Nancy Law keynote

Nancy Law

• “Oversold & Underused” (2002) American critiques of ed tech, cannot change teaching
• “Rethinking education in the age of technology” (2008) can education change teaching? in public basic education, technology is not very useful, maybe in elite or higher education

Re-envisioning undergraduate education - 2010-9-20 at HKU. C9+1

• make undergrad more interdisciplinary
• HKU undergraduate curriculum reform (all of HK is changing, from September 2012)
• 240 credits, standard undergrad courses are 6 credits
• “Adding wings to caterpillars does not create butterflies. It creates awkward and dysfunctional caterpillars. Butterflies are created through transformation.” Stephanie Marshall

What are the biggest problems you have met in educational technology? Lot's of problems, but creating an innovation that can last for more than two years, when you are not there to push it forward, is perhaps the most difficult.

You have to take an ecological approach to make the “foreign” innovation fit into the local context - this requires a second process of innovation and creativity.

It might be easy to get students to discuss - now there are so many platforms that encourage discussion, but if you want it to be a structured discussion that is useful to learning, it becomes much more difficult. Requires involvement/support from many levels.

“Educational Innovations Beyond Technology - Nurturing Leadership and Establishing Learning Organizations” (Springer) - Law, Yuen, Fox. 100 case studies from around the world.

Metaphor of new trees that grow flowers much faster, but the butterflies are not ready to spread the seeds yet - an innovation cannot survive alone in an environment that does not adapt to it.

The traditional model of innovation - research, prototype, refine, implementation – perhaps this worked earlier, when the pace of development was not as quick, now we have to take into consideration all surrounding factors.

The bigger an innovation, the more destructive to the existing environment. The most difficult thing to change is evaluation systems.

The more creative the teacher is, the less sustainable is the innovation? because it will not work as well with other teachers?

Heargreaves “Education epidemic: transforming secondary schools through innovation networks”

5 criterias for ecological sustainability of educational innovation (very different from traditional step-wise model of innovation)

• need to have clear policy and pressure that conforms with the innovation
• enough support and resources for training in the innovation
• professional network - it is lonely and dangerous to be an innovator, needs support and encouragement from others
• architecture for learning - organizational learning
• educational technology should be the object, medium, basis of innovation – co-evolution, developing technology together with the theory, and the users

A new obligatory class in HK high schools, no curriculum, to train inquiry

• policy support
• received financial support from HKU, including support for teachers' time to participate.
• create network for teachers to participate
• weekly meetings, teachers critique the development of the software, help each others prepare for classes