Keynote

The first Keynote speaker was very American and tried to raise alarmist flag about jobs being offshored or replaced by machines. He made some good points that even in NZ manufacturing jobs are being replaced by machine or shifted to cheaper labor sources. Routine cognitive jobs ie: taking reservations, helpdesk, travel agent etc are increasingly being replaced by computer. Those that still exist are liable to be moved offshore as well.

The sort of jobs that are left are either services that must be local or are abstract such as design or artistic. The real growth (he was really into growth at all costs, damn the sustainability) is coming from the abstract creative side.

The way we need to educate for this will require a huge shift. Incremental change is not up to it.
We need a revolutionary shift. I don't know how true this is. We will have to work within the existing structures. Schools will still be around for a while yet and I can't see them disappearing anytime soon. There may be small revolutions in individual classrooms, maybe even schools but there will need to be a sea change at the top. The way we assess is hostile to collaboration. It is a bit better at assessing the higher level thinking but has a long way to go. Until the assessment is assessing what needs to be taught any revolutionary change will not be acknowledged.



Notes Follow...

Started with a moment of silence for Chch. Then a clip from uLearn. Speaker Carol Moffatt, Educational architect.

Background on ICT in NZ education. Beginning in the 90's. Learning before boxes. Human infrastructure is much more important than technical inf. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

Scott McLeod. http://scottmcleod.net/
Everything is moving to the internet. Face to face is becoming marginalised. 1/8 US marriages start on the net, online dating etc. New big shift is now everyone can produce, not just consume, information. Mix up, mash up, push out. " If you think of the internet as a place to look stuff up you are missing the best part".

Clayton C - disruptive innovation. Game changers. Killing sectors of society. Painful shifts.

Location dependent vs independent. A lot of manual jobs are really independent. Shift manufacturing to undeveloped countries. Loss of skills. Loss of routine cognitive work, call centers, data entry, support, medical interpretation. Replaced by AI. factories replace manual labour, computers/internet replaces routine cognitive work.