Jan 14 2009
HSC and High Stakes School Assessment.
If we worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance. Orville Wright
I link Wright’s words to this question “Has the NSW BOS HSC reached it’s use by date for today’s learning?”
Today’s Australian IT News (etal) announced a new international assessment review will investigate high stakes school assessments, such as the NSW Board of Studies Higher School Certificate Exam (HSC). The article states;
… that reforming student assessment is the key to transforming education to bring it into the 21st century.
The executive director of the review will be Australia’s National Curriculum Board Head Professor Barry McGaw and will be co-ordinated through MERI at Melbourne University.
Is anyone seeing synergies for Australian Education reform?
Here we have the head of Australia’s emerging 2009 National Curriculum working con-currently on an international review of antiquated,summative and high stakes school assessment that have reached their collective use by dates. (my italics)
The policy paper was launched at the Learning and Technology World Forum in London yesterday. Professor McGaw
will oversee five working groups headed by other education experts charged with specifying 21st-century skills in a way that can be measured…
The red highlight is critical. 21st century tools and skills, vital as they are, will remain marginalised diversions to what a majority still see as the measure of ”real school learning” (UAI scores, NAPLAN, School Merit Lists, HSC results, media league tables, stressful competitive comparsions etal)
Until HSC style summative assessment, that NSW education stakeholders feel beholden to, is substantially reformed, attempts to embedd more meaningful and relevant learning into the mainstream will be nigh impossible.
The miniscule number innovating now can, or should be able to, accurately answer this question.
After applying, how have we measured improvement?
I hope early adopters are keeping their micro measurements of successful learning transformation for that is the evidence also needed at the macro level. It is the only evidence governments will respond to, when their education systems are openly compared on global league tables such as PISA and OECD. Ironic isn’t it? almost bully like in fact.
That is the crux of embedding systemic change. If meaningful assessment is unavailable to demonstrate and prove the ’21st century skills and tools mantra’, then sorry, any leader will baulk at supporting what really remains just an interesting experiment, tinkering in the back shed style.
This international assessment review should be the catalyst that forces the slumbering giants of education to actually ”get it”. As earnest as the disassociated minnows currently working wonders on the case by case, school by school level are, meaningful change will not occur until the powerbrokers change their measure of schooling, that is assessment.
The few innovators at the chalk face, the day to day doers, will keep plugging away because they already know this learning is what is needed, but they are having a hard time proving it beyond their tiny insular echo chambers. This must change and annoucements such as this review are important macro steps.
McGaw has wanted to align results with OECD,PISA and other educational indicaters that governments actually respond to for many years. No country likes coming out poorly in these results, whether or not we believe or respond to them, governments do.
Therefore assessment reform is really the first imperitive before any other ’21st century’ change. Leaders need to see outcomes that are manifestly better than previous methods. Change for changes sake? No thanks.
The policy paper outlines initial core skills as the basis for a new kind of assessment, covering
- creativity and innovation
- critical thinking
- problem-solving
- communication
- collaboration
- information fluency
- technological literacy
It argues that high-stakes assessments, such as Year 12 exams, determine what is taught in schools irrespective of what is dictated in the formal curriculum, and so changing the assessment will change what students learn.
More of this horse before the cart thinking is needed. In the article McGaw also says not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, acknowledging the current system is not broken but needs serious tweeking. The pace of any assessment reform should be called to question as even this review also has a three year life. Is that too long? Yes.
Our new National Curriculum can have as many motherhood objectives about “transformative 21st Century Learning”, but unless assessment substantially changes, teachers will continue to teach towards high stake exams, for myriad reasons.
If the 7 skills identified above are not meaningfully assessed, then they simply will NOT be taught in the mainstream. End of story.
Everything else that innovators attempting to drag leaders, colleagues, parents and students into the 21st century will be resigned to a patronising tinkering status.
But really, who can blame them? Teachers do what we know and do as we are told but is that really good enough now for our 2009 Kindy students graduating in 2022? Will a summative assessment ala HSC really prepare them for their future? No.
Know your destination before you choose your mode of transport. What we currently have should not be adjudged as the ultimate dictate of learning worth or success in the second decade of the 21st century.
The world has moved on, so should education, starting with assessment.
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Timeframe? That’ll be the killer!
