July 21, 2006 – Trevor Doerksen

I truly hadn’t realized the connectedness of everyone these days until Trevor discussed the phenomenal amount of technology people have access to. I was rather shocked when he said that a child’s iPod can do more for education than Alberta’s SuperNet. Having used the SuperNet to teach my physics 20 class through videoconferencing, I was quite amazed at what we were able to do. Trevor has a bias against standardizing systems and the SuperNet but as a person who must work within the educational restraints of the system, I think we are doing a pretty good job.

Trevor described four “C’s” dealing with technology and education. The first is communication; that the students want to communicate and feel connected with others. The have the ability to use the technology and so we should build on that. The second is to collaborate: work with others (information is cheap, so use it to work together on projects. The third is to create: creating things builds community with the students and a connectedness to the whatever they are creating. I really appreciated his comment about anything with a blank page is a really good learning activity as it requires the students to add their own information to it. The fourth is crisis: this describes the low enrolment in post secondary, the need for webconferencing versus videoconferencing (much cheaper and more user friendly), and get rid of filters. The best advice Trevor had for us was if we had the opportunity to look forward, then we should do that since the technology will always move forward.