SITE Conference – Day Two – 27th March 2007

The first session of the day was a welcome address by the president of SITE, Ian Gibson, Australian Centre fo Educational Studies, Macquarie University and then a Opening Keynote adress by Roger Shank, Socratic Arts, USA entitled ’Rethinking Teaching: How online Learning Can and Should Completely Alter Your View of Education’.

His address was inteded to provoke those attendeding the conference with his radical ideas and he did managed to schieve this. Some of his ideas are:

·         Schools do not teach anything that is useful in life
·         We teach what the students do not need in their everyday life
·         We teach students to memorize nonsense

·         Fixing:

o   Teaching the right stuff, the right way – the stuff that helps you function in todays world and taking advantage of the available technology

o   How does real learning work?

§  You pursue their own goals

§  You fail

§  You try again

§  You develop of a theory of how to improve

o   Learning depends upon reminding

§  We fail, We wonder, We get reminded, We wonder, We explain, We create new expectations

o   Learning depends upon failure AND failure requires explanation – schools are about rewards

o   Knowledge comes from questions – schools do not cater for this.

o   Learning starts with true goals.

o   Goals for teacher in the future:

§  Teach how to ask? Students do not ask ……because they are not taught….

o   The teacher sets the tasks – the students create a plan of attack – in groups – the students deliver and the teacher provides feedback

o   Teachers are not the source of information any more.

o   VISTA curricula (teaching around a central REAL WORLD project/topic):

§  Scientific Reasoning

§  New Technologies

§  Health Science

o   What matters is that they can Write, Speak, Reason, Interact etc

o   A good teacher does not

§  Give lectures

§ Give answers to students

§  Give them answers by themselves

§  Give grades

§  Determine the curriculum

§  Have any authority over student’s achievements

§  Necessarily have in depth knowledge of subject matter

o   Student’s Bill of Rights

The rest of the day was spent attending other sessions, talking to attendees from diferent parts of the world. One of the advantages of attending a conference like this is the opportunity to meet like minded people from the different parts of the world and the links and contacts made.

SITE Conference – March 26th 2007

After a long four hours flight from New Jesrsey, I landed in San Antonio in the evening. From the airport, I took a shuttle-bus to to the Crown Plaza hotel in San Antonio. The ride to the hotel (about 10 km) was quite bumpy, due to the poor condition of the roads. Reminded me oif the drive from Delhi airport in India. The sceneryy on  route to the hotel looked very  much like that in Malaysia, especially the trees and buildings.

On reaching the hotel, I checked in and had a quick shower and went down to the restaurant to grab a quick dinner. I was surprised that the first person I spoke to at the restaurant was actually a Filipino lady from Sydney. She was a lecturer at the Woolangong University and had come here with her daughter to attend the conference. What a small world! The next day I met a few others from Australia (one of whom is actually the president of SITE, the conference organisers). I also met an Indian guy, a lecturer at Penang University, Penang, Malaysia. I also met another Indian professor from Hydrebad, India who had come with seven of his PhD. students.

It was raining the whole morning. At noon, I decided to make a quick visit to the Riverwalk, the main attraction in San Antonio. I manged to walk up to where the Riverwalk started but then decided to get back to the hotel as the weather did not look very good and I had to attend a workshop at 1.30 pm.

At 1.30 pm, I attended the ‘Powerful Blending: Using Web 2.0 to Interact, Create, and Assess’ workshop, which was conducted by Wesley Fryer, Texas Tech University, USA. Those involved with educational blogging would know him as the owner of the blog ‘Moving at the Speed of Creativity’. He has actually blogged on some of the activities taking place at this conference.

Wesley’s workshop, which was three and half hours long, was both entertaining and informative. He covered on the many aspects of Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. He encouraged the use of Google reader and Firefox as feed readers, in preference to Bloglines and Internet Explorer, giving his reasons.

After diiner at the restaurant at the ground floor, I went back to my room. As I was still, quite tired, I retired early to bed. I had to get up early next morning as the first item for the day starts at 8.00 am.