Key Competencies for the Future

Key Competencies for the Future was release mid 2014 and explores the history, idealogy and understandings of New Zealand's Key Competencies.  The authors; Rosemary Hipkins, Rachel Bolstad, Sally Boyd and Sue McDowall look at the Key Competencies from many angles and examine the important place that they have within our curriculum.

Right from the start of this book there were key elements and statements that stood out to me that really highlighted the importance of the Competencies for teachers.  Particularly of interest was the concept of how even though the Competencies stand alone, they have to stand together.  You cannot also look at them in isolation and piecing the picture together of how they fit and work together in the wider world is key to us as educators supporting our students with them.

"Key Competencies are actually cross-cutting of each other.  We pull them apart to understand their individual character, but it's also important to stitch them back together when we put them to work in real contexts" - KCFTF (Key Competencies for the Future) Pg 16

I've really enjoyed following the VLN thread and webinar that happened as part of the Connected Educator Month - you can watch the webinar with 3 of the authors here.  It's worth the watch and listen, even if you aren't currently reading the book.

There are such a wide range of concepts that stood out to me personally and for my practice and I particularly enjoyed the thinking around 'wicked problems'.

Wicked Problems: the idea of students being involved in real future focused problems that have relevancy and impact for their world.  Concepts such as food security, sustainability, pollution and more.  These are large scale problems that are difficult or impossible for people to solve due to a number of reasons, such as perspectives, scale etc.  Read more on Wicked Problems here.  Through this I was questioning how really future focussed our practice and selection of negotiated learning avenues have really been?  Are they big enough with far reaching consequences that surpass the students' time in school.  At uLearn I have had the opportunity to attend workshops run by Tom Barrett of NoTosh - in these workshops I have begun to explore Design Thinking further.  Many comments and conversations with my colleagues during this workshop filtered back to themes and ideas from the Key Competencies for the Future book.  Particularly around Wicked Problems, provocations and the design thinking journey.

Hashtags & Conferences

It's that time of the year again. uLearn has rolled around and it's a great opportunity to meet up and catch up with the people of twitter, learn, teach and share.  This year the Google Apps Summit is also happening in Auckland - a Google Apps for Education 1 day feast at Albany Senior High.

Both provide a great opportunity to learn new things even if you aren't at the conference.

"How?"  You say...

Easily through Twitter.

Each of these upcoming conferences have a hashtag that people will use when sending out a tweet.  You can easily follow the tweets this way, whether you are at the conference or not and whether you are on twitter or not.

A hashtag (#) acts like a collection agent - allowing people to group together tweets on a similar topic or subject so they can easily be collated on the internet.

Here's how it works...

The wonderful people of twitter who are at the conference taking part in keynotes, presentations or marvellous conversations will hopefully add a hashtag to their tweet.

Here is a tweet that I sent with the hashtag #GAFENZ

This tweet will then be picked up in hashtag searches when looking for the hashtag #GAFENZ.


Here are links to help you follow the tweets from both of the conferences:

The Google Apps Summit on Tuesday has the hashtag #GAFENZ or #GAFESUMMIT
#Gafesummit - You can follow the tweets that are posted here on tweetchat.

#Gafenz - You can follow the tweets that are posted here on Twitter or here on Tweetchat

ULearn is using the hashtag #ULEARN12
You can follow the tweets that are posted here on Twitter or here on Tweetchat

On tweetchat you can search for a particular hashtag and it will group them for you together so you can easily read through the tweets being sent.  You don't need to sign up to use the site, but this is an option.  You can also change the speed that you would like it to check for new tweets - just click on the 'refresh speed' at the top of the page.  This is great for when there are a lot of tweets happening - it allows you to work through the tweets without them refreshing too fast!

So whether you are at the conference or not you can keep up with the conversations, ideas, links and more that will be coming from the conferences.  If you are feeling a bit bold - you might even sign yourself up for twitter and join in the conversation!  Just remember to use the hashtag in your tweet so we can join you!

Image used under Creative Commons: Shovelling Son