EduTech2019

The biggest EdTech event in Australia is held each June in Sydney with over 8000 people attending. The vendor floor is a sight to behold with hundreds of displays, designs and demonstrations.

Some big ideas:

• Transformation is about people - how do we transform the way staff feel about and use technology?

• There is a real sense that transformation is about culture and a tipping point has arrived where the engines of the future are reaching critical mass.

• Jocelyn Brewer https://www.digitalnutrition.com.au/ challenged a lot of common thinking about screen time, including the research in this area

The plural of anecdote is not data

• We have IQ EQ and now DQ (the digital quotient)

• Digital citizenship- Relevance is key for students, needs to be embedded across the curriculum

Kids are not addicted to the device or the internet but the social connection

• Carolyn Taylor https://www.walkingthetalk.com/ gave a fantastic talk about aligning culture with strategy

• Culture - patterns of behaviour that are encouraged, discouraged or tolerated by people and systems over time

• What culture do you want? Curiosity? Collaboration? Courage? Kindness? Excellence?

• What behaviours are most important to building the culture you want? Choose only one at a time!

• Sir Ken Robinson is amazing. Although the message has not changed, there is hope that things are changing

• Where are students in our org chart?

• You have to fix the right problem! Education is a complex adaptive system. Everyone has agency!

• Play is important - the system creates the problems not the kids

• Our current systems are based on the industrial - linear, standardised and focus on output

• We have degraded the culture of learning

• Pasi Sahlberg

• Let the children play!

• Student voice should not just be the top students - how do we capture every student's voice?

• Feedback walls?

• Trips to other schools

• Ask them to design spaces

• I saw some nice uses of Minecraft - developing student literacy through creating and storyboarding stories in Minecraft

Here is a good case for passphrases

• The hacking session I did by Martha McKeen was great - clear, practical advice on cyber security

This challenge would be excellent for students to engage with:

• A school in Bali (opening soon in NZ) based on environmental entrepreneurship https://www.greenschool.org/about/

• Clare Amos gave an insightful keynote on preparing for a future that is rapidly arriving and the danger of doing nothing and accepting status-quo.

The so called "21st Century skills" have actually been around for a while! But I think they are more valued than ever before in the modern workplace