Food for thought: Thinking about technology

Dear all,

Brian Rogove, the Cognita CEO for South East Asia was in school on Thursday and was incredibly impressed by what he saw and heard from both teachers and students. A special moment was when Grade 10 students presented their Minecraft rendition of the new school which lead to a very lucrative business proposition being sent their way. He will back at ISHCMC for the PYP Exhibition to speak to our students and find out more about their learning experience at ISHCMC. He assured us that building is definitely about to start on the new campus following regulatory delays. Very excitingly he would like to start refurbishing the existing campus which will be converted into the ISHCMC Primary school. Hence, next week we will be working hard on firming up plans for the building using the work of the Primary School Refurbishment Committee that has been working throughout the year on this project.

The next few years could be even more exciting than the past,  as we transform our learning environments to match our vision for 21st century education.

The Food for Thought this week focuses on technology. The first part illustrates how schools and teaching can potentially be changed and how quickly this transformation could occur. This sort of tech will be here much sooner than one might imagine. It could replace science labs with ordinary classrooms, at least for the older students, and could provide the most incredible and creative individual learning pathways for students in the future. This video builds on one of the Speed Geeking concepts shared by student "Titans of Tech" to secondary teachers last Thursday morning.

Also the educational theory about technology is very sound and comes from the SAMR model for use of technology which encourages us to use technology to transform the learning experience rather than just replicate it by using tech. The link takes you to a commonsense media video that explains the SAMR model.

The second part of this weeks Food for Thought comes from the perpetual fear that many parents have about student addiction to technology. This fear leads to you being asked by parents about technology use, screen time etc etc. Obviously the appropriate use and balance for technology has to be an important part of our thinking regarding our homeroom and advisory programmes as they are reviewed. Our main source of information regarding managing the tech world for our students comes from commonsense media and so does this article, What Educators Need to Know about Technology Addiction.

Have a good weekend,

Yours,

Adrian