Activity 6 - Contemporary Issues or Trends in NZ or Internationally

Two contemporary issues or trends influencing New Zealand Education:

1: Digital Fluency

Digital fluency

Broadly speaking, digital fluency is a combination of these three concepts:

• digital, or technical, proficiency:
• able to understand, make judgements about, select and use appropriate technologies and technological systems for different purposes; this might include knowing how to use technologies to protect one’s data, digital identity, and device security.  
• digital literacy:
• in digital spaces, being able to read, create, critique and make judgements about the accuracy and worth of information being accessed;
• being fluent in critical thinking and problem-solving online;
• Use digital tools to collaborate and construct information across all relevant and significant contexts
• social competence, or dispositional knowledge:
• the ability to be able to relate to others and communicate with them effectively;
• able to manage one’s identity, information, relationships in ways that are appropriate, responsible, safe and sustainable.
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• The aim, then, of becoming digitally fluent is for people to be able to act as successful citizens in whatever contexts they choose for themselves. Our role as educators is to deliberately design pathways from early childhood through to tertiary and beyond that support these developing fluencies in ways that make sense to the learners. The recent report - Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection (OECD, 2015) - highlights the importance of bridging the digital divide, not leaving the development of digital fluency to chance.
• The skills, understandings and competencies that comprise digital fluency are best considered as underpinning supports that weave throughout curricula. In many ways, here in New Zealand,  the Key Competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum offer a helpful way to think about a framework for fostering digital fluency as part of learning. Similarly, the four strands of Te Whariki can be considered through a digital fluency lens while the Te Marautanga o Aotearoa encourages communities to frame a graduate profile that might include digital fluency as an over-arching goal for ākonga.
• We know that ‘adding on’ modules or skill-based ticklist to work though do not effectively offer ways to foster digital fluency. We also know learning how to effectively and safely manage technologies cannot be achieved solely through technical means (e.g. filtering) or prohibition (e.g. denying people access to technologies). Instead, a proactive approach to designing learning pathways, that balances preventative approaches with application of skills and understandings in meaningful contexts, is the preferable approach.
• NetSafe and the Ministry of Education remind us that we need to offer “opportunities for students to be involved in decisions about the management of digital technology at the school [and develop] a pro-social culture of digital technology use” in school, alongside our communities
• Where to begin?
• One helpful framework for thinking about planning approaches to digital fluency development through learning can be found in the description of how key competencies integrate into effective curriculum design > http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies/About.
• Broadly, this reminds us that digital fluency approaches should:
• align to the principles of the New Zealand Curriculum, TMOA and Te Wharaki
• draw on a range of values that are inclusive and enable young people to become confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners
• be embedded in learning in each of the learning areas
• be supported by effective pedagogy.
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• Questions to consider

o   What might digital fluency look like in the context of your learners’ curriculum experiences now? What do you and your community want all learners to aspire to be able to do when they leave?

o   How are digital fluency learning opportunities aligned to your values and principles?

o   How might you deliberately teach the skills and competencies to navigate online spaces successfully in the context of student-led learning?

o   To what extent are learning areas explored in ways that invite higher-order engagement, problem-solving and authentic use of technologies? Are students doing more than searching for information? Are they applying it in ways that are real and connected to the world around us?

• Links

o   3 things you should know about digital literacies - Steve Wheeler

o   What kind of global citizens are teachers creating? - Guardian

• Articles
• Towards Digital Fluency (NZ Govt) PDF
• The digital environment has the power to transform teaching and learning in our schools. We’re committed to taking full advantage of the opportunity to become a world leading education system through changes to our infrastructure, practices and pedagogy. The range of initiatives for Digital Technologies in Education will ensure all New Zealand schools are equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure, teachers get the support and resources they need to be digitally fluent, and every student benefits from the advantages of digital technologies for learning.
• EDtalk 2014:  http://www.edtalks.org/video/what-does-digital-literacy-look
• In this EDtalk recorded at ULearn14, e-learning facilitator Esther Casey describes the things that educators could be doing to support learners to become digitally literate. Esther talks about the need to foster critical thinking, collaborative and creative learning, and ways that students can use other people’s knowledge in respectful ways as they create their own new knowledge.
• Reference - Core Education

2: Gamification of Education

Explanation:

Gamification is the name given to the process of developing motivation and engagement by rewarding people with things that they want, and it often takes the form of points, acknowledgement of achievement, badges, prizes, and so on.

 Frequent flyer programmes or customer loyalty schemes are some of the earliest examples of gamification outside actual games. You probably know how they work: You complete certain milestones and you are rewarded with something you want, something that is meaningful and engaging to you. The rise of computer gaming culture has meant that more and more research has gone into finding out what features make these things so addictive for some people. And crucially for us, how we can take some of those features to make other things, such as learning, or school, more engaging and, hopefully, addictive. 

