Ulearnings

This is my reflection on my learning from the Ulearn 2014 conference. In my previous post I talked about my thoughts around the first keynote from Yoram Harpaz. Here are some of the other highlights for me.

Tom Barratt talked about fostering questions and how our reactions to them can either encourage them or close them down. This fits well with the idea of fostering an inquiry disposition. We all know how many questions pre-schoolers ask but by the time they reach upper primary school many of them have stopped. We need to make sure nothing we say or do contributes to this but instead makes questions and wonderings an expected part of what goes on in classrooms. As Tom put it, we need to "encourage students to be resilient questioners of the world."

Yoram Harpaz spoke about how education is always in crisis because we expect to achieve too much. This leads to us always looking for saviours. Teaching thinking was the saviour for a while, currently it is digital technology.  He didn't seem to have a high opinion of digital technology but that is another story. 

He talked about the three elements of thinking:

• thinking skills
• thinking dispositions
• thinking for understanding

To find out more about his thoughts on this read his paper 'Back to Knowledge: The Ironic Path of Teaching Thinking". Just as he believed we must choose one ideology, he believed we had to choose one way to teach thinking and he believed that was by teaching thinking for understanding. Part of his reasoning was that we can only think well in areas we understand therefore teaching for understanding should be the focus which does make sense to me. 

However, even though I agree that teaching for understanding is really important and is one of the main reasons I believe in an inquiry approach to teaching, I still think there is a place for explicit teaching of skills in context. Teaching dispositions is also important, although probably the hardest of the three to develop. In my opinion the skills and dispositions support the development of understanding, just as when we teach reading we teach that meaning is essential but there are skills and strategies that need to be used and we foster the love of reading. 

In my next post I will talk about my thoughts around the breakouts from Lane Clark and Mike Scaddan.

Social Media as a Professional Development Tool

October is Connected Educator month and so I have set myself a challenge to write a blog post at least once a week during October. I'm starting with a post that I think is very apt - talking about about social media as PLD. 

Online communities are great sources of information and support and in recent times have reached a sort of tipping point where the numbers of educators involved has taken them into the realms of more mainstream PLD. Where once it was rare to find teachers who tweeted or were involved in online communities, it is now becoming almost the norm. 

It won't be long before the unconnected teacher is the exception rather than the rule. More and more teachers are realising that it is not only their students who need to be capable, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.

So why are these online communities gaining popularity? Well for a start they are virtually free, other than the cost of the data and the device to access them. And let's face it, most people already have an internet-capable device.

Secondly, you will be interacting with educators from a wide range of backgrounds from diverse communities. You can just lurk and read what others have to say or take the next step and make a contribution, ask for help or even answer someone else's question.
  
How connected are you? You can take this survey to find out. I was 2 points off being a Web Celeb, maybe blogging a little more frequently will bump me up. What will you do this month to bump up your score and help you become a more connected educator?

My challenge to you in Connected Educator month is to sign up and attend at least one event. The great thing is that you don't even need to leave home to do it. Then join at least one online community, whether it be Twitter (suggested educators to follow - I am @jkellow), the VLN or an education-related Facebook group like my Inquiry group, Edudemic, Edutopia, TED Talks or Te@chthought. 

Or follow some educators on Pinterest and start your own Pinterest boards, get the Pin it extension for your browser and start pinning sites that interest you to your boards. You can check out my boards here and see what is possible.

Or maybe you could start your own blog. Many teachers already have a class blog and this is a good place to start but you could also start a personal blog to reflect on your teaching or share your own learning with others. You might even get some feedback. 7 Reasons Why Teachers Should Blog. You could also follow some of your favourite educational bloggers. See the sidebar for some of my favourites or to follow this blog. 52 Educational Bloggers to Follow

While you are at it, why not get your school connected if it isn't already. Lots of schools are now using Facebook and Twitter to connect with parents. Creating a Dynamic Facebook Page for your School 

So go on, dip your toes in the water, take the plunge and make new connections. You'll soon find out which ones work for you.

Related Links
Recorded webinars on the VLN
8 Tips for a Twitter-driven School Culture
Twitter as daily PLD video
Twitter in Schools - A Getting Started Guide

Tweeting for Schools

Presentation about the VLN, Twitter, Pinterest and Pond.

