT-free zone with a substantial proportion of ‘stand and deliver’ in face-to-face or online mode. If it is true that teachers tend to teach as they are taught then it must be time evolve our practice to better represent what appears to be the emerging practice in many schools.

Those with an interest in experiencing more of the flavour of ACEC 2010 can visit the conference web site and/or review the #acec2010 Twitter stream.

The conference proper started on Tuesday, 30 March and ran until Friday, 2 April. However, my first involvement was with the executive meeting that I attended on Monday as former SITE Vice-President and Chair of the Information Technology Council that comprises 15 special interest groups. Although SITE President Gerald Knezek described my position as ‘emeritus’ my major role at this meeting was to ‘channel’ current chair of the council (Sue Espinoza) via Skype because health issues prevented her attendance in person. I substituted for Sue again during an 8:00 am walk around of SIG meetings on each of the first 3 days of the conference, and at the IT Council meeting on Wednesday evening where I again ‘channeled’ Sue via Skype while co-chair Ron McBride conducted the meeting.

On Thursday evening I attended the SITE leadership council meeting comprising the leaders of each of the 3 major councils and the SIGs. My major role there was as one of two nominees put forward by the election committee for the position of SITE president. Elections for president are held on a rotation with the successful candidate serving as President-elect for one year before assuming the office of President for 2 years. I was honoured to have been nominated but the successful nominee was Mike Searson of Kean University in New Jersey. Following the dinner I was invited by the current president to take leadership of a SITE effort to extend international links – a role I was pleased to accept and look forward to working with.

The presentations that I was involved with were scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. The Tuesday presentation was a roundtable conducted with the editor of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education for which I am one of 3 associate editors. I will assume temporary responsibility as editor during April and May while the editor is unavailable due to health issues. On Wednesday I presented a paper co-authored with Romina Jamieson-Proctor and Glenn Finger (Griffith) with a focus on assessing development of preservice teachers’ TPACK confidence. Attendance was disappointing because it had been scheduled against TPACK presentations by Punya Mishra (one of the originators of the model) and Judi Harris (another high profile presenter) but the other presenter in the session was engaged in similar work and we made a useful connection. On Friday I presented a paper based on the work of my doctoral student (Kitty Ho) on Home Economics teachers in Hong Kong.

The four daily keynotes comprised 2 individual speakers and 2 panels. On Tuesday Allison Rossett of San Diego State spoke about the challenges she faced in her switch from face to face teaching to teaching online. The take away message was the way in which reconsidering her courses revitalised her teaching. On Wednesday Erin Reilly of University of Southern California spoke about remix culture with numerous examples of tools and techniques used by the younger generation to express themselves using remixed media and how we might respond to that in our teaching. My Twitter stream included these points: “remix requires considering original source in relation to a new context”, and “remixing is not a solitary occupation, community, collaborative, hunter-gatherer, remix for learning”. The Thursday panel presented international perspectives, mostly from Asia, on the adoption of ICT in schools and the Friday panel looked at the ‘E’ (for engineering) in STEM. All were thought provoking.

The highlight for me was probably Chris Dede’s (Harvard) presentation on Teaching and Assessing 21st Century Skills. My Twitter stream from that presentation summarised the main points for me as: “Chris Dede 45 sec version of his message – ICT is changing life, education? not so much”, “people better than machines at problem solving expertise & complex communications”, “teacher preparation must include opportunities for creativity and collaboration”, “new literacies are not technical but 21C – collective intelligence, play, networking, etc.”, “problem finding before solution, team comprehension, meaning from complexity”, “teaching through situated learning and transfer”, “apprenticeship, legit peripheral participation, hifi not important unless essential for task”, “immersive interfaces – MUVEs, VR, ubiquitous computing – Science Jan 2009″, “assess sophisticated performance using rich observations not paper & pencil tests”, and “schools resist evolution, requires transformative approaches or disruptive innovation”.

Other sessions of note for me covered such topics as TPACK (Charles Graham & colleagues on measurement and Judi Harris & colleagues on the Learning Activity Taxonomy which promoted a “Shift in use of technology from affective to intellectual engagement” (Twitter stream)), EduSummit Call to Action in which Chris Dede noted (from my Twitter stream) that “evidence of effectiveness is not in top 3 reasons for adoption of innovation” and “top 3 ease of use, trusted recommendation, cost” and Don Knezek (ISTE) commented that “it may be more important for students to see teachers engaged in learning than demonstrating existing competencies”.

Among all that intellectual activity there was time for fellowship with colleagues and “Dinner at Indigo Grill http://bit.ly/bUMEVg“.

The key ideas that I brought away from SITE that might have wider relevance for the faculty were mostly based around the work on 21st Century Learning, TPACK, especially the learning activity taxonomy, and some ideas for courses I am preparing – EDU8111 Emerging Environments for Learning (S3 2010) and EDP4130 Technology Pedagogy and Curriculum (S1 2011). As in 2009, there was an emphasis on the need to see ICT, and other aspects of teacher development, as part of an ecological system in which the various components interact in complex ways rather than exist as standalone changes.

