Archive for the 'Future Directions' Category

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Network Payoff

Published on February 22, 2010 in Blogging, Digital Convergence, Future Directions, Internet and Personal Reflections. 13 Comments

I work three days a week in a primary classroom. So, theoretically, I am in a good position for putting edtech and Web 2.0 idealism into a realistic roadtest situation. I don’t stand behind podiums at conferences berating and exhorting the masses to bring their classroom into the digital world. I don’t have influential push (or pull) within my own system – and I’m not sure what I’d be suggesting even if I did. But I have invested an enormous amount of my life over the past four years into this networked learning thing. If anything, I have a lot of digital runs on the board. Heh, the Geoffrey Boycott ¹ of edublogging. That could be me.

So, I feel that my personal benefit has been enormous. I connect with a wide array of educators who feed me a daily diet of inspiration, insight and practical resources. I have become more aware of how education systems work in various parts of the world. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of the most interesting people that I’ve come across in my lifetime – some I’ve conversed with on Skype and in Elluminate and Adobe Connect or just the comments sections of blogs. My network connections have given me opportunity to present about my experiences at conferences and online events, and I’ve learned about connectivism, social media, gained a more balanced view about cybersafety issues and heard about Illich, Gatto and Postman for the first time.

I couldn’t give up my Network now – it gives too much to me.

But I work in a role where I’m meant to be bringing the “good oil” to teachers, helping them to get their feet wet in technology use and showing them how the web can transform student learning. It is a role that sets me up as some sort of “expert” which can be a problem in a couple of ways.

Firstly, Darren Kuropatwa points out in his reference to neophytes that “Experts have a different aura about them. That aura of expertise is intimidating for neophytes.” His basic premise is that any message that an educator with “expert” status might try to seed with his or her own colleagues will be perceived to be unattainable and beyond their reach. So all of my efforts to highlight how easy digital tools are and how empowering technology can be via workshops, team teaching and other training could actually be unproductive.

Dean Groom also talks about the burbclave effect – where teachers don’t have to go and become innovative users of technology because if they have one connected educator on staff, they just have to wait until it is brought to them. It’s the effect when staff say they can’t use their IWB until they’ve had some training, where they wait for a list of good numeracy websites to be emailed to them (or given to them on a printed piece of A4) or wait until they are given release time for planning before they will even look at something like the ISTE Standards.

Ironically that while someone like me may well be viewed as somewhat of a local expert, the educators I connect to and learn from leave me feeling very neophytic indeed. When I measure myself globally, my local credentials shrink down to small proportions.

The building of your own social media network is such a personal journey that it is a very difficult beast to describe in such a way that non-web-savvy educators see the point. It’s why I won’t ever bother offering a Web 2.o / PLN / using social media to learn presentation or workshop ever again. I’ll guarantee that no-one has ever been turned onto blogging based on anything I’ve ever said or wrote – its value is intrinsically linked to the individual’s needs. If a teacher is not interested in exploring the internet on his or her own time, then they are never going to see where this could take them or how it could impact their classroom.

Which brings me to my next point. Many of us edubloggers assume that what we learn online is directly transferable into our classrooms. We also assume that if more educators did what we did (read, write, link, share, create) then we would end up with these amazing transformed classrooms. So, we spend time preaching the benefit of social media tools even though there is no one simple recipe, even though this networked learning thing is intensely personal and damn near impossible to replicate.

I keep wondering if the time spent to become proficient in the online world (note I wrote proficient, not expert!) is worth the investment in potentially transformed pedagogy in the classroom. I have spent many hours online, eschewing television and other possible hobbies, and I know that many, many of my colleagues are not prepared to invest the same amounts of time into this medium. I know that my investment is worthwhile – for me. But I struggle to see how social media can transform the primary school classroom. There are so many compromises that need to be made in the name of online safety and duty of care, barriers in terms of computer access and the pressure of the traditional curriculum that I can see why so many teachers wait to be told what to do in terms of technology use, rather than take the risks involved with being an innovator.

I think my next step is examine my own classroom practice to see what has changed in my approach since becoming connected back in 2005. I suspect that the process is so gradual that I may find it difficult to recall my former practice with any accuracy. And if I, the enthused educator playing with connected technologies in my spare time, can take so long to work out what can translate into today’s classroom, what hope does a less enthusiastic teacher have of bridging the gap of digital possibilities?

Just thinking, that’s all.

walk2web

¹. The metaphoric comparison may be lost on any non-Commonwealth non-cricket playing readers. Geoffrey Boycott’s career was characterised by lengthy stints at the batting crease, accumulating runs at an extremely slow rate often to the frustration of both the opposition and his team mates. Certainly not as talented as others in his era, his dogged style meant that he hung around for a long time in a somewhat selfish manner.
2. The really cool visualisation of links out from my blog comes from walk2web.

I Can’t Even Create My Own League Table

Published on January 30, 2010 in Future Directions and Information Literacy. 1 Comment

The My School website is big news down under right now.

I would love to be writing something insightful about this big issue right now  but am finding it hard to really pull together my impressions and thoughts in order to convey to readers beyond the boundaries of Terra Australis. Its launch was right at the start of the school year and even though every principal made it their first order of business to get access as soon as the site went live, most rank and file teachers were too busy, well, teaching to get much of a look, let alone a solid impression. My own boss was very interested in the system used to create Statistically Similar Schools which gives each school a ranking number which is a very different comparison tool. In order to compare local schools, one would need to be prepared to do some laborious data scraping.

I had my first real look last night where after checking out my kids’ school, I thought that I’d take a tour through my teaching career and see what this site would tell me about the schools where I have taught. That was interesting. Apparently, the school I taught it in my five year stint in Port Augusta is more disadvantaged than many of the schools in the socially disadvantaged Northern suburbs of Adelaide, and the rural Area School where I taught through a variety of year levels in a variety of roles over nearly two years had a higher rating than my current suburban Adelaide setting. One school would not even come up in the search field so I assume that is one of the glitches still to be ironed out. Apart from that, glancing at NAPLAN shades of green or red seemed to confirm this particular world view.

For a decent comprehensive analysis of the My School website launch, I suggest you read Darcy Moore’s blog post. If you’re inclined to be more cynical about government accountability initiatives (as I am) then Dean Groom’s take is worth a look as well.

I also did what every other tech-loving educator does when pressed for time – check the #myschool hashtag on Twitter. Over the time I checked there were tweets from journalists bemused at any negativity from the education quarter, punters squaring off against each other to find the “worst” school in Australia, parents who couldn’t find their kids’ school, would be league table creators bemoaning the data access, website designers pointing out the design flaws on the site and others prepared to take on the knockers.

My favourite tweet comes from Burnt Sugar:

#myschool it really doesn’t tell the whole story – but we knew that

Gonna Be An Interesting Year

Published on January 23, 2010 in Future Directions and School websites. 0 Comments

I thought I’d take the time to highlight a few things that Australian (and in particular South Australian) teachers, schools and students will be grappling with over the next twelve months or so.

The National Curriculum.
The word in the staffroom is that schools will get their first look at the new National Curriculum sometime mid-year. We assume that our schools will continue to be guided by SACSA until we are told otherwise, but part of the new Science initiative, Primary Connections, aligns itself with the coming curriculum and does not translate easily into SACSA outcomes. With Federal dollars behind the big Science and Maths push, all upper primary teachers have been promised three days of PD over the next two years with the Maths release to follow. It does not take much of an Einstein to realise why the 11- 13 year students have been targetted first, rather than training Early Years staff first, as the Governement wants more students entering high school in the next two to three years to be eyeing off and seeking out Maths and Science options in their future education pathways.

The Controversial My School Website
This site has been stirring the pot for a while though even though its main function is yet to be unleashed. The site describes itself as:

The My School website (www.myschool.edu.au) provides profiles of almost 10,000 Australian schools that can be searched by the school’s location, sector or name. The website provides statistical and contextual information, as well as NAPLAN (www.naplan.edu.au) results that can be compared with results from statistically similar schools across Australia.

The nation’s Education Minister is adamant that this information is what parents want to make informed decisions about their child’s education as outlined in the Australian today:

Gillard’s determination to push ahead with the publication of comparative school performance data – available to parents on a website called My School – has been met with furious opposition from the national education union.

Teachers have threatened to boycott national literacy and numeracy tests unless the federal government bans the publication of league tables. While Gillard does not support league tables, newspapers will be able to create them using the My Schools data.

As Gillard stares down the threats from teachers and in the process entering into a public brawl with the Labor union heartland, she is adamant she has the support of the majority of parents, who welcome greater transparency in school reporting.

Gillard has drawn inspiration for her “revolution in transparency” from New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, whse reforms linked student progress and performance in literacy and numeracy to teacher evaluation. Under Klein’s system, schools are graded from A to D, or F for fail. Schools that score D and F face the possibility of restructure or closure unless they lift student performance.

During a visit to Australia in late 2008 at the invitation of Gillard, Klein said information gave parents the ability and tools to demand higher standards from schools, placing the impetus for reform in the hands of parents “so that parents can raise hell”.

Interestingly, school principals have only been given 24 hours prior to the official release to peruse their own school data and “like” schools that they will be compared to before potentially being queried by parents seeking clarification or drawing their own conclusions from the data on show. This will be a hot issue for quite a while yet, depending on differing parties’ definition of accountability.

Local News Item Of Interest
This article caught my eye on Monday but really, anyone who finds the findings that children in low socioeconomic areas had the “lowest education outcomes and poorest achievement” to be surprising has not been listening to teachers who work in those disadvantaged areas. Maybe it is nice to see that there is some research out there that confirms what we’ve suspected all along. That might be small comfort to educators in other parts of the world where they are regularly told otherwise.

New Life For Old Laptops Running Ubuntu

Published on January 14, 2010 in Future Directions and Resources. 15 Comments

We have these old Leader laptops at my school that were part of our original batch of teacher laptops and they have not really been used since those teachers upgraded to more powerful machines in 2006. We put them out in classrooms for a while as bonus computers but they’ve struggled with our network image. So they’ve been sitting in the technician’s office (aka the server room) for over a year and I had this idea about using them as a side project for tech savvy kids in my classroom. One day when I was contemplating on Twitter what to do with our old Pentium 4 desktop that was being strangled by viruses, Chris Harvey recommended Ubuntu as an excellent operating system that would breathe new life into older machines. I know a few other members of my network are Linux advocates so I figured that it would very appealing for these tech savvy students to tinker and set up these machines in my classroom. So, I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu and burnt it to DVD and grabbed one of the old laptops for the summer holidays.

So, you’re thinking – big deal. I know that many of my network are avid Linux users (of which Ubuntu is but one option) and that installing and playing with open source products is just part of what they do. But I am no computer whiz. I have never installed any operating system on any computer before and never really used a Linux based operating system. I’m not really that technical minded as I discovered when I went looking for details on how to get rid of the original XP operating system. I got lost for several hours, looking through forums, downloading a couple of utilities only to discover that I needed to know how to get into BIOS, or how to partition a disk or any number of things that kept telling me I’m out of my depth. So, if anyone knows of an idiot proof way for me to ditch Windows and keep the Ubuntu install (or failing that how to wipe the laptop completely and re-install Ubuntu only) I would be most appreciative. These old babies only have 40G hard drives and I don’t need any MS memory hogging stuff eating into that precious space. The batteries are nearly shot and they have makeshift power adaptors, but they do offer a chance to boost what we can do in our 2010 classroom.

