Edge of Learning

I am going to blog this week on Clarence Fisher and Stephen Downes presentations. I was wowed with Clarence Fishers middle years classroom and how he is comfortable with allowing his students to make contact with the world through the use of  laptops. He is definitely helping his students to be collaborative leaders, collectors and creators of information. Currently, in my school we only have one student in Grade 12 who is using a laptop and most of my teachers would not be comfortable with allowing a whole class  of students to use laptops. I think the question Stephen Downes asks at the beginning of his presentation, “How do you teach if you no longer have power over the students?”, is, I’m sure ,a thought in many teachers minds. As well,we would not have many students with their own laptops. Yes, we do have a mini and main computer lab but we’re still working on getting 1 or 2 computers in our classrooms for students, not alone, asking the school division for laptops.

Stephen Downes talks about a network approach to teaching. He says we can create our own personal learning environment. “Aggregate, remix, repurpose, and feed forward. “Personally, I find my personal learning environment is not where I’d like it to be. Being aware of the many technological tools out there, exploring these tools, all takes time and time has been a rare commodity for me these days.

But I do like the idea of creating your own work environment with your own content. 

As Clarence Fisher says, ‘Education is a vital, natural resource.”