Vision, BLOGS & Teaching

My recent trip to the European Centre of Modern Languages in Graz was both inspiring, informative and eye-opening. As part of the organising team of the BLOGS project, my job was to introduce the concept of blogging to teachers of French and English representing 23 nations from around Europe. On return to their home classrooms they will use the custom-designed blogging platform with their language pupils to communicate and collaborate online with pupils from the other nations, so developing an authentic community of language learners from around Europe.

That was the objective of the workshop and it seems that folks are already using the platform in schools. However, for me the really interesting part of the whole workshop was observing the sometimes disparate visions of teachers for teaching and learning in their subjects. No matter what techno-babble there appears on the surface of any educational conference or workshop, listening to teachers talk about how they might implement a particular piece of technology at the chalkface and overcome any associated problems, always exposes undercurrents of vision. Sometimes these undercurrents are refreshing like a teaching-and-learning jacuzzi for the 21st century. At other times though, the undertow is dangerous, pulling towards a 19th century learning whirlpool of spoonfed teacher dependency.

Put another way – what a teacher fundamentally believes about teaching and learning will drive both attitude and action in the use of any given technology in the classroom. Encouraging teachers to use technology is only half the battle. Getting teachers to adopt technology to inspire new heights in the teaching and learning of students is only achieved by delving below the surface into the murky waters of vision.

The ECML workshop was no different in this regard but I suppose the sheer variety of 23 teaching contexts, each with their own cultural and curricular idiosyncracies, really highlighted for me different approaches to teaching and learning. Some of the discussions in the meeting times really helped my reassess and clarify for myself what I actually believe about the role of teachers and students in teaching and learning in the 21st century. By far the most powerful interactions, however, happened outside the official meetings over a beer or two when people really got talking about what they do and why. Chatting with Ewan McIntosh for example was genuinely inspiring, enough indeed to get me willingly blogging again