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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Watch out for those computers: they might break down!

I thought it was great to see a Principal of a government school brave enough to come out this week and remind us all how silly it is (in this day and age) that we actually get students to hand-write long (ish)  pieces for important assessment, and call this a contemporary education.

Actually, Michael Phillips from Ringwood Secondary College didn’t need to remind me. I’ve told anyone who was foolish enough to stop and listen that the Year 12 exam must be about the last time many of these students will ever write anything substantial, thoughtful and structured by hand.

And, it’s not as if they’ve been handwriting through much of their school life.  My students, like the students at Ringwood, have been working with computers extensively and in a sustained way for most of their school assessment through years 7 to 10. Then we get all olde-worlde and put the computers away so students can get their pens out. What?

Or more precisely: why? When I’ve raised this with people from VCAA they’ll argue it’s about equity. Not everyone has had access to a computer so no-one can use one in the exam. And, if pushed, they’re worried about security too in a high-stake exam. But what about equity for students who have been learning, thinking and writing with these tools? ‘Put them away sonny, this is important’. Or equity for those students whose hand-eye coordination results in writing that doesn’t look as good as someone else?

The AGE reported that:

SIX weeks before VCE exams, students at Ringwood Secondary College dump the computer keyboards they have used since childhood and start practising their handwriting.

It’s a forced necessity, given students must write three-hour exams in longhand, that has principal Michael Phillips gritting his teeth. ”Illegible writing has become much more problematic in the last few years because kids are used to working on a keyboard,” Mr Phillips said. ”I think it’s ridiculous that in 2011 we are still doing pen and paper testing … It’s holding the learning back at a time when we’re actually saying there are a whole lot of skills they need for university and the workforce, which involve the use of technology.”

By 2000, we should have found ways of doing work differently.”

In 2007, the Rudd government launched its Digital Education Revolution, pledging every year 9-12 student would have a computer by the end of this year. Given this investment, Mr Phillips said there was no reason why there would be insufficient computers in schools for VCE students to sit their exams. He said assessment should be more sophisticated than students regurgitating facts they have memorised in essays. Instead, exams should test how students solve problems and research and analyse information within time constraints.

VCAA’s response was forthright:

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority chief executive John Firth said in order to be fair, VCE exams needed to be sat under exactly the same conditions across the state. He said there were security risks with the use of technology and the possibility computers could break down. However, using computers was certainly an issue that had been raised, and the VCAA was keen to conduct trials using word processors in exams in lower year levels.

”Our strategic plan over the next three years is we want to make some progress along these lines, but we wouldn’t start with [VCE] English,” he said.

Hasten forward slowly!!

Below: ‘Dont use those modern brass instruments!!! They might break down’*

*Okay, not the best tie-in but I was looking for an olde-worlde illustration and this is the best I could come up with!

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Don’t scare the children!

Alongside the box of ‘things schools should be teaching’, a new box of things schools should steer clear from: in this case, teaching about climate change. Apparently, kids run the risk of being terrified by the ‘doomsday’ scenarios that the government is providing in its kitbag of resources for schools.

 News.com.au reports:

 Australian National University’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science director Dr Sue Stocklmayer said climate change had been portrayed as “Doomsday scenarios with no way out”.

Dr Stocklmayer said she was not a climate-change sceptic but worried that “too much time was spent presenting scary scenarios, especially to young people”.

“(Children) feel incredibly despondent and helpless in the face of all this negative information,” she said. “To put all of this before our children … is one of the most appalling things we can do to (them).

Not, that there’s not more than a whiff of politics in all this stuff from the Murdoch press, who are all over the climate change stuff, but it does seem a bit rich to drag out some psychologists to get everyone all heated up about what those leftie teachers are up to now. I actually don’t see any sense of there being any research at all into this; probably more a phone conversation along these lines:

Murdoch reporter to Psychologist: Do you think some kids could become anxious given all this talk about climate change?

Psychologist: Could be.

