Learning+at+Schools+2010




 * Learning at School - notes from Sue **


 * Too much to share and you’d just be bored, so I’ve picked 3 highlights and included a VERY SHORT summary so you can go straight to the one that interests you! **

All the way from Boston, USA, teaches education technology and has his own website: novemberlearning.com - his message was great - renewed student engagement, “anytime anywhere” learning, real time assessment - all changing the culture of teaching and learning. Lots of practical examples - more websites for you to browse and use!
 * Not Just the Froth on Top** - a fantastic array of new applications for me that took me straight into learning for understanding, so I was sold on them! You can Google all the applications and they’ll come up straight away and they’re all FREE!!!!!!!!
 * Mary Chamberlain, Ministry of Education, on National Standards** - who would want to be in her shoes at present?!, but good on Mary, she always seems to come up with the goods - her key questions were how can Nat Stds support the new curriculum; and she thinks we need to start talking about the change we want to see rather than what we don’t want to see.
 * Keynote address - Alan November - video link**

** This was a great laptop-based workshop by a teacher who had gone from using computers to do the same things we have always done on paper, to a digital classroom, which ‘occupied’ the students well, but was still ‘just the froth on top!’
 * 1. Not Just the Froth on Top in this Year 4 Classroom

So she wanted to turn the focus more onto learning and developed an eLearning team at her school, a learning vision and moved into some collaborative practice. The kids don’t need to be taught skills and software, they pick it up easily. She needed to be able to teach for understanding - to ask what a learning community might look like in her classroom, and to ensure the students knew what they were learning, what the learning was for, what the next steps were.

The Wiki then became a main learning tool. Key applications: Google Sketchup - change, adapt, modify Hero Factory/Buildyourwildself - language - why do we get kids to write then draw about what they have written? Why not ask them to draw their ideas first then write about those. eg creating characters on these two apps, or using them to create characters they have visualised from reading etc. Toondoo - cartoon creation application - creating conversation/oral language BlockCad - the teacher has Lego in the classroom and this application is an extension of that, enabling you to work out perimeter, area, volume etc using lego bricks on screen. She uses [|www.classblogmeister.com] as her class blog, and you can visit their Wikispaces homepage - http://digikidz.wikispaces.com - to see lots of the cool stuff they do, and click on Learning at School down the left hand side and you’ll see examples of most of the stuff I’ve mentioned here.

The workshop facilitator also talked about the following that I didn’t get a chance to sample: Glogster Artrage Audacity - The Easispeak?


 * 2. Mary Chamberlain: National Standards **

Success in education is dependent on the quality of relationships - connectedness, networks that are bridge building and outward looking. She would like to shift the talk from labelling, testing etc to the possibilities of our new curriculum.

How can Nat Stds support the new curriculum? KC’s promote the emotional side to support the cognitive - we need to build on this. We need to start talking about the change we want to see rather than what we don’t want to see, and use the Nat Stds in a positive way.

Despite ATOL and other PD programmes, etc we still have a big tail shown by the data. We need to believe we can make a difference for those kids.

She thinks the Nat Stds show what we can do, what we are aiming for, and points out what parents and teachers will do to help them get there.

We need to engage kids in their own progress and achievement - where is the positive energy in our school? what generates the positive energy?

The National Standards booklets give us: descriptions in words examples in each area assessment tasks and tools


 * By end of March there will be a mapping tool on the web that tells you if a child gets a stanine 5 in PAT vocab etc where they will be working at or working above etc according to the standards. This has not been easy to establish as PAT vocab for example has always been harder than comprehension etc, so stanine 5 in one test does not equate to the same standard in another test.**

More examples of reporting styles/templates will be on the web in next few weeks also.

Our nat stds have been deliberately designed in the service of the wider curriculum so for example, reading and writing examples show you have to read and write for a purpose and use examples from the whole curriculum and across the learning areas, eg science.

She still maintains that what teachers do in the classroom is what matters most.

And finally she had some questions for us to consider: What is the story about Nat Stds that we hear the most or that we tell the most at present?

What are the pay offs for holding onto that story?

What is worth keeping? what is worth shaping for the students in our school?

Overall Teacher Judgements - do what you’ve always done.


