SITE Conference

I recently attended the SITE Conference in San Diego, California.  SITE stands for the Society for the Information Technology and Teacher Education and it is one of the biggest conferences in this field.  Chip Bruce and I had submitted a paper based on the Digital Literacy in Primary Schools (DLIPS) project.
I attended many other sessions and it was very useful to catch up with developments across the field.  One thing that struck me is the use (perhaps overuse) of short abbreviations to describe areas of interest.  Thus a session might be described as dealing with TPAC for SET in K-12 – decoded this means Mhisra and Koehler’s (2006) Technological, Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK – worth a future blog!) for Science Engineering and Technology (SET) subjects in primary and secondary schools (K-12).
The presentation associated with our paper is posted below.  The basic idea is an exploration of the connection between learning as inquiry and new digital media.  Essentially we argue for a new approach to pedagogy based on the Inquiry Cycle and making the most of digital media capabilities to initiate,  sustain and enhance that cycle. 
It’s not so much that the vision of learning as inquiry is new – it is in fact a well established idea but that the new media of today make it possible to realistically achieve in a school setting.  See my previous blogs on An Organic Approach to Teaching and How Digital Media Make it Possible and my discussion and links on the Inquiry Cycle in my Why We Blog post for further insights.