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Global education online

The Future of Online Learning: a global education context

This paper was prepared in January 2010 at the request of AusAID to inform the future direction of the Global Education website Project. It seeks to provide a brief overview of future trends and issues related to online education, with a particular focus on global education online. The principal author was Cecily Wright, with input from Pru Mitchell and Cathy McNicol of the Global Education website project.

We sought to provide an overview of initiatives in Australian education relevant to online learning and to present key issues related to 21st century learners, teachers, pedagogy, curriculum and technologies. In looking for digital content to support online global education the key elements sought were that content was interactive, visual, media-rich, collaborative, searchable, exchangeable and community-enriched. Barriers to online learning identified include teacher capability, internet filtering, infrastructure, copyright, equity of access and cost.

Discussion and feedback on the paper is welcome. There is a forum for this purpose in the Global Education Projects Support Group.

Tags: global education papers
Posted at 12:00AM Feb 02, 2010 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

Global Education PD

Lindsay Rae from World Vision led a discussion session entitled: Where are we going? Future PD: how to build communities of practice

1. What needs to be developed?

• standards
• content knowledge
• practice
• leadership

Have to start with motivation and committed/passionate participants, requires Principal/leadership support
How do we help teachers maintain this passion without burning out?
Enunciate where GLobal Education fits within curriculum areas
Need to develop online PD
Take opportunity of the National curriculum: to tweak to Global perspective into local curriculum
Take leadership opportunities: offer mentoring to younger teachers

2. What support will most empower teachers?
depends so much on individual systems/sectors/states - generalised feeling that
constraints: NAPLAN particularly found in government schools
PD time is very tight, and hard to get time allocated to Global Education
Cluster-based, train the trainer model

What PD approach is most effective?
Needs to be ongoing, try something out, come back to the group and reflect. eg Global Journeys stories
Face to face mentoring and modelling within schools: what or who inspired you to become Global Education leader?

3. What resources could we apply to maximise global citizenship potential?
Resources are really helpful: digital, video etc
Online access is the easiest way to receive these
ready-made resources written for immediate implementation are desirable - this is not realistic as PD providers
Need for constantly updated resources

Tags: global education professional development
Posted at 11:45AM Jun 04, 2009 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

History wars

Day 2 of the AusAID Global Education conference started with a valuable history lesson from Professor Henry Reynolds on the history wars: should we remember or should we forget?

Starting with an international perspective discussing Truth Commissions following major historical conflicts/events, he then revisited Australian history from the total absence of Aboriginal history in texts of the 1950s through to National Curriculum 2011.

History Wars & Truth Commissions
History wars happened in many countries, distinctive characteristics include truth commissions following political events, eg end of dicatatorships, end of civil war, collapse of communist regimes etc set up by governments, NGos, churches or UN.

• encouraged public confession and public retellings
• held in public
• those setting them up state that the purpose was not revenge and reparation as finding 'the truth'

Two ways of thinking

1. We must remember - the need to record the past, which in most cases had been repressed, to find out who was responsible for the terrrible things that happened in our society. Without this public national period of confession there can be no new beginning.
   Those who suffered must know why they suffered. Their relations must know what happened to them, where they are buried. Some expression of regret, public recognition of what was suffered.
2. POV the past should be left alone - it is better to forget the horrors of the past. We must draw a line under the past and move on. The new arrangement is fragile, there are great political dangers in delving too far into the past. It's all very well now to make moral judgements.
   Interesting question in Eastern Europe - do we open up the archives? To find that members of community, family, friends etc provided information to the security services.
   Why do Japan, Soviet Union and China choose not revisit the horrors in their past history?

Australia and its past

Henry referred to his experience teaching Australian history at Townsville University College with the set text Greenwood 1955: Australia; a social and political history
http://www.questia.com/library/book/australia-a-social-and-political-history-by-gordon-greenwood.jsp
which contained no index entry for Aborigines
HIs study of reviews of the book as it was released contained no comment on the absence of aboriginal history.

Early 20th century - Commonwealth
reasons why belief that the aboriginal population was dying out
- population was definitely declining in their areas
- laws of evolution dictated this

What brought about change in perspective?

