small steps

I have been reading about a number of teachers who live stream their teaching to the world and thought it would be an interesting project with a Senior PDHPE class. The next time I have a senior class my plan is to record all lessons and edit to the key teaching aspects and then upload these to the web so students and others can see what is happening.

Benefits I can foresee include students having access to classes if they are away and being able to use it for revision. Others could also critique the lessons and it has the potential to open up conversation around the teaching and learning strategies used. I see the major potential barrier as being the time required to edit and upload the videos and it may be the breaking point of the project but I still think I will give it a try and see how it goes. While the focus would not be on students I see it would be necessary for students to give consent along with their parents on the project.

I would like to see a DET or statewide attempt at the project where they identify a few quality teachers and organise for them to be recorded and use it as a Professional development type project. I think this would be great for beginning teachers especially but all teachers could potentially benefit.

Stay tuned.

Just read an interesting article on 21st century skills that is worth a look. The article looks at the
argument that 21st century skills should replace the teaching of content where the article essentially suggests that content has an important role to play in developing the 21st century skills.

“Unfortunately some 21st-century skills proponents believe these skills should replace the teaching of content. They believe that because so much new knowledge is being created, students should focus on how to know instead of knowing. This view threatens to reopen a debate in American education that is not new either: content pitted against critical thinking rather than the two complementing each other.”

“Content undergirds critical thinking, analysis, and broader information literacy skills. To critically analyze various documents requires engagement with content and a framework within which to place the information.”

Worth a read overall.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” albert einstein.

This is one of my favourite quotes and it underpins the way I present information as a teacher.

As a teacher I see our job as being to help our students understand and grasp complex ideas in simple ways that make sense to them. This does not mean that we attempt to take the complexity out of the ideas but that we are to present the ideas in a way that they can get their head around to be able to explore the concept on a deeper level. I am guilty at times of trying to present ideas in a complex form to students which often leaves some a little lost and the concept can go straight over their heads with having a chance to engage with the concept or issue. 

To balance that quote out I like the following quote also. They almost contradict one another but I think it comes down to explaining things in ways that are relevant and meaningful to students so that they can comprehend them and work with them. 

Teaching is a fine art – hope I can master it someday!!

PLC has been in the news recently about an assessment task it set where students were able to use the internet and mobile phones to access information to assist them in completing the task.

This post from Chris Betcher who teaches at the school is a great response to some misconceptions about the task. It has raised some important issues to the mainstream and hopefully these will be explored some more into the future.

I think it is great they have put this out there and have been willing to open their assessment methods up to the world. Ahead of their time perhaps, or just trying to get to where we should be???

dy/av : 002 : the next-gen lecturer from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

Stumbled across a great blog by Dan Meyer where he shares his classroom experiences as a beginning maths teacher. He is a very clever film maker and poses lots of good questions in his blog and videos. 

Just came across this interesting poem at http://tasteach.edublogs.org/

The Things We Steal From Children

By Dr John Edwards

If I am always the one to think of where to go next.
If where we go is always the decision of the curriculum or my curiosity and not theirs,
If motivation is mine,
If I always decide on the topic to be studied, the title of the story, the problem to be worked on,
If I am always the one who has reviewed their work and decided what they need,
How will they ever know how to begin?

If I am the one who is always monitoring progress.
If I set the pace of all working discussions,
If I always look ahead, foresee problems and endeavour to eliminate them,
If I swoop in and save them from cognitive conflict,
If I never allow them to feel and use the energy from confusion and frustration,
If things are always broken into short working periods,
If myself and others are allowed to break into their concentration,
If bells and I are always in control of the pace and flow of work,
How will they learn to continue their own work?

If all the marking and editing is done by me,
If the selection of which work is to be published or evaluated is made by me,
If what is valued and valuable is always decided by external sources or by me,
If there is no forum to discuss what delights them in their task, what is working,
what is not working, what they plan to do about it,
If they have not learned a language of self-assessment,
If ways of communicating their work are always controlled by me,
If our assessments are mainly summative rather then formative,
If they do not plan their way forward to further action,
How will they find ownership, direction and delight in what they do?

