Pixeled Multimedia Teachers Association

I'm going to the ACEC conference in Cairns next week and running a workshop. While I was on the ACEC site though I followed a link to a site called 'HitcHikr' which is basically a run down of links to other conferences happening around the world. I kept following the links and read through some really interesting blogs about new developments in education and how to teach students in the digital age. The only frustrating thing is - no-one in the Australian education system seems to be listening. I find this really sad, that so much can be done to utilise technology effectively to change the way our schools operate and yet we are eternally stuck in the 19th century model of teaching.

I know some efforts are being made, for example Fitzroy High, to implement new ways of teaching and learning. However, Fitzroy High is still in the early stages and it will take a few more years before anything develops that can be used as a template for other schools.

I find it frustrating that the resistance to technology, certainly in my school, comes from a lack of money spent on teacher professional development. The students all have laptops and the expense of putting together networking and cabling and the sheer maintenance of it all costs a fortune. However, whilst the school has spent millions on putting the hardware and software in place they spend next to nothing on training and developing staff to effectively teach with new technologies. It's crazy, but then I find the whole education system hopelessly outdated and doing little to prepare students for the 21st century. What about global warming - how are we preparing students to live in an environment that will be drastically different from the one we grew up in. What about China and India - the next superpowers, how are our kids going to compete in a global economy?

If you want to read more about the potential prospects of our school then follow this link: http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?mode=about

You will have to follow the links that interest you but one I enjoyed reading in particular http://2cents.davidwarlick.com/

Educators though should be blogging and sharing their research and views. I don't believe enough of us in IT/Multimedia are using blogs effectively. I think we should make them a part of the Content/Copy module. Get students to keep a blog all year - then for their assessment task they can take bits of their blog as evidence of their writing and put it into an instructional website on how to write a blog (which covers the 15 hour specification for an assignment). I'm certainly going to try this with the students next year.