Interesting discussions in a cluster management meeting yesterday, of which this post is just one snippet. We were talking about milestones, data and evidence and how to gather valid evidence (Hmm - is there ever such a thing???)

Somehow the discussion got on to providing data to BoTs etc for how buying 30 laptops has impacted student learning. The difficulty perceived being that whatever data you collected could not be directly related to the laptops. True! BUT! Again I see this as cart before the horse stuff.

Buying thirty laptops shouldn’t be about anything other than clear learning intentions about what you are trying to achieve. So often the purchase of equipment, or the design of buildings for that matter, is about “If I had X then student achievement and engagement would increase in my room.” Well yes I guess there is always the chance that it might - but only if the need to buy was driven by clear, specific intentions of what could be achieved from your learning goals.

The focus needs to be on what learning we are wanting to see in our students, driven by information or data about where they are now and where you want to go. Currently, many classrooms seem to think that literacy is all about the written word - writing it and reading it. But my literacy goals, while they would certainly include writing and reading, would also come from the curriculum vision statements about creative, energetic, enterprising, confident, connected, actively involved and lifelong learners. (NZC P.8) If I want them to be confident for example, that means that they need to feel able and therefore we need to teach in ways that will enable and empower them. Being able to communicate effectively would be a very important goal. Having a strong command of oral and visual literacy would therefore be imperative. When I look at how I might achieve that in my classroom I would see the huge potential for students to be communicating with others in these ways, and the internet offers great opportunity for that - Skype, collaborative projects, student made schooltube videos, conferencing with other children and experts to name but a few.

I would therefore need access to all of that. If the school purchased a pod of laptops that I could book for a few hours a week, or that from the pod I could have five in my room on a regular basis, I could start to achieve those student enabling goals. So providing data and evidence to the BoT becomes easy, as what I need to report is how has the access to the laptops fast tracked progress with my specific learning goals for my students. Because I had clear goals, had collected baseline data in setting those, and mapped out what 5 steps of progress towards achievement would look like in my classroom, through development of a rubric for those five steps, I can through observation and discussion and self review of students, plot progress of each student regularly throughout a period of time. Then all I have to do is collate that, graph it, provide anecdotal comment and samples of work at each of those steps and from a sampling of students, and I have valid evidence about progress with my goals.

You see its not about data about the tools - its about data about the learning!!!!

Likewise in milestone reporting - its not about data about tricks with technology, its about data on progress with enhancing student learning - and that needs to start with SMART learning goals, action plans for PD related to that, effective collection of beginning data on student achievement, rubrics of 5 steps to where you would love to reach, and mapping progress across the class, school, cluster in relation to that. And any data is only valid if supported by anecdotal comment about the learning along the way, successes and weaknesses, key lessons learnt, next steps - and hey - that’s just what the headings in the milestone template ask for.

So what am I going to be able to report about cluster progress in understanding this? My clear goals and enabling process should have been evident in the term 1 or 2 cluster network meetings - a full day was spent on this in the Waikato area so here’s the link to that day
http://waikatohg.wikispaces.com/Network+Meeting+Feb+09
http://waikatohg.wikispaces.com/Developing+Rubrics

My 5 steps for the milestone rubric:
1 Provides anecdotal comment and a few pictures of student work as evidence
2 Relates anecdotal comment to action plan goals and provides pictures and links to wikis of student work
3 Has developed action plan goals into SMART goals and has made statements about progress made from initial achievement linked to actions taken. Some samples of work
4 The school or cluster has developed an action plan with SMART goals, planned their actions accordingly and has commented on impact on student learning in classrooms with some examples.
5 As in 4 but now has quantitative data on how many teachers are at each stage of the rubric for their specific goals, and provided sample student achievement data gained from class or school rubrics and provided comment on the depth and likely sustainability of change resulting from senior management review discussions on learning.

Where would your cluster rate for this coming milestone?
What can you do in the next six months to move towards rating as a 5?

So here we were with “time to play” that teachers so often say they need, and advice and guidance available, to focus on learning and learn how to use some tools for this purpose. But no-one that I spoke to had a context for their work for the term, two people had a specific web 2.0 tool they wanted to learn and got on with that, a few others explored the wiki links and some other web 2.0 environments and others just quietly left during the session. I am left with my ongoing concern and frustration that teaching seems to have lost a strong focus on curriculum learning intentions, personalising learning and enabling the learners to be thinkers, creators and independent achievers. We seem to have become fixated on learning about Kid Pix or movie making or podcasting, and everyone using this graphic organiser and that inquiry process to gather information with a “so what” finale. But what about learning? And what about aiming to raise student achievement? Were these not the real intentions of the ICT PD programme? Isn’t all PD funded with the intention of improving learning and raising achievement?

If learning is what we want to improve, then the learning intentions are where we need to start and not with the technologies. If we are focused on the learning needs of our class, then a one size fits all ladled out approach will not work as we will have different needs. Hence in this workshop the context for learning for the term was to be the determinant of the web 2.0 learning, leading to grouping by common needs and a guided discovery approach modelled for further learning. But it failed! When there were no contexts evident, I should have been sufficiently on my game to know that we needed to stop and work on that before proceeding. The lesson has been indelibly imprinted on my brain, and this blog post is about further sorting and hopefully drawing greater attention amongst teachers, principals and facilitators that we need to make a change! We need to talk about learning and learning and learning, and only then technology. We need to work with the end product in mind – what do we want our students to know and be able to do and how can we take them on that journey? What will success look like? How will they have moved their thinking and their performance at the conclusion of this learning period? How will they be more enabled and empowered for the future?  Clusters also need to be more accountable for ensuring that they are more contributory during these meetings and do the preparation asked of them.  Their attendance is funded by the cluster and there should therefore be an obligation to get the most out of the session by participating fully.

Two days after this meeting I was in one of the teacher’s classrooms, and found that her context of study for the term was “structures”. We downloaded Google Sketchup, explored the self paced tutorials and could see their potential as a reading activity to provide a platform for discovery, problem solving, sharing of ideas and new learning, and development of community. Students would then be able to use this programme to draw and design 3D structures, view them from all angles and perspectives etc. The Drape logo programme was then set up for learning about angles and programming. We searched and found free animation software that could be used for moving the shapes and structures to find out more about their properties.

In another classroom, the teacher was preparing for a study of the Olympics. Here we worked to set up Netvibes on her computer to create a learning springboard for accessing athlete’s blogs, world time clocks to compare time zones, news feeds etc. Much was learnt about web 2.0 within half an hour after school, but focused around the specific needs of her programme this term.

Dr Michael Wesch of Kansas State University in his address “A Portal to Media Literacy” at Manitoba University captured in a YouTube video talked about the knowledge of everyone being greater than the knowledge of anyone – in others words the capitalising of group knowledge and endeavour to increase the learning through collaboration. Workshops and Web 2.0 allow us to unleash the power of everyone – but only if we are prepared to contribute and participate.

So, as we reflect and review our progress in our ICT PD contract, let’s all look carefully at what we are really achieving, where we are focused and what we are assessing. Let’s make the focus of our next milestone reporting be about the changes to student learning rather than just the changes to use of technology. Let’s also look for opportunities to share, collaborate and celebrate together. And please let us be aware that the interactivity of the Internet, now allows us to collaborate more globally, and that this is going to be a major point of difference for the students in our classrooms in their future. Change and learning needs to start with ourselves. Grasp the moments and opportunities that you have, and don’t let them slip by.

I spent the morning working with the junior class teachers and the afternoon with those a little further up the system. By the end of the morning there was a buzz of excitement, and teachers apparently arrived back at school keen to get in and get started. So what had been the magic that made the dramatic change?

Simply, it doesn’t take magic - it takes good management and routines, and a clear focus on learning that drives any use of technology. This development is not about “How can I use Kid Pix or Powerpoint or any other software in my classroom?” It is about “What am I trying to get my kids to learn today in their reading or writing or maths or whatever?” If and when that can be enhanced through the use of technology, then “How can I manage that process with my class?” becomes the next consideration.

The “buzz” generated in this session was around the stories I told of classes who had markedly increased knowledge of beginning sounds when they set up a simple Powerpoint Slideshow template with all transitions preset and duplicated on the many slides, with a Paint background embedded that kids could then double click and create their own 5 minute wonderfully creative illustrations. The “magic” that sped up the learning, was in the fact that the kids were so motivated to play that slideshow many times a day because they loved seeing their pictures whirling in and out of the show - so simple repetition was the magic, and the programme provided hugely increased motivation. The focus on simple clear routines and coaching models that demanded independence from the kids meant that teachers found the process easy to implement and it ran itself throughout the day while the teachers got on with their teaching.

The practical work I did with these teachers was then on discovery learning around how that simple activity could be applied to modeling writing during news time at the mat. These teachers were then guided through questioning to work the process out for themselves. That way they can apply the same process to any other work they want to do on computer with their kids. The usual cry of when can we get time to practise is also simple - have your teacher laptop on your knee during your favourite TV programme and use the ad breaks to play. (I take no responsibility for the fact that these teachers also thought it would mean husbands would have to do the dishes that they currently squeeze into the ad breaks :->> That’s all just good problem solving and innovation LOL)

I believe that good ICT PD is about teaching strategies to make kids innovative, exploratory and independent, yet much of what we see in classrooms is about dependence, step by step instruction on “how to” that requires no thinking or problem solving and high teacher input products. If juniors can switch the balance, then so can any classroom.

