I’ve discussed before on this blog about WHY we need to be innovative and creative with our teaching techniques and our teaching resources.  Primarily, it is ensuring that the needs of the future are addressed through the education of today.  One such example is the emergence of KNOWMADS.  The Leapfrog Institutes at the University of Minnesota have discussed the notion of a knowmad on their blog. 

A knowmad is what I term a nomadic knowledge worker –that is, a creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere. Industrial society is giving way to knowledge and innovation work. Whereas industrialization required people to settle in one place to perform a very specific role or function, the jobs associated with knowledge and information workers have become much less specific in regard to task and place. Moreover, technologies allow for these new paradigm workers to work either at a specific place, virtually, or any blended combination. Knowmads can instantly reconfigure and recontextualize their work environments, and greater mobility is creating new opportunities.

This is the future we are being asked to prepare our students for.

Ten thousand Victorian Government students who started the 2009 school year on Monday have begun a new three-year trial of individual netbook computers.  344 schools across the state are involved in the trial that will cost families just a dollar per week.  At the end of the trial students will have the opportunity to buy the computer outright. 

The netbooks will run Windows XP and a range of software including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium, Kahootz, Google SketchUp and a range of other free open source multimedia programs.

For other schools currently pursuing a notebook purchase, the Acer Aspire is currently available for $588 as part of the current pricing schedule.

FutureLab is the British equivalent of DEECD’s IdeasLab.  They have been doing quality research on innovation for years.  In the video featured below, Dr Leila Walker, senior researcher at Futurelab, gives a presentation on Handheld Learning and its applications both now and in the future.

To watch it click on the white triangle or follow this link to the website from which this video came (http://media.futurelab.org.uk/podcasts/becta_talks/leila_walker/)

I visited an extremely innovative school today. It features trasnformed teaching spaces and a broad range of subject areas. Independent thinking and inquiry are both encouraged. Its results are quite low in all the major data indicators that DEECD measures.

I also heard about another school (not far from the first) that has a very narrow academic focus. Its results are outstanding in all the major data indicators that DEECD measures.

So which is the better school. Which approach should other leaders see as the preferred model? I suggest that we should not have to choose. Surely we don’t need to choose one or the other.

When it comes to teaching and learning we need to follow Batman’s lead. He always had his utility belt ready. On it was range of tools to use in a range of situations. The more strategies we use the more students we engage. This encourages academic rigour across the breadth and depth of the curriculum. So get your utility belt on when you step into the classroom and engage all your kids across a range of subjects with deep levels of thinking.

As an inovative educator the question is often aksed “Why do we need to do things any different from when I was a kid?  I went through it and I turned out OK?”  The problem with this question is that it assumes teaching practice is changing in response to a change in our students.  The reality is that it is the world into which our children will be moving that is different.  Students who are completing Year 12 this year will retire in 2065.  Can you possibly imagine the skills and attributes needed to thrive and survive in 2065?  With so many changes occuring, it is suggested by Ken Kay that a new set of basic literacies will be needed by our students when they are adults.  He says:

“So the coin of the realm is not memorising the facts that they are going to need to know for the rest of their lives, the coin of the realm will be:

Do you know how to find information? 

Do you know how to validate it? 

Do you know how to synthesise it? 

Do you know how to leverage it? 

Do you know how to communicate it?

Do you know how to collaborate with it? 

Do you know how to problem solve with it? 

That’s the new set of 21st century literacies.  And it looks a lot different from the model most of us were raised in.”  

Daniel Pink suggests as similar suite of skills will be needed in the future.

“They will be doing work that calls on their articstic abilities, that calls on their abilities of synthesis, that calls on their abilites to understand the context, that calls on their ability of working in teams, that calls on their abilities in some sense to be multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual, multi-cultural.”

To watch the video Learning to Change; Changing to Learn, from which these videos came, click here.

Welcome to the Innovation and Next Practice Blog for DEECD’s Southern Metropolitan Region. 

This is your one stop shop for all things innovative in teaching and learning.