The Digital Classroom – a podcast from ACEC 2010

Back in April I keynoted the Australian Council for Educational Computing (ACEC 2010) in Melbourne, Australia. After the keynote I had a tap on the shoulder from a lovely young man who works for a show called “FutureTense” on the ABC National Radio network asking if he could record a short interview for his show.

I think it came out pretty well – listen and you’ll hear all kinds of ideas about “The Digital Classroom” from me and others including Helen Otway, Chris Rogers, Alan November, Andy Penman, and Michelle Selinger. I especially liked opening the show by talking about how technology is not dehumanizing us as it’s often depicted. Rather technology allows a greater sense of community with people around the world, and how this can now include young people in an unprecedented way.

Sylvia

 

Off to Qatar

This week I’m off on a new adventure – I’m an invited speaker at the ICT Conference 2009: Exploring ICT in Education in Doha, Qatar. I’ve never worked in this part of the world and I’m looking forward to meeting new people from Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. They’ve asked me to talk about games in education and of course, student voice and student involvement in technology integration to support education.

Qatar seems like a fascinating place, I’ve read up a bit about it (Wikpedia has a nice article) and I’m looking forward to learning more. The first thing I learned is that I didn’t even know how to pronounce it – I assumed it was “kah-TAR”, and it’s actually more like a cross between “gutter” and “cutter” although I’m sure that’s not exactly right either.

The country has a focus on education as their path to the future; these days looking beyond their oil revenues seems like a really smart policy.

Sylvia