Who are you?

On a reçu dans les casiers un petit doc à propos de la minute de silence, en comic sans ms, forcément. Question de tradition

— Monsieur Le Prof (@MsieurLeProf) November 16, 2015

This little tweet brought all the horror of recent events into sharp focus for me. 

I follow @MonsieurLeProf on twitter, He teaches English in the suburbs of France and has a wonderful, dry sense of humour. He is a skilled user of web based technologies and has a clear understanding of how to present his digital identity to the world.  Here he makes an off the cuff remark through twitter that illustrates the lack of general awareness of appropriate etiquette when using digital media. The incident? A missive for communicating the observation of a minute's silence out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks. It came via pigeon holes, written in the childlike, light-hearted font known as Comic Sans MS. 

The lack of understanding of the nature of this communication is startling. The printing press was introduced to Europe in 1439, nearly 600 years later publishing is in the hands of individuals, every office produces desktop published documents for circulation on a regular basis but much research into fonts and their communicative properties is surely common knowledge? Google it! YouTube it!  Find out here what your choice of font says and watch a personal evaluation of fonts here to help you make your own choices.  

This is computer-mediated communication 101, the most basic of digital communicative skills. Yet our educational institutions fail to recognise the importance of effective digital communication skills as vital in today's world. If we paid more attention to digital interaction we would understand that we only have a hope of addressing the unfortunate abilities of those with effective digital skills combined with murderous intent if we raise awareness of the importance of transversal skills.

These skills are no longer only the domain of the publisher. In the same way as music production, photography and film making have been democratised by the personal computer (and now smart phones and tablets) our digital presence speaks volumes about us. We look very foolish when we neglect these forms of communication and worry only about the face to face. 

Make it snappy!

Top Tips for Course Creation in Languages@Warwick

View more lists from Teresa MacKinnon

Licence to kill!

A recent visit to Bilbao led me to reflect on digital creation and ownership. I will briefly describe the two experiences that triggered this post. The image above is a photo taken during my visit to the Guggenheim museum. As I wandered around looking at the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit on the top floor I used my phone to capture some of the quotations on the wall. A friend meanwhile captured the impressive light and surfaces of this beautiful building. We were not prevented from doing so. That is until I turned my phone towards one of the artworks and was abruptly chided "no photos por favor". Fair enough, I thought, maybe the flash could damage the artwork. Later, having visited the fan shop for Athletico Bilbao in the old town to take home a souvenir for my son, I asked if I could take a picture of the shop's interior to share with him. Again came the "no photos" reply. 

I was left puzzling the principles behind these rules. Both spaces are public spaces, they clearly want to attract visitors. Both will happily take our money and benefit from our patronage. Our reported experiences (as seen on sites such as Trip Advisor) can influence other potential visitors and thus affect their "brand". It is normal these days for us to capture snapshots of our experiences to share on social media. Perhaps such businesses could better communicate what they consider to be acceptable use of technology on their premesis? 

Digital activity has made everyone a reviewer or reviewee. Creating and sharing digital capture allows individuals to express their unique take on the world, capturing a perspective that is personal and original. In the same way Basquiat's self expression came to promenance on the streets of New York, ours resides on social websites such as Instagram, evidencing how our experiences shape our lives. Businesses are in some cases claiming ownership of such experiences, the more progressive of them recognise that visitor impressions are powerful and encourage posting to their own social pages. 

Using legislation, policies and rules to limit the rights of others to experience and portray their world without good reason is abhorrent to me. I believe it is contrary to web culture, a domain where equity and freedom of speech is currently a defining principle. I believe Basquiat would have felt the same way had he lived long enough to experience the rise of the web. He clearly felt that self expression through art connected him to the world.  Freedom is under threat however, not least by those who abuse it, but also by those who would assert ownership of the infrastructure to create a two-tiered system where access is governed by your means. One way of addressing this is to ensure that ordinary people can claim their stake on their contribution through Creative Commons licencing. The silent majority need to be heard if we are to avoid the internet becoming a mirror of our world, where 1% of the population owns the lion's share. 

PS. If you would like to explore Basquiat's work in the open take a look at this site Artsy has a mission to bring art to all. 

