Connected learning

Mark Treadwell: At the Connected Learning conference last week, Mark made great use of narrative to describe the ‘most dramatic paradigm shift of all’, the Internet-based paradigm. He argues that we have reached our upper limit in the book-based paradigm. Also of interest is his stuff on thinking, Thinking 101 where he explores What is thinking?, how the brain works, Socratic questioning and much more.

Trudy Sweeney: At the same conference, Trudy touched on her work which I think is most interesting, i.e. Interactive whiteboard developmental framework which give technical and pedagogical indicators through the stages of ICT integration. There is a neat description of her study to develop this model published in the Australian Educational Computing journal (Vol. 23 No. 2 pp. 24-31). It captures teacher practices at different levels of sophistication that would allow teachers to identify their professional learning needs. She also draws on the NSW model of Quality Teaching making this a most interesting framework.

TED talks is always a great sources of the new and very interesting – the latest big GASP is Pattie Mae’s wearable device with projector, Sixth sense on TED talks. If this is achievable then …

NSWIT, The digest, Talking to learn: Dialogue in the classroom promotes lengthy interactions between a teacher and a student or group of students for collaborative and mutual support, the importance of dialogue and interactions to help students build understanding, explore ideas and develop thinking skills. Well worth a read!