I just watched a Webinar by Lenva Shearing of Hapara on Inquiry Learning and Learner Empowerment. It was a great watch and can be found on this bit.ly link:
bit.ly/inquiry_learning
The key points were the use of Workspace to facilitate authentic student inquiry. Hapara workspace allows a teacher to set up an inquiry process within workspace and for students to choose and then be grouped according to interest around a big idea. Students can also upload their own resources and learning activities.
She also discussed using Workspace to conduct Teaching as Inquiry projects too.
This is a quick blog post as it's nearly Christmas time and I'm going to attempt to switch off for a few days.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Disruptive Education
Nicola Ngarewa was the Principal at Patea Area School and has recently joined the team at Spotswood College. She is a disruptive educator. She challenges anything that gets in the way of students becoming successful learners, and she puts the responsibility for that solely at the feet of the school community. She has ditched bells, rigid timetables and changed up start and finish times for students. She's all about real life contexts for learning, STEAM, and an integrated curriculum. In terms of inquiry, Ngarewa sets up a school where students inquire and act on problems they see around them. She integrates litearcy and numeracy skills within these subjects and not as stand alone subjects. She believes in growing successful global citizens. Powerful and brave stuff!
So what would it mean to be a teacher with leadership like this? More collaboration and close relationships with students would be a must. Teachers would need to work closely together and change up what they have done in the past. They would be more responsive to the needs of students. Plans would need to be fluid, but inquiry and learning to learn skills would need to be explicitly taught with high expectations put in place. Once in a Lifetime | Nicola Ngarewa
If you want to learn what a classroom might look like in the early years, watch this YouTube clip: Are you ready to disrupt learning?
You can see how technology, mindset, critical thinking, inquiry, innovation and creativity is important in the classrom. But more importantly, it's about the teacher's approach and philosophy: the teacher is the learner too. Both the student and the teacher learn and inquire together. The teacher's role is to facilitate activities and projects, question students, creating engaging activities for critical thinking, creativity and innovation, prompt for links between knowledge and skills, make students accountable to showcase their learning and make it visible, to act on the inquiries, to provide links with the outside community and places.
It's an exciting time to be a part of education. I'm going to delve further into disruptive education and what it means practically in the classrom. Watch this space.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Becoming Google Certified
For a while I have been interested in becoming a Google Certified Educator. It was not so much for the badge, but more for the learning that would encompass the certification. For our school, Google is the fundamental tool that allows us to deliver personalised learning. For me as a teacher, I now use Google Apps for pretty much everything. I don't know when was the last time that I used Word, Excel or Powerpoint. It's all done online, can be shared easily and found on any device. Magic!
If you're interested in learning more about Google Suite for Education, I highly recommend doing the certification. It's easy and the course covers more than simply how to use the Google Suite. It covers pedagogy and gives great examples of how teachers are using this to engage and personalise learning for their students. You don't need to go through a third party to deliver the course. You can do it all via the Google Certification site. However, if you do wish to get some extra support, I recommend ShakeUpLearning. This site has some really useful resources and ideas.
To gain access to the exam and get the much desired certificate and badge, simply pay about NZD$10 and register. A warning here: the exam is actually pretty full on. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours and it involves you using Google, not just answering questions. It actually made me respect the certificate more. I found myself reasonably exhausted by the end of it all. However, it is well worth it.
Next I'll attempt Level 2 which is aimed at leaders of digital tech.
If you're interested in learning more about Google Suite for Education, I highly recommend doing the certification. It's easy and the course covers more than simply how to use the Google Suite. It covers pedagogy and gives great examples of how teachers are using this to engage and personalise learning for their students. You don't need to go through a third party to deliver the course. You can do it all via the Google Certification site. However, if you do wish to get some extra support, I recommend ShakeUpLearning. This site has some really useful resources and ideas.
To gain access to the exam and get the much desired certificate and badge, simply pay about NZD$10 and register. A warning here: the exam is actually pretty full on. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours and it involves you using Google, not just answering questions. It actually made me respect the certificate more. I found myself reasonably exhausted by the end of it all. However, it is well worth it.
Next I'll attempt Level 2 which is aimed at leaders of digital tech.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
ISTE Standards & Hapara training
In the past month, I have completed the Hapara Champion course. Wow! If you're using Hapara in your school this is a must do. It will provide you with all the skills you need, and the all important links and discussions on pedagogy, to run an effective learner agency in your class and school. I didn't know this before, but it is based on John Hattie's research. The catch phrase is "visible learning" and it truly provides the functionality to make this happen easily in a digital classroom.
If you're not using Hapara, and you work in a 1-1 device school, I would really recommend you take a look at it. They only accept a certain number on the course, and I applied three times before I got in. Keep your eye out for the next intake.
Now I'm working on the Hapara Scholar course which dives into ISTE standards. The ISTE standards provide a framework which educators or leaders can work towards. Also, well worth a look.
If you're not using Hapara, and you work in a 1-1 device school, I would really recommend you take a look at it. They only accept a certain number on the course, and I applied three times before I got in. Keep your eye out for the next intake.
Now I'm working on the Hapara Scholar course which dives into ISTE standards. The ISTE standards provide a framework which educators or leaders can work towards. Also, well worth a look.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Why accountability is key: both for teachers and students
I read an article this morning which had a theme I am always interested in: The Blacklash Against Screen Time at School. I want to never be afraid to delve into an article or research that challenges the pedagogy we are implementing at our school. Within this article are red flags/warnings that are extremely important to consider when implementing technology and personalised learning in schools.
It began by discussing the Mark Zuckerberg experient called AltSchool. If you remember back to Hekia Parata's CoolSchool model then this was' like that, just with way less funding. AltSchool were in practicality labs opening up around the States where students would use a device to walk at their own pace through a learning playlist which was personalised, somewhat, to them. Teachers were in attendance to be coaches and provide support. There's been a load of criticism over this model and these schools. Much of it surrounds how much it costs and the lack of data proving that it works better. Now here's the key question of most articles that challenge digital tech, and I would say also a critique that many teachers have when visiting schools with digital tech: how do you know it works better? I think it's important to add the word "better" here, because there's no point it working the same. Effective teachers do amazing things with students regardless of tech and have been doing so for ions. But how is the use of a digital device making it better: more targeted, more efficient, more engaging. If it's not, then why use it? At our school we are continuing to ask: what can this _______App, technology, method do better that we couldn't do before in a traditional mode and how will we know and track that it is working better?
What does this article question? Here are a few snippets.
"But in the midst of all the excitement, there’s little strong evidence that classroom technology, including personalized learning, is improving educational outcomes. A 2015 report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development found that countries that invested heavily in computer technology for schools showed “no appreciable improvements” in reading, math or science, and that technology “is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.”
"A recent Rand study evaluating the use of personalized learning found emerging signs of promise, but with plenty of caveats. Students in 40 schools with personalized-learning programs funded by the Gates Foundation scored a bit higher on standardized English and math tests over the course of one school year, with only the math gains reaching statistical significance. A “slight majority” of schools had positive gains, the report found. But because it didn’t have a randomized control group, “our study is not able to make a very strong statement about whether the personalized learning approaches actually caused the improvement,” Elizabeth Steiner, a study co-leader and an associate policy researcher at the think tank, told me."
Now this " on control group" puzzled me. Our schools have years of data from students from when digital devices were not in use. That to me is an adequate "control" group. As our school was implementing our digital ed model, we used the data from the previous two years to check when our pedagogy was doing better. We found that 80% of students in our class made significantly more progress than years before. There is also the informal assessing of a strategy, which great teachers should be doing regularly. Are we seeing gains? What are those gains? They're not always linked with "data". Some are simply seeing increased executive functioning from the student or seeing heightened engagement.
This quote is also important to think about:
Another review of the Gates-funded effort, by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, concluded that: “At the end of two years, despite some pockets of innovation, few schools had developed replicable strategies for personalized learning.”
Schools that don't focus on pedagogy around personalised learning, will not be sustainable and not see the accelerated progress in students, year on year. It is vital that schools have a model of how the device will be used and how teachers will "be" in the classroom. What does it look like to teach in this environment now? When should devices not be used? When should they? Are you pushing out games and off the shelf "playlist" type products, or are you using apps that require the student to engage with the learning? Are students verbalising their learning? What tracking does the teacher do: daily, weekly, termly and yearly to ensure that what they're doing works?
We cannot ask parents to fork out money for devices and trust us with the children and not expect to put in the work on proving what we are doing is working... better. This is accountability. This is what makes our job as teachers a highly regarded profession. This is why this job cannot be done by a tech-whizz or a developer.
Finally, we have to ensure that this critique is kept at the foreground of what we do in schools:
As time went on, France started questioning what he and his colleagues were doing. “The vision was a curriculum that catered to every child so they’re learning at their level all the time,” he said. “But when every child is working on something different, you’re taking away the most human component in the learning process, which is social interaction—learning from one another and collaborating to solve problems. They’re developing a relationship with their tablet but not with each other.”
For France, the turning point came one morning when he looked around a kindergarten classroom, “and the kids were staring at their tablets, engrossed by them. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘They could be building with blocks, they could be doing a number of different things that are more meaningful that also build social and emotional skills but they’re choosing not to. Why? Because the tool is so addictive, that’s all they want to do.’”
It is vital to know how to use the device in a way that does not look like students sitting on their own with headphones on. Sure, there is a small amount of time when this can be effective. But teachers need to prompt when to put the device away. Teachers also need to evaluate their use of the device: how much time is the device being used in a way that is collaborative and interactive. We use iPads in our classes. In science, these iPads make great time lapse videos. Students are still working together, doing science, but one iPad is set up to record. They forget it's there, most of the time. But it allows them to go back and look at what they were doing and to verbalise their learning overtop of their video. We use iPads in PE: students can video one another doing a particular skill and then evaluate it, improving as they go. Our students still play, still make mess, still read actual books, still write in books, they play outside - with no technology allowed during break times, even wet ones. Technology is embedded in our lives. It's our job to teach kids how to interact with it in a healthy, positive way. But turning our backs on the gains that can be made by using it effectively, is ignoring the benefits it has. It's not the golden ticket, the one solution, it's always part of the package. An effective, highly trained and professional teacher should never be replaced.
It began by discussing the Mark Zuckerberg experient called AltSchool. If you remember back to Hekia Parata's CoolSchool model then this was' like that, just with way less funding. AltSchool were in practicality labs opening up around the States where students would use a device to walk at their own pace through a learning playlist which was personalised, somewhat, to them. Teachers were in attendance to be coaches and provide support. There's been a load of criticism over this model and these schools. Much of it surrounds how much it costs and the lack of data proving that it works better. Now here's the key question of most articles that challenge digital tech, and I would say also a critique that many teachers have when visiting schools with digital tech: how do you know it works better? I think it's important to add the word "better" here, because there's no point it working the same. Effective teachers do amazing things with students regardless of tech and have been doing so for ions. But how is the use of a digital device making it better: more targeted, more efficient, more engaging. If it's not, then why use it? At our school we are continuing to ask: what can this _______App, technology, method do better that we couldn't do before in a traditional mode and how will we know and track that it is working better?
What does this article question? Here are a few snippets.
"But in the midst of all the excitement, there’s little strong evidence that classroom technology, including personalized learning, is improving educational outcomes. A 2015 report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development found that countries that invested heavily in computer technology for schools showed “no appreciable improvements” in reading, math or science, and that technology “is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.”
"A recent Rand study evaluating the use of personalized learning found emerging signs of promise, but with plenty of caveats. Students in 40 schools with personalized-learning programs funded by the Gates Foundation scored a bit higher on standardized English and math tests over the course of one school year, with only the math gains reaching statistical significance. A “slight majority” of schools had positive gains, the report found. But because it didn’t have a randomized control group, “our study is not able to make a very strong statement about whether the personalized learning approaches actually caused the improvement,” Elizabeth Steiner, a study co-leader and an associate policy researcher at the think tank, told me."