#blideo challenge

This inspirational video clip was shared as part of the #blideo challenge. I wasn't nominated but couldn't resist the message on this one shared here: (with thanks to Whitney Kilgore)




There's more to this video than the powerful guilt-inducing recognition of triumph over adversity that makes our "first world problems" pale into oblivion. I don't know about you but the thought of waking up in the morning to the smell of landfill would be unlikely to get me strumming my guitar. What I find the most compelling about this video is the determination to work at something even though many may say it won't be "good enough". The instruments, created from everyday paraphernalia discarded by others, are not likely to produce the timbre of a Stradivarius or suchlike. Even after hours of crafting and practise their music is unlikely to be lauded as better than that of the LSO or other great orchestral organisations. However, the vision of these ordinary folk -  who are clearly transformed into musicians - allows them to see beyond mere musical perfection. Working with what they have - a not inconsiderable amount of talent and dedication - they are able to lift the spirits of all who hear them and show how the human spirit can overcome even the most dismal of circumstances. Playing side by side, each member has to listen to the others and harmonise, keeping in time and focusing on the performance. I cannot imagine anyone stomping off because " Victor's cello is out of tune!" If there is a lesson to draw from this then for me it is to understand that our efforts, no matter how imperfect others may consider them to be, are significant and should be celebrated. We are all fighting our life battles and will face our share of challenges. Harmony, no matter how imperfect the end result of shared endeavour, is better than egotism for so many reasons. If we understand this our lives will be richer for it. 

Here's my #blideo challenge to anyone willing to take it up:
(I nominate @sensor63 @mgraffin @bobharrisonset ) 

of eggs and baskets #blimage

This #blimage challenge was posted by Steve Wheeler here. 

I know it's a bowl in the picture but with a little poetic licence it is easily connected to the proverb:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket"


and for those learning English here's a quick test of your understanding of the meaning of this advice. 

I'm looking at this advice in the context of educational technology and change. Ubiquitous technology means that we are all becoming increasingly dependant upon tools to support learning. I would argue that this is, by and large, a good development overall as education needs to capitalise on the learning potential offered by digital tools and help inform their use so that we are able to influence the users. We do not need more passive consumers of an ever increasing wave of expensive gadgets, we need critical thinkers who understand the relative advantages and affordances offered and can make informed choices. They in turn can then influence the evolution of the markets and use their democratic power to regulate when necessary. 

One of the risks we need to ensure that users of technology understand is that of "lock-in". You can read more about it here. Some technical tools for creation that may be very enticing insist on producing file types that require ongoing commitment to a particular technology, tool or licence. This brings an inherent reduction in future proofing for your creation. At a time when the pact of technical change continues to accelerate you could very soon find that your well thought-out digital package of content is no longer usable. Remember Betamax or Sony mini disc cameras? Think of the time and money wasted and the potential for wheels being reinvented endlessly. 

Fortunately there are folk out there who are working to convince the technology industry of the importance of open formats and interoperability. Look at the work of IMS on Learning Technology Interoperability here. Also the open source media streaming company Kaltura campaigns for open video formats.  As users of technology for education we should ensure that we know how to preserve our educational resources so that they can be repurposed, accessed by anyone. That way educators' great ideas do not become obsolete overnight. Here are a few practical tips:

• if you are making something using a browser based tool (a video, screen cast, audio recording) make sure that you can download the finished file so that you have a copy. Websites disappear regularly.
• find good file conversion facilities (e.g. Format Factory, Freemake) so that you can save your file in a range of formats.
• go open - use Creative Commons licences (CC BY) on your work so that others can remix, repurpose and develop your ideas. Sharing to a wider community increases the longevity of your work but you should get acknowledged as the originator. 

Open Education #FOS4L Getting creative

Open Education is dear to me, creating tailored learning resources has always been one of my favourite aspects of teaching, But what's the point of all that creation if you can't share it widely and be inspired by others who critique or improve on it? But the concept of open is often misunderstood. 

Since the advent of digital I have not only been able to clear out all the ancient worksheets from under my bed (25 years of dust collecting under there!) but I have also been able to refine the best ideas and develop them for digital practice, sharing using slideshare, TES resources, scribd, issu, dropbox, flickr and other sites and the engagement with them has helped me to realise how useful they are to others. It's not always easy to find sites that display the creative commons licence obviously, hence my campaign on slideshare recently. 

