Change happens to all of us, if we wish it or not. I guess the challenge for us is to harness that change for our own benefit.When I met my lovely wife Jo, she hated computers, in fact she didn't even own a TV. Maybe that's too harsh, she just didn't understand how they fitted into her idea of what learning was.
I used to step nervously into her classroom, and try to gently push her around to seeing how ICT could make a difference for her and her students. Today, she maintains a class blog (and it's a great one too!), is an expert on multiple intelligences and inquiry learning, and is using a wide range of ICT tools to support her classroom programme. In fact, I almost fell on my face when I went to bed one night to find her reading a copy of Interact magazine intently...and it was her copy!
I've been working on our cluster exit milestone for the past few weeks, and it has been amazing to reflect on the massive changes that schools in our cluster have undergone during the contract period.
When we started the contract, we had schools with older pc's, one interactive whiteboard in the whole cluster, some digital cameras and video equipment. There was a wide range of understandings of 21st century learning, inquiry and thinking skills.
And now? Huge...not just in hardware, and the use of that in classrooms, but in the understandings of teachers. Schools that have changed the way that learning is perceived and facilitated. The walls in our cluster walls have turned if not transparent, then quite translucent, with the understanding that learning is not something that is 'done' to us in a classroom, but something that is everywhere and whenever.
You can see some of the 'learning journeys' from our cluster schools on our cluster wiki, and also you can read through some of the action research that our teachers have undertaken this year.
It is exciting times, our contract is coming to an end, but the cluster continues. I look forward to seeing what will happen in the future.
