Just Wiliam

Dylan Wiliam nailed it for most of us at the conference this morning. His keynote (the second at ALT-C this year) dealt with how technology will help to change the way our learners are assessed. Building his case expertly (liberally dosed with dry humour) Professor Wiliam showed how formative forms of assessment are key to the success of learning that actually 'sticks'. Teaching is complex and chaotic, he said. Your don't need to know about 'learning styles' either, he said. What you need to know about is differnt styles of teaching, which will tap into and challenge all kinds of learner styles and approaches. Technology can help us to do this he said. He said a lot of things actually, too numerous to mention in this short blog, but interestingly (as with all the Keynotes at ALT-C 2007) his talk is available on Elluminate as a video on demand. Dylan Wiliam's conclusion, convincingly argued for many of the delegates, I sensed, was that automated aggregative technologies will provide the solution where teachers need to know excatly where the group stands in terms of the knowledge and understanding they have just acquired. Straw polls taken through classroom clickers, discourse software (where student responses can be projected onto a screen for the whole group to discuss) or even simple handheld voting,will all indicate to the teacher that students need more explanation, or are ready to move on.

Well, move on we did - because many of the delegates have been talking about this keynote over lunch. The bottom line is: we need to realise it is more important to improve pedagogy than to improve subject knowledge. Wiliam believes that aggregative technologies will do this.