#2 - Greg Stevenson said:
2008-11-07 10:18 - (Reply)

Improving New Zealand’s Education System The following are my thoughts on how NZ can improve their Education System and how NZ Government can put more substance to the policy shift to a "Knowledge Based Economy". My ideas are based almost entirely on what is proving to be the most successful business development model the Information Technology sector has ever experienced. Its catch phrase often called "Open Source". It is the principal behind how a Computer Operating System called "Linux" has become capable of going head to head with a Microsoft's Windows operating system. It is very much a "David & Goliath" story. The principle is that individuals give away the best of their efforts with the common end of improving a system. I believe this principle can be used to dramatically improve many systems, but that the Education system lends itself well to the idea. The key reasons for this are that (most) Teachers regard their job as a Vocation and that the premise behind "Education" is, the transfer of knowledge. As a lead to how to improve the transfer of knowledge I present these assumptions 1. "Teachers" are NZ's Education Systems biggest resource. 2. Computers are an effective Education Tool. 3. An individual Teacher cannot be an expert at everything. 4. Virtually every NZ School has Internet access to some degree. A practical system of implementing the principle of "Open Source" would be. 1. Create a resource using Current Computer and Internet Technology. This would consist of developing a (or improving an existing eg. http://www.cwa.co.nz/eduweb/index.html) single Internet based Web Site containing a database. It should be structured to be a representation of the current school Curriculum from pre-school to end of secondary school. eg. Geography topics divided by year 0 (preschool) to year 12 (7th Form). The site would have read access by anyone and a structured write access by registered teachers. 2. Make it compulsory for every registered Teacher to take an approved one day training course on the principle of "Open Source" and the practical aspect of writing and retrieving information from the database. 3. Make it compulsory to publish to this database, at least one Lesson Plan per teacher. The copyright to this lesson plan would be in line with the GNU copyright, which is that anyone can use the lesson plan as long as acknowledgment to the original Author remains intact. 4. Teachers could apply to take a one year paid sabbatical whereby they read submissions, assess, and create abstracts where necessary and file all submissions appropriately in the database. Only one sabbatical per teacher. 5. An Administration team of say three individuals would be paid as full time employees to administer the team of Teachers assessing the submissions and to keep the database up at all times. 6. Actively advertise the resource. This would include the standard means of Internet advertising. Links from other Web Sites, newsgroups, chat channels, Banner exchanges, e-mail etc. Printed ads in education gazettes etc. And an initial TV advertising campaign. 7. Develop and encourage an anonymous rating system by all registered teachers for lessons plans used in the classroom. This would be divided into sections such as Effectiveness, Ease of use, Availability of associated resources etc, and of course, an overall rating. 8. Revisions to Lesson Plans would be submitted by any teacher and could either be approved by original Author(s) or published as an entirely new Lesson Plan by the revising Author. 9. Develop an enhancement to the system whereby the submissions to change the base curriculum are also accepted filed, peer reviewed, and rated. The above practical implementation provide the benefits of:- 1. A central resource for lesson plans and related resources. A teacher may never have to write a lesson plan again. A teacher may never have to write a set up questions or exam again. A teacher could up skill in knowledge and techniques quickly and privately based on the best submissions their peers have to offer. 2. The government of the day will have a quick feedback of areas of concern in the current curriculum. This will enable them to implement change in a timely fashion. 3. By searching on ratings of Authors published Lesson Plans, School Administrators will have one more information source, to base the abilities of their workforce, or potential workforce. This would be over and above CVs, written and verbal references and recorded academic achievements. Conversely a Teacher can get recognised for their specialist abilities by their peers rather than their employment superiors. What would be needed to achieve such a System? A commitment by the Government to the allocation of funds, say a couple of million dollars, most of which would be spent on Teacher Training and Advertising. This would be a one off and could possibly be in the form of a NERF project with a portion being a long term loan to be paid off from advertising revenues that the site would eventually command. The paid sabbaticals would be an ongoing cost to the Government and the cost would be totally dependent on numbers required. Those who took up such a post would invariably come out more highly educated. Finally, although this could be eventually run totally commercially, my preference would be for such a system to be owned by a SOE. This would is far more in keeping with the "OPEN SOURCE" principle. Keep this asset owned by New Zealand. Greg Stevenson Primesoft NZ Ltd