Thursday, 15 March 2012

Website

I have just set up a basic website using Weebly. This is all very new to me, but I must say I am pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy the process was.

Please feel free to check out my new website!

Wicked Wikis

I recently posted about blogging and the potential applications of blogs in the teaching context.

Wikis are another example of a digital technology suitable for educational use, and are essentially basic websites that can be edited by users. This is an important difference between wikis and blogs, although there are a number of other conceptual) and technical differences.
In contrast to a blog, which essentially facilitates chronological reflection by a single user (with comments able to be provided by others), wikis are much more collaborative and open-ended. They are conceptually very simple, a ‘blank page’ which can be viewed, edited and overwritten by users. This is an important consideration for both teachers and the students using the wiki. A SWOT analysis of wikis is provided below.
<><><><><>
<><><><><>
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Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
·       Constructivist tool that encourages learning through social interaction.
·        Wikis facilitate collaboration and group interaction more effectively than blogs.
·        Teachers and students a great deal of flexibility in how the wiki ‘looks and feels’.
·        Wikis allow you to easily link between different pages on the same wiki, as well as to external content (websites, youtube videos etc.).
·        Entries can be tracked and date stamped.
·        Create positive peer pressure.
·        The level of complexity in a wiki can be tailored to students’ age level.
·         Although wikis allow group interaction, they do not allow authors to change content concurrently.
·        The multi-user nature of wikis means that a set of rules are necessary to manage responsible use.

·        Huge range of applications – teachers can creatively adapt wikis to serve a range of purposes.
·        Using wikis provides teachers with an opportunity to integrate behaviours across different contexts (e.g. a set of rules about rights, responsibilities, respect, netiquette etc. may be relevant to the classroom, wiki use, blogging and other social medias that are used at home).
·        Can provide feedback/insight for teachers about student learning and the effectiveness of their own teaching methods.
·        Risk that students accidentally delete or write over others’ work.
·        Parents/families may not embrace the use of wikis at home for a variety of reasons.
·        Students have differing levels of technological competency and attitudes towards using technology.


In order to get my head around the technical affordances of a wiki site, I experimented with my own wiki by setting up a ‘fake’ learning activity for a group of students.

The very basic activity I created on my wiki would allow students to participate in a group debate. I created a number of pages on my wiki to support this online activity, including a main Debating Chamber and a number of debate-related pages, each of which elaborated on the core activity in some way (i.e. Debating Rules and student Debating Glossary). The Debating Chamber introduced the concept of debating and defined the topic (“it is better to read a book than see a movie”). Similar to the Mobile Phones wiki activity in Week 2, the activity culminated in students entering their debating arguments/rebuttals into a table. The Debating Chamber contained links to the other related pages within my wiki. I was also able to add a hyperlink to another website which features a video of real primary students engaged in a debating competition. The wiki activity contained an embedded youtube animation introducing the debating process.

As a (very) novice wiki user, once I familiarised myself with the wiki functions, I was able to set up this activity relatively easily. I could also have provided links to appropriate sites for research, uploaded various images and created pages for students to prepare their debating material or discuss approaches. The debating activity could have been further scaffolded by use of a thinking tool like de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.

Given the success I had in setting up this basic wiki activity, I can see the potential for incorporating wikis into learning. A wiki would be a fantastic epicentre for a class, serving as an information hub, communication resource and platform for educational exercises and extension work. Wikis provide an easy way for students, parents and teachers to communicate. There are a huge number of educational resources and wiki examples available online.

Wikis can be tailored for different learning types and to help students move from lower to higher order thinking, according to Bloom’s taxonomy. As an example, wikis can support the following types of activities:
  • Knowledge – answer recall questions based on a text, remember the wiki rules, define relevant terminology in a glossary;
  • Comprehension – understand grammatical/semantic rules for a correction competition;
  • Application – modify the end of a choose-your-own-adventure story, solve collaborative maths tasks, group authoring;
  • Analysis – scaffolded PMI activities to compare and contrast;
  • Synthesis – compile a new class textbook; and
  • Evaluation – critique a text, participate in a class debating activity and research projects.
Something that I came across this week in the course of my research into wikis was the 'flipped classroom’. The idea is that teachers create a digital library of learning resources which are used in place of traditional lecture style classroom teaching. Classroom time is instead used for active learning and class collaboration (hence traditional school learning and homework are ‘flipped’). Wikis would be an ideal tool for use in this context.

Audrey Watters, in her Hack Education blog, describes the work of Reich and suggests that although wikis are designed to facilitate collaboration, they are not frequently used in this way.  As with any ICT tool, I think it’s critical that the use of wikis in the classroom is accompanied by clear learning goals as well as technical and pedagogical competency.

Monday, 12 March 2012

A Blog about Blogging...

With (limited) experience now under my belt, this is essentially a reflection about blogs and educational blogging. I should begin by indicating that by educational blogging, I am really referring to blogging that is scaffolded by a teacher with the aim of supporting/enhancing classroom learning. Clearly blogging and a host of other social media activities can also occur outside of the classroom and without any involvement by teachers.

To facilitate this reflection, I have started by completing a Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) thinking routine.

PMI Evaluating Potential of Blogs in the Teaching Context

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Plus
Minus
Interesting/Implications
  • setting up a blog is free
  • blogs are easy to use and have a similar functionality to many of the word processing applications students already use regularly
  • blogs can be edited
  • empowers students giving them the ability to occupy roles not generally available in a ‘traditional’ classroom environment (e.g. author, editor, publisher, reviewer etc.)
  • blogs are ‘instant’ and can reflect current events, recent activities etc.
  • blogs provide a useful mechanism for teachers to deliver or disseminate information
  • the self-paced nature of blogging offers students autonomy
  • blogs enable students to work in interactive and collaborative ways, by linking to other web resources, images, videos etc.
  • blogs are a great tool to engage with a range of learners (active, reflective, sensing, intuitive, visual, verbal, sequential and global)
  • blogging allows students to understand the power of persuasive writing and helps them to find their ‘voice’
  • blogging is challenging and interesting, sparking interest and enthusiasm (also many students will be used to ‘having their say’ through other forms of digital social media)
  • although less collaborative than some other web-based tools, students can comment on their own or other blogs and follow blogs of interest
  • although the end product of blogging promotes written literacy, blogs also facilitate reading, engaging and reflecting 
  • students typically cannot contribute content to the content of other blogs
  • blogs are less collaborative than some other web-based tools (e.g. wikis) as they are generally written by a single author
  • blogs are often blocked in schools (or only approved blog sites are available)
  • blogging in classroom environments has been criticised  as being contrived
  • blogging requires students to access the internet, which involves ethical/legal/safety concerns
  • provides a potential avenue for bullying or other antisocial behaviours
  • blogging is perceived by some to be trivial

  • blog content is static, which may be useful for teachers in some applications
  • editable
  • chronological aspect of blogs is useful for diaries or reflective purposes
  • blogging is a useful tool for engaging a wide range of learners
  • blogging has potential for both individual and (somewhat limited) collaborative activities
  • important that blogging serves a purpose and is appropriately scaffolded
  • allows teachers to communicate with parents/families
  • allows teachers to teach explicitly about subjective/objective information and opinion versus fact
  • blogging should be supported by a clear code of conduct and explanation of netiquette
  • it is likely that teachers will need to tailor assessment criterion for blogging activities, as it will probably need to be more flexible and iterative than traditional assessment techniques

As the practice of educational blogging becomes more popular, a wide range of practical examples are freely available online.

I like the idea presented by Downes (2004) of separating blogs into different 'spaces' (e.g. public, personal reflections able to be shared and private spaces to facilitate teacher feedback).

The phenomenon of instant online publishing and feedback not only takes the focus off the teacher as the 'expert', but also provides avenues for feedback/assessment additional to traditional teacher feedback. Through online comments and functions such as 'likes' and 'dislikes', students are provided with self-assessment opportunities provided by their own community of learners.

Applications of blogs are numerous and are only really limited by the imagination of teachers. In the context of my own teaching practice, I see blogs as offering advantages in the following key areas:
  • Tool for information exchange between the teacher and parents/families/school communities (e.g. through a classroom blog which pages for calendar, information/annoucements for parents, class rules, homework - http://mrbaldock.edublogs.org/).
  • Tool for information exchange between the teacher and students (e.g. relevant links, assignment information, class rules, homework, class news, reminders, extension exercises).
  • Tool for information exchange within classes/areas of the school. This link provides an example of a library blog, which is relevant to all students at the school.
  • Tool for archiving and publishing student work (http://tlpsart.edublogs.org/).
  • Tool for scaffolded individual/group reflection and collaboration within a class or wider online networks.
  • Assignment construction point (e.g. 'expert jigsaw).

The below video provides a great summary of the benefits of blogging in the teaching context.




As with any other online tool, it is critically important that students are provided with information and training about online safety. This should involve establishing clear rules/practices when using the internet (e.g. use of avatars instead of student photos, use of nickname or first name only, no personal information, stranger danger etc.). There are many resources available to support teachers in this area, many of which provide online videos/games - https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/teachers/.

References


Downes, S. (2004). Educational Blogging. EDUCAUSE Review, 39 (5), 14-26.

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Reflection on Wiki Activities


Image courtesy of CDA (2012)

As part of the engagement component of the coursework for EDED20491 this week, I participated in an activity on the campus wiki. This built on last week's introductory activity in which I added my blog and wiki hyperlinks to the Blog and Wiki URL's wiki.

This week's activity involved the EDED20491 cohort being divided into four groups and making contributions via an online wiki about the topic “mobile phones – should they be used in the classroom?”. The wiki activity required learners to consider and respond to this topic using de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ (Kurwongbah State School, undated).
This reflection examines a range of learning theories to determine which are most relevant to the design of this activity. I also reflect on the scaffolding techniques used, the value of collaborative learning and the lessons I will take away for designing my own learning activities.

Learning Theory

The instructional design of this activity included only limited ongoing involvement by the teacher. Given the lack of reinforcement of target behaviour/s and the open-ended structure which lacked a pre-defined end result, I do not consider that this forum was reflective of behaviourist theory (Fasso, 2012). Behaviourist approaches typically target low-level content and routine skill development (Fasso, 2012).

Cognitivism seeks to understand learning in terms of inner mental activities (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2012). Although I think cognitivism goes a way towards explaining my mental processes in transferring the information presented in this activity from the sensory register to working memory, I don’t believe the design of the activity is cognitivist in nature. A key tenet of cognitivist theory, ‘meaningful effects’, refers to the linkage of information to prior schema, making it meaningful and therefore easier to remember (Mergel, 1998). Cognitivist learning design is heavily focussed on helping learners connect new material to existing information in order to help them memorise the content (e.g. concept maps) (Lein, n.d.).

In contrast, the purpose of the wiki activity was to develop higher order thinking skills. Constructivist theory is underpinned by the notion that learners construct meaning based on their perceptions of social encounters and experiences. The design of the wiki activity was constructivistic in nature in that it aimed to stimulate social interaction between members of a learning community and encourage learners to actively share their personal interpretations of the topic. The experience of sharing (or ‘negotiating’) these interpretations,  is what resulted in the construction of knowledge.

The wiki activity presented a realistic setting and in this case, qualitative assessment was integrated through this reflection task (Merrill, 1991, in Smorgansbord, 1997). The direction of the wiki was quite flexible and able to be influenced by the participants, another characteristic of constructivist learning design. This was evidenced by the different material presented across the four groups for the wiki.

The role of the teacher in this activity was to really only to provide initial scaffolding. This is typical of constructivist learning design, which is generally more facilitative than prescriptive (Mergel, 1998). 

Scaffolding

Although the activity was instigated and set up by the ‘teacher’, the content was contributed by the group of learners. The teacher scaffolded the activity by providing:

  • an introduction to learning theories;
  • a framework for collaboration (i.e. online wiki);
  • webconferencing tutorials;
  • a description of what should be learned through the activity;
  • groups of learners;
  • a suitable tool (i.e. de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and a table template to structure responses by learners);
  • a series of leading questions and required ways of thinking to guide the direction of reflection about the activity; and
  • selection of discussion forums to enable personal and interactive reflection (e.g. blogs).
The scaffolding provided the context for the wiki activity and supported the particular way learners thought about the topic. For example, by providing links to information about de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, the teacher ‘set the scene’ for the wiki by making learners aware that they should use a range of thinking modes to come up with a range of perspectives. By introducing wikis and providing instructions on how to edit the table displayed in the wiki, the scaffolding facilitated the collection of the perspectives offered by the learners.

Constructivism and Collaboration

As a mode of learning, the online wiki supported thinking and participation by:
  • allowing learners to ‘own’ their responses to the topic;
  • encouraging collaboration between learners; and
  • encouraging learners to provide a range of perspectives through use of the six hats.
The responses added to the wiki were relevant, reasonable and varied. The wiki activity allowed me to reflect on the topic individually as well more fully understand the complexity of the issue through acknowledging a number of other responses added by my colleagues.

As I was participating, I was aware of the fact that de Bono’s thinking hats were encouraging me to consider wider perspectives than I would typically, and the collaborative nature of the wiki took this one step further by listing even more perspectives.

The participation provided by the wiki makes the activity ‘fun’, as a learner, it reminded me that we were talking about a real issue with real implications. I found it interesting to read about what my classmates were thinking and exciting to contribute to a group discussion.

The activity challenged me and sustained my interest, allowing me to synthesise responses from the diverse ideas for each ‘thinking hat’. Some of the ideas added by my colleagues then prompted me to think and read further by raising new related issues.

I felt like I was able to learn about my peers and gauge some sense of their personality through reading their responses. By either aligning myself with their position or questioning their ideas, I felt like I was constructing meaning about the content but also about myself and my colleagues. I also found that the collaborative wiki helped me to articulate and solidify my own views.

There can be no ‘correct’ response to the topic, and responses will be subjective and heavily influenced by one’s particular context and definition of the question. The activity encouraged problem-based higher order thinking, a move towards the most complex categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain (Big Dog, Little Dog and Knowledge Jump, 1999).

The Productive Pedagogies project, stemming from the University of Queensland’s Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study, identified productive pedagogies from observations of classroom teaching (Department of Education and Training, 2002). I think this learning activity reflected strategies within the productive pedagogies, including (Fasso, 2012):

  • the facilitation of deep knowledge through higher order thinking;
  • the facilitation of collaborative learning in which conversations are important;
  • learning that is owned, controlled and managed by students; and
  • learning that is socially supportive and engaging.

Wikis - Benefits, Issues and Drawbacks


Although participating in wikis like these has a number of benefits, there are also some drawbacks as identified in the graphic organiser below.


Plus
Minus
Interesting
- benefits a range of learners (active, reflective, sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, sequential and global) (Soloman and Felder, undated)

- facilitates collaboration between a group of geographically distant learners

- equips learners to effectively deal with real life scenarios - in the real world, individuals are continually confronted with new situations which require them to acquaint themselves with other people’s realities in order to negotiate solutions

- develops the ability to appreciateand understand others’ views
- although this wiki was well-suited to higher order thinking and collaboration, it was less suited to the development of lower order thinking and basic recall.

- in some learning activities, it is important to set achievable goals and measures progress towards these goals quantitatively, which is not one of the strengths of constructivism
- the design of wikis has implications for the type of learning they promote
- as pointed out by Mergel (1998), there are situations when divergent thinking is not desirable or appropriate


I intend to use my understanding of the learning theories and my observations/conclusions about this wiki activity to inform my design of learning experiences to maximise learning gains.



