Lesley Andrews wrote: > ICT in education, if used creatively, can not only enhance the education > process to help the development of literacy but it can also prepare > young people to become social and economic entrepreneurs - creating the > foundations for the development of democracies, knowledge societies and > open societies.
Lesley, I work in Europe sometimes, particularly in Greece. We just had a conference in Athens. Here was the most recent conference: <http://www.3rd-ws.org/agora2002/> Also one of the problems here, but perhaps not the same in every place in the world is that women are not given a say in the way in which training is done. We in the classroom may not be technical wizards, but we can teach. Often the technology people do not understand creating a learning landscape. That is, we view the effects of technologies as operating to a large extent through the ways that they alter the environments for thinking, communicating, and acting in the world. Thus, they provide new media for learning, in the sense that one might say land provided new media for creatures to evolve. This view of media encompasses, but extends, the familiar idea of media as a place to put information. Today, interactive, multimedia technology provides us with a new way to draw upon children's natural impulses. These new media hold an abundance of materials including text, voice, music, graphics, photos, animation, and video. But they provide more than abundance. Bringing all these media together means that we can vastly expand the range of learning experiences, opening up the social and natural worlds. Students can explore the relations among ideas and thus experience a more connected form of learning. Perhaps most importantly, these new media are interactive, and conducive to active, engaged learning. Students can choose what to see and do, and they have media to record and extend what they learn. Learning is thus driven by the individual needs and interests of the learner. <http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~chip/pubs/taxonomy/#Media> We cannot effectively use technology if we do not understand the convergence of media. In Europe in this group we are thinking about all kinds of technology as a learning environment. >From the George Lucas Web Site <www.glef.org>: Teachers need information, training, and assistance to ensure that new technology tools benefit student learning. Effective technology professional development includes: * Providing teachers with access to technology tools and time to learn how to integrate them in their teaching; * Participation in online and in-person learning communities where educators share expertise; * Ongoing technology support at the school site. We also have to learn to teach teachers to use what they have, whatever it is, effectively. Bonnie ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
