What's this all about?

Welcome! My name is Richard Lambert and I'm a Primary Teacher from Victoria in Australia. The idea of this blog is to help support teachers of both Primary and Secondary students in their quest to be better teachers in the digital age.

I hope we are moving towards a place where we can take the 'e' out of 'e-learning'. That is, to talk about 'e-learning' as distinct from 'normal' learning is becoming more and more ridiculous by the day.

As long as the 'e' remains in 'e-learning' it is like a big advertisement that as teachers we just don't get where our students are at. It is one of many similar such phrases that we use as educators that work to completely alienate us from our students. Would anyone under the age of 18 go around thinking of what they do everyday of the week as 'e-learning'? Of course not!

Using technology to learn things or produce things is no longer new, distinct or different.

Once I got so frustrated with the inability of my grade 6 class to complete a simple task on time I told them about how easy they had it being able to simply log on to the internet to find information. I related to them how I use to have to get on my bike and ride down to the library to do research when I had to complete an assignment for school. There was stunned silence. I knew that this idea would be foreign to them, but just how amazed they were at this story from my childhood really caught me off guard.

These kids had never been anywhere but the internet when they had a personal need to obtain information, and were unlikely to ever need to unless it was specifically required of them in a school setting.

That is, the only place these kids hadn't used technology to learn something or produce something was at school!

Until we fully and properly understand that, for the students we teach, 'e-learning' is simply 'learning', then we must be failing to fully and properly prepare them for the world they will need to function within as adults.

This blog is all about my life as a Leading Teacher and ICT Coordinator at my school, the things I am doing in that role, and the things I am learning as I go along. I'll be talking about digital storytelling, blogging, making wikis, podcasts, vodcasts, class websites and so on. I am also a part time author and this blog will follow the progress of a book I have written with one of my collegues as it nears publication through the Curriculum Corporation.

The sharing of knowledge in blogs, wikis and similar types of ways is a fantastic device to improve our practice as educators. But more importantly, using these tools to make us more intelligent and knowledgeable in our everyday life puts us in the world of our students. It allows us to properly understand them, model for them, and teach them the skills they must have to operate in the modern world.

What's this all about?

Welcome! My name is Richard Lambert and I'm a Primary Teacher from Victoria in Australia. The idea of this blog is to help support teachers of both Primary and Secondary students in their quest to be better teachers in the digital age.

I hope we are moving towards a place where we can take the 'e' out of 'e-learning'. That is, to talk about 'e-learning' as distinct from 'normal' learning is becoming more and more ridiculous by the day.

As long as the 'e' remains in 'e-learning' it is like a big advertisement that as teachers we just don't get where our students are at. It is one of many similar such phrases that we use as educators that work to completely alienate us from our students. Would anyone under the age of 18 go around thinking of what they do everyday of the week as 'e-learning'? Of course not!
Using technology to learn things or produce things is no longer new, distinct or different.

Once I got so frustrated with the inability of my grade 6 class to complete a simple task on time I told them about how easy they had it being able to simply log on to the internet to find information. I related to them how I use to have to get on my bike and ride down to the library to do research when I had to complete an assignment for school. There was stunned silence. I knew that this idea would be foreign to them, but just how amazed they were at this story from my childhood really caught me off guard.

These kids had never been anywhere but the internet when they had a personal need to obtain information, and were unlikely to ever need to unless it was specifically required of them in a school setting.

That is, the only place these kids hadn't used technology to learn something or produce something was at school!

Until we fully and properly understand that, for the students we teach, 'e-learning' is simply 'learning', then we must be failing to fully and properly prepare them for the world they will need to function within as adults.

This blog is all about my life as a Leading Teacher and ICT Coordinator at my school, the things I am doing in that role, and the things I am learning as I go along. I'll be talking about digital storytelling, blogging, making wikis, podcasts, vodcasts, class websites and so on. I am also a part time author and this blog will follow the progress of a book I have written with one of my collegues as it nears publication through the Curriculum Corporation.

The sharing of knowledge in blogs, wikis and similar types of ways is a fantastic way to improve our practice as educators.

But more importantly, using these tools to make us more intelligent and knowledgeable in our everyday life puts us in the world of our students. It allows us to understand them, model for them, and teach them the skills they must have to operate in the modern world.