Students Writing Tutorials for Teachers - now that's clever!

I was reminded the other day of one of my favourite consequences of giving students a laptop. A student, who had that day been given a laptop as part of the NSW Department of Education laptop initiative, had published a tutorial written to help teachers and others use Photoshop.

The exciting aspect of this story is how quickly and naturally teenagers can break down their own understanding of a process for others to digest. It doesn't take a degree in education to know how to teach someone what you know. It also doesn't take much experience in using screen capture software and web publishing solutions to get your teaching steps published in a tutorial form.

In this case, the tutorial is based on some of the software provided on the laptop - namely, Adobe Photoshop. It is clear in the screenshots and explanations that this student relishes the access to professional software and I think the Department has done a great thing to provide the tools used in industry instead of only cheap or open source alternatives (such as GIMP).

Lets all keep encouraging our students to not just learn new skills and knowledge but teach it to others.

Public Schools - the Ultimate Untapped Great Teacher Network

Public Schools in Australia have the most awesome resource that has not been properly explored and harnessed - great teachers in one network of practice. A shared community of expert knowledge and teaching skill.

This is an untapped resource, mainly because of the geographical divide between schools but also because of the segregation between faculties and stages.

The divide is sometimes bridged when teachers attend inter-school meetings, professional development conferences and training seminars. But these are few and far between. These events are also exclusionary by their nature - only teachers who get released from their school duties can attend and the funding for conference fees is split many ways, limiting the opportunities.

As a result of the limitations, meaningful collaborations between teachers on a large scale has failed to eventuate.

I don't mean that collaboration between schools from different suburbs (or indeed states and countries) hasn't occurred already. It certainly has, through programs like the Connected Classrooms Project here in New South Wales there has been many wonderful connections between schools.

However, these connections have often been between students in class groups, in the way of virtual meet-ups organised by the teachers from the various schools.

As yet, teachers haven't been able to freely and regularly share their own practice and expertise with each other. They may have joined professional associations, such as the Computing Teachers Association (of which I have been an active member), but this also provides time and budget limitations on teacher collaboration. It's not yet free and open. It also depends entirely on the goodwill and tireless effort of organisers. It's still very hierarchical and as such there are bottlenecks in the collaboration process.

I await the day when the great teachers in our public schools have a virtual space for the free and open sharing of their expertise and resources in a format that easily transfers to another school. Something well organised that puts the power in the hands of teachers to share. Without financial or geographic boundaries. Utilising the wonderful resource that is the Internet to pull everything together in an elegant way of organising collaboration. Something not bottlenecked by a business model.

Teachers in our public schools share the same employer, the same core educational values and ultimately the same clientele - the students who put their faith in public education. Why can't they share their hard work without any more effort than clicking a button? Let's be clever about making collaboration happen in the ultimate great teacher network.

(Mountain photo thanks to Tony Burton - http://www.flickr.com/photos/t0nyburton/)