It’s almost 5 years since we moved into our present house. Because I had been experimenting with WiFi Internet sharing using my iMac as a base station in our previous house I was confident we would manage networking without cables in the new house. Shortly after we moved in I signed up for ADSL broadband and hooked up a Belkin ADSL modem-router which worked well for sharing the connection with the laptop my wife used from toward the back of the house.

Just more than 3 years ago we moved my wife to an Intel Core Duo Mac Mini that allowed her to run some Windows embroidery software using Parallels. Its WiFi connection to the Internet via the Belkin router worked well until a few months ago when it began to occasionally drop, or not make, its connection.

I tinkered with it, as we do, and noticing the presence of other WiFi networks in the neighbourhood, surmised that there might be interference. Using CoconutWiFi I was able to see that at least some of the time one or other of the other networks was on the same channel so I tried selecting and locking to a different channel.

The intermittent connectivity problems continued and appeared to be getting worse so in the week between Christmas and New Year I decided it was time to find a solution. I also decided that it was time I implemented WPA security rather than relying entirely on filtering by MAC address – effective for keeping interlopers out but inconvenient when adding guests.

I began by confirming with my iPhone and laptop that I had plenty of signal at the mac Mini and beyond. That should have told me something about the nature of the problem. If some devices could connect from the troublesome location and beyond it was unlikely that interference or signal strength could be the problem.

Confident that I had signal, I implemented WPA security and managed to get everything, including the Airport Express on the stereo system back on the network and operating. The Mini had intermittent problems with connecting at all or getting other than a self-assigned address from the DHCP server. My iPhone and iPod Touch had similar problems so I recalled that I had read that cycling power and creating a new network could fix such problems. I shut everything down and brought them up with a different name and passkey on the network. The problems persisted.

I tried moving the Mini closer to the base station. That worked sometimes, mostly when it had been off for a while, but not at other times. At one point I had it sitting beside the base station and unable to see the signal and connect. I began to think that the airport card might have a fault, possibly temperature related. Short of buying a replacement computer – likely to happen in 2010 but not yet – I needed some way to get a WiFi connection to the Mini without using the internal airport card (or paying to replace it). Searches of the likely producers of alternative WiFi cards with USB connections came up blank – at least for devices with easy to install Mac drivers.

I played briefly with the Airport Express but discovered it would not do the necessary bridging to the Mini ethernet port. However, in my searching I came across some mention of ProxySTA using the newer 802.11n version of the Airport Express. That, and an Airport Extreme for the near end, gave me the solution I needed. The Belkin box is now functioning as a simple ADSL modem with PPPoE and DHCP handled by the Airport Extreme. Moving to N should increase range and the Airport Extreme is dual band which allows for additional flexibility down the track. The fix cost me more than I would have preferred but at least the extra pieces of equipment represent an upgrade to the home network and should be useful for the next several years regardless of what eventually replaces the Mini.

Some members of Academic Board appeared to struggle with the meanings and distinction because they were, until then, unfamiliar with the terms which were not well defined in the proposal. The proposal was passed and digital literacy is now among the qualities expected of a USQ graduate but it seems likely that many of those who will be required to ensure the quality is developed may be unclear about what it is they are facilitating.

A document that I came across today via the Sixty Seconds newsletter from education.au provides a useful definition of digital literacy and more. Hague and Williamson (2009) “use the term digital literacy to refer to the skills, knowledge and understanding that are required for digital participation” (p. 4). Although the document is pitched at digital literacy in school education it does provide some useful starting points for discussion, including a model of the processes that might be required for learners to demonstrate digital literacy through communication and enquiry.

Reference

Hague, C., & Williamson, B. (2009). Digital participation, digital literacy, and school subjects: A review of the policies, literature and evidence. Bristol, UK: Futurelab. Retrieved September 30, 2009, from http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/lit_reviews/DigitalParticipation.pdf

One of my recollections of my first years of teaching in Queensland secondary schools is of sharing a staff room with a senior, in both years and level of teaching, English teacher who was widely respected by students, parents and colleagues. This was a woman who had started her career as a pupil teacher in the days before teachers’ colleges, when teacher preparation was a matter of apprenticeship to a master teacher. One of the things that had surprised me about her was her forthright admission that she had a problem with spelling. Her solution was to ensure that she was never far from her dictionary. Knowing that she had a problem and taking steps to deal with it appropriately meant that it was seldom, if ever, an issue in class.

