So, what have I learned?

I’ve certainly been in a number of sessions over the last three days, many of which I’ve blogged about here, but what have I learned?

It’s been refreshing to immerse myself again in the IB world and its vast labyrinthe infrastructure which only becomes (frighteningly) apparent at times like these. It’s been good to catch up with some familiar colleagues, spend some intensive time with a colleague from my own school and meet some interesting new people. I’ve had an invitation to a primary school in Bangalore, seen a new and interesting looking anti-LMS called ‘teamie’ and have had the new iPad Shakespeare app demo’d for me by a super-keen Cambridge University Press man. I’ve taken the subway to Chinatown (*like every other system in the world the ticketing system is better than Melbournes) gone to the top of the tallest (twin) towers in the world and enjoyed performances from a range of talented students who’ve been featured every morning.

And that’s without mentioning any of the sessions at all, including some great keynotes and a session on leadership lessons from Shakespeare’s Henry V that was entertaining and moving and had some good lessons from the leader’s experience of the ‘dark night’. (Interestingly, the sessions I took notes with the stylus using Penultimate haven’t really featured in the blog; I have to type them up again afresh and that seems an effort at the moment.)

I’ve been to some great workshops and some infuriating ones, have put my hand up to contribute only to be ignored for the keener student with the straighter hand at the front (oh yeah, that’s how that feels), have listened to some teachers and leaders who talk about themselves and their school but never their students and seen others who have made it their life work to change the world one conversation at a time.

Taking up my pet topic of technology I’ve been heartened to see more conversations that ‘get it’, and less that talk about how kids ‘only play games and muck-around with computers’ and only a few outright annoying ‘Google is making us all stupid (except me)’ presentations, warm, nostalgic and comforting to much of the audience as they are, like a nice cup of Ovaltime in your pyjamas in front of the fire.

There are problems with the IB; it’s huge Gormenghastian indifference, the transitional moments, the elitism, the dotpointing and the bureaucracy it serves, creates and fosters.  But, at the heart of it, there’s also some compelling learning that’s possible within the structure, and some passionate people working in it.

I fly home tomorrow, with only four days of the term left until Easter, and then back up this way to Vietnam for a holiday. I’ve been there before and was entranced. I hope to have some new learning there too.

Above and below: some images from a short time in Kuala Lumpur. Photos: Warrick. Below: Green view from the 22nd Floor

Below: Dr Paula Barrett talking about the importance of preventative work in mental health.

Below: Cooling down in Chinatown.

Below: View from the Two Towers

Below: Conference essentials.

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Online learning: it’s not Plan B any more

The premise of this panel worried me; that online learning has been characterised as what you do when classrooms aren’t possible (bird-flu!) Really? Okay, let’s be tolerant. It turned out to be an interesting session, if a little narrow definition of online, and I’d like a bit more about blended approaches. EG> Why are we talking off-line and online if they are mutually exclusive.

It was interesting to hear about student and parent anxiety and asking questions like ‘if you could take this course face to face would you prefer that?’ (mostly, yes) and ‘Did you learn something about yourself at yourself as a learner’. (mostly, yes)  Here’s what the panelist said:

Matt Harris –  Head of Learning Resources, German European School, Singapore

Synchronous and asynchronous learning (German and Dutch offered to replace self-taught learning) using video conferencing primarily. What we’ve learned: pedagogy matters.

Edward Lawless – Principal – Pamoja Education

James McDonald – Head of School, Yokohama International School

Giving students access to subjects they can’t offer internally, but the world is changing.

Glenn Odlund – Head of School, Canadian International School, Singapore

Challenging the notion that online courses are for a ‘certain kind of kid’. Thinking of making it mandatory for students to take up 1 course online and hoping that students will engage in an online experience that  was so powerful it would leverage the more conventional bricks and mortars classes. They decided to offer one subject, ‘Economics’ as an online course only (and they had a good teacher on campus) They expected ‘push-back’ from parents and maybe teachers, but some has come from students. He describes the advantage of online: time and distance but also described the fact that MYP students had been circulating a petition asking that the Economics course be taught conventionally.

Denise Perrault – Head of Online Learning Devp, IB

Denise talked about ‘why bother’ and the four stages of online learning – substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition. What is the desired outcome? she asked.

Dennis Stanworth – Head of Academics, Yokohama International School

Dennis made some provocative statements; ‘are schools that don’t offer online courses going to be swept away by those that do?’, should an online subject be compulsory for all students?

Photo: Apple for the teacher, virtual apples? Photo: Warrick

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Face to face or online learning? The case for blended learning?

ABSTRACT: What is the picture of a student’s intellectual future? How is online learning transforming learners and the ways in which learner’s learn? There is no turning back, to the pre-internet world of learning and inquiry. Our minds are changing as we interact with the tools of learning, and as the structure of our brain changes, so do our thoughts and experiences.  What do we stand to lose by constant connectivity, instant and unlimited information? For a talent lost or diminished there will be another one that is gained. As educators continue to nurture student’s minds, they need to tread carefully and perhaps adopt the evolving ‘ Blended learning’ model of education, the combination of traditional bricks and mortar and online delivery. This presentation will cover the impact of the Internet and its tools on learners, the different approaches and models of Blended learning, how the IB is leaning towards a blended learning environment and practical insights into what makes it work

This session opened with a disturbing metaphor: ‘the internet the invading our world’.  It didn’t improve much when we then went into the ‘what is the internet doing to our brains’ and then showed a whole lot of pictures of young people texting. However, she twisted the narrative by then showing a picture of the conference from the day before; a whole lot of educators on their ipads and computers (and iPads are everywhere here)

Unfortunately, it was then back to neuroscientists and ‘What the internet is doing to our brains’ and the Nicholas Carr book, ‘The Shallows’. Our brains are changing apparently, being constantly rewired and neural pathways and synapses are working all the time. We used to call this ‘learning’ by the way.

This presentation argued that there is no turning back, but then went back to what we might lose by constant connectivity. So far, so negative. It was nice to see some of the participants questioning back: ‘how is this different from the way the brain is rewired when you learn French?’ Yuzzah. You go you. The session threatened to get feisty when one man said that the way he had to deal with 150 emails a day and didn’t read the same anymore, and that was because of this (gesturing at the screen with the word ‘internet’) And there was a bit of back and forth. Nice to see.

But then it was back to us losing the skills of ‘concentration, contemplation and reflection’. And (no irony at all) an argument that we should go back to the blackboard. I’m not joking.

We eventually got on to ‘blended learning’  - ‘a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, pace etc.’ For schools, surely this is the future I think; the mix of ‘brick and mortar’ and online learning model. She argued for a ‘self-blend’ model for IB where students take an online course in their regular school schedule and students work with a site based coordinator.

Blended learning provides a nice convergence of online and face to face. She gave some good tips including the importance of the dedicated site coordinator, sharing student weekly progress using Google Docs, setting up collaborative student teams, making tutorial or help sessions available, student counselling in and out of the program, limit of one subject per student, the importance of educating parents and students, providing hard copy text books and doing regular surveys of student opinions and interests.

On the other hand this was pretty much the only session I’d seen so far where the presenter demonstrated good design skills with some good images, and very little text. And she handled what I would probably have regarded as challenges, really well.

Below, a key diagram from the presentation, which argued for the self-blend model.

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futurEducation

Well, I spoke at the futureEducation Conference this week, which was pretty interesting, and enjoyable too. The conference describes itself this way:

The symposium is an excellent opportunity to hear from leading international specialists about high quality education resources and their outcomes. This conference is feature packed and focusses on the pedagogical, economic and strategic value of Australian education and how it will shape the future of Australia as a highly skilled, globalised knowledge economy.

I think I was pretty much the only one from a school perspective so I was keen to strike a balance between the ‘big-picture’ needs, aspirations and work of teachers as a collective as well as the daily life of the digital resourcing in schools. Which was a challenge.

