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’.
