ULearn News

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We are thrilled to have Bruce McIntyre give a response to our first keynote by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. Bruce will be speaking on behalf of the business sector as part of our collaborate key theme.

Bruce is also one of ULearn08’s invited guests and will be giving a presentation entitled For which master? His workshop’s abstract is as follows:

Education is increasingly structured to serve the economic construct. We know that economic wealth is centred in a few hands, while our planet is being stripped of its life support systems and species, while our environment is rampantly toxic and stressful, while people are turning off or lashing out. What role does education NEED to play in today’s world if humanity is to have a desirable future?

Bruce McIntyre is known for starting Macpac at age 19 in 1973. Macpac became one of New Zealand’s early export success stories. Today, its innovative, high quality products can also be found in shops and mountains around Australia, UK, Europe, Scandinavia, USA, Japan and Asia.

In the late 1980s, disillusioned with traditional business culture, Bruce instigated a prolonged cultural and organisational reform project which transformed the workplace into an open, highly participative, team-based, human-oriented environment. These reforms were presented at the two Workplace NZ conferences.

Currently, Bruce is working on education reform, developing a model school, which has the intention of developing the innate, holistic potential of every student. Bruce comments that, “current education is openly focused on providing workers for the economy. But the base cause of our social, environmental and economic woes is that our society limits human potential to an estimated 10% of its capacity - the other 90% of us is shut down.”

Delegates are invited to contribute to the Showcase to the future sessions which will run across breakouts 1-5. Each session will comprise of 7 x 10 minute presentations. If you have ONE or more good idea/s which you are excited about, come and share the stage with the other 6 presenters during the session.

New innovations and future technologies, new and innovative use of software, totally stunning websites, web 2.0 applications that everyone just has to know about, transformative classroom strategies that work … you have the ideas we want to see!

Email Sherry sherry.chrisp@core-ed.net in the next week with your name, contact details and, of course, your “idea”, with showcase in the subject line.

Our seven spotlight sessions feature recognised leaders in education and will be held during each breakout in the Christchurch Town Hall Auditorium. This year we have invited presenters from Australia and New Zealand.

• Julia Atkin, from Australia, returns to provide some clarity on collected and distributed leadership in relation to the curriculum.
• Westley Field, from the MLC School in Sydney, will talk about the Skoolaborate initiative, emerging technologies, and their implication for learning.
• Greg Gebhart, from IT Vision in Australia, will focus on the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 tools, highlighting a range of free and engaging applications that can enhance student learning.
• Nicola Yelland, Research Professor of Education at Victoria University in Melbourne, will discuss what it means to be literate in new times and the ways in which teachers can provide relevant contexts that support children to become multi-literate by extending their modalities of learning. This spotlight is particularly relevant for early childhood educators.
• Mark Treadwell, from Dataview in New Zealand, will take you on a nationwide tour looking at innovative practices surrounding curriculum, including school and centre management, assessment, the use of ICT, and transformational leadership.
• Cheryl Doig, from Think Beyond, will round off our local contribution by asking leaders to “walk the talk!”.
• Joan Dalton, from Australia, returns again to focus on 21st century learning in a digital, networked world, and asks us what this shifting landscape will mean for teachers.

ULearn’s very first unconference will take place on Friday 10 October during breakouts 6 and 7. An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants during the course of the event. It is a BYO session in which delegates can introduce a topic, discuss an opinion, or share a viewpoint about a subject.

The principles of ‘Open Space’ unconferences are:

1. Whoever comes are the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
4. Whenever it is over it is over.

And, finally, the Law of Two Feet is a guide to people attending an unconference: “If you are not learning or contributing, it is your responsibility to respectfully find another place where you are.”

Remember that whoever comes to your session will depend on who is present at the time, and whatever happens on the day is meant to happen! So, think about what you might like to talk about and be ready to share your ideas at the unconference.

“Educating Leonardos” - multidisciplinary education

Helen speaks of the need for more creative thinkers, more innovators, and the need for schools/teachers to impart and encourage the joy of learning. She emphasises the new roles for teachers as facilitators, and the need to be inventive with the curriculum.

As far as attitudes are concerned, Helen speaks of the “open source attitude” - a positive attitude towards learning, developing, inventing, creating, sharing, hacking and innovating. A way to do this she asserts is cross-discipline or multi-disciplinary connections - for example bio-computing, and the development of organic machines. Helen advocates a managed approach to this, and spent some time talking about the future of education and the campus of the future.

Ewan McIntosh, talking about the need to explore emerging practice that matches the potential of emerging technologies - leading edge thinking, teaching and learning.

The 5 points he covered were

1. Audience - from classroom audience, or teacher as audience, to hundreds of thousands
2. Creativity - new publishing tools and options, animations, students sharing products online and for ipods and cell phones,
3. Differentiate - raising the bar; moving from page-based to digital media.
4. Authentic goals - authentic purpose and audience, leading to strong ownership and motivation.
5. It’s not about the technology, it’s about the teaching - an emphasis on old tools can be a barrier to innovative practice; computer games can make a difference.

Quote - “mobile phones need to come out of pockets and be on all day”

The conference is underway and I’m listening to Ewan, the first keynote speaker. Ewan is talking about digital holidaymakers. Audience members applauded when he gave his view on accuracy of digital immigrants/natives metaphor, no doubt due to the huge numbers of “older” teachers who are at the forefront of the digital innovations in their schools, and see the “digital natives” yet to catch up. Ewan ranges over flickr, youtube, blogging and more, posing questions about the time teenagers spend on creating online video to the time they spend on school activity.

Ulearn has started with a bang. Many teachers attended Pre-Conference workshops prior to the conference starting. Workshops were run on topics such as Inquiry learning, curriculum, Kidpix, Podcasting and Web 2 tools. I had a wonderful day with 20 switched on teachers ranging from Early Childhood, primary, secondary to tertiary. We spent the day looking at the importance of giving student voice in the classroom and the many ways you can help that happen. In the afternoon participants were given the chance to script and create their own podcasts and I thought I would share one with you.

Simon from Educating the Dragon created this vidcast inspired by the Show With Zefrank. Take a look for a bit of fun. This link will take you to podcast entitled “Can I go to Uloin?”.