2009 finished in a real whirl with term 4 being one of the more hectic terms I have ever been through, hence the late reflection. It was a year overall where the blogging dropped off a fraction and that is something I aim to rectify this year. This was in part to finally having a look at twitter and I must say it is a great tool for coming across resources. While I have not posted as religiously as most I regularly read and come across great resources on a regular basis using twitter. Twitter has quickly become a staple in my professional learning and I see this continuing in 2010.
Term 4 began with presenting at the PDHPE conference which was a great experience and while a little out of the comfort zone, it was something I enjoyed and hope to do again. The presentation was repeated in a webinar at the end of term and that was a very different experience. Presenting to a blank screen and knowing there were 60 odd other particpants at the other end was hard to get the head around. Resources for both presentations are at – http://ictinpdhpe09.pbworks.com (conference) & http://ictinpe.wikispaces.com (ACHPER Webinar). Both workshops were really just introductory teasers into what is out there and showcased a range of simple but powerful apps that can be used by teachers to enhance teaching and learning. It looks as though ACHPER might run a range of ‘how to’ workshops this year and I look forward to being involved in these if the option arises.
Towards the end of the term the position of Learning Technologies Coordinator came up at Magdalene and this was a key driver behind the unusually hectic ending to the term. Applying interviewing and receiving the job meant I had to tie up all things associated with PDHPE Coordinating and get my head around a new role in the final weeks of term. No small feat and I think it will take some time yet to get my head around the new role!
As mentioned in the previous post, the end of they year had a tragic ending which really shook my world and the beginning weeks of 2010 will be particularly difficult with my next door neighbour to be in the staffroom no longer there. What I have come out of the experience with is a strengthened commitment to helping others and really focusing on the ‘human element’ of being a teacher. It was without doubt Kev’s strength and effective relationships are so crucial to teaching. While I often get caught up in the busyness of work, I aim to ensure that this year I invest time and effort in developing the great relationships I have with the students and teachers at Magdalene as at the end of the day, to me, it is what teaching is all about.
“Teachers do not write on inanimate objects but on the hearts and minds of human beings”
In attending the funeral of Kevin Wade today (a magnificent teacher from Magdalene) the above quote jumped into my head when I saw a mass of students exit the church to form a guard of honour. On Christmas eve, so many students donned their full school uniform in stifling heat to pay their respects to a man who had taught and cared for them. He had clearly touched the lives of so many students and I can see just why so many students would have felt this way when I think about how he treated everyone he met. He was a larger than life personality who made everyone around him feel good and he had a genuine care for other people.
The eulogy mentioned that he was doing his dream job and would not change it for the world and I think teaching can be like that. At its core is working with people and while they may forget the formulas he taught them, they will never forget how he treated them, nor will anyone who was lucky enough to cross his path.
You have clearly taught them well Kev and you would have been so proud to see just how many lives you touched.
After reading parts of John Hattie’s visible learning it really re-emphasised the importance of feedback being so critical for student learning. Any educator knows that feedback has a huge impact on learning, especially if it is timely, specific and provides direction on ways to improve.
And this got me to thinking about just how little feedback we get as teachers.
Besides having prac teachers in my classes a few times a year I get very little feedback from students or other teachers on my performance as a teacher. It largely comes down to my intuition and personal reflection on lessons and in the busyness of school life, quite a few lessons unfortunately get very little reflection.
This to me is a real shame as I know there are lots of areas of my teaching that I could use some tweaking on and quite possibly areas that require attention that I am not conscious of. And the reality is that a lot of these things go unnoticed and I never have the opportunity to improve in those areas and ultimately provide better learning opportunities for students.
While I have been surveying students regularly on my teaching (love google forms!!) I think there is a lot to be said for having another teacher critique what happens in the classroom and engage in discussion around this.
How much could good quality feedback help improve my teaching?
Following on from my last post I guess a similar question could be asked about the effectiveness of using computer/web based tools to cover fairly basic and fundamental knowledge.
Is it worth spending considerable time learning and utilising a tool which does engage students, to complete an activity which students can learn just as easily and much faster using more traditional methods. What is the cost / benefit analysis of the tool? How much time is it worth spending for the learning that we want to take place. In a crowded curriculum I find this to be an important question to ask.
