Derek's Blog

A hot topic in the area of eLearning at the moment is anything to do with assessment and evaluation - and the associated questions around "quality".
Few issues are hotter than assessment, but few are more misunderstood. The editors of eSchool News have assembled a new Educator's Resource Center to help put assessment in clearer perspective. I found browsing many of the links very informative, including the backgrounder in Data driven decision making and another explaining why technology-based assessment needs to change direction!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The long awaited National Educational Technology Plan has been released in the US. It contains a range of recommendations, summarised in the following Action Steps:

To help states and districts prepare today's students for the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow, a set of seven action steps and accompanying recommendations have been developed.

1. Strengthen Leadership
2. Consider Innovative Budgeting
3. Improve Teacher Training
4. Support E-Learning and Virtual Schools
5. Encourage Broadband Access
6. Move Toward Digital Content
7. Integrate Data Systems

"The plan will center on how to help students as they grow up being exposed to various technologies, this effort will set new priorities and actions that all stakeholders can rally behind to ensure technology is being used effectively to prepare students for their future, not our past."

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Open Learning Conference began with a range of presentations from National and State Ministry of Education representatives from across India and neighbouring countries. The event opened following traditional lighting of the lamp (see photo) after which we heard an opening address from each of the key dignitaries attending (second photograph shows Susan Phillips, COL rep., getting up to speak).
The conference is being attended by around 60 national and state ministers and secretaries of education and other government officials from the education sector. In India, open schooling is an attempt to address the problem of the extremely large numbers of students who drop out of schooling before completing a secondary education, and the even larger numbers of students who do not have access to any form of schooling at all.
Key messages from the first day include:

• Changes over a century in India: in 1900 the illiteracy rate was 93.6%, in 2001 ?? 44%. However, in the same period of time, the population has grown from around 230 million to one billion ?? so the actual numbers of people considered illiterate in India has actually grown!
  
• Strong endorsement for educational policies to mandate a multi-modal learning approach ?? to embrace as wide a range of learners and learning opportunities as possible
  
• Assertion that all learners must become autonomous, self-directed learners. This requires:
  
  
  1. Learning what to learn
     
  2. Learning how to learn
     
  3. Learning how to evaluate one??s own achievements
     
  4. A self-regulated process for monitoring learning throughout life
  
  

• We need to liberate education so that education can liberate us!
  
• education is a process of human empowerment and human enlightenment in order to achieve human transformation.
  
• open schooling is not about providing access alone ?? but about providing every chance of success!
  

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm currently in India, having arrived in Bombay last night after a long flight from Sydney. I'm here as at the request of the Commonwealth of Learning to participate in a conference on Open Schooling.

This morning my taxi driver took me on an extended tour of the city (Bombay) on the way to the airport. The photograph to the left is of a part of the old city, and is where generations of families have been washing clothes for a living. I was particularly interested to see this as it was shown on the plane as part of the travelogue they show you before you land.
The photograph to the right is of the resort in Goa, on the West Coast of India, that is the venue for the conference, hosted by the National Institute for Open Schooling. The conference officially begins tomorrow (Sunday over here) - but already I have spoken to some interesting people from other parts of India who are involved in open schooling projects. They are especially interested in the model of the virtual learning network and operation of the video conferencing clusters that we have been establishing in NZ.

Goa itself is an interesting place. A small, Portugese settlement, it is very advanced in terms of what is happening with technology, with such things as the Goa Schools Computers Project , a community based project which is attempting to improve the levels of computer literacy and computer access to students in Goa through the use of donated computers.
More to come...!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent study identified the existing innovative trends in theories and practices in new learning environments in school education throughout the European Union. elearningeuropa.info , an initiative of the European Commission provides a free adaptation of the summary of the report, titled The New Learning Paradigm for Schools .
The summary provides a number of key thoughts about the likely changes we'll see as the new learning paradigm emerges:

• The view of pupils as individuals.
  
• Planning learning according to individual learning styles.
  
• Focus on social participation.
  
• Change in the teachers' role.
  
• From reproducing to constructing knowledge.
  
• Reorganizing the learning situation.

• A need to evaluate in new terms.
  
• Persistent sticking to tradition causes some problems for the New Learning Environments in several respects.
  
• Doubts about new learning methods.
  
• Doubts about reorganization.
  
• Difficulties of independent learning.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's something worth a look - a different sort of online journal called Activate: The Journal of Technology Rich Learning
To quote:

"Unlike other journals with a particular publication date, this journal will be updated throughout the "season." Each new article contains the volume, number, and date for the purpose of citations"

(thanks to Richard Elliott for the link!)

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today marks my first day back for 2005 - a chance to catch up with a mass of paper work before getting back into the serious stuff for the year.
What better way to begin the year's blogging than uploading a few holiday snaps? (Just to prove that I had one!) The one on the left is of the camp at Woodend where my parents and two of my sisters stayed for the New Year period. No blue skies though!!

This one was taken from the side of the road near Kaikoura when my son Jack and I did a father and son road trip home with a van loaded with the last of our possessions from Christchurch. We counted more than 15 seals sunning themselves on the rocks.

And from yesterday - an idyllic beach setting with the family settled for a picnic lunch on the beach in Day's Bay in the Wellington Harbour. Brilliant sunshine, lovely food and good swimming! What a way to finish the holidays!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)