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Game-based learning is a big subject, and you could go broad, or you could go deep. It means very different things to very different people

Derek Wenmoth (2019) writes in his blog about ‘Auahatanga | Innovation’, if we want our young people to be innovators and change agents, who can begin to mobilise in response to the growing concerns they have about the problems they see looming on the horizon, then we will need to empower them to be the change agents that make a positive difference in the world they live in – both in person and online. Thirteen years on, and in light of recent events in Christchurch, many countries are now calling for social media controls where giants like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter are held to account for the management of offensive and harmful content online. In this Youtube video (11.08), Richard Culatta talks about digital citizenship not a set of rules for what not to do, but about using technology to: * respectfully engage with people who have different beliefs from yours * be able to shape and change public policy * be able to recognise the validity of online sources of information. As educators we want our young people to find that balance, to have a sense of belonging (whanaungatanga) and wellbeing, to be part of safe, respectful, thriving, networked community online, that reflects us as Kiwis on a global stage.

Mahuika was open to hearing Māui’s plea and offered a new flame so that Māui could return fire to the world. This story of how Māui brought fire to the world helps us to understand the potential for disruptive change, that displacing established practices can create a place for us to consider an entirely new way of reaching our goals. * Schools as part of the community The CORE uLearn19 conference themes of Kirirarautanga | Citizenship, Whakatōhenehene | Disruption and Auahatanga | Innovation intertwine to help us to recognise new ways to effect positive change. When all learners, educators, whānau and community are empowered to be disruptors in our education system, we will witness disruptive changes which move beyond doing the same things in better ways, to being presented with new ways of reaching our evolving goals.

From these early times both Māori and Pākeha have been identified as practical, problem-solver types, able to invent, fix and create solutions, often through improvisation and clever thinking rather than having access to the level of resourcing available to others. While we may have grown up thinking of ourselves as the nation with the Number 8 Wire mindset, in our modern world we have become increasingly accustomed to having our problems addressed for us by others who have the knowledge, skill and resources to do this. This will be a challenge in a world of increasing complexity and exponential change where our problems won’t only be about how to address our immediate physical needs, but will extend to how to address issues and concerns that affect the way we live and survive as a society, locally and globally. As young people around the world begin to mobilise in response to the growing concerns they have about the problems they see looming on the horizon, we need to think about how we prepare this generation of learners, through developing an innovator’s mindset, so that they become the solution builders.