How long do we have before ’serious tweeking’ becomes out and out quick, it’s collapsing around our ears.
How long before assessment is reformed in NSW? Predictions?
Exactly Darcy.
Delay further embeds what mature systems ultimately need to unlearn. Emerging education, often in less developed countries, have no such stymie, guess which will flourish?
Imperitives to “catch up” still rely on policy distillation, but the reform cycle is gathering momentum and pressing the process into tighter and tighter constraints. Good, finally.
I am interested in the fact McGaw is now head of two major determinates of future Australian education, assessment and curriculum.
I wonder how aligned the two will really be for the 21st century?
5 Years is waaaay too long.
Brilliant article Tony. I wrote about some if this in relation to the laptop rollout in the Digital Education Revolution back in June: http://paralleldivergence.com/2008/06/01/australias-digital-education-revolution/
I really fear that this National Curriculum and these proposed changes are our last chance to get this right for 21C. The question is, how will the teachers accept this need for change?
The seven key skills you mention above have been sorely missing from the curriculum in this past decade or more of rapid change in the world of information and communication – and to get them included, everything must change.
Also, I am worried to death that the rollout of the DER in NSW DET is being managed by the ICT administrators and not by any education/staff development directorate. This is so big, it really needs overarching leadership, but right now, it doesn’t appear to be there. It’s all about the hardware only.
I’m excited and terrified at the same time.
Stu
Thanks for your insights, really enjoyed the link. Much depth and thought in your work, I like that.
Agreed, concurrent “excited & terrified” will be a major 2009 theme in many schools I feel. The enormity of what will land in unprepared laps will be interesting to watch unfold.
Anyone who thinks a magic ICT panacea will “revolutionise” learning by proximinal osmosis is either a politician or dreaming. (see UNE PICTL report 07 http://tinyurl.com/7eu7ex & Australian IT http://tinyurl.com/73os28)
Mainstream nationwide classroom teachers will not change or integrate 21st century skills, that require higher order use of ICT, until these ARE the actual skills being ASSESSED at a National mandated compulsory level. End of story.
The great stuff early innovators are doing is seen by the Barons in charge as tinkering, Caractacus Potts style, joyous and idealistic, but no real place in their society.
It’s like espousing daily world peace, because thats a motherhood truism we all know is preferable, but also knowing the final high stakes exam will actually assess war strategy.
I know which will consume the mainstream classroom time. “You need war, its in the final test” “peace stuff? its only optional, learn it in your own time.”
Our current curriculum is exactly that. We know 21st century peace skills are needed but we still test the war syllabus. Why? because of the final assessment.
Result? More Graduate General Schwarzkopf’s than Meaningful Mother Theresa’s. Sad but true.
The tinkering/hobby farm/cottage industry level of early adopters is fine, dandy, needed and earnest. I love their work but non tech teachers who may be swayed to experiment and upskill voluntarily still have the mandated assessment expectation hanging close by.
Even teachers who DO deeply embed the “new 21st century skills & learning” are quick to revert to “proper HSC/NAPLAN preparation” mode for that is what really drives the daily teaching.
Who can blame them for these pointless test results are what the masters then judge success, failure or improvement by. No wonder teachers are scared of the Helpmanesque child catchers. This has to stop.
The new national curriculum will also change nought IF it does not reform assessment. I hope Barry and his mates get it right and the world listens.
Long time reader, first time posting a comment:
‘that require higher order use of ICT, until these ARE the actual skills being ASSESSED at a National mandated compulsory level. End of story.’ When considering ICT in our overall assessment our faculty had to include ICT just to make sure some teachers included it in their classrooms. Having recently arrived at the school, we another colleague and I, we started embedding the higher order ICT straight into assessment plans, (causing some minor ripples with students and parents as some teachers refused moving beyond their chalk and talk learning space) rather then await the magic wand from above. More teachers should push, rather than wait to be pushed.
Guilty! Sad…but honest. ‘Even teachers who DO deeply embed the “new 21st century skills & learning” are quick to revert to “proper HSC/NAPLAN preparation” mode…really drives the daily teaching.
