Group 3 - How do you prepare your students for the future?

Building opportunities for creativity, innovation and collaboration into curriculum planning and assessment.

Allowing students to take risks to share, create and compose in low stakes opportunities before, during and after assessment.

Values to drive all curriculum- curious, creative, confident, compassionate citizens of the world. have an education view for technology based on age and stage. Teach about appropriators use of - mobile phones, AI, innovation…

Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking and an understanding that the future is not yet determined, and they have the capacity to help shape the future to what they wish it to be. 

Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking and an understanding that the future is not yet determined, and they have the capacity to help shape the future to what they wish it to be. 

Intentional approach across the school:

• clear school vision which prioritises these future skills
• school wide pedagogical approach incorporates these future skills and capabilities into teaching and learning process eg Project Based / Inquiry learning
• Cross- curriculum connections where possible to deepen learning
• well- resourced - access to digital tools to support learning and development of skills
• induction program for onboarding new staff

Importantly, this starts with the Whole School Connected Pedagogy (Inquiry Learning) where technology is the tool that enhances it. By empowering staff, building confidence, promoting continuous learning and providing balance when using technology, I influence every classroom across the whole school. Here’s my strategy:

👩‍🏫 Empowering Staff: To use apps effectively, I equip our educators with the latest creation tools like Keynote, Numbers, Pages, Clips, GarageBand, and Notes. Staff are given time to explore, play, and create their own content to share with others, experiencing firsthand what effective future learning looks like and what it is not. This approach helps them transfer these skills to their classrooms, turning students into Inquiry Learner creators, not just consumers.

💡 Building Confidence: I create an environment where teachers confidently integrate creation-based apps into their lessons. Through assemblies, student-led workshops, and professional learning, I celebrate both student and staff achievements in digital design, animation, audio, and video creation. Tools like Classwork enhance critical thinking through collaborative projects and constructive feedback.

🌐 Promoting Continuous Learning: I encourage both staff and students to innovate and think outside the box. By celebrating risk-taking when creating with technology and fostering a culture of sharing through Professional Learning Communities and in-class coaching, I ensure continuous growth, innovation, and creative thinking.

📚 Balancing Tech and Critical Thinking: I ensure technology use with staff enhances learning and creativity without overshadowing original ideas. Staff are supported to research, evaluate information credibility, and cross-reference sources, fostering critical assessment skills. This allows them to take key ideas and transform them into their classrooms.

Upskilling staff with these skills prepares students to be future-ready by equipping them with creativity, critical thinking, and digital design principles. They then have licence to apply these into their classrooms and learning programs.

By ensuring our tamariki are equipped with dispositions that will help them to be life long learners and prepare for their future…fostering creativity, collaboration, student agency and critical thinking. Encouraging our tamariki to produce their best work using the best tool for the job and having positive meaningful experiences with this range of tools.

We ensure that iPad is used to foster creativity which we believe is a key skill that students require to prepare them for the future. We do this through our Reggio inspired principles that encourages technology to be used as part of documentation of learning and enabling student voice through integration through the curriculum.

At Al Siraat College, we are constantly chasing innovation in this fast-evolving technological landscape.

Our secondary school has 1:1 iPads, allowing teachers to bring their creativity to every class. Our strategic goal this year is to increase engagement through Apple technology.

Being the first Islamic school in Australia to be recognised as an ADS, we push ourselves to do justice to this. We have three ALCs in the secondary school, and innovation is generally led by Digital Champions who have been selected from all our Learning Areas/Departments.

Our teachers are motivated to create citizens of the future who are digitally, nationally and morally responsible, coupled with the tools to add value to their community once they graduate. We do this through a range of pedagogy, professional learning and values based education.