Computer World NZ posted this article after attending my workshop given in Wellington, New Zealand. They just about got it right, only two minor errors. First, as I was introducing Will Richardson who greeted the Kiwi educators through Skype, I shared a story he tells about Wikipedia (crediting him)-- in this report they left that part out. It is still makes a great point the way they tell it though. And secondly, Darren Kuropatwa (In Canada) was the math teacher, not a US math teacher. Let me know what you think of the article.
Complete Article Available here
3G phones put NZ ahead in education tech
Web
2.0, advanced technology for handheld digital communication and a
willingness to innovate in education places New Zealand at the forefront.
By Stephen Bell Wellington | Thursday, 29 March, 2007
New Zealand cellphone calls may be expensive, but we are further into the third generation of cellphone technology than many Western countries, including the US, says Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, an educational technology specialist from Virginia.Nussbaum-Beach was keynote speaker for the Tuanz education conference last week.
She says the confluence of Web 2.0, advanced technology for handheld digital communication and a willingness to innovate in education places New Zealand at the point of a “perfect storm” for new uses of digital technology in education.
The internet, and particularly Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs and social networks, has given this generation of young people a new outlook on information and learning, Nussbaum-Beach says. It will no longer be possible to teach them in traditional ways that rely on the teacher as the font of all knowledge and memorising as one of the chief elements of learning.
There is little point in committing a huge number of facts to memory when they are immediately available, with latest updates, in response to a simple web query. Emphasis will, rather, be on the creativity of the student; what they can achieve by combining and interpreting information from different sources — including their fellow students and other people accessible online.
She cites the case of a student who uploaded his draft research paper to Wikipedia as an article, watched while knowledgeable people corrected his mistakes and added further information and pertinent references; then downloaded the result as the final version. A conventional teacher would have said “do your own work”, she says, but it’s hard to draw a firm ethical line between this kind of interaction and the normal process of consulting authoritative sources.
Web 2.0 will bring to the fore both an increasing range of instruments, such as 3G cellphones, for using the internet and a variety of software agents, tailored by the user to scan the internet continuously for the latest information on a particular subject. Agents will also take the form of “avatars”, representing the users themselves, and relating to other avatars in virtual worlds such as Second Life.
Skype is “an amazing tool for the classroom” Nussbaum-Beach says, allowing a class to bring in an author or expert to discuss their book or field of study with a class. She demonstrated this at the conference, calling a mathematics teacher in the US, who demonstrated how he interacted on problems in trigonometric functions with his students, giving them the grounding for a study of calculus.
The idea of a teacher being put out of work by a computer may be passé, but teachers who fail to embrace the opportunities offered by digital technology are likely be put out of work by teachers who do, Nussbaum-Beach says.
I wanted to add as a sidenote-- I scored major cool points with my son on being quoted in Computer World. He is 20 and said he knows none of his friend's moms have ever been quoted in Computer World. And told me it was very cool.
I am so pleased. Cool points with a 20 year old geek is major.
Posted by: Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach | March 31, 2007 at 03:57 PM