So can the tool bring learning to life? If it is core content that we feel is essential for students to understand can the tool engage the students and help them develop a deeper understanding that would have been difficult using traditional means or a teacher directed approach. For content that students may perceive as boring but teachers and society considers important, can the tool be used to switch on the students mind and engage them with the subject matter. If so then the tool may very well serve its purpose.
Another important question to ask is whether the students are simply engaged in the tool as opposed to the learning and are teachers measuring the learning that is taking place to be able to answer this question.
I have started making crude summaries of some of the reading/listening I have been doing and do this on google docs so I have access to them everywhere. The latest book (What teachers need to know about teaching methods) & listening Why students don’t like school) have questioned some of the thinking behind the constructivist approach to teaching. Particularly it has suggested that for basic skills and fundamental knowledge a instructivist or teacher centred approach can be far more effective. Once this basic knowledge has been gained student centred, constructivist approaches can be effective at developing the ’21st century skills’ (which are not new skills but are becoming more and more important in this day and age such as collaboration and critical thinking). Neither suggest that one way is better than the other as such just that each method has a purpose and needs to be used to achieve appropriate goals.
Is there ever a case for using a constructivist approach to help learners understand fundamental knowledge?
I notice a lot of teachers will use a range of methods which on the surface may not appear to be the most efficient method for the learning goals stated, but claim that the method engages students in their learning and so is therefore effective. They may be considered to be using constructivist approaches for teaching fundamental knowledge which apparently can be taught more effectively in a direct manner.
Eg: For road safety if I was looking at students developing an understanding of the major factors leading to accidents, a sample project may be to have students work in teams to research and create a presentation (movie, podcast, ppt etc) for teenagers about the major risk factors for having an accident. The time required would be significant and the quality of a number of the group presentations could quite possibly be relatively poor.
Am I better off developing my skills as a lecturer/presenter and delivering this myself to develop their fundamental knowledge around the area or can the collaborative approach be more powerful and engaging and help students develop a deeper understanding of the issue?
Should I combine the two approaches and always directly teach the essential, fundamental knowledge and then use the student centred approach to deepen their knowledge or is there justification for leaving them to their own devices in a well planned project and letting them discover this fundamental knowledge, even though this goes against the research based evidence?
Just listened to this interesting discussion on Daniel Willington’s new book – “Why students don’t like school” and made a crude summary of the points I found interesting below. I think I expected him to be an advocate for technology and new models of schooling based on the name of the book only. It was refreshing to come across some ideas challenging some of the accepted wisdoms of learning and I am currently going through his website and digging up lots of other interesting stuff.
Much better to listen to the actual interview as my wording has quite possibly changed the meaning of a few of his points but here it is anyway.
Cognitive sweet spot - people like learning new things but only under certain circumstances. Learning has to be challenging but not too hard or too easy. Can be difficult to set challenging activities for a mixed ability class of 30 students that hit the ‘cognitive sweet spot” for all students. If activities are not in this cognitive sweet spot then is unlikely to be interesting or engaging for student.
21st century learning/skills - goals of 21st century skills are great but question is that the goals are not new so why is it going to be different this time. Has been tried previously and failed. Higher order thinking skills are important but are not new. Technology is a small part of 21st century learning. Major thrust is about problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration which is not new. Current circumstances make these skills more important than in the past for school leavers but is not convinced current models are the right ones.
Constructivist approaches - The argument seems to be that the learning should look like the mental processes but does not necessarily agree to this. Get into trouble when we use the idea to influence models of pedagogy. When we leap to the idea that we construct everything so we let the student do a lot of that constructing. Whether we use discovery learning, guided discovery or direct instruction they are still constructing knowledge. Cannot have a ‘passive receptor’ of knowledge. It is possible to have very effective lecture style, didactic learning and possible to have very poor learning this way – just as it is possible to have great & poor student centred learning activities.
You can’t think critically about something unless you have a strong background knowledge. Back to basic vs 21 st century skills- need them both – need a good knowledge of facts to be able to really develop higher order skills.
21st century advocates would argue that the balance has been to heavy around facts and looking for a better balance.
The way that accountability has been handled means that examinations dominate the education landscape as the key accountability measure. These largely encourage learning bits and pieces of knowledge that are not integrated. Fact collecting and fact teaching.
Multiple intelligence - different people have different abilities – importance of goals in using multiple intelligence theory in schooling. Gardner says that just because there are multiple intelligences does not mean that you have to teach to them all in schools – depends on the goals of schooling – economic, self actualisation, social etc. Eg economic – would not focus on all intelligences – self actualisation – would try and develop them all.