My vision is that these laptops become an extra resource for students to complete work on, access the web, edit photos, create graphics and so on. The tech savvy kids will be able to install and uninstall open source programs (although Ubuntu comes with an excellent array of software as part of the package) and teach themselves and others a bit more in an environment that is geared towards education and help them to move beyond the Windows only world view of computing.

Here’s where I’m open to suggestions. Your ideas on how I could use these five laptops would be greatly appreciated. Maybe I should get the kids to run a different flavour of Linux on each one. They could become the publishing and graphic design workhorses leaving the faster laptops we have for working on the wireless network. What technical challenges could I set my small band of junior geeks? I am sure that they will quickly master the particular pathways of the Ubuntu environment and show me a thing or two. What would you do?

ubuntuPosted from an old 2005 Leader Celeron laptop running Ubuntu 9.10. A bit less pretentious than posting from my iPhone.

How To Best Use The Time You’ve Got

Published on January 6, 2010 in Future Directions and Personal Reflections. 2 Comments

So, I did something unusual for me the other day when I re-posted one of Dean Groom’s 2010 predictions in a style that one would more likely find on Tom Hoffmann’s or Dan Meyer’s blog. It was just one of those things where Dean’s words hit a chord and I thought that I’d want my own easy reference point. So, I blogged it. No big deal. I didn’t think anyone would even notice except to maybe follow the link and give Dean more feedback on his post.

But I can never tell when something will strike a chord with a reader (and I’m still constantly surprised by who is actually reading!) and I received a number of really great comments that deserve more airing than just an @commenter reply. Because you’ve all made me think and that is a good thing in this self indulgent, slack off summer holiday time that I’m currently enjoying. So, I going to reference these comments and see where they take me while I listen to some Laughing Clowns in the background.

One of the interesting things about being an edublogger is that there is always a danger of taking yourself too seriously and over-estimating your potential impact on any form of meaningful change. The other danger, of course, is that you don’t take your own place in the network seriously enough and consequently fail to capitalise on opportunities that could make a difference. There are many wrong turns to be taken so being a bit flippant and pessimistic can act as a buffer and reason to sit comfortably in the critic’s chair.

Firstly, Dean’s predictions were interesting and I see that he has expanded on his first prediction and the concept of Bubblegum Edupunk. He covered a lot of ground including his view that consultants widen the digital divide instead of bridging, the impact (or lack thereof) of DER laptops on learning outcomes, Conroy’s filter, tech issues around portable technology and virtual worlds and there finished on the paragraph that I featured.

Simon was the first commenter and his words seem to indicate that private schools are not necessarily all progressive in the technological sense and that Dean’s ‘virtual glass ceiling’ might not be applicable in his experience. I get where Dean is coming from in that the bigger the education system the more things are “locked down” system wise in terms of filters, software and hardware agreements etc and therefore there are predictable limits on what can be achieved even with the most enthused switched on, innovative teacher. I think that many teachers and leaders over-estimate their own place in the implementation of technology within their own places of learning. I know of several schools where the principal is pleased with his/her whole school roll out of interactive whiteboards, feeling that must place his/her teachers somewhere near the cutting edge. And as Dean’s prediction states, that is a potential recipe for 2010 stagnation.

So, right when I was feeling smug about my “I’ll be saying I told you so come year’s end”, Christopher drops in to whack me around the ears with some well chosen words.

Rather than bemoan the current state of affairs, use social media to lead others. Get your community involved. Hold rallies. Organize parents, civic leaders, students.

Leaders lead, mate. Be creative. Put all of your great theories about change into action. Get off your duffs. Remember, governments are reactionary; they respond to the conditions on the ground. Lead your legislatures. Start at the edge, work your way in. Lead by example. Stop whining.

And I know what he’s saying. Sitting around whinging doesn’t actually do anything. But here is where the right take on my own place in the world is necessary. Because who you are and how much influence you actually wield is a big determining factor is whether you can swing at the iceberg of education change with a sledgehammer or a toothpick. I like what Tim Holt is doing at the moment where he is leveraging the power of edublogs with elected officials. I can see how one could take his US based idea and use a similar tactic in Australia, even if our method of electing representatives is quite different and responsive to different pressures.

