Andew Cappie-Wood, Dir Gen, NSW Department of Education and Training, in his opening address outlined that such a massive, diverse, goegraphically dispersed system (1.3 miliion students, 140,000 teachers) faces challenges to ensure equity of access to learning. With demographics changing how do you deliver a physics class to an increasing number of students in schools with small student numbers. ICTs can help achieve this. Personalisation (ie learner at the centre) can also be achieved by the use of technology. But, Andrew says there is potentially a new digital divide in education, where the training of teachers needs to keep pace with their students….or does it?
Robert Caillieu, the co-inventor of the internet says that computing is pervading all aspects of life (eg informatics is being used for cancer cures). He observes that exponential growth, rapid change will challenge us. How can we deal with this?? He spoke of the scientific method being about common sense observation, deduction and inference. Games and virtual environments are attracting people because imagination is better than the real world. How will education cope with people who are disinterested in the real world?? Only a well educated population can cope with the coming changes.
We need to be inclusive about who is learning? Teachers learn alongside their students, who for the first time, know more than teachers or can use the technology to know more. Can such a cultural shift be so difficult to achieve? It does happen in small pockets in systems. There are great innovative ideas happening at grassroots level, but it is often hard to discover!!
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