21st Century Learning September 4, 2008
Posted by mrsuds in NZ Curruculum.Tags: NZ Curriculum
2 comments
Yesterday Darfield High School hosted a presentation that ran across two elearning clusters – Cantatech and AorakiNet. The presentation was delivered by Rachel Bolstad, a researcher from the NZCER. Amongst other things, Rachel has researched and published on the revised New Zealand Curriculum. Since all our schools are currently preparing for this major change, I thought it might be an opportune time to hold an ‘event’ like this. Rachel kindly agreed and away we went.
You can view the presentation below, but the general gist of it was on what a 21st century curriculum might look like. There were some excellent insights, but I think the key message was that existing curriculums, especially, in secondary schools, just don’t cut it. If schools, and learning areas, think that just tinkering with existing programmes will do the trick they really need to think again. The New Zealand Curriculum signals major change, but I can already see that many schools are struggling to deal with the practicalities of this. Some are asking for models of what it might look like, but there are no models. That is the point though - this is school based curriculum design. It is a curriculum for your school, your students, your parents and your community – not someone elses. To me it needs to be approached from the ground up with a clean slate and an open mind. Hard work – but boy it’s exciting!
Like the metaphors Rachel!