A modest proposal:

I propose that all US edubloggers (that are not specifically writing  for a school, a district, or a job that would prohibit such activity) use their blogs this year ask people that are running for office in their congressional districts/senate districts, gubernatorial races or any public elected office questions about education. They then publish the UNEDITED responses without comment. That way, the blogger is neither being pro nor con, merely reporting back on what was asked.

So, I was a bit taken aback by Christopher‘s challenge and even now, still not sure what my actual response should be. Ideally, I’d be planning my own fantastic contribution to the education change but for me, it is really a case of how to best use the time that I’ve got. I don’t usually sit on my hands – I like to think that I contribute in a number of small ways – but like most connected educators, I know I could always be doing more. I still have to balance that against my own family’s needs, the responsibilities of the job that pays the bills and even leave a bit of time to ensure that my own batteries aren’t completely drained. But I have presented at conferences, contributed to Ning communities, visited interested schools in my own time, facilitated a blogging community with my own students, plus a few other things that don’t readily come to mind right now.

Darcy Moore pointed me over to his blog post where he writes:

I believe ‘teaching’ will have a renaissance this century, as we co-operate and collaborate and the citizens of the planet have the need to solve the growing challenges we will have to overcome. This renaissance has already commenced but will become truly evident during this new decade. Skilled teachers are already at a premium but those with vision, relentless enthusiasm and who love to learn, challenge and be challenged, will insist on thriving!

I note with a smile that Darcy talks about change over the next decade, not just the next year. There is no doubt that the education system will have to change significantly over the next few years but like Dean, I’m not sure that my own system senses the urgency yet. The DER laptops have forced the issue to a big degree for many high schools and Darcy’s school have obviously embraced the initiative and run with it. Dean points this out in one of the comments on Darcy’s blog:

Yours is one of the exceptions to the stagnant norm. We see individual brilliance and even school brevity — but what we must ask for is evidence that these machines are improving outcomes on the same scale they are being rolled out at. It will be interesting to see how this is evaluated and measured this year if at all.

Then a veritable giant in the elearning world, Leigh Blackall, offers an actual plan of action. This is a person who does in fact do all of the things that Christopher identifies as “leading by example”.  He has contributed original thought and content, challenges the status quo and creates his own working alternative models for others to use. His Facilitating online communities course is a testament to his get things done approach. Leigh has a confidence in his own ability to prioritise things to get ambitious things off the ground so his suggestions are right in line with that approach. He suggests growing a community which in my world might take more than 2010 to grow legs, but with a National Curriculum fast approaching would have plenty of traction to draw passionate educators in to interpret that new document for the betterment of student learning using the online tools of communication, collaboration and hopefully cooperation.

So, I’m still not sure what I will do. I think I know what I should do, but think and will are two different beasts. I have my own work at my own school which via the DECS Learning Technologies Grant has its own chance to influence system and other schools’ direction. I will continue to work with my own colleagues, raising their awareness so that they have their own eyes opened to the potential of technology facilitated learning and with my students, giving them the chance to take charge of their own learning. I will pitch in for my professional association, CEGSA, providing sessions at the annual conference and hopefully, offer similar to other professional opportunities throughout the year. I will gently push some ideas at my own sons’ school’s Governing Council so that their educational opportunities are not compromised. I will endeavour to blog regularly, the good, the awry, the ambitious, the half baked and I will comment more frequently on others’ blogs. I will look to do something meaningful that furthers the cause of educational change that helps to match the rhetoric of “learning spaces, personalisation of learning” to actual practice. What that will be, I don’t know. But these comments have helped me to start contemplating that next move.

