Yes, I agree with you Val it was good for both groups to talk and it was good of the Framework to make it happen for the group.

I would like to encourage people to spend the time talking to both educators and IT support from within and outside their organisations. Fortunately with my position at the College, I talk closely with our IT support and am luck to also interact with IT staff from other Colleges and the Department. IT is important for us to listen to both viewpoints and reflect on the issues from the other persons situation.

What can I say Alex – those emails (can I respond to this by email as well ?). Certainly for me, because I make time to network with IT support, most of what was discuss I already knew. But that was not necessarily the case for the majority in the room. Peter MacFarlane also highlighted that fact that why couldn’t we have done it virtually. MMMMmmm thought the travel would be nice? Which it was but think about it – how many people were in the room? 25? Not sure – which is good but how much better again, in terms of knowledge share and collaboration, could we make it by expanding the number of participants – using Web 2.0 tools.

Sure Michael, you say you want me in Victoria …then say WA needs me. Look forward to catching up in October.

Totally agree with you Kathryn, but I think the issue is that perhaps our organisations do not realise how our students are innovating. Maybe we are to be blamed, locked management in a room with IT support – run a series of workshops – maybe then they will gain a better understanding of why?

Andrew, I have responded to your comment on your blog. I really look forward to you sharing your knowledge and thoughts on these issues so us practitioners can gain from networking with some one in IT support.

PS wrote long response and maybe I should have turned my response into another post. And Alex before you tell me off for not breaking it into separate comments for each post – two words – traveling and chocolate challenge – tired!

Sue

I can now see that Education is a 2 way, living thing. Lets allow our teachers to teach in an open wide reaching world, then let our students teach us what they can do when we allow them to engage.

To me the question is “Do they choose for us to be ahead of, in step with or behind our students?”, and then – “If they choose for us to be behind the students, how can we say we are teaching them at all?”

The same now exists in email land. Messages backwards and forwards sometimes title;

“Dear Sue…….

Now that IM has been around for a decade you’d think we’d get rid of the “paper” and yet;

[......While there were many at the workshop with a high understanding of the use of the tools and applications, there was many present with minimal exposure to their use. Possibly time should have been taken to showcase the educational use of some of the tools so everyone present had a good understanding of their value ......]

It’s a excruciatingly slow process but at least with re-structures you get new funiture, knife sharpners and cupboards filled with unused PDA’s. You may even take out a little dead wood but IT always remains intact.

The ATB project has highlighted what we already new……the bushfires are approaching and the bandwidth is getting wider.

Then we build new online rooms with the same features and the same issues emerge.

People that know nothing of what we speak of, revert to email and at the end of the day keep it all inside cause it’s imperiative that we protect that information no matter how useless it is anyway.

TIC.

Man o’ man….and what did this little venture cost the Framework ? Has anyone heard of webcams and synchronous connections or is it about pressing flesh and agreeing to disgaree and networking till you get all the right emails to resolve issues that are in fact another departments issue, different bits of paper and a whole heap more people that have no idea how to use any of it in an educational context.

Great post anyhow’s Sue. You can come and work with us anytime.