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The Broader Professional Context - Mindlab Week 27


Paradox. What a brilliant word to describe the world we teach/learn in.

The trend that captures my attention with regards to Globalisation in education is technology and how much more connected we are. There seems to be so much more to know about the world, and yet it is getting smaller everyday. Things that were once difficult to access due to distance are now available at the touch of a button - we can access the world in High Definition with views that might not even be possible if we were there in person. For education, the opportunities to enrich learning experiences with greater diversity and more inclusivity are profound. Developing key competencies and advanced skills within students to equip them to participate in this hyper-evolving world is changing the way we think and go about education. The OECD report on ‘Trends Shaping Education’ (2016, p19) states that educators need to be aware of the skills students need in order to “flourish in knowledge-rich labour markets”. As the popular saying goes - students today are more and more likely to be working in jobs that don’t exist yet.

In my practice, the rapid development and evolution of technologies has had (and continues to have) an impact, particularly on communication. In a previous classroom, I used a blog to connect students in my low-decile school to people on the other side of the world.  In my current setting, just a few short years later, learning is becoming ubiquitous as students use G-Suite platform to present and received feedback on their work. For our teaching teams, planning, assessment, and sharing of information has become almost entirely cloud-based. I recently worked on a project involving teachers from across the seven schools of our local cluster - creating Google Docs meant we spent reduced amounts of time in meetings and were able to work on it at times that suited us. We benefit from incredible efficiencies of time, money, and effort through using these digital tools to support collaboration.

There are pressures and problems with this exponential growth in technology. Classroom practices, school policies, and management systems need to evolve in order to take full advantage of the opportunities arising from development in technologies (National Intelligence Council, 2017). Infrastructure that supports increased demands on internet connectivity, for example, have needed considerable financial investment at a school and governmental level. $700 million has been invested by the NZ Government to enhance school connectivity (NZ Govt Press Release, 28/6/17). Acquisition of devices is an added expense for both schools and families, and has the potential to aggravate the division between “haves and have-nots” unless managed well. And as could be expected, an increasing reliance on digital technology becomes complicated and cumbersome when ‘the internet goes down’ and we need to revert to pen and paper - or worse, an entire lesson that is dependent on technology cannot go ahead!

The Minister of Education Nikki Kaye recently launched the consultation into the new draft Digital Technologies | Hangarau Matihiko curriculum (NZ Govt Press Release, 28/6/17). I am personally excited about what this new addition to the NZ Curriculum represents - acknowledgement and support of the place of digital technologies in the classroom. While we have long talked about these things being a ‘tool for learning’ - which they are - the reality is that we are also teaching digital literacy as a logical and necessary consequence. I am also please that it has been acknowledged that professional development for teachers is a necessary component of the equation - not a surprise to hear that from a Mindlab student!

**This post was prepared as part of the requirements for CISC8100 Applied Practice in Context, for the fulfillment of requirements of a Post-Graduate Diploma in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) via Mindlab for UNITEC.

References
National Intelligence Council. (2017). Global trends: The Paradox of Progress. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://www.dni.gov/files/images/globalTrends/documents/GT-Main-Report.pdf

NZ Govt Press Release (28/6/17) “$40m digital fluency package” Retrieved from https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/40m-digital-fluency-package


OECD (2016), Trends Shaping Education 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en

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