Last week I attended the Australian College of Educators Conference in Geelong, Victoria. Mark Pesce gave an outstanding keynote that stressed that the main agent of change in educational institutions are the students.
"A spectre is haunting the classroom, the spectre of change. Nearly a century of institutional forms, initiated at the height of the Industrial Era, will change irrevocably over the next decade. The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system. Within just the last five years, both power and control have swung so quickly and so completely in their favor that it’s all any of us can do to keep up. We live in an interregnum, between the shift in power and its full actualization: These wacky kids don’t yet realize how powerful they are......." (Mark Pesce, Keynote for the Digital Fair of the Australian College of Educators, Geelong Grammar School, 16 April 2009)
This is a very interesting and thought provoking talk, and well worth spending an hour with it. GREG
"Teaching is but an illusion ... only learning is real"
