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Future Schools

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future schoolsFuture Schools provides you with the opportunity to discuss if we should school change our learning experiences and if we should increase the use of more technology in our schools. These activities are centred around the theme of Future Jobs and Education which explores how different societies create roles and opportunities for people to develop their skills and knowledge.

Exercise 1Exercise 2Exercise 3My Ideal SchoolWord List
What does it take to prepare students for a workplace that doesn’t exist yet?  Watch the video and answer the questions that follow.

Click here to view transcript.

Transcript
I think the biggest challenges facing education today is to make sure that every child in Australia has an equal opportunity to develop their potential. How do we create people who can be in future workplaces?

The types of jobs that the big companies that they are looking for the more social skills, soft skills
the problem-solving skills. Who can manage change who can handle uncertainty who can think creatively. But most of all they’ll be human. They’ll be able to be creative and they come up with ideas that machines will never come up with.

The four C’s are collaborating, communication, critical thinking and creativity. The student of the future essentially is going to have to be really good at things that computers ain’t. These students who are graduating will be doing 17 jobs across five different fields. The student of the future will be very good at navigating the unknown. Technology now is vital it’s the way that students understand the world.

The role of technology in the future of education brings people together to solve complex problems both collaboratively and they need to be creative.

Joy and delight and curiosity are absolutely intrinsic to kids doing well at school. It’s love interpersonal
relationship, it’s that sense yeah I felt like I belonged in your class. Unless computers get pretty good pretty quickly I don’t see teachers going anywhere for a while.

Here it’s where we start the future it’s how we create the society that we’re all going to be living in. It’s not about bringing up ‘mini-mes’ it’s about actually bringing up individuals who realize who they are
you.

Listen to a conversation between two friends, Sarah and Peter, about the use of ebooks.

Click here to view transcript.

Transcript

Sarah: So what do you think about switching over to electronic textbooks in the classroom?

Peter: That’s a really good question, it’s one I’ve been debating myself for quite some time. I think I’m mostly for it because I think the textbooks tend to be quite heavy to carry around, students carry a lot, have to carry a lot of them around. And having it in a digital form is much easier for students to access, it’s very convenient. They can carry most of their textbooks in one kind of tablet or one on their phones and access it anywhere. And it’s easily … obviously easily transportable but also easily accessible wherever you are really. I think it’s also with technology improving, you can change the format of the reading that you’re doing in the textbook and the font sizes change and you can highlight and change text if you need to. I’ve also started using it myself and I think it’s become much easier taking notes, I just open up a document next to it and add notes as I read. Yeah, I’m mostly for it. What about you?

Sarah: I see the advantages for it as well but I also see many disadvantages. The first disadvantage I see is, students if it’s on an electronic device they’ll be more tempted to do other things other than what they’re supposed to be doing with their textbook. As well is I see as a problem for writing in the book as far as notes. Although you can write notes in there, it’s hard to reference back to them or hard to reference back certain pages, because I myself have used electronic textbook in the past and found that for regular books as far as reading, it’s great but textbooks it’s very difficult in the class if some people have regular textbooks and some people have electronic textbooks, trying to figure out what page everyone is on because if you have different text sizes then perhaps it’ll be different page numbers and it just makes it more difficult for trying to all be on the same page.

Peter: Yeah, I can kind of see your point. Although, what I do like about the electronic textbook so that they’ve got a lot of interactive material that you can directly link to the text that you’re using like any animated materials, videos, other online material that you can access immediately whereas if you have a book you don’t have that more interactive component. And as a teacher I think it’s easier for me to add anything as the lesson goes on or as the course proceeds to just add more things to it, whereas with a textbook you’re kind of more bound I guess, you have to stick to the text and the online experience just opens up many more possibilities, I think. And it’s all in the same medium so you know that I find really great.

Sarah: Yeah, I would agree with you and I think that’s the way the future is going, definitely for education is to go, they’re calling it paperless, I think. I know many schools in the U. are going paperless where they’re doing all electronic things in the classroom. They all have iPads so it’s very interesting.

Peter: Yeah, it is. The only concern that I haven’t really thought about carefully enough I guess before is that with just reading online and accessing things online, I think students don’t write – physically write things anymore. It’s all typing and looking or engaging with things in a different way than before where people use to take notes, actively think about things and write it down, making their own notes, which I think is a really useful skill to have. Like even if you type notes online it’s not the same as writing them out and keeping a diary as it were of your notes. What do you think about that?

Sarah: I would definitely agree with you, especially in language learning. It’s very important to have the skill of writing and if you’re not doing that in the classroom then chances are you’re probably not doing it on your own later either.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah.

Read the text and find out if future school will replace teachers with robots.

Goal

You must create:
A schedule (with the school subjects, the activities and the hours).
A plan of your school and the campus
A drawing of your school from outside (exterior)
A description of your school

Step 1
Draw a mindmap of your school and the campus
Include some of the facilities, subject and rules for your ideal school
You should be able to explain the reasons why you have included these features, subjects and rules.

Step 2
Make a timetable that includes the subjects, activities and hours.

Step 3

Write a text to describe your school.
The qualities: Our school is big, beautiful, interesting.
The rooms: “In our school,  there is a gym,  there is a library, there are classes…”
The activities: “In our school,  you can play soccer,  you can swim in the pool, you can play computer…”
The employees of the school:  There are ten teachers, one librarian…

Step 4
Create a poster to promote your school with a slogan.

Here are keywords and phrases covered in future schools:

  • adapt
  • collaborating
  • communication
  • critical thinking
  • debating
  • chances are
  • creativity
  • diagnose
  • empathy
  • individuals
  • Interactive
  • interpersonal relationship
  • potential
  • takeover
  • tempted
  • the same page
  • underestimate

Especially helpful are exercises that are focussed on a theme or topic as these provide word retention practise so you can be confident to read, write, speak and listen successfully.

Customs and Traditions explores how we celebrate our cultural identity across the globe.

Entertainment and Leisure explores how we spent our free time.

Environment and Nature explores the way humans and animals live, adapt and change on our planet.

Exploring how different societies create roles for people to develop their skills and knowledge.

Exploring how we learn and adjust to the world around us. .

Exploring how we experience the world through our life journeys

The more words you encounter and understand, the broader your day-to-day vocabulary will become. Our word games and puzzles are an excellent way to help to reinforce spellings in your mind.

We add reading and writing exercises on a regular basis. Why not bookmark our site, so you can come back to practice anywhere or at any time of the day?

For this part, you practice how to understand the details of a text, including opinions and attitudes.

For this part, you practice how to understand the structure and follow the development of a text.

For this part, you practice how to find specific information in a text or texts.

In addition, we add listening and speaking exercises in order to practise for this part of the B2 First Exam.

In this part you talk to the examiner about yourself and your life, e.g. your name, school, interests and future plans.

In this part, you talk about two photos on your own which you have to compare for about 1 minute. After you have finished, your partner will be asked a short question about your photo. When your partner has spoken about their photos for about 1 minute, you will be asked a question about their photos.

In this part you express ideas with your partner by looking at a discussion point that the examiner gives you.

This will be available soon.

In this part, you focus on general aspects of a topic with the examiner or you may involve your partner.

This will be available soon.

In this part, you will hear people talking in eight different situations.

In this part, you will hear five people talking about different things.

In this part, you will hear an interview.

Cambridge English Examinations:

Cambridge English exams are designed for learners at all levels from the pre-intermediate level Cambridge English: Key (KET) to the very advanced level Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE). These exams give candidates proof of their ability to use English in a wide variety of contexts, relevant to work, study and leisure activities.

A2 Key | B1 Preliminary | B2 First

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