Educating the Dragon

Having read Scott’s post it got me thinking about the New Zealand context, especially with the New Curriculum.

Scott McLeod’s article in ‘The School Administrator’ opens with the words:

Scott McLeod

“As our world becomes more technological and globally interconnected, it’s increasingly imperative superintendents and cabinet members understand how to best facilitate student acquisition of so-called 21st century skills. ”

Which got me thinking back to Ulearn07 and a session I was in. Someone, sometime quoted someone else (vague, I know) as saying “ 20^th century leaders are not eqipped to lead the 21^st century”. Which calls the education profession from two directions. Firstly to those leaders to upskill, which is heralded by Scott in his article. And second, let’s take a look a serious look at those Net Gen ‘kids’ coming through and what their outlook and perspective has to offer.

“School administrators no longer can afford to be unfamiliar with what constitutes effective technology-infused pedagogy.” So true, but the questiobn then arises: How do we get them to shift. I was privy to a conversation with the AP who had returned from the ‘New Curriculum Meeting” having seen the ’shifthappens’ video for the first time… She was buzzing about it. So I followed up on the conversation today to find out what the key messages were regarding the implimentation on the new NZ curriculum to which she replied. “oh they handed us a copy of the curriculum each and told us we were the school lead-teachers and were now the experts on the new curriculum with permission to write our own school curriculum.” Hmmm, I was expecting to here a little more indepth about vision and focus and what the principles behind it were etc, etc. She also went on to explain that these meetings were largly being boycotted by NZEI over the negociations about Management Units. If that is the case then the NZEI need to be held to account. Is the steering meetings for the ‘future of our schools’ really the best meeting to have people miss out on? Is that truly the responsible course of action to take? However, I digress, sorry.

Scott states ‘Unfortunately, most superintendents have received little to no training on how to facilitate good technology use by teachers and students.”

This echoes an ongoing discussion we’ve been having in New Zealand about the factr that ICTPD is predominantly ‘training’ in its narrowest sense and little is being done towards true professional development and pedagogical change.

“Your district will see a lot better return on its technology investments if instead it begins with the end in mind and then asks how the technology can help support that.” Yet again another true statement from Scott but what does that look like on the ground, in my school, your school? What does the end look like, especially in light of the new curriculum. If schools are responsible for creating their own curriculum to meet, more specifically, the needs of their students then much education of those responsible is required.

How do we know whether technology is being used effectively in the classroom? Aside from the fact my principal has never sat once through a lesson of mine in two years of developing my ‘digial classroom’. Assuming that principals do observe lessons and want to know how to assess a ‘technology-rich’ lesson. What are the criteria to look for? What does that look like? And, how can we encourage principals to value it?

“What positive resultsare we seeing from our use of digital instructional technologies?” The anecdotal evidence is huge. The ’semi developed research, such as what i’ve been grapling with is often subjective in nature. Basically, the speed of technological change is so fast and the willingness or time-constraints placed on classroom practitioners is such that formal, ‘useable’ research remains thin at best.

Scott raises some serious issues and we need to take a long hard look at the answers to those questions on school by school basis but also as a nation on the crest of ‘The 21^st century curriculum’.