Box Hill Institute's e-Learning Expo 2010 kicked off on June 21 with a blended e-Learning showcase.

Subtitled ‘Thinking differently about ourselves, our students and the future’, the showcase featured a thought-provoking and highly entertaining talk courtesy of guest speaker Jason Clarke, from Minds at Work.

Despite obtaining the lowest Year 12 score in the history of his school, Jason has gone on to become one of the most sought after creative minds in Australia, consulting on issues of leadership, innovation and problem solving to some of the country’s biggest companies and institutions.

His speech at the Institute was in keeping with the e-Leaning Expo’s themes of engaging students in innovative ways, and exploring alternative approaches to delivery. A naturally charismatic orator, albeit one whose stylish rhetoric is amply backed up by genuine substance, Jason stimulated and inspired the audience, and proved to be the perfect person to open the Expo.

Jason commenced by discussing how today’s technology-savvy students are more comfortable with visual learning, as opposed to text-based, which is consequently changing the way educators teach, and has huge implications for how we connect with our students.

These days the majority of students, prior to commencing higher education, have already been informally schooled on computer games, the internet, television, iPods, mobile phones and other such technology, and this exposure to electronic media has changed the way their brains work.

It’s thus important to adopt an innovative approach to how we teach, and to properly harness the new technology available to us, and embrace progression in order to engage pupils. As Jason says, “We need to change education from a 20th Century model to a 21st Century model”, and he gave an example of lectures being provided via podcasts to illustrate the benefits of change.

However, there is an important distinction between embracing technology, and being in thrall to it. Throughout his speech, Jason reiterated how technology is merely a tool designed by us to serve us, and offered a number of memorable maxims to make his point: “Let the technology know who’s boss”, “It’s about you, not the tool”, “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us”, and “In the hands of the artist, any tool is a source of magic”.
New technology should be neither feared nor fawned over, and the key is to ask how it can serve you, and not vice versa. 

Technology should free you up, not slow you down, and in order for that to happen, educators must take control of it. “Technology is unlimited but people aren’t”, said Jason, “and it’s important to place human restraints around unlimited technology”.

With these restraints in place, and with the intelligent application of technology in a learning environment, educators can utilise the new tools available to them, and duly become more flexible and responsive to the individual needs of their students.