‘The new national curriculum will also change nought IF it does not reform assessment.’ I attended the forum on the National English framework. In our group discussion didn’t even reach assessment, we got stuck on the inclusion of ‘explict teaching’ (why not include group, formative, student centred, ICT teaching and learning methods etc etc??) and ‘How should new technologies, especially digital and online settings, be ‘accommodated’ in subject English across the stages of schooling?’ We wanted ‘accommodated’ changed to ‘embrace’…
Troy
Always good to hear new voices who care enough to comment about the big issues confronting education.
Pleased you guys are causing local disruption (’push’, ‘ripples’), should be far more of it. The first baby steps are always remembered affectionately years later, well done.
Its one thing for our faculty to write H.O.T ICT into a program, sit back and hope, completely another for mainstream teaching to reflect, let alone deeply understand, it.
My argument is until formative assessment based on the 7 skills listed in the post is the core focus, not curriculum, not syllabi, ICT will be the domain of the tinkerers, remain marginalised, poorly taught or avoided.
My real fear is ICT will still be sprinkled on top by innovators, not embedded as a core learning function. The way to change that is bring on the real education revolution we need to have, not this digital facade aka politicians re-election soother.
As much as I despise mandates, assessment MUST initially do so, until the culture changes to become the norm.
When the fish don’t see the water, we know we have arrived. (or more pragmatically when this whole web2.0 tosh/tools/apps crap is no longer debated, learning for the 21st century will be making a difference to kids lives in all schools.)
Whilst the debate is active we have far to go. Thanks for joining in and hastening our arrival.
You give me even more to think about in your reply to my comment.
Interestingly, your insight, caught my attention: ‘…ICT will still be sprinkled on top by innovators, not embedded as a core learning function…’ At the end of last, my Boss started his little going away monologue about me by using some examples of how I work with ICT, however, describing it as ‘unconventional’ made me think: how we approach ICT, (embedded, higher order, not just publishing a document), should be ‘normal’, not unconventional…
This is turning into a great discussion. I personally believe that even though the early-adopters have put in a lot of effort and a lot of their own time to get ICTs working with their students, they are doing their school and their students a disservice if they DON’T also do everything they can to bring their fellow teachers along with them.
Where is the value for the students in 5M who are doing brilliant things with ICTs when their counterparts in 5J are doing nothing? And when 5M move onto 6T, where’s the continuity if the 5M teacher is working on an island?
While it’s expected that the curriculum and the syllabi will catch up to the rest of the world eventually, we can’t simply sit back and wait for that to happen. Because if we do, we’ll simply end up with the roadblocks that the union will put up to “protect” their constituents.
We preach the concept of “lifelong learning”, but how many teachers actually practise it? As professionals we must all make an effort to keep up with our craft. I believe the early adopters we have a responsibility to lead and motivate our peers. We should no longer accept their excuses. When DER kicks in, if our teaching force is not already running, we’ll be facing years of pain – with no guarantee that the “revolution” will continue after the initial four years. It’s going to cost a lot of money and the government and community will expect to see value for that money. Nobody wants to throw good money after bad.
The elephant is in the room now. We have to all work together to make sure it doesn’t turn white.
Stu
I too am enjoying the discussion, white elephants will result unless there is more of it.
My premise is “Think Global, Act Local”
The fantastic work innovators are doing now is THE best and most pragmatic way to spread the word. Bring all learners who matter along with you, yes. This obviously needs to continue and is still the most important role of classroom teachers, teach committed learners well, be they children or adults.
We offer colleagues interested in 21st century tools, apps and practices the chance to learn, voluntarily. I have little time for overt gatekeepers/blockers/naysayers, I don’t have the energy or wherewithall to accomodate them. Putting it bluntly, I’m over them. None of this is now new and yet the way some people respond you’d think it was revolutionary.
The changes we are facing will expose the genuine lifelong learners and those who give the statement lip service. If leaders at all levels say “Yeah great, innovate” and then they fail to engage at even the most rudimentary level themselves, we have a problem Houston! The amazing thing is none of this is particularly onerous to learn and that just further exposes the doers and the sayers.
The DER has been a “sayer” so far. Political expediency, throw some serious $ at the issue and hey presto, the shiny baubles aka technology has magically taken us into the 21st Century.
Wrong, although this will be the pollies rhetoric on the issue when they say post 2012, “we’ve given them the national curriculum, the budget and the tools, its their fault now”. That was not the problem that needed fixing dummkopfs.
