Kids and tech in the classroom. What’s next?

Brett Cruse believes sometimes you have to step sideways to move forward.

Brett is the Dean of E-Learning and Innovation at Whitsunday Anglican School and understands the value of technology and the changing demands of education.

Last month Brett was one of a group of teachers from across Mackay who took part in Future Anything’s Professional Development workshop hosted by GW3 at CQUniversity, where they took a dive into the jobs of tomorrow for high school students.

Part of the roundtable workshop explored 21st Century skills and future capabilities for young people to thrive and to give teachers the capabilities to integrate innovation and technology in the classroom.

In addition to the workshop, teachers went on a Robotics tour at CQUniversity with Lasi Piyathilaka, Mechatronics lecturer, who introduced teachers to a few local robots.

One of those was a robot that you can control and move with the help of your facial expressions, whether you are happy or sad the robot connects the expression to its movement.

Brett has, investigated into what innovative educators are doing around Australia and the difficulties they were having.

“I also look at opportunities for entrepreneurial missions as a teacher internal and external how we can change how education is presented to students.”

Brett said Whitsunday Anglican School has integrated the Future Anything program in the classroom through their digital technologies subject E-steam.

Through the program, students develop an idea using technology and then pitch to Future Anything in a competitive environment as well as being assessed in the classroom.  The idea can be a product which has a business or social enterprise focus. 

“That program provides help with the planning side, and as a teacher coming up with some of those ideas individually can be quite difficult.

“A collaborative body or an external program like Future Anything can really help teachers to bring innovation technology into the classroom much easier.”

Brett said there were many barriers to innovation in the classroom but there were always ways to overcome these.

He said the advocacy and support of Greater Whitsunday Alliance (GW3)  and Future Anything to help find solutions and resources to help teachers bring innovation into the classroom was a fantastic step forward.

“It is great to see what CQUniversity are doing and what students are doing once they leave our classrooms. It is important to see what we are preparing the students for in the next stage and how we can work together.

“I think it would be great to see opportunities with industry in the classroom, maybe even a collaboration with the university and to see who is available to participate from an industry level who has time and resources.”

Brett believes when it comes to integrating technology and innovation to schools’ teachers need the support and training to pivot different ways of educating.

“Teachers can be a facilitator and learn with the students at the same time, as long as there is some support within the curriculum or online environments with an industry partner – so they don’t have to be the sage on the stage at all times.

“I don’t think we are going to teach lesson by lesson in a sense, instead we might connect the dots and create a project, such as project-based learning where teachers are given training in project-based learning and the ability to learn that.

“Teachers are not going to be masters of it straight away, after a couple of years they will start to be more comfortable in change and transformation,” Brett said.

This professional development workshop is part of a series being delivered to the Greater Whitsunday region that is using cutting edge research to explore what skills and attributes young people need to navigate the jobs of tomorrow.

During 2021, over 45 schools have put their students in the driving seat of entrepreneurship, challenging them to create for-purpose business ideas that make their world a better place through Future Anything’s  Activate school entrepreneurship program.

Three Mackay and Whitsundays high schools have made it into Future Anything's National Semi Finals.

Mercy College Mackay, Mackay North State High School and Bowen State High School have made it to the semi-finals which will be held on Monday October 25 and Thursday October 28 from 9am where they will join the other finalists to pitch their business ideas online to expert judges, which includes GW3 CEO Kylie Porter.

For more information contact Sherry at sherry@gw3.com.au or visit www.futureanything.com