Leveraging Learning – ATLE Keynotes

This past week I made my way down to Red Deer, Alberta to the annual Alberta Technology Leaders in Education (ATLE) Conference. It’s a tech-packed 2.5 days of meeting, greeting, exchanging, learning, creating and connecting of educational technology and information technology leaders. In my current role as a Curriculum Educational Technology Facilitator in Parkland School Division, I work closely with administrators, teachers and our I.T. department. And, this conference really showcases the complementary work that both the IT and ET departments/people do together to have jurisdictions and schools working in a 21^st century environment. The other piece that ATLE does well is to bring in some great, thoughtful and relevant keynote speakers.

 

This year, the three keynote speakers were Scott McKinney, Stephanie Hamilton and Michael Furdyk. Each of their immense biographies are found HERE. Scott gives an overview of “Moving Learning Beyond the Book” with an ET/IT perspective. It’s well worth the one hour watch. Stephanie takes us around the world and back discussing the impact that educational technology has had on student achievement. Finally, Canadian phenom Michael Furdyk walks us through the impact that technology has had on his life and the work that he is involved in getting the youth of today involved in many socially relevant online learning opportunities.

 

Each of these speakers have an amazing keynote speech and well worth the time to watch! Some suggestions would be to have a group of teachers eat lunch together while watching one of the keynotes, sharing bits of the videos with staff, or even sharing a clip with parent groups. You do need to log in to the ATLE streaming site and there you will find each of the Keynote videos.

If you are interested in seeing one or all of these videos, feel free to get a hold of me through email or twitter for the URL and username + password.

 

How Should Critical Thinking Be Integrated with Technology?

This question was the topic of discussion on yesterday’s first #edchat discussion on Twitter. (Or follow through the Educator’s PLN Ning.) Although I was quite engaged in other matters, I was able to peruse the discussions archived on the wiki which was helpful. It provided an opportunity to see the variety of ways we THINK about critical thinking.  I agree with @cybraryman1’s comment that “good teaching requires an understanding of how technology relates to the pedagogy and content (see my #5.) As well, @Parentella makes the statement that “it requires critical thinking skills and problem solving to be able to function in the world we live in” whereby I give out a rebel yell ‘ YES!!’ and come down to reality. The way schools are structured in learning silos must be disintegrated. Reform is not the way, a learning revolution MUST take place in order for a majority of our schools to change the way they are educating students. (Check out my blog on The 21^st Century Learning Environment and even Sir Ken Robinson’s Bring on the Learning Revolution TED talk.)

Here’s my own path towards critical thinking:

1)      I have had various teachers and mentors who have facilitated my own immersion into critical thinking.

2)      The  definition of critical thinking from Dictionary.com’s 21st Century Lexicon cites that it is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.

3)      With the above definition in mind, I have even had an opportunity to work on the newer Bloom’s Taxonomy by giving it a digital addendum. (See my SLItech blog.)

4)      I recently have been exposed to TC² which is part of our AISI (Alberta Initiative for School Improvement) three year project. Critical thinking, according to TC², is concerned with developing sound judgment. Teachers need to guide students to think critically through various forms of learning. Developing criteria to judge a particular project, instructing strategies to organize thinking and acquiring a vocabulary about thinking are some of the necessary activities to build critical knowledge and skills.

5)      Finally, let’s talk tech. Being a BIG supporter of the TPACK model, I believe that critically thinking will involve some form of technology. If this isn’t clear, check out Judi Harris’ wiki with learning activity types which offers a way for teachers to deliberately plan their lessons with technology if they so wish. Now, add some critical challenges, investigation of images, ask some powerful questions and you have started on your way! (Sounds easy, but take little steps like concentrating on one form of critical thinking first) As well, our own K-12 Alberta Social Studiescurriculum  is smattered with critical thinking possibilities to assist teachers.

Critical thinking is a lifelong learning process and I am certainly glad to be part of the experiences in our school division. I can thank Leah, Diane (our curriculum facilitators) and Wally (TC²) for that!

Image http://darcott.com/blog/img/Diana_06-04-12_AHrHT3.jpg