Thats why this education revolution should be about so much more than technology. Assessment is the Sisyphean task that no one has been brave enough to fundamentally question since the Wyndham scheme delivered the first HSC back in 1967 for NSW students.
Sure its been tinkered with on the edges, freshened up and modified, but it is now the single biggest barrier to real 21st Century education. It remains the final arbitor of school success as we know it, it’s what stakeholders are beholden to. Its taught to, reported on, judgements and comparisons made and worst of all its still seen as the entry ticket to post school learning, albeit now called the UAI.
No one wants to seriously question the status quo for its what we have had now for a generation. Teachers teaching sat for it, the media reporting on it sat for it, parents all have their own HSC story to tell and a whole industry of beaurocracy is enamoured to it for it is their iconic castle. So far the released 2009 – 2010NCB white papers are also scared of the assessment industry for it barely touches on reform.
I am amazed by the great work individuals are doing daily in schools. Yes they need to educate others locally and keep plugging away. Maybe a slow bottom up revolution will result?
Unfortunately in reality these earnest efforts will not lead to any substantial change in what schools remain, test beds for data collection due to high stakes summative assessment.
The chat, explicit or back room, is all about the “test, data, value added”on which schools and ultimately teachers, are jugded and compared. We are just starting to follow the lead where Britain and US are seriously questioning the failures of these models to reform education. Why didn’t it reform education? because it wasn’t the problem.
A 21st Century Wyndham is needed, urgently. Hope to hear some more voices contribute, especially from NSW.
I agree Stu, discussion/interaction is part of the joy of blogs.
Further the ideal of ‘…disservice if they DON’T also do…’ is important. You are right, Stu….Sadly I don’t know any other profession that you may have active resistance to technological change. Imagine my father resisting using technology in his motor mechanic business?? Or your local GP?? He wouldn’t have a business, yet we accept that different teachers will have different skills to bring to each class and sadly most of the time those skills are not ICT…
I’ve just spent a semester as Head Teacher teaching and learning and that allowed me the time in a sense, to ’spread the wealth’, but again, as a 28yo on a planet with the majority of people over 50, it was difficult, but so rewarding.
Hi Tony, one comment of yours I’d like to pick up on is this:
“I am amazed by the great work individuals are doing daily in schools. Yes they need to educate others locally and keep plugging away. Maybe a slow bottom up revolution will result?”
Being in NSW DET for over 15 years now, I have seen many an educational ICT project from State Office level (top-down) start but rarely go beyond “trial” mode. These projects all have a start date, a finite budget and an end date. KidMap, TILT, TILT Plus – gone. Even TaLE – where is that going? Have you discovered CLI CURLS in your “My Applications” tab in the Portal yet? How many teachers use these tools regularly?
You’ve got a Connected Classrooms section on your blog. CC is brilliant! But how do you know which other schools you can connect to? How do you know who is interested in what you are interested in and video-conference with them? You just don’t. What percentage of your teachers use VC? That room cost over $20K to put together. Are you getting value for that money yet? How much money was spent on all of these past solutions? Why do we not learn lessons from past implementations?
It’s clearly the case that top-down, non-mandatory ICT innovations often go nowhere together with large amounts of money that could have been better spent.
On the other hand, there are numerous examples of inexpensive, self-supporting bottom-up education ICT solutions that have spread by osmosis – classroom blogging, podcasting, video editing, digital storytelling, wikis, student-centred intranets and digital portfolios, Moodle, LAMS, Joomla – ALL of them local initiatives, implemented on-site by local staff for next to no cost. Unfortunately, we have no real mechanism to identify best practise, capture and propogate these local solutions so we often end up reinventing the wheel in each school and in a system of 2200+ schools, that’s a lot of doubled-up unnecessary work.
State Office needs to recognise that they are not the only “experts” in our schools system and that there is much to learn from individuals (like you and many others) who are already DOING IT EFFECTIVELY in schools.
Investigate. Evaluate. Promote. Adopt. Adapt. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
By FOSTERING bottom-up solutions you have a much greater chance of acceptance by other schools than you have of any forced solution from above. History speaks for itself.