 * 3. Alan November: The Emerging Culture of Teaching and Learning **

website: novemberlearning.com - information literacy for teachers

Alan thinks there are 3 critical skills we must get our heads around if we can be successful in the 21st century: global collaboration dealing with overwhelming amounts of information from the digital world self-directed

A key question to ask ourselves: who owns the learning? is the teacher working harder than the students - the students should be doing the work. Every student is a teacher and every teacher is a learner.

Authenticity of the learning: Google example - kids using incorrect grammar and syntax of web and get the wrong hits - eg Turkey and Pope’s speech. We need to teach them things like site:tr to get hits from Turkey rather than western versions of what happened. [|www.easywhois.com] /domain name - tells you who owns a website to check out the authenticiy of a site eg Martin Luther King site owned by white supremacist group.

[|www.archive.org] - wayback machine - can check on the site since the time it was launched [|www.allaboutexplorers.com] - give kids bogus websites so we can teach them to tear apart the web layer by layer and know what is real and true for themselves.

Give kids real jobs! [|www.mathtrain.tv] - a teacher trying to improve maths. Got kids to design tutorials to teach other kids. We constantly underestimate what kids will do to share their learning with others.

[|www.jingproject.com] - screencasting software - how many jobs can we give to chn that teachers used to do?

YouTube - numberthestars1.mov - kids creating movies of book reviews - checking out ones on line and making theirs better

Kids making podcasts - template for all the jobs and stuff - writers, editors, mixers, recorders and publishers etc - tell the story of what is learned at school every week - teaching children to be rigorous and careful about documenting their learning. We often underestimate the kids and what they can do.

[] - you can find any equation there - kids can contribute a library of explanations about maths.


 * Notes from Mandy..... **


 * 4. Top Ten Trends for 2010 **

Derek Wenmoth presented a collection of themes and issues that have been identified by CORE staff as trends in education that they imagine will impact on the work of NZ teachers in the coming year. There is a particular focus on the use of ICTs in education, "reflecting on the fact that we are living in a world where nearly everything we do has a digital dimension". The top ten trends are: 1. Changing role of teachers and learners 2. Internet capable, mobile devices for learning 3. Globalised learning 4. Ubiquitous computing 5. Cyber citizenship 6. Digital Literacy 7. Open education resources 8. Cloud computing 9. Advanced network and school 'loops' 10. Assessment Practices

I was madly taking notes during this session, only to find that Derek has posted his Presentation on his blog. This is well worth flicking through: Click on the image to take you directly to his blog:

Key messages I took from this presentation >> - amplifying >> - curating >> - wayfinding and socially-driven sense-making >> - aggregating (filtering, engage them in understanding bogus websites) >> - filtering >> - modelling persisitent presence
 * Changing teachers and learners - "technology enables, supports and accelerates change"
 * Teachers roles in a networked learning environment (connectivism):
 * We have to be actively modelling appropriate online behaviour
 * Ubiquitous Learning
 * Shift from personal computing to having devices that enable us to participate from anywhere, at anytime and from any device
 * Schools no longer the absolute hub of learning
 * Homework now a thing of the past. The learning and work that students are doing at school naturally continues at home
 * Cyber Citizenship
 * @http://www.netsafe.org.nz/ - very useful site, in the process of overhauling what they are doing - focussing more on digital citizenship. Included on this website is a cyber citizen disposition rubric
 * Shift from cyber safety 'fear factor' to something more embracive of an educative approach
 * Digital Literacy
 * Definition: Digital literacy refers specifically to the range of skills, knowledge and competencies required to operate effectively in a world immersed in digital technologies
 * Open Educator Resources & Cloud Computing
 * http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page

5. LMS Gateway to Learning and Assessment
 * Mark Treadwell - session started with a brainstorm of how education is changing. This led to a tour through an online learning platform, demonstrating the potential that an LMS has in addressing these changes. Unfortunately we had a few internet issues - but some of the demos that we did see highlighted:
 * LMS as a one-stop-shop - place to store everything
 * Now have interoperable LMS that integrate with SMS - one key benefit is the off site data storage
 * LMS enabling personalised learning
 * Providing reflection tools
 * Ability to showcase work and learning stories to real audiences
 * Providing a historical record of student learning
 * Research tools (EDna) integrated
 * Session ended with Mark talking a little about his latest publications - more information provided on his websites:
 * www.schoolV2.net
 * @http://www.i-learnt.com/
 * I love Mark's cartoon of an Emergent 21st Century Teacher:
 * Brainstorm of how 'everything in education is changing':