The lessons behind the burger…

As teacher across many subject areas, who might be termed an ‘early adopter’ of technologies, I have been looking long and hard at the moves the Web has made over the last few years in its transition from Web 1.0 (essentially ‘read-only’ – an information repository) to Web 2.0; the so-called ‘read-write’, or interactive Web. In my own mind I have been grappling with how to effectively use Web 2.0 tools or environments in teaching. In November 2004, I wrote a proposal for a ‘Year 7 class weblog project’ that would have come in with the ‘new’ (for our school) 2005 Year 7 Homeroom initiative. Perhaps the idea was a little ahead of its time at my school, perhaps there was too much else going on, but it never eventuated. I do remember thinking the top issue then was controlling both student access and how comments coming back might be screened. Since that time, I have seen further manifestations of the Web 2.0 phenomenon appearing, and have kept pondering how they might be used in a meaningful, effective, relevant and safe way.

In June this year at an Australian Council for Educational Research ‘Digital Education Revolution’ Conference in Melbourne, I heard Mark Pesce (an American-born, Australia-based ‘futurist’, technologist and inventor) giving a keynote entitled Those Wacky Kids (video/text). It summarised the advances the Web has made in the last five years and put it in the context of the current generation of students working differently to ‘us’ (ie, teachers) as a result of the technology. This has many parallels with ideas put forward by Marc Prensky (another America futurist), who coined the terms ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘Digital immigrants’ in 2001. The end result is that such commentators posit that our students are becoming less engaged as student expectations and modus operandi shift.

These ideas have been further reinforced at my school with a visit (sponsored by UK Trade & Investment) by Dr John Ingram, developer of the ‘Digital Excellence Awards’ scheme which has taken hold at several schools in Victoria. This program, in all likelihood, is destined to be in place at my school in the primary years for 2009. In addition to all the messages about ICT skill entitlements and competencies – an area I am passionate about – John Ingram was also talking a great deal about student engagement and changing the way technology is seen and delivered in schools.

Finally, my attendance at the Computerlec ‘Expanding Learning Horizons‘ (ELH) conference saw innumerable keynotes and presenters all repeating essentially the same messages; firstly, that teachers need to shift from their traditional way of doing business to keep students engaged, and secondly, that greater collaboration (teacher-teacher, teacher-student, student-student) is essential. Thrown into this mix relating to the first message was the notion that traditional schools are good at ‘killing creativity’.

At the ELH conference – as a reaction to a session I was sitting in at the time – I sent a Twitter (a Web 2.0 application) message outlining that my Homeroom class had a term-and-a-half old burger in the video cabinet at the front of the room. This ‘experiment’ was testing the urban myth that they are so full of preservatives that it will not deteriorate – true, as it turns out. A teacher and Twitter follower of mine – Concetta Gotlieb – who is employed by edna in New South Wales sent a message back asking where she could see the blog, or at least an image of the project. That request, and the kinds of ideas that I was seeing at the conference started me thinking. After some light-hearted discussions with my colleagues at the conference, and others, the idea to create a truly Web 2.0-enabled cross-curricular project took shape.

The sillier the ideas became, the more obvious it was that students would probably love it, that Web 2.0 made it possible with minimal effort and expence. Since that time a few weeks back, the project has taken on a life of its own.