Anyway, it went quickly, the panel session was interesting afterwards and comments on the twitter stream were generally favourable (thankfully). Below, I’ve embedded my slides, which probably don’t make a lot of sense without the talk itself, which I don’t think was recorded. The ‘abstract’ of my talk was:

While schools and publishers are coming to grips with a changed paradigm and new possibilities for everything from libraries to textbooks, teachers are working with their students in the classrooms to create quality learning resources together.

I basically argued that teachers influence educational resourcing by ignoring offerings, by collaborating on what they find so that good resources ‘tweet their way to the top’ and by making their own resources, through a rang of (mostly) web tools. I was keen to emphasise the idea of the ‘classroom community’ or the Will Richardson idea that ‘networks are the new classrooms’.

Then, it was back to school to sit in on the planner meeting making sure the rooms for the parent-teacher-student conferences next year don’t clash and that reports can be uploaded in time. Such it is for anyone who works in schools.

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futurEducation

I was invited recently to speak at a forthcoming publisher’s conference: futurEducation on a teacher’s perspective on the kinds of textbooks, resources and future needs students and teachers are going to have. In fifteen minutes. In two weeks.
Quite a tall order, and one that seems even more complex given some of the big picture ideas that the conference talks about unpacking such as:

What is the future of Australian education? What kind of high-quality educational resources will be required to underpin the Gonski reforms? As the mining boom winds down what needs to be invested in education for Australia to be at the forefront of the global knowledge economy? In a digitized world what economic and strategic value should we place on the production of high-quality education resources? How should we value teachers and pedagogical practice in Australia? How are these issues being addressed overseas — in Finland, South Korea and the Czech Republic?

Yes, quite. So, I spent most of today thinking about that, putting some slides together and thinking how I might respond. Even put out a call to help to Twitter (without any results) So much to say, but how do you frame all that. I’ll put the text of the talk up here some time afterwards, maybe the slides too.
Anyway, by 4pm I was pretty much fried and needed to clear my head with a good winter beach walk, complete with scudding clouds, clumps of dark rain and ruffled water and bright moments of sunshine, made briefer by the dark clouds already building up in the background. Perfect. I walked one of my favourite routes: along the beach in the wind, then turning up into the estuary, following the little creek inland in a big loop and home.

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First look at Apple’s new take on textbooks

I’ve embedded the Apple announcement on text books below. I’ve already heard some negative reactions in the twittiverse arguing that this is another examples of Apple’s ‘walled garden’ approach, and that locking schools and districts into Apple systems entirely is not a good move. It seems there’s other questions too about whether these textbooks will be available on other platforms (unlikely) or available in other formats (very unlikely).

Nevertheless, I’m quite excited about it, particularly from a writer’s perspective. Could I write my textbook and have it on the Apple bookstore without the intermediary of the publisher? Like musicians do now?  Could we break down the systems and empower good teachers and good teacher/authors and share their expertise more widely? And I’m definitely going to download the publication software.

But I have reservations, and they are more around the idea of the textbook in the first place. Maybe the textbook thing is bigger in the United States than here, or maybe because I’m an English teacher there isn’t generally the reliance on a textbook beyond the set novels and plays.

The video says they are going to change ‘one of the cornerstones of education: the textbook’. But is the textbook really that critical? How does this change learning? Or teaching? And, will replacing the traditional textbook with a ‘bells and whistles’ version change the classroom experience? Where are the collaborative tools, the feedback, the personalisation, the differentiation, the user-created textbook that we’ve talked about for some time.

There’s no doubt it will look pretty, it will save a lot of printing and heavy schoolbags for kids with iPads (oh yeah, how many is that right now?), they can be updated easily and they will be more engaging.  But every time I hear ‘engagement’ as an argument for new software and hardware I cringe a little. There’s got to be better reasons than that. We shall see!

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What is e-learning now?

Yesterday I got the opportunity to speak again at the Chisholm Institute ‘Ripple’ Conference at the Mt Eliza Business School, overlooking Port Phillip Bay; this time with a focus on what e-learning looks like to me  now and how can help support teachers through change.

