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Tom starts off with three statements to provoke thought…
Three things which keep me awake at night:
What might yours be?
Mr Tim Hartford teacher of I.C.T at Wellington East Girls College came to the Learning@Schools conference wanting to compare how his school teaches to other schools within New Zealand. He would like to have seen how blogs can help students contact each other and share ideas, and to ask other people around the world for an answer, or just discover the learning differences between countries in the world.
Mr Hartford wanted to use the blogs to build communities outside of the classroom, he wanted students to take initiative and help each other out with homework etc. Mr Hartford wanted students to take a hold of their education and teach each other different ways of looking at a problem, he wanted students to ‘think outside of the box’ and take a hold of their futures and each others futures.
Another thought he had was that teachers could use a blog to teach students outside the classroom, example, a student is stuck on a question, instead of leaving it until the next day and saying to the teacher “I can’t do it, it just doesn’t make sense to me”, the student could post a comment on the blog and the teacher or another student could help the student understand the question and the student could come to class the next day knowing that he/she is just that slightly more intelligent where as if the question was left the student may never find out what the answer to that question is, and usually those types of questions are the important in exams.
Mr Hartford wishes to start a new blog with his junior class and is going to try and extend on that depending on how the blogging system goes with the juniors, if it goes well he will continue the blog onto his more senior classes.
As the assistant head of English at Wellington College, Mr James Edgecombe wants his students to excel in English to the best of their abilities. He has been given some great ideas to help them achieve this. This is his second time at the L@S conference, and after the first keynote speaker, he was thoroughly impressed, even more so than he was when he came in 2006.
His expectations included lots of information about learning through technology and different strategies with students, and these have been well and truly met already, with extended ideas about keeping students engaged in their work by giving them incentives, such as i-Pods and mobile phones allowed when their work is finished, rather than giving an amount of time that they must concentrate for, for example thirty minutes. This would help because instead of students having a period in which they do work, but often not finish it, they are given as much or as little time as they need. This would increase productivity, which is exactly what Mr Edgecombe wants. Another idea that Mr Edgecombe liked, was of sorting students into classes according to their mental, rather than biological age.
Mr Edgecombe has also been inspired at the classroom level. Some ideas that have inspired him are letting the task dictate the lesson, which means letting students finish whenever they can, whether it is late or early. The early finishers then get time to get to the bus, or are able to listen to their own music, while the later ones can stay after class to finish. Mr Edgecombe’s thinking has been extended by this idea, which is one of the reasons he has so far enjoyed this L@S conference more than the others. He wants to try the incentive/motivation technique when he gets back to teaching his English class, which is the technique described in this paragraph.
Today we are trying something new, pushing boundaries and demonstrating the possibilities of ICT. Alan November is recognised as a leader in education technology. His areas of expertise include information and communication technology, planning across the curriculum, staff development, long-range planning, building learning communities and leadership development. He has delivered keynote presentations and workshops in all fifty states of the USA, in every province in Canada, and throughout the UK, Europe and Asia.
Using technology we have access to thought leaders around the world. We can bring them to our place without the expense and time of actually travelling.
So this year we engage with Alan November via Skype.
Here are my notes from Alan’s presentation:
Desperate people make good students!
Alan discussed the key skills for today’s children and these form the structure of this talk:
The most important question to ask is who owns the learning? Is it the teacher or the students. In many classrooms the teacher works harder that the students. The trick is to turn this around. The philosophical onset of this is that every student is a teacher and every teacher is a student.
Alan demonstrated how you can zoom in on one countries information by using the word “site:tr (the ‘tr’ stands for the country code of the perspective you would like to search for). This is a way to make sure you are gaining information from different points of view as straight google searches really do give you a very western perspective in the results.
This brings about the discussion about teaching students how to be effective and evalutating users of the web. Alan introduced us to a few websites you could use:
www.easywhois.com type in the domain name of a website and it tells you who owns the domain so you can evalutate the information
www.archive.org – this site has the way back machine. Use the search bar to type in your website and it will give you the history of the website from the time it was launched. You can view the different versions of the site and how it has changed over time.
There are a variety of tools that all children should know that tear apart the internet layer by layer.
I have a list of bogus websites that can be used for this, and there are more on Alan’s site:
http://otepoti.wikispaces.com/Using+the+Web
Some sites Alan shared to demonstrate students taking on teaching roles, and demonstrating deep learning:
http://mathtrain.tv - Students design tutorials to help other children learn.
http://www.studentnewsaction.net
http://isenet.ning.com – independent school teachers
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ - Wolfram alpha – investigate this for your math classes
The concept is should we be asking children to do work that teachers used to do? How many jobs can we give to children? Given that we have incredible tools the answer is probably limitless.
Don’t underestimate your kids.
The twitterverse were active during this presentation making comments and sharing links. If you haven’t yet had a look at the back channel discussions that are going on at the conference head to http://twitter.com/ and put #latsconf in the search box.
Principal Mr Wim Boxen of Ponsonby Intermediate came to the Learning@School conference expecting to learn about the latest developments of managing his school, he also came here hoping he could gain ideas about networking all his students onto a single network so that they could share ideas and help each other through school work and even homework. He would like to give students the opportunity to access this network via there home computers and laptops, to help each other through problems.
He stated that this year was his fourth year attending a Learning@School conference, and he said that last year he was inspired enough to bring home 30 Ipod touches. He said that he thought that giving students Ipods would make it easier for his students to access homework, and assumed that teens in the current world are very technologically aware and that it would make it much easier for them to do such work.
