Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

The last few days I’ve been in Switzerland, home of cheese, cuckoo clocks and watches, or at least that’s what you might believe if you accepted the stereotype. I had been invited to speak at the Swiss Group of International Schools (SGIS) Annual Conference, on the topic, “Blogging: taking student-adopted technology and using it in the classroom”, a topic I’d submitted back more than 6 months ago. The conference was held at the American School in Leysin, a small ski resort town about two hours train journey from Geneva. On Thursday afternoon, I travelled along the northern side of the lake and via cog railway up the mountain, impeccably on time as you would expect in Switzerland. Since my session was not until Saturday afternoon, it enabled me to attend some of the sessions and meet up with international educators and friends I had met at other conferences over the years. In total there were over 200 teachers from all over Switzerland, and some from farther afield had made the journey.

Often when submit topics for a conference, I submit two. One reflects my current somewhat half-baked views on that topic with the very reason that it challenges me to define and develop them into something a bit more concrete. The other, something I’ve spoken on before, that I want to take further. Then I let the gods decide! The difficulty only comes when the organising committee decide they like both, which can mean a lot of work! In this case, they chose the former.

At the time, I was wrestling in my own mind about the notion of taking a popular pastime of students (fad or not) and harnessing it as a means of educating learners in a classroom context. We often do this as teachers (one of my school memories was in 1971 when my science teacher did a lesson on the physics of ‘clackers’. A fad toy of the time, which consisted of two large marbles attached at either end to a sturdy string with a ring in the centre. You would put your finger in the ring allowing the marbles to hang below. The idea was to get the two balls tapping (or clacking if you prefer) against each other by pulling up on the ring lightly. Once you got the hang of it, you could get them going faster and faster until they were smacking each other above and below your hand in a stunning arc. They were soon banned as the glass shattered in some instances causing injury). By doing so we attempt to make connections with our audience so that the impact and relevance of the learning can be more clearly seen. I’ve often wondered whether this technique was entirely fair on learners being rather gratuitous and opportunistic. Was blogging was yet another example of this? It therefore forced me to examine more closely the pedagogical aspects of blogging. If it was just another way of getting learners to write by latching on to the fact that children were blogging outside school, it would be disappointing and might even spoil an enjoyable pastime for some. If it was more than that, I would be interested in thinking it through. This meant examining more closely how ordinary teachers were using blogs and whether there was a pedagogical progression between techniques being used. It was this that I wanted to explore in preparing for the session.

If interested, look out for my further posting on the session.