Tech take-over!

Technology could make almost 40 per cent of Australian jobs, including highly skilled roles, redundant in 10 to 15 years, a new report has found.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-16/technology-could-make-almost-40pc-of-jobs-redundant-report/6548560

This scares some people. A LOT! I saw a report on the news tonight about an automatic brick laying machine, developed here in Perth, that can build the walls in a house in 2 days. It takes a lot longer with humans doing it.

This is another example of why the report above and the figure they quote could well be correct. What does this mean for schools and education? Do we really think we can serve up more of the same in a system based on the industrial revolution model of schooling and designed for the agriculture age?

The values that bright coloured glossy school brochures espouse - the ideals that we would love our young people to leave school with include being critical thinkers, adept at solving problems, being able to work collabratively with a variety of people and being able to communicate ideas effectively using a variety of medium. These kind of people will get a job and be successful in the rapidly changing fluid 21st Century job market. These kind of people do not appear when there is rigidity, over-regulation, lack of learner agency, over-prescribed curriculum and a system driven by compliance and high-stakes external assessments. What happens with all that are students who know how to play the game of school, who know how to get good marks, but who never go deeper or love what they are learning. They don't learn to solve authentic problems, just memorise facts and apply algorithms. They learn to do what the teacher tells them to do to get that mark they need. They communicate with little passion or imagination and rarely reflect of how they can deepen their understanding.

All of our students deserve the opportunity to learn skills such as coding and robotics - these are 21st century currency as we move into an economy dominated by technology.

I love this quote:

I think teachers will ALWAYS have a job - good teachers that know how to leverage technology as a tool to enhance learning. Robots can't do what good teachers do!