Now That's what I'm talking about

I have recently linked to "Langwitches - The Magic of Learning Through Technology". Great site. The most recent post It's about reflecting and analysing our teaching practice, really hits the nail on the head when it comes to integrating ICT into our teaching practice. The fact that we use technology is not the issue. The fact that we are able to create engaging and rich learning opportunities which lead to meaningful learning using technology is the issue. Regardless of the tool, or the method, without reflection and analysis of our practice we may as well be using sticks and stones as teaching tools as opposed to ICT. A very clear idea of the learning outcomes is so important as this will impact on unit/lesson construction. The post shows the use of technology in 3 different ways but one way is clearly more engaging, personal and rich compared to the other two. The (now) old phrase "poor teaching + technology = expensive poor teaching" will always hold true. The New Zealand curriculum includes teaching as inquiry as a key component of effective pedagogy. It also includes eLearning as a key component of effective pedagogy. Teaching as inquiry is independent of the tool, while eLearning without reflective practice is a dead duck.

The Volcanics Community, as an eLearning community, I think, is only just realising this fact. It therefore begs the question why we should not just call ourselves a Learning Community, as teaching is not about technology, but about teaching and Learning.

So now what do we Do

Just read the most recent blog post by David Warlick regarding the use of web2.0 tools and other emerging learning tools, all of which are technology based. He talks about a "significant knowing-doing gap", i.e. the gap between knowing about the tool, and actually using it in education. His post goes on to list the main contributors to this "knowing-doing gap". These include time, money, age of hardware, ignorance of technology, etc. The same old same old. This of course made me think about the challenges we face here in "God's Own". The reality is, these are issues for education institutions all over the world, not just NZ. The challenge is, if NZ schools want to be a leading light in education, world wide, then we seriously need to consider what we are doing about these challenges. Too many teachers are using the excuses I read in David's blog. How many of these are valid, and how many are just a cop out. What are we doing to address and remove the barriers for teachers and what are we doing to address the issue of teachers who refuse to change, and use ignorance as an excuse. Name another profession where ignorance is an excuse?

Finding the solutions will not be easy, but the reality is, WE HAVE TO FIND A SOLUTION, for the sake of our children and education in New Zealand.

Designing Learning Spaces

One of the things that I am trying to do with the schools that I work with is to include the use of ICT for learning as part of the schools overall learning vision with the idea that it is the learning needs of our students and the teaching needs of our teachers that drives the purchase and implementation of hardware and software. This then leads to focussed PD based on need, which in turn leads to the old idea of reflective teaching where the teacher assesses the impact of their teaching and teaching approach on their students' learning. This is included in the NZC under "Teaching as Inquiry".

While I have advocated this approach, I have paid little attention to the design of learning spaces. Instead, I have continued to follow the old model of computer labs and computers in the back of classrooms. Derek Wenmoth's recent blog post "Designing Learning Spaces", has just turned my world on its head, because it means more change and more learning. It also means that I need to make sure that I am up to speed with all the recent developments around technology, LMS/SMS integration, pedagogy and now property management so that I can provide the best advice to the schools and staff I work with. My list of books and articles to read grows on a daily basis.

Michael Fullan - The Change Maker

One of my colleagues at Raupehu College, Jane Voon, pointed this article out to me. It is called in the "Change Maker" and is published in the most recent edition of the Education Gazette. This follows up a powerpoint and podcast sent to me by two other colleagues regarding the work of Guy Claxton. My focus for the last two years has been on ICT, and the technology, with the understanding that the technology is really secondary to the pedagogy. However, my knowledge of the pedagogy has been scant at best, and so this year has been a real challenge for me as I climb the steep learning curve of truly understanding the pedagogy behind eLearning. This has widened my exposure to not just educators who have an ICT focus, but educators who truly have the learning and the teaching of young people at the centre of all they do. A very humbling experience to say the least.

Michael Fullan points out the importance of teacher capability and motivation, and the need for strong educational leadership. Not administorial leadership, but educational leadership. This has to come from principals and teachers in our schools. I realise that in my role as an ePrincipal, I am well positioned to provide educational leadership, not just technological leadership, which brings me back to the point of pedagogy, and the long hill still in front of me as I come to grips with the theories and the methods that will really make a difference to a child's learning.

Now that's what I call blogging

I have often been asked the question "how does technology benefit the learners? Where is the evidence?" Well here it is. This year, four students from Reporoa College did a computing course, through video conferencing with a teacher at Mercury Bay Area School, Max Ross. The first part of the course was dedicated to creating a web page in PHP, with a link to a data base which was created and queried using mysql. The second part of the course was all about building a robot using Lego, and programming it to carry out a set of given tasks. This culminated in all the students congregating at Te Aroha College to engage in the "Robot Wars" to see whose Robot would be able to tip over the other robots and hence claim the "Title".

In order to track their work and to document the project development, the students were asked to set up a blog. Which they duly did. When I read a few of the blogs, what I saw is what we have been talking about as educators. Here I saw responsible and independent learning, collaboration, creativity and problem solving. Check out these two blogs (whose permission I have obtained from the owners to share).

12VC-nxt.blogspot.com
robot-abattoir.blogspot.com

These students would not normally have access to blogs because it comes under personal networking and is filtered by our network filtering system. So we had to unblock the filters for them. Makes you think - responsible use of blogs is so beneficial, but how many students would simply spend their time on bebo (Blog Everywhere Blog Often) and do nothing? Something we need to look at closely.

AND-BOTH

I know I make reference to the work of Jan Gilbert ("Catching the Knowledge Wave") and Dan Pink ("A Whole New Mind"), and I think so often that teachers look at me and go "who"??? Well not so much with Jan Gilbert, but definitely with Dan Pink. Now here is a NZ blog, about educational leadership that makes reference to Dan Pink and puts his thinking into an education perspective. Thanks to Cheryl Doig and her blog "Think Beyond". for putting the education slant on a book which could be mistaken for a book only for business, but which in reality has so much for education too.

The Schools We Need Presentation at Ignite Philly 2

I Wanted to share this vid. It’s a good one. If you wonder why he speaks so quickly, its because each presenter only had 5 minutes.

Artichoke

A "place" where I can wrestle with ideas, argue, challenge, think, and rethink. A "space" where I expose my raw and flawed thinking about information communication technology, teaching, and learning for critique.

I subscribe to this blog, and currently read an interesting post called :

If only Jane Gilbert had a blog .... and NZCER had a wiki ....

Some compelling stuff here, again focussing on what do we REALLY need to do to support our students and help them learn. So necessary if we are not to be drawn in by the commercialism which surrounds ICT. I am not saying that ICT is a fad driven by big business, but to say that we must not be blinded by technology and that we must keep learning at the centre of our endeavours.

Well, it's been a busy day so far for finding new stuff. Two new survey tools have been released by the NZCER, one looking at student engagement in years 7 to 10, and the other being a teacher workplace survey.
Go to http://www.nzcer.org.nz/ to check out these new survey tools. I reckon all the schools in the cluster should have students in years 7 to 10 carrying out these surveys, and their teachers carrying out the workplace survey.

I was looking through the breakouts for ULearn08 and came across a presentation by Andrew Church on VARK which is a learning styles assessment tool. So naturally I googled VARK abd came across the website "Vark -- A guide to learning Styles". This look very interesting and has application for both primary and secondary teachers.