And hey, if you think I’m full of it, you can let me have it in the comments…

Uncomfortable Predictions

Published on January 2, 2010 in Future Directions. 5 Comments

Dean Groom:

The number of teachers using technology in new and resonant ways in school will stagnate — and more will leave public to work in private because of the ‘virtual glass ceiling’. Many schools will find it frustratingly hard to integrate technology — due to policy — that keeps outsiders – outside. Large systems will not re-assess their HR policy and continue to hire people who are unable to lead them anywhere other than in circles — believing qualification and time-served are more important than ePortfolios, digital-authority and reputation.

This hits uncomfortably close to home. I especially want to be proud of where the public school system goes here in my home state but fear that this prediction is a totally sure bet.

Feeling Proud

Published on September 9, 2009 in Future Directions and Staff Training. 1 Comment

I’m feeling very proud of my colleagues this evening. Between my principal and I, we cooked up a sharing process based on a poster sharing session she was part of during a Teaching Australia principal’s PD program. The focus was on sharing contemporary classroom practice with a technology flavour. We designed the poster template, had copies printed up on A2 paper and distributed them out to all staff members. I talked about the goals behind the process and followed up with this email:

Dear colleagues,

School Closure Day requirements:
Just to clarify from last night, you will receive your A2 sheet and marker  in your pigeonhole this afternoon. Your task is to reflect on and write in dot points about an aspect of your classroom practice that reflects
contemporary learning. Use the ISTE Standards to help hone your thoughts:
-
1.         Creativity and Innovation
2.         Communication and Collaboration
3.         Research and Information Fluency
4.         Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5.         Digital Citizenship
6.         Technology Operations and Concepts
Think of something you have worked on that would fit into these categories, write it up on the A2 sheet with the view that you will present it to a group of colleagues speaking for no more than 5 minutes.
You will present it once more to more colleagues from other groups as well.
I know that this can be nerve-wracking for many of us but consider the following: Research shows that some of the most powerful learning occurs when colleagues share what they do (hence the emphasis on Professional Learning Communities). We also have a duty to our students and colleagues to de-privatise our practice – as we all build on each other’s work as students move through the school.
This is not an exercise in big-noting or critiquing.

Well, the resulting sessions were excellent. Ann had shuffled the staff into groups of 5 with a 5 minute allocation for each person to speak to their poster. Once that had happened, each group broke apart to re-present their poster, this time for 10 minutes to interested staff members from the other groups. So, in the space of an hour, I personally heard how a Year 3 teacher was using interactive material on netbooks with her class, how a Year 5/6 teacher was fostering a learning community within her classroom, a Year 5 teacher who used a key YouTube video to cement a key inquiry concept, an inspiring story of a Year 3 teacher new to our school this year who had gone in his words from “Lost In Space” to “Star Trek” in his evolving use of the same netbooks, a junior primary teacher who was seeking to improve her IWB skills, our Assistant Principal who was using a literacy website with her Reception students as well as presenting my own on the use of delicious tagged bundles of sites for our Inquiry unit as well as the use of YouTube videos to show varying viewpoints on the topic of the Murray River / Lower Lakes. I’ve blogged about this before – but as is often the case, most of my colleagues don’t read this blog so this was the first they knew about my strategies.

It was an awesome array of contemporary practice at our school and showed that although the progress is all at differing stages and speeds, everyone is moving forward and committed to ensuring that our practice provides the best learning for our students. My next job is inform the parents booked in for my ICT Focus evening tomorrow night.

Assessment for Learning Session Notes – Toni Glasson

Published on September 9, 2009 in Future Directions and Staff Training. 1 Comment

Toni Glasson – Assessment for Learning – My Notes From Our Session at our Pupil Free Day

Start planning with what skills, knowledge and understanding do you want your students to have, not what will we “do” in the classroom. 21st century learning is about personalisation, students are the focus, need to be able to see progress over time. assessment for learning – inquiry learning, quality  teaching

Terminology:
Summative = assessment of learning
Formative = assessment for learning (can be broken into for = teacher via learning intentions, and as= student, self assessment) Toni sees this as an artificial division, as teachers and students are a symbiotic relationship.

