Week 27 - Contemporary Trend in New Zealand

Week 27 - Contemporary Trend in New Zealand

In 2013 I completed a Master of Māori Education and during that learning I identified many needs facing the education system and how it would need to innovate, adapt and change to meet the needs of students in our schools in this 21st century.  Even in 2013 things digital were still being accepted and adopted in a reasonably ineffective manner and in te reo Māori was even more dire.  Thankfully since then the uptake of digital technologies in particular have increased and improved dramatically in education in NZ and definitely at Whakawātea.  

Even though I was critically aware of the need for the implementation and use of digital technologies, initially I doubted my own ability to lead this.  This was a huge challenge but one I am so glad I found the courage to grab and run with no matter what!  I seriously had to 'grab' and 'run' and bring staff with me where some were even more less able than I was.  Thankfully again the Ministry of Education supported schools nationwide with the SNUP (Schools Network Upgrade Programme) programme to ensure that all schools had the necessary infrastructure of cabling, fast fibre connections, wireless capability and N4L (Network for Learning) to cope with the uptake of digital devices.

The renowned and well known education professional development company, Core Education identified Ten Trends (2017) where technology is the central trend.  "In every part of our lives, technology is reshaping expectations and enabling new possibilities.  The emerging technologies are very different to what we have experienced in the past, requiring us to find new ways to adapt to digital change in a more sustainable ways".  Teachers need to find ways to empower students to learn utilising the medium of digital technologies whether they can or can't use these themselves.  If we rely on teachers to know everything we could impoverish learning as our students are leaping ahead of them this is an area where facilitation may be far more appropriate.  The OECD (2016) inquires about whether education should keep pace with the rate of growth of technology.  In order to prepare students for the future, it is imperative that we must.  

Digital technologies and technology itself demands schools and teachers to change their pedagogy in order to prepare students for the future.  ITL Research 2013 states that, “we live in a connected world with unprecedented access to a vast array of digital information and experiences. The use of technology continues to transform how we live and work. On-going adoption of new advances in ICT has become more essential to both life-long learning and life-long earning” (ITL Research, 2013. p23) and substantiates these claims with a series of 21^st Century Learning Design Rubrics.

References

CORE Education. (2017). Core-ed.org. Retrieved 29 October 2017, from http://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/

OECD. (2016) Trends Shaping Education 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en

International Telecommunication Union (2003). “Internet indicators: Hosts, users and
number of PCs”, [4 September 2003].  Retrieved from - http://m.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/industry_sectors/information_technology_and_communications/digital-divide/introduction.aspx