Can’t cover everything in schools - better to cover a limited amount of material and develop in students a deeper understanding of that material. eg maths – cover 6 or 7 topics and repeat them over 4 yrs. Better performing countries cover limited topics but develop deeper understanding. Procedural knowledge is developed in drill and repetition but students lacking conceptual knowledge. Once taken out of context students struggle to apply the knowledge.
Technology - will it change the way we think – Web 2.0 tools – the fact they exist will not change things – it will depend on whether we can find ways to leverage them in a way that is useful. Greater possibility for more interaction but someone still needs to know something – much more information available . Greatly increases the burden on the student to differentiate the interesting and useful information from the non-useful. There are more opportunities for learning – still need to be able to differentiate the information.
Saw an interesting article in the daily telegraph today that I thought it raised a lot of good points about issues with the current computer roll out. I disagreed with one point and have included my reply.
“Personal computers, desktops and laptops are as the name indicates intended for personal use and not classroom teaching. They are not, and never will be an appropriate technology for teaching a whole class.”
Perhaps not in the traditional sense where the teacher stands at the front of the room and attempts to fill the heads of students with information that they must regurgitate for a test, but they can be extremely powerful classroom tools if you are looking to have students create and construct knowledge and look at alternative models of schooling that are more relevant to the age we live in. Constructivist learning theories are well supported by a digital classroom and they provide the opportunity to create student centred learning environments and diversify learning to make learning more relevant and engaging to students.
An internet connected laptop is by far the most powerful learning tool we have ever had access to, but I agree that it all comes down to the ability of the teacher to harness the tool and create experiences for learning and this is the bit the government seems to have missed. Professional development and teacher ability is the key to making this worthwhile and this unfortunately appears to be an afterthought, as opposed to the foundation of the initiative.
While I think the core messages need to be about the pedagogy as opposed to the tools, I thought I would put together a few of the tools that I think would be of most benefit teachers who are just starting out on their digital journey.
1. delicious (or other social bookmarking tool) – a simple way to share and find web based resources with others. Create networks and subscribe to key words so you collect everything from the web that you want without having to go looking for it. Here are my PDHPE links as an example.
2. google reader (or other RSS tool) – have the web come to you. Instead of returning to quality sites to see if they have changed, get them to send you all of their new stuff with an RSS feed. Can collect from blogs, wikis & webpages that displat the little RSS symbol (and any other pages with ‘add to rss’ or similar).
3. pbworks (or other wiki platform) – wiki’s are a great way to collaborate with others and a simple way to create interactive webpages. Yr 12 PDHPE Wiki and 9 PASS wiki as examples.
4. google docs – I could really separate each document as they all have great features but again, the ability for more than one person to interact on the one document has some great potential benefits. The spreadsheets application is one of my favourites as it can be used to create online surveys that are automatically entered into a spreadsheet. Great for surveying students and creating quizzes. The word document is useful for faculty programming and group tasks.
5. Wordpress (or other blogging platform) – great tool for webpage creation, reflective writing, publishing and sharing student work amongst other things. Example of Yr 7 PDHPE and Sport Coaching Blog used with students. Lots of great PDHPE blogs around if you have a look about!!
6. Google calendar – keep organised and productive with google calendar. Send free sms or email reminders for events and organise your work and personal life.
7. slideshare – loads of great powerpoints and resources here and a great place to share and store student presentations. Ability to embed them into your own blogs and wikis to showcase student works.
8. youtube/teacher tube – lots of great resources here and the potential to post up the work of students to add to your wiki or webpages. You can keep them private if required and have a place to store your video’s online.
9. Twitter – while I rarely ‘tweet’ myself I do come across a lot of resources from the people I follow who seemed to have slowed down on the blog posts and amped up the twittering.
10. google search – I almost don’t consider it a tool because I use it so regularly and it is such a natural part of using the internet. Can’t go past it though.
Lots of others I could easily slot in but all of the above deserve their place (for the time being!).
I am getting more and more excited about the digital education revolution that is happening in NSW DET Schools, and not just for the great opportunity I see this providing for students. I think part of its greatest potential is all of the reflection on learning that will occur amongst teachers over the next few years.
