http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

So I watched this video from one of my favourite Youtube creators and I am left with a overpowering feeling of What the?

As a educator I have spent twenty years being goal based, setting beautiful pathways where my students thrive and prosper into young men and women! However these pathways were based in a belief that there were jobs, there were specific jobs for specific types of students! I felt I had I good grasp of who should or at least could be capable of doing what in their future! Well this now appears or at least is beginning to manifest itself as the wrong way of thinking!

The way I am now seeing it is as follows; we are working with our students to design their pathways to their skill set so that what ever profession is placed in front of them they can do!

Wow that sounds easy! 🌝

The fear of lack of success!

~What does this mean for us as educators?

~Does guilt play a role in your life as a teacher?

~Is there different levels of success?

~Are you too hard on yourself?

The fear of judgement!

~Do you feel you need to get better at something because "they" are better at it than you?

~Who is going to judge me if I try this?

The fear of exclusion!

~If I work hard with the kids who are interested am I excluding?

~If I do something different from my peers will they exclude me?

The fear of time!

~Do I have enough time to get through all the aspects of this task?

~Do I miss out on PD that will benefit my classes because I have done School based PD?

~Do I make time to reflect on what happens in my classroom?

The fear of loss of language!

~Do I have time to share the individual discourses of each subject with my students?

~Are we slowly losing the different styles communication/language?

Questions of the educational mind!

Every now and then I get a grounding reminder of the importance of the basics in the classroom environment. As usual this happens on holidays with my own children.

I currently have a yr10 class that I am having issues with, and this has reminded me that it is not the amount of technology access nor the amount of money we have that makes a classroom a connected learning environment, it is the amount that people feel they can share of themselves that counts!

So to all the educators/learners out there when you walk back into your classes, develop relationships like there is no electricity before you build relationships in other environments as in my opinion what we share I f ourselves is more important than what we share of others!🎓

The discussion had around the ideas of "Hidden Curriculum" are well documented over time! But in my world I hear very little discussion about what the effect technology is having on us as teachers and the knock on effect on our students.

In Australia we have a show called Q&A and education was the topic last night. During the discussion a politician continually reflected that teaching is the number 1 cause of student results! The message behind that is that if results are poor then teaching is poor! However I do not believe this to be the case.

Educating is a long term business and it needs to stay that way, but my concern was raised by another panelist on Q&A "that teaching and learning in Australia is losing it moral and ethical grounding and that is something that as a Aussie I have been proud of."

Wow, this hit me hard! The question I was left with was, do I create less relationship in my classroom now than I did before this big push on a Technology?

I got to thinking about what the "hidden curriculum" of technology was in education?

Speed? Product sales? Consumerism? Communication?

Answers were hard to find, so I did what I like to do these days and turned to some of my Twitter friends for a discussion. @edutweetoz was the place and space for this discussion to take place and many opinions were shared between 6.30am and 7.30am

The outcome was simple as it does always tend to be! Teachers and students learn best and in the most equitable fashion when learning is collaborative. But this collaboration brings about a sharing a of "ways of doing" which is critical to both the learner and the teacher within the interaction! This includes what ever technology is used throughout the interaction! However if we only use one form of technology this could and does effect the way in which communication and therefore relationships are formed!

The take away for me out of this is that schools and educational institutions need to use and be able to use all devices & soft wares so as not to holt or negatively effect the human interaction of learning!

Engaging between these two entities is a complex and mind wrenching task for a teacher! Yet there is a drive to set up student driven learning so that they are in control of the, when, how fast and what volume can I manage! These concepts lead me to the mapping of progress and the "designing" of ones learning pathway! If our students do this, then they can self assess against their standards! Our job is to guide, nurture and be a emotional resource for our students in there educational design.

The next step is taking the time at the beginning if each Learning Grouping (Skill or knowledge) to actually get the students to articulate their learning to you! What is it you are going to know how to do by the time you are finished?

Then there are questions like, why are you wanting to do that is this way? Have you possibly thought of using this App which I find a very fast and effective way of doing that?

Questioning is the key! Introduce the technology for a reason! If it does not improve the speed of learning then there is no point in using it! Stick with what they can use to learn! But continuously challenge them to learn in deeper ways! 🎓

The educational game is increasingly more political, difficult and diverse than ever before. What is it that I now see as my core business in a day of modelling learning?

Is it subject based curriculum of ACARA, is it the student needs based learning of individual students differentiated in the classroom or the educational learnings needed in the local community and business?

I know there is a middle ground but as a teacher these are the genuine balance of every day life! The idea that a teacher resets the balance and is ready to face children again day after day for 50 years of service is challenging to say the least!

Thoughts!!!!😁