The trend of gamification is really about how to reward, motivate, and engage people in learning.  ie  Class Dojo

Impact:

Elements of gamification have been with education ever since teachers started giving out grades or stickers. But these are a very crude form of gamification, and we’re seeing a trend towards more widespread use; a growing awareness of how effective and sophisticated gamification can be.  Access to mobile devices in the classroom also allows us to harness  the power of computers to do two things:

1. ·        support us in the tracking and recording of progress
2. ·        support us in the ways we enable learners to control more of the process themselves.

We’re getting more and more research on motivation in learning, and it’s really important for us as educators to know what leads to motivation. We talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation — whether we’re motivated to learn by something inside us, or external to us. An over-reliance on extrinsic motivation ultimately limits learning, so, while stickers or badges might work in the short term, intrinsic motivation, or the desire to do something for yourself is the best way to ensure long-term learning.  The real power of gamification comes through using it to help learners move from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. One of the things that drives intrinsic motivation is mastery, or the ability to do something well, and gamification can help learners build mastery through rewarding specific actions.

Game designers use things called reward schedules to keep people engaged, and these are linked to evolution. Through evolution we’ve developed a way to reward the solving of problems and it’s the same chemical associated with eating chocolate, which might explain something about our motivation. As humans evolved over tens of thousands of years, the solving of problems, and the completion of challenges proved to be a really useful trait: climb the tree — eat the fruit. Research shows that the kinds of rewards that are commonly associated with ramification — unlocking the next level, gathering points, getting the answer correct — also release dopamine. This is one of the things that makes computer games so addictive.

One of the three guiding principles of universal design for learning (UDL) is providing multiple means of engagement. There is a strong body of research that shows that people are motivated to learn for a variety of reasons. For some it’s the intrinsic motivation of the learning; for others it’s the desire to get the certificate to hang on the wall; for others it’ll be the social element of collaboration, or the ability to make a contribution to the greater good.

There are a number of features of gamification that we can use in learning:

·        Every action should be rewarded, particularly effort: If we’re interested in encouraging the journey as well as the finished product we should find ways to reward effort.

·        Feedback is vital: There’s research around the role that digital technology can play in increasing the rate of feedback for learners. Think of the old way of testing short answers or closed questions: Set a 10-question quiz, collect from the students, mark it and hand it back out the next day. There’s a minimum of a 24-hour delay on that feedback. Connect kids up to an adaptive learning platform that allows them to complete the task and receive frequent, specific feedback. Let the machine do that low-level stuff so you can focus on higher-level, qualitative feedback. 

      Sites like Quizlet, Khanacademy, Mathletics or Sumdog fit neatly into this category.

·        In the design of learning there should be multiple long and short-term goals: While the big goal might be to pass a particular assessment, gamification suggests we should be providing a range of short term goals to scaffold our learners towards those goals. The wider the variety linked to that overall goal, the more interesting it will be: collaborate with 10 different people, complete online tasks for 4 days in a row, get 100% in a short answer quiz, help out 4 other people, and so on. Maintaining engagement over the course of any sustained lesson or project can be difficult for many learners. Research shows the importance of incorporating periodic or persistent “reminders” of both the goal and its value in order to support students in sustaining effort and concentration in the face of distractions.

·     An awareness of the lifecycle a player goes through in a game: There’s another big opportunity for us as educators here. There are generally three stages:

• o   the newbie — players new to the game who need some hand holding
• o   the regular – after players get to know the game, it needs to become a habit for them. The next few levels need to provide satisfaction as per the player type.
• o   the enthusiast – these players have pretty much mastered the game and need new twists and challenges to continue playing.

Thinking about each of these roles within learning, and also, about how you can make use of

     and support each of these roles.

     How are you stretching the enthusiasts? 

     How are you supporting the regulars?

     How can you make use of the challenges newbies face to tap into the expertise of the enthusiasts? Think peer tutoring, collaborative learning, or tuakana teina.

Implications:

As you are offering multiple means of motivation and engagement, think about aligning learning to the principles of gamification:

• What’s your reward schedule?
• How long should a learner go without being rewarded?
• How can you allow learners to be challenged at a level that is right for them or to find what they are looking for in the material you’re exploring?
• How do you reward every action, even if it is an unsuccessful attempt, because, after all, it’s the fostering of a growth mindset — one that can cope with and learn from failure — that we’re aiming for.

And, if it’s good enough for our learners, think also about teacher learning:

• How do we allow teachers to find their own rewards in professional learning?
• How do we reward every action?
• How do we convene teams of newbies, regulars, and enthusiasts to make powerful learning.

In gaming, there is often a thing called an epic win — an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive that you almost don’t believe you can achieve it. 

If we can build on this trend of ramification, we might get to the educational version of an epic win: Learning that’s so engaging and addictive that we can’t stop learners from doing it.

Reference -Core Education blog