On the move: sharing the journey

This past weekend I've been at the European Council of International Schools (ECIS) Conference in Lisbon, Portugal.  This was the first time I've been to Lisbon and I enjoyed it a lot.  It's a place where, hundreds of years ago, many famous explorers and navigators set sail into the unknown.  One of these, Vasco da Gama, wrote:

We know we are on the move - we are not sure of our destination.


It's a similar situation with technology.

I attended the Pre-Conference facilitated by John Davitt.  His opening presentation struck a nautical theme:  he said we haven't yet found our digital longitude, though technology does allow us to cover great distances.  He asked, do we want to just talk about what is technically possible, or do we want to surf the waves of our connected possibilities?

I made a presentation on Saturday afternoon about the role of ICT in the PYP.  I'd made this presentation before at the ECIS IT Conference last March, but this time the audience was more diverse with classroom teachers and teachers of different subjects.  I'm embedding the Prezi I used below for the participants (or anyone else) to use back at their schools.  In this I have tried to chart the personal journey I've taken in the 3 schools where I was teaching IT, from using technology as a set of applications or tools to where we are today using technology to investigate, organize, collaborate, communicate and create.

One of the things I took away from John Davitt's presentation was that ephemeral is OK.  Things don't have to last forever.  The tools we are using, that we are building our curriculum on today, probably won't exist in their current form in 5 years time.  There will be new opportunities.  We have to move on, even though we are not sure where we are going.  It's good to be able to share this journey with others along the way.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent... It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.  Charles Darwin

Photo:  Discoveries Monument (Padrão dos Descobrimentos), Lisbon