How to Breathe

I thought I'd do an opinion piece today. There is something that has been bothering me for quite some time, and I'd like to express my thoughts on it.

I have an issue with the word "e-learning". I was wondering at what point we are going to ditch the "e" in front of "learning". I assume "e" stands for electronic. Did we have "p-learning" before that, when kids used pens for learning? It seems, to some, at least, the tool that is used to make the learning happen is considered more important than the learning itself. People (like myself) who are considered accomplished in "e-learning" should be considered first and foremost as great teachers who happen to use technology quite a bit to enable the learning.

If you truly want to integrate technology into your teaching, your first step is to stop thinking of it as something separate, and start thinking of it as a way to achieve your educational goals.

This leads to the next question, "What are my educational goals?". The old chestnut of Alice in Wonderland comes to mind...

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

In other words - if you don't know what you want to achieve in your classroom/school, it doesn't matter how or if you use technology.

For me, my educational goal has been personalised learning - students engaged in learning matched to their own interests and abilities. My interest in "e-learning" exists purely because it can be used to realise my goal of personalised learning. If bananas could achieve it, I'd be into "b-learning". But as it turns out, computers, and the internet, are rather good at realising personalised learning if used correctly. Here are some examples of how I use technology to personalise the learning of my students.

Personalising Literacy using Technology

What do I need for learning to be personalised for me? Well, first of all, I need motivation and authentic purpose. What is the motivation and authentic purpose for me to do that most basic of things, and write? Let's look at a rather mundane example.... a blog post by one of our students.



Now this student is a fantastic writer. She's also very passionate about writing. In a school the size of ours, there are only a handful of students with her passion and ability in writing. If she writes in an exercise book, she has a small audience, and can only receive feedback from a small number of people - her teacher, perhaps a small number of classmates, or if she takes the work home, her parents.

However, by publishing her work on a blog, she now has an audience as large as she likes - in this case, she's published her work on our Writer's Club, which has students sharing their writing from five schools around the state. Potentially, she could be sharing her writing across the country or world. She can inspire or be inspired by people she's never met before, but share her ability and passion. She can receive feedback from the same people, fueling her motivation and giving her a greater authentic purpose for her writing. In this way, technology has helped to personalise the learning for her, in a way that would be impossible with pen and paper.

Personalising Numeracy using Technology

Differentiation is an important part of personalising learning. Students not only need to be working on things that match their interests, but also things that are in their "zone of proximal development" - otherwise, the dart board is 2 feet away (boring) or 200 feet away (frustratingly impossible). Our classroom, like others, has a broad range of learners, and we use technology to give instruction to our students at their own level - so here is a video I created to show how to solve algebraic equations, which is a skill called for at the end of Year 7 in Victoria; despite the fact that I teach grades 5 and 6, there are students who are able to work at this level (and higher).


Students also use technology not merely access instruction, but also to represent their understandings of mathematics, through traditional 'written' form, physical models, computer games, while recording their voice and articulating their thinking. Here is a montage of some of our students' videos.


Now, if I had ten teachers to address the ten different ability levels I have in my classroom, I wouldn't need the technology. Similarly, if I had time to listen to each student explain to me their understanding of the maths they have been learning, and if I could somehow record what they say, I wouldn't need the technology either. However, neither are feasible, and so I rely on computers to personalise my students' learning.

Personalising Science using Technology

Real scientists investigate questions they don't know the answer to. I know, because I used to be a scientist. So there.

To personalise science for students, they need to be working on questions that interest them. For example, some of our students are interested in finding the most effective way to kick a football. Others are interested in finding out what affects animal populations.

Now, my expertise as their teacher can only take them so far in these investigations. If you've ever seen me attempt to kick a football, you'd know that my knowledge of such things is pretty limited. And my expertise in understanding what affects animal populations is limited to eating them. So, to support my students in their personalised questions, I use technology to allow my students to call on a suite of 'virtual experts' to provide depth and authenticity to their investigations.



Clockwise from top left : Andrew, a graphic artists/teacher in Apollo Bay; Tim, an electrical engineer in Newcastle; Fiona, a biology teacher in Bendigo; Geoff, a biomechanist in Melbourne; Sarah, a biology teacher in Bendigo; Pat, a software developer in Canberra; Krystal, an immunologist in Melbourne; and Chris, a chemist in Florida.

If I could have these people in my classroom, all day every day, for whenever the students had a question, I wouldn't need the technology. This isn't feasible, so technology allows these people to enrich my students' learning.

I'm not suggesting you should simply do what you do now, but using computers. I'm suggesting you need to think about what your ultimate classroom looks like. Then think about how technology can help bring that about. Then, finally, we can go from "e-learning" to just "learning". Unless, of course, "b-learning" comes along and throws a banana in the works...

This post's blog title comes from a track on Depressive Art's album, "Bye Bye Dear Everything", available for download on Jamendo.