Tony Ryan – Agents of Change

Well, where to start – maybe with the abstract for the presentation:

“Some people just seem to change the world. They consistently make it a more sustainable and inspiring place for the rest of us.  For the sake of this session, we’ll refer to them as Agents Of Change. 

During this presentation, you’ll be encouraged to explore options on becoming one of these agents of change. Or perhaps, how to recognize that you’re already fulfilling the role.

In 2011 going on 2020, we now need to embrace change, rather than fight it. It’s a well-worn cliché, yet the world is now going through the most dramatic and rapid advances in its history…. and educators must lead the way.

As a pending agent of change, you will be offered:

• Some of the directions being adopted by innovative educators around the world

• A series of worthwhile ICT tools and frameworks for generating student voice in your school”

Tony has been a primary teacher for 13 years and now a consultant/presenter travelling the world, talking about education. His talk, very much a lecture, was very engaging and challenging to the large audience to go out and be an agent of change.

Some brief notes:

Introductory activity – Circle of Four (introduce yourself to 3 other people and remember name for rest of conference)

Context is critical for students to engage in effective learning.

Ways of learning:

  • Behaviourism
  • Instructivism
  • Constructivism
  • Connectivism ( http://www.connectivism.ca/)

Idea of a ‘Genius Bar’ for learning (similar to Apple Store’s genius bar)

Slides from presentation: Agents Of Change

Recommended websites:

Tony’s website

Thomas Frey – futuristspeaker.com

Real life superheros- reallifesuperheros

Tech learning

Other Resources

Online Intellect-Slides

The Team-Slides

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Dr Jack Bacon

Here’s the blurb on Dr Jack who was the opening Keynote for the 2011 ULearn conference in Rotorua:

Jack is one of the most requested speakers in the world for topics concerning technology and the factors that shape human society. A noted futurist and a technological historian, he has written three popular books entitled “My Grandfather’s Clock,” “My Stepdaughter’s Watch,” and “The Parallel Bang,” with many thousands of copies sold of each.

He wrote a book called My Grandfather’s Clock– in which he details a day in the life of 24 generations of his family. The point was how to describe the average day of his grandparents, who have seen so much change in the last 70 years. Much of this engaging talk was about the rate of change the world has witnessed.

Notes:

  • Linear vs non-linear (4 minute mile
  • we keep improving models of the world
  • complexification (development of art from cave paintings to Egyptian paintings to bayeux tapestry to da Vinci to Avatar
  • convergence of knowledge & data storage & speed of communication
  • Parallel bang ~ when increase in knowledge meets fibre enabled online communications

Links:

Posted in teaching | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Shanghai Learning Summit

What better way to spend a Saturday morning that to head along to CCIS and go to some workshops – this is the Shanghai Learning Summit. A heap of different options were on offer – the ones I attended I’ve posted separately on.  Here are links to resources for other topics:

And I won a 300RMB coffee voucher! Double score!!

Posted in teaching | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Animate Your Students

Presented by Laura Brown from CCIS. Demo’d some example of student’s work.

SAM animation is the app to use. It has a heap of examples of student work on the site. icreatetoeducate website also has examples of student work. We got to have a go using the software and some modelling putty.  Medium that can be used include whiteboard, modelling magic, paper… Here’s what I came up with:

A stop motion

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha

This workshop was presented by Samuel Chen. Demo of WolframAlpha website – data is already curated from the Wolfram database. There is a useful intro video on the website and has a mobile app (although you can access the website through a mobile browser). Some examples of what it can do:

  • nutritional info for coffee and bagel
  • plotting mathematical formula
  • cross word puzzles
  • comparing sets of data (employment vs. house prices)
  • solving differential equations (showing steps)
  • sequences
  • generate QR codes

You can also download as .pdf files (Wolfram|Alpha-mooreslaw) and images:

Moore's Law from wolframalpha

Mathematica is application software. This can call data from the WA website. In this software you can manipulate graphs and variable.  Also there is a WA demonstration site. This allows students to interact with the data/graphs/whatever.  Sam showed an Economics text he had put in Mathematica and had inserted dynamic graphs to show supply/demand relationships etc.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment