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Ten Trends 2012: Citizenship

Posted on August 30, 2012 by John Fenaughty

What is Digital Citizenship?

Everyone reading this blog, has, at minimum, dual citizenship. You may already have citizenship to one or more nations, but your presence online also grants you digital citizenship. Traditionally we gained citizenship to a place by being born there (right of soil), or having a parent/grandparent born there (right of blood). The everydayness of the internet in our lives means that most of us will spend a few hours a day on cyber-soil, granting us the bundle of rights and responsibilities of citizenship as they are applied to the digital world.

But it’s not enough just to be born somewhere if you want to maintain citizenship. We know that in most countries if you break particular laws (or enough smaller laws) you go to jail and lose your citizenship. Similarly, if you do not have the skills or knowledge to function in a particular land you have to go someplace where you can survive and be safe, and take out citizenship of that place instead.

Digital citizenship refers to the skills, knowledge and attributes required to achieve the things you want in a way that keeps you safe and meets the responsibilities expected of you. But because no one owns the internet (even though they may want to) or the tubes through which it flows, who sets the responsibilities and who enforces the rights of digital citizenship is undefined.

Locally, NetSafe has explored what digital citizenship could mean in Aotearoa/NZ. The NetSafe model sees digital citizenship as the nexus of skills, values, and knowledge that enables someone to use ICT (digital literacy) safely (cybersafety) to ethically, effectively, and respectfully (as described by some of the values and key competencies in the NZ curriculum) achieve what they need. Digital citizens must possess skills and knowledge in all three of these domains, otherwise they risk losing citizenship through harm to themselves, ineffectiveness, and/or sanctions.

What’s driving the interest in Digitial Citizenship?

Two thrusts are sharply driving interest in Digital Citizenship: 1.) safety concerns and 2.) The potentials offered by e-learning.

Contemporary cybersafety work in terms of child safety is roughly 15 years old. Although this work has undoubtedly increased safety, holes have appeared in some of the thinking underlying cybersafety philosophies. Technical solutions have proven to be limited in protecting children from potentially harmful content and conduct (not withstanding the technical limitations introduced with BYOD). Awareness raising approaches, while effective at educating people how to keep safe online, fall down when other users do not treat others safely, respectfully or ethically (e.g., road-safety metaphor time: it doesn’t help you to be safe if other road users drive on your side of the road, or use a car with failing breaks, etc.).

The rise in digital citizenship interest reflects the fact that focusing only on cybersafety does not produce a safe environment if there is not a focus on ensuring that other digital citizens use this space ethically, respectfully, and safely. 

Secondly, the push for digital citizenship reflects the contemporary value ascribed to e-learning and its various blended and virtual siblings. In scores of countries policies and funding now promote e-learning. The expectation for schools is no longer that young people will simply be entertained by the internet, but will instead occupy it and use it for learning. With this comes the recognition that these learners have rights in this space, as much as they have rights in their classrooms that they sit in. Equally, there is the attendant requirement for learners’ responsibities to others in this space. Locally, Ultra Fast Broadband in Schools and e-portfolios are examples of the value by which educators and the government place on e-learning. The awareness that safety concerns may limit uptake of these opportunities makes digital citizenship a strong contender for change.

What does this all mean?

Currently the safety issues raised by the the ‘wild-west’ of the internet, and the inability of traditional cybersafety approaches to prevent them, see these issues being brought into the purvue of governments and law makers. Locally we see this manifesting in increasing regulatory pressure for action (e.g., most recently on cyberbullying). We should expect to see more legislative pressure and regulation around digital citizenship concerns.

We need to ensure that we teach young people about using ICT to achieve what they need in a respectful and ethical way that keeps them safe. This means recognising that that teaching people how to be safe is not always going to keep them safe, and nor will relying on internet filters to always do the job. We need to ensure that all digital citizens understand their responsibilities and their rights, and we need to find ways to enforce these rights carefully.

These issues highlight the need to ensure that schools plan for the provision of digital citizenship within their strategic planning. Increasingly this will become a critical way to ensure that the school community gets the most out of e-learning. School communities need to ensure that their educators are confident in supporting learners to become thriving digital citizens.

What can you do?

Don’t let stubborn cybersafety and digital citizenship concerns hold you back – If you are passionate about e-learning and student-centred practice, then:

  • Advocate for your school to incorporate a digital citizenship into its strategic plan.
  • Use NetSafe’s excellent Learn | Guide | Protect website. The website lists resources and approaches to embed cybersafety and digital citizenship within your practice.
  • Speak out for professional development for digital citizenship so your school community can get the most out of e-learning and not be left behind.
  • Check out Mike Ribble’s comprehensive work on digital citizenship.

Information about CORE's Ten Trends

  • An introduction to CORE's Ten Trends for 2012
  • An explanation about CORE's Ten Trends

 

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CORE Education eFellow Review 2012

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Emma Potter

The 2012 CORE Education eFellows gathered in Christchurch for their final Masterclass session of the year before they will present individually and together at ULearn 12 in Auckland. Throughout the course of the year the eFellows have gathered, connected, shared and inspired one another, forming unique bonds that will benefit them all in the years to come.