The new affordances of digital tools increase the impact that can be achieved from a teaching perspective considerably. Using digital video for example can revolutionise the authenticity of language teaching and learning scenarios. I have been involved in the EU Video for all project over the past year and a half and I have conducted piloting sessions with colleagues in HE to get their impressions of this approach to encouraging creativity. Of course using commercial video or "finding images on the web" can be problematic and sometimes teachers get caught like rabbits in the headlights, afraid to create or encourage creativity in case copyright is infringed. So for that reason I took one of the Video for All examples made by one of my students (using poetry for student creation) and made some resources about Creative Commons (including a wiki page here) to support language teachers in embarking on their own make to suit their context. 

I believe that supporting the confidence of teachers to create and within their Community of Practice is very important. We have been disempowered through a series of bureaucratic practices in education for too long, good teaching is a fundamentally creative process and skills development in the digital era should be a priority. This is why I embraced Terry Loane's suggestion of Open Guilds and participated recently in the webinar. I also set up an open badge for other language educators (see below, designed by @mearso) so we can start to build a cross sector CoP to promote such activity. If you know a language educator who practices openly, please share the badge claim link with them!

Flexible pedagogies FOS4L

An invitation to join #FOS4L this week arrived just as I was coming to the end of a week's leave and returning to work to catch up on over 300 emails! (most were quickly deleted thankfully). As I catch up on open discussions taking place within the #fos4l spaces online and I see happily that it will involve interacting with some of my favourite folk in #edtech and making new friends I am instantly inspired to get involved. The suggestions for activities over the short 5 day course coupled with the fact it is already day 3 meant I decided to draw together my reflections together on the first 3 topics through this post. 

Digital literacies and identity:

My professional identity puts my role as a language educator before my learning technology role, although both are clearly very closely connected. I have reflected on this before for #ocTEL last year. My access to French language use afforded by the interenet feeds my language teaching identity, leading to an ongoing connection to the language as it continues to evolve - see this for example on authenticity. I also curate content to help other language teachers explore and manage their journey towards greater digital awareness. I very much welcome the inclusion of Wellbeing in Jisc's digital capability model as a recognition of the time it takes to acquire skills and knowlege necessary to be an effective digital practitioner. 

Flexible pedagogies: 

I am not sure I like this term as it implies a kind of fuzziness around how learning happens. Personally my learning since the arrival of the internet has been best described by the term heutagogy and I feel this is a useful learning theory, essentially reflecting the ease with which we can follow our own learning paths since the advent of ubiquitous access to information. As I have worked using this to inform my practice with students I have certainly found it to increase their autonomy and engagement. If we direct our own learning it follows however that we can refuse to learn should we choose to do so, no amount of teacher encouragement, threat or reward can force an individual to learn something that he doesn't wish to. I see this in my own refusal to learn that eating chocolate is fattening! However, I have to accept that heutagogy is a newcomer. The HEA have a very useful site on flexible pedagogies which I see as an umbrella term to encompass the sort of toolset I have always supported. Flexibility, willingness to adopt a learner-centred approach, devolve the locus of control to them and learn from them are all positive in my opinion. It is time to change our understanding of how learning happens but change stands little chance of success institutionally despite the helpful advice in this report unless they accompanied by a flexible approach to assessment. We get what we assess, our assessments also show what we value. 

Supporting learning:

I am going to reflect on this with respect to my leadership role in supporting digital engagement with my teaching colleagues. I have adopted the following principles:- autonomy, mutual support and connected, open practice.

• provision of self-service, just in time rescoures for skills acquisition e.g how to tutorials sandbox course spaces on our VLE and a central sharing community for all tutors to build a community of practice.
• show and tell sessions every term for dissemination and celebration of the best teaching and tool use. (see slides below)
• encouragement of PLN development through social media tools and open networks

Seems to be working for those who are prepared to accept that you have to make time in order to avoid reinventing square wheels.  A shift away from silos and towards a more open mindset are also required to value connecting for professional development. 

Where is the silliness in education?

This headline grabbed my attention recently. Politicians have decided it is time to stamp out low level disruption in classrooms and they plan to do so by appointing a behaviour management consultant Tom Bennett @tombennet71 -a former nighclub owner now reinvented as a teaching consultant, now fêted in the press as the latest "behavious tsar". I share Ken Robinson's exasperation at the outpourings of those in government office who wade in with "initiatives" to justify their existence. 

