Forum: School 2.0

The Panel: Bill Hutchinson (Principal Hong Kong Sea School) , Karen Moffat (Bahrain), Michael Webber (CiSOS) Philippa Curtis (SIS)

The Question: Many schools would like to think they have transformed but on the surface they have students sitting in classrooms being told this by adults which they will be examined on later. What are the signs that a school is shifted to a school 2.0 model?

From the panel:

• When the discussion is about learning, not technology
• Audience: What does it look like, is it just the class, is it the teacher, is it both? Outside audiences?
• Collaboration, tech people need to be involved, teachers need to be involved in discussion with administrators
• Teachers immersed in the technology that kids use, but aware of the risks
• Students educated in web literacy and safety, otherwise it is like sending them into a seedy part of town on a dark night
• Collaboration: we are still behind closed doors in out little kingdoms, we need to be working on problem based learning and we don't singly have the skills, need to work together
• High stakes environments already do this: military, medical, pilots
• Rich environments: How does World of Warcraft compare with worksheets in engagement?!
  
  

Open to the floor

• Good learning and collaboration can occur without technology
• Not all students are digital natives, there is a range of skills, only 15% are digital innovators. Most do trivial stuff
• Tools don't have innate educational value, we need to have it scaffolded for us and we need to scaffold for our colleagues and students.
• Students are changing in the way they process information and learn.
• Are they really? The research perhaps hasn't shown this.
• Students have a much lower tolerance of boredom.
• Younger teachers have grown up with tech, experience will be different for students in their classrooms
• Google- workers work 4 days for the company and have 1 day for exploration of ideas. Why not trying this with teachers? Give flexible time for curriculum and change.
• Chinese system schools, teachers have much more time to plan collaboratively, less face time
• We don't give our kids the chance to do this because we don't do this ourselves
• Schools can have a vision, but currently, teachers can choose to ignore this and do what they like
• What about the fact that curriculum is geared towards getting kids through exams to enter Uni? 
• Teaching kids to learn should be just as effective preparation for those kids to do exams
• But for administrators, they do not want to risk a drop in exam marks
• Canadian school has 5 people training teachers. That is a sign that they are school 2.0
• Rapid personalised feedback will enhance learning, maybe technology an facilitate this.

Paradigm shift