I attended four workshops at the Learning @ Schools conference. The first was exploring the 'E-Competencies'. These are set of competencies students, and teachers, need to learn or develop to allow them to work effectively and safely in an 'E' environment. Because 'E-learning' should be integrated into all areas of the curriculum then I believe the 'E-Competencies' should be explicitly planned for and taught in context in a similar to how we integrate the Key Competencies from the NZ Curriculum.
The 'E-competencies' identified at the work shop were:
eAwareness
Technological Literacy
Media Literacy
Digital Literacy
Informational Literacy
As a staff I think we should analyze each of the 'E-Competencies', develop some key indicators or elements and look at we can integrate them into our every day teaching when we are working in an 'E' environment.
Another question we need to ask ourselves as a staff is what new technology should we be looking to invest in. The introduction of the net-books has been a great success, so where to next? A part of this conversation could also be whether or not we still need a computer suite or is there a better way the resources in this suite could be distributed? If we acknowledge that e-learning should be integrated into all aspects of the curriculum and we need to develop our curriculum to integrate e-tools then is having as suite still the best way to support the curriculum. I still hold the belief that we need to develop 'E' contributors not 'E' consumers, (thanks Point England for that thinking), so the types of tools we buy/lease need meet this need.