Stu,
Your comment, “…numerous examples of inexpensive, self-supporting bottom-up education ICT solutions that have spread by osmosis – classroom blogging, podcasting, video editing, digital storytelling, wikis, student-centred intranets and digital portfolios, Moodle, LAMS, Joomla – ALL of them local initiatives, implemented on-site by local staff for next to no cost…” is right on the money.
The really terrible thing is that when a school asks for some very simple support their is no mechanism or flexibility to do so. MOODLE is a classic example, why would DET not adopt this free Australian innovation is beyond me.
Here’s an edited extract from an email re: MOODLE to…oh, it is best I don’t say. First, my email:
“We have established MOODLE…and are experiencing difficulties configuring updates for the MOODLE server. The principal suggested I ask if you could assist with the following questions:
1. Can DET offer some official support to schools seeking to implement their own MOODLE servers?
2. Is it the official DET position that schools wanting MOODLE servers should pay for hosting from a 3rd party?
3. Is the DET planning on standardising all schools on some other course management system?
4. If the DET is prepared to offer some support for in school MOODLE servers will they consider hosting a CVS server with MOODLE updates and allow access to it on port 22 from within schools so we do not need to find away to get through the firewall?
5. There is a good chance that some of MOODLE related difficulties we are experiencing have already been solved and we just haven’t found the “right person” to ask yet.
Hope you can help.”
The response:
“At the current time Moodle or other learning management systems are not formally part of Learning Tools Program but it is obvious that this needs to be incorporated in Departmental planning and I am working on this. Many TAFE Institutes are deploying Moddle.
I will forward this email to the Change Management Team in the ________________ program asking them to follow up on who may be able to give some advice on who is successful implementing Moodle in other schools and to contact you.
If you don’t hear from them please get back to me.”
That was Sept. 8th and as yet, you guessed it, have not heard back.
While I’m on a roll, blogging. We had many of the kids blogging at my former school then the SIBE cutover blocked us out. I was told that DET would have blooging infrastructure that we could use ’shortly’. Three years have elapsed and zip. The kids were doing critical literacy style lessons looking at issues of spam, netiquette etc. in a real world online setting. It was 2004 we started and 5 years have elapsed.
Some leadership would be handy…some savvy leadership with 21st century nouse even better.
Troy
Love your analogy to motor mechanics and GP’s, unfortunately in education we have no direct financial imperitive to reform antiquated practice, like going broke if we don’t.
I’d hope the teaching profession reforms because they value the future lives of students in their care, no $ value can be put on that. Thats just a 25yr idealism surfacing again. Good.
I still highly respect the teachers I work with who daily demonstrate quality teaching skills, some of whom have no ICT. The work ethic is high, kids seem engaged and the paper ‘results’ on high stake tests are excellent with the methods they employ. Should there still be more, Yes.
In fact this skilled and entrenched “20th Century perfection teaching” are reasons why change needs to be mandated in assessment first and foremost, to bring them out of that role.
If all teachers HAD to address and embed these skills;
creativity and innovation
critical thinking
problem-solving
communication
collaboration
information fluency
technological literacy
for they knew formative assessment was applied, ongoing and valued for individual learning, then we may have arrived.
Educational reform is so much more than just ICT use. We need far more leaders like you, age is meaningless. In fact targetted graduates should be harnessed to lead ICT in schools before they become inculcated in the old ways.
Stu
At risk of going deaf in our echo chamber, so many good points are raised to respond to, I’d love others to chip in. Go on all you experienced bloggers out there watching.
Your comment
“Unfortunately, we have no real mechanism to identify best practise, capture and propogate these local solutions…”
is another reason why assessment reform is critical.
21stC skills need to be assessed using common measurement tools. That’s exactly what McGaw and one of the 5 teams will be addressing in the next 3 years. (see http://tinyurl.com/6ukgq6 pages 14&15) It will be difficult.
If formative assessment mandated the 21st century skills we learn, then we’d have economies of scale via the CCP and a common focus for our embedded teaching, further reducing duplicity but still allowing for local innovation.
Ok enough, my brain hurts nicely, I still encourage others to voice an opinion or two, especially disparates.
cheers Stu, Troy and Darcy, back to the tennis now.
Tony, Stu and others,
I was lead to this site by Stu’s post in the Sydney Region forum and am glad I was.
