End of May, Dave and I went to a symposium on 21st century Christian Education - preparing students for 2025. Take a look at www.21stcenturyeducators.com for some reading links if you are at all curious.
People from many different countries and education streams gathered for 3 days of discussion in this great venue called the Morris J.Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver - I felt like I was in the U.N. I attend a lot of conferences each year, but I came away from this stunned and buzzed at the same time. We met this gang of rabble rousers from the Sydney Center for Innovation in Learning that challenged almost everything we do in our regular everyday classrooms. Sir Ken Robinson has a Youtube (RSA Animate Changing Education Paradigms) with an animation that blew my mind - really, I will never look at a school the same way again. The embedding of technology into every classroom was a big part of the discussion, but I came away with the conviction that what needs to change is the pedogagy, not just the technology. Your probable response is "whatever that means" and you're right, I still can't put it into words myself.
Now, I have heard some of these ideas presented here and there over the years. I've seen kids get turned off education (I believe I turned off a few myself, actually) and felt quite powerless to reverse that. I've seen my creative, artistic, intuitive son-in-law change his concept of himself because he was assigned to go to the "dumb" high school. But these dudes in at the Sydney Center for Innovation in Australia are actually doing this 21st century stuff, at a small (well, not so small anymore) Christian school attached to a local church. They have been at it for 8 years, taking chances, making mistakes, being relentless in their pursuit of innovation (which I think should be spelled inovation but I'm wrong) and they have 7th grade boys breathless to get to school in the morning.
Now I want to get me some of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment