Michael Wesch has done it again. For those who enjoyed his “The Machine Is Us/ing Us” video all about Web2.0, this recent one about the Information R/evolution is equally as challenging.

This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. It has been created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

A useful resource to have on hand when considering the idea of “literacies”, and the rationale for changes in the new curriculum released in NZ yesterday!

Well – yesterday was the big day, the release of the new NZ Curriculum, so with bated breath I watched the news last evening, and ran to get a paper this morning, to see what sort of coverage was given to this significant event in the NZ education system.

To my dismay I found very little. The TV news ran an item on “Teaching Values”, with interviews with a few parents lamenting that there are so many parents who don’t instill values in their children that schools might as well do it, while in the Christchurch Press (my local paper) I found a re-hash of the MoE press release inserted at the top of page two (the part of the paper most rarely looked at) that bears the headline “Children Must Study Treaty” – as if that’s the most significant thing about the release of this new curriculum? I even went onto the Press website, but that article doesn’t deserve a mention – not even when I used the search facility.

And why is the Ministry of Education so quiet about this – their website has a rather uninspiring news item with links to the Curriculum Online website (the Ministry of Education official website for the New Zealand Curriculum) and
a link for parents to the TeamUp website for advice on how parents can support their child’s learning. Where is the celebration of the fact that this has been such a collaborative and participatory effort? Where is the news about what support, PD and ongoing participatory opportunities that are to be offered?

Seems to me that the media have been so busy looking for a “spin” to put onto this event, that they’ve missed the real story here – the story about a two and a half year process involving many thousands of teachers (reportedly around 15,000) in the process of conceptualising and co-constructing the new curriculum, based around the key competencies identified by the OECD as being essential for preparing citizens for the 21st century. The document released yesterday is the result of thousands of hours of thinking, discussion, collaboration, research and writing on the part of these hundreds of educators.

Not that the story stops there – the curriculum must now be interpreted and managed within the context of the 2500+ schools in NZ, and this will take a considerable amount of effort, support and trialing etc – a point raised by Irene Cooper, President of the NZEI in the Press release. She says, “Putting in place a review of their whole school curriculum is a major piece of work and it cannot be done by osmosis.”

A part of the process for moving forward is the Share and Discuss forum that has been created for teachers and educators to participate in an ongoing discussion and sharing of ideas around the implementation of the new curriculum. The Curriculum Online site is another place for valuable background information and material to support with implementation. On this site the Ministry curriculum facilitators have set up groups nationally to help develop support materials for the implementation process in each of the learning areas – these can be found as links from the Learning Areas page.

Unfortunately, none of the releases I’ve seen so far make any mention of this. Even more concerning – when I did a Google search for the NZ Curriculum this morning, the top links took me to the old curriculum information on both TKI and the MoE website (last updated 7 June 2007).

Surely this event deserves better coverage – must we always be looking for the “dark side” of things? My hope is that we’ll see lots of feedback and activity in the online forums, and in the general blogosphere over the next few months. If you do know of things that are happening, or have some good news stories to tell about the curriculum implementation, make sure you share them in these forums!

This week I finished teaching my Global Classroom course which is part of the University of Canterbury’s Graduate Diploma of ICT course. I’ve had (another) fabulous group of teachers who undertook projects including an intercultural study with a class in Malaysia, planning a virtual camp with another class in NZ, participating in a virtual field trip to Antarctica and using ePals to connect with students in the US.

I’m always on the lookout for projects that these teachers can link into for their Global Classroom experience, and so was interested today to come across the Interactivity Center, from Education World, which features collaborative projects, virtual field trips, educational games, and other interactive activities. Most of these are free or very low cost, and illustrate the incredible imagination and creativity of teachers in making use of the opportunities now available in the online world and with the emergence of many creative applications in the Web2.0 world.

If there’s not something here that you feel you can participate in, then there are heaps of ideas for projects that you could begin yourself, using some of the online environments and applications that are freely available.

Thanks to a twitter from my friend in Canada, Sharon Peters, I’ve been introduced to the work of a friend of hers in Saskatchewan called Find a Story, Map a Story, Tell a Story. What a wonderful idea!

“Find a Story… Map a Story… Tell a Story invites you to choose a story that matters to you and using an online mapping tool like Community Walk, Wayfaring or Google Maps, create a StoryMap that will place your stories within a geographical context. Using one of these digital mapping tools, locate a geographical map from your story location, and add images, audio and text memories to the place markers found on the mapping tool. This project will help you recover lost stories and save and share them so other can enjoy and learn from them. Completed StoryMaps will be posted on a student work page on the Find a Story… Map a Story… Tell a Story web site.”