I am basically “just” a classroom teacher one year away from retiring and have been dabbling in the ICT side of things since Microbees and Commodore 64s because of my own personal interest. Very little of my development has been provided by, encouraged by or rewarded by the DET.
I agree with the vast majority of what has been said especially in the bottom-up approach. About 6 years ago my Principal leased, at fantastic expense then, a data projector. This data projector remained virtually unused (except for when it was stolen and replaced by insurance) until about 3 years ago when I started using it in my new role as Librarian/Technology person. Shortly after I started using it other members of staff were borrowing it and basically asking for their own. Our P&C has now agreed to purchasing an extra four data projectors with trolleys so that we can have one shared between 2 rooms. This is not ideal and people would have preferred one set up in each room but at this stage it’s all we could afford. Of course this won’t miraculously make everything better; it won’t necessarily mean that all learning becomes meaningful, relevant and wonderful (neither would having an IWB in every room). They are merely tools and we need to look at using them in new ways. I have yet to see an IWB used as much more than an expensive blackboard or screen. Please note I am not relating the above as proof of my own genius. I quite happily let the data projector sit largely unused for 3 years myself as a classroom teacher. It was only when my situation changed and I needed a way of showing a computer screen to a large audience to demonstrate a point or lesson that I began to use it. Interestingly I now prefer to use Remote Desktop more to demonstrate things to my students and don’t use the data projector as much. Teachers WILL use tools when they see the benefits and are confident that they have the skills to do so.
Now to my last point, we are now a week away from a proposed 2 day strike because the DET has offered us an insulting salary increase. People above have made comments about professionalism etc, well I don’t feel, after 35 years in the DET, that I have ever been treated or re-imbursed as a true professional. To my way of thinking, teachers are asked to take on big changes, to become more and more responsible, but to be valued less and less. Our glorious leader, who couldn’t be a teacher because of his criminal record, frequently extols the virtues of his minions but then offers us a pittance. To be honest, with a year to go I will be glad to be out, and can understand why tecahers would resist extra work, responsibility etc.
Hi Darcy.
Moodle has been picked up by many high schools as a 3rd-party solution because DET has not offered an alternative. But Moodle is not the only class management system being used. Some schools use LAMS. Some schools use proprietry products like Blackboard and Janison. This has all happened because of a need seen by schools which hasn’t been met by their educational authority.
The same can be said for swipe card attendance, timetabling and student welfare/discipline tracking and SMS communications software. OASIS timetable and absences are horrible and DET has no standard solutions for SMS or welfare/discipline tracking – but these are clearly identified as essential needs for any high school. So what happens? Schools make their own decisions and across the state there are probably a dozen or more different applications being used to meet these needs.
Let me explain the bigger picture because very few people in individual public schools understand the issues. You want standardised support from DET? Which of these separate systems do we support? If centrally they choose to only support Moodle, then that will exclude ALL of the other players in the market and as a large educational authority, unless we go out to tender and contract a single solution it can be seen as a “restriction of trade” for some vendors, who may take action. This is the government we’re talking about, remember? Independent schools don’t have such problems.
NSW DET has a history of rejecting off-the-shelf and open-source solutions in preference for internally developed ones. But things are changing. Recently all of our students had their email migrated from a locked down Unisys (based on Microsoft) solution to Google’s GMail. Soon (later this year), students will also get access to on-line storage/blogging etc using a new solution to be implemented called eBackpack. This may use Google Apps or any number of existing Web 2.0 applications re-packaged and run through our Portal. It’s been a long time coming, but it is coming – hopefully just in time for the DER laptops – and it will be supported.
Tony has raised some of the MAJOR issues we have with IMPLEMENTING this stuff in his article – existing assessment and exam requirements don’t lend themselves to this new stuff hardly at all. Staff acceptance is LOW – what percentage of staff at your school do the stuff you do with ICTs? We could spend millions (and do) on ICT-based solutions, but it all goes to nought if it’s not being used effectively for teaching or learning. If cost-benefit analyses don’t show value for money, if standardised test results don’t improve as a result of this massive spending on ICT, then why are we doing it?? (nevermind that the standardised tests are the wrong benchmark in the first place).