A Social Media Pinterest Board

Connected Educator Month
Official Twitter hashtag: #CENZ14
Twitter Account: @ConnectEduNZ

Suggested VLN groups to join:

~ iPad/iPod user group

~ New Entrant teachers

~ Year 5 - 8 teachers unite

~ Enabling e-learning

~ Blended e-learning Leadership

~ e-learning teaching

~ eLearning in Primary Maths

~ Blended e-learning Literacy

Disasters, Dilemmas and Decisions

2009

2014

I recently visited Christchurch. It was my first time back since the second and largest of the quakes in February 2011 and it was a very emotional experience. I had visited briefly after the first big quake in 2010 but my main memories of Christchurch come from the time I spent there as an e-fellow in 2006 and at several Ulearn conferences before and after that. So much has changed. 


There are still many buildings left that are obviously due to be demolished, many, many open spaces where buildings used to be, and many in the process of either being rebuilt or demolished. Many of my favourite places no longer exist or are scheduled for demolition.

2014

Many new artworks have appeared in the city, providing a strange contrast between beauty and destruction. This building was one of the strangest and, to me, most meaningful, of those artworks. Look carefully to spot which parts are real and which are paintings. A view of this building from the back is included at the end.

2014

The saddest part of my visit was seeing the Christchurch Cathedral. This building was badly damaged in both earthquakes. Parts of it look almost unscathed, if you don't look too closely, providing a glimpse of its former glory.

Sadly, the front and tower including the beautiful rose window, have completely disappeared, leaving a gaping hole. No-one was killed or injured when the tower collapsed. Having climbed to the top of the tower myself in 2006 I can appreciate how lucky that was.
The church owners have decided to demolish the church and build a new one. This decision has been surrounded by much controversy with attempts being made to restore the building. 

2014

In the interim a transitional "cardboard" cathedral has been built. Very beautiful in its own right, but naturally very different from the original. When designing the front window, designs from the original rose window were incorporated into the design to provide a link between old and new. 

So what has all this to do with education? Change is inevitable. Sometimes it is gradual, happening over a long period of time. Often we are barely aware of these changes happening, or of making conscious decisions about them. 

2014

We can also consciously decide to change something and spend time exploring possibilities and making decisions about how best to implement those changes so as to cause as little disruption as possible. Sometimes we will implement temporary changes to ease that transition or to provide some improvements while we work towards a bigger picture.

2014

Sometimes we will have change thrust upon us. This can leave us reeling and feeling helpless. It can however give us a chance to rethink what it is we value, what we want to keep and what we need to leave behind. 

Schools looking to implement an inquiry-based approach need to think about what they value and need to retain and what they can remove from their curriculum. Attempting an inquiry approach without doing this can only end in tears. More on this thought to come.

More Photos

Cathedral 2014

Cathedral 2014

Photograph G. O'Beirne 2006

What is real? 2014

Play, Passion and Purpose

Play, Passion and Purpose

Tony Wagner's video on creating innovators looks at 5 key factors in creating innovators. These include and my personal favourite: Play, Passion and Purpose. We need to give students time to play and explore the world around them, with guidance so they can get the most from their experiences. We need to encourage play and passion in ways like Stonefields School is doing in their Break Through time, and companies like Google do with their 20% time or Genius Time. 

We need to value creativity, innovation, problem-solving and iteration. As Wagner says it is not what students know that matters, " What the world cares about is what they can do with what they know." So what is it that we assess and therefore show we value? Edutopia describes some ideas on Building Creative Confidence.

One of the questions I find myself asking teachers most often is "What is the purpose of this lesson/activity/inquiry...?" Sometimes teachers find this easy to answer, others struggle, eventually giving answers like "It is in the test", "We have always done this" or "I was told to".

The purpose of everything we do in the classroom needs to be really clear to both us and our students. If we are clear on the purpose it will make choices surrounding the lesson/activity/inquiry much clearer for the teacher and the student. The purpose of the inquiry will provide clear guidance on what we do as a result of an activity or inquiry. Which also means that often we may not know at the start of an inquiry exactly what we will do as a result as our findings and our purpose will guide that action.

Classroom Blogs

Here are a few classroom blogs that are worth a look. Don't forget to make a comment if you see something you like. I will add to this list as I find more. If you have a blog you want to share please mention it in the comments.

If you have a New Zealand  class blog you may want to join the VLN group Quadblogging Aotearoa. You should also check out the Enabling E-learning page on encouraging blog engagement and this site on effective commenting. This blog post on the rewards of blogging is also worth a look.

Allanah King's Class Blog

http://tcsrm8.blogspot.co.nz/ Lots of great work using i-pads

http://mrststamariki.blogspot.co.nz/p/blog-page.html 

http://www.8spdmbas2013.blogspot.co.nz/p/inquiry-project-blogs.html
Includes links to student blogs which are used as reflective journals for their inquiries.

http://room4-brightwater.blogspot.co.nz/ Includes some podcasts of the students' stories recorded using AudioBoo on the i-pad.

http://room4learningjourneys.blogspot.co.nz/ Have a look at the student blogs listed on the right hand side.

http://www.clyderoom6.blogspot.co.nz/ A junior blog

http://2013pinehill11.blogspot.co.nz/   Includes lots of movies made by this year 2 class.

http://moturoa.blogspot.co.nz/ - lots of work done using i-pads

http://melvilleroom8.blogspot.co.nz/ Includes some work using Minecraft

http://room9nelsoncentral2009.blogspot.co.nz/ Year 2 blog

http://www.ptengland.school.nz/our-blogs Pt. England School Blogs

http://maraekakahoschool2.blogspot.co.nz/ Marae Kakaho school

http://pesmarks.blogspot.co.nz/ A Pt. England school blog

Landfillhamonic

This speaks for itself. If you want to know more check out their facebook page 
https://www.facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie

Confusing and Perplexing

Ramsay Musallam believes our job as teachers is to confuse and perplex our students and evoke real questions. He believes we need to cultivate curiosity and inquiry.
He gives 3 rules:
1. Curiosity comes first.
2. Embrace the mess.
3. Practice reflection.

If we followed his advice from this TED talk then classrooms would be exciting places where real learning was taking place. He makes a valid comment about Flipped classrooms being no improvement if they just deliver the same boring content in a digital way.

On Procrastination, Driving and Dispositions

I am an expert at procrastination. If I don't want to do something I can find hundreds of perfectly reasonable-sounding excuses for not doing it.

I drive quite large distances as part of my job, and beautiful though the scenery  on the Coromandel Peninsula is, after a while my attention can begin to wander. So often I write blog posts in my head while I drive.  This one was partially composed on the road between Whangamata and Whitianga.

Now those who have checked my blog will now be wondering what happened to all those blog posts. To answer that I need to refer to Yoram Harpaz.  In his article ‘Approaches to teaching thinking: Towards a conceptual mapping of the field’ he talks about good thinking being a combination of Thinking Skills + Thinking Dispositions + Understanding of Knowledge.  

Now when it comes to blogging I have the requisite skills and understanding, I understand the concept of blogging, I know how to blog, I’ve blogged before. What I have lacked is the disposition to blog. Without that, my tendency to procrastinate wins the day and no blog gets written.

Which brings me to inquiry-based learning. In this video Sharon Friesen from the Galilleo Institute talks about Inquiry as a Disposition.

Inquiry as a disposition from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Sharon Friesen talks about inquiry being a disposition cultivated during teaching and learning, rather than a process that 'gets done' by students. She talks about successful inquiry leading to deep understanding, giving examples from her own experiences.

Inquiry isn't a process. While some sort of scaffolding of an inquiry can be very helpful and having a shared understanding around inquiry is essential, we shouldn't be focusing on the process and ignoring the heart of inquiry. We need to foster the disposition to inquire.
As Socrates put it: “Wisdom begins in wonder.”

And hopefully I now have developed a disposition to blog and my posts will be a bit more frequent. Time will tell.

LATS 2011 Questioning

Learning at Schools 2011 Questioning
Trevor Bond

This was an excellent session, very thought-provoking and informative. I created a Google Doc of my notes which can be accessed here: http://tinyurl.com/BondQuestioning

I lked the levels of questioning which provided a scaffold for both the teaching and assessing of questioning skills. One very good point that he made was the importance of modelling, that by asking and answering poor questions we reinforce them. He has also developed a rubric to aid this assessment. http://question-skills.wikispaces.com/The+QuESTioning+Rubric

Another valuable point he made was the importance of both open and closed questions. There has been a tendency by some to negate the importance of closed questions when in fact they can be very valuable. They can save us a lot of work for example by eliminating some options. Many of the subsidiary questions for inquiry are closed questions and are needed to answer the Key question.

The other main point I agreed with was that inquiry does not always have to involve huge, rich, fertile questions. Yes these are great and once or twice a year a rich inquiry is extremely valuable, but there is a place for many smaller authentic inquiries. An example might be "How can we keep our cloakbay tidy? This might only last a few hours but could something that is really relevant to students and result in a large number of inquiry skills being developed.

