DFI 9, Google exam, ubiquitous.

We had to write a review for the course earlier today and I definitely felt a sense of mourning at the prospect of having to be back at school on Fridays and not being in the warm embrace of the DFI Fridays. I have really enjoyed these sessions and not just because of the chance to get out of the classroom for the day. The MOE would do well to provide a professional development day per week for every teacher in the country - it might sound ridiculous but I am pretty sure the benefits to everyone would be worth it, anyway enough dreaming. One of the real eye openers for me was hearing what life is like for primary school teachers. I am shocked at how different our worlds are and yet we actually teach the very same kids.

The progression being made through the DFI and weekly catch-ups with Herman have meant we really have developed our teaching practice in ways that move us along the SAMR spectrum to somewhere better than mere substitution of devices for paper.

There seems to be a lot happening in education and I am starting to see a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes in Gisborne. There are all sorts of connections being made here and it will be very interesting to see where all this leads us. Many people agree that education globally seems to be on the verge of some sort major paradigm shift as we start to understand what the technology is doing and how we can harness it in ways to serve our students better. What has become apparent to me is that very few seem to have crystallised any sort of vision or road map for this crazy journey we have started on.

When anyone with a phone has pretty much the entire body of all human knowledge at their finger tips, teachers and schools no longer have the monopoly on education that they once had, and the role of the teacher has to evolve accordingly. 

Something that occurred to me today is that for the people already on this waka it is important to remember that we are all at a different stage on this journey and there will be major hurdles ahead as the status quo is challenged and education changes. Many of the ways things have been done will simply have to be abandoned. I think will be a really hard on some people and sometimes a sad and even traumatic experience for some teachers. In the technology department at GBHS we have some incredibly experienced technical drawing/graphics teachers - in fact one of them even created the booklets used in most NZ schools today. We all love teaching graphics or DVC, but last year we had to face up to the reality that using set squares and pencils etc to do drawings was completely redundant. We had to just let it go in favour of an entirely CAD based system. Letting go of this area of teaching meant coming to grips with the fact that many decades worth of learning no longer held the value it once did and if this value is tied to a person's identity, as it often is, then you can imagine the human toll these changes can have on people.

On a positive note I was at a professional development course at Tauranga Boys High a few years ago and some of the older technology teachers told us that they had initially been reluctant to learn all the new CNC technology but once they bought into it they discovered a second wind in their careers that meant they weren’t even that keen to retire anymore.

That’s my two cents worth for the week. Ciao