In the last week the 10 schools in our ICT cluster had the opportunity of hosting Stuart Hale. Over the two days Stuart shared his thinking on where mobile technology is heading, how it is impacting on education and why we can't afford to sit still. Our cluster lead teacher support person,
Mark Herring, did an outstanding job of collating his major points from the different sessions.
- For the discussion shared at the morning principal and lead teacher sessions click here
- For some key links and resources from the 'everyone' afternoon session click here
- For some reflection from the Board of Trustees and Principals evening session click here
For me, couple of key points stood out from an overall school perspective:
- 'Wireless connectivity' - we need to ensure that the infrastructure behind whatever mobile devices is robust and able to handle multiple connections without any drop in performance. The government has poured a huge amount of money into improving schools data network and into providing internet fibre connection 'to the gate'. We are doing that support a disservice if we don't ensure that our bit - the wireless network that supports these devices - is of the same 21st century quality.
- 'Cognitive blisters' - Learning new concepts can sometimes be hard or quite frustrating, like with learning to play a guitar. This can quickly put you of as the gain doesn't always seem to be worth the pain! Like the guitar metaphor, the initial learning phase has a lot to do with getting blisters on your fingers until they toughen up. The point was made that mobile technology can help students overcome those 'cognitive blisters' and find success where before they only experienced failure and disappointment.
As I unpack more of the learning from the two days by myself and with staff I am sure that further reflection will emerge which I will try to add on to this post. What thoughts and reflections do you have on this exponential journey of discovery that mobile devices is bringing to our world?
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