The Power of 2 - Teacher Education in a Digital Age

Governments around the world extol the need for countries to transition to new economies powered by innovation, and to take advantage of the opportunities that new technologies afford.

Schools are expected to play their role in providing a stream of graduates equipped and eager to play an active role in this transition. At the same time, the simplistic equating of global ranking in basic maths and science results as a proxy for innovative capacity  continues to drive educational systems towards narrow curriculum and the drilling in basic testable knowledge. This is too often at the expense of opportunities for genuine integrated learning.

Researchers into the science of learning have clear and consistent findings that support  active rich learning as essential, not only as an engagement tool, but as a means of developing critical thinking and problem solving skills and confidence.

With a modest effort, but careful design, activities can and have been developed that can introduce teachers and their students to concepts that will be fundamental in not only embracing but developing the technologies of the next decade and beyond. The formal educational eco-systems are often slow to evolve. Yet there is scope to introduce alternative approaches that continue to satisfy the current core competencies being targeted, while simultaneously introducing new concepts. In such activities multiple learnings arise, together, naturally and in a meaningful context. 

Just as a humble activity like exploring geometric growth - using beads and chess boards - highlights the power of 2, so do the collaborations between informal learning specialists and those universities that develop teachers and study the science of learning.

It's what $40 can get you, enough for 48 maths and computer science activities for a few hundred teachers, including the dental floss.

The recent trials of our "Bite Wise" workshops in Brunei with the education faculty of the University Of Brunei Darussalam (UBD), have again confirmed the openness of teacher educators to these approaches, and the formation of partnerships to jointly refine and localise the approaches.

The more 2x2x2x2 partnerships we string together the sooner the impact of these approaches will mount. In the few quiet moments between workshops, my mind turns to how I might run these in Mongolia. A camel can carry a lot of dental floss -  it might need to.