If we want our students to take risks then the teachers need to take risks too. The teachers also need to supply the space for the students to take the risks.
Challenges to improved change ?
Time, lack of devices, lack of passion, parents, mandates, TITWWHADI, technical expertise, rapid change, priorities, lack of support, budgets, communication, equity, research.
When you hear something that works, it should give you hope but you should not replicate it exactly. Everything is different for different people and situations.
Strategies.
Know your product, people and process - the three p's
Understand fully the possibilities of any product you are going to use.
Connect with other people to help, advise and listen to.
Use the product yourself and it will improve your confidence in talking to others about it. Keep up to date
Approach the early adopters and get them to try stuff and share it back, then it is not just the same innovators trying to push everything.
Early majority - mostly want proof and evidence before they make the leap
Late majority - need more proof and see it done.
Laggards - don't polish the rocks!!
People are risk averse and the majority of people will say no at first.
Early adopters can trial and suggest how it can be made meaningful for the majority.
Need to invest in building capacity in staff - it doesn't happen by magic.
How can time be used efficiently?
Less formal "techie brekkies"
Build expertise in students - they can assist staff and other students.
Creating conditions for change - there needs to be an urgency
Once you have adopted something how do you make it stick?
How can schools retain the passionate people?
What mindset is needed?
What tools are needed?
What skills are needed? Kotter's 8 steps for leading change
SAMR model - key moments need extra attention for this to happen and not slide backwards.
Understand your why first, then the how will fall into place.
Starting with why create your purpose, this will then drive your motivation and so to passion - lack of passion could be that they are not linked to the overall school why.
It will fall over if you build competency but not passion for the why.
Biggest challenges and obstacles towards improved change expressed by leaders at Auckland #edtechteam Summit - change is complex, messy, and variable. pic.twitter.com/ToN6FarpAY
Planning for all Learners - Multimodal Teaching and Design
Kate Harland and James Hopkins
Factories churn out things - does education churn out people?
Education came about because of the need to fill factory jobs - learn a bit - get assessed - learn a bit more - get assessed on a bit more.
Are we giving students the chance to not fit in to this system?
Is education fast food?
Those most likely to succeed? - documentary
The more different ways you learn something, the more you will remember it.
Learners engage in different ways so why do we standardise everything?
Learning is not constricted by four walls so why only do the teaching there? Also the time? It does not happen between 9 and 3, especially the students who have loads of responsibilities at home. A students best learning time is anytime which is good for them so the learning needs to be accessible at any time.
This all changes the job of teaching to different parts of the day too.
On the examples - Google Drawings are used mostly to show the activities. The students choose which activities to engage in from the drawing.
There is a time limit for the drawing - in terms on lessons / weeks etc - the students do not have to do all of the tasks on the drawing.
Different ways of learning the content, presented in different ways, outcomes to be created in different ways.
There is always a create / do connected with all the blocks.
Visual literacy is an important skill so we can have understanding of all the information that is throw at us on a daily basis.
Design is a huge component of communication.
The Google Drawing page is in the centre section.
Use the zoom tool to zoom over the area you want to work on so you don't have to see all of it all the time.
Fonts give an immediate feeling and thought when you see them.
You can use this to your advantage.
Culture plays into the meaning - it is the person seeing the font that makes the meaning it gives.
Rules
2 fonts
Use colours that go together - don't just randomly throw colours at the page. Use colours that help you tell the story. ColorZilla - chrome extension Colour lovers - web page
Shape - these can make your brain link to things as soon as you see them.
You can make simple images by combining simple shapes together on Google Drawing. Build your own rather than find something on Google. Makes it more personal. FlatIcon.com - vector images Noun Project - icons for everything
Do we see the technology in the classroom as the enemy?
Does teaching have a "plug and play" formula?
Do we just do it a certain way as that is the way we were taught?
Be brave, try new things, fail. Try high risk things on your classroom. Some things will work.
If you can't be brave all the time, then pretend.
Magic happens outside your comfort zone not inside it.
People need to be honest about how it feels to be outside of their comfort zone.
Education, technology, passion - the cross over is the sweet spot.
What is innovation?
"Innovation is change that unlocks new value" Jamie Notter
If you stand at the point of conflict and choose not to be brave, then you miss out and so do your students.
What does the climax of your story need to look like? Can you imagine it? The teachers story is linked to the students story.
Teaching Computational Thinking and Coding with Scratch (and CS First)
Anthony Speranza
Bit.ly/speranzascratch
Scratch 3.0 is coming out this year.
Digital technologies is the way the world is going so it is important for students to know about it. We teach art and music to all students and they don’t all become artists and musicians so there is no expectation for all students to become programmers.
CS First website - takes you through structured lessons to cover the content / projects.
Tutorial videos are included - and help and support sheets and forums - the teacher does not have to feel like they need to know everything.
Scratch 3.0 does not work on flash so it will rock on anything.
Devices like sphere etc can be coded from Scratch 3.0 via Bluetooth.
Scratch jr has a specific Chromebook app.
If the videos are too overwhelming then on the right of the scratch screen is step by step help and support.
Community and connections - how do we use these tools to showcase community of school, location, diversity of students and learning?
How do we grow our global community?
Who is accountable for you implementing your learning?
Patrick Green
The Relevant Teacher
@pgreensoup
Why is it hard to look back at educational practice and admit when you were wrong?
#sasedu
How are we placed to change as the world changes? Are we as teachers prepared and if not, how can we prepare our students?
