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 ‘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

Bangkok Patana. If we are not exploring the future possibilities, then how can I offer a learned answer as to what is current? If we haven’t explored the cul-de-sacs as well as the roads to success, how can we know how data interlinks? How ‘future ready’ are we as a community?

Understanding interoperability allows creative freedom regardless of application or platform

Lately, educational technology companies and the education branches of the big tech firms have all built very solid accreditation services and qualifications with different creative pathways. Over the last few years at Bangkok Patana we have focused on Google Educator Certification and across the school we have seen 26 staff members achieve Level 1 with four of us at Level 2, one as a Certified Trainer and one as an Innovator. This year we have a huge boost with a further 19 signed up to become Level 1 by Christmas - the largest cohort so far.

The process this year is to set clear targets for technology advocates as well as those with an interest in educational technology to achieve accreditation in one of the four strands below by the year’s end. How can we achieve this? We will have a rolling programme for staff to attend both for advocates and interested parties for the four main areas: • Google Certified Educator (2) – Level 1, 2, Trainer and

Coach (numbers above) • Microsoft Innovative Educator (3) (MIE & MIEE (MIE

Experts of which Bangkok Patana has two)) and another five signed up so far this term. • Apple Teacher (4) that utilises the #EverybodyCanCreate resources in iOS and iPadOS, currently four with another three this term in Primary. • Adobe (3 and an AEL: Adobe Education Leader). (5)

A further three signed up this term for Adobe Creative

Educator.

The interest is growing at a fantastic pace.

In the Primary School there are also individual programmes for Seesaw where ambassadors lead the use of this data-rich platform to provide intrinsic support for all staff.

How do these qualifications help Bankok Patana, the staff and the students?

It all comes back to data, interoperability and ‘future readiness’. All these programmes are designed to be used on multiple devices across the age ranges on different platforms and for different audiences. Therefore, this level of cross-platform use requires teachers to test their knowledge and understand the best methods of application within the classroom. It also trains teachers to re-evaluate paper-based resources, digitise them and bring collaboration to the forefront alongside the likes of automation to individualise learning journeys.

The other long-term goal would be to use the outstanding professional learning resources from Microsoft to bring the number of Microsoft Innovator Educator Programmes (MIEE) to such a level that Bangkok Patana can apply to become a Microsoft showcase school. This would be an almighty milestone as it would mean we would be the only school to have achieved this in Thailand. With the school’s recent investment towards Data Insights, we are in a very positive position towards bridging the interoperability gap and bringing the understanding of future readiness to the fore.