References

Big Dog, Little Dog and Knowledge Jump (1999). Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive

CDA (2012). Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats Revisited. Retrieved from http://cdainspired.com.au/edward-de-bonos-six-thinking-hats-revisited/

Department of Education and Training (2002). Productive Pedagogies. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/public_media/reports/curriculum-framework/productive-pedagogies/html/about.html

Fasso, W. (2012). EDED20491: ICTs for Learning Design (Term 1, 2012). Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=19580

Kurwongbah State School (n.d.). Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved from http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Hats/hats.htm

Learning Theories Knowledgebase (2012). Cognitivism at Learning-Theories.com. Retrieved from http://www.learning-theories.com/cognitivism.html

Lein, K. (n.d.). Cognitivist Approach. Retrieved from http://elearningpedagogy.com/cognitivist.html

Mergel, B. (1998). Instructional Deisgn & Learning Theory. Retrieved from http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm

Merrill, M. D. (1991, May). Constructivism and instructional design. Educational Technology, 45-53.

Soloman, B. A. and Felder, R. M. (n.d.). Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

Smorgansbord, A. (n.d.). Constructivism and instructional design. Retrieved from http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/smorgan/cons.html

Monday, 5 March 2012

Technological pedagogical and content knowledge - a definition

In order to describe technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), it is useful to first define pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

PCK essentially refers to the combination of the following three types of knowledge, which allows teachers to effectively transfer knowledge to learners:
  • knowledge about the subject matter or content;
  • knowledge about teaching principles; and
  • knowledge about context.
TPACK adds technology into the mix and refers to how technology (specifically information and communications technology) can be appropriately incorporated into pedagogy to facilitate the learning of content.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

My Learning Style

Today I completed Soloman and Felders’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to get an indication of my own preferred learning style/s.
 
The results indicate that I am:
  • a strongly reflective (as opposed to active) learner;
  • fairly well balanced sensing and intuitive learner (possibly with a slight preference towards intuitive learning);
  • slightly more visual than verbal learner; and
  • a slightly more sequential than global learner.
Overall, I would say the results were quite accurate. However, I wouldn’t have described my preference for reflective learning as being ‘very strong’. Despite preferring to think quietly first about new information, I don’t always like to work alone.
My learning style suits learning experiences like individual reading, reflecting, summarising, strategies like PMIs, SWOT analyses, etc., rather than group work or active experimentation. Being a visual learner, I tend to learn well from visual learning experiences including videos, images, powerpoint presentations, graphs, flowcharts and mind maps. I also tend to learn well when information is provided sequentially, in steps which build upon each other or can be pieced together logically.

I find it interesting to think that a single learner may have different preferred learning styles at different times. I wonder after years of university study with learning primarily delivered through teacher-centred delivery methods, whether I might have developed stronger sensing and verbal learning styles than I would otherwise have preferred?
Profiling learners in order to cater for learning styles/preferences
Given the likelihood that a single classroom will comprise learners with a diverse range of learning styles, teachers will never teach in a way which suits everyone all the time. I have found it valuable to understand my own learning style and to recognise the diversity in learning styles even within the EDED20491 cohort.
In order to cater for the diversity of learning styles in a class, I would profile students by:
  • establishing rapport with students;
  • observing their responsiveness and engagement in various learning experiences; and
  • asking them questions designed to highlight their learning style (e.g. adapt existing examples like Soloman and Felder’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to suit the age group of the learners).
How to support the range of learning styles in a traditional classroom of 25 students
I guess the important thing as a teacher is to utilise a diverse enough range of pedagogies that learners are offered a balance between those styles which allow them to learn most easily (meaning they feel comfortable and included) and those which they find more challenging but which allow them to build on their adaptability/flexibility. Obviously, a narrow teaching approach will benefit only a small number of learners and will risk the other students becoming disengaged. Resonates well with this quote by Eistein:
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
In a traditional classroom of 25 students, I would design my lesson planning to include strategies which suit the various learning styles. I would use the results of the learning styles profiling exercise to inform my planning.
Examples of how I might support the range of learning styles include the following:
  • Instead of doing group work or individual work in isolation, I might ask students to reflect individually on a topic by answering/posing a set of questions, then have them form small groups to brainstorm further before discussing as a class. This would engage both active and reflective learners.
  • I would use visual aids when presenting orally to the class and include exercises like constructing diagrams, charts, mind maps etc. to engage visual learners.
  • I would attempt to include optionality in my lesson planning where appropriate. For example, after doing a group activity, I could give learners the choice of doing an oral presentation or a written presentation.
  • I might form groups for particular exercises based on the learning styles profiling and develop specific activities best suited for each learning style.
  • Ensure that the physical structure of the classroom is conducive for different learning styles (e.g. by placing visual learners close to the front, providing a visually stimulating environment, creating ‘shared’ spaces for group work etc.).
How does ICT support differences in learning styles?
Pedagogies that incorporate ICT have the potential to engage learners with various learning styles. This is in part due to the multimodal nature of ICT, which frequently combines audio, visual and tactile stimuli. ICT describes a vast array of technologies and tools which, each of which has different functionalities and applications which can be tailored to a particular purpose.
Although ICT can be used to support particular learning styles (e.g. social networking is well suited to active learners, blogging is suited to reflective learners etc.), I think it is important that all learners are competent in accessing and evaluating digital information in a range of different ways.
References