I spent 15 years in the secondary teaching system and I have seen my share of chair rocking, paper passing and giggling. Now having spent a further 15 years in H.E., teaching staff are more likely to complain about a lack of animation from their students, a passivity or disconnect that troubles them. Behaviour and body language are physical manifestations of our psychological state, I would not wish to suggest that they should be ignored. They can be vital clues for those charged with classroom management and should always be taken seriously - but branding such behaviour as "silliness" is to misunderstand the psychology of the developing young person in front of you and -far worse - to undermine the challenges faced every day by every teacher in the western world. Classrooms can be boring places,humdrum droning about targets, levels and exam requirements are often the dominant narrative, they can be anxiety incubators, pressure cookers which have faulty valves due to the enforced passivity for hours on end. Austerity means we won't be seeing government initiatives to increase access to open spaces (if they haven't been sold off already), participation in field trips or working in better buildings - just more young people crammed into unsuitable spaces with little opportunity for personalisation of their learning. 

At least during my secondary teaching days we had the flexibility to excite our learners, to recognise their need for activity through multi-sensory approaches, drama, music, cookery, creativity- many were the ways in which I could engage students with language learning. The opportunity to balance the activity over the course of a lesson, a term and a year making time for lively interaction and fun as well as time for quiet reflection and even a vocabulary test or tricky problem solving session. I don't dispute that there are challenging individuals in any classroom nor that it is helpful to provide strategies to support teachers in re-engaging them. However there is so little that can be fundamentally changed by an individual practitioner about a sytem which has lost sight of its purpose thanks to being used as a political football. This is where the real silliness is in education. The obsession with the superficial over the substance of learning. Teachers need the breathing space to reflect upon their classroom encounters, the energy to address them and the supportive professional community of fellow practitioners to implement innovation. The insights explained here make a good deal of sense to me:

Real writing

Why get your language students used to navigating web pages which are largely populated by native speakers of the language they are struggling to comprehend? Isn't the use of techncial language and the culturally specific content only going to confuse them?

Maybe. 

But don't forget, many will be very familiar with finding their way around a website, they will have the contextual understanding to work out which button does what. And they can and will help others. Encourage some exploration.

Plus de deux tiers des Français avouent qu'ils ne connaissent rien au vin http://t.co/IYoQb54bEd
— 20 Minutes (@20Minutes) September 2, 2014

You never know what they may discover and it is all happening in real time!

I have used the French jobs portal ANPE as the starting point for a very real work related vocabulary activity and for a deeper dive into the skills necessary for students wanting to prepare themselves for life in the real world. The short video clips such as this one may be linguistically challenging but they are well sign posted for key words and the similarities between French and UK jobs clear. This opened up their minds to considering placements abroad  and these students had the equivalent on GCSE level French. 

Collecting shopping vocabulary using a supermarket site makes a lovely homework task, you can rest assured that browsing in French will continue longer than the usual 5 minutes! Use the Pointless quiz game metaphore and see who can bring back the item that no-one else found. 

So don't assume that all language your learners come across has to be carefully pre-screened. Our brains are hard wired to work out language, we may only bother if the task is real and sufficiently relevant. 

Ayez confiance!

Content - a deposed king

Choosing my regular blog for this response to #rhizo15 week 3. Dave's post raised questions around  content in learning. I have several different angles to bring to this. 

Firstly a discovery I made shortly after I started to work in an HE teaching context. I discovered that my colleagues teaching language undergraduates consider themselves to be content experts. This is distinct from those of us who are language teachers on Institution-wide language programmes teaching undregrads of subjects other than language (maths, politics etc). This really confused me. Surely they, like I and my colleagues were teaching language - just with a slightly different focus. I was certainly unaware of this distinction when I was an undergraduate studying French. I was clear I was learning the language whilst using sociological or literary sources. I completely accept that they are more up to date on the detail of social trends or literary criticism according to their research focus, whereas we focus on approaches to learning and metacognition - skills acquisition. 

Secondly, the saying when commercialisation of web first came about was content is king. Marketting was all about creating interest in your brand, finding interesting content to integrate in your website that would attract visitors. Companies paid big money to buy from content producers and associate it with their brand. This was "click bait". This was described by Steve Wheeler on his blog post ...context is king

Steve always has a knack for getting to the root of the issue. This post  was the pointer to making content open - he says "In education, if all learners receive is content, content, content, then they will be... well, discontent."  If content matters in education, what matters most I believe is that it is open. Open educational resources can lead to all sorts of unexpected (and usually positive) things. Those who find it can repurpose, remix, share and build new learning, contributing to the constant evolution of their Community of Practice. Creatve Commons licensing will be crucial to this. The rhizome in action...