I am currently typing up some of the thinking that went into the Friday session, and this can be found in my wiki for junior class teachers. Check it out, and please add your own ideas to support this approach at http://juniorclasses.wikispaces.com Just click “Edit this page” and add your ideas in. Please reference this with your name so that we can see how contributory the site can become.

On just reading and reflecting on my last post of a few moments ago, it suddenly dawned on me that I need to provide some links from this blog, to the areas where I really do feel I make the difference. Thinking is one of my passions, and is an area where I have workshopped extensively. If you are interested in development of this key competency, you may find my wiki of use. Check it out at http://thinkingworkshop.wikispaces.com
From there you will also find links to some other blog topics of mine.

I am now on day 15 of a stint away from home, and my own bed is looking more luxurious every day. However it has been great being out in the clusters again, and seeing real classrooms and real teachers working away at the development. All the teachers I meet are goal set on improving opportunities for kids and are generally striving to achieve that. While it is great to see the focus on moving forward, there is still that niggling feeling that the direction is not yet fully clear and that at some point there is going to be need of a strong wind or a storm to alter course and point them in a new direction that will actually turn out to be better.

I still often hear people saying that the PD needs to be renamed so that people actually focus on the right things - I would have to disagree. All that is needed is a broadening of what ICT really encompasses, and a clearer focus on what the world is really like these days and how our students of today will be required to work in the future. If we remove the ICT wording, we could get a back to basics mentality, whereas what we need is a forward to the new basics mentality. We need to keep strongly focused on learning and what that entails and the processes (ICT = process just as much as product) that will lead us there. Currently there is too much focus on the activities and the stuff that goes on in classrooms, and still a shortage of reflection on what is really being achieved. There is talk about key competencies, and even goals that relate to these, but few are really focused on deciding, for example, what a self managing learner is really like and what skills and attributes we need to explicitly teach in order for them to become self managing. The vocab alone does not suddently produce the goods.

Work on development of a school curriculum aligned to the NZ Curriculum (which should have stopped being new by now), should create the opportunity for schools to really focus on what it is that they believe and want to work towards with learning. The process of consultation, information and discussion that is part of that curriculum design, could then also focus on what the learning looks like, what needs to be inputted and how teachers and students can monitor and reflect on their progress towards the goals at each level of the school.

Good things are happening out there, but lets keep sharpening the focus, and also sharpen ways of monitoring how much learning is really occurring.

However, dropping in here before Learning@School Conference in Rotorua next week, I see that I have been very neglectful of my blog as 2007 progressed. I really must make more effort to post this year as there are so many great things going on around the country, and much to reflect upon - which is a large percentage of the value of a blog really.

I begin this year with 22 clusters - 6 around the Waikato region where I live, and the remainder from Christchurch to Invercargill in the South. I have four new clusters this year - in Ashburton, Dunedin, Gore and Invercargill. I will be heading down to see most of these clusters following our conference next week. In talking with project directors about plans for a launch and focusing the programme, it is interesting again to hear the same debate raging about what the ICT PD contracts are all about. Many of the new schools come in thinking they are going to spend all their time learning how to use computers in their classrooms - boy what a rollercoaster ride awaits them as they discover how much wider and more exciting the journey really is. At the other end of the scale, February is close off time for the exiting clusters, and it is great to read about how classroom practice has transformed for many. Somewhere in the interim years the discovery generally gets made that it isn’t about doing the same old with a new range of technologies, but rather about looking with fresh eyes at learning in the 21st century (somewhere we have been for 8 years + now) and the new skills, attitudes and ways of working that our emergent leaders will need to pave their way successfully. And hey - it links so well with a new curriculum (surprise! surprise! :->>) I look forward to sharing some of these revelations with you as the excitement begins again.

And on the home front, a busy time with my dad’s estate to wind up as his house sells in the next few weeks and needs to be vacated, our own rental property also on the market at last after weeks of redecorating and sorting, and our first grand-daughter due to arrive in June. No time for resolutions - let’s just let it roll :->>

Today I am in Allanah King’s workshop and expecting to learn a few new tricks for working in my blog. If you want to find out about the things we are learning about here you can access Allanah’s help notes for use with Blogger.com at http://www.bling4yrblog.com

Nothing like adding to the complexity, as now I will have to see if I can transfer the process across to a blog.com account. I’ll report back on that process as I go.