Ways to improve our learning....

Ewan McIntosh blogged that "the best school systems in the world: it's not (all) about the money"

He comments that:
"Success will go to those which are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change. There are three key points to getting this point of success:

1. Getting the right people to become teachers
2. Developing them into effective instructors
3. Ensuring that the system is able to offer the best possible instruction for every child

1. Getting the right people to become teachers
In an era of 'people shortages' in the labour market - how will educational institutes be able to 'afford' the right people - surely they will be 'head hunted' by private enterprise training?

2. Developing them into effective instructors
This means that educational institutes will need to 'value' their staff, have good educational leaders and mentors for their staff, and develop a strategic approach to their staff development. At this stage in Australia, public educational institutes are more worried about their budget then their 'core business' of education/training.

3. Ensuring that the system is able to offer the best possible instruction for every child
With improved teacher/trainer training - perhaps this will naturally occur however, at this point in time teachers/trainers are more focussed on getting their student to achieve the course 'outcomes' and not focussing on developing them as individuals - as they're forced to compare their students against National Standards and benchmarks.


Perhaps the answer may be in the question:
Is learning/education more highly valued in a society like Singapore?

Rambling Questions and Thoughts too big for Twitter....

The beauty of human intelligence is that there will always be more questions than answers...

1. Why do teachers/lecturers/trainers automatically think that just because they've set their students a 'task' that the students will 'want' or be excited to produce their best work?

2. What role do our Local Communities (family, local groups, church etc) have in developing an 'educated' society? Or is it just the role of an educational institute (school, college, university)?

3. When new technologies like social networking sites, web 2.0, mp3s, Nintendo DS, mobile phones/PDAs etc become ubiquitous - will this mean it won't consider 'time wasting' to use them?

4. Why do people think that news produced by the 'Nightly News' television stations and mainstream newspapers holds more 'credence' than information shared via social networking and web 2.0 sites?? At least the Russians know they were being fed propagada during the Cold War!!


Learning requires a lot of time, good problem solving skills and good support - welcome Twitter - you're like no other.... here is an example



Even though I didn't produce this posting using cursive writing I did still enjoy creating it...

Twitter connects once again

Nancy White suggested that I should frame this Twitter comment - so I did!!

Wow - this is me - just to mention a few

In reply to MySpace posting I realised I've developed a lot of me on the net:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/theother66
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=546713143
Skype: Allison Miller, Adelaide, Aust
Gmail: theother66@gmail.com
Me: http://me.edu.au/p/theother66
del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/imillera
Pownce: http://www.pownce.com/theother66
Profilactic: http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/theother66

Trying to connect in a connected world - trying to generate change through learning

Using Workforce Development for change

I was originally 'blown away' by the "Google and the Wisdom of Clouds" article because of Google's 'cloud' concept of storing and accessing information - however - the real 'gem' of this story is the fact that Christophe Bisciglia, a 27-year-old senior software engineer at Google, was able to use advanced training with new recruits to radically create a new strategic approach to the way Google provides information.

Bisciglia used his "20% time, the allotment Googlers have for independent projects, to launch a course. .... Google 101. .... (which) eventually lead to an ambitious partnership with IBM (IBM), announced in October, to plug universities around the world into Google-like computing clouds."

So how can we tap into the concept of developing VET staff so they are able to create a training environment which reflects the needs of the 21st Century?

We have a lot to learn from Christophe (http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/071214/68/4ddd6.html)

It's the people that matter

I couldn’t agree with you more Will Richardson's "Network, Not Tools" blog posting - and it’s the skill of networking, sourcing and filtering information which we need to be teaching our students so they can be able to function in the ever changing knowledge world.

Long live George Siemens and Connectivism - where “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe”, so “the ability to plug into sources to meet your requirements becomes the vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.” Therefore“…the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing” (George Siemens, Dec 12, 2004 www.elearnspace.org/articles/connectivism.htm viewed 29/11/06).

Are you a Buyer, Seller or Broker of Information

Barb McPherson from River Murray Training has been working on a very innovative Individual Learnscope Project in SA called “Leveraging Enterprise Knowledge and Know-how”.

Barb has been an e-learning innovator with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework for a number of years - and her company, River Murray Training, are leaders is responsive training solutions in the VET Sector.

Here is part of Barb's Final Posting for 2007 LearnScope Teams & Individuals

"One very interesting concept I learned about was that in any organisation there are buyers, sellers and brokers of knowledge. Let's say you now have the "know-how" on some new e-learning thing. But you got the idea and a few starting points from someone else. Let's say the Learnscope team put you in touch with that someone else. You are a buyer of knowledge, the "someone else" is a seller; and the Learnscope team is the broker. Why would the seller have been happy to share their know-how with you? Maybe they were altruistic; maybe they felt indebted to the brokers for soomething they had done. Maybe you have something that the seller could use now or in the future. You are the buyer - what will you offer in return?

In organisations people don't just give away their know-how. If the culture is such that sharing knowledge is not supported and encouraged then it won't happen. If people are promoted on what they know then it doesn't encourage them to share does it. If they are promoted because they share their knowledge freely, then it is likely to encourage more open and sharing teams. What sort of organisation do you work in? If you are a manager, what messages do you send your staff. If you are a facilitator - what messages are you sending your students?"


Barb has highlighted some very interesting points:

- are you a buyer, seller or broker of knowledge - or do we change roles depending on the need/ concept/ process/ idea we are working on?

- are you a sharer or hoarder of knowledge?

- and how do we 'manage' knowledge?

River Murray Training's Industry Engagement Project "Engineering Employers Association Group Training Scheme" used the tool itensil to project manage this project. Itensil is a "a wiki and workflow software in one"