Welcome to Connecting with learners, the final edition of The Knowledge Tree for 2006.

In this edition contributions focus on how technologies eg. blogs and processes eg. reflection, shape teachers and through teachers their learners. Through looking at examples of formal and informal teacher education and professional development programs, this edition considers how teachers can be more constructively critical of their own approaches to teaching. Contributions cover: the use of technology to enable reflection, creating culturally inclusive curriculum through constructive self critique, the creation of more enabling social, relational use of Web 2.0 and mobile technologies for learning, the improvement of access for rural learners and the development of the digital literacies required by teachers (as learners) and by their students. The critique of practice and the consideration of the use of these technologies and processes is ultimately focused on improving our learners’ experience.

The lead article ‘Technology shaping learner dispositions’ has Michigan based teacher education academics Sean and Paula Lancaster focusing on changing dispositions of preservice and inservice teachers through a range of processes, for example modelling, and blogging as a reflective tool. These teacher educators open up their minds, modelling through ‘thinking aloud’ how they work to change their dispositions in order to improve their practice. Through witnessing these processes as active and engaging experiences pre service and in service teachers can anticipate how these processes will be useful with their learners and plan for their use.

Julie Woodlock’s presentation ‘When tensions lead to change…’, on the nexus of Indigenous Standpoint Theory (Nakata 2002) and Miller’s (2005) critical factors for flexible delivery, is a perfect example of this opening of the mind, ‘thinking aloud’ and sharing with others the challenging of one’s own dispositions towards education, in order to improve the cultural inclusivity of mainstream curriculum and teaching practice.

Leonard Low in ‘Connections: Social and mobile tools for enhancing learning’ considers ways to connect learning, literacies and technologies (e.g. mobile devices and Web 2.0 tools) with which young people are becoming very comfortable, through facilitating social and connected learning practices.

Terry Marler, Jean Tilleyshort, Stanley Frielick and Margaret Granger, in a New Zealand-Australian distributed collaboration, conduct a open conversation around ‘Supporting rural learners now and in the future’.

The book review of Martin and Madigan’s (2006) Digital Literacies for Learning, summarises the main theme, i.e. how to equip teachers and students to be digitally involved. The volume presents a series of chapters on the latest concepts and case studies in digital literacies in learner centred environments. It’s well worth a January holiday read.

To listen to the archived recording of the final ‘live conversation’ for 2006 in which Sean and Paula Lancaster further explore the main ideas in their article visit:
https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.AF01F7651F91C61D37A4A24D688E7D

Further editions of The Knowledge Tree will be published in 2007. Please consider contributing. Click to view our Call for contributions. We look forward to hearing your ideas.