Australia Day this year was great! I got to take my sister in law Tina and one of her three daughters Cecilia for a flight in my ultralight (next time for Bianka and Ashley when they are a little taller) and then after that we went to the Australia Day celebrations hosted by Gerry Woods, the local member for the area who has been described as a chicken farmer with enough power in our local parliament to turn a rooster into a feather duster.

The kids got to play cricket, run around, go for a ride on a classic fire engine, have a hot dog, a cool drink and fell asleep minutes after we had left the event for home.

In between the trip to the airfield and the Australia Day event I had the radio on in the car and came in part way through a speech being made by the unmistakeable voice of President Obama.

Those who know me will know that I have about as much interest in politics as a vegetarian in a butcher's shop, however I will not shun any valuable offerings that they have. In this case it was Obama's inspirational speech to congress that had me listening to it and reflecting on how I could map some of the talking points to our own situation here in Australia and in the Northern Territory. He spoke of the economic situation, how Americans had fallen behind, how education and health along with infrastructure and unemployment were big issues... and then he went on to describe how it was going to be fixed.

America has been hit hard by the recession. A friend of mine who just returned from the US said that 350k houses in Las Vegas now sell for less than 150k. That must be heartbreaking to find that your house is worth far less than the value of the mortgage you have... and then you lose your job.

Out of this grim set of circumstances, Obama crafted a speech which genuinely gave hope.

Why am I writing about this in an eLearning blog? Four reasons.

I went and searched YouTube for a copy of the speech, which I embed below. I also have the transcript of the speech.

  • The speech spoke about improving education in a direct way
  • I have never gone and looked for a copy of a politician's speech before
  • It inspired me to map some solutions and focus points onto our own situation in Australia and the Northern Territory
  • I figured that if a crusty old public servant like me can be inspired and make a connection to our environment here in the NT, then young teachers and students could view the speech and see if they can create inspiration with their students or create solutions that really make a difference.

So that is why I wanted to share what some may term "informal learning". I prefer to call it spreading positive energy. I would (if I were you) have a look at the transcript above and then fast forward on the video to the relevant pieces on education or whatever interests you.

Now, you could embed this speech into a Moodle Course and ask students to address one of the aspects touched on in the speech - education, infrastructure, innovation, healthcare or renewable energy as key topics and as a starting point see if the plans outlined by the President could work here in the Northern Territory. This is not about political leadership, but at the grass roots level making a change in our homes, schools and thinking about what we do to make a difference to a child's education.

Let me digress with a challenge most education departments face - social networking access.

Students will research, google, twitter and facebook during the hours when us oldies are sipping milo or fast asleep... If we still want our sleep and be able to reach our students, we need to address SNP (Social Network Paralysis) that exists within our system because of the fear that "friend" is the wrong word to use between student and teacher, doctor and patient and all of those professional and ethical boundaries we have in place for good reason.

Maybe, as in the case of twitter, you have followers... they are not your friends and in some cases can be your competition keeping an eye on you - If a teacher had a professionally managed twitter account and students followed to catch up on assignments it might be more palatable. Having the following limited to students in the class and a centralised audit account that followed all teacher accounts and randomly searched for terms that could be inappropriate, then you have a cocooned social network microblogging facility available to all and reviewable by those who may need to do such things.

For those who do engage in the use of computers and are old enough, facebook and twitter are the preferred way of communication (apart from SMS and the phone). Blogs take too long to write and email is so last century (according to my nieces and nephews).

Moodle, Adobe Connect, SharePoint, Yammer, OCS offer differing levels of instant connectivity or message board / wall style posting... We may as administrators and teachers choose to post information or learning at civilised hours of the day, knowing that our charges may pick up the message at 3am and work on it until 5am before a quick nap and heading sleepily to school. 

We have the tools and technologies to allow students to engage at different times of the day and we probably do need some time overlap for students and teachers to be (virtually/physically) in the same place at the same time for review, support, mentoring. tutoring and facilitation purposes.

I probably need to add at this point that the opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect a departmental stance.  

So, unfortunately I don't have the charisma or speech writing ability of Obama, but in celebrating Australia Day in our family way, I felt it was good karma to have Obama present his speech to the US on a day so important to Australians.

 

This entry was posted on January 30, 2011 at 9:30 AM and has received 302 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.