Last year I focused on the students who were coming in to tertiary institutions from k-12 schools and what that meant for learning environments. This year my focus was more on the teachers. It was a beautiful spring day, maybe the first real spring day this year, and the conference was well run with a group of teachers who wanted to be there.

Below is a an abridged version of the slideshow with some of the key ideas. There’s also an annotated list of the resources I used on Diigo here: http://www.diigo.com/list/warrickw/ripple-2010

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Creating an online learning hub

I liked this image from Free Technology for Teachers about building an online learning hub. I’ve tried to do some of these things in various ways over the years, sometimes making the mistake of having too many different places for students to go for various aspects of the course. The key here is that there is some kind of online hub (blog, wiki, website…?) that centralises all the functions around one course.

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21st Century Learning

The 21st Century used to be a synonym for the utopian future; but now it’s well and truly here. I used to love to read science-fiction stories about what the future would be like. But it arrives whether you’re prepared or not. And are our students prepared?

I spent some time today preparing for a presentation for staff on ‘student voice’, with a bit of an emphasis on using wikis to create collaborative learning projects going.

So, I thought I’d grab a list of 21st Century Skills to launch into that discussion. Not so easy!  There’s lots of lists around, but I found it hard to find anything that looked quite right.

I began by searching this very blog and fund a couple of good starts. Will Richardson’s list of learning axioms from EduCon, that I blogged about in December last year, is good, but more about the schools than the students. It says:

1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members

2) Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen

3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.

4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate

5) Learning can — and must — be networked.

Then I found Greg Whitby’s keynote comments from the IB Conference I attended in April. He said it was about learning for this century and talked of the recent OECD work which described learning having four components:

• Customised: 1-1 learning
• Knowledge sources: Cloud, anywhere, anytime learning
• Collaboration: between teachers and students, students and students, and teachers and teachers (Called in the literature as ‘de-privatising practice‘) Learning is a ‘mediated practice’
• Assessment: here, he emphasised ‘assessment for learning’.

Four components, but not the skills I was after. I wanted things like ‘collaboration’, ‘problem solving’ and ‘creativity’.

So, I headed over to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Ausralians (Direct link to PDF) which is the latest combined offering from Australian government, just out this year and replacing the Adelaide Declaration of 1999. I was disappointed.  The premable sounds like it was written by a committee:

In the 21st century Australia’s capacity to provide a high quality of life for all will depend on the ability to compete in the global economy on knowledge and innovation. Education equips young people with the knowledge, understanding, skills and values to take advantage of opportunity and to face the challenges of this era with confi dence. Schools play a vital role in promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians, and in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion. Schools share this responsibility with students, parents, carers, families, the community, business and other education and training providers. In recognition of this collective responsibility, this declaration, in contrast to earlier declarations on schooling, has a broader frame and sets out educational goals for young Australians.

In the 1989 Hobart Declaration and the 1999 Adelaide Declaration, the State, Territory and Commonwealth Education Ministers committed to working together to ensure high-quality schooling for all young Australians. The Melbourne Declaration acknowledges major changes in the world that are placing new demands on Australian education:

– Global integration and international mobility have increased rapidly in the past decade. As a consequence, new and exciting opportunities for Australians are emerging. This heightens the need to nurture an appreciation of and respect for social, cultural and religious diversity, and a sense of global citizenship. – India, China and other Asian nations are growing and their infl uence on the world is increasing. Australians need to become ‘Asia literate’, engaging and building strong relationships with Asia.

– Globalisation and technological change are placing greater demands on education and skill development in Australia and the nature of jobs available to young Australians is changing faster than ever. Skilled jobs now dominate jobs growth and people with university or vocational education and training qualifi cations fare much better in the employment market than early school leavers. To maximise their opportunities for healthy, productive and rewarding futures, Australia’s young people must be encouraged not only to complete secondary education, but also to proceed into further training or education.

– Complex environmental, social and economic pressures such as climate change that extend beyond national borders pose unprecedented challenges, requiring countries to work together in new ways. To meet these challenges, Australians must be able to engage with scientifi c concepts and principles, and approach problem-solving in new and creative ways.

