No matter who you are and where you are, you are affected by technology in many ways. Especially solution seeking age in education can not just stand away from technological developments and tools. The essential question is: How and why we integrate technology in our traditional minded classrooms in Turkey? That must be answered and I feel lucky to have a deeper understanding now thanks to "Educational Technology Summit".
It was not possible to attend all the classes, still I try to summarize key points from my view of point.
1- Perceptual Differences
2-Wisdom & Assessment
3- Personal Learning Networks
4- Paragogy
5-Connectivism
6- Myths
1- Perceptual differences ( Photos are from Steeve Wheeler's presentation)
We have to consider that even now there is a huge difference in perceptual understanding. That means it is useless to provide surface learning by only direct instruction. Strategic learning is vital since we can not describe future. To decrease the gap in terms of perceptions between young and "old" generations, it is suggested to provide conditions that they can learn, not to "teach" them things. Therefore, rich learning environments must be provided including technology.
2-Wisdom & Assessment
Wisdom is the most difficult thing for assessment especially when a teacher assessing OF learning instead of assessing FOR learning. However, considering the future of education, even wisdom may not be adequate to comprehend 21st century skills.
In Turkey's circumstances, standardized tests make difficult to provide and evaluate wisdom.
3-Personal Learning Networks
We have to accept that many of us have that kind of windows for learning in many cases. As for students, they are more tend to use computers and internet to explore the world. Moreover, when they get a connection with somebody which has connections with other people, then a very complex network with many different people all around the world appears. So memorizing is no more valuable. Knowing where to find information when needed is the new way of thinking things.
4- Paragogy
Paragogy is proposed by Corneli and Danoff to characterize the critical study and practice of peer learning. Paragody is dealing with analysing and co-creating the educational environments as a whole.
There are five principles of paragogy:
1- Context as a decentered center
2- Meta-learning as a font of knowledge
3- Peers are equals but different
4-Learning is distributed and nonlinear
5- Realize the dream, and wake up!
5- Connectivism
In Ziya Selçuk's presentation, one of the highlighted issues is that lack of an educational theory in Turkish education system. It is mentioned that connectivism could be conceptual framework of this theory. George Siemens who introduced this new theory of learning indicated that "knowledge is growing exponentially so we can no longer personally acquire knowledge but we derive our competence from forming connections".
Karen Stephenson also states that “ Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people.”
6- Myhts
Kürşat Çağıltay gave also a great talk. Like in his example of learning, I made new connections between my neurons. He mentioned about four myths which are commonly known as truths in education. They are:
1- Digital Locals, X, Y, Z generations, Multitaskers
Human brain is last evolved 30.000 years ago which means if we bring a person from that time, there will not be any difference in terms of learning comparing with people from 21st century. Therefore, all these things are myths. For instance, "multitaskers" are not capable solving a Maths problem and painting at the mean time.
2- Learning Styles and Right and Left Brained People
3- Learners can decide the content and control their own learning
4- Learning Pyramid
You can visit the web page http://www.egitimteknolojilerizirvesi.com/MainPage
