This blog post reports from the APPI 2012 conference in Coimbra, Portugal.  The theme of the conference is “Motivated Teachers make a difference” – I’m updating as I go, so apologies for any typos, I’ll try and clear those up later.  Owing to coffee breaks and fresh air requirements, no time to do the abstract.  I think the title’s fairly self explanatory.

Nik Peachy;  Developing materials and practices for the digital generation

This should tie in quit neatly with Nicky hockly’s talk from yesterday.

Handouts and materials from the session c/o: http://technogogy.org.uk/techteens.pdf

In this session:

  • Some research
  • Some tools
  • Some ideas

(Everything is free)

Digital natives / digital immigrants (Marc Prensky) – levels of digital comfort vary, even amongst teenagers ….  some stats:

  • 75% of teens own cell phones
  • 73% use social networking
  • 38% share content online
  • Teens average 3,339 sent and received texts a month

Marc Prensky – “the app gap” the gap between students that have smart phones with app capability and those that don’t. What about the gap between teachers and students?

Thinking about the classroom…  what’s preferable?  NOT rows of computers, but wi-fi enabled, internet enabled devices, data projector, good broadband, with air, light, colour and comfort.  The model of the traditional computer room is outmoded already….

http://www.todaysmeet.com – creating a back channel with your students, another means of communication with and amongst students.  The teacher can “lurk” and see what’s going on, intervening where necessary!  Sharing links, so making classrooms more paperless.

Why use it?  Information sharing / Audience response / democratising the classroom / brainstorming / working without paper / provides a record of the interaction.

Some nice examples of literature via textspeak – including Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice and Shakespeare’s “what’s in a name”.  You can translate stuff into text speak via http://transl8it.com/.  Text speak is quite phonetic and can help work on pronunciation.

Why use it?  Increase enagement with short texts / understanding the genre /

Shared Work Space:  (www.posterous.com) works on the emailing principle – just email the blog and it’ll post.  Or text the blog.  Why:  publishing and peer editing learner work / collaboration / personal reflection / blended learning.  Also works well with audioboo, recording audio which you can then upload to the blog.

What do you use when you study?  How do you take notes?  try “scrible.com” – an online text annotator, highlighter and virtual stickynote generator, plus library or article collation system.

How has computer based information changed the nature of receptive skills?  The kinds of texts we access in our daily lives has changed and the way we access texts has changed.  So instead of referrring to a single source, learners need to access multiple sources and we can help learners by providing mixed media tasks.  An online tool to help with this: Storify – here’s Nik’s example: http://storify.com/nikpeachey/connectivism.  Can help avoid the cut and paste problem of learner research, as it means learners evaluate and assess and make an original contribution, while also including links to the original source.

Generic Tasks for digital comprehension. (see handout)

http://mailvu.com/ – good for learners to practice speaking and getting feedback.

Nik’s running out of time and I think the last part of the seminar will need some investigation via his handout, which are full of the links!

Conclusion – this is going to need a certain amount of time to process and re-organise!

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