Page 168 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

156
The role of the educator is now far more dynamic and requires a deeper professionalism and rigour in our understanding of the Learning Process, the concept frameworks within the learning domains and the competencies within which we are operating, as well as in the thoughtful and reflective pedagogical practices we are encouraging. As educators, we need to redefine a dual emphasis on being highly relational as well as genuinely academic within our fields of expertise and pedagogical practice.
The technological infrastructure required in every educational institution must allow the learner to be able to access the internet to:
• communicate effectively with their peers, educators and experts of any age, anywhere in the world
• manage their formative assessment and report their progress dynamically via a range of media formats
• access information and communication resources efficiently and publish their learning to local, regional and global audiences
• receive feedback and feed-forward commentary and questioning -‘Just-In-Time’
• collaborate in local, regional and worldwide partnerships with peers and experts.
The focus of technology is not to make the learner’s work look pretty or create far more ‘stuff’, but to give greater agency to the learner and drive their learning capacity deeper by focussing on the new end-point of building conceptual frameworks of understanding that learners can apply creatively to be innovative and ingenious. These requirements rely on learners and educators having access to secure, high-speed, wireless internet throughout our educational institutions. It also requires the necessary internet devices to be made available to all learners and educators, either by the institution itself or via the parents/caregivers.
Whether the education institution, parents/caregivers or the learner chooses a specific device, or a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) approach, there are a range of parameters that the device must meet:
• access to a high-speed, (Gb) reliable wireless internet service within the school
• be portable, robust, agnostic (as much as this is possible), using the ‘cloud’ to share
information and resources with any other device, anywhere at anytime
• have access to resources, production, publishing and communication tools courtesy of the internet
• enable learners to map their learning as it happens and export a comprehensive record of that learning that they can use to guide their next steps in learning
• enable the learner-educator to present their understanding so other stakeholders can make commentary and ask questions of the learning that is presented
• be sustainable and replaceable in the long term (low cost/ease of use)
• enable the learner to upload videos of their learning and view educator presentations
within a secure online ‘video channel’ environment.181
• have mandatory filtering and virus protection installed.
The key here is to leverage technology to make that happen, but the technology must be simple to use, requiring no significant training. If ongoing training courses of any length are required, then it is unlikely that in the long term, the technology will be used by educators as it was intended.
181 YouTube ‘channels’ can be a powerful toolset for educators wanting learners develop their own videos of their learning to support a reflective approach to that learning and to learn from their learning experiences.