At the 2007 TUANZ Education yesterday US keynote speaker Miguel Guhlin encouraged Auckland primary school teachers to ‘wikify’ their lessons. By putting their content online he said educators can take part in an international discussion in any subject area – from ICT in education to how teach kids basic calculus.
“We used to be told to think global, act local. Now it’s think global, act global.”
During his presentation Guhlin skyped a colleague in Georgia who spoke about a number of initiatives in both her classroom and among her colleagues worldwide. She is part of an international collaboration on the Horizon Report 2007 which offers the following six challenges facing higher education.
- Assessment of new forms of work continues to present a challenge to educators and peer reviewers.
- There are significant shifts taking place in scholarship, research, creative expression and learning, and a profound need for leadership at the highest levels of the academy that can see the opportunities in these shifts and carry them forward.
- While progress is being made, issues of intellectual property and copyright continue to affect how scholarly work is done.
- There is a skills gap between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content.
- The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
- Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.
That last one – number 6, makes you think.
Guhlin together with the US keynote speaker from the first two weeks of the conference – Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach – have create a wiki for the conference, in which many of the presenters have posted information.
Today it’s the turn of Auckland secondary school teachers to learn more about the role of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. It also marks the final day of the three-week conference that visited nine centres from Invercargill to Whangarei. Hats off to the TUANZ team and the exhibitors who were there throughout the three week - I was only travelled with them for the first three days and had to have a very strong cup of tea and a lie down after I got home to recover from exhaustion!