Lærerutdanningskonferansen, 2021 - Day 2

Day two begins with Kristin Børte, Bergen University, talking about the importance of student active learning in teacher education.

The second item on the agenda, a two-hour-long parallel session, is how programming can be taught in concrete learning situations. The session begins with Morten Munthe from NMBU discussing how programming can be a part of teaching in various disciplines and provides hands-on advice on how to do this. He also touches upon how teacher educators are supposed to relay this knowledge since there is basically no research done in the field. The second speaker, Siri Wieberg Klausen, INN, talks about digital storytelling as a method for supporting students' digital skills, i.e. to make movies, to take photos, to edit sound and images, and to create voice overs. She provides concrete examples of how she uses this in teacher education and shows how the video editing application WeVideo works. The third and last speakers in this session are Merethe Skårås and Trine Anker, MF, who give a talk on active learning, cooperation, and digital production, the three components on a DIKU project. By presenting two students' digital home-school project for a year 10 class, they show how student active learning modes can include oral proficiency both in learning and in the end result. The primary focus is to highlight the work process.

The following discussion touches upon the fact that the pandemic has lead to a quantum leap in knowledge of how to use digital tools and that we, as teacher educators, may not need to be completely certain of how various apps work. Students have become more proficient and teachers as well as students can learn together. In addition, there is a need for further education.

The first session after lunch focuses on the effects of Covid-19 on the education system.

The first speaker, Fazilat Siddiq, Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge, asks the question "What have we learnt since spring 2020?" She recounts the results from a recent study among teacher educators about the readiness for digital education and what happened when countries were in lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is followed by a panel moderated by Elise Håkull Klungtveit, Norsk studentorganisasjon, with the participants Bodil Svendsen, NTNU, Fazilat Siddiq, Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge and Marte Blikstad-Balas, Universitetet i Oslo.

This panel discussion centres on the question "What does this mean for teacher education?" They agree on the premise that "proficiency" needs to be replaced by "readyness." The pandemic has shown that all of us need to be ready to use digital technology to a much larger extent than previously. They also discuss digital exams and the ways these can be achieved in a secure manner. Siddiq refers to the OECD report from March 2021.

The last presentation in this session focuses on students' reflections on the above from Edvard Botterli Udnæs, Student Union.

The conference ends with a brief session on digital transformation and visions for future teacher education with Elaine Munthe, Kunnskapssenter for utdanning. Munthe's point of departure is how schools have functioned in pretty much the same way from 1920 to 2020 and that the pandemic has forced the system to change. Students need to be able to evaluate not only texts and textbooks but also technology. Things are changing, but they are not changing equally or in the same manner everywhere. She stresses that everyone in teacher education must have an understanding of digital technology and design-based research.