Mr.J’s Blog!

Increasingly I have begun to get a little tired of the use of the ‘Web 2.0’ catch-phrase.  It’s not that Web 2.0 tools are not great – in fact many of them are.  However, I also think that many of them are not really that useful in an educational context.  Often they expose students to unmoderated environments teeming with inappropriate advertising and dubious content.  For me, it is all about engagement.

One of the primary tasks in evaluating any Web 2.0 content should be a determination about whether the use of the tool will serve to enhance the engagement of students within the context of the course.  I currently have a student teacher who has been teaching a number of my classes and I find myself using the word ‘engagement’ an awful lot in discussions I am having with him.  Without me knowing it, it has become my ‘word’ of 2009 (at least until I change my mind)!  Watching someone else teach my classes has made me wonder how engaging the tools and delivery methods I use are?  Are forums engaging to students?  If used in the right way, with the right amount of prompting and moderation – absolutely.  As are wikis, blogs, podcasting, online collaboration and many other Web 2.0 tools.  However, the byline to last year’s conference (which struck a chord with me then and continues to), is particularly relevant.  Technology alone cannot save us.  The use of technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive.

Take Twitter for example.  Now I know that there are many of you who use Twitter and love it.  I was open to using it and have played around with it for a few months now.  However, I struggle to come up with an educational application for it – especially one that would engage students in just the sorts of ways that I would like to.  I remain to be convinced and perhaps someone out there can set me straight?  Flickr is cool but I rarely use it in class.  Google Maps and street view are also a lot of fun and have certainly fueled some good IT ethics discussions – but again I struggle to find an application for my own classes. 

I certainly welcome any nifty ideas or resources that anyone cares to move in my direction – and despite how the paragraphs above sound, I will give anything a go.  Did I mention that it is all about engagement?

VITTA’s ICT week has just concluded as I sit down to write this – and so it is probably a good opportunity to reflect on the past week, the ICT Careers Expo and the state of the ICT industry.

ICT week is now in its second year and has gone from strength to strength.  It has now become a National event and the ICT Careers Expo (as the flagship event of the week) continues to be successful.  Many of you have gone out of your way to organize events for the week and have either promoted the Expo or attended with your students.  However, this week is just one of the ways in which we can redress the recent downturn in our enrolments. 

One of the key messages that we wanted to deliver during the Expo was the state of the job market.  Many students are not aware of the opportunities that exist.  Of more concern is the attitude of parents towards the industry – and many of them still believe that the industry is suffering the aftereffects of the ‘dot-com’ crash. 

In Victoria, the ICT industry now generates over $24 billion dollars per annum.  It exports over $1.8 billion and employs over 85,000 people.  Nationally, the figures are much more impressive than this.  The growth of the industry is evidenced by an increase in the number of ICT jobs in Victoria – which has grown by over 40% in the last four years (over 24,000 new jobs).  I have these figures available (together with the national figures) in a presentation available on the VITTA website for you to download – which I would encourage all of you to do.

Slowly but surely we are breaking through the stereotype of the nerdy guy sitting in a basement glued to an LCD monitor for many hours of the day.  The reality is that the ICT industry is incredibly broad, spanning most other industries and encompassing a wide range of specialties.  Add to this the possibility of world travel, great pay, flexibility, a wealth of job opportunities.  You don’t have to act like a used car sales-person to sell this to your students – in fact, it’s amazing that they are not beating down our doors!