Yes it needs to be based on research!!!

The research that we are doing is from the McRel society which reviews research and lets you know what instructional strategies and concepts will imprve student learning. They have practical strategies that will work.

Couple with this the closely related topics of Dimensions of Learning and Habits of Mind and you are starting to devlop some serious pedagogy that points at teaching that is based on research.

My challenge is to see hoe this fits with the ICT Curriculum and how ICT can enhance this pedagogy.

Some ideas about Laptop classes

This is from Pamela Livingston's Blog
But I do believe laptops can empower teachers and students to do better work, to get to higher-level thinking ... But if every learner (including teachers who are learners as well) has a digital assistant/laptop (thanks again Prakash Nair for this idea) the time required to get to real thinking is shortened.
Of course, this does mean teachers need to consider how they are framing their projects so that the result is thinking and not regurgitating. But master teachers have always known this.

My department

I think I need to set up my department so that we have:

• Curriculum direction
• ICT professional development direction
• IT support direction

I need to look at curriculum direction in the school and analyse what works for them, what is working for us, where do we want to be and how can we get there.

With ICT professional development I need to look for a model that will work in our environment. Do I look for a model that has worked at the school, look for one that is popular, or look wider a field. Some articles I want to look at are the papers published at the ACEC2006 conference and also the Ryan Daniels article has some interesting directions.

I think I need to start small scale and build momentum. This will suit my personality, help build my profile, confidence in myself peoples confidence in me and let me learn lessons on the way that won't impact badly on a large number of people.

I think IT support goes hand in hand with ICT professional development. If people can not use and feel confident that the technology will work then they won't use it. We need to build a safe, secure, reliable and usable infrastructure. Build it and they will come.

Making decisions

A process for making organisational decisions needs to be found. The one that the articles are implying is:

What is the need of the community based on data
What is the best way to fulfill this need based on research
Develop a plan that includes a review phase
Get people on board and go go go
Monitor and gather data as you go go go
At your review point consolidate the data
Evaluate your data, look at new research and meet the needs of the community again

Ray Daniels has a thought provoking article at:
The 2056 school: knowledge management, nature and Socratic thinking

He is suggesting a vision of the 2056 school and the strategies that his team are using and what educational research it is based on.

The one point that is made somewhere is that some educators are like old medicine men. We make decisions based on what we think is best. We need to make decisions based on research, on the body of knowledge that is out there so that we can make informed decisions.

Is this the best way to be guiding our students. Do we develop them to be future citizens that make informed decisions based on research? Or is this me be a medicine man again and follow my own thoughts and not basing it on any hard evidence???