EduTECH Ignite - What we saw and what we took away!
Here is my attempt to encapsulate our key takeaways from EduTECH 2014. You can check out the slides below.
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EduTECH - Sugata Mitra on The Future of Learning
Mitra began his session acknowledging that many will have seen his talks, but many have not. He went on the set the scene, looking back at the demands of the Industrial Age. Schools with their military-industrial-religious origins are outdated and obsolete. The pedagogy will need to change if we want different outcomes. Will the old model crate creative children? This of course leads into the re telling of 'The Hole In The Wall' experiment. If you aren't familiar with this story, you can watch the TED Talk here: http://www.ted.com/speakers/sugata_mitra It was lovely to here this story in person, particularly with personal anecdotes woven in. Children left alone with the Internet for 9 months will reach the same level of computer literacy as the standard secretary in the West. Which of course raise questions about the need or the role of the teacher. The children had changed. Their English was perfect and their work across the board improved? It turns out they had stumbled a...
The "novelty effect", "Hawthorne effect" and reflecting on ICT related pedagogical change
The novelty effect, in the context of human performance, is the tendency for performance to initially improve when new technology is instituted, not because of any actual improvement in learning or achievement, but in response to increased interest in the new technology. The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they know they are being studied,[1][2] not in response to any particular experimental manipulation. Source: Wikipedia As someone who is passionate about the potential for e-learning and Teaching as Inquiry to be real change makers, I think it is paramount that the potential for the "novelty effect" and "Hawthorne effect" to cloud our results and what we now believe to be true is openly discussed and considered. Without question I believe that increased access to technology and the Internet have the potential to improve ...