FLEXILEARN

Dr. Evan Arthur, Group Manager, Digital Education and Youth Transitions Group , Dept of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Canberra on the topic “Implementing the Digital Education Revolution (DER)”.  Barriers to implementation: lack of functional ubiquitous computing environment, lack of ability to connect teachers and students with each other all the time everyhwere and at an affordbale price, lack of content matched with easy-to-use tools that make it easier to use technology for work in the classroom that without using technology, IP and copyright isssues, staff development for teachers, etc.

Technology is pervasive in students’ lives outside of school but not within school – often peripheral to classroom instruction. The DER is a five-year $2.2 billion programme to embed ICT in the curriculum, and enable teachers and administrators to shift from being managers of bad ICT to being innovators with functioning technology – a scalable network that is affordable and optimises effective educational use of the bandwidth.  IN NZ we have NEAL and other urban-fibre MUSH networks but little uptake from schools connected to these.  So beyond the infrastructure is the problem – tools, content that enable teachers to easily carry out their core educational role using technology.  There is $40 million for teacher and school leader professional development in ICT – could sure use that in NZ !

There is a need to ensure that data on performance in the Australian school system is activcely used to improve performance – by driving change in ICT skill and use, and linking this to effective technology use in the National Curriculum. Standardised testing etc – NZ is now heading down this road with TKI etc. But teachers still don’t use ICT because it is still easier to do core tasks offline rather than online – so the answer is to make more easier to use ‘low-threshold applications’ than enable sharing and collaboration.

I think the ‘McDonaldization’ thesis can provide an alternative critical perspective on this somewhat top-down rational approach to the problem of implementing the DER – more on this in later posts.

Next up is Megan Stewart, Director, Worldwide Higher Education and Community Programs, Adobe Systems and Bob Regan, Director, Worldwide Primary and Secondary Education, Adobe Systems – on “Preparing your Students and Teachers for the Digital Future”.  The key question – how do we do this ?

This is preceded by a ‘pixel mash’. This is a live design competition using a word + an image + Adobe CS4 + wacom as the brief – the students have to use only these elements and tools to come up with a design. There are 4 students from UTS sitting at computers marked A,B,C,D and they will now go live in front of the audience who will judge the designs.  The image is a BBQ, the word is ‘education’.  Learning as ‘braaing’ maybe :).  We can see the students’ screens as they are working which is quite cool.  Again we see how design education approaches need to inform a more collaborative approach to learning mediated by digital tools.  We could do this for example in a music or computer science class, even creative writing or English where students and teachers could all see each other’s work and comment and critique. And why don’t we give all students access to tools like Photoshop and Dreamweaver instead of Word and Powerpoint ??

OK – pixel mash done with student B as the winner.  Back to Megan and Bob.  21st Century Campus Report states that students across the disciplines were making choices about where to go on the basis of what technology was available.  What can institutions do improve the student experience when there is global competition between institutions ?  More detail on this from Megan tomorrow.  Bob is talking about 21st C learning in schools – picking up the 6Ds theme – but focusing on Tech literacy, Creativity, Communication, Critical thinking and Collaboration as the key 21st C skills. But haven’t these always been important skills – OK the technology has changed but some kind of technology has always been part of education. But for the multitasking digital generation how do we design classrooms that are multimedia and connected spaces -well, by using cloud computing and social computing.  More on this from Bob tomorrow – especially on how Adobe fits into this world.