Reshaping our practice
Yesterday I received a message from Miles Berry reminding me I had agreed to deliver a keynote at the Open Source Schools conference in Nottingham on 20 June (have to admit it had slipped my mind!). So I searched the web to dig out what the conference was all about and arrived at the conference wiki.
What a fabulous site! This is an unconference with contributors being invited to develop themes, presentations and and collaboration around sessions being through the wiki. This exemplifies what I have been banging on about for the last few months. We need to use technologies – not just as a teaching tool – but to shape and reshape our own practices. As a community of practice we need to explore how we can use the potential of social software in our own daily practice for collaboration, for our own (collective learning) and for developing and sharing knowledge within our community. And that practice will inevitably change how we have traditionally organised our work – for instance through conferences seminars and publications.
This is also true of research into technology enhanced learning. It is almost impossible to research the use of technologies for learning without experiencing the use ourselves. This not only means using technology as an adjunct or aid to more effective research practices but also rethinking methodologies towards a more action research oriented approach.
Congratulations to Miles and his colleagues for having a go!
