Welcome to the final newsletter of 2018. Regardless of what the festive season means to you, I wish you all the best for the holidays and 2019.
Maori TV recently broadcast an interesting feature on the digital future of education. The Raranga Matihiko programme delivers digital technologies access and curriculum content learning for both digital technologies and Hangarau Matihiko to learners in low decile schools. Learners have the opportunity to explore a range of digital tools, including computational thinking and computer science skills, using these to support their learning.
Spark Foundation in partnership with 21C Skills Lab are running a fundraising campaign to help New Zealand schools and communities recognise and value the importance of 21st century skills. If this is something that you or your company would like to support, there is a Give a Little page here.
It’s great to see Accounting Pod, University of Waikato and Xero continuing to work together to deliver work ready graduates for their global advisors. Educators are also embracing technology to bridge the gap from education to employability with their innovative in-class learning platform.
For those of you in the classroom, check out Kia Takatū ā-Matihiko, The National Digital Readiness programme is free, supports teachers/kaiako and leaders to ensure they are well equipped and confident to deliver the new curriculum content.
If, like me, you are interested in the impact of emerging technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) on education, check out some of the articles we have curated this month for some real world examples.
Phil Garing from Synapsys also posted this interesting article earlier in the year on the future of learning, We have the technology, do we know what to do with it? On average, he estimates that we will have 12 different jobs (or more!) during our careers. The changing world of work is shining the spotlight on the future of education.
Ngā mihi
Shane Kerr
Vice Chair