Conversations have already well and truly started and will continue as teachers grapple with a new aspect to teaching and learning. I am sure it will encourage many with its great potential but also trouble others who have difficulty with, or resist its use for a wide variety of reasons. It is the conversations that will come about because of this that I see have such great potential. Teachers will be forced to re examine their practices and think about the ways we currently do things and whether there are better ways of doing them. I am sure that initially there will be people who strongly oppose the laptops, and those who are strong campaigners for them and to me this will be healthy for the debates that will arise over how, when and why laptops can be effective learning tools.
A lot of these conversations will take place in spaces where others will have access to them and while they may be locked down behind DET walls, DET teachers will (should) all have the opportunity to take part in these conversations. In the past these may have taken place in faculty rooms, network meetings or executive areas, but they were largely constrained to the people and spaces in which they took place. We now have the means for these to take place in online spaces which can be shared and accessed anytime, anywhere with internet access. To me this is powerful and will help us as teachers develop and reflect on current practices, which will hopefully benefit students in all of our classes.
I have been using bubbl.us as a prefered mindmapping tool with students for a while now because it is so simple to use. Students don’t have to sign in and a 30 second demonstration can have the students off and running. I find this to be a fairly common feature of web based apps – they are designed to be very intuitive and simple to use. Students also seem to like the visual design and the way the bubbles explode when you delete them. Funny how the small things can make such a difference. The students actually want to understand the work so they can create more bubbles and join them together etc which was an unplanned benefit of using computer over paper. The fact they can make mistakes and fix them and produce a nice looking product at the end encourages them to experiment as they go and not worry too much about making mistakes which I quite like also.
I have included a quick video showing a few of the features and how it works and have attached a link to some of the students work. I uploaded their mindmaps to flickr and the next step will be for the students to go in and critique the mind maps using some of the features on flickr that allow students to comment on the images.
The ICTEV conference is being held down in Melbourne today and I have just checked out Jarrod Robinson’s presentation on using mobile phones in the classroom. He is doing lots of innovative things around implementing ICT in the classroom and his afternoon session on his use of the nintendo wii in his classes is also a great program with lots of potential.
I also stumbled across this great little video made by year 6 students on mobile phones and I can see this would be a great little activity we could do in PDHPE. It is based on the video “mankind is no island” which was the winner of tropfest NY in 2008.
There are lots of areas in PDHPE you could have students create a similar style video and it is an activity I think would engage students and get them thinking deeply about an issue to try and construct their movie.
My classes have greatly enjoyed using google docs as a way to share information and complete class activities and I have just read a post by Jarrod Robinson who completed this activity in a similar way. He has taken a screencast of the activity and this provides a great visual as to the way the google spreadsheet works.
Essentially, using google spreadsheets allows all students to input their data simultaneously and the graph will update live. It is interesting to see the data turned into something meaningful in real time and this in turn is quite motivating for the students. I have used a ‘google form’ to enter the data also but this does not allow for the instant updating of the graph so I prefer to enter straight into the spreadsheet.
If you have not already come across Jarrod’s blog I recommend having a look around as there is lots of great stuff over there and his post will provide further insight into how you can run the activity.
I recently put together some of the important data from the 2008 AIHW report that is regularly used in PDHPE into a google presentation. I did this to use in class and also so it can be uploaded to our wiki. I like google docs because if I decide to add anything to the presentation then I do not have to worry about re uploading it anywhere as it will be automatically updated everywhere it is embedded. Just another little benefit of google presentations.
I had one of those moments recently when I really felt like I had made a difference and helped my students understand something.
In one of my classes we had a very heated discussion around racism related issues and it was great that students were being open and honest, but I was deeply concerned about some of the views and comments that were being made. While I tried my best to challenge some of their views, a number of students were very set in their stance and I could not seem to get through the importance of tolerance and appreciating diversity and difference.
I remembered a really powerful video I had watched titled ‘a class divided’. “One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination.” (website description)
I watched this with my students in the next lesson we had and I could not believe the impact it had on the students. We had another equally open and honest discussion immediately following the video and each of the most vocal students the previous day had all commented along the lines that they had never really thought of the impact of racism like that and that it was great to see it from another point of view. You could see in their body language and the way that spoke that their mind had opened to the issue of discrimination and racism. I don’t think I could have used words to open their mind in the same way as this video managed to do so. Watch the movie and you will understand!!
