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In these times of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA), in this Post Truth era, what do our children most need from their education? How do we best prepare them for their future?

How might we prepare our students for an unknown future? If we accept that we are living in times of rapid change and that the world our children will inhabit is likely to be very different from the world of today, or perhaps more importantly, different from the work our current education system was designed to serve, what should we do to ensure our children are able to thrive?

These two powerful questions framed a recent webinar presented by Professor David Perkins of Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero. Answering these questions and helping teachers find meaningful and contextually relevant answers to these questions has been a focus of Perkins' work, especially in recent times. His book "Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World" introduced us to the notion of lifeworthy learning or that which is "likely to matter in the lives our learners are likely to live". This is a powerful notion and one that has the potential to change not only what we teach but also how we go about teaching what we do.

 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.

Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead. 

Red Fish Soup - Games for Children - Jeux pour Enfants

via http://smartboardgoodies.com/2012/04/05/fraboom-online-childrens-museum/

coz this is a site for art edu using some tech for next children too..

a ning community site for art educators ... a start to social networking too

Great interactive CD-ROM project from folks who bring you "The Digital Frog." This page outlines an educator's license, but try the Demo first! It looks great for an Ecology class.

This award-winning digital field trip allows students to visit a bog in Algonquin Park, Ontario without getting their feet wet. Photos, videos, animations and interactive exercises teach about such topics as photosynthesis, wetland types and mechanisms, wetland plants and animals, formation and succession, food webs and the impact of humans on this vital ecosystem. Interactive concept maps and context-sensitive help ensure that users never get lost. Definitions and pronunciations make the text accessible to students with a wide range of reading levels. Even very young children can enjoy many activities, as well as videos and pictures. Students love playing the electronic version of the predator-prey string game. Teacher and Student versions of the workbook materials are included on the disc in PDF, Word, RTF and Ascii formats, allowing you to print just what you need, when you need it, as well as customizing the materials if needed.

It seems that thanks to COVID19, educators, parents and students are in a rush. It seems the rush started moments after the decision was made to promote social distancing by offering remote learning. From quality learning in classrooms focused on deep learning we shifted into top gear. Packets of work were prepared, online tools rapidly expanded, new options for content delivery were examined and quickly deployed. We wanted to make sure that our students would be kept busy. Parents wanted their children to be busy. - Maybe slow looking is the solution?

Learning is a social endeavour. Schools need to understand that for our students the social landscape has changed. Rather than turning away from this reality we need to understand what it means and what our children need to know and learn to safely maximise the opportunities it brings.

LearnEnglish Kids is for children who are learning English. Find games, songs, stories and lots of activities - and learn English too.

As children, we ask "Why?" a lot. It is a part of childhood, that special time when the many forces acting upon our cognitive development converge around a singular desire to ask "Why". It becomes the central focus of our conversational style, an incessant exclamation into the void which tests the patience of any nearby adult. But asking "Why" offers so much more.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with a group of parents whose children are transitioning into a new phase of their learning. I used this as an opportunity to share some key messages for successful learning and thought I would briefly unpack these here.

this site has good interactive tools... as the timeline2 done in flash ...

coz of creating with children the timeline .. that's a good way to link events