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 If the young people of today are to thrive beyond the walls of the classroom they will need to be able to cope with a world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The children of todays Kindergarten will enter the workplace in the fourth-decade of the 21st Century. We debate the merits of teaching 21st Century Skills and what they might be while teaching children who have lived their entire lives in that very century. The challenge is how will schools and individual teachers respond to this drive for urgent change.

I had the pleasure recently of listening to Michael Fullan thanks to ACEL (Australian Council for Educational Leaders). Like many thought leaders who are looking closely at the current state of education, Michael builds a strong case for radical change in education.

 Embedded in the very weave of the organisation, culture is the most difficult aspect of an organisation to change and the hardest form of change to sustain 'That's because transforming a culture requires influencing people's deepest beliefs and most habitual behaviours' (Rogers, Meehan & Tanne 2006 p5). Rogers et al indicate that as little as 10% of all organisations that set out to develop a high performing culture achieve their goal.

A significant shift continues to occur within global education markets. It is signified by the manner in which it makes sense to speak of a global education market. It is driven by neo-liberalism and the expansion of markets into all aspects of our lives and it is made possible by manipulation of the third messaging system within the educational triad of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It is a drive towards accountable, comparable and productive education systems fine-tuned to maximise the return on investment and provide industry with the workforce it desires. What must be asked is how does this trend impact students and are these the forces that should be driving change in our education systems?

We are living in interesting, frightening and rapidly changing times. Where rapid changes and transformations through technology, politics, globalisation and the climate, conspire against normality. These times demand a fresh approach to education, one that provides learners with the thinking dispositions they need to turn challenges into opportunities.  "All that was 'normal' has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense." But what thinking might guide us through this time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity?

"A new study from North Carolina State University finds that educating children about climate change increases their parents' concerns about climate change. "There's a robust body of work showing that kids can influence their parents' behavior and positions on environmental and social issues, but this is the first experimental study demonstrating that climate education for children promotes parental concern about climate change," says Danielle Lawson, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at NC State."

A quick overview of how the Internet is changing education, and how educators can take advantage of it.

"Many media have finally recognized the education bubble and the potential that it may hurt our economy more than the housing bubble. However, two experts in the field of education know this and are trying to change the way we see education - Dr. Raymund Paredes and Salman Khan."

Education exists in an uneasy domain and the teaching professional is forced to navigate between a multitude of conflicting tensions. Our education systems are dominated by abundance of voices all shouting for attention and offering a solution to the problems they have diagnosed. Each individual claims expertise and insights gained from years as a student is sufficient experience to allow one to speak with authority. - Educators need to find their voice. 

Be interesting to use this in a class discussion on the viability of the iPad or other similar devices as content consumption and/or creation devices along side the debate that has to do with how textbooks are changing.

n practical terms, any change effort that does not consider the culture into which it is introduced is unlikely to succeed. The worst-case scenario is that the change effort is resisted to such a degree that it is never truly implemented. In many cases, however, the change effort fails to produce the sort of results initially imagined despite the efforts of all involved to adopt the change. Although the new behaviours are adopted, something goes wrong, and it isn't always that the new idea itself is to be blamed. - Maybe it's culture?

This is a "field-book of tools and processes to help readers in all fields develop as researchers, writers, and agents of change." For more details and how to purchase: http://bit.ly/TYS2012. (Printing and distribution in Australia and Europe begins end of March.) Comments on the influence of this book's approach "I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling." a healthcare professional and story-teller "I really had not been used to thinking about my own thinking, so learning to do that also helped me to slow down and start to look away from the career path that I had been taking for granted." a biologist-turned-web designer "I found that the experience helped me to accept feedback from other professionals. I am more comfortable with listening to why my own ideas might not work or need further evaluation. This even happens to the point where I find reasons now to seek out this kind of feedback." a teacher "I had viewed research as a process of collecting information into a sort of database and reviewing it effectively. I have now revised my notions to include a more broad understanding of interconnectedness between people and ideas. An important part of research is to keep relationships going." an adult educator "One of the most useful ideas was the use of dialogue, which helps to slow down the procedures used by the company. There's a tension between management's need to make quick decisions and desire to have real dialogue around proposed changes-changes to the internal company operational procedures as well as to evaluating the quality of what the company is doing with its publications." a teacher, currently working in publishing "I was asked to pay attention to what I actually could do instead of what I could not. This enabled me to (1) step back and let go of a huge technic

The cloud and online learning are key trends and opportunities to transform education today. And with today's launch and availability of Office 365 for education, schools now have a holistic collaboration platform that will change the game. As schools face ever-tightening budgets and the pressure to innovate, Microsoft is offering enterprise quality technology for free that will modernize teaching practices and help prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow.

Learning and teaching in higher education is experiencing rapid change, in part, as a result of the influences of emerging technologies. These proceedings are the refereed papers of the 2nd Annual Conference on Emerging Technologies conducted by the University of Wollongong's Centre for Educational Development and Interactive Resources (CEDIR) and the Faculty of Education's Research Centre for Interactive Learning Environments (RILE) between 18 - 20 June 2008. The conference provided a showcase for research into these technologies and an insight into the way they can be used to promote meaningful learning in the higher education sector. Papers have undergone a double blind peer refereeing process to Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) standards. The papers have been assessed as providing information that increases the stock of knowledge and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications; they are original and have the potential to produce results; they represent substantial scholarly activity; and they have validity through a peer validation process. Further details of refereeing are included in the Conference Program available below.

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together Charles Leadbeater: Education innovation in the slums Arthur Benjamin's formula for changing math education Bill Gates on mosquitos, malaria and education Let's use video to reinvent education: Salman Khan

"I am on a flight returning home after a successful Presentation at the New York State Association of Computers and Technologies in Education Annual Conference, NYSCATE. I was pleased with the outcome, but I did make a few observations about how presenting at these conferences is beginning to change and may never be the same. Presentations for any educational conference are the backbone of the conference. They are usually the main reason why educators attend conferences, wild parties notwithstanding. It is a great accomplishment for an educator to have a proposal for a conference presentation accepted and placed on the Program. Being judged and accepted by one's colleagues is both an accomplishment and a thrill and for some, the process could also be terrifying. Presenting is considered by many to be one of those thresholds in an educator's career. I have done several presentations at various conferences over the years and I have been moved by the positive experience with each event. Because it requires putting one's self out there for all to see, most presenters do a great job of preparing and presenting to the best of their ability."

Understanding responses to change is critical and with the predicted future of education increasingly being linked to innovative practices which prepare students for an unknown future change is a central theme

A great perspective piece on American education compared to the world.

Elevate the education conversation with your voice! We encourage students to submit videos that... * Offer new ideas for what education could be, and/or * Inspire others to transform education, and/or * Propose specific actions you or others can take to improve education in your community