“I have nothing to blog about…” | My response

I have heard this said, in various ways and tones, after many sessions this year.

When I have discussed sharing and collaborating online around teaching inquiries, I hear comments such as the one in the title – or variants of it, such as:

• “I have nothing worth sharing.”
• “There are others who know far more than me about this.”
• “I’m afraid people will laugh at me.”
• “I’m afraid people will mock me.”
• “I’m afraid people will ignore me.”
• “I’ll blog when I have something to say”.
• “I’d rather just share it face-to-face.”

How did we come to be so afraid of sharing what we do, online? Is it the media and its stories of cybersecurity breaches and trolling? Is it the perceived permanence of committing thoughts to a faceless server in the United States?  Have some of us become too self-effacing at the expense of our profession and do we need to get more ‘Gen-Y’ (‘privacy, schmivacy’) about what we do?

Can we afford not to share?

The classroom – the school – can be a very siloed place. Me, four walls and a group of young people, grappling with the challenge of …sharing. It is a scenario played out all over the educational world. Every problem, breakthrough, pondering and wondering in a classroom is a potential learning moment for others. And every moment that is actively reflected on is a learning moment for the educator undertaking that reflection.

The ability and knowledge about how to respond flexibly and sustainably to challenges in a complex, changing world is not held by one individual, even one school. It is held in the network of schools, of educators. It is evolved, played about and developed with every learning moment that occurs, day in, day out, in schools across the globe.

The secret to our future success – and the success of our students – lies in the network.

And my response to the question at the start is this post: Nothing to blog about? Of course you have. No matter how humdrum, insignificant or problematic an inquiry - blog about your successes, your wonderings, your breakthroughs, your resources, your trials and tribulations in your class.

Don’t be afraid – there are millions of us in the same boat…but we’ll only find out, if we share.

And if you liked that, try these:

• BLOG POST: Swimming out of our depth? Leading learning in 21st century Schools: NZCER 2012 report which focuses on the value of collaboration and de-siloed practice

• VIDEO: ‘Share it’: Allanah King, in this CORE Education EdTalk advocates teachers to share what they do.

• VIDEO: Sharing – the moral imperative: Highlights from Dean Shareski. The title is self-explanatory; we owe it to our profession to leverage the social web to open up our practice.

• VIDEO: David Wiley’s TEDxNYED talk, on open education. We can share, without giving away, our knowledge.

[Image source: CC by furiousgeorge81]

Does BYOD really mean SYOD?

I’m about to tell you a secret but, as it’s just you and me, I’m sure you won’t tell.

I hate sharing.

There. I’ve said it. It doesn’t apply to every situation – I’ll happily share a story, cut you in on a good night out, split the bill, and pour us each a nice glass of merlot.

But there are times when I don’t want to share. The first ‘go’ on a new piece of technology…the first look at a birthday present…the first bite of crème brûlée (especially that moment when the caramel cracks)…

There are some things that are so precious, that are just ours,  that we just want to put them up on the top shelf when the friends come round to play because they’re just for us.

The prevailing paradigm, especially concerning technologies, is that we should be sharing – share our ideas, thoughts, expertise. I strongly advocate for it when I’m facilitating sessions on professional learning. Heck, the whole underlying premise of ‘social’ technology is that we are innately good sharers. But in practice, sharing is not always straightforward.

A recent conversation with a teacher about the educational shift towards BYOD – students bringing their own web-capable devices to school  -  recently got me thinking about sharing in the classroom. He told me that:

“BYOD [Bring your own device] seemed like a great idea, and this year we strategically  allowed our students to bring their own devices in. We got all kinds of different technologies, which seemed great at first.

But the problem we have found is that students don’t want to share their devices all the time, and as not everyone in the class has one, that’s what we had planned to happen, at times.

It is often the most precious thing they own. They know their parents have paid a lot of money for them, and they are very protective of these devices.”

These are interesting questions to grapple with:

• To what extent do we assume that our students will share technologies they own?
• How reliant are we on the goodwill of the students and their families to meet inequities of access?
• How can we design an approach that manages this issue, that doesn’t rely on the support of a few famiies, and that doesn’t make some students feel left out while others feel put upon?

Is this teacher alone in trying to respond to this – or are other schools seeing the same?

[Image source:  Kalexanderson]

Update:

Just found two other interesting articles looking at the possible disadvantages of a BYOD approach:

• Gary Stager: BYOD – Worst idea of the 21st century?
• Scott McLeod: Are BYOD prgrams simply and excuse not to fully invest in 1:1 ?

None of this is to say that BYOD is wrong, but the more viewpoints on an issue that we have, the more we can plan for the implications.

Pedagogy, not technology

Interesting how, once you see a reference to an idea, it pops up everywhere. And although this work from Michael Fullan came out last year, it’s slid across my radar twice this week.

Fullan’s paper - Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform (April, 2011) – highlights that policy makers who select the wrong drivers (like testing, accountability, fragmentation – and technology) may get a few runs on the board, but they won’t achieve system lift.

