CORE Educations Ten Trends 2016

Click on the image to visit their web page to learn more

Each year, CORE Education's experienced staff of researchers, educators, and digital technology experts, pool their expertise and combine their understanding and evidence of the ways that digital technologies are influencing all aspects of education. The result is CORE's list of the ten trends that are expected to make a growing impact upon education in New Zealand in the coming year.

Ten Trends 2014: Agency

Click on the image to go to this Ed Talk

Derek Wenmoth provides an explanation of learner agency. Derek describes three features: the initiative or self-regulation of the learner, the way agency mediates and is mediated by the sociocultural context of the classroom, and social connectedness - an awareness of the responsibility of one's own actions on others.

Impactful Innovation and Student Agency

Click on the image to hear this Ed-Talk

Chicago-based digital learning coordinator, Jennie Magiera, talks about meaningful change - not change for the sake of change, but transformation that is focused on improving learning and experiences for students. Jennie emphasises the need to reinstate curiosity, scaffold the release of responsibility to our students, show them how to follow their passion and the importance of resilience.

Student Agency - Sparking Curiosity

Click on the image to go to the Ed Talk.

Stepahine Kitto, CORE Education eFellow, talks about investigating curiosity in the Junior school - how to encourage and utlilise curiosity as a starting point for further learning - and discusses some strategies used to engage children's thinking and questioning.

Project-Based Learning

If interdisciplinary project-based learning is a goal for us and our students, we could start with questions about our place.

For example: Where are bicycle accidents most likely to happen in our community? Where is the best spot to watch for migrating Monarch butterflies? What is the safest evacuation route in the event of a natural disaster? How have the suburbs of Christchurch changed since the 2011 earthquakes?

To investigate such questions, the tamariki would need to gather and analyze data, look for patterns, think critically, and communicate their understanding using maps (Google maps are a great option here), and other visual aids. In the process, they would also make connections across curriculum areas and deepen their literacy skills.

The ability to organize, visualize, and analyze information that relates to local and global issues is critical preparation for living in our connected and fast-changing world.

Students could not only investigate these interesting and timely questions, but also develop possible solutions. That means not only finding a problem worth solving, but finding a problem that is solvable, based on available data.

Using technology, the tamariki can communicate their solutions in a way that is visually interesting and understandable to public audiences.

"They're moving out of a place where there's always one right answer." Kolvoord, R. (2016).