ICT for Pedagogy and Pedagogues

If you have ever had the privilege and challenge of hanging out with ICT mentor Stephen Heppell, you know that his mixture of pragmatism and idealism is infectious. I first met him at the Ontario Library Association's SuperConference. After wonderful conversations, he promised me a ride on his boat moored in the Thames. I’d settle for a pint at his local pub!

Stephen is one of my heroes. On January 31, 2010,  he looked back on a decade of learning potential and wrote:

Online learners now have laid down a single set of markers for personalisation, for transparency, for mutuality, for us-ness, for whole new economic models, for quite literally unbounded learning, for a world of helping learners to help each other. The artificial distinction between "formal" and "informal" learning has already vanished online. We are, as I have often reflected, facing the death of Education, but are very much at the dawn of Learning. 21st century Learning looks pretty exciting and today's leaners, with today's pocketable personal connected ICT, are showing us very, very clearly just how good learning might be. We ignore that at our peril.

For me, it is also imperative that we help teachers help each other to take charge of their own new learning. We must not merely implement ICT in our daily practice with students. We must integrate ICT in our practice with each other. If Stephen calls for global and local connections in learning, these must include teaching as well. 

Some questions arise:

• How does teaching reflect learning in the 21st century? How can we both learn from and lead our wired students.

• How can governments, teacher organizations, and school district harness the power of social networking? How easily do teachers in 2011 build curriculum, share resources, and forge innovations together and globally?

• Must educational professionals depend on commercial enterprise for leveraging their learning capacity? Are Facebook, Twitter, and teacher.net. our communications default, by default?

I continue to seek examples of social networks set up for and run by teachers, where their own learning is honored and their professionalism is developed. Last week, I mentioned several examples of curriculum planning and resource sharing tools across N.A. My jurisdictional scan continues, especially in consultation with Toronto’s Shore Consulting Group. I will be posting more on this soon.

In the meantime, I am posting the next set of teaching/learning strategies (you can see why I prefer the slash), adding ICT-based strategies to my glossary on Page 1. Of all the additions, this is the most tenuous, given the daily dawning of educational change. 

I hope Stephen approves and buys the first round.