Future Focused Learning

Future focused learning is about effective inquiry learning, which has changed the way we need to plan.
Working collaboratively, we need to identify the big ideas, understandings, and desired skills we want to focus on, with our students' needs and interests driving the direction.
Some guiding questions (ngā pātai ārahi) might be:

What are the learning needs of our students?
What aspects of the big idea interest our students?
What do we want our students to understand about the big idea?
Why do we want them to understand this?
What are the understandings that we want our students to walk away with?

What do we want them to understand about their world, and why do we want them to understand it?

"Future-focused education needs to embrace a much more complex view of knowledge, one that incorporates knowing, doing, and being. Teachers could provide opportunities for students to act on knowledge – relating knowledge to their own lives; sharing knowledge with others; and creating and using knowledge to find solutions to challenges.” tki (2016)

21st Century Skills

We definitely still need to maintain our focus on the basics, Numeracy and Literacy, but our tamariki also need the knowledge and skills to function as 21st Century global citizens and we need to prepare them for 21st Century workplaces, whatever they may look like in the future.
Our tamariki need to be practicing these essential skills - collaboration, critical thinking, effective communication and creativity, to be future-focused learners and leaders. We need to prepare our learners for a connected and technology-rich world.

The use of technology can help to redefine our learning programmes so that our tamariki have the opportunities to problem-solve in real-world environments from their classroom spaces.

I wonder ....

How might education come to life if children continued to possess a burning need to know? 
How can we ensure our learners grow up to be curious, responsive, engaged citizens?

Ask Questions

I think one of the main educational shifts there has been since I first began teaching, is, we are now teaching and encouraging our learners to ask questions, rather than find answers.

In the past, this was something that seemed to be 'lost' in the child's journey through school. They started school as inquisitive learners, asking lots of questions, about everything.
By the time they are in their 3rd or 4th year of schooling, it has often been difficult to get them to formulate those inquisitive, inquiring questions that came so freely to their 4-year old mind.

We need to change the way we have been teaching and foster our learner's natural inquisitiveness and willingness to take risks.

Top 100 Tools for Learning (September 2015)

Even though it is now 2016, I think this is a useful list to peruse.
The list was compiled by Jane Hart from the votes of over 2,000 learning professionals worldwide working in both education and workplace learning.

Top 100 Tools for Learning