“Assessment for learning is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.”
(Assessment Reform Group 2002)

Why AfL?
Use of AfL strategies leads to:

  • improved student achievement
  • greater engagement and motivation and responsibility for their own learning on the part of students

http://assessmentforlearning.edu.au

Learning intentions are an obvious sharing with the students of what they will be learning. This is followed by the success criteria which tells the students whether they have learned.

What happens to your learning if you don’t know what you’re expected to learn OR whether you’ve learnt it?

Sharing learning intentions with your students:

  • expressed in terms of skills, knowledge and understanding
  • learn, not do
  • separate the learning from the context
  • linked to the “big picture”

In practice, when do you share your learning intentions?

Sharing success criteria:

  • makes student assessment explicit
  • different forms, including rubrics
  • students become aware of work quality and the quality to which they aspire

The learning intention is separate from the task, but defines the purpose of the task. It is important not to have too many success criteria. Hattie points out that feedback is one of the most important aspect for student improvement – so use the success criteria to target that feedback. (Research says that oral feedback is more powerful and immediate than written.) Articulate everything and the reasons why you are doing things – the students are the conduit to their parents and informing them of why they are doing the work they are doing.

Keep collecting samples of work – at various levels – so that you have examples to draw on to outline your expectations. What makes this a good narrative? What needs to be improved for this to become a good narrative?
This becomes designing the success criteria with your students.
Don’t design rubrics on your own – the best ones are always designed collaboratively.

  • clearly expressed and relevant skills, knowledge and understanding
  • an appropriate number of criteria for your year level
  • mainly qualitative differences are identified in the descriptors (rather than quantitative)
  • clear descriptions of all levels for student self assessment – accessible for all, needs to be unpacked in class (without this accessibility, it loses its ability to be a formative tool)
  • for summative assessment, weighting of criteria needs to be included to reflect importance
  • where possible, rubric is accompanied by models and work samples
  • when used for formative, not used for “grades” and “levels”

Effective Teacher Feedback
Key ideas are that it must relate directly to the success criteria, identifies what has been done and and where improvement can be made, offers advice on how to improve that achievement, and can occur both during and after an assessment, can be oral or written  and allows time for students to act on the feedback.
How do you differentiate the success criteria to cater for personalisation of learning, even though the learning intention stays the same?

Plenty of food for thought here – Toni’s work helps educators to inform their practice and ensure that effective assessment is informing student learning.

I Can’t Do This Alone

Published on August 12, 2009 in Future Directions and Inquiry. 2 Comments

I quite enjoyed the first day of training for the Intel Thinking With Technology course today. A small group of ten educators who are being trained to take this course back to their sites made for an engaging time as we whipped through the first two modules, led by our expert Senior Trainer Steve Nicholson. I plan to reflect in more detail as the next four days unfold but I just wanted to document this realisation before it fades.

We had time this afternoon to start using the planning template the program offers for designing a unit of work. It has a number of similarities to the Understanding by Design influenced unit planner my schools currently uses, so it was very user friendly to work with. Steve had time set aside for us to work on designing of a unit of work for future use in our classrooms, and with the gift of time, I looked at the school’s Inquiry Scope & Sequence to determine which of the inquiry units that my colleagues needed planned before the year’s end. I started on the last one currently titled “Does Music Make The World Go Round?” , cutting and pasting SACSA outcomes into the template before I had a major attack of the doubts and emailed my colleagues at school (Kim, my tandem teaching partner and Maria, our next door co-planning buddy) for counsel in where I should start, especially as our next actual unit of inquiry centres on Health outcomes in the dreaded “growth and development” area. Kim answered during her lunch break, correctly calling me out for being cowardly and avoiding this unit and so in the afternoon when we had some more time, I started again.

So, as I pored through the outcomes and SACSA examples to get my head around what the unit should be about, I realised that this was not how I plan for learning in the classroom any more. I needed my colleagues’ input, the conversation that hones in on the essential understandings, and the shared understanding of where we want the students to go during an inquiry unit. We do all of this together in our co-planning time, in the evenings on the wiki chatroom and through email exchange. Occasionally, we break the planning up into segments for individuals to work on alone but these are always pieces to the bigger puzzle.

