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Conference Major Speakers

Meet Tom March “Before ICTs, an authentic and engaging curriculum was a hard-earned option: enthusiastic educators challenged their students to think critically, imagine creatively and produce expertly. With the integration of information and communication technologies, such a robust learning experience is within reach of all educators and, more importantly, all learners.” - Tom March

Profile

Tom March is passionate about education and learning. Recognised as a Teacher of the Year for San Diego County in 1991, he concluded his formal classroom teaching in 1995 when he began a three year fellowship during which he developed such Web sites as Filamentality, Eyes on Art, and Blue Web'n and the WebQuest model with Professor Bernie Dodge. He is the creator of an array of strategies for integrating the Web into learning activities, embodied by the interactive environment called Web-and-Flow. He continues to evolve the WebQuest in BestWebQuests.com and leverage in-person keynotes and workshops with online support via the cutting "edge-ucator.com." In 1998, he and his family emigrated to Australia and settled in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Tom writes and presents frequently on various aspects of "working the Web for education.

Major Presentations
"When WWW means Whatever, Whenever, Wherever"

Just as education starts to address the impact of the World Wide Web, a culture of personalised, WiFi-delivered, digital content hovers just over the broadband horizon. Like kids in a candyshop, our students will be surrounded by whatever they want, whenever, wherever. Do our classroom practices promote independent thinking and self-awareness or do they train students to become victims of their own desires? .

Concurrent Session 1 The New 3Rs - Real, Rich& Relevant
Given a solid understanding of the pedagogical foundations of real WebQuests, let's look at real world examples that show how educators shape the theory through the scaffolding of the WebQuest model. See a range of ways skilled educators have interpreted the WebQuest model and shaped an activity to meet their learner's interests and needs.

Concurrent Session 2 WebQuests as Fulcrum for Systemic Curriculum Improvement
One teacher can't transform education alone. No, not even one teacher-librarian! However, Tom March argues that it can happen when educators work together to create a systemic, learning-centred k-12 curriculum that leads into WebQuests before unleashing students as self-initiated lifelong learners.

Meet Toni Downes " When used well, digital resources offer children a range of ways to play, to interact with other children and adults, to explore and represent their environments and solve problems, to be creative and to represent their ideas with symbols, words, sounds and images. They are as important as traditional media given that one of the aims of early childhood education is to nurture children’s capacity to help make sense of their world." - Toni Downes

Profile

Professor Toni Downes is the Head of School of Education and Early Childhood Studies at the University of Western Sydney. Her research projects and consultancies focus on quality leadership and technology, the investigation of the educational use of the Internet, young people's view about the use of computers in homes and schools, and the changing nature of literacies and technologies in new learning environments. Most recently her focus has been on working at the national and international level in policy research in regard to teacher learning for the effective use of ICTs for teaching and learning in schools and early childhood settings.

Major Presentation
Digital Media, Artefacts And Tools: Essential Ingredients In Early Education

Exposure to the digital world is a 'fact of life' for an increasing number of young children. The most recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on household use of technologies (ABS, 2003) estimated that in 2000, over 70% of Australian Households with children had working computers in their homes, and over 40% had Internet access. In these homes, digital media artefacts and tools are becoming a part of the fabric of children's daily experiences as they play, communicate, handle information and engage in a wide range of leisure activities using digital media.

As part of a commissioned study on the educational use of Internet with children under the age of eight, we developed a framework for education use of digital media, artefacts and tools based on this rationale. The framework included a set of principles that addressed the following issues raised by educators and parents within the study. These principles were that the use of digital media and resources needed to:

•  be shaped by sound pedagogical
•  be directed towards particular learning goals and outcomes
•  be embedded within learning environments;
•  be used as a social activity;
•  support child directed experiences; and
•  be used in ways that create open-ended learning experiences.

We found that the application of these set of principles led to a different way of thinking about the physical placement and allocation of digital resources in early childhood classroom.

commissioned study
A full report of the study has been published: Online Appropriate EdNA services for children eight years and younger (1999) and is available at www.edna.edu.au . The study was commissioned by Education.Au Limited for the EdNA Online Pathways Project. It was prepared by Dr Toni Downes, Leonie Arthur, Bronwyn Beecher and Dr Lyn Kemp from the University of Western Sydney .

Meet David Jonassen "Students do not learn from computers. Rather, students learn from thinking in intentional, meaningful ways. When students represent what they know using Mindtools, they are learning with computer technologies where they enter into an intellectual partnership with the computer." - David Jonassen

Profile

David Jonassen is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Missouri where he teaches in the areas of Learning Technologies and Educational Psychology.  Since earning his doctorate in educational media and experimental educational psychology from Temple University, Dr. Jonassen has taught at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Colorado, the University of Twente in the Netherlands, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Syracuse University.  He has published 24 books and numerous articles, papers, and reports on text design, task analysis, instructional design, computer-based learning, hypermedia, constructivist learning, cognitive tools, and technology in learning. He has consulted with businesses, universities, public schools, and other institutions around the world. His current research focuses on problem solving. He is Director of the Center for the Study of Collaborative Problem Solving.

Major Presentation Computers as Mindtools for Modeling Knowledge and Engaging Critical Thinking

In schools, students fail to develop transferable skills and lack conceptual understanding of content they are learning. Why? I argue because teachers and professors over-rely on single formalism for representing and assessing knowledge. Solutions include using alternative assessments to scaffold different forms of thinking and using cognitive tools (Mindtools) for engaging learners in reflecting and building models of what they know. Mindtools provide multiple formalisms for model building, each of which engages different kinds of critical, creative, and complex thinking. Mindtools include semantic organization tools (databases, semantic networks), dynamic modeling tools (spreadsheets, expert systems, systems modeling tools, and microworlds), information interpretation tools and visualization tools, knowledge construction tools (multimedia production, hypermedia construction and linking, Web site production), and conversation tools (synchronous communication environments, asynchronous information tools, scaffolded computer conferences). These tools can be used to build models of domain knowledge, systems, problems, experiences, and thinking processes.