• from 1946 - decolonisation and collapse of the European empires
• dramatic revolution in anthropology, and link with evolution theories broke down to see hunter and gatherer communities in their own right
• Universal Declaration on Human Rights - no exceptions. These rights applied to all
• 1960s: American Civil Rights movement
• 1968 Boyer lectures: E.H. Stanner 'After the Dreaming"

1990s
Within 10 years: a revolution in thinking, massive change

1. Reconciliation movement
   led to a great deal of thinking about our history. Above all, we want recognition and acknowledgement of what happened. Local committees began detailed investigation of local history
2. High Court decisions: Mabo and Wik
   Key point was the judgement of Judges Dean and Gordon that used the phrase 'legacy of unutterable shame'
3. Report: Bringing them home
   very successful in terms of sales, and in its effect. Probably because it was about families and childrens touching people in the way no other issue had done. Apologies by governments, churches etc
   Key point was Roland Wilson referring to this as genocide disturbed

Counter attack to the black armband version of history
Includes historians, commentators, and also John Howard - who thought his greatest achievement was bringing a balanced view of the past
What is the purpose of history? Why teach history in schools?
History is the principal way that children are trained to become citizens - therefore they must be given a positive view so they develop pride.
Trying to change the way history was taught and how it was taught. Unprecedented effort into creating curriculum material, documents, books etc that emphasised the sacrifice of Australia's soldiers overseas.
Issues with applying modern standards to the past, and unfairly judge by these standards.

Judge history by our own standards at the time

Professor Reynolds challenges us to judge history by our own standards at the time.
Australia makes more of war than any other country, but cannot come to terms with conflict within Australia
Compare international conflict and internal conflict and the celebration/importance given to concepts such as

• invasion
• burial/graves of the fallen
• what is included in memorials
• 'Lest we forget

History curriculum

One phase of the History wars has come to an end with the Rudd apology.
New history curriculum is now being developed without the Howard emphasis
Has victory gone to the black armband wearers?

Studies of school student attitudes reveal that students really don't want to know about terrible things in the past. They want a good, positive story.
Audience of own generation: why weren't we told, why didn't we know? Check out Reynolds' books (NLA)
New generation saying: we don't want to know this painful stuff. Why is this?

Kate believes this is because children are barometers of their parents. The apology is for those academics, philosophers in ivory towers - most people just want to get over it.

Great idea from Pauline: Key students into Civil Rights in US and Mandela in South Africa, and then bring them back to Australian history.

Multiculturalism as a contributing factor - 25% of Australians from immigrant background, so the Aboriginal conflict is not their personal history, plus the emphasis on harmony rather than conflict

Cathy comments on the discomfort in the fact that the results of our history staring us in the face in the tremendous gap between indigenous and non-indigenous

Tags: australian history history wars global education
Posted at 10:19AM Jun 04, 2009 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]

AusAID

We started Day 1 of the AusAID Global Education conference in Launceston, Tasmania with presentations by Peter Waddell-Wood from AusAID presenting about his diverse global experience with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and in Afghanistan and Pakistan (referred to as AfPak).

Global Crop Diversity Trust

www.croptrust.org
This is an amazing project collecting unique seeds into a gene bank. 
He also showed graphs of the Impacts of climate change on food security and the need to consider potential changes to varieties of crops in terms of heat tolerance and new diseases,
Some interesting similarities in management of a seed repository as in information/knowledge repositories. Sad photos of a flood that destroyed a seed library with many unique varieties now lost. No GM seeds are collected although some may be provided to commercial companies involved in GM.

Check out the Svalbard Arctic Seed vault - 200 million seed samples - in island above Norway, dubbed the Doomsday Vault, as the ultimate safety net for the world's most important natural resource: food.

Also an ABC documentary called Seed hunter: Australian scientist Dr Ken Street, looking for the wild chickpea that can survive temperatures of 40 degrees above and below zero.

Pakistan

Need 3 Ds: Defence + Diplomacy + Development
necessary also to provide some element of hope for population

• Australia's aid response to Pakistan this year: $30 million (doubled from previous year) $120 million over next 2 years
• work centred around poorer border areas
• priorities: health, education, rural development, governance and infrastructure particularly following 2005 earthquake – rebuilding schools

The Global Education Pakistan profile
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/1194

Afghanistan

• life expectancy is 42.9  - mainly related to health, remoteness of large proportion of the population
• infant mortality rate 129 per 1,000 live births
• adult literacy only 28%
• progress towards MDG 1 is regressing 42% presently below overty line
• whole generation has only known war

The Global Education Afghanistan profile
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/617

Tags: conferences global education pakistan afghanistan food security
Posted at 11:50AM Jun 03, 2009 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]