It’s been called the deprivatisation of practice where teachers open up the closed door to their classrooms and create better learning through conversation and planning. But it is truly how I work best now. It is how this whole online networking thing works best – learning from each other and creating better learning experiences for our students.

We can’t do it alone.

Making Use Of The Space You’ve Got

Published on August 7, 2009 in Future Directions. 1 Comment

I’ve hanging around a few Nings of late and even kick started one to give some of my staff a first hand experience of social networking walled garden style. One that I’ve just joined recently is part of an online conference run by my education system and focussing on Learning Spaces. What I find interesting about this is the chance to contrast the thinking and experiences of educators within my system with other points of view out on the open web. For instance, Vicki Davis recently pointed to this video from Bob Sprankle’s presentation at the recent BLC conference in North America.

Now, the concepts and ideas that Bob raises are worthwhile, don’t get me wrong. Many teachers can articulate what their ideal classroom could look like if someone was actually funded to build it. But there’s the rub. Even with the Federal Government getting stuck into the biggest building initiative in decades via the BER initiative, I don’t think much of that is going into future proofed classrooms and buildings. Schools are being handed templates of current buildings with minimal opportunity to rethink the way a school or even a classroom could be designed and function.

So when an idea like Qantas Club model classrooms was floated in the second Ning that I’ve been frequenting, I can feel a collective sigh from all of the teachers who just know that their classroom space is not changing any time soon. They quite pragmatically see that fantasy talk around learning spaces that are tailor made for these 21st Century Skills is not their reality. After all, they still have to shoehorn 30 odd students into their allocated area, connect to less than reliable networks, juggle limited budgets and still meet the rising demand for data driven accountability.

Of course, if we can allow the connection to the web in our schools to be less restricted and of sufficient bandwidth to be useful, then these new online learning spaces for the everyday teacher have much more chance of being achieveable. Even here, we run the risk of stumbling into fantasy territory again. You know the dream, the one of kids using their own devices to connect to the school network so that connection to the rest of the world is right there on the kid’s desk. But then we’d need top notch technicians to ensure a robust and flexible network – and I know in this state, there isn’t enough funding to keep the sort of talent in this area that we need for that dream to come true.

I have this gut feeling that even primary school education is going to dramatically change – some how, some time – before my time in this system is up. But I’m realistic enough to know that the physical facilities that people describe as pushing towards a more ideal learner centered classroom don’t come cheap and it will take a better government (State or Federal) than what we’ve got right now to make that investment.

Don’t get me wrong – we are seeing welcome investment in education that is a long time coming. I have to keep my cynicism in check and my network helps to keep me from assuming negative outcomes.

e.g.

Darcy1968: Windows 7 is RTM so we may be advantaged by getting our laptops later rather than sooner #DERNSW7:09 PM Jul 27th from twhirl

grahamwegner: @Darcy1968 I’ll bet there’s a few teachers quaking in their boots re: DER laptops – or planning to ignore so business as usual.7:18 PM Jul 27th from Twitterrific in reply to Darcy1968

Darcy1968:@grahamwegner It is terribly exciting for most though and at our school there’s no where to hide but plenty of collegial support and help.7:21 PM Jul 27th from twhirl in reply to grahamwegner

grahamwegner: @Darcy1968 That’s good to hear – it would be easy to be cynical (like me).7:34 PM Jul 27th from Twitterrific in reply to Darcy1968

Darcy1968: @grahamwegner we have all just been empowered to make a genuine difference and I buy into the once in a lifetime opportunity notion.7:36 PM Jul 27th from twhirl in reply to grahamwegner

We can make genuine change in classrooms exactly as they are right now. Waiting for the ideal learning space may never happen but as Tom Woodward’s great photo illustrates, schools will be eventually forced into change whether they want to or not.