Update from 2010 July NSW Education Conference

You may remember I shared briefly in the last blog post (which was August!) that I had been a key note speaker at the NSW Engaging Learners Through Innovative Practice Conference in July.

I had promised you at that time to update you on the presentations from that conference. You can download them directly from the NSW DET website here (http://www.detconferences.nsw.edu.au/engKeynotes.php) or read on and I have a little spiel about each and you can download them from this blog!

Jason Clarke (Minds at Work) is a very entertaining speaker and the main thoughts I gleaned from his presentation has actually led to a revolution in what i present to schools. It is his I.D.E.A. idea!

Consider that there are 4 types of people in groups that lead to having projects and things occur. They are grouped into

(I) innovators, ideas people – the ones who have the ideas

(D) Designers – the ones who take ideas and think about how it can be done

(E) Evaluators – the ones who come up with all the objections and “but what about”

(A) Action people – the ones who take the actions, the doers.

In project based learning and inquiry learning we need to develop students in all four skill sets. Quite often we focus only on (E)valuating in school and not enough (D)esigning. In fact it is the (D)esigning that will enable students to be entrepreneurs and adapt to the 21st century world.

Download JasonClarkeKeynote and JasonClarkeWorkshop

Anne Bartlett-Bragg was interesting, in an academic way (she is a professor at the University of Technology Sydney), but the main idea I gleaned from Anne was the social technographics ladder she put up which distinguished the ecosystem of users on the internet. From “inactives”, to spectators, joiners, collectors, critics and creators … it gave me an insight in that I should be talking to teachers about how are they developing their students as participators on the internet – given how much it will dominate our lives and work choices in the future.

Download Anne BB Workshop

Curtis Bonk I spoke about in detail in the last blog. Here is his presentation Curtis Bonk Workshop