Gayle Brent, Learning and Teaching Consultant from Griffith University was a speaker at PebbleBash 2024 and presented ‘Change is the only constant: Exploring the untapped potential of PebblePad transform measures of success for all things employability (skills, career development and professional identity).’ Click here to watch the video with the full transcript or if you’re having trouble viewing the video above.
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Not great with microphones, but there are a lot of people here today, so I will use one. So thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with you today, and I apologize for some of you who were in yesterday’s workshop that there may be a few slides that, seem a bit familiar but I do have some new additions to the presentation as well. Alright. So, this is Mission Possible because what I’ve heard so far in this conference is that we do have a lot of challenges and we need to know within ourselves, that we can actually achieve this with the right tools and the right platforms.
I’d like to begin, of course, with acknowledging, the traditional custodians of the land where I live, work, and play, and where this work that I’m going to share with you was created, and that’s the Kumbaymeri people of the wider Yugumba language region in what we now call the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. And I extend my respect to, elders past, present, and emerging of all indigenous peoples and cultures worldwide.
Alright. When I was a little girl, there was a program on TV called The Twilight Zone.
And there’s one episode from The Twilight Zone that has actually stayed with me all these years. And in it, there were these blue construction workers, and their job was to actually construct reality, as it were. So they were, kind of, just ahead of the real people in time and space, and they were busy creating the set of life.
For whatever reason, which I can’t remember, because I was only ten years old, they felt they started to fall behind schedule.
So, little by little, things started to go missing from people’s realities. So, you know, it was like, oh, where’s my hairbrush? Or, what happened to the dog lead? And then it got bigger. Didn’t we have a couch?
Wasn’t there a staircase there? Until ultimately, people were moving into a white void. So the blue construction workers had fallen so far behind schedule that there was just nothing there.
Alright. All good. You’re thinking, what the heck has this got to do with PebblePad or anything about the student journey you’re learning and teaching? And this is what I think.
We are the blue construction workers.
And we need to be adapting right now for our students’ futures. And if we design for today, then we are going to fall behind. And ultimately, our students will move into an educational reality that is devoid of some of those important things. So whatever choices we’re making today, we need to make sure that we’re actually really thinking ahead to the challenges of the future.
And, some of those challenges, of course, are with us already.
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