The changing world of education

The world is changing and learning today has to encompass so many new concepts and issues that the world is now facing, as well as providing a personalised digital experience. The challenges this brings to education include how to embrace the new, slightly chaotic environment, whilst managing an ICT service for every user. How do you provide the services your students want, whilst ensuring you provide the service your school, college or university demands?
University students arrive on campus with their laptops, and their high expectations of being treated as a customer. School pupils, most of whom are already regularly involved in highly interactive, multimedia, ICT experiences, arrive in the classroom with their high expectations of what ICT can enable them to do.
Soon, every student will have access to a computer whenever they want - how will that change learning? From an IT perspective, how will that change the way that you support learners in school, as well as your staff, your systems, and your learning delivery? We don't know all the answers, but in this newsletter, we've pulled together some of the ways that we might be able to provide some help and support.
Before you read the newsletter, if you haven't already done so, watch the Shift Happens presentation that has caught the minds of teachers, parents and students worldwide.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) continue to be a major driver of
economic and social modernisation. Today, businesses in the EU devote 20% of investment to
ICTs, and the sector accounts for 26% of overall research expenditure. Moreover, 60% of
basic public services are now fully available online and more than half of EU citizens use the
Internet regularly.

The whole study: go here

In a climate when innovation efforts and research and development budgets are likely to see more scrutiny than ever, our 2008 list of the World's Most Innovative Companies adds three financial measures to the mix to determine the rankings. For this year's list, votes cast in the proprietary BusinessWeek-BCG survey received 80% of the overall weighting, stock returns were weighted 10%, while three-year revenue and margin growth each got 5%. While these changes -- only votes from our survey counted in the past -- marked the biggest shift yet in our rankings of the World's Most Innovative Companies, there are some similarities to previous years. Once again, Apple's design whizzes lead our list, followed by Google’s search geniuses and Toyota's hybrid car mavens. But the added financial metrics and the greater diversity of our survey, which polled more global and C-suite respondents than ever also helped to produce a few big changes. Global names such as Tata Group and Nintendo, both making their first appearance, landed in the top 10. Traditional innovation icon 3M plummeted from No. 7 to No. 22. And dark horses such as No. 18 General Motors, which has suffered through a tumultuous year financially, received a surprising number of votes thanks to concept cars like the electric Chevrolet Volt and the Detroitautomaker's renewed focus on design.

Quelle

Übersicht per Region:

"The winners and losers in the next decade may well be separated by a single factor: those who conquer complexity and those who don't."

(Michael L. George)

die folgende Studie, die über ein Sample von 500 Führungskräften in Deutschland durchgeführt würde, zeigt dass – fernab der Schlagzeilen und in der Breite der Unternehmen - Führungskräfte heute nicht weniger, sondern mehr Wert auf Werte legen. Sie liefert damit klare Belege für die steigende Relevanz, die wertebewusstes Handeln in der Wirtschaft wie auch der Gesellschaft zugesprochen wird.

Die vorliegende Untersuchung zeigt: Eine neue, junge Generation von Führungskräften fordert sehr selbstbewusst ein aktiveres Management auf Basis und mithilfe von Werten ein. Der enge Zusammenhang zwischen Werten und Wertschöpfung, zwischen hohen moralischen und zwischenmenschlichen Standards und der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit eines Unternehmens ist erkannt. Es ist absehbar, dass sich – trotz der Negativschlagzeilen über die schwarzen Schafe des Kapitalismus – diese Haltung in den kommenden Jahren in den Führungsetagen weiter durchsetzen wird.

Auch in der öffentlichen Debatte ist es an der Zeit, dass nicht mehr nur mit dem Finger auf schlechte Beispiele gezeigt, sondern der Blick nach vorne gerichtet wird: auf die Unternehmer und Unternehmen, die schon heute Positivbeispiele sind. Nur an ihnen lässt sich zeigen, was in der Alltagspraxis des Managements die Werteorientierung ausmacht, welche Instrumente eingesetzt werden können und müssen.

