Jill Hammonds EdBlog

Another great day out in cluster schools, and today a discussion with a principal about authentic contexts. Students in this small Southland school had been pushing for the installation of an ATM machine in their town. They had written to the banks etc., but were frustrated that businesses were not taking them seriously, and in some cases not even bothering to respond.

Fortunately the students were encouraged to work through the ways that they could gain more credibility and engagement in some substantial discussion on the matter. It became a topic of discussion with parents for homework and lots of suggestions were put forward, and the students have launched in to following through to see if it makes a difference. It’s great to see students actually getting to look at ways they can be more empowered to influence their world. it will be interesting to hear what develops, but the observation of the increased engagement in relevant contexts has been noted.

This then led to a discussion of how one can keep on finding authentic contexts for students to work on. I hope people reading this will contribute further ideas, but a couple of thoughts that occur:

• Relevant or authentic does not need to mean local. The issues of the world affect kids and can be just as relevant to work on as the things in the immediate physical environment. The web now enables students to become just as involved in global issues and to find contacts with whom to debate these matters. It may take a little more search skill to get in touch and create a trail of people to engage with on a topic, but we need to get plucky and seek them out.
• Newspapers, TV and other media, stories, song lyrics – all of these and many more can be the trigger for authentic contexts. What will make them authentic or otherwise is whether they strike an emotional chord with the students. hence the need for the topics to be decided in partnership between teachers and students.
• When teachers take the rsponsibility for the context or topic of study, these are best when very broad to allow students to get involved or immersed, and to then find specific tangents that they wish to pursue. Students need to take ownership for the study to be authentic. Of course, the art of the teacher, is in being able to sow seeds that will then grow in fertile ground. A particular story can channel students to want to take up a cause, but they feel like they made the decision.

I would encourage people to read Stephen Downes on his 10 things that people should learn:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/09/11/how_to_be_successful_stephen.htm

http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2006/08/things-you-really-need-to-learn.html

Here’s one that particularly appeals visually and to the heart for me.

How to empathise.

Cheers,

Jill

Y-E-S!!!!!

Today was one of those days when you can see something really taking off. I’ve been into promoting wikispaces for use in classrooms with something like missionary zeal lately. Some of you may be aware of that :->>

This week while preparing a keynote address for the weekend, I’ve been looking for examples to show the possibilities. I knew my Rosetown Cluster were getting underway with using wikispaces for their online community, and was excited to see that three such wikis had been created by the facilitator, and these are now starting to be populated by cluster members. Check out http://www.rosetown.wikispaces.com to see their professional development area, http://www.edresources.wikispaces.com for their resource area and http://rats.wikispaces.com for their Really Awesome Teacher Stories. These have just been set up in the last few weeks but reflect the facilitator’s enthusiasm for this “new way of doing things.”

As if that weren’t treat enough, I was expressing a desire to find a class using wikispaces well, and that too had already blossomed in the lead school with a Year 7 & 8 class. Take a look at http://room3tai.wikispaces.com to see how this class at Te Awamutu Intermediate are changing the way they work through use of this environment.

Be sure to click on the Discussion tab to check out the students driving their own learning between home and school.

You may struggle to read some of their txt language, but remember that is your problem not theirs. They’re asking each other and their teacher questions via this medium at home while using the internet to find info for what they will be doing at school tomorrow (while by the way, simultaneously chatting in MSN, listening to iTunes and gaming), and supporting each other with problem solving in maths, and maintaining their reading logs. They are your Mark Prensky “digital natives” in full flow. Lynne, their teacher, later told me that she sits at home with the computer open while watching a bit of TV, and often responds to their questions at the same time, and this certainly fits with one of their explanations of why they like this medium – “you can be ‘chatting’ with your teacher and she hasn’t got any other distractions at that time of day.”

But hey! There’s more! Today I visited the class and the teacher was happy for them to stop what they were doing and just talk with me about their learning. What an articulate lot of students. This was no question and answer session. I asked one question and then we just had a conversation that flowed between the students and occasionally me but in which these students poured out all their understanding about how they learn using the now tools of their day. This was no practised performance – they didn’t know I was coming – hadn’t heard of me before I stepped into the classroom. But it was one of those times when I was so absorbed in hearing them that I forgot that I had my digital camera in hand and could have recorded it, but at the end it was agreed that I would come back later and capture a replay on video.

Of course later became 2.30p.m. and the class were off at assembly, but there were 4 students who had stayed back to complete some work – who had been out of the room during my morning visit so knew nothing about the earlier session or what was planned. But they were quite happy to oblige with an interview. With the digital immigrant facilitator on camera, the discussion just took off with very few questions needed to set the flow going. Being newbies to the particular video camera we then struggled to shift the filming on to my laptop, and currently have some totally raw, unedited footage that I can use for my keynote on Saturday. With the help of some more technically able friends I’m hoping I will be able to add this video to my blog next week – check back and see.

Days like today really show what can be achieved when we “let” kids use the technologies and we as teachers focus on their learning, extending their thinking, developing their oral language skills and allowing them to be a community of learners. Any teacher who thinks they need to learn the technologies so that they can teach them to kids is missing the moment.

And by the way, in answer to my question this morning “What is your message to teachers about the way you like to learn?” the response from several members of the class was:

“We do like to have structure because it helps us to sort out what we need to do and how to get there.”

“We don’t like really fixed deadlines- because sometimes we find there is a whole lot more we can learn and we want to be able to carry on.”

“We like to be able to talk about what we will do with the teacher, and suggest changes and different things that we can do and negotiate all that.”

