"Inquire with a travelling mindset..."

"Inquire with a travelling mindset"...an analogy used by Claire Sinnema while exploring teaching as inquiry with facilitators recently. Useful and timely messages from Claire in light of some of the confusion between teaching as inquiry and inquiry learning, that we have experienced as schools move towards implementing the New Zealand Curriculum (2007).

Image Attribution: 'je dois apprendre aux curieux'

More from Claire...

The NZC(2007) describes some ways of thinking about teaching and learning using evidence based approaches, "the kinds of teaching approaches that consistently have a positive impact on student learning" (p.34) and also thinking about teaching as inquiry, a way of 'being' or the underlying attitudes that influence our practice.

Focusing inquiry is about:

• Prioritising what is most important: "Every 10 minutes matters"... image the impact on student learning if those 10 minutes every day of every week are added up over the years a student is at school.
• Learner diversity
• National and community curriculum aspirations
• Information and data
• Individual group needs

The above can be informed by research however the value of a teacher's past practice should not be overlooked. What good are the approaches, principles and mechanisms in the research? Why inquire if we know what works?  

"Because context matters... inquiry is important"

Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences: Tikanga ā Iwi: BES, Aitken and Sinnema (2008).

"Approach Teaching as Inquiry as we would approach travelling to new places..."

Claire left us with the following message inspired by Alain de Botton's, The Art of Travel...
"To inquire with a travelling mindset!" 

From the book...

“What, then, is a traveling mind-set? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is or is not interesting. We irritate locals because we stand in traffic islands and narrow streets and admire what they take to be unremarkable small details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall. We find a supermarket or a hairdresser’s shop unusually fascinating. We dwell at length on the layout of a menu or the clothes of the presenters on the evening news. We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs. Home, by contrast, finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about our neighborhood, primarily by virtue of our having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place where we have been living for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind to it.”
–Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (2002)

Image Attribution:'Atlas, it's time for your bath'

Learning through socially networked media...Part 2

After reading the LearnOnline blog for a while it was good to meet the author Leigh Blackall and his partner Sunshine last week when Leigh spoke to a group of educators in Auckland. Leigh has been researching and developing models for learning through socially networked media... from free and open source software, de-schooling, and networked learning and explored and challenged these concepts in the context of New Zealand education and the widening use of the Internet, social web and 3D virtual worlds in schools.

Just that morning I had read a thought provoking post by Sheryl on progressive education that included a clip from the 1940s where I seemed to be hearing the same questions and conversations we are having today (recommended reading). A clear message from Leigh was the importance of us as educators taking control of our networks,rather than letting others make these decisions for us and blocking sites verses facilitating and modelling socially responsible strategies for using web based environments... this took me back to Stuart Hale's keynote at the Kapiti-Otaki Cluster conference last month when he said "the server is there to serve us".

I have also become aware lately that some of us didn't realise Wikipedia is " written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world" and consequently is viewed by some as 'not a reliable resource for use with students'. An idea from Leigh which I think might be worth pursuing as an authentic learning context, is to use wikipedia to connect with experts. For example... if students were to author an entry in wikipedia with the teacher facilitating a connection with a local expert or associated organisation that can then work collaboratively with students to develop the validity of the entry...in the words of Konrad Glogowski...

"I do not want to create a community or a social network for my students. Instead, I want to create the conditions necessary for the right kind of environment to emerge. Building an environment for the students is likely to result in failure: environments and communities need to be build with the students, with their full participation, through their work and their interactions with and about texts."

If you are interested in accessing more of Leigh's recommended blogs and resources he has kindly set up a delicious tag here

Learning through socially networked media.

I have been following some interesting discussions around rethinking school and education (Artichoke, Sheryl on the Techlearning Blog, Christopher D. Sessums). Also the recent response to the Software Licensing for schools, whether you agree or not, I believe is more about rethinking school than an issue of access to software.

Another NZ blogger who has been tackling some of these issues is Leigh Blackall. Leigh will be speaking in Auckland on Wednesday 15 August at the Epsom Campus. Leigh has been researching and developing models for learning through socially networked media. Ranging in topics from free and open source software, de-schooling, and networked learning he will be exploring and challenging these concepts in the context of New Zealand education and the widening use of the Internet, social web and 3D virtual worlds in schools.

This will be an excellent opportunity for educators to begin exploring the possibilities for learning in ways that are different and potentially more relevant and responsive to today's educational environments and perhaps those in the future.

This event is organised by The Auckland Computers in Education Society (ACES) and is free to members (Register as an individual - $25 or as a school/organisation - $75). To find out more details and to register visit the ACES website.

The New Face of Learning

Thought provoking article from Will Richardson who asks what happens to the traditional concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can "go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime".
The web...once a 'read only' domain, perceived as a place to purely source information is now developing and evolving...a space where we can publish, collaborate, learn and share our voice, thinking, knowledge....where "creating content is almost as easy as consuming it."

A new learning landscape not universally embraced and while students increasingly use these technologies many schools are either blocking them or simply choose to ignore their existence or impact they are having on how students learn.

The New Face of Learning (Will Richardson, 2006)

Mike Anderson

It was great to have Mike, the Principal from North Loburn School
visit us yesterday and share some of his thinking, projects and passions for education. He spoke to a group of Principals and lead teachers from our cluster, posing some challenges and questions for us to ponder and discuss about learning and teaching in the 21st Century.
Some key ideas included thinking around ICT and learning as a process rather than a product..."today we are going to learn how to structure a narrative" verses "today we are going to do iMovie".

I also found Mike's analogies to "More Monsters, Fewer Millionaires" made a lot of sense. Do we want our students to know lots of stuff and be able to answer questions like those on game shows "Who wants to be a millionaire" or ...
...be more like the contestants on "Monstor Garage" where a team of people are challenged to collaborate, plan, build and test a "monster machine" turning a stock vehicle into something else...Mike likens this process to a more authentic learning experience where we see evidence of many of the characteristics of the Key Competencies and also reflects the message from Learning@School keynote speaker David Warlick...

"Its not a future of security so we shouldn't be preparing them for one...instead we should prepare them for a future of opportunity...and that's done differently"

Have a look at North Loburn School's website to see some of the projects students are involved in ... is anyone interested in participating in the Rock Our World project?