Steve Carden provided the inspirational day two keynote talk on day two of the ULearn conference. Providing a very full and engaging view of the challenges we face in the world ahead of us, Steven provided three key challenges to all delegates at the end of his presentation…
- The workforce needs highly adaptive people
- We need radically new ways of educating young people
- It’s all about YOU – we can talk about the need for better schools, more funding, more resources, but at the end of the day it all depends on good teachers. The difference between a good and a great teacher is the ability to inspire and encourage.
Steven drew much of his material from his book “New Zealand Unleashed”, and from the updated “Did You Know” clip (see below), illustrated with lots of NZ examples:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U&w=425&h=344]
Hi Derek looks like the conference is going well… My reflection on this challenge “The workforce needs highly adaptive people” is that it seems to be rather passive. I would think that the workforce is more in need of something like ‘creative individuals who have the confidence to make a difference’.
And never mind the philosophical / political arguments about the purpose of education being to provide a workforce… :^)
Hi Derek
Didn’t make it to ULearn as popped a disc in my back and was layed up. However, I am slowly tracking the goings on through the ULearn site and various blogs and wikis that are everywhere. I really believe that the issue lies with teachers and principals on one hand, and teacher training colleges on the other. Teachers need to change how they teach; this needs to be lead and driven by principals. I believe this is especially the case in secondary schools, where we have compartmentalised learning and the timetable is God. Universities need to train teachers how to teach in an online, anytime anywhere learning environment. At the moment teachers do their courses on line, so they are users of the technology, but they need to be taught to be producers as well, to produce learning content based on sound pedagogy.