Last year was the first year I attended the ICT in Education Conference in Thurles, Co. Tipperary and I had a really great time. I met some really great people and attended a number of brilliant workshops. I listened to two amazing speakers – Daithí O’Mhurchú and Conor Galvin who both keynoted and capstoned the conference respectively. I wrote a review all about it a couple of days later, Topp day in Tipp. This year was a little different. I was asked to be one of the Keynote speakers at the conference and to run a workshop. Eek.
The theme for this conference was “The Wisdom of the Crowd” and I decided to give my talk based on my article, “Talkin’ ’bout iGeneration”, which discussed how people of my generation think and learn. I then aimed to showcase some of the wisdom that was in Irish classrooms already and challenge them to spread their word. It was littered with really bad puns, based on “My Generation” by The Who. Eagle eyed pop geeks may have noticed my PowerPoint presentation background was The Who’s logo. Anyway, I tried to cause a big sensation and I think it went down well. One thing I didn’t realise was that I was being streamed live over the Internet. My sister also didn’t realise as she tried to ring me in the middle of the talk. A few minutes later I felt the vibrations of a text message in my pocket. When I checked later, it was from my sister who had logged onto her Facebook account and saw that someone had posted a link to the live stream. She seemed to like it.
I had to endure a questions and answers session where someone on Twitter described one of my answers as a “polite kicking” to the Department of Education. Next up was Bernie Goldbach who spoke about how using mobile devices is a fantastic tool for gaining wisdom and learning. He showed us some examples of how he gets students to find out information equipped with an old camera phone. He played some videos that some of his students took using these phones. The great thing about this was the amount of learning that was going on while students were using equipment they already own. If you look at even a very basic mobile phone these days – it allows so much communication opportunities. One of Bernie’s examples was an assignment he gave to his students, where he asked them to find out who Adam Curry was. The great thing about this seemingly random question is that this guy was so influential to the course these media students were studying. The students had to go around interviewing each other using a video camera on an old mobile phone and present their final answer on low-spec video. Even writing this a week later, I still remember who Adam Curry is! What sort of learner does that make me?
After the first keynotes and a busy coffee, it was time for the workshops. I was giving one on Twitter, which I have podcasted. I just got a load of people signed up to Twitter and showed them how to do a couple of things at it. I tried to convince them of its worth in education. I know that some of them are still tweeting! Before all that, I sat in on Anne McMorrough’s (Twitter name @annemmcm) about “Life in the Digital Fast Lane”. In this workshop, Anne questioned who the new teachers of today are. Who is leading who? She argued that teachers are learning as much from children as they are from us. I loved the fact that her presentation used one of the tools that she and her class are using Storybird. Storybird is a brilliant tool for creating stories and sharing them. Anne told us about a project she is involved with where transition year students are writing stories for primary school pupils. Anne’s children are reading the stories and critiquing them. It’s a wonderful link between first and second level where both sets of students are learning important skills. We also looked briefly at Microsoft’s excellent Photostory 3 and we watched Anne’s Junior Infant Class telling us about all the Web 2.0 tools they use. Their favourite was Skype. To show us why, Anne had arranged a live Skype interview with a colleague of hers from Doncaster, England, and he told the audience about how he uses Skype in his class.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get an opportunity to see another workshop that day as I had a couple of meetings and an interview with the conference organisers, which I hope will be uploaded to the web.
The final part of the day was a capstone talk from Mark Little, the former RTE correspondent. Mark has started his own news service, Storyful.com, which looks like it may transform how people report and receive news. Mark made a brave decision to leave RTE. He said that part of his decision came from a Twitter message during the elections in Iran. Mark gave some interesting examples of how his new news service was going to work and I can’t wait until the service kicks off.
James Greensdale, the MC for the day, did a super job alongside a fantastic team consisting of far too many people to list here. On a final note, it was interesting to see how from a non-educational perspective, Mark Little reiterated what all the day’s education speakers were saying.
The world is changing. Communication is key to this change. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has wisdom.
The Wisdom of the Crowd was a timely and accurate theme for this conference and congratulations to all the crowd who had the wisdom to organise such a fantastic day.