Da Vinci Innovation Labs
Two days in school - learn from home three days a week - the students go to work with their parents some days and take self paced school work with them to be getting on with. What level of trust and organization do you need to make this happen?
Sequoia has School - mixed grade classrooms - everyone is held back twice before the age of 12. Personalization and leadership. Institutionalized failure. - failure as normal so they get a chance to try things that they have not done yet or did not get the chance to the first time round. This is done with cooperation with the parents to work out when is a good time for it to happen.
It is not always school wide initiatives attached affect the students, it is individual teachers.
It all starts with relevant teachers who don’t wait for the school to change but lead from their classrooms.
A relevant teacher knows their role is different from what it was in the past - flipping - allowing students to be teachers.
Is what I’m teaching transferable beyond my classroom walls? If not, why am I teaching it?
Are you wasting students time teaching them things they will never need?
Relevant teachers are not afraid to access to information and to allow students to access it when they need to.
How much of the student day is filled with stuff they can find on the internet?
Should students be allowed to use their devices in exams as this is the way the world works - no need to memorize - dont make students do what adults dont do. Adults look things up when they need to in the process of doing a job. Why do we expect students to memorize everything?
“The End of Average” one size fits nobody - Todd Rose
Curriculum building is not perfect for everyone. Meeting students where they are at - not just learning wise but physically and online.
Craft a digital footprint / portfolio. What is the best way for students to do this so they can showcase themselves online in a positive way?
Here is what I did and how I did it - show the process and thinking, not just the end product.
Drive and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
Autonomy
Mastery
Purpose
The “shoulder shrug” - dont give all the answers.
Www.CMDigitalAge.com
20% time for students to do what they want - genius hour? - passion time? .. etc
Alison White and Shaun Kirkwood
@aliwh_white
@shaunyk
Imagine - Investigate - Iterate
What is something that I am doing that is not that important?
Think of things that you can get rid of.
Value student ability to not follow instructions.
The problem with exemplars is that the students try to replicate them exactly and not be creative themselves.
Do they have a preconceived idea of what the end outcome might be because of the exemplars that you gave them?
When students choose something over what we as teachers want them to do - is this addiction or just more interest?
Exploration and immediate feedback is “addictive”
In modern games, there are side quests as well as getting from a to b. Can be make our lessons more like this. An end outcome but with possibilities on how to get there.
We talk about “work” all the time at school. Why does everything have to be work?
The students are working in pairs and are playing a card game. This involves them DESCRIBING the product that is on the card to their partner.
When we were all together, we played a game with a pack of emoji cards to warm us up. The instructions for the rest of the lesson was to sit in pairs and use the help cards to describe to each other what is pictured on the cards.
Lesson Topic :- Describing Products to Each Other
Year Group :- Year 11
Learning Outcome
To be able to describe a product / object to each other verbally.
Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, taking account of stakeholder feedback and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop a final outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief and justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders.
We will continue to do whole class describing of products / things at the start of each lesson.
Further in this project
Describing skills will be used both in their research of existing chair designs and of their own design work.
Reflection and Analysis
What went well.
Lesson Content :- doing the warm up at the start was good as it got the students interested and they were all joining in.
Lesson Pacing :- I allowed them to take as much time as they wanted for the game, and this ended up being about 15 minutes which was good. They stayed on task for the whole activity so this amount of time was just right.
Lesson Delivery :- Although the start of the lesson had the students around the front table for a while, it was a more interactive session as we did the warm up card game all together. I managed to keep my session instructions super short this time so the students could then get on with the activity in pairs. This enabled me to get round the class as they were working and work with the pairs rather than spend too much time with the whole class.
Student Understanding :- They worked well together and helped each other. This helped their understanding and taking turns helped with this too. They seemed to get more comfortable with the describing as the game went on.
Student Outcomes :- I was pleased with the amount of fun they had while doing this activity.
What still needs work.
Lesson Content :- I photocopied / printed the images onto paper so we had to hide the game cards under a sheet of paper so the students could not see what they were as they were a little see through. Card would have been better as you would not have been able to see what they were from the back.
Student Outcomes :- Only 6 students were there today due to various trips out today so the rest of the class missed this.
Other Comments.
It became apparent as they were working that they realised that when they explained how the object was used, it made it a lot clearer what the object was. One team especially was avoiding explaining how the thing could be used as it gave their opponent more chance to guess what it was.
I hope they remember this as they are describing their own designs. Explaining how their design is used or how parts of it work will really help with the understanding of what their design is.
This is some of the ongoing lesson during the describe game.
I have included the full 15 minutes of the game for each team here. I decided to do this as their conversations for the whole time were focussed on the task and they were working hard at the describing that they had to do. These videos also show that they were having fun while doing the activity. Please scrub through to see different sections throughout the videos.
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
This is the card game we were playing in the warm up
I had a really good meeting with +Cheryl Harvey (specialist classroom teacher) today about various things and one of them was finding reading activities about design for my students to use.
She suggested that we have a look at the exemplars on the NZQA website for the standard that the students have just started. Link to exemplar work on the NZQA site here.
She said it is good for students to see the work of others across New Zealand. This also fits with what I saw happening in the classroom of +Robyn Anderson when I went to visit her. Blog post here.
I decided for their first reading task, that I would isolate just one design from each level, via a screen shot, and type up the student notes with that design, rather than have my students try to read the hand writing on the examples.
I am going to also copy what Robyn did in regards to printing these out and getting the students to highlight key elements with highlighter pens.
Design terms, sentence connectors, descriptions, reasons given for decisions made etc.....
