Professional Learning and Leadership
The fifth and final visitor led presentation came from Cathie Howe (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathiehowe) who spoke to us about her work as Professional Learning and Leadership Coordinator, NSW DEC, & Manager Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre http://www.macict.edu.au/ .
As we have come to expect from a Colloquium, we learned of another example of knowledge networking and digital innovation which is impacting on the skills of teachers throughout New South Wales. Cathie’s work is centred on meeting the needs of C21t learners by improving teaching and learning in the connected age. She shared this image to summarise this philosophy:
As with all of the colloquiums we have experienced, this presentation also revisited concepts from the first subject in our course (INF 530) such as future work skills which is the motivation behind MacICT.
(Institute for the Future, 2011)
Cathie’s presentation was delivered with enthusiasm and she was happy to digress in order to answer our questions. The fact that the colloquium continued beyond the allocated time slot was testimony that she had engaged our class with her material.
Despite Internet connectivity issues making themselves known in every session in a range of ways which were annoying rather than terminal, these sessions were a demonstration of the potential for anywhere, anytime learning which was different to the methodology of a flipped classroom or Khan Academy. The latter examples are more akin to sage on the stage teaching while our colloquiums have seen one or more presenters engage with people in real-time and through oral and text connectivity.
Plenty of food for thought in terms of applications to “classroom” teaching where the room has no walls!
Thanks are due to all the presenters for the semester. Thanks too to Julie for finding such a range of fascinating presenters to further our educational program.
References
Howe, C. [Host] (2015, September 24). Colloquium 5.
Institute for the Future. (2011). Future Work Skills 2020. Retrieved October 4, 2015, from Institute for the Future: http://www.iftf.org/futureworkskills/
Macquarie University; Department of Education, New South Wales. (n.d.). MacICT. Retrieved October 4, 2015, from MacICT Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre: http://www.macict.edu.au/
Margaret Simkin 
Thanks Margaret, I agree. Cathie’s presentation was really interesting. I envy her ability to co-ordinate all the members of that team and ensure that they are meeting the needs of teachers and students. I was impressed with the things they achieved and how they grew the business, making it openly available to so many people. Also interesting is how they are moving forward and the focus now is on future pedagogies and design thinking. I have since followed up on reading about design thinking and felt a bit ashamed I hadn’t discovered this before. cheers, Tracey.
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I took Ewan McIntosh’s subject last year which focused on design thinking and design for learning. It was amazing – full on and so interesting. I don’t think you need to feel ashamed – those who don’t bother about learning should be in that boat! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
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