As you can see by the timing of writing this post, it was all still swimming around in my brain, and I’ve given up any ideas of sleep until I’ve got this recorded in my blog. Pictures and hopefully some of that video can be added later. I need those singing nuns from The Sound of Music to tell me that it’s “time for bed.” Sorry Room 3 if you are reading any of this – you probably won’t know about that because it’s from another generation :->>

The hills are alive, with the sound of music – la lalala . . . .

Another great day out in a cluster, this time with the principals’ management group reviewing their year and planning for the next. The cluster facilitator took them through a process that moved them from a group of schools looking to write up an action plan, to a motivated group who wanted to be a leading cluster, who knew what that needed to get them there, and were putting their hands up to say, yes lets get on with it.

They used the thinking hats as their starting point:

White hat – lets get the facts down about where we are at and what we are currently doing.

Yellow hat – what are we really happy with?

Black hat – what are the issues and what’s not working?

Red hat – how do we feel?

Green hat – let’s be creative in our thinking and design what we want.

Current thinking was then extended with a reading of a chapter from “Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education” Peter M. Senge p.325 “Triangle of Design, Circle of Culture”

What lifted the subsequent discussion out of the ordinary was the big focus questions – the first major one being “What do you want to create out of this contract?” Responses were questioned and challenged further to push the principals out of the ordinary into specific, unpacked, clarified statements that were then summed up in the statement:

More challenge – “So what are 21st century learners?” This provoked a lot of discussion, pooling of ideas and eventually the realisation that like many “cliches” there was little clarity about what that meant and no time to do it justice now, so this became one of the goals for the cluster “To unpack what a 21st century learner is like” followed by the other things that the cluster wanted to achieve:

Note the identified weaknesses that this cluster saw they needed to work on to help them to be not only a motivated group, but a more empowered and enabled group – help with their communication and interaction skills etc. How often is that built into the programme? More often clusters struggle on without getting expert input to streamline their procress.

From this came the guiding ideas,

the organisational structures to implement their programme, and the success indicators. These will then morph into the milestone tasks.

All wrapped up in a day? Not likely! This cluster know the work they need to do and have planned for further meetings. They know that they will only get the results they want, if they continue to develop clarity around that through revisiting the ideas and goals. Their next step is to set up a wiki space where today’s notes will go so that they can all continue to add ideas, comments and questions to guide the next stage. Well done Bush Cluster.

It has been great to get back out visiting my cluster schools today – its always invigorating after days behind a computer screen completing admin tasks. As well as the buzz of talking to principals and teachers and seeing the lights coming on with the new learning occurring in the clusters, I always like to get inside classrooms and see what is happening.

Today, at the end of the school day, I was just in time to see a group of 5 year old students working on creating images using blue screening (or green screening if that is your preferred colour) :->> These children had been sharing in a learning experience for their teacher and were excited about showing me their achievments in the afternoon session. If anyone thinks 5 year olds can only play reading and maths games on CDs – take a look at this! And think what these pictures could do for their writing stimulus.

A free trial of the UMAJIN software used is available for download from http://www.umajin.com

 Believe it or not!

I’ve decided that it’s time to put theory into practise.  Until now, blogging has been “just in case” learning, or occasionally a place for recording my overseas holidays.  I’ve never felt that I had anything that I wanted to regularly contribute to an educational blog, seeing huge potential for kids in classrooms and at home, but not for my own lifestyle.

However, I see interesting things when out in schools, and always learn more myself when running workshops, so figured that a blog would be one way of sharing the highs of learning, and hopefully linking with others in the process. 

Core Education, for whom I work, have just hosted the ULearn06 Conference in Christchurch.  Over 1400 delegates attended and there seemed to be a very positive hum about the experience.  I would have to say from the worker side of the registration desk, that there was more yearning than learning for me personally, but I am looking forward to working with my clusters this term and hearing about the changes that have resulted for clusters, schools, teachers and hopefully kids in classrooms.

Part of my job description for the conference was to provide a preconference stimulus via the online environment with discussion of the 10 key questions.  I must confess to wondering how active or useful this would be in the last three weeks of the hardest term of the year, but was pleasantly surprised to see a percentage of the delegates actively involved, and to hear from the workshop facilitators that there was evidence of people exploring the readings and coming to sessions well prepared.  An early look at the behind the scenes stats for the area shows that the active participants are just the tip of the iceberg, with a huge number of teachers reading below the surface.

I am starting to see a shift from teachers seeing the online environment as an add on to their workload, to seeing the possibilities for their own learning, but also for the kids in their classrooms.  I have been promoting the ideas of using wikispaces as ways to bring a new dimension to the classroom.  The opportunity for educators and/or classrooms to have one of 100,000 free wikispaces is an exciting possibility.  With so many parents now at work each day, the wiki environment presents a new opportunity for the classroom and the community to merge and share ideas.  Parents are often privy to the public displays at the end of units of learning, but now here is an opportunity for them to be involved in the process stage, either actively or passively.  Imagine the rich contributions that families could make to the building of information in immersion stages of units, or entering data and other forms of information about their experiences that can contribute to building up concepts about the ways people live and interact with their world.

If any readers are excited or curious about the possibilities of use of wikispaces in the classroom, please add a comment or question below.  Anyone can create their own wikispace through www.wikispaces.com – these are public and I believe have advertisements at the side but you can soon not even notice those.  Classroom teachers, early childhood centre teachers and other educators have access to free private or open wikispaces from a link from the above site.  Check it out and start experimenting with their use.  They are as simple as using Word – just click Edit the Page to add comments and then save.

Cheers,

Jill