Education in a Digital Society

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Education in a Digital Society

• Understanding of Context, Approaches and
  Challenges

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Learning The Treasure Within (UNESCO 1996)

• Challenge world a better place to live!
• Tensions globalisation -personal responsibility
  
• global - local (society)
• universal - individual (individual)
• tradition - modernity (developmental change)
• long-term and short-term (policy)
• competition - equal opportunity (market -
  control)
• expansion of knowledge - human capacity
  (curriculum)
• spiritual and material (materialism)

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Learning The Treasure Within (UNESCO 1996)

• The four pillars of learning
• Learning to live together others
  history/culture/personality, ..
• Learning to know rapid change, lifelong learning
• Learning to do job, teamwork, learning
  organisations
• Learning to be personal responsibility/
  judgement
• None of the talents which are hidden like buried
  treasures in every person must be left untapped.
  - 7 intelligence - learning environment and
  strategies

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The goal and challenge of general education

• Prepare students to meet and master the
  challenges of life, together with others
• Qualify the individual to take care of own life,
  with a surplus and will to support others
• Qualify for a productive life and preparedness
  for occupations yet not know (Norw. Curr.
  Guidelines 97)

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Culture for Learning -challenge of education

• basic competencies, tools of learning
• oral presentation
• master different aspects of reading
• express oneself in written
• make use of arithmetic
• utilise digital tools/resources - digital society
• personal-/ social attitudes and abilities,
  creativity, entrepreneurship, foreign langues
  etc.
• Culture Personal and organisational learning

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To Understand - Two different approaches

• Experience based analysis
• Linear, slow developments
• based on previous experiences, evolutionary more
  effective use and/or better quality
• Utilise images, visions
• Rapid development leaps, innovations
• explore rather than examine different use
• experimental approach create new use

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A dialectic model of education (Fägerlind, I.
and Saha, L. J. (1989)
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A model of society Daun, H. (1998)
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From industrial to digital society

• From a industrial society - electricity
• stable structures
• national economy
• national cultures
• educated for life
• local labour market
• tourism for elite
• long term plans

• To networking society - digital information
• flows of information
• global economy
• global cultures
• lifelong education
• global labour market
• mobility for all
• change - open plans

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A digital society

• Global village - mixing real and virtual people
• New social networks, codes and cultures
• To master information flow - power position
• Explosion of knowledge (eroding structures)
• The medium is the message
• New occupations and trades - erosion of old
• Mastery of change chaos - lifelong learning

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Rapid and radical changes challenging education

• Nothing is harder to notice or adapt to than
  rapid cultural change ...
• Resist grasping it our organisation/underlying
  cultures resist responding to it.
• Fundamental to rethink our educational ideals
  (Katz and Denti 1996)

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Education needs revitalisation

• Institutional transformation is required for our
  society to revitalise its commitment to the ideal
  of universal education
• that each person should be educated to his or her
  fullest potential (Katz and Denti 1996 261-262
  The Road to Nowhere Begins With Where We Are
  Rethinking the Future of American Education.
  Interchange (Volume 27 Nos.3-4).

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Imagining to enhance understanding

• Concepts of organisations is a product of the
  mechanical age.
• Now that we are living in an electronic age, new
  organising principles are necessary.
• The ideas presented here help us to make the
  transition and meet the challenges of this new
  reality (Morgan 1997 378, Images of
  Organisation)

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Concept of schools

• The concept of our school is products of
  mechanical age
• A digital society has/needs, new organisation
  principles
• Schools in transition need new, challenging
  images
• Metaphors introduced to read situations,
  visionary leadership

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Applying Metaphors

• Metaphors always offer limited focus
• also create ways of not seeing
• Utilising metaphors open ended approach
• explorative/not conclusive, discussion
• Metaphors are used both for explorative
  understanding and leadership purposes to create
  new methods and organisations

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Metaphors within Education

• Bureaucratic school system
• rules and regulations, hierarchy, formal, ...
• Industrial school organisation
• mass schooling rational, cohort organisation
• national curriculum standard textbooks
• certified teachers loyal civil servants
• standard, certifying exams
• hierarchical organisation

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Industrial School - Metaphor

• Based on machine models focusing
• effectiveness, rationality
• goals and objectives achievement
• detailed plans/organise/control, control, ..
• Hierarchical leadership
• laws, regulations, supervision, innovations
• Ideal model in a stabile environment

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Environmental School

• School in a natural system, an organism
• Surrounding society, set of complex (sub)systems
• Human management including cultural aspects
• Schools change and are changed by environments

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Schools as Learning Organisations

