Technology in K-12 Education - Jeff Davis, Varsity College

Jeff Davis is the Executive Principal at Varsity College. Varsity College is now the second largest school in Queensland with over 3000 students. Student performance in all year levels is of a very high standard and has continued to improve in the last few years.

When looking at where to begin, Jeff’s question to staff was “What do you build first, the car or the road?” The invitation was to just get started. Their focus is learning and the pedagogy to support the learning, not the teaching.

Ideas from Jeff’s presentation are aligned to Covey’s Seven Habits for Highly Effective People.

Begin with the End in Mind

Varsity College strives to build on ‘4’ pillars of success; academic excellence, performing arts, sporting excellence and community involvement. This allows for all students to find an area of excellence and therefore experience success every day.

Sharpen the Saw

Work on practice; focus on pedagogy and learning. Performance measures; collaboration, innovation and achievement.

Be Proactive

Introduction of successful innovations, for example, the Chinese Immersion Program. Extended Chinese Immersion is an intensive language program to prepare students for entry into the traditional Chinese Immersion Program following in Years 8, 9 and 10 where students will receive 50-60% of their schooling in Chinese.

Seek First to Understand

Focus on whole school improvement;

1. Build an effective leadership team
2. Develop organisational climate.

Synergise

Develop key partnerships that enable students to live in the real world, for example, www.deforestation.com.

Thought provoking message:

Work your way around the roadblocks, otherwise don't start.

Technology in K-12 Education - Ian Jukes

Held over two days at Australian Technology Park, I found the conference to be a valuable experience, a great opportunity to hear from different speakers, their thoughts on current practice and the future direction of education. My three top speakers included Ian Jukes, Jeff Davis and Stephen Harris.

Ian Jukes is an international speaker and educator. Ian is also the Managing Partner of the 21st Century Fluency Project. His focus has consistently been on the compelling need to restructure our educational institutions so that they become relevant to the current and future needs of children.

Ian began his address stating we live in exponential times – change = explosions! He spoke of Moore's law, which describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. Basically, as the functionality, capacity and speed of a computer increases the cost of ownership decreases. We have powerful, disruptive change at an extreme rate.

Thought provoking message:

The most powerful piece of technology in the classroom is the teacher – any piece of technology that can replace a teacher, should!

Ian challenged us to think about what era we are preparing our children for?? How you do get a rubber band to stretch and stay stretched??

Welcome to A Garden of Thinkers!

Welcome to A Garden of Thinkers!

I can’t think of a better way to begin this blog than by sharing my thoughts on the Technology in K-12 Education Conference at Australian Technology Park.