ulearn

ULearn09 will now be held in Christchurch, instead of in Auckland as originally advertised. ULearn conferences have been held annually since 2005, and previously had alternated between Christchurch and Auckland. With the number of delegates and presentations continuing to grow each year, there are sometimes up to fifty sessions happening concurrently at different venues. The number of venues available for workshops within a close vicinity is considerably greater in Christchurch. While Auckland venues offer excellent facilities for keynotes and spotlights, limited venues available for workshops close by means that numbers need to be significantly restricted. Also, the Westpac Arena in Christchurch is able to comfortably seat around 2000 guests for dinner, whereas seating at the Sky City Convention Centre is limited to 1000, meaning that many delegates will miss out the opportunity to attend the conference dinner.

In addition, the development of the advanced network allowed excellent connectivity across almost all conference venues in Christchurch, and we are keen to exploit these opportunities again in the future. Therefore, with these factors in mind, it has been decided to once again hold ULearn in Christchurch in 2009.

The keynote videos are now all available on the ULearn08 site. You can watch Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach discussing the ways in which we need to equip our students for working in a networked age. Karen Sewell, John Hattie and Rod Oram examine the needs of 21st century learners and what more schools could be doing to move our students forward. Steven Carden talks about possibilities for business and education partnerships for the 21st century. This includes details of a project he founded, First Foundation, where a number of New Zealand businesses provide scholarships to support students with academic potential who are financially disadvantaged. Derek Wenmoth (chair), Tania Coutts, Beverly Kaye, Carolyn Stuart, and Linda Tame look at the integration of ICT from a variety of perspectives including a powerful message from the early childhood sector that children there are already being equipped with skills at that level so we need to be building on this in other education sectors.

There are also a range of wikis that were developed as part of ULearn08 that you might want to check out. Lenva Shearing put together a Getting tricky with wikis wiki set up in Wikispaces that gives you many tricks to move beyond the basics of wiki design. You can learn how to do things like making a table of contents on wiki pages or finding out how to easily add your students as members of the wikispaces. Make sure you also look at the links on the home page to Lenva’s other resource wikis.

Suzie Vesper from CORE Education ran a pre-conference workshop on Blogs, wikis and the online tools that make them pop. You can find the basics of what web 2.0 means and the differences between blogs and wikis and comparisons of some of the major online providers. You can find many examples of how these are being used in education and a table of 44 tools that can be used in conjunction with blogs and wikis.

Want to see some reflections from teachers of their experiences at ULearn? Have a look at the Nga-Taonga cluster wiki page where attendees have put together their thoughts around the presentations and sessions that they attended.

Five spotlight videos are now available for viewing on the ULearn08 website. You can view spotlight presentations by Julia Atkin, Westley Field, Greg Gebhart, Nicola Yelland, and Mark Treadwell. The final two spotlights, and those of our keynotes, will be available shortly.

Please note that the synchronising of video and presenter slides while editing the video may result in some variance from the conference session. Also, some presenters used media files which we have not been able to include in these video versions.

Presenters have given permission for these presentations to be made available online for 4 months to conference attendees by login access to this ULearn08 website, for the purpose of further professional discussion in ICT PD cluster schools. We do not have permission to provide DVD copies of the presentations.

Supporting materials for some spotlight presentations can be accessed from the Find presenters’ material knowledge base.

Listen to the interview between our keynote speaker, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Kim Hill. The interview was broadcast on Radio New Zealand National Saturday morning. You can access the podcast online.

Just a reminder to presenters to please post your presenters’ material on the ULearn08 site. If you have any problems with this, please contact Angela angela.page@core-ed.net or Suzie ictpdonline@core-ed.net

The keynotes and spotlights were all videoed and most will be available for you to view online the site once they have been edited. We’ll keep you posted!

The conference dinner was absolutely spectacular, with excellent entertainment and food. There was rouge and baubles as far as they eye could see. Here are some pics from the big event:

BubbleShare: Share photos - Craft Ideas

Our conference dinner was held last night at the Westpac Arena. With a theme of rouge, the rest was left up to delegates’ imagination - and what a party it was!

Prior to this year, CORE Education held the record for the largest sit-down meal at the Westpac Arena with dinner for 1967 people at Navcon 2K4. Last night, we exceeded this record with dinner for 2000!

104 staff were on hand to cater for our every need. Here they are, ready to wait on us hand and foot:

The second keynote was presented by Steven Carden. This was a highly entertaining talk with a profound message. I asked the twit network to reflect on the keynote as it was happening and you can see their comments in the image to the left (click to enlarge).

The take away message from this keynote:

We are facing or experiencing rapid, extreme change - discussions are needed about our future. What sort of society do we need to be to survive in a changing society?

Steven argued that we are not ready for this change. We forget how small we are (NZ) on the world’s stage. We do not have any profound answers… yet. Dialogue is needed.

Societies who are moving in a forward direction have three things in common:

Idea-generating
Ideas are needed to cope with a world that is changing

Idea-absorbing
Small countries like NZ can’t generate all the ideas we need. We need to absorb them from elsewhere.

Willing to change

Steven asks what does all this mean for NZ’s education sector?

1. The workforce needs highly adaptive people. The nature of jobs is changing dramatically
2. We need radically new ways of educating young people
3. It’s all about YOU - the quality of the teachers in our schools is the key.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” (Alvin Toffler)

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Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach opened the ULearn08 conference with an inspirational presentation with examples of students using blogs to make a difference.

Laura is a young girl who lost her grandfather, she decided in his memory to make a difference to the world. She tells her story at her blog http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com.

At a conference Laura was asked a question.

“Laura can you tell us how do you come up with your ideas of who to help?”
She replied “I ask my readers.”

Laura has a voice. She knows her opinions are valued. She feels empowered to make a difference and contribute. Do we allow this in our classrooms? I use the word ‘allow’ pointedly. Do our students get to use their voices?

It makes me think of the joke of the young girl spending her first week at school:
“Dad, I don’t think I’ll go to school anymore there really isn’t any point.”
“Why is that?”
“Well I can’t read and I can’t write … and they won’t let me talk.”

21st century technologies allow us to have voices, to voice our opinion, to make a difference. These technologies are available for our students, our children. We must let students have their voices and we must make sure they know how to use these voices in an ethical manner and in a safe way.

That is our job as educators.