Soloman, B. A. and Felder, R. M. (undated) Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html.

Reflection on Connectivism

In reading the material on connectivism and the work of Siemens (2004), I did found it slightly disconcerting to have my assumptions about knowledge and knowing challenged. I have been encouraged throughout my formal education to only seek and trust information provided by ‘experts’ and to avoid referring to any sources which offer unsolicited opinion not written or peer reviewed by academics.

However, when I look back at what I learned and what I have found useful in everyday life and my professional career, I can’t help but think that the truly valuable lessons were more about processes and methodologies than about content. Content knowledge and factual information can be found easily enough using a variety of media (e.g. web searches, print media, blogs etc.), but critical thinking and evaluation skills are what have allowed me to make sense of the vast array of informaiton available at the click of a button.

Although some content knowledge is invaluable, it seems that our assessment of students’ recall is designed more to facilitate easy marking than to assess true understanding. As an exercise in connectivism, it would be interesting to encourage learners to move the focus away from empirical knowledge (or finding ‘the’ right answer) to developing a network of information sources and evaluating the usefulness/application of each source.
References

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.

Reflection on Prensky’s Ideas

I find the concept of digitial ‘singularity’ proposed by  Prensky (2001, p.1) interesting. More than ever before, there seems to be a mismatch between the learning paradigm held by teachers and the world that learners live in.

Although I find it difficult to believe that technology has induced a physical change in learner’s brains, kids these days do seem to think and process information differently. They are definitely socialised into technology, although software also seems to be becoming increasingly intuitive.

I (unfortunately) consider myself a digital immigrant, so this course and indeed my future as a teacher who integrates ICT into my pedagogy (with any luck) will be a steep learning curve. I read Prensky’s papers with a slight internal cringe, as I recognised my own strong ‘accent’! Undoubtedly, I will have the opportunity to learn a lot from my students over the coming years!

Much of the learning dogma from my own school days (e.g. delayed gratification, one step at a time, practice makes perfect) I realise is now relatively outdated in today’s fast-moving information age. One thing that is still the same, however, is that learning should be fun. As to the validity of the “engage or enrage” argument, I guess in the noisy, sensual overload that is today’s technology, it is critical that teachers make the educational experience something worth paying attention to. As surmised by Margaryan and Littlejohn (2008), I suspect that many children don’t comfortably fit within the ‘kids that tune us out’ category painted by Prensky (2005, p. 60), and realistically sit anywhere on the continuum between technologically illiterate to digital genius. In practice, the reaction of modern students to outdated teaching methodology is more likely to simply be disinterest or frustration, rather than rage. That said, the last thing I would wish for is to be seen by learners as a ‘dinosaur’ they cannot relate to.

What will this mean for me as a teacher? Well I think it will mean keeping an open mind, being flexible and adaptive. It will mean challenging my own preconceptions about the nature of knowledge and the relative value of some types of knowledge or sources of information over others. It will also mean accepting that there are many more ways of knowing than what I was taught through my formal education. The focus will become more about the process than the end product. Essentially, I will have to be the old dog that learnt a new way of doing its’ tricks!

References
Margaryan, A. and Littlejohn, A. (2008). Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students use of technologies for learning.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, M. (2005). “Engage me or enrage me”: What today’s learners demand. Educause Review, September/October 2005, 60-64.