– Rapid and continuing advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing the ways people share, use, develop and process information and technology. In this digital age, young people need to be highly skilled in the use of ICT. While schools already employ these technologies in learning, there is a need to increase their effectiveness signifi cantly over the next decade.

Australia has developed a highquality, world-class schooling system, which performs strongly against other countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In international benchmarking of educational outcomes for 15-year-olds in the 2006 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, Australia ranked among the top 10 countries across all three education domains assessed. Over the next decade Australia should aspire to improve outcomes for all young Australians to become second to none amongst the world’s best school systems.

In striving for both equity and excellence, there are several areas in which Australian school education needs to make signifi cant improvement. First, Australia has failed to improve educational outcomes for many Indigenous Australians and addressing this issue must be a key priority over the next decade. Second, by comparison with the world’s highest performing school systems, Australian students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are under-represented among high achievers and overrepresented among low achievers. Third, there is room for improvement in Australia’s rate of Year 12 completion or equivalent.

Literacy and numeracy and knowledge of key disciplines remain the cornerstone of schooling for young Australians. Schooling should also support the development of skills in areas such as social interaction, crossdisciplinary thinking and the use of digital media, which are essential in all 21st century occupations. As well as knowledge and skills, a school’s legacy to young people should include national values of democracy, equity and justice, and personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience and respect for others.

As signatories to the Melbourne Declaration, Australian Education Ministers seek to achieve the highest possible level of collaboration with the government, Catholic and independent school sectors and across and between all levels of government. Australian Education Ministers also seek to achieve new levels of engagement with all stakeholders in the education of young Australians.

In the 21st century Australia’s capacity to provide a high quality of life for all will depend on the ability to compete in the global economy on knowledge and innovation. Education equips young people with the knowledge, understanding, skills and values to take advantage of opportunity and to face the challenges of this era with confi dence. Schools play a vital role in promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians, and in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic prosperity and social cohesion. Schools share this responsibility with students, parents, carers, families, the community, business and other education and training providers. In recognition of this collective responsibility, this declaration, in contrast to earlier declarations on schooling, has a broader frame and sets out educational goals for young Australians…

But Goal 2 comes closer, and I’v put in bold the things that resonated here for me:

Goal 2:

All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens

– develop their capacity to learn and play an active role in their own learning

– have the essential skills in literacy and numeracy and are creative and productive users of technology, especially ICT, as a foundation for success in all learning areas

– are able to think deeply and logically, and obtain and evaluate evidence in a disciplined way as the result of studying fundamental disciplines

– are creative, innovative and resourceful, and are able to solve problems in ways that draw upon a range of learning areas and disciplines

– are able to plan activities independently, collaborate, work in teams and communicate ideas

– are able to make sense of their world and think about how things have become the way they are – are on a pathway towards continued success in further education, training or employment, and acquire the skills to make informed learning and employment decisions throughout their lives

– are motivated to reach their full potential

That’s closer, and I found a PDF from the Metiri Group in the USA in assoication with the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory which was even mor focused. It lists them in four areas: Digital Age Literacy (today’s basics), Inventive Thinking (intellectual capital), Interactive Communication (social and personal skills) and Quality State-of-the-Art Results. Here’s a summary:

Digital Age Literacy (today’s basics)

• Basic, Scientific, and Technological Literacies
• Visual and Information Literacy
• Cultural Literacy and Global Awareness

Inventive Thinking (intellectual capital)

• Adaptability/Managing Complexity and Self-Direction
• Curiosity, Creativity and Risk-taking
• Higher Order Thinking and Sound Reasoning

Interactive Communication (social and personal skills)

• Teaming and Collaboration
• Personal and Social Responsibility
• Interactive Communication

Quality State-of-the-Art Results

• Prioritizing, Planning, and Managing for Results
• Effective Use of Real-World Tools
• High Quality Results with Real-World Application

Then I found this blog post that listed seven key skills from Tony Wagner. He write:

Wagner presented a list of seven “survival skills” that students need to succeed in today’s information-age world, taken from his book The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–And What We Can do About It. It’s a school’s job to make sure students have these skills before graduating, he said:

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking;

2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence;

3. Agility and adaptability;

4. Initiative and entrepreneurship;

5. Effective written and oral communication;

6. Accessing and analyzing information; and

7. Curiosity and imagination.

Then, a new list supported by the NCSS lists these core skills:

* Creativity and innovation
* Critical thinking and problem solving
* Communication
* Collaboration
* Information literacy
* Media literacy
* ICT literacy
* Flexibility and adaptability
* Initiative and self-direction
* Social and cross-cultural skills
* Productivity and accountability
* Leadership and responsibility

So, I’m finally getting closer to the kind of list I was after, and seeing lots of commonality emerging. On the Edutopia site article about project based learning New Skills for a New Century, they state:

“Today’s graduates need to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and effective communicators who are proficient in both core subjects and new, twenty-first-century content and skills,” according to “Results that Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform,” a report issued in March by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

These include learning and thinking skills, information- and communications-technology literacy skills, and life skills.

Students of today enter an increasingly globalized world in which technology plays a vital role. They must be good communicators, as well as great collaborators. The new work environment requires responsibility and self-management, as well as interpersonal and project-management skills that demand teamwork and leadership.

The final example I found on a wiki called Golden Fleece wiki, which has quite a few more examples and opens up with this, which brings us right back  Will Richardson again:

Our kids’ futures will require them to be:

• Networked–They’ll need an “outboard brain.”
• More collaborative–They are going to need to work closely with people to co-create information.
• More globally aware–Those collaborators may be anywhere in the world.
• Less dependent on paper–Right now, we are still paper training our kids.
• More active–In just about every sense of the word. Physically. Socially. Politically.
• Fluent in creating and consuming hypertext–Basic reading and writing skills will not suffice.
• More connected–To their communities, to their environments, to the world.
• Editors of information–Something we should have been teaching them all along but is even more important now.

Am I any closer to that definitive list I wante to plonk on a PowerPoint slide?  No. But I did begin to see across curriculum contexts and regions, including our very own Melbourne Declaration that I opened so mockingly about, an emerging consensus about the directions we should all be taking in the interests of the young people in our schools.

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It’s not the hardware, it’s the ‘headware’ (ELH2008)

Bernajean Porter gave the opening keynote on ‘Raising a Generation for Greatness’. She spoke about a three to four month window of opportunity for change to take place when an opportunity comes along, before the mould on the jelly sets, which followed up nicely from Bruce Dixon’s opening, which talked about the once in a generation opportunity that the government’s investment in 1-1 computing.

She also described the USA context, which she referred to as ‘no child left untested’, a nice point given our government’s recent sabre-rattling about standards and accountability.

Porter spoke about our ‘unprecedented mission to shift cultures and gears in our classrooms’, about the power that we’re putting in the hands of our students, and what we’re doing with that power.

She raised the concept of ‘participatory cultures’ and showed us examples of students who’ve learned how to move forward in their learning without waiting for permission from their teachers, about the gap between what some students are doing and what their schools and teachers expect and allow. Her examples, of students doing great things for their communities, were examples that were all outside the school system and she argued that we should be trying to activate this kind of learning in our students in schools and a passion for learning.

One way to get this passion was her idea of whole days of ‘inquiry’; where students choose their own topics and are given time on them, something we’ve been thinking about for a new Year 9 program. She argued for some small space in schools for students to find their own interest and passion and how disengaged some students had become in traditional schools.

It’s not about the hardware; it’s the ‘headware’. She gave an example of a school district that spend six million dollars rolling out whiteboards but hadn’t changed the instructional strategies or pedagogy at all. It was just a more expensive story. She argued for a different story, for looking beyond the ‘stuff’ to who owns the learning: the teachers or the students, and also who owns the questioning in the classroom.

One of the references she left us with was Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. It’s online here: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2108773/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CD911571-0240-4714-A93B-1D0C07C7B6C1}&notoc=1

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