Murdoch reporter: Thanks a lot. (Aside: ‘Hold the front page’)

Note: The conversation above is purely imaginary based on the (lack of) evidence provided.  Unlike the Murdoch press I haven’t hacked into anyone’s voicemail accounts. You can read more about that …

And, if you really wanted to alarm kids,  you might show them the state of the parliamentary debate on all this.

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NAPLAN knows…

I started off all indignant when I ripped Miranda Devine’s latest piece of folksy wisdom out of the Herald-Sun on Thursday but in the end you just have to laugh at the dross that comes out of the conservative media’s best and brightest day after day as if someone is paying them to do it!

Devine’s latest take on the NAPLAN tests is as fine a piece of persuasive writing as you’ll find, resonating with power. Here’s a bit from the opening:

It is accountability time.

After failing the 20 per cent of children who leave school functionally illiterate, we finally see the truth.

Which students have sat through two years of boring lessons without learning to read and write? NAPLAN knows.

Which teachers are adding little value year on year to the students in their classroom? NAPLAN knows.

Which schools are failing to improve their students’ test results? NAPLAN knows.

NAPLAN knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Just like the shadow did! How do they think of this stuff. Has Devine been channeling 1930s pulp fiction? You be the judge!

 

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What’s phones got to do with it?

Okay, I admit I teach in a pretty privileged environment where I don’t face the threat of violence from students on an everyday basis. That some teachers do face threats and intimidation in the classroom and that they can still go and make a difference to their students is an enormous credit to them.

So, I can understand how it makes good sense, especially in political terms, for a new Minister to be rolling out the ‘law and order’ argument, as happened this week from new Victorian Education Minister, Martin Dixon, as reported in the little paper.

And, studies do show that an ‘orderly’ classroom, a classroom without violence, for example, is one of the key pre-determinants for learning to occur (Hattie).

BUT, what’s with the mobile phone connection? Why is this article headlined with a peaceful looking student engaged in a phone conversation? And, doesn’t it really imply that, along with knives, bad language and ‘sloppy dress’ the mobile phone is a weapon of disorder and unruliness?

So, instead of looking to the potential in the enormous number of young people coming into our schools with a powerful mini-computer in their pockets, we see it instead as a distraction, a negative, even some kind of weapon.  At the same time as educational commentators bemoan the ‘digital divide’, disengagement in schools, and the need for 21st Century skills, our political betters are trotting out ‘back to basics’ truisms backed up by a compliant media.

We haven’t even scratched the surface of the potential for the mobile phone as a tool for learning in our schools. But, maybe one of the reasons we haven’t is because that really would be a possible shake-up to the ‘order’ of things in schools.

[Screenshot captured in my newest Chrome extension: Awesome Screenshot]

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Support good teachers

Earlier this year, in my Texas round-up of the ASCD  Conference (doesn’t Texas and Round-up sit nicely together in that sentence!)I attended in March, I posted the ominous ‘sack teachers’ Newsweek cover, which I thought epitomised something of the disregard lots of Americans have for the profession.

So, good on ASCD and the latest (May 2010) issue of Educational Leadership, who have turned the Newsweek cover on its head (below) ASCD do good things; where’s the Australian equivalent? And don’t say ACER! Didn’t they invent NAPLAN?

Below, the original NEWSWEEK cover

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Australian Teacher

I’ve read Australian Teacher magazine one and off for a couple of years now, mainly because it’s stacked conveniently next to the copies of The Age and The Herald-Sun at the bottom of the lift well, which I pass ever morning.

I’d pick up the student newspaper too and take a stack of both to my Year 12 English class.  Funnily enough, the students in my class were more interested in the teacher magazine than the student one; I think because the student version is aimed more at middle school students and some of my students were keen on doing a teaching degree.