Der Wettbewerb in einer globalen Wirtschaft, die kulturelle Grenzen überschreitet und in der sich völlig unterschiedliche Wertmaßstäbe begegnen, nimmt zu. Er macht es für jedes Unternehmen zur Überlebensfrage, ein eigenes Wertebewusstsein zu entwickeln und sichtbar nach ihm zu handeln. Und nicht zuletzt der demografische Wandel führt dazu, dass in der Konkurrenz um die besten Köpfe solche Firmen die besten Chancen haben, die es ihren Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern erlauben, auch im Unternehmen zu leben, was ihnen privat wichtig ist.

Hier geht's zur Studie

Mass education designed for the industrial age meets the needs of
neither the pre-industrial village nor the post-industrial future...
indeed, all education—has to be totally reconceptualised.

(Alvin Toffler)

Österreich nach e-readiness-Ranking erstmals in den IKT-TOP-10
Klares 1:0 der Schweiz im Ländermatch um bessere IKT-Infrastruktur
Wien (pts/15.04.2008/14:34) - Österreich konnte sich erstmals auf Platz 10 im aktuellen e-readiness-Ranking setzen. "Dass Österreich klassische IKT-Länder wie Finnland aus den Top 10 verdrängt hat, zeigt, dass sich die Arbeit aller IKT-Stakeholder in unserem Land bezahlt macht", kommentierte ICT Austria-Geschäftsführer Mag. Christian Eggenreiter heute die jüngst vom britischen Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitut Economist Intelligence Unit gemeinsam mit dem IBM Institute for Business Value durchgeführte Studie, die in den weltweit größten Volkswirtschaften die Investitionsbedingungen für IKT-Infrastruktur und deren Nutzung untersucht.
Österreich führt im Westeuropa-Teilranking bei den Kategorien "Legal Environment" und "Consumer and Business Adoption". Bei der wichtigen Kategorie "Government Policy and Vision" katapultierte sich Österreich auf den zweiten Platz hinter Dänemark. "Allerdings fährt die Schweiz gegen Österreich einen Teil-Sieg betreffend IKT-Infrastruktur ein", stellte Eggenreiter zum klaren ersten Platz der Eidgenossen unter allen Ländern fest. "Hier müssen in Österreich nachhaltige Investitionsanreize seitens der Politik folgen", schloss der ICT Austria Geschäftsführer.
Über ICT Austria
Die wichtigsten Akteure des IKT-Marktes haben sich im Oktober 2006 zur Interessensplattform ICT Austria, einem Netzwerkpartner des Fachverbandes der Elektro- und Elektronikindustrie (FEEI), zusammen geschlossen, um den weiteren Breitbandausbau noch stärker zu stimulieren und die nationale IKT-Politik gezielt und kräftiger als bisher bei der Gestaltung optimaler IKT-Rahmenbedingungen zu unterstützen. Mitgliedsunternehmen sind Alcatel-Lucent Austria AG, Bundesrechenzentrum GmbH, Ericsson Austria GmbH, Kapsch AG, Microsoft Österreich GmbH, Siemens AG Österreich und Telekom Austria TA AG. ICT Austria-Präsident ist Ing. Mag. Rudolf Fischer, Geschäftsführer Mag. Christian Eggenreiter. (Ende)

Governments, experts and practitioners in the education sector increasingly recognize that information and communication technology (ICT) can play an important role in supporting educational improvement and reform. A high-quality education in turn serves to advance the goals of social and economic development.

To be successful in today’s information-rich and knowledge-based societies, students and teachers must utilize technology effectively. Bringing ICT into the classroom serves to:

- Help students develop the skills necessary to live and work successfully in the 21^st century

- Support teachers to improve students’ classroom learning experiences with interactive and dynamic ICT based resources, and

- Provide a more motivating and richer education experience for students.

The Internet, interactive materials and simulations, and open educational digital content are some of the resources that empower teachers to provide previously unimaginable opportunities to help students to learn more effectively and to be more engaged with their learning. Within a sound education setting, teachers can enable students to use technology to become better information seekers, analyzers, problem solvers and effective communicators.

