What knowledge is of most worth?
I've sometimes felt that as rapidly as time goes by, I keep asking myself is what happens in my classroom keeping up with all of the developments that I want students to be involved with. So, this is the general theme of this post. Just what is important today and how might I adjust to deliver this?
The above quote comes from the title of a report from a group from Michigan State University a few years ago, and that I read a few years ago and just happened to recall. The full 2013 report from Kereluik, Mishra, Fahnoe and Terry is here. In their report they looked at all of the major "21st century learning" frameworks to look for any consistent themes that might help teachers in their quest to redesign learning. The model they came up with is pictured below.
I was also reminded of the work here in NZ by those looking into "future focussed learning" and, as you'd expect, most of the analysis from this group echoes that by Kereluik et al - likely because they use the same research base.
So, since 2013 has anything changed? This year the World Economic Forum have published their "New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology" report. From their report we see the following summary
So, do they have anything new to contribute (No) - or are they saying the same (Yes) ...Well, thanks to my good friends at the SingularityHub I haven't needed to plow through the the WEF paper fully (yet). The graphic below comes from the report, but it tells the story nicely I think.
Like other reports, there is a set of foundational literacies, and they go wider, and deeper, than our traditionally narrow focus on literacy and numeracy. They now encompass scientific, ICT, financial and cultural literacy. (And don't we need the ICT and cultural literacies to better understand the recent events in Europe. ). Like NZ has it's key competencies, the WEF have their competencies and character qualities. As a model, I can identify with this better than I can with other models I've seen - it's not overly different, just gives me a framework that works for me.
So, one of my goals for next year is going to be to develop learning activities for students that allow them to explore according to this "map". And in case you would like an overview of another person's view of some of the WEF information, along with some other stuff, spend a few minutes watching this video by Dr Nicole Wilson form Singularity. It's only about 10 minutes, and parts of it are better than others, but it's worth the watch.
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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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