But, I was interested to see in the latest issue of Australian Teacher that it seemed to be taking a  more editorial approach, with more opinion articles than I remember, including two very different approaches to the issue of cyber-bullying: a report on research by Professor Donna Cross that ‘based on evidence … the harms from cyber-bullying will be far greater than face-to-face bullying’ and a different approach from Ken Rigby from the University fo South Australia who argued that the evidence does not support the view that bullying is on the rise.

There was also news that the AEU had purchased the domain name ourschool.net.au and intended setting up an alternative website the government’s myschool site, and one that recognised a broader range of student and school achievement.  However, move on along, nothing to look at there  yet folks!

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Teenage violence and male role models (Proof!)

Most Year 10 students could spot the flaw in the Herald-Sun’s “logic” this morning:

Just 28 per cent of state schoolteachers are men, down from 32 per cent 10 years ago.

Youth crime has soared in that time

The full article, arguing that the the decline in male teachers in schools has contributed to rising youth violence, is HERE.

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How your school ranks

Well you’ve got to say that the Herald-Sun delivers on its promises! This from out and about yesterday.

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Rupert Murdoch vs my Iphone App

I’ve been following the recent bluff and bluster from Rupert Murdoch with interest: ‘Google are ripping off my content’, ‘You can’t do this to me!’, ‘I’m taking my newspaper off the internet’, ‘Pay for view for news is the future’, stuff like that (I’m paraphrasing but you can do a Google News Search and get the exact quotes yourself; what am I, a journalist?) Here’s a snapshot:

Some see it as a bluff, or an attempt to cut a deal with Bing or some other search engine, others see it as the last gasps of a media mogul who just doesn’t get it and/or the desperate last throes of old media.  I heard that a year ago Rupert Murdoch had never done a Google search himself. That figures.

I love newspapers but some of them aren’t doing a great job of convincing me that I care. I loved reading the NY Times when I was there recently and bought it every morning and I’ve got a lot of time for the AGE but then I go there this week and find vitriolic opinion columns from sensationalists like Catherine Deveny or across town the same stuff from Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun.  It’s fun for language analysis practice for Year 12s, but you dont’ go there for insight, or even particularly good writing. Can a newspaper that has to be one thing to all people really work any more?

Truth is, when I wake up each morning I check my email and my Google Reader feeds before I check the newspaper online.  I follow 101 blog feeds daily, from people who are expert in their fields, who I respect, many of whom also write better than Bolt, Deveny and the rest. Try Scott McLeod, Derek Wenmoth, Don Tapscott or David Warlick on education, for a start. I could go on!

And I’m hopeful that a new era of open-ness has begun and that the genie is already out of the bottle in a democratisation of the media. We want access to the information that matters to us in exactly the format that works for us and I hope that Murdoch’s view of the world is fading.

I’m teaching the classic text Frankenstein to my literature class next year and have been trawling around for resources. One that struck me was a study guide on the text available as a web site you could visit, a PDF you could download or an Iphone App you could buy for $1.19. You can find it on Itunes.  It’s not anything particularly intuitive except that it understands the ubiquity around content now, and that we want choice in how we receive it.  The ABC seems to understand, they’ve been working hard at delivering their content in increasingly diverse ways, including on hand held devices.

I met with my publisher recently in planning a new text book for next year, maybe. We were talking about models of publishing and they’ve begun to move (slowly) toward a sort of print on demand model where you order a customised version of the book depending on the texts and contexts you’ve chosen to study. But what about making that same content available online? We’ve had a web site resource add-on for a while now, but I’m arguing for the book to be available in other ways too: to be read on the Kindle, downloaded and purchased in bits, even as an iphone app. It’s going to be interesting to see who catches us on quickest in all this; the slow ones aren’t likely to last.

I’ve been following the recent bluff and bluster from Rupert Murdoch with interest: ‘Google are ripping off my content’, ‘You can’t do this to me!’, ‘I’m taking my newspaper off the internet’, ‘Pay for view for news is the future’, stuff like that (I’m paraphrasing but you can do a Google News Search and get the exact quotes yourself; what am I, a journalist?)

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