Now this " on control group" puzzled me. Our schools have years of data from students from when digital devices were not in use. That to me is an adequate "control" group. As our school was implementing our digital ed model, we used the data from the previous two years to check when our pedagogy was doing better. We found that 80% of students in our class made significantly more progress than years before. There is also the informal assessing of a strategy, which great teachers should be doing regularly. Are we seeing gains? What are those gains? They're not always linked with "data". Some are simply seeing increased executive functioning from the student or seeing heightened engagement.
This quote is also important to think about:
Another review of the Gates-funded effort, by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, concluded that: “At the end of two years, despite some pockets of innovation, few schools had developed replicable strategies for personalized learning.”
Schools that don't focus on pedagogy around personalised learning, will not be sustainable and not see the accelerated progress in students, year on year. It is vital that schools have a model of how the device will be used and how teachers will "be" in the classroom. What does it look like to teach in this environment now? When should devices not be used? When should they? Are you pushing out games and off the shelf "playlist" type products, or are you using apps that require the student to engage with the learning? Are students verbalising their learning? What tracking does the teacher do: daily, weekly, termly and yearly to ensure that what they're doing works?
We cannot ask parents to fork out money for devices and trust us with the children and not expect to put in the work on proving what we are doing is working... better. This is accountability. This is what makes our job as teachers a highly regarded profession. This is why this job cannot be done by a tech-whizz or a developer.
Finally, we have to ensure that this critique is kept at the foreground of what we do in schools:
As time went on, France started questioning what he and his colleagues were doing. “The vision was a curriculum that catered to every child so they’re learning at their level all the time,” he said. “But when every child is working on something different, you’re taking away the most human component in the learning process, which is social interaction—learning from one another and collaborating to solve problems. They’re developing a relationship with their tablet but not with each other.”
For France, the turning point came one morning when he looked around a kindergarten classroom, “and the kids were staring at their tablets, engrossed by them. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘They could be building with blocks, they could be doing a number of different things that are more meaningful that also build social and emotional skills but they’re choosing not to. Why? Because the tool is so addictive, that’s all they want to do.’”
It is vital to know how to use the device in a way that does not look like students sitting on their own with headphones on. Sure, there is a small amount of time when this can be effective. But teachers need to prompt when to put the device away. Teachers also need to evaluate their use of the device: how much time is the device being used in a way that is collaborative and interactive. We use iPads in our classes. In science, these iPads make great time lapse videos. Students are still working together, doing science, but one iPad is set up to record. They forget it's there, most of the time. But it allows them to go back and look at what they were doing and to verbalise their learning overtop of their video. We use iPads in PE: students can video one another doing a particular skill and then evaluate it, improving as they go. Our students still play, still make mess, still read actual books, still write in books, they play outside - with no technology allowed during break times, even wet ones. Technology is embedded in our lives. It's our job to teach kids how to interact with it in a healthy, positive way. But turning our backs on the gains that can be made by using it effectively, is ignoring the benefits it has. It's not the golden ticket, the one solution, it's always part of the package. An effective, highly trained and professional teacher should never be replaced.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Hapara Champion Educator Cadre 10
I was lucky enough to be selected to do the Hapara Champion Educator course this year. I'm halfway through. We've used Hapara to ensure accountability and help us use Google in the classroom for the past two years, but there is so much more to this software than I thought.
Highlights: a great way to view your students' screen, to allow you to open sites on their device and close down sites they're on. My only complaint (and it's a big one...), you can't use this feature on an IOS device - aka ipads. We chose ipads instead of chrome books as they are more flexible - allowing a student to easily take photos and videos. They're less like a typing/viewing device. But as they don't allow chrome extensions, these features can't be used on ipads, meaning Highlights can't be used effectively.