Trevor has developed a questioning wiki http://ictnz.com/Questioning.htm which is well worth a look.
Learning at Schools 2011 Trevor Bond - Good Inquiry Good Learning 
My notes can be viewed in a Google Doc http://tinyurl.com/BondGoodInquiryGoodLearning

Trevor made a very good distinction between Celebration of the Found - celebrating what students found out abut the topic and Celebration of the Understood - celebrating what students did with the info http://ictnz.com/Inquiry%20Learning/good%20inquiry%20learning.htm#celebrationoffound These two concepts were coined by Dr Ross Todd

LearningatSchools 2011 Day One Keynote

The first keynote by Scott McLeod I found interesting. The messages he was giving were good ones:
He talked about Disruptive Innovations http://www.claytonchristensen.com/disruptive_innovation.html and how we need to move forward. Most of the presentation could be summed up in the David Warlick quote

“No generation in history has been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.”

However I had a certain sense of deja vu. I have been hearing these same messages for the last 6 years if not longer at these conferences. Why are we needing to hear them again and again? Do schools not already have this message?

It is my belief that primary schools at least have got this message loud and clear and most teachers have made the pedagogical shift or at least are well on the way. What many are lacking however is the skills, strategies and confidence to implement this in the classroom.

Moving to a more student-focussed rather than teacher-centred approach is scary for many. It involves relinquishing some control and many find this hard. They need a lot of support as they embark on this journey. Instead of focussing on what we are doing wrong, how about a focus on how we can move forward, what actually needs to happen in the classroon on Monday morning.

This video of a valedictorian delivering a speech against schooling is worth taking 9 minutes out of your day to listen to. For those of us fostering inquiry in our classrooms it is a reminder of why that is so important.

http://www.wimp.com/valedictorianschooling/

Ten Powerful Things To With A Laptop

The first keynote at Ulearn09 this morning was Gary Stager. He had some messages that very much tied in with my thinking.
Gary mentioned the internet being about primary resources. This was one of the findings from my e-fellows research where students were able to go directly to the source of the information they required rather than relying on often inaccurate or biased second-hand accounts.

He talked about when the dominant metaphor for computing is looking stuff up – that this will result in kids looking up inappropriate stuff. Something to think about, although I believe there is a place for using computers in this way to inform their inquiry. Obviously though, in that case it is not the dominant metaphor.

Of his ten powerful things to do with a laptop the ones that resonated the most for me were:

• Share your knowledge
• Answer tough questions
• Make sense of data
• Change the world
• Become a mathematician, a scientist, a poet, a playwright etc.

These fit very well with the inquiry-based approach to learning I am so passionate about. Sharing knowledge is an important use of technology. Computers, and increasingly other technologies such as cellphones, are providing means for students to share their knowledge with an audience far outside their own school. Blogs, websites, wikis, podcasts, Twitter and social networking sites are just a few of the ways students are reaching people outside their school walls.

Students do need to be answering the tough questions. This fits in well with the characteristics of fertile questions developed by Yoram Harpaz and Adam Lefstein in their 'Communities of Thinking' article. These have the following characteristics:

• Open - there are several different or competing answers.
• Undermining - makes the learner question their basic assumptions.
• Rich - Cannot be answered without careful and lengthy research. Usually able to be broken into subsidiary questions.
• Connected - relevant to the learners.
• Charged - has an ethical dimension
• Practical - Is able to be researched given the available resources.

Making sense of data is something that is an essential skill but one that is often overlooked. There is a need for active teaching of the skills that students need to be able to take data, critically analyse it and apply it to tasks.

The last two points made by Gary speak very much to having our students complete real world tasks rather than tasks whose only purpose is to pass a test or tick a box. There is a tendency by some to underestimate what students are capable of. Students can make a real difference, create real knowledge. We need to make sure they have the opportunities to do so and not just regurgitate existing knowledge.

The role of the teacher was emphasised with Gary saying "A prompt is worth a thousand words" when you have:

• Appropriate materials
• Sufficient time
• A supportive culture

This is seems very consistent with an inquiry approach. I have talked before about the need for teachers to provide those prompts for our students.

In Jacqueline Brooks’ book ‘In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms’ she summed this up very nicely:

“Critics contend that the constructivist approach stimulates learning only around concepts in which the students have a pre-kindled interest. Such criticisms miss the mark. Posing problems of emerging relevance is a guiding principle of constructivist pedagogy. However, relevance does not have to be pre-existing for the student. Not all students arrive at the classroom door interested in learning about verb constructs, motion and mechanics, biological cycles, or historical timelines, but most students can be helped to construct understandings of the importance of these topics. Relevance can emerge through teacher mediation. " (Brooks, 1999, p.35)

Gary's website.