Must confess – I’m familiar with and used Google Maps, but hadn’t seen Community Walk or Wayfaring before – they look cool. I’ve checked out the StoryMaps and couldn’t see any from New Zealand – perhaps an opportunity here for an enterprising NZ class to be the first?

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
(For the full lyrics see Guy Fawkes Night)

It’s Guy Fawkes day – yay! (not!) But it’s got me thinking – what are the parallels between Guy Fawkes Day and our education system? None you say – well think in this…

• Both have their origins centuries ago, with the real reasons for their beginnings and relevance to our modern day able to be articulated by but a few in our society.
• Both have since been shrouded with traditions and customary practices that further distance us from these origins.
• Difficulties have been experienced along the way in both cases as some of these customs and traditions confront changes in societal thinking and behaviour, resulting in cosmetic ‘tweaking’ of the conditions under which these customs and traditions may be observed and practised.
• In both cases we observe strong public reaction at any suggestion of significant change to these customs and traditions (despite there being repeated cases of events that threaten the safety and well-being of citizens)
• In both cases examples can be found of safe, well managed and enjoyable practices, which are frequently used to defend the continuation of the customs and traditions at a system wide level.

Worth pondering? Those are simply my reflections on this Guy Fawkes day, when I prepare (again) to lock pets inside, try to explain to my kids why it is that this is all going on, and prepare for tomorrow morning when I have to clear my yard of all the rockets and used fireworks wrappers whose guidance systems have led them directly into my vegetable patch.

Seems like an age since I blogged – and it has been. Truth is I was struck down by a pretty vicious virus that had me on my back for almost a fortnight, and since then I’ve bee struggling to catch up!

Prior to the virus episode, I had the opportunity to attend the Education Leaders’ Forum (ELF) at Terrace Downs

One of the speakers there was Nicola Meek who leads the secretariat supporting the Guardians of Secondary Futures speaking about the work of this project in creating a vision for secondary education in NZ in twenty year’s time. This project is advancing steadily, with two strategic papers released already, Students First and Inspiring Teachers, with a third one on Impact on Society to be released shortly. A feature of this work is the extent to which teachers have been engaged and involved in the discussions leading to the development of these papers.

Prior to her presentation we had a presentation from an inspiring group of students from Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti, a co-educational state school with a special character designation located in the centre of Christchurch. These young people inspired the group with their explanations of what school means for them, how they are given the opportunity to negotiate their own curriculum and learning pathways etc. They explained how they operated in a very personalised and very online world, making innovative use of a range of social networking and web2.0 applications – several were running their own business combining an interest in computer graphics, music and dance!

Inevitably there was mention made about the need to somehow include student voice in all of the deliberations around the future of secondary education (and of education in general). While I fully endorse this notion, there are two underpinning assumptions that seem to surface in these discussions that I find myself questionning. The first is that students aren’t currently expressing their ideas and opinions, and secondly, that the forums they ought to be doing this in are the ones set up by the adults (ex-20th century learners!)

Now while a presentation like the one we heard from the Unlimited students at the ELF has undoubted value and significance, I think we may be missing something. You see, it seems to me that now, more than ever before, students do have a voice, and are finding all sorts of ways of expressing their thoughts, ideas and opinions on a range of topics and issues – and in a range of forums and media (including YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, wikis and a variety of other social networking software). The problem as I see it is that we (the 20th century learners) just aren’t connecting with it, and are not sure how to engage with or interact with it when we do ’stumble’ across it. Now granted, not everything you find in these environments is constructive or useful even, but if you take a moment to check out an international project like TakingITGlobal you’ll soon find thousands of young people giving expression to their thoughts and ideas in very practical ways. TIG is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities. It’s the world’s most popular online community for young people interested in making a difference, with hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month. It was started by Michael Furdyk who we’ve had out here to NZ on a few occasions now to speak at our ULearn and Learning@School conferences.

The way I see it is that the future of education lies in hearing the voices of a wide range of stakeholders, including students, parents, community leaders, teachers and potential employers etc. The challenge is finding forums and venues for these ideas, concerns and opinions to be expressed openly and without judgement. In this regard I feel we need to be looking to our 21st Century Learners to provide the lead!