Reflective Entry #1 - The context of different audiences.

Reflective Entry 1:

In my Inquiry, I am addressing the context of different audiences (local, national and/or international)  My local audience is the students themselves in the Accelerated for Learning (ALL) group, their immediate whanau and extended whanau. The senior leader and therefore the principal.  Nationally, other teachers in the communities of learning that are involved to raise standards of literacy for haoura- well being and success.   The wider audience is also society as it links to the National well being budget that was released by the government recently. 

In their document; “Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective” (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins, 2012),  identified the role of current and emerging technologies as an emerging principle for a 21st century education system.  In this, they mention  four components of effective teaching of technologies in the classroom being;

providing enabling tools and infrastructure

providing inspiring ideas and opportunities to connect ideas.

enhancing capacity

supporting innovation

All four components need to be present in order to support meaningful changes in practice.   The global audience is related to the trends expressed in the graph; 

Trends shaping education spotlight (OECD, 2018), Robotics and coding has increased significantly and robots are talking over many labour enforced jobs, as you can see by the graph.

Emphasis on STEM-focused educational programmes has risen internationally in response to these trends (Ritz and Fan, 2015). Programmes addressed STEM education across all levels of education; while some focused on improving learning in stand-alone subjects, 

Therefore the play based approach, to teach the core curriculum subjects through the means of coding, will help to develop children into 21st Century thinking to embrace the future demands. 

The attitudes and perspectives in my audience may be such is that; if they witness my class room is that they are playing are they actually learning? What a mess! There may be scepticism about this play based approach and question it's validity for 'real learning' possibilities. 

 Through my inquiry the students will become more equipped to face these International trends as also referred to in the reading from  International Robotics Federation. 

My inquiry does have the impact and the four steps as clearly stated out above with play based learning and using real life contexts linking to literacy, the children will gain knowledge in coding.  

providing enabling tools and infrastructure - with I-pads, laptop use, scratch apps.

providing inspiring ideas and opportunities to connect ideas.- the children use real life problems that they come across related to ‘Energy Matters’ for example creating instruments linking to makey-makey. 

enhancing capacity - with exploration of the apps in the class to up-skill.  Integrating into the timetable. 

supporting innovation - linking with the circle of inquiry and allowing clear organisation and a risk taking, growth mindset.

They also will learn to be risk takers and will make improvements in other areas such as computational thinking and brushing heavily on the essential skills as reinforced in the curriculum. 

 By reading the first part (p.4-8) of ‘“Addressing Current and Future Challenges in Education” it analyses what  schools should do to prepare students to be successful in the rapidly evolving global economy.  It is suggested that children come to school as ‘digital natives’ yet they come to school and power down their devices.  My coding practices via play based learning helps to reinforce and normalise digital technology that is happening in their lives on a daily basis anyway. 

Teachers can use pedagogies such as Expeditionary learning (EL), a model of education powered by the growth mindset. Schools pledge to help students become "leaders of their own learning" 

References

Education Council. (2017). Our code, our standards. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Daggett, B. (2014). Addressing current and future challenges in education. Retrieved from http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf

OECD. (2018).Trends shaping education 2018 spotlight. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/Spotlight-15-A-Brave-New-World-Technology-and-Education.pdf