Henley- on-todd - Rotary Down Under

gen wi-fi
Educating
The term “real world” is often
thrown around by educators
to ensure students and
parents alike that the material
they’re learning will be applicable in
their everyday lives. But even after
the dawn of the digital age, some
schoolrooms still resist embracing the
increasingly multimedia culture we
live in. Greg Whitby, Executive Director
of the Catholic Schools Diocese of
Parramatta and author of Educating
Gen Wi-Fi: How to Make Schools
Relevant for 21 st Century Learners,
thinks it’s about time schools utilised
the vast array of tools students are
adept at using to create a more
meaningful and dynamic learning
experience that mirrors society today.
Technology and information are
constantly changing, yet the idea of
one teacher being the channel of
data for 30 students has remained
fundamentally the same.
I-FI
Technology and
information are constantly
changing, but are our
schools changing rapidly
enough to keep up with it?
Words: Libby Wright
“The issue is not the teachers,
their role is critical,” explains Greg.
“It’s that students are becoming
deeply frustrated and increasingly
disengaged because the classroom
is very different to the world they live
and socialise in. We need talented
teachers to mediate the learning,
to teach students how to navigate
today’s technology and help make
the learning experience more
representative of modern society.”
In Educating Gen Wi-Fi, Greg
discusses making the learning
environment more collaborative by
having students working in smaller,
personalised groups that reflect the
open-plan, teamwork orientated
workplaces of today.
“There’s no one size fits all when it
comes to education anymore,” says
Greg. “We need to know how each
child learns and what they know, and
group them together so they support
one another and not get held back.”
There’s no denying that although
the dramatic rise in everyday
technology is powering along, it is
still somewhat in its infancy. Just a
generation ago, devices like the iPad
and Kindle were almost other worldly,
but at the current rate they quickly
become outdated, sometimes over
the course of just a year. Greg wants
to get schools trained to embrace this
shift and be prepared to meet the
demands of the future.
“It’s not going to happen overnight,
but eventually we’ll be laughing at the
crude technology we have today and
wonder how we got by. Half the jobs
that exist now didn’t exist 20/30 years
ago, and we need children trained to
utilise these ever-changing array of
tools and situations.”
So why haven’t our schools stayed
abreast of this issue?
“It’s certainly been slower than I
would like, but I think the better term
is cautious,” explains Greg. “We’re very
concerned when it comes to children
and shaping the way we teach, but
this is about bringing to bear the best
we know about education and slowly
and carefully implementing it.” >
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