Next up is Megan Stewart, Director, Worldwide Higher Education and Community Programs, Adobe Systems and Bob Regan, Director, Worldwide Primary and Secondary Education, Adobe Systems – on “Preparing your Students and Teachers for the Digital Future”. The key question – how do we do this ?
This is preceded by a ‘pixel mash’. This is a live design competition using a word + an image + Adobe CS4 + wacom as the brief – the students have to use only these elements and tools to come up with a design. There are 4 students from UTS sitting at computers marked A,B,C,D and they will now go live in front of the audience who will judge the designs. The image is a BBQ, the word is ‘education’. Learning as ‘braaing’ maybe :). We can see the students’ screens as they are working which is quite cool. Again we see how design education approaches need to inform a more collaborative approach to learning mediated by digital tools. We could do this for example in a music or computer science class, even creative writing or English where students and teachers could all see each other’s work and comment and critique. And why don’t we give all students access to tools like Photoshop and Dreamweaver instead of Word and Powerpoint ??
OK – pixel mash done with student B as the winner. Back to Megan and Bob. 21st Century Campus Report states that students across the disciplines were making choices about where to go on the basis of what technology was available. What can institutions do improve the student experience when there is global competition between institutions ? More detail on this from Megan tomorrow. Bob is talking about 21st C learning in schools – picking up the 6Ds theme – but focusing on Tech literacy, Creativity, Communication, Critical thinking and Collaboration as the key 21st C skills. But haven’t these always been important skills – OK the technology has changed but some kind of technology has always been part of education. But for the multitasking digital generation how do we design classrooms that are multimedia and connected spaces -well, by using cloud computing and social computing. More on this from Bob tomorrow – especially on how Adobe fits into this world.