On their final day in Christchurch, the eFellows were asked to reflect on their year, and share one thing they will each take away from their experience. They all agreed that it had been a worthwhile experience but different for each of them nonetheless, coming from a different parts of the country, different schools, and different sectors in their own words (see above video).

Applications for the 2013 eFellowship close at 5pm on Friday 31st August—apply today!

 

Emma Potter

Emma Potter is the Marketing and Communications Officer at CORE Education. She started with CORE following her university education, where much of her study was focused on news and the news media.

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Educational Positioning System | The Whole School Development Tool

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Adele O'Leary

The Education Positioning System developed by CORE Education in conjunction with Dr Julia Atkin offers a comprehensive process for formative school self-review to empower schools to shape and direct their future development.

Following extensive research and trials in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the EPS has developed as an effective framework for guiding data driven decision making, providing real-time research and analysis, enhancing community involvement, and enabling schools to gain a better understanding of what is working and what is not.

As you can hear from above, the process offers a non-threatening and provides an anonymous method for capturing the perceptions plus ‘voice’ of the school community whilst enabling schools access to rich data that is personalised and relevant to your specific school context. This, then becomes the basis for future dialogue and professional learning opportunities that will foster and promote ‘personalised learning.’

Just as a GPS helps us locate where we are in space, the EPS aids in determining where a school is in its educational development. Based on a framework of three interrelated dimensions and eighteen key elements the tool is designed to provide a comprehensive process by which schools can review, plan, implement and evaluate their progress in an ongoing manner.

This comprehensive framework combined with an online data gathering tool and facilitation support, enables schools to identify their ‘current reality’ and generates a sustainable self-review and school improvement process for whole school development.

The online survey provides baseline information for your school’s development process, and can be used interactively to explore data plus the next steps, then at a later stage to provide evidence of where progress has been made via an immediate analytical report (both online and in print). This report identifies relative strengths and weaknesses, providing a sound basis for strategic planning and future development thereby fostering a culture focused on promoting personalized learning.

For more information please check out the EPS website or get in touch direct for a demonstration of this service.

 

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Ten Trends 2012: Personalisation

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Douglas Harré


There is a growing awareness that one-size-fits-all approaches to school knowledge and organisation are increasingly ill-adapted both to addressing individuals' needs and to the knowledge society at large.

As teachers, therefore, we strive every day (well…most days) to provide some degree of individualised approach to our teaching in the classroom—to hopefully interact with each student on an individual basis, and to provide something that meets their particular needs.

Over the past 10-15 years many governments have tried to create social systems with the citizen at their centre, challenging the ‘old’ model, and developing systems that are more responsive to individual needs: "a system that responds to individual pupils, by creating an education path that takes account of their needs, interests and aspirations." (See link to document below.)

These governments are usually in OECD economies where the need for this approach is probably better recognised, and where educations systems have (in most cases) moved on from the provision of education at a massive scale, or where the Millennium Development Goals are still a target to be reached.

In the same way that many of the current aspects of our “modern” education system grew out of the needs for trained workers for the UK's Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, the newer, more personalised, approach can be seen to be allied to the economic changes that have been at work in the last 10–15 years.

Now, in 2012 as the centre of Henry Ford's "any colour as long as its black" approach to mass production moves from Europe and the USA to those nations where total costs are lower, so the new economic model for “a modern economy” moves towards a more personalised, consumerist approach. In the education sector this
 new approach to personalised learning followed the emergence of the term (as we know it now) in the UK in 2004. The move beyond uniform, mass provision of education can therefore be seen in a wider sense as "personalisation" of consumerism (entertainment and advertising in particular) and of public services more widely.

Noted UK educationalist David Hargreaves acknowledged this in 2004 (PDF) by observing that "customisation in business is where goods or services are tailor-made, in contrast to the mass production of good or services. Mass customisation means providing goods or services at the prices of mass production. Personalised learning is an educational version of this, and means meeting the needs of every learner more fully than we have in the past."

His vision was still somewhat controversial some years on.

So where we did (and do) have individualisation of education—providing (essentially) the same objects for all learners, the trend to personalisation—is predicated on providing differing objects for all learners. ‘If I can have a mass production car built to my specification, why can my child not have a mass production education built to his?’

Personalisation in the business world is about creating the illusion of individuality for the consumer while giving the producer the advantages of mass production. Personalisation in education, though, means pupils get what they need, not what they want. It is not the pupil's decision, but someone else’s.

Ninja Google Masters such as yourselves will quickly find a range of approaches to personalisation that rise out of the work of practitioners such as Benjamin Bloom (Mastery Learning) and Howard Gardner (Multiple Intelligences). Additionally, there is the ongoing debate that has been happening since the 1980s around the benefits of mixed ability teaching morphing into a range of 1990s differentiation approaches. While all of these still play their part in classrooms around New Zealand (and the world) every day, in the 2010s it is the inexorable rise of digital technologies such as that is playing a pivotal role in enabling this new degree of personalisation to occur.


