GAFE Summit

Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the day at the GAFE Summit at the Halcyon International School in London. What a great experience! It is always interesting to meet others who share my passion for the use of technology in teaching and learning and I now have so many things to try out.

In discussions at the event it was clear that people were in two camps: those who are always wanting to push the boundaries of new technology in their quest to improve all the time and those who love new technology but want to stand back occasionally and put energy into getting a wider roll out of ideas in their school. I am definitely in the second camp, but we clearly need the pioneers of the first group.

One thing I am struggling to keep up with at the moment is the large number of sites and services that I sign up to. Each time I feel that the new thing is going to be the best thing since sliced bread, only to find it going a little stale a few weeks later. A priority for me now is to settle on a few good services and really get them implemented more widely in my school.

As someone who often watches others teach I have certainly seen a few lessons where technology is being used for its own sake. This isn't a problem occasionally and I would encourage all teachers to experiment from time to time. However, there have also been a few lessons where the technology has actually got in the way of learning. This should never happen. When it does it always seems to be due to glitches in the technology. No amount of testing beforehand quite puts a system under strain in the same way that a class does so I suppose that this is inevitable.

Anyway, now to enjoy the rest of half term with just a little bit of experimenting with new ideas from the summit. Already looking forward to next year's event!