One of the challenges in bringing ICT into education however has been that in many cases teachers lack the ICT skills necessary to integrate technology into the classroom, and the professional development to understand how to make best use of ICT for the benefits of students. Similarly, curriculum and training providers lack a clear set of internationally recognized guidelines on what constitutes appropriate ICT professional development for educators.

Standards on Incorporating ICT into the Classroom

Recognizing the need to provide standards to help the education sector leverage ICT, UNESCO teamed up with Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, as well as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), to set up the ‘ICT Competency Standards for Teachers’ (CST) project.

The goal of the CST project is to provide guidance on how to improve teachers’ practice through ICT and giving a new dimension to their skills, regardless of where the classroom is located – resulting in better education and highly skilled students.

More specifically, the CST project objectives are to:

· Constitute a common set of guidelines that professional development providers can use to identify, develop or evaluate curriculum or teacher training programs in the use of ICT in teaching and learning;

· Provide a basic set of qualifications that allows teachers to integrate ICT into their teaching and learning, to advance student learning, and to improve other professional duties;

· Extend teachers’ professional development to advance their skills in pedagogy, collaboration, leadership and innovative school development using ICT;

· Harmonize different views and vocabulary regarding the uses of ICT in teacher education.

Launch of the Competency Standards for Teachers

The first phase of the CST project was completed in late 2007 and the Competency Standards for Teachers launched in London on 8 January 2008 at the Moving Young Minds conference, an international seminar hosted by the UK government for education ministers and policy makers to discuss the use of technology in enhancing education.

At the conference, UNESCO and its collaborators introduced the ICT Competency Standards for Teachers, a set of three booklets including:

1) A Policy Framework explaining the rationale, structure and approach of the ICT-CST project;

2) A Competency Standards Modules’ Structure which crosses the components of educational reform with various policy approaches to generate a matrix of skill sets for teachers;

3) Implementation Guidelines providing a detailed syllabus of the specific skills to be acquired by teachers within each skill set/module.

The technology companies contributed valuable perspective and background on the skills required for the effective use of ICT in education, combined with UNESCO’s expertise in education. Cisco’s Networking Academy instructor training, the Intel® Teach Program Curriculum and Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential, Digital Literacy and Partners in Learning curricula, represent some of today’s teacher training options, which are consistent with the emerging standards.

The syllabus is the key reference for training providers, listing guidelines on what teachers should know to apply ICT to education in their own creative ways, and examples of how to train them to achieve this. The guidelines cover policy, curriculum and assessment, pedagogy, the use of technology in the classroom, school organization and administration, and teacher professional development.

While the Standards specify the competencies needed to bring ICT into education, it remains up to approved governmental, non-governmental, and private providers to deliver the curriculum and training programmes for these competencies. Providers interested in participating in the ICT-CST framework are allowed a considerable flexibility in their implementation. To ensure their trainings meet with CST guidelines, they must submit an application describing and justifying their course offerings for approval by the ICT-CST Endorsement Board.

Professional development providers are not expected to comprehensively address all of the competencies listed. Rather, they can design offerings for approval that address only certain phases of professional development, certain components of the educational system, or certain approaches to educational reform.

The documents, constituting the standards, as well as more information on how to participate in the ICT-CST framework will be made available to training providers and policy makers on UNESCO’s website dedicated to this project:

http://www.unesco.org/en/competency-standards-teachers

Future Vision

A second phase of the ICT-CST project will involve the establishment of a UNESCO mechanism to endorse training programs for compliance with the UNESCO standards. The complete guidelines for submission, evaluation and endorsement will also be published on UNESCO’s website.

In addition, UNESCO plans to develop a mapping of existing teacher training standards and training programs to the ICT-CST matrix of skill sets in an attempt to streamline the global efforts in this general area. This work will seek to contribute to the development of appropriate training programs for ICT skills of teachers with a global recognition.