Finally for the reason for me that content is the deposed king and context rules, again I am returning to another post from Steve. As educators we can find content, we can select and curate the best of that content but what really matters is the context we provide for learning. This is where great teaching happens. Get that wrong and essentially learners are finding their own way (or not, you may have lost them). 

I am grateful to Steve that he is an Open Educational practitioner, all his posts are available CC BY or CC BY SA. If you are an educator and that means nothing to you take a look at Education Creative Commons You need to know. Don't let content to be bought and sold, learning, like the web must be available to all. 

"Content is people" says Dave. Content in the contexts above is just stuff - a document, a book, a video, a "learning object". Used by managers as this is something they can measure. Does a course have content? Yup, 3 book chapters, 12 videos and a set of quizes. Lets not assume that access to content = great learning experience. That is clearly style over substance. The interactions we have - the context - is clearly more important. 

Open to change!

I have just returned home from #oer15. My first #oer conference but a place where I met and consolidated friendships with many I have known online as like minds for many years. We were focusing on the issue of mainstreaming Open. Let me explain:

Open educational practitoners believe that education is not something you "do to" others, it is participation in a learning community, we are all learners. As such, we share and learn from each other. Few teachers have an issue with this ideal, (although some are less keen perhaps to learn from their students). Most practioners also feel that getting to grips with Creative Commons licences and searching banks of content is too big a task to contemplate. I think it is also too important to ignore. Watch David Wiley's Ted talk if you are unconvinced.

Basically: 

• Learning is vital if we are to survive as a species, the challenges that face us are bigger than we can imagine
• Learning is getting more exclusive, access is limited to a relatively small proportion of advantaged people
• The costs of learning are beyond the means of the many, this is unfair.

Open educational resources are (mainly) digital objects made available for retention, re-use, revision, re-mixing and redistribution. This is facilitated by a set of Creative Commons licences, the most "open" one being CC BY. This indicates a resource that is available for all of the above but the originator should be attributed. This offers a way of ensuring that work you produce (your worksheets for example) acknowledge your intellectual input. For me this is a way of helping to re-professionalise teaching, a "profession" that has largely been diminished, with teachers just the worker ants, a benign interface between the curriculum creators and exam authorities, under valued and bereft of influence.

So, along with my like minded colleagues, we agreed that we wish to support the journey to open practice, international open practice that opens locked minds, overcomes insularity and silos and empowers creativity and enagement. Great learners make great teachers..

Time however is an issue. There's never enough and we all prioritise accordingly. I proposed that we consider how #openbadges could be deployed in the context of the journey to becoming an Open Educational Practioner, recognition of investment in CPD (becoming a digital practitioner) which could become part of your professional credentials. Others also seemed to feel that this would help to go towards recognition of time invested. I hope this idea flies.

If you are a language teacher, please take a look at my contribution to the OpenContentToolkit here (thanks to @theokl) on images for language teaching. Becoming open is a process so you can take it at your own pace :)

Check out @WarwickLanguage ’s page on Language Teaching with images http://t.co/hilg3grnXl < toolkit join code 3KQ97DR #oer15 #ukedchat

— Theo Kuechel (@TheoKL) April 17, 2015

Celebrating the digital in HE at #digifest15

Last year I watched Jisc's digital festival #digifest from behind my desk. I could see from the website that the venue was imaginatively laid out and according to the twittersphere there were many interesting things to see and do, all at the bleeding edge of technology in education. This year, with attendance free to HE staff, I decided to go along and see for myself. The short train ride to Birmingham followed by a brisk walk across town taking in the Cathedral and the new Library was a welcome break from sitting behind a screen. The International Conference Centre in Birmingham is easy to find and well staffed and soon I was exploring the hub under the multi-coloured circus tent decor which gives the event an enticing atmosphere. Using the event app and twitter I was able to connect with other participants too. 

#digifest15 kicks off pic.twitter.com/CL2uH1IKDf
— christine sexton (@cloggingchris) March 9, 2015

Soon I was getting the latest on Jisc Open Access services, giving me helpful insights into the issues and the technical challenges that Jisc can help HEIs to confront.  I made a mental note to share with colleagues in our library.

I was interested to hear about Jisc's support for publishing:

Institution as eBook publisher #jisc project. Support for heis to take on a publishing role #digifest15
— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) March 9, 2015

and participated in a lively, well attended session on using apps which included a good hands-on demo of Socrative. A session on 3D tech gave me insights into the technical aspects of this immersive way of curating and interacting with valuable artefacts and extended my understanding in an area I don't usually come across. 

