I’m excited (and exhausted, now that I’ve completed my presentation) to be at the Digital Technologies Symposium in Auckland. The symposium is on digital technology teaching and learning, with industry and tertiary organisations joining teachers from schools piloting the Digital Technologies Guidelines.
The DTG is a ‘planning environment’ for teachers to design and deliver programmes of work for years 11-13 that give context, coherence and relevance to its related areas of knowledge, with rich pathways including digital society, business technology, digital media, electronics, and software development and programming.
So, what’s being discussed? Tracy Bowker from Cognition Consulting (contracted by the Ministry to lead the project) spoke about the importance of relevance - teachers designing relevant courses that lead to assessment, rather than assessment driving courses – and also collaboration - within departments, across learning areas, between schools, and with tertiary and business – to support these relevant programmes of learning.
Her message about the need to communicate career opportunities to students was picked up by Janina Voigt from Canterbury University. Janina is a 21-year-old computer science graduate, embarking on post-graduate studies next year. She says computer science couldn’t have been further from her mind when she juggled science versus languages at the end of secondary school and went into journalsim becuase she could ‘see a job in it’.
Thanks to a persistent boyfriend, who taught her Javascript, and some independent learning of her own, she got hooked: ‘by developing technology, I get to be part of it. There’s nothing more exciting than being part of it.’ Working with her friends on software development projects, she says there is ‘a feeling that we can make a difference with technology’.
Janina asks the question: if technology is so exciting, and there’s increasing demand from industry, why are student enrolments [in university computer science courses] dropping?’ She says the industry has an image problem, thanks to the stereotype of the nerdy guy with glasses programming in the basement. For her, the opposite has turned out to be true – it’s creative work, it’s team work, and it’s about communicating above anything else.
We can correct this perception of technology studies, especially if our focus is on designing relevant programmes and on quality teaching. Increasing specialisation and depth in discipline knowledge is critical in the senior secondary years, but the DTG pathways also offer opportunities for teachers and learners to explore the boundaries between disciplines where exciting new stuff occurs. It’s also great to hear all the talk at the symposium about what students are doing outside of school and how we can bridge that gap in order to engage students and strengthen their skills, knowledge and competencies to the benefit of both their formal and informal learning experiences. Promising stuff.
Useful resources:
- explore how the DTG might support you in your digital technology teaching and learning programmes on the DTG website
- find explanatory papers on the strands of the technology learning area and on technological literacy, values and key competencies on the Techlink website.
Update on 27 November 2008: You can find my presentation on slideshare.
