Preparing our pupils for their future

First of a series of scenes around school captured using iPhone 3G and Camerabag App

There is some discussion recently about how schools are able to prepare our pupils for their future. Have we not been doing that all this while? Sure we have, but always in our more traditional manners, mostly catered to preparing our pupils for their next stage in education. The landscape or lives in which our pupils are living have changed so much in the last 5 years that the roles of schools and teachers need a re-examination to keep ourselves relevant.

When such discussions went on, I was asking myself what the main difference is? As in the lives pupils live. Much of me was thinking about the digital divide and the cultural manifestation technology plays on our society, it intervenes directly into how we perceive our realities and how we experience our lives. It is a cultural thing, it is immersive and will surely continue to evolve rapidly. If we do not stay relevant, coming to school will just be pure distraction for many pupils, for they are able to equip themselves with far more knowledge when they are connected to the internet than we can ever imagine providing them.

So how bad is the gap here? I think it is a huge one. Someone I was talking to over dinner mentioned wisely that we are 'teaching our pupils for our past, and not for their future'. I cannot agree more.

It seems that there are plenty of content on the internet in this area of preparing our pupils for the challenges of the 21st century. When I saw the 3 Steps video which highlighted the importance of Collaboration, Competition (Self), Environment, Global Awareness, etc, it provided some really simple but totally relevant things we can surely work on. We just have to focus on which one to start with.

The picture which you see in the beginning of the post is a creativity exercise I set for myself to document some interesting perspectives of our school using purely my iPhone 3G and a local phone app. There will be no other processing like Photoshop done outside these tools. Just a fun thing to keep me doing Art which I will try to keep doing alongside this reflection blog.