As I recalled this in the context of talking about the qualities of graduates from our teacher education programs, it occurred to me that possibly the greater risk attached not to graduating teachers who might be unsure of their knowledge but in graduating teachers who, despite deficiencies in their knowledge, were confident that they knew their subject well. That brought to mind a statement that is often a subject of mirth, even ridicule, but which contains some important grains of truth:

as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. (Donald Rumsfeld)

Perhaps it is the “unknown unknowns” that should cause us most concern in the preparation of teachers. As a teacher of chemistry in schools, despite having several years of university study of chemistry culminating in a masters degree, I was seldom prepared to face a class without brushing up my knowledge to ensure I was comfortably on top of the topic of the day. As a principal and parent what concerned me most was not a teacher who may have had some uncertainty and made sure to get things right, but those who exuded ill-founded confidence and shared their ignorance with their class.

In the information age, when the available information on almost any subject is expanding at a rate much faster than we could hope to absorb it and much of it is almost instantly available at the touch of the screen on a handheld device, why should we assume that teachers need to know everything about their subject? Might we be better served by teachers with good basic skills, the humility to admit their ignorance of much beyond the range of everyday use, and the skills to seek out and critically apply the knowledge available on the networks?

I’m not a tablet computer ‘true believer’. I have serious doubts that it is worth spending roughly twice the money on a tablet for no real gain for what I consider ‘normal’ use and a considerable loss for a Mac user. In fact I recently commented elsewhere on a post by another participant in the trial, in relation to online marking with a tablet computer:

I’m not sure that I’d like using a Tablet PC (even if that PC were a Mac ). I’ve always had an aversion to people touching computer screens and leaving greasy finger marks and for a long time I used a fountain pen in preference to a ballpoint because I liked writing with something that had sufficient friction for me to feel confident the tip would not slip all over.

Then again, I really do like using my iPhone and have learned to look past the greasy finger marks. I also used a Palm with a stylus for several years and found that easy enough to adapt to. Perhaps I need to try doing something with a Tablet PC and see how that works out but the tools I have been using for the past few years seem to work for me and inertia is strong.

The tablet trial is being run by Birgit Loch as part of her USQ Teaching Fellowship. As part of that trial, those of us who are experimenting with tablets are expected to document our experience and share it with others involved in the project. There is a closed USQ space for that purpose but I figured I could post here and copy or link to get my thoughts into the ‘official’ space.

I spent an hour or so tinkering/playing with the tablet on Friday evening. The onboard help files were not all that helpful and, without administrator access (why do techs insist on setting things up like that?), I apparently could not install some online help that appeared in a search. A quick exchange of email with Birgit straightened me out on how to get the ‘digital ink’ flowing and I was able to scratch around in a test file.

The weekend and Monday were committed so it was Tuesday afternoon before I sat down in my office, transferred some downloaded student submissions from my Mac to the tablet, and proceeded to try my hand at marking. Because I had seen folk using tablets in ‘pad’ mode, once I had the files in place I rotated the screen and went to work with the stylus.

It took me longer than it would have with the keyboard and mouse to insert a new page at the end of the submission and insert a copy of my marking guide. Part of that was lack of familiarity with the Word 2007 interface (I use 2008 on my Mac), part was my usual awkwardness with Windows (it is not my Mac), and some was the trackpad (not a mouse). With a bit of exploration I was able to record a macro that automated the insertion of a marking guide at the end of subsequent submissions.

Working with the stylus was awkward enough but I found that, although I could enter text using the on-screen entry box or keyboard, I could not locate the inking controls that Brigit had helped with on Friday night. I resorted to using Google on my Mac to find instructions, but even when I found the controls to switch on inking I could not get it to work. After several attempts I opened the test file I’d used on Friday night and had no such difficulty there. Back in the student file ink would still not activate and I spent most of 30 minutes becoming increasingly frustrated. Eventually I tried a different student submission and found that ink worked immediately. Evidently the first file was different in some way. When I checked later with Birgit she had no explanation either. Most of the 27 submissions I had to work with had no problems but at least one more did. Apparently some DOCX files behave that way for no reason we could discern. Ultimately the fix for such files was simple – save in the older DOC format and get on with it.

After talking with Birgit I adjusted my approach to use the tablet in a normal laptop configuration, typing any larger blocks of comment and using the stylus with ink for less formal comments. Even then I found it awkward to write accurately and legibly with the stylus sliding on the surface and the calibration apparently not quite right. Part of that may be related to my inexperience with the equipment but I suspect it is inherent in the device. I worked through my 27 files reasonably quickly, though no more so than if I had used my usual techniques on the Mac and probably less legibly in places. Once they were done I transferred the files back to the Mac where I was able to upload in bulk to the assessment system.

What of the tablet and the headache? Based on this limited experience I don’t think it is going to cure any assessment headaches for me and, though on this occasion it did not cause me any real headache other than some brief frustration, I see no reason yet to move from my previous scepticism about tablets. Given a choice of spending the difference between the price of a decent Mac laptop and a tablet on something else I’m sure I’d find plenty of ways to spend the money on things that would do more for my productivity than a tablet.