I live in the largest centre outside of the capital of South Australia. Adelaide is about 450km away.  That’s a 4.5 hour drive if you don’t stop. I’ve been teaching in rural and regional areas for my 30 year career and a consistent statement I heard and often felt during that period of time is that the decision makers worked as if South Australia’s border with Victoria was at the Toll Gate. The past five years has seen PD for me that would easily defeat the sum total of all PD prior to that time in both quantity and quality. I could possibly stick in a multiplier to quantify it and its all been free.  I’ve not needed to travel and that’s significant for rural folk. I’ve been independent of the capital city. If you are reading this, then the method is probably no surprise to you and may in fact be old news.

I’ve immersed myself into blogging, Delicious, Diigo, Linkin, email lists, RSS, Twitter, Ning, Edna, Facebook, Orkut, forums, ….. I get my information in smallish chunks which makes it easy to digest and has put me in touch and in conversation with experts in the fields I am interested in locally, nationally and globally.  I’m an expert to others in return. It’s flexible. It is not a problem to vary the degree of immersion and even work in fits and starts. It’s been great for professional networking, hobbies and links with industry.  In many ways it has replaced what a professional organisation used to offer me.

Is it any wonder that I’m over the moon about the new SACE Research project then?  What a great subject and in view of the way the world is heading as a consequence of the ICT led Information Revolution it is also very timely. Having such a subject points strongly to a notion that is gaining more traction in the education world and that is that the “pipe is more important than the contents”. (Almost as good an argument starter in a group of teachers as “God doesn’t exist”) It is how we access, process and use information that makes the difference and equips students for life long learning. Use being the operative word. I am thinking that it possibly should be the only subject that we have at school.

BUT there is a snake in the grass and its poised to strike. Filter is its name and Information Nazi is its game. It is Kerries recent posts that have drawn me into this filtering fracas once again after making at least one comment about it over the past years?   I suspect that these broken, primitive, clunky, chunky filters will be one of the main obstacles to making the Research Project a success.  The filter obstructs access to most, if not all, of the things, that I listed above that have been so good for me, that can really make the Research project tick and because students will be doing different things, even the newly acquired teacher filter override will be too clumsy to use effectively with a larger group of students.  Where will that leave things?  Running to Web1.0 and books and a huge opportunity lost. In the past some people have reacted to my criticism of the filter indicating that it is not such a problem and that all I have to do is be more proactive in unblocking things…..that will be the answer they say.  I guess that is fine if all the kids are doing the same thing and it is important for some obscure reason that they access the same information.  Ha….now they will, by the very nature of the Research Project subject, be doing different things.  Now what?  Mr Filterer…..are you listening?  If you must be here then do your protection thing properly and stop being such a stupid obstruction.

I wrote a post on my blog this weekend.

Nothing too unusual about that – for me. I also attended a Professional Development day earlier in the week along with about 140 other educators from at least four local schools. We were there attending a great day with Mark Treadwell, traveling scholar, author and education consultant for the New Zealand education system. Mark is an acknowledged expert in the field of 21st Century Learning, brain research and curriculum design and therefore had a lot to offer us regular educators sitting there soaking in his message. He challenged us with plenty of thought provoking information – and many people were ready to apply his words to their practice, quoting his work as a form of pedagogical gospel.

Now I really, really liked what Treadwell had to say. In fact, it was the second time I’ve heard him speak. But unlike the vast, vast majority of his Monday audience, I don’t have to accept his words as total, unchangeable gospel just because he is in the well-known role of expert. Because I am an online educator, because I am connected, I am “Googleable”, because I have a PLN (Professional/Personal Learning Network) I have advantages over many of my colleagues. I can pose half formed thoughts around one of his propositions in written form, share them in a public forum (like this blog) and gain valuable pushback from colleagues all around the world. I get to filter my initial ideas back through my network to moderate, balance and mould an emerging viewpoint that may differ to the advice offered by the expert.

I’m not discounting the role of the expert. We need them. But through the use of a PLN, a self selected collection of colleagues in various systems, sectors, countries, stages of career using a selection of social media tools (blogs, wikis, twitter, podcasts, videos, bookmarking) can offer me greater counsel in tapping into the collective wisdom of many, many experts. After all, we all have expertise. and we have something that many experts don’t have (or only have a second hand experience of) and that is grassroots experience. That is the grey area where the expert’s boundaries intersect with our experience. It is true that we need critical skills to make this work in the “publish then filter” era but technology can be utilised knowingly to filter any ideas around education and learning.

No one person holds the key to learning success – not any more and for me, that is the true shift of the new Internet Based Education Paradigm that Mark referred to on Monday.

Image: Sue Waters http://aquaculturepda.edublogs.org/files/2008/12/plntool.jpg

Well, the CEGSA blog is finally up and running and will hopefully grow to be a focal point for discussion within our professional association. Your committee members will be regularly posting here bringing you items of interest, issues worthy of debate and breaking news. Think of this as a place where South Australian educators can gather to keep tabs of the ever changing world of educational technology.

So, add this blog to your Google Reader, your StartPage or your bookmarks and don’t be shy about joining the conversation.