If I speak of individuals but present learning as if they are all the same,
If I am never seen to reflect and reflection time is never provided,
If we never speak together about reflection and thinking and never develop a vocabulary for such discussion,
If we do not take opportunities to think about our thinking,
If I constantly set them exercises that do not intellectually challenge them,
If I set up learning environments that interfere with them learning from their own actions,
If I give them recipes to follow,
If I only expect the one right conclusion,
If I signify that there are always right and wrong answers,
If I never let them persevere with something
really difficult which they cannot master,
If I make all work serious work and discourage playfulness,
If there is no time to explore,
If I lock them into adult time constraints too early,
How will they get to know themselves as a thinker?

If they never get to help anyone else,
If we force them to always work and play with children of the same age,
If I do not teach them the skills of working co-operatively,
If collaboration can be seen as cheating,
If all classroom activities are based on competitiveness,
If everything is seen to be for marks,
How will they learn to work with others?

For if they…
have never experienced being challenged in a safe environment,
have had all of their creative thoughts explained away,
are unaware what catches their interest and how then to have confidence in that interest,
have never followed something they are passionate about to a satisfying conclusion,
have not clarified the way they sabotage their own learning,
are afraid to seek help and do not know who or how to ask,
have not experienced overcoming their own inertia,
are paralysed by the need to know everything before writing or acting,
have never got bogged down,
have never failed,
have always played it safe,
how will they ever know who they are?

Feedback is essential for learning and as teachers, in my experience, we generally get very little feedback in regards to our teaching practices. The last time I was formally observed in a lesson was on my last year of Practice teaching some 9 years ago. I have had prac teachers observe my teaching but not from a critical perspective and I think I could benefit from someone coming into my room and critiquing what I do.

While we acknowledge that our students need regular feedback on their work to help guide their learning we don’t back this up for ourselves as learners and it can occur that we may go years without any critical appraisal of our lessons and our teaching styles. We get anecdotal feedback through the way our classes respond to us and our impression of what we think they think but obviously this is fairly limited and it is hard to know exactly what the students think and feel about us as teachers and our lessons.

Our school is currently completing a school review and improvement process and our group is working on a number of tasks including an open classrooms project. The idea is to try and get teachers into each others classrooms to see what they do and learn from one another. As PE teachers we often get to see each other teach outdoors which is great but the dynamics and pedagogy of teaching a theory lesson is quite different to practical and I think there is a lot to be gained from going inside each others classrooms.

It will be interesting to see how the initiative goes as, while I think most agree with the idea in principle, it may be quite uncomfortable at first to have others watching and critiquing what we do. Also time is always a critical issue with teachers and whether we can make the time for this remains to be seen.

After watching Chris Lehmann speak at the NECC conference about his schools (Science Leadership Academy) approach to teaching and learning, I have realised I need to ask better questions of my students more regularly.  He talks in his session about asking questions that we don’t know the answer to and allowing students to find their own answers. While I am aware of the importance of asking fertile questions I think I have fallen into the habit of not asking anywhere near enough of them.

I think the ‘googleable’ questions are much easier to ask and allow us to remain in control because we know what the answer should be and can lead our students to them. To ask questions that students are forced to interpret and think about can get ‘messy’ but opens the door for authentic learning and is something I think I need to refocus on.

I must admit homework is not an issue I have thought about too much but I have been reading an interesting debate over homework on another blog, The Faculty Room. This blog has a range of educators that contribute and discuss issues in education. An entry by Dana Huff titled ‘the homework is unecessary myth‘ was well challenged by two other entries, Let them be kids and Alfie Kohn weighs in. These make for interesting reading and both sides seem to have valid arguments for their case.

While I generally don’t set a great deal of homework it has not really been a researched and analysed decision. My underlying thoughts were that we can generally cover everything we need in class if we use our time well and that kids need to do other things besides structured learning tasks set by school outside of school hours.

An issue that has consistently raised its head at our school is that students are spending a long time out of school hours working on homework and assignments which can be quite distressing to the students and the parents. The crucial question in all of it is whether there is genuine learning taking place as a result of the homework and assignments and it would be interesting to do an analysis of the type of tasks students are spending their time on outside of school and the value it has for them. If all it does is give students an impression that learning is a chore and waste of time then we are doing them a great disservice.