LEARNING LEARNING
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING FOR FUTURE READINESS By Glenn Malcolm, Primary ICT Teacher, Cross Campus Advisor Computing What is on the horizon within the professional learning space for educational technology? Modernity in the technological sense is such a movable beast that the age of an application, process or piece of hardware has a lifespan of around two years before a newer, more socially connected version takes hold. In educational circles this timeline is somewhat longer. To this end, we all carry with us between one and four constantly updating devices to divide the work, play, entertainment and other digital lifestyle corners of our lives. This may be a phone, laptop, tablet, watch or fitness tracker that have similar lifespans. The newness of our personal devices outstrip what we use day-to-day in the classroom. This has always been the case, yet nowadays these are increasingly becoming attached to us and smaller still in the form of nanotechnology.(1) This inter-device refresh is a relatively new paradigm with as many pluses as there are minuses. One major aspect for teachers and students is how we understand the seamlessness of how hardware ‘talks’ to one another and how one piece of media interacts with the software across all the others. This 14
• Bangkok Patana School
‘talk’ is of great interest for me. As for all of us with a multitude of linked devices, we are creating masses of ‘talk’ in the form of data points that lives in various guises. How these devices interact with one another is called interoperability and as our students get older, their understanding of this process is paramount in terms of this inter-device data transfer that carries their identities with it. Reading this, you may reflect on your own arsenal of technology and ask ‘how is all this interlinked?’ Some of you may already know and utilise this data to better your family’s lives. The Technology Department, on the other hand, is exploring data as a mode to streamline a school’s day-to-day processes with an eye on successful interoperability of software and hardware. The outcome from a recent meeting made me reflect on this general understanding of data flows within school because a key phrase in educational technology that is taken from broader industry is called ‘Future Readiness’. Just how ‘Future Ready’ are our classrooms? And, looking into how we can manage and simplify data streams in school is one of those ideas that can be applied to the likes of assessment and ‘on-demand’ target setting. This data management brings me full circle to my role at
