The decision to invest in a new technology ...In reality it's all about the potential of the device to deliver rich new data sets for students to explore that holds the potential. fOne of the problems faced by classroom teachers these days is whether or not to invest time and energy into newly developing technology. The decision to engage or not is usually made around the usual issues ...
OK - rhetorical question. Right? In NZ we have the "Practising Teacher Criteria" from the Education Council that requires us to ...(at least) 4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice 5. show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning 6. conceptualise, plan and implement an appropriate learning programme So - it's basically a requirement of our contract with the country that we "implement" an appropriate learning programme. The emphasis is important - "learning" - not "teaching". So, we owe it to the country to explore and develop and conceptualise and implement. But - this is easier said than done in reality. Let's take a current case in point. Drones. For one reason or another drones are in the news. Not just the ones that the US deploys in the Middle East, but from ones that deliver pizza to those that have and are revolutionising sports photography, through to the opening clip showing search and rescue drones in NZ. It might be argued that drones have a wide application in many areas - and so if we can afford the cost of entry to purchase a controllable drone with appropriate cameras then we should. There is no shortage of options available. But I do wonder about a better reason to try and introduce something like a drone into any course - stuff like this of course is great fun to try, but we miss that authentic application. Two possibilities have crossed my mind of late. One is pretty simple - use a drone with downward facing camera to capture sport (or any outdoor activity). Analysis of the resulting video can provide insights to the activity that were not otherwise possible. Example - analysis of positions on hockey/netball/football fields/courts during games. We've seen plenty of examples on TV of elite sports - now we can bring the technology to everyone. Aligned to this would be the analysis of geo spatial imagery taken for a certain area - maybe geography or science related to a local area. The second application that took my eye came to me from the Singularity hub (one of my favourite thought provoking sites). The article that I read talked loosely about industries prime for disruption with the exponential growth of "big data" and they mentioned drones, car parks and the finance industry in the same sentence.The claim is that there are drones targeted to image carparks of the likes of large store chains in the US (think Walmart and Toys R Us) and with real time analysis of the data collected, the imagery is being used to predict the financial success of the store chains long before any financial data is published by traditional analysts or the stores themselves. So - you can determine which shares to buy and sell by how full their carparks are at any given time compared to last week/last month/last quarter ... even last hour! What will that sort of information do to the stock market? That's a major disrupter. I'd argue that some kind of "big data analysis" from a local area imaged regularly by a drone could see students come up with traffic plans, parking plans or any other type of GIS related issue - maybe even updating local council GIS data or cross checking it, or working with council on joint developments. I'm sure that more creative people than me can think of any number of applications. Of course there are well documented issues of drones in close contact with other aircraft- control of the device, privacy, air hazards ... but these are all surmountable with little effort. In reality it's all about the potential of the device to deliver rich new data sets for students to explore that holds the potential.
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I have been taking a few minutes to reflect on some presentations I saw last year - and they fit perfectly into my current thinking space - so I've copied the blog post from my old site over to here. Living on the Future Edge I've borrowed the title for this post from Ian Jukes of whom many of you will have heard. Ian's been around for a while now and delivers some pretty energetic keynotes. I watched him deliver the final keynote at EduTECH 2014 in Brisbane yesterday. In this he gave a fast paced, emotive plea to Australian education to make the rapid change required to deliver the kind of education that will be relevant for learners of today an into the future. In his presentation he pulled no punches. He based much of his presentation on the work of Richard Florida and his Creative Class project, ( http://www.creativeclass.com/ ) and that of .... Clayton Christensen and his Disruptive Innovation projects. http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/ Now, I'll have to admit that I have heard Ian before and while I have not read Florida or Christiansen I am aware of their work. So, it was good to hear and see what some of their research is showing, and I'll try and capture the essence of it as Ian shared it. 1. Many of us know the 'industrial' model that Sir Ken Robinson and others have described in some detail over recent years. We all nod in agreement that the Industrial Age has long gone and we are in the Knowledge Age. But as I sat and watched comments such as ... '90% of routine cognitive tasks will be taken by either software or outsourced' 'By 2025 the average number of careers (note : not jobs, but careers) that school leavers can expect to have by the time they are 38 is 10 - 17’ 'Part time is the new full time. The corporation of the future is the corporation of size 1. You will have multiple part time jobs with multiple organisations at the same time, all on contract.' [Ian gave an example of his own company hiring via oDesk. They posted a job on oDesk and within 20 minutes had 238 applicants. They hired a developer in India. oDesk does all the rest - keeping track of the work the developer does and sending this to Ian's company.] 