However, never despair: introducing Dashboard. This allows a teacher to see what their students are doing in Google. They can see what files have recently been updated and even click on the file to open it. Think about this scenario: you've set a task and you wish to give feedback. You pop into Dashboard and click on individual student documents. This opens the document. You can then comment, add a link for additional help and set a Resolve button so the student hits Resolve when they have responded to the feedback. Easy and efficient!
Other cool features include:
- You have access to All Docs in the Google drive, allowing you to find lost documents.
- You can search both documents and phrases within documents.
- Set up a blank document using SmartShare.
- Send documents using SmartShare to different groups. Let's say that you'd like to send an a particular document to ESOL students or to Gifted students or to a particular project group, it's easy doing this in SmartShare using Groups.
Next I'm learning about Workspace.
This tool is definitely getting to ensure accountability and making using Google so much easier and more efficiently. It helps to promote learner agency and makes the work the students are doing in Google more visible.
Highlights: a great way to view your students' screen, to allow you to open sites on their device and close down sites they're on. My only complaint (and it's a big one...), you can't use this feature on an IOS device - aka ipads. We chose ipads instead of chrome books as they are more flexible - allowing a student to easily take photos and videos. They're less like a typing/viewing device. But as they don't allow chrome extensions, these features can't be used on ipads, meaning Highlights can't be used effectively.
However, never despair: introducing Dashboard. This allows a teacher to see what their students are doing in Google. They can see what files have recently been updated and even click on the file to open it. Think about this scenario: you've set a task and you wish to give feedback. You pop into Dashboard and click on individual student documents. This opens the document. You can then comment, add a link for additional help and set a Resolve button so the student hits Resolve when they have responded to the feedback. Easy and efficient!
Other cool features include:
- You have access to All Docs in the Google drive, allowing you to find lost documents.
- You can search both documents and phrases within documents.
- Set up a blank document using SmartShare.
- Send documents using SmartShare to different groups. Let's say that you'd like to send an a particular document to ESOL students or to Gifted students or to a particular project group, it's easy doing this in SmartShare using Groups.
Next I'm learning about Workspace.
This tool is definitely getting to ensure accountability and making using Google so much easier and more efficiently. It helps to promote learner agency and makes the work the students are doing in Google more visible.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Digital Passport
I have just signed up for the digital passport course run by Mindlab. Hopefully it will compliment my work on CS4PD course I did in 2017 and the Mindlab course I'm enrolled in this November.
Toro Mai - Maori Language course
Have you seen this free Maori Language Course: Toro Mai?
It's run via distance, online through Massey University.
Dr Vince Ham eFellowship Application
This year I applied for the Dr Vince Ham eFellowship for 2019. Unfortunately, I wasn't successful. However, the whole process was really beneficial and this is now going to form the basis of my teaching as inquiry project.
I believe that schools need to have a clear pedagogy behind their use of digital tech, and that digital tools and apps should only be used when they are better than what has been done before and if they more efficient for the teacher and student. There is a bunch of research behind my philosophy of digital ed which I am looking forward to putting toward further study.
I believe that schools need to have a clear pedagogy behind their use of digital tech, and that digital tools and apps should only be used when they are better than what has been done before and if they more efficient for the teacher and student. There is a bunch of research behind my philosophy of digital ed which I am looking forward to putting toward further study.
Digital-Age Teaching - 21st Century Pedagogy
I recently completed this Digital Course online via Udemy by Craig Blewett. I'm not sure if it is still available on Udemy, but it is well worth checking out. Udemy is an online portal for courses.
This course covered the pedagogy called: Activating the Classroom. It was about changing the classroom from being about knowledge consumption to focusing on creating, conversing,. challenging and causing chaos. It's an active learning model that we may all be familiar with.
It then introduced digital apps and contexts on how these can be used to fit this model.
Some of them included:
- Listly
- Tlk.io
- HipChat
- Edu-Canon
- Padlet
- Google Apps for Education
- AllOurIdeas
- Powtoon
- Easel.ly
- Edmodo
Run by Dr Craig Blewet from South Africa, the course was relevant, up-to-date and fit with the inquiry based learning models used in most NZ schools. It definitely introduced me to a bunch of new tools.
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