INF530 – Blog Task 1
Knowledge and Understanding of Concepts and Practices in a Digital Age
Accepting employment as a Digital Technologies Leading Teacher in 2014, I entered a rapidly growing and changing workplace in the northern metropolitan region of Melbourne. The school has quickly developed over the past 5 years going from an enrolment of 300 to 920 students from Prep to Year 6. This enrolment boom has resulted in the employment of a predominantly new staff, many of whom are in their graduate years, and the need to develop whole school cohesiveness. As part of the school strategic plan, developing staff and student capabilities with an understanding to teach, learn and work in the digital age was of high importance.
By being responsible for leading a school through such changes in digital practices, I found that the concepts and ideas for what Digital Technology actually is, was very different for staff depending on their experiences, beliefs, capabilities and ages. Another finding was that my concept of what digital learning meant, in an education setting, kept evolving and changing. This was due to new concepts becoming accessible and achievable for staff and students all of the time and also as a result of resistance, both financial and human when developing new digital concepts.
In regards to the practices of embedding digital tools and resources across the school, this also changed and evolved over time. With ever changing and improving digital technology and devices it is important to change the mindset of setting up ‘one way’ to use digital technology and instead grow and change digital teaching and administrative practices as the technology evolves.
The context for my learning is through personal job requirements and the passion to continually challenge myself and grow as a digital educator. While working with over 80 staff members, all of whom have very different beliefs, approaches and pedagogy towards working in the digital age, I continue to develop as a leader in order to assist and guide the school towards improving digital practices. This has not come easily and continually challenges me as a leader, an educator and as a learner.
When undertaking the INF530 subject, I hope to collaborate with other like-minded educators and make time for my own personal growth and development in the area of Digital Learning in an education setting. I feel that through continued self-development and learning, I will make the time to research and collaborate. I aim to be inspired to continue challenge myself and the school through furthering my knowledge of what is possible in the digital age.
Throughout the completion of this subject, I will be stepping back into the world of personal study and endeavour to further invigorate my passion for learning. I hope to overcome the challenges of balancing full time work, part time work (as a sessional lecturer for RMIT University), part time work (in my own business) and undertaking my second subject in my Masters studies! I thrive on inspiration and challenges and look forward to my learning journey, both in this subject and in the entire Masters of Education in Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation course. I look forward to learning and collaborating with peers and I am excited by new learning opportunities.
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Yoong Chin, I am fascinated by the challenge of bringing digital technology into a school that has tripled in size over five years. You mention that “one way” will not work and the diversity of a staff of 80, what types of platforms do you use to provide digital tools with the flexibility to accommodate such a large staff? Do you have a budget that can sustain contemporary technologies?
Hi Sam, it certainly is a massive challenge to bring staff on board. As you could probably imagine, having such a large influx of staff on a yearly basis also results in the employment of many young staff. This means that we also have many pregnancies as well, so with over 25 ongoing members currently on maternity leave in the past 3 years, we consistently battle with upskilling and continuing our digital journey. AS part of my role, the past 5 years have begun with auditing and purchasing age and usage appropriately and within budget constraints, to planning and modelling how technology can be used in rooms. Digital portfolios are now across all students from prep to Year 6 as in the implementation of a school wide cybersafety program. In more recent years, the school is using cloud based collaborative tools for staff and students as well as an online learning management system for all school data and reporting.
This year, a parent online portal has been released for all members of our community and we have an active robotics and coding program running from Years 3-6. Its definitely busy and a consistent battle to cater for all staff and students (as you can imagine, we also have many new enrollments throughout the year and many of these students do not come through with our program causing other issues.)
In regards to the budget, luckily the school sees this area as a priority and have invested in my role as a digital Technologies Leading Teacher along with a sizable portion of the school global budget. We are also a private Partnerships School where some of our infrastructure such as WAPs, Servers and IWBs are taken care of by the agreement.