Learners leading learning

I valued the opportunity to collaborate with teachers in 2011 to develop and edit snapshots for the Software for Learning site with a focus on eportfolios and mlearning.

Image Source: Lenva Shearing

The process, especially the learning conversations, facilitated some great opportunities to explore how learners are utilising ICTs for learning.

While each snapshot is unique I believe common messages are evident throughout including the relevance of:

• context and responding to the needs of diverse learners
• teachers actively inquiring into their practice (Teaching as Inquiry)
• learning focused relationships (Assessment Online)
• elearning and pedagogy (NZC Online)

Snapshots of Learning are framed to reflect the Teaching as Inquiry cycle and reference links to other TKI community resources i.e. NZC Online, Assessment Online, Literacy Online, NZMaths. They can also be utilised by school leaders to plan and support professional learning for their staff and school community. 

This Google Doc identifies components of Software for Learning, including the snapshots and describes how they might be used by teachers and schools to build their e-learning capacity through sustaining a professional e-learning community and professional inquiry into e-learning.  

A key motivation for writing this post was to recognise and thank the inspiring teachers and students who shared their learning and their practice. I have linked directly to their individual snapshots below plus all snapshots are can be browsed from the Software for Learning website.

Google Apps, Teacher Dashboard and 1:1 Computing

How ePortfolios and student-owned mobile devices have been used to increase student ownership of their learning.

Contributed by Lenva Shearing, Bucklands Beach Intermediate School, Auckland

MyPortfolio and Ultranet

Developing an ePortfolio approach

Contributed by Erin Sawyer, Fairfield Intermediate School, Hamilton

Learning Journals 

Learning Journals enable students to become more active partners in the learning process. 
Contributed by Amanda Grimsey, Cornwall Park District School, Greenlane, Auckland

iPod Touches and iPads 

Implementing the use of mobile devices to support learning 
Contributed by Cameron Lockie, Kaipara Flats School, Kaipara Flats

MyPortfolio   

Establishing a learning environment to foster student collaboration and ownership of learning

Contributed by Fiona Burns, Mount Roskill Grammar School

MyPortfolio and Google Apps

Utilising an ePortfolio approach to increase opportunities to learn

Contributed by Jon Bowen, St Peter’s College, Palmerston North

mLearning Capability Project

How student owned mobile devices have been used to enhance the relevance of new learning and enable students to take greater ownership of the learning process.

Contributed by Nathan Kerr, Howick College, Auckland

Jogging Digistore

I have been organising web content for upcoming PD sessions and remembered this useful web tool JOG THE WEB which I discovered last year and used to create the following tour. With JOG THE WEB you are able to group and organise web content plus include comments and feedback.

If you are new to Digistore this tour created in JOG THE WEB  is designed to highlight some of the key features and support material to get started.

Click to view Digistore Jog

"Fantastic turnout for #EduCampAKL" via @lenva

Posting to organise and record some of the excellent contributions from EduCampAKL yesterday. Ka nui te mihi to everyone who participated and contributed, you continue to inspire me.

Also thanks to our hosts @ClaireAmosNZ and the IT team from Epsom Girls Grammar who worked wonders with the network when around 80 of us (with multiple devices) descended for the Smackdown at 10am.

For those of you who like to take time and explore, the EduCampAKL wiki includes a multitude of links and resources shared on the day. I have also summarised and book marked contributions in My Delicious below.

"Because context matters...inquiry is important"

 I have been fortunate in the past couple of months to have had opportunities to collaborate with teachers and colleagues focusing on a variety of educational contexts including: curriculum, pedagogy, e-learning, leadership and assessment.  Our conversations and thinking often include reference to Teaching as Inquiry (NZC and TMoA).

As we have explored examples of Teaching as Inquiry I have been reminded of a statement from Claire Sinnema that I referenced in an earlier post on this blog "Inquire with a Travelling Mindset" ...

"because context matters... 

inquiry is important"

 The New Zealand Curriculum Online describes the Teaching as Inquiry cycle as "an organising framework that teachers can use to help them learn from their practice and build greater knowledge."

While the framework provides us with a common understanding and language for inquiry into our pracitice, the context is what brings life to the inquiry and to the learning.

Context matters 

Can Digistore contribute to sustaining e-learning in your school?

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

In a recent Interface article David Kinane makes valuable recommendations for school leaders to consider if they are to develop sustainable e-learning models for their schools.

David specifically refers to the impact of teacher turnover and subsequent loss of knowledge suggesting that "ICT knowledge and skills should be actively collected and accumulated not randomly swapped."