My twitter feed brought more interesting observations from attendees:

It may be our institutions that are not fit for purpose, not our #edtech #digifest15
— Elizabeth Ellis (@liz_isabella) March 9, 2015

The combination of the physical (an unusually genteel, calm conference) and the virtual (through social media) brought me space to think. Add to that the encounters with tweeps I had not really had a chance to chat with before as well as meet ups with old friends and this was a better than average conference experience. The highlights were yet to come though! The Google presentation was comprehensive and enthusiastic, well caputred by Martin Hamilton but by far the highlight, and well worth waiting for was the no-nonsense delivery on FE and Feltag by Bob Harrison, seen here getting a selfie to show the wife :) He reminded us that we have a responsibility to future generations to make best use of our assets, to think differently and to engage together in agile evolution. 

So thanks Jisc for a memorable day, my batteries were recharged and I felt ready for the rest of my week knowing that the sector lead is up for embracing the challenges of digital education. Inspired by Bob's words I am ready to shift some paradigms :)

Video in teaching and learning

Recently I was involved in facilitating a workshop for H.E. language educators on using video. The session took place at Southampton University and my plan was very technically demanding. I had just one hour to bring a self selecting group with varying roles and computer experience to the point where they would create and upload a video they had made through an unfamiliar online portal in order to earn an open badge. No pressure! 

Digital video can be enormously challenging, different devices using different encoding and having different playback needs. From a professional development context I felt a need to tackle video with my colleagues. My experience within our Languages@Warwick VLE research was that 100% of our teachers use video in their courses. The nature of this use was largely playback, and in my session I wanted to extend this to show that in fact we can use video in many other ways and so we decided to play on!
Here are the slides from the session.



 Future #highered students want to be able to create and contribute media to the virtual learning environment #Bett2015

— Helena Gillespie (@helenauea) January 21, 2015

We used Languages@Warwick's inbuilt video tools provided by Kaltura which include:

• screen capture
• webcam capture
• video assignment submission
• media upload

Almost all the participants in the session completed the video creation and submission and earned their #openbadge. They inspired me with their excitement. The technical headaches were managed by the system, the interface is easy to understand so the creativity can thrive. Here's one colleague discovering the joys of screen capture. 

IT, ET and UT. Rethinking the control of technology in education.

Crossed wires.

A photo posted by Teresa MacKinnon (@profteresamac) on Jan 13, 2015 at 9:28am P

 Working in educational technology and teaching at this time of rapid change I often find myself in uncomfortable positions, trying to navigate conversations with people who have varying levels of understanding of technical systems and priorities that are not my own. I try to understand their point of view and, if they are interested, explain how I see things. Some conversations end happily, with increased empathy, others are awkward. Control is central to the awkwardness.

In educational institutions access to technology, how it is configured and used and by whom has long belonged to IT departments.  Over more recent years, technology deployed specifically for teaching and learning (Educational Teachnology, ET) has seen the development of new IT roles, often combining the skills of technical staff and teaching staff working side by side. This is not always an easy relationship but does provide a bridge between the two areas of activity, allowing (at best) increased understanding of how to provide engaging online systems which meet user needs. 

However, we are rapidly moving to a new reality. 

The era of UT - ubiquitous technology. Our smartphones are often all that is needed to capture and share a learning opportunity. We share and message each other, building our own personal learning environment as we select our preferred tools, sources of information and interactions. The educator's role in this context is changing, no longer the sole purveyor of wisdom (if we ever were) we have to keep pace with the ever proliferating access to more interesting content in order to engage our learners critical skills and earn our place in their information eco-system. The image below, shared on Steve Wheeler's post summarises the changes clearly: 

Originally shared by Teacher Toolkit http://teachertoolkit.me/

The debates and concerns about control of IT systems are really as helpful as my tangled mess of wires. If institutions are to cope with the changing landscape, those in IT and ET need to accept the era of UT and work constructively in discourse, respectful of the rights all have to participation and preferences in choices of technology. Sure, there will be core tools we may provide but control of all technical tool use in unrealistic and undesirable, especially when you are working with young people who have only known a world mediated by the digital. There are more important things to worry about than control - the learning and strength lies in co-operation and distributed networks. Effective collaboration is the key.

As a youngster I would often sit and untangle the box of wires my dad kept for his hobby of amateur film making. Seems like I find myself in that situation professionally now. 

ST