Earlier this month, my colleague Travis Smith in Australia published an article on LinkedIn asking precisely this question. I highly recommend you take the five minutes to read it, but not as much as I recommend you take the 24minutes to watch the video below from Tamara Sullivan, the Deputy Principal at Brisbane South State Secondary College.
Tamara’s presentation covers some excellent areas of interest to modern pedagogy in technology powered learning environment and I strongly suggest you have you pen and paper ready when listening to take notes (or even better, OneNote and stylus!). Some aspects that really stood out to me included:
- The continual references to data and research informing their pedagogical approach
- The refusal to get ‘modern furniture’ but then simply use it in a traditional classroom configuration
- Modelling, throughout her presentation, the technologies the teachers and students are expected to use: consistent use of digital paper (OneNote) and digital ink (stylus) to mark up her presentation in a very tactile way. These, along with zooming and scrolling reflects the natural interactions we have with traditional media but supercharges it in new ways for students
- Significant investment in end user devices whilst saving money by not using ‘smart’ boards and keeping the intelligence on the endpoint device but with wireless broadcasting.
In his article, Travis identified four key themes from Tamara’s presentation:
- Matching pedagogy to space
- Consistency in terms of technology choices
- Going paperless
- Leadership and Strategy
He expands on these in his article and if the above are areas you’re needing to make decisions in for your school, then I highly recommend you read his article and at the risk of me getting offside with Travis, if you’re short of time and can only do one of the two, I really recommend you watch Tamara’s video in full.