• brain metaphor, holographic designs
• ability to think, learn, self-reflection
• Focus on accommodation to new society
• Relevant for rapidly changing society
• School is the brain, not body or limbs
• team based organisation, interrelated system

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From School Factories to Learning Environments

• Schooling based on industrial systems /on
  demand standard - individual
• Need for changes acknowledged Reforms
• Top-down approaches - local experiments
  encouraged
• A mix of industrial, organic and cultural models?
• Rear mirror approach? - not intended

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Education and quality, tendency and demands

• Quality can only be judged towards context of use
• Rear mirror approach
• old models, methods and content Society needs
  reproduction, same kind, no or slow change
• BUT in a changing society / competencies
  knowledge explosion and social erosion
• need for deconstruction, reconstruction or
  recreation
• IF schools dont change explode or replaced

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From teaching to learning approach

• teaching teacher in charge,
• plan, present, explain, correct
• learning student in charge, responsible, active
  and accountable
• learning environment and open access to
  information and knowledge
• learning styles, individual focus
• reflect on own learning, personal curriculum

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From teaching to learning

• From teacher as civil servant
• Master of classroom
• follow national curriculum, textbook
• teach reading, writing, arithmetic and subjects
• order and discipline
• local/national

• To teacher as professional
• Organiser of learning environment, team member
• individual curriculum
• learning to learn, master learning methods and
  tools
• responsible students
• global environment environment

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A New School?

• Innovations encouraged ICT projects
• PILOT (Project of Innovation, Learning,
  Organisation and Technology)
• Learn to use ICT
• Use ICT to learn (ICT intertwine knowledge,
  methods)
• Develop learning resources (software, Internet)
• Global villages new learning environments

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Examples of ICT use

• Lower primary school
• my own curriculum - student counselling
• No classes, but basic groups (different ages)
• Project/theme learning - public presentation
• Lower secondary - hhtp//www.godoy.no/
• Internet based learning environment
• Internet based exam

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Leadership Promoting Change!

• Basic analysis society/student needs -
  educational consequences
• Remove old attractors
• regulations, routines, timetables, textbooks,
  blackboards, definitions - answers etc.
• Introduce new attractors
• Digital resources, project methods (presents
  results), support system ICT, reward
  innovations, redundancy groups, suggest

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Basic ICT Teacher Training in Norway

• Programme for 44.000 teachers
• Different bidders, competing for contracts
• Basic ICT (knowledge, tools)
• Combine with other educational programmes
• School owners responsibilities access to
  computers, internet, time (paid), support
• School leader motivate/support/teams
• Support mentors, physical, internet

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ICT training programmes

• School is signing on team of teachers, not
  individually
• Headmaster responsible - budgetary/organising
• Differentiated according to previous computer
  competence
• 1 Getting started, e-maill, browsers, Window-98,
  search machines, attachments
• 2 Choose an in depth programme ...

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ICT training programmes

• 2 choose focus text, spreadsheet, picture/sound
• text basic, edit/format, tables,
  picture/illustration, document types
• spreadsheet everyday usage, class tour,
  present data, ...
• Picture digital camera, sound/picture, scanning,
  Power-point

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Teacher programmes and students learning

• Students should learn to use same programmes as
  teachers
• Students can follow same programmes
• Lower primary students use text, spreadsheet,
  picture (camera, scanning) for their
  presentations within ordinary learning programme
• An example

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Our school

• Skjong barneskule is a 1-4 grade school at
  Valderoey.
• Here we are 82 students, 10 teachers and 6
  assistents.
• At our school we take care of milkcartoons
  because

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When they become empty ...

• At our school we drink 60 cartoons of milk every
  day. They are sent in return to Bingsa when they
  are empty.
• Sondre. 2 grade
• Skjong skule get 9000 cartoons of milk a year
• Øyvind. 4 grade
• MILK IS HEALTHY. MILK IS GOOD. MILK IS
  ENVIRONMENTAL!
• Steffen. 1 grade

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What happens?

• When we have drunken the milk we fold the
  cartoons and put them in bags to return them to
  the recyclingfactory.
• Thomas 4 grade

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Internet as a learning arena

• Godoey school (11-16 years old)
• The road to a student active school
• Inclusive and individual based education
• student driven learning - learning conversation

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Homepage as learningresource
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Relgion and ethics web
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English web
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Experiences of success when

• System and leaders are made responsible
• programme, access to ICT, time, support
• Training related to daily practice
• Integrated to subject learning (working life)
• Early classroom practice, student involvement
• Part of ordinary curriculum - learning
• Part of ordinary exams

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Thanks a lot!

• For careful listening
• Remeber to make your own reflections starting out
  from local context and needs.
• The future always comes, but you can make a
  difference