He picks out the following as the right drivers that, when working in tandem, show evidence of making a systemic difference. Efforts to lift schooling must:

• foster intrinsic motivation for teachers and leaders
• engage students and teachers in continuous improvement of instruction and learning
• inspire collective or team work
• affect all teachers and leaders

A key point he makes, for me, is around technology: That the mistake is thinking that a new and shiny technology will somehow make the difference – but “not without smart pedagogy it won’t”.

He argues firmly for pedagogy, not technology, to be in the driving seat, no matter how seductive those shiny things might be. Once teachers are grounded in effective instruction, that integrates technology, then we might see acceleration in engagement.

“Without pedagogy in the driving seat, there is a growing evidence that technology is better at driving us to distraction , and that the digital world of the child is detached from the world of the school” (p. 15)

He cites OECD surveys that suggest that deep learning with technology rarely happens at home, so schools need to be the place where that depth of engagement and higher order thinking occurs.

Possibly this is nothing new – but it’s good to hear it from Fullan, and in a way that positions the thinking at a policy level.

How to assess impact of ICTs on learning?

It’s certainly an interesting question - to what extent ICT raises student achievement - and I appreciate the accountability that schools have, especially after significant investment from the BoTs:-) While we do need to be asking questions about the impact of our teaching, I’m not sure that focusing on the impact on ICT alone is the right question.

It is, perhaps, more useful, when looking for evidence of impact, to look at the whole picture, rather than at just one of many variables in play. If, for example, a school invested in a set of iPads for a class, provided professional development on their effective integration, and then used them as part of a focus on literacy, it would be reasonable to gather information on:

• How the technology impacted on teacher practice, in terms of pedagogical approach and the way they planned effective literacy teaching experiences (lesson notes, teacher conversation, observation..)
• How the technology impacted on student learning in the context of literacy i.e. how it enhanced the literacy content or the activities in which students were invited to engage in literacy (student/teacher/parent voice; observation; lesson notes)
• Shifts in literacy competencies (literacy tools; teacher judgement; student/teaxcher/parent dialogue; observation)

…then triangulate the information to describe impact holistically. At best, you could draw some possible links, but it is very hard to make causal links when there are so many factors in the learning story (check out the Manaiakalani Trust link below for an example..).

Other resources that might be useful related to this:

• Capturing evidence of student progress and achievement (Teaching group thread, VLN)

• How do you know if ICT is making a difference – and does it matter? (Teaching group thread, VLN)

• The impact of technology – Value added classroom practice.docx (OCX, 1.16 MB)

• Impact of ICT on teaching and learning: This is a Delicious stack (a collection) of research and readings I have gathered over time…)

• Manaiakalani Research into e-learning and literacy: Five years’ of research into the impact of one-to-one devices on teacher practice and student learning

There are plenty of studies that highlight the way effective use of ICTs can lead to engagement (of prior learning, of culture, of interests…)  - this is certainly a pre-cursor or enabler for active learning.  Research from a decade of ICTPD from Vince Ham et al (2010) showed that ICTs can support students to:

• feel motivated and engaged
• enhance thinking, communication and creation skills
• enhance social & collaborative skills
• scaffold and differentiate their content knowledge

[this post originally appeared in a closed discussion of the National Aspiring Principals' Programme in the VLN; image source: aussiegall]

How I personalised the PD

One-off keynotes or professional learning events are always an exciting challenge – such a short period of time and an unknown range of learning needs, expertise and interest in the room.

Last week, I had the pleasure of working with 130 teachers from three schools in Auckland, two primary and one intermediate. It was a large ‘class’ (although they were very well behaved!;-) – but, in such a large room, how to ….

• offer multiple ways to engage with the ideas?
• personalise the learning?
• percolate ideas across a room of 130 over four hours?
• ensure we captured the learning to build on after the day?
• share and articulate our thinking?
• link everyone to wider resources and people beyond the room for further exploration and learning?

In other words, how to try and walk the talk?

With the power of a strong wireless connection (and with one eye on the promise of UFB), here’s how I did it:

• Set up a Google site for the day
• Set up ‘virtual rooms’ using pages on the site, each linked to activities on themes that had been signalled as relevant to the schools before the day (the most popular being the effective use of e-learning in the classroom)
• Included links to key resources on the site, contextualised in their chosen themes e.g. BYOD resources provided for those who had chosen this theme – and made sure those resources were aligned to the e-Learning Planning Framework so teachers could come back to them as they reviewed practice in the future;
• Presented information using a variety of means:  paper, stickies, streamers, movement around the room, share ideas online, multi-media (via Keynote), stories of practices underpinned by reference to research;
• Provided a space to record, share and discuss ideas and questions via a Twitter backchannel – #3schools1day - and Google Moderator
• Set-up Google docs to capture the thinking during discussions – a shared resource to see what the thinking was across the room on the day and for planning afterwards.

Having a strong connection was clearly vital – but so was having a group of teachers who had their own devices, were enthusiastic and keen to connect, and had a history of belonging to their own collaborative cluster.

Many thanks to Point View, Somerville and Willowbank for hosting me for the morning.

(Image: ‘pencils’ – by aland; Google sites)

2 reasons to keep the ‘e’ in e-learning

The question comes up frequently in discussions related to using technologies in education:

Why do we still have the ‘e’ in ‘e-learning’?

Shouldn’t it be just about the learning? And doesn’t the retention of the ‘e’ just perpetuate a short-sighted focus on the tech, not the teach?

These questions, in my experience, often come from the early-adopters who are already well down the track of thinking about the effective use of technology. For these folk, the tech may already be invisible in their classrooms, and using Google docs, or blogs, or wikis, fully integrated in effective learning, is as natural as breathing.

What the questions miss, however, is the importance of the strategic use of technology – the word ‘e-learning’ reminds us that this is a specialist field, that to use technology appropriately requires a clear understanding of the relationship between content, pedagogy and technology. Check out the TPACK framework  [right] for a nice unpacking of this idea.

The other reason to retain the ‘e’ is that, for many schools and teachers, for a number of reasons, there still is little or no ‘e’ going on. I would argue that a deliberate focus is needed on the ‘e’ until the effective use of it becomes integrated and invisible (have a look at the ‘Empowering’ stage in the e-Learning Planning Framework, the state at which entire schools, not just one or two teachers, would be ‘e-mature’), or at the pedagogy section in the New Zealand Curriculum…and we have a fair way to get to that state in many schools. It’s easy to ignore a focus unless it’s overtly drawn to our attention.

So, keep the ‘e’, at least while we are in a period of capability building. If you use the tech appropriately, then you’ll recognise the specialism behind the word – and if you are not yet there, it reminds us that a clear strategy and framework is crucial if it isn’t be an add-on – or even forgotten altogether.

[Image: freedigitalphotos.net; tpack.org]

Waving – or drowning? | Professional learning for 21st century

A new report is out this month from NZCER that adds to the ’21st century’ schooling conversation that they have been championing for several years:

Bull, A. & Gilbert, J. (2012). Swimming out of our depth? Leading learning in 21st century schools. Wellington, NZ: NZCER.

They set out to explore the extent to which schools have shifted the way they manage learning, including professional learning, in the face of increasing exposure to thinking and conversation about ’21st century’ dispositions for learning. We are well down the track of a new curriculum that has this thinking at its heart, but

“… how are the signals it gives being interpreted by teachers, school leaders and other education stakeholders? Is the new curriculum transforming how we “do” schooling? Is it changing the sector’s “ways of thinking”? Or has the old jargon simply been replaced by new jargon, leaving the old ways of thinking intact?” (p. 5)

Is it old wine in those new bottles?

The researchers explore three schools as cases to illustrate ways in which well-led staff can nurture shared conversations in “communities of practice” (Wenger et al.), but they challenge the extent to which “learning communities” (ref. Ki te Aotūroa) are in place. That is, they find plenty of rich examples of ways in which educators gather together to exchange ideas, even deep inquiries, about their practice.

But there were far fewer examples of teachers who are:

• objectifying their practice,
• holding it up to the light, critically examining it for ways to improve and
• acting upon new thinking created by this, potentially uncomfortable,  challenge to the way we usually respond to issues.

Key points that were takeaways for me were:

• the importance of leadership in deliberately creating structures that allow these uncomfortable conversations to take place safely, fostering a shared vision.
• the need for “slow, reflective” questioning and reflection that considers practice purposefully.
• the need for professional development to address “cognitive growth”, looking objectively at problems of practice.
• the importance of time dedicated to the slow reflection for each teacher, as well as time to share and connect in communities, both face-to-face and online.

[Image source: ant.photos]

Managing BYOD at Albany Senior High | Notes from PoriruaNet

[This is cross-posted to/from the Enabling e-Learning: Leadership group]

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to the PoriruaNet Cluster conference, to facilitate a couple of workshops on Enabling e-Learning and blended professional learning for schools.

It was great to see four schools coming together to explore the way they were using technology for learning – and the day was kicked off by Mark Osborne (Albany Senior High School – see picture) who explored several aspects of how his school has integrated technology into their curriculum and learning philosophy.

Managing the challenge of inequity in BYOD

At Albany, for students who have any device, they can bring it in and the school will make sure the network is available. But their vision for students means that they should be able to learn in the way they wish – which may not involve technology. We should remind ourselves that learning is a social activity, so screen time needs balancing with peer work, and their suggested optimum ratio is 1:3 around a single device.

All information in the cloud

The goal at Albany is for any browser to be able to access the web, using any device, anytime, anywhere. This requires huge commitment to the network and infrastructure. 400-500 devices are on the network during the day.

Open source – Open access

For every personal device that comes in, a school computer is freed up for a student who needs it. Software access can also result in inequity, so they chose to use open, free, powerful software that anyone could access. E.g GIMPinstead of Photoshop; Open Office, instead of Microsoft Office. To