"...good skill sets and a wealth of IP just walk out of the door" (David Kinane)

We have been exploring the possibilities within Digistore to create collaborative learning spaces. These include functions that can enable schools to develop and share resources and strategies both in and across schools. Using their school's current Digistore school login, teachers can develop Learning Paths that can also be shared publicly. The single sign in for educators (coming soon*) will also enable teachers to share resources between their school and their individual Digistore account. Consequently when a teacher leaves a school resources that have been developed are not lost to either the school or the individual teacher.

Harnessing tools for collaboration and sharing can also provide valuable opportunities for educators when planning and reflecting on their practice. This includes opportunities to model effective e-learning integration and develop sustainable procedures within schools that can lessen the impact of staff turn over.

These functions in Digistore include:
Learning Paths
A collection or sequence of learning content interwoven with teacher comments and descriptions. Learning Paths can be created and shared between schools, and publicly. This functionality enables educators to develop resources collaboratively and share within and across schools. Read more about Learning Paths on the Digistore wiki.
(see the Digistore User Guide, p.30)

Star Rating and Comments
Share knowledge on the value of Digistore content in relation to the New Zealand Curriculum. Rating content and sharing comments will support others to identify and select digital content more effectively. This will enable a collaborative understanding of the pedagogical value of content to grow both in and across schools.
Tags
Add your own tags to content to improve searches and highlight specific keywords and phrases relevant for use across the curriculum.
(see the Digistore User Guide, p.24-28)

*Watch the Digistore website and subscribe to the Diginews for updates on single sign in

"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'

"Teaching as Inquiry"

In my last post I explored the relevance of teachers developing the confidence to approach new technologies with an inquiring, open mind and learning about the technology within a context that is connected to their current classroom practice.

Also for those who are considering how twitter might be useful in an educational setting...

e-Learning and pedagogy

I have been following Michael Wesch online, many of you may be familiar with the videos he has created with his students exploring the impact of new media on society and culture ( "The Machine is Us/ing us" and "A Vision of students today").

While the ideas that they explore are significant, what also challenges me is thinking about Wesch's application of new media in his practice. See a previous post "There are no natives here" Again I would recommend that you invest some time and watch "A Portal to Media Literacy".

Last week Wesch posted a link to some work created by one of his students Kevin Champion. I have watched this video a number of times since ( embedded below) and have enjoyed thinking about the concepts Champion explores around connectedness, the impact of new media and the breaking down of barriers in education that are now possible as a result.

" In education, this is seen in the emphasis on cross-disciplinary, multicultural, holistic, and interdisciplinary studies. It becomes clear that no one discipline and no one perspective can provide all the answers. Over the last 50 years, this theoretical connectedness has been expressed in the physical world through media. Television, cell phones, and the internet have added both a new level of connectivity and new ways to connect." Kevin Champion

What continues to capture my thinking is the question of how Champion's use of new media to explore, share and create his understandings, may have been supported by the teaching actions of Micahel Wesch? During repeat views of the video I have tried to identify links and examples that may reflect effective pedagogy in the NZC specifically e-learning and pedagogy (p. 36).

This exercise has continued to extend and challenge my thinking around "the changing role of the teacher and also our understanding of elearning as a pedagogical practice"...and also what this might mean for how we use assessment to both provide feedback and inform future action.

For me this has been a useful next step from 'A Portal to Media Literacy' and the concepts of what it means to be a teacher in this century. I plan to use this example to further explore the concept of e-learning as a pedagogical practice with colleagues.

Many thanks to both Michael Wesch and Kevin Champion for their inspiration.

"There are no natives here"...

...so says Michael Wesch as he reflects on his use of technology to support learning. His experiences also highlight a key message in the New Zealand Curriculum...to explore new and different ways of teaching and learning. The reference to Prensky's (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants also challenge some of the assumptions that we might have around our use of technology and student learning.
As a cluster we are constantly exploring the changing role of the teacher and also our understanding of elearning as a pedagogical practice. Concurrently, while we recognise some students may have grown up with the technology and are confident adopters, this may not always automatically transfer to purposeful use that can impact positively on their learning? To engage with the technology simply to entertain without appreciating how it can be harnessed to make a difference to learning and consequently actions that are 'significant' involve development of new understandings about the technology for both teachers and students..."there are no natives here".
Michael Wesch explores these ideas and provides some useful frameworks, understandings and examples of a 21st Century teacher...well worth investing the time to listen and consider.


Thanks to Jo McLeay for highlighting.
More videos by Wesch and his students...Vision of Students Today, The Maching is Us/ing Us etc...