There is a concern that the IT masters (software/hardware/networks) within DET (and virtually every other large education authority) are separated from the Curriculum masters (teaching and learning) are separated from the Professional Development (training) masters are separated from the Finance masters (the money)…are separated from the Assets masters (the buildings and facilities)…and so on.
We are expecting ICTs to be INTEGRATED into teaching and learning in the classroom, but none of the direction from above is INTEGRATED.
You said it best when you said:
“Some leadership would be handy…some savvy leadership with 21st century nouse even better.”
The ball is well and truly rolling…
“By January 14, the state Government had received 21 submissions for the learning device and 15 applications for the wireless network, the department’s chief information officer, Stephen Wilson, said.
“Given the massive size of this and what we’re asking, there are pretty high hurdles to overcome, so that’s an outstanding result,” Mr Wilson said.
A team of experts had been formed to evaluate the expressions of interest, he said.”
Full article:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24934750-15306,00.html
Thanks Ian, Stu, Troy and Darcy.
A valuable discussion of the issues facing DET NSW, learning and ultimately our kids.
Ian and Troy your contributions are exactly why bottom up is best. It gives us a daily focus and a pragmatic “can do” in local schools with our learners. Local web2.0/ICT tinkering is good and needed BUT it certainly won’t shift a DET within a generation.
We also need the leaders as Darcy says with genuine “21st century nouse” to have the will and commitment to do something braver than incremental. Hope they don’t own a fiddle, have matches or a mate called Nero. (… or maybe a regenerative burn is in order)
Assessment2.0 should be a fundamental reform goal for leaders, albeit an extremely difficult one. Some will see the need later than sooner, our DET may continue safe & steady whilst progressive, relevant PBL forges ahead, New Tech High style. http://tinyurl.com/82ltsw.
Stu, your ICT insights give us more to consider, particularly the separation/duplication /waste you highlight in your last point. Circuitous ‘too many cooks’ is certainly alive and well in the antiquated Pyramid called DET NSW.
I await the long promised ebackpack/Tools that Tim Hand and other TaLe staff have been developing. The lag time from announcement (in our case last April at the NCR Tech Forum) to implementation is of concern but I guess that was delayed due to state/federal squabbles over budget.
Tim Anderson’s procurement logic, which he also shared that day, is also now reflected in the C.L.D. tender response. If you go fishing with massive bait you are sure to catch something of substance. Lets hope there are not 21 white elephants floating around.
The time will take care of itself IF we have strong will.
Ok, even though I’m not a full-blown teacher (yet), it is interesting to read through all of this and compare it to my own experience in helping the ANU Faculty of Asian Studies re-do their curriculum.
Basically, the curriculum hadn’t been touched since the Faculty first started, and there was around 150 courses on the books – each one being created by a different staff member – the majority of whom were no longer employed at the ANU at all.
The biggest complaint from students was that a lot of the courses relied on out of date texts, or assessments that required a certain type of learning.
Example:
All language courses were assessed using exams. Written exams required students to regurgitate word lists or do ‘odd one out’ exercises, with a 2 A4 page narrative to finish it off. Oral exams were something similar.
Now, as financial constraints began to bite, and the faculty began to look at where they could cut the fat, it became apparent that Chinese, Japanese & Indonesian were the only profitable language courses. The smaller courses, such as Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Urdu, Tetum, Lao & Malay were told that come end of 2007, they were going to be cut.
Instead of accepting fate, the heads of these particular centres began working on new methods of delivering their courses – Thai developed a CD-ROM based learning software, and struck up a deal with several Australian universities to enable them to teach their own Thai courses. Hindi & Tetum came up with similar courses too. Their start-up costs? Nil. The staff did this on their own time, after hours, and on holidays, using their own expertise.
Then something interesting happened – the Chinese department said they would be happy to subsidise the other language courses (such as Lao, Malay, Vietnamese, etc) if they were given a grant to implement an online WebCT-based course in Mandarin. What happened next was that the course was so effective, they sold the prototype to probably the most unlikely buyer there was – University of Hong Kong.
My point? There needs to be a financial incentive for change to make the bureaucrats sit up and take notice. There also needs to be a sense of urgency to get this implemented on the ground level.
