About this paper
This is one of a series of papers written to help inform thinking about how we might leverage the potential of digital in a post COVID-19 world. Much of the material was written prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic which forced the closure of schools and required a shift of teaching and learning activity into the online environment. This shift has highlighted the importance of digital technologies as a means of ‘bridging the gap’ in a remote teaching and learning context, and further, the importance of digital skills and capabilities to ensure these things are used appropriately and to good effect.
According to the recent Curriculum, Progress and Achievement MAG Report, digital technology, and the efficiencies it enables, supports educators across the system to:
- easily access high quality resources that support curriculum, progress, and achievement
- access and use smart tools for designing, enacting, and inquiring into curriculum, progress and achievement
- connect with groups of educators grappling with similar issues to themselves
- contribute and share their knowledge and insights.
The intention of the papers in this series is to provide guidance around what is required to enable an environment with equitable access to internet connectivity, digital devices, and information-sharing tools and processes that use the affordances of digital technologies and do not increase (and may reduce) teacher workload. New Zealand has yet to achieve full digital inclusion so consideration is given to the design for digital learner materials and digital online professional learning to ensure all learners are catered for. These things have taken on a new significance as we have experienced the shift to an online world in response to the COVID-19 crisis. While we may expect a return in the future to where learners and teachers will resume activity in their physical spaces of learning, the need for a more comprehensive plan of action for how we can best utilise the potential of digital technologies and the online environment to achieve our goals as learners, as teachers and as a system has certainly increased in prominence in the minds of many educators and others supporting the notion of a more accessible, equitable and quality education provision in New Zealand.
