The teaching of thinking is a critical endeavour for teachers and one that brings enhanced learning opportunities for students. Unfortunately thinking is not something that we naturally do well and as a consequence it is a skill we need to learn.

In 2001 Marc Prensky divided the world into two broad groups, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. His idea struck a chord with popular culture and has become a dominant paradigm in education. Given the core concept remains a feature of educational dialogues it is worth re-visiting and seeing how the idea might evolve to better serve our needs and understandings of how people born after the internet, learn with and think about, technology.

In a time where much of the debate around education is linked to performance on national and international assessments such as PISA, TIMMS, PIRLS and in Australia, NAPLAN combined with calls for market-driven reforms there is a danger that a climate of competition between schools and systems will grow.

An increasingly significant aspect of literacy is an awareness of the visual elements that fall beyond the traditional components of written text. Termed 'Visual Literacy' this is the ability to read and create communications that use visual elements. It combines the skills of traditional literacy with knowledge of design, art, graphic arts, media and human perception. It takes literacy further beyond a decoding of text to a decoding of the complete package around the communication.

Watching video from the Apollo space programme one can't help but notice how things have changed since those days in the early 1970s. Banks of small round rectangular screens, dot matrix printers, a myriad of switches and dials each with a specific task to perform and a design aesthetic that says functionality in mild mannered green. What is missing beside the sort of computing power we carry in our pockets today are women. In the 70s science and engineering was what men did and from a quick look at the statistics there continues to be much room for change.

'Inside the Black Box' was written by Black and William in 1998 and in it they describe the classroom as a black box with inputs and outputs but what occurred inside was a mystery. For many teachers the reality has been that what occurs in their classroom has been both private and isolating, a matter between the teacher and his or her students but a task largely tackled alone. But this isolationist view is, in the age of the social media and networking increasingly challenged and more and more teachers are finding their voice, sharing their ideas and gaining valuable insights from a global community of connected educators.

Spend time in any school talking to teachers and even students about thinking and learning and you are likely to hear the phrase 'Bloom's taxonomy' passed around. More than likely you will see it displayed on a wall as a set of processes learners engage with when working in the cognitive domain but how might we maximise the benefits of Bloom's Taxonomy

There is an innate beauty and wonder in History. How might we ensure students receive the maximum benefit from their study of History? How do we encourage them to see History as more than content?

A discussion of curriculum review and nationalisation reveals a messy field with no clear way of meeting the needs of all involved. What lessons might we learn from high-performing international systems and what are the dangers of borrowing ideas?

In technology circles the importance of the 'platform' is important and well understood. The companies that have had the most success in recent times are those that have become the platforms upon which great ideas are built. But what would it look like if a school imagined itself as a 'platform' in this model?

There are three cognitive loads that impact the efficient formation of schemas. Extraneous cognitive load are those not directly required to master a task and have a negative impact on schema formation, reducing these is desirable and can be achieved through efficient design. Intrinsic cognitive load is that which is inherent in the task and for the most part cannot be reduced. Tasks with high intrinsic cognitive load are by nature more complex for an individual and in the long term are managed through equally complex schema. Germane cognitive load refers to the mental resources devoted to the efficient formation of schemas and is seen to have a positive effect on learning. Understanding these things will allow us to more effectively target our efforts as learners and teachers ensuring the cognitive load theory has a valuable role to play.

What does it mean to have learned something? What occurs within the individual as they are learning and what changes occur as a result of that learning? At some point in the teaching/learning cycle we need to ask this question and ponder our definition of learning and the consequences that follow from our conclusions.

There is a danger in seeking finished perfection in all that we do. There is a risk that our students will focus solely on the attributes that define a finished piece and overlook the importance of the process that leads to it.

In the song 'There's a Hole in the Bucket' we are introduced to Liza and Henry as the overcome the difficulties caused by a bucket with a a hole in it. Liza sets Henry the task of collecting water but as we soon find out this is no simple task.

If we teach our children to think then they will do better on the test and they will do better in life. This was one of the clear messages delivered by the presenters at the International Conference on Thinking (ICOT) in Bilbao, Spain.

A critical component of learning is the ability to reflect on one's learning and the processes that occur while we are engaged in learning. If we are to develop independent, empowered learners then we need to build the skills required for metacognition both directly through the provision of suitable strategies and indirectly via the modeling of effective learning that we provide.

Recently I have found a number of ideas on the web that were particularly interesting and together paint a compelling picture of education's future. Each fits into a model where the focus is on developing skills, dispositions and habits that will last into the future - long life skills.

In the constructivist-learning model, engagement and experience combine with immersive environments and self-organisation of knowledge to establish a context in which learning occurs naturally. Constructivism has since the time of Dewey become closely affiliated with Project Based Learning and yet despite years of efforts to refine the process the result does not always match the promise. Design thinking might be the answer.

The message from PwC is clear, Australia needs to take action now if we are not to slip behind the rest of the world. 'Australia is waking up to the fact that the good times can't go on forever. In the face of economic challenges and a digital revolution that's reshaping business and the workforce, we need to act.'

In June 2014, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Tony Abbott MP acknowledged the significant role that STEM is to play in the nations future. 'There will be significant emphasis in boosting our focus on science, technology, engineering and maths because science is at the heart of a country's competitiveness and it is important that we do not neglect science as we look at the general educational and training schemes.' But what does this mean for schools?