2. The rate of change is/continues to be exponential. Moore's Law still applies to the computing part. Doubling of the number of transistors every 18 months and halving the cost. Fibre optic cable can transmit vast quantities of data at the speed of light. And I mean VAST ... And the speed of light is pretty quick from memory, too. As Sugata Mitra observes, 'there is no need to know. There is the need to know how to know and when to know.' We have incredible amounts of data available. And the tools we have for manipulating that data and transferring it are incredibly powerful and cheap today on comparison to just a few years ago. All of this leads to a crucial, and I would say tipping, point... In the now, and in the future, there is a new learning disability. This is those who are digitally illiterate. Today and in the future, it is as important to be digitally literate as it is to read and write and do basic arithmetic. This is big. How many of us believe that today's students, the so-called digital natives, are digitally literate? They may be tech savvy, but are they digitally literate? From my own experience I would say no. Many don't know file types, they don't know how to protect their systems from corruption, and if corrupt how to restore. They don't know the language of the network they depend on. How many of our teachers and administrators are digitally literate? How many of our colleagues can use multiple devices, operating systems, applications and create their own content for the network in any form other than via a word processor and email? As Steven Johnson said, 'chance favours the connected mind' and if we really believe this, or of we even suspect this is true, then why is it that we have extensive discussions in schools about just how to block students from social media sites. Business and individuals are communicating via these means for real work and real learning and we want to ban them because we don't understand how to make our students aware that they are really useful tools. They are using them outside of our school networks anyway! 3. The world will only pay for what you can do with what you know. Given that if you can harness the power of the networks to know, then what you do with this is critical. I loved this comment - Neck down is minimum wage! Neck up is where the money is. And of course this is the non routine cognitive work that Florida talks about and that we hear so often is the domain of the 'creative class'. And the creative class jobs are increasing. Now - this is quite scary for a country like NZ. We have a huge agricultural dependency. The jobs are rapidly going in numbers as smarter ways of farming, more technology and bigger machines replace the people aspect. So what do the rural people do? Move to the city will be one corollary to this. But also, given that the requirement is now to continually recreate our own knowledge base and skills, and given that the power of the network let's us do this anywhere, we need to be opening pathways for students to explore their creativity and to explore what it means to be in the space where knowledge value and creativity happens. In reality, they can do this, from anywhere. They don't need to be in 'school' to,do this. Sure there is a social role that schools provide, even a custodial role while parents are 'at work' ... but parents aren't going to be at work in the future according to many of the futurists - they'll be at home ... so the kids can be too. Why will a parent in the future want to send their children to a school unless it serves some real vaue? Creativity is facilitated by technology. There was no 'app' industry 5 years ago. Last year it generated $10 billion in revenues. There are 800,000 jobs in app development currently, growing incredibly fast. This graph, again from Florida, shows that we are at around 25% of jobs in the creative class now. This will grow to around 50% in 2018. How many of our students are ready to move straight into this space as a result of what we are helping them with in our schools today? Of course, the rest of the jobs are being replaced by smart software or outsourced to lower cost of manufacture and delivery countries. As has been said many times before, we are in danger of becoming irrelevant to our students if we don't make the required changes in our classrooms to cope with this sea change going on around us. Our students will learn from where they see the value to them. Again, I'm reminded of Mitra's work ... kids are not stupid. They have, as Robinson says, tremendous capacity for creativity. Mitra has shown that kids can and will learn on their own via the web if they have the desire. A question is then how do we harness the best of the web and develop the digital literacy skills for them in a way which is beneficial for all learners. This will require some considerable thinking and lots of action, testing and trialing and it will threaten many individuals and schools and systems of education. It worries me that in education we still spend so much time on planning and consultation and inclusiveness and equity and replanning and reinventing what already exists .... We need to apply more of Fullan's 'ready fire aim' and hurry things along. A final reflection. There is a convergence here. Whether it is Robinson, Mitra or Jukes or Florida or ... the messages are powerful and we are seeing the evidence all around in business of massive change. The explosion in mobile has driven this much faster than we thought. We've only had tablets and 'smartphones' for a few years, yet these have rapidly changed everything. They have brought the power of the network to everyone. And as Carly Fiorina said to Tom Friedman all those years ago, 'Tom, what you have witnessed so far is only the forging and sharpening of the tools. The real revolution is yet to come.' Well it's come. We're in it. This is sea change stuff and we'd better respond fast. Or the next generation will not be so keen on sharing their children with a system which is a relic. 'There is a default future rushing towards us,' says Jukes. Sometimes you only get one last chance to catch the wave. |
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