Mr Boxen has discovered some new ideas that in his opinion will help students have a guideline to aim for and something to look forward to, he seemed to take an interest in the new Ipad touch screen computers, he explains that they are a laptop of the future and that using the all new touch screen will encourage students within the classroom and make them aware to the environment that they are seated in and wanted them to get a “feel” for the new ways in which learning in the classroom can be encouraged and how teachers can use different methods of transferring their information onto the students within the classroom, besides why else do you go to school, it’s all to learn and prepare students for the future of the outside world. He wants to give them a real grip on what the real world is like and how to manage it.
Another aspect Mr Boxen assimilated was the fact of his students producing a time capsule, allowing students to reflect on their past opinions and ideas. They then see how they have changed and matured, allowing them to keep an open mind to their future aspirations, in having goals and aspirations students have something to aim for. Example, a student looks into his/her future discovers that they want a successful job, working indoors. The student might decide on an accounting job, therefore the student from a low level will make decisions based on an accounting background. This can affect anything from what subjects you choose to who your friends are. It has a huge impact on future life and how well the person may find themselves in life.
Marvin are running a 2010 Microsoft Marvinator competition. Here are the details…
Dear teachers,
Students and teachers are invited to enter the 2010 Microsoft Marvinator competition and be in to win loads of great prizes!
Entries are invited from groups or classes of students who, along with their teacher, develop and submit a MARVIN presentation which meets one of these criteria and responds to the brief (see website – it is gets updated from time to time, so if you don’t see the information there, try again later).
There is also an individual student competition to solve the riddle The competition has three different categories or streams:
Regardless of whether your class is submitting an entry to the main competition (the teacher/class competition), individual students are invited to solve the riddle and upload their own clips to the riddle tab, and win a prize for the best clip in this category.
Timeline:
The deadline for submissions is 5pm on 28th May 2010. Winners will be announced by 23rd June 2010
Draws:
There will be weekly draws for spot prizes - MP3 players. All you need to do to qualify for a spot prize is to submit your animation (class or individual) to the Marvinator website by 5pm every Friday afternoon. Winners will be announced every Monday on the “Judging and Prizes” tab of the website.
The earlier you get your clips submitted, the better the chance of winning, as the longer you wait, the more people will be submitting!
The prizes to be won are:
About MARVIN
MARVIN is a fun, easy to use animation program used to support the objectives of the revised curriculum framework. There are no costs to NZ schools, teachers and students (PC compatible only). MARVIN can be used to present knowledge and outcomes from units of learning, allowing students to cover a range of topics by projecting their ideas into animated characters (avatars) that can verbalise and enact their thoughts. Topics could cover environmental, social or just “hard to talk about” issues. As a teacher you can participate simply by using MARVIN as part of your teaching or have your students create animations to report on class projects.
So………….let your students’ imagination come to life and enter the competition (see details below) and get more information at the MARVIN blog.
Some contacts and web URL’s of importance:
The official competition website
Technical help (installation, networks issues and other computer specific issues), please contact Nathaniel at nathaniel.peek@nticed.com – NTICED is the company that is supporting this programme.
For all other questions relating to the content, or similar, please don’t hesitate to contact us at marvinator@egl.ac.nz
Learning @ School has started with a thought provoking and entertaining presentation by Stuart Middleton. He effectively wove a story using metaphors highlighting the current challenge of disengagement of students in New Zealand. He presented some shocking statistics about what is known about disengagement in the education sector. Some of the statistics are:
NZ leaking education pipeline, we are losing kids
Stuart argues we need to meet this challenge Are we ready? We have to get very much better at what we do, and that means change. If we carry on doing the same it will get worse.
NZ, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and USA all are facing the same or similar issues in education with disengagement with kids. They also are all going down a similar path with education initiatives. Stuart asks is it our right to do what other countries have done even if they fail??
These countries all have these things in common:
Stuart outlines three types of disengagement:
Stuart calls us to meet this challenge. We can make a difference if we are willing to make changes and continue to make changes that make a difference.
What suggestions do you have for meeting this challenge? In my opinion this conference is indicative of the changes that need to be made and the people who are passionate and committed to making these changes. An inspiring start to a great three days of conference.
This year we close the conference with Dr Tom Hoeer fresh from the new City School in Missouri USA . Tom, a practicing principal, will share specific assumptions and practices for creating a learning organization.
“In a good school,” says Hoerr, “students learn, but in a great school, everyone learns!”
Hoerr blends the work of Roland Barth, Carol Dweck, and Jim Collins in his strategies. He will share what has worked for him as well as what keeps him awake at night.
Alan November will speak to delegates direct from Boston (USA) via video conference on Thursday 25th at 9.00am. This is the first time for Learning@School that we have conferenced in a keynote speaker. Alan’s presentation will focus on practical examples of how emerging technologies provide educators with an opportunity for continuous professional improvement.
You can read Alan’s bio on the Learning@School website.
It took us over a year in planning but we finally signed up the best minds from across the globe.
This year the conference opens with Stuart Middleton a homegrown talent from Auckland. Stuart will outline what is known about disengagement and the reasons for this phenomenon which characterises western education systems. He will show the extent to which all levels of the education system have a role to play in re-positioning the education system in a changing world with new purposes and different roles for educators. You can read Stuart’s biography on the Learning@School website
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