Broader tools that fit into this category include:

  • Learning Management Systems—delivering what your student needs/wants in terms of curriculum material provides flexibility in curriculum delivery timing but is it personalised?
  • ePortfolios—"a record of the best work that I have produced over time and that I can take with me as I transition from one education organisation to another. In New Zealand this usually means Mahara (or the version supported by the Ministry of Education, MyPortfolio) and often supported by the work of people like Dr Helen Barrett
  • Personal computing devices—the BYOD-mania / 1-to-1 computing trend that is sweeping the world (or parts of it).

At the leading edge of larger online systems (past that usually seen in New Zealand), there are the types of larger “personalised”, adaptive, learning systems from vendors such as Pearson or McGraw Hill (Learn Smart). These are like LMSes-on-steroids and have the capital, and are designed to deliver at scale (i.e. to cohorts of schools and students in excess of most schools in the New Zealand system). 



Summary: As noted above, the trend is to no longer have a one-size-fits-all approach—the classroom is going mobile. These trends will only increase as broadband and wireless speeds increase, and as student initiated learning and pathways become more commonplace. Education will be the great differentiator of the 21st century, and New Zealand schools will need to continue to lift their game in the face of a series of global challenges.

How this will play out in a post-global financial crisis and a more Asia-centric world will be interesting to watch unfold.



What are your views?

 

Information about CORE's Ten Trends

  • An introduction to CORE's Ten Trends for 2012
  • An explanation about CORE's Ten Trends

 

read more
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Another chapter in the story of educamps…The MAGIC of educampchch

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Emma Potter

efellows blog post 2

CORE Education eFellow and self-confessed ‘educamp groupie’ Anne Kenneally shares her experience of educampchch, which she travelled up from Dunedin to attend. EducampNZ is a user-generated ‘unconference’ focused on e-learning and education.

The journey towards educampchch began way back in 2011 at the inaugural educampdunners. Pauline Henderson travelled down from Christchurch and as we shared the day we dreamt of a time when Christchurch could celebrate. Again Pauline travelled to Dunedin for the second educamp and the dream became a real possibility! We spend a weekend planning together in Christchurch and the dream became a reality!

The 23rd of June dawned and we gathered at Burnside High School – an AMAZING venue. We gathered from across the sectors, across New Zealand, on a Saturday on the penultimate week of term 2. From the outset the MAGIC of the educamp phenomena was evident.

efellows blog post 4

The MAGIC began as we welcomed people to their first educamp, as well as reconnecting with those who are self confessed “educamp groupies…”. A highlight in particular was celebrating the MAGIC of the inaugural educampchch, as we shared in the resilience of the amazing Canterbury educators. Participants gathered from afar (Auckland, Wellington, Reefton, Timaru, Dunedin, Darfield, Springston and in and around the Christchurch area) to share their learning expertise.

Like other educamps, educampchch was participant driven, with educampers having the opportunity to discuss current successes, challenges, motivations and ideas, as well as having individual choice over the discussion groups they joined. The willingness of people to engage and share; sharing, not only of skills, tools and knowledge but practical discussion around how to enhance learning opportunities is what makes the educamp experience in particular so MAGICAL. The collaboration between primary and secondary further enriched this experience; having so much wisdom in one room was all thanks to the people—he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

efellows blog post 3

Specific successes of the day were the SMACKDOWN, with a wonderful smorgasbord of innovative tools and sites, with an opportunity to see how we might use them to cause learning to happen; discussions around the concept of BYOD (or BYOB—bring your own browser, as it is becoming known). With the wisdom in the room, and around New Zealand with contributions from those following the Twitter hashtag for the day, it was possible to share successes and challenges and to look to the future, sharing policies, links, and opportunities to hand the learning over to the learners, and encourage ubiquity of learning.

The sharing around Daily5 and CAFÉ was enriched with the expertise of Judy McKenzie and Amanda Signal. Their experience not only encouraged and motivated others, it has set up a collaboration that is only possible when online meetings, become face to face meetings and the learning is transformed.

A designated Secondary School session allowed time for specific sharing in this area, while discussions across the sectors throughout the day allowed for a developing understanding and collaboration which is part of the educamp phenomena. Opportunities for sharing favourite iPad and iPod apps, were extended into sharing of favourite accessories of the day: iRig Mic, iRig recorder, iPad cleaning cloths. Another MAGIC opportunity in the day was hearing about the GCSN, and really celebrating the resilience and innovation of educators in the greater Canterbury area. As educators celebrate the ‘recharge’ and ‘motivation’ of educamps, they return to their workplaces determined to continued the collaboration and networking that is made possible on the day!

efellows blog post

A HUGE thank you to Pauline, Burnside High School, and all who attended this AMAZING event and are committed to continue contact and collaboration.

The MAGIC now lies in the anticipation of educampakl and educampcentral Otago.

What was the MAGIC in the day for you?

 

Emma Potter

Emma Potter is the Marketing and Communications Officer at CORE Education. She started with CORE following her university education, where much of her study was focused on news and the news media.

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