Trend 1. Global Connectedness
The biggest and fastest developing trend is technology. In educational terms that is going digital. More schools in New Zealand are becoming BYOD (bring your own device) schools. Green TV (2014) predicts a world with 80 billion connected devices, where our home, office, car and phone are all connected and the digital world is integrated into our lives completely. There are 700 billion facebook members Pearson (2013) where the average person has 130 friends. 90% of the digital software being used now was created in the last two years. It is one of the fasted moving trends of the modern world. How does this affect education in New Zealand? Its massive. My school alone has brought in three completely digital classrooms for the year 5 & 6 students, we are looking at extending that to the year 3 & 4s next year. Each class has their own blog address which are currently being set up. Students have their own Google Drive for storing all the work they do on the digital devices. Parents are being encouraged to connect via blogs, class dojo, our website or email, even our conferences are booked online.
How would I address this trend in my context within my learning community or professional context?
Being a low socio-economic area and a decile 2 school, we have a number of students without internet access or use of a digital device at home. Our digital classrooms have been set up with 90% of parents buying into the BYOD through the school on an affordable hire purchase scheme. There are still families struggling to meet the needs of their children, extra devices are in the classroom for these students. As a Year 3/4 teacher this will be my aim next year, to identify the families that need help so that their children don't feel disadvantaged in this increasingly digital world. Through Mindlab I have been able to learn new digital apps that have become part of my teaching tools. I feel that I am learning alongside my students, many of which pick up skills faster than I. My next step is a classroom blog, currently I communicate with parents through email and Class Dojo. Class Dojo is not only a classroom tool, it lets the parents see where their child is gaining points in the class room for behaviour or achievement. I use it also to post videos and photos of our activities where they can 'like' or comment.
The issue of social media and the abuse of this within the student body is an issue which is addressed and discussed regularly, especially on social media. As a teacher, and a mother of two teenagers, I am very mindful of the harm social media can do. My mantra is that "If you cant say it to someones face, then you shouldn't type it either." I will discuss social media in teaching in depth is my next blog post.
Issue 2. Health and Wellbeing
Green TV identified health and wellbeing as being one of the key trends in the ever changing world. With modern medicine people are living longer, the amount of people living to over 80 years old will increase 5 times by 2030. However, Back Joy (2012) estimates that due to the fast growing digital lifestyles that we lead, we spend 9.6 hours a day sitting, which means 31 years of our life are spent being immobile and usually hunched over a screen. 4 out of 5 people suffer from back pain, it is second only to cancer for health issues and hospitalisation. What does this mean for ourselves and our students? We are encouraging our students to work on a laptop or tablet, either on the floor of our new ILEs, or at a desk that is usually waist height, thus inducing a hunch. Not only are they curving their spine for hours of the day, but less opportunities for moving around the classroom, being outside or just standing are being utilised as we stare at our screens. Many students go home to hunch over their own laptop, sprawl on the couch and watch TV or play on a game console.
How would I address this trend in my context within my learning community or professional context?
As I am in the process of choosing furniture for my soon to be ILE, I have been quite taken with the higher benches where the students sit straighter and even stand to do their work. Health is quite an issue in our school, with the eating habits of many students being poor due to the affordability of healthy food. We feed many of the low income families through our breakfast club and Eat My Lunch programme but the big push for me is to get the students being active. I try to get my class moving as often as possible with PE, fitness, Jump Jam, GoNoodle and energetic brain breaks. I predict that this will be a bigger issue in generations to come as the world becomes more digitally dependent. Green TV even predicts robots in the very near future, just to do our housework.
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References
Pearson. (2013, April 26). Global trends: The world is changing faster than at any time in human history. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdZiTQy3g1g
Green TV. (2014, Jul 30). New Mega Trends. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEFKABKblFw
Back Joy (2012, March 12). Did you know? These 2 minutes can change your life. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odIUNbt3ev8&feature=youtu.be
http://www.backjoy.com/
http://www.backjoy.com/
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