Every university I have ever studied at has utilised some form of Web learning. Whether it be blog-based, discussion forums, or interactive learning. Lecturers were forced to have at least the skeleton pages up. However, there are two distinct groups of educators when it comes to web-based tools:
- Those who do, and do constantly, and do better than everyone else
- Those who don’t, refuse to, and will never do it in their lifetime
When as a student body we surveyed the lecturers who didn’t touch Blackboard/WebCT the majority of them said they just didn’t know how to do it. Those who did use it, only knew how to use it because of trial and error.
My impression of the NSW system of doing things is that they haven’t committed to a single program, nor will they commit anytime soon. Thus we have the confused system where a handful of people at School A use Blackboard, the people at School B use Moodle, and the people at School C use nothing.
I guess the main question is – what is the solution? How can the effectiveness of one system be measured against another?
Which fits better into assessments? And finally, how can the seven points above be best assessed in this type of environment?
Now THIS is what we need in Australia if we want a true digital education REVOLUTION.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=RDfpd8GV9dI
We need our leaders to be seen to be using ICTs effectively for communication. To generate an expection that people will use ICTs themselves to access those communications.
What Obama is doing is real change. Discussions over his Blackberry, Recovery.gov – keeping people in the loop. This WEEKLY address on YouTube even has OPEN comments. As of this writing, there are almost 2,800 comments already. THIS is democracy.
We should demand this level of openness and accessibility from our leaders. You can’t just sign a piece of paper and say “We’re going to have a Digital Education Revolution!” – our government are our leaders. Lead us. Model what you want us to do. Don’t pay us lip-service.
Stu
Valid in the extreme, leaders should lead by daily example, simple you’d think. BO’s 1st term now has much to now live up to.
BO is trying a new openess, we are led to believe. If he retains his apparent personal voice rights, that is. We’ll see on that, now that he is el presidente the political minders will want to filter his personal contributions. A royal battle looms me thinks.
Rudd & Turnbull are both doing the toe dipping twitter flitter, yeah good, (& Turnbull even looks to be actually sending his own tweets, love his dog’s life page on his blog too!) but the laughable Conroy/Tanner attempt of a blog died a quick painful death, it’s reincarnation will need to be real next time. It smelt.
Our 6th North Coast Regional priority calls for “connected learning”, yeah superficially good again, but why only in the DET silo? Our CCP is only with other DET schools, our tools will only be with othet det learners. Sure 1.4 million is a large silo BUT…. Dumb? extremely. Counter productive to real 21st learning? absolutely.
We know our long promised suite of “tools” are going to be locked up and sanatised in the portal. DET arguments include safety, child protection, limited bandwidth & an unspoken desire to retain direct control. Less vocal is their real fear of litigation (who could blame them?) and a sad paucity of staff skills to otherwise manage the real open sources we should be having.
Check the “Hole in Wall Project” in India to see what I mean. If it’s happened there over the last decade, we really need to get on the same page as the rest of the rapidly emerging so called ‘less developed’ world. Not for much longer bucky jim bob. Those systems have little to unlearn, no prejudicial antiquated attitudes & stymie’s, no ivory assessment towers, hence their rapid rise. They’ll race past so called “advanced DETs” easily in the next decade. Check Zoho as one example of what else is coming out of LDCs, soon.
Our DETs attempts, earnest as they make it sound, is only a half baked/half way attempt for 21st century skills. Sort of understand why, maybe, just, BUT it won’t be real OR beneficial in the long run.
My gripe is our approaching new “silo safe tools” will insulate DET learners FURTHER from the reality of the rest of the world’s openesss, it neatly avoids the harder question of the real (unwritten) curriculum we need to be teaching now in all schools. (digital citizenship, CC licensing, open source, 1:1 K-12 not 9-12, AWAT learning, formative assessments)
When kids smell a disconnected fake attempt at connected learning, they won’t honestly engage and the potental for an expensive flop is massive, a bit like the taxpayer rip off of “The Learning Federation” digital resources, what a crock that turned out to be.
The lack of external voices in our recent debate here highlights the fact we have to break that mould.
I am extremeley grateful for the intelligent informed input from all so far.
My rant is now officially over, sorry.
Tony, your article and this whole discussion thread has been excellent. I hope the powers that be bother to read it. They may learn something.
It’s prompted me to put together an article over at my blog:
http://paralleldivergence.com/2009/01/26/still-waiting-for-the-revolution/
Thanks, Stu.