Voicethread

I have been very impressed with what Voicethread can do and can also see huge possibilities. Voicethread is a free website which describes itself as "A tool for having conversations around media". I came across the following Voicethread on the Japanese internment camps from WWII done by 4th grade students in the newsletter from Voicethread. This short video explains the project.

Here is the Voicethread:



Another one that impressed me was done by kindergarten students talking about trout hatchlings.



There is an educators' version of Voicethread which provides a more secure environment. There is also a comment moderation option so you can control who comments if you choose to invite public comment. You can find out more about EdVoicethread here and here. There is a free educator version which is worth joining as it gives you unlimited Voicethreads (up to a total of 2GB) as opposed to 3 in the standard version. I think it is worth upgrading to the Pro Educator option for only a $10 one-off verification fee. This gives you a lot more online storage space (10GB) as well as the ability to export archival Voicethreads.

There is also a Voicethread Ning and a Voicethread wiki where as well as classroom examples you can find classes wanting to collaborate on Voicethread projects.

Edtalks Video

Yes I know it's been a while, so don't fall off your chairs in shock that I have made a post. Will be making another one shortly on inquiry dispositions so watch this space.

This one is a bit of shameless self promotion. The video clip can be found on the edtalks site which I recommend you take a look at if you haven't already.


Inquiry based learning from EDtalks on Vimeo.

ULearn08 Day One

Tony Ryan's ULearn08 workshop today on roles for the transformational teacher gave me some much needed energy after a very early start due to cancelled flights. He showed part of the Where the Hell is Matt? dance video which I'd seen before but is worth seeing again.



Some things from Tony's presentation that struck a chord with me were the need to develop awareness of self-talk in our students, developing active listening skills and the need for more educational intrepeneurs, innovating from within our schools.

He asked what I felt was a very valid question about the percentage of time we engage in positive dialogue about education. It is very easy to get caught up with what is wrong. There is so much we can celebrate, with many great things going on in and out of classrooms. We need to share these more.

The Ulearn08 tweets are providing some more thoughts on the conference, some valuable, some not so much . How many pens people have does seem to be getting a lot of attention. Not hooked on Twitter but have made some valuable links with other educators and definitely providing some links to resources.

Just started using Twitter. Have resisted in the past because it seemed to be a place where there was a whole lot of chat about what people had for lunch or similar inanities, but it seems I was not doing it justice. There seems to be a thriving educational community who are twittering. I've already picked ups some useful resources. I think maybe the short posts might suit me better. As you may have noticed I'm not a consistent blogger but Twitter seems a little easier so maybe I'll use it more, time will tell.

I saw a video by Michael Wesch today which is worth a watch. He is the guy who put together The Machine is Us/ing Us. It is called 'A Portal to Media Literacy' and examines assumptions about information and how students get meaning from their education and how they can make meaningful connections.



The video is just over an hour long so you need to set aside some time to watch it. In the video he talks about a project he does with his students and there is also a video about that: 'Twitter and the World Simulation". This is only about 4 minutes long.

While in Helsinki we visited a high school. I was very distressed to hear about the school shooting near Helsinki shortly after my return home. I was pleased to hear it wasn't the school we visited but very distressed that this disturbing trend has moved to yet another country.

The students at the school I visited all looked very relaxed and friendly. There were lots of open areas with tables, chairs, sofas etc where students congregated in their breaks.


All students receive a free lunch at school. The school also had a tuck shop with decidedly unhealthy food for sale. There were however very few overweight students to be seen. This was despite the fact the students could not go outside at breaks on many days.

I am currently attending the Microsoft Innovative Teachers' Forum in Helsinki Finland in late October. This is an amazing city steeped in history and there is some truly amazing architecture. The weather here is not as cold as I thought it would be, around 5 degrees C.
There are over 80 educators here from all around the world and the range of projects is incredible.You can read my thoughts on the conference at the Microsoft Partners in Learning site.
Have a look at the photos below, they were all taken during the day. I only saw the sun on the final day I was in Helsinki and it was quite low in the sky even at mid-day. It was mid Autumn when I was there. To view more photos go to my Flickr page.

If, like me, you have had your doubts or disagreed with Marc Prensky's article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, you should take a look at Jamie McKenzie's latest article in which he not only disagrees with the main premises of Prensky's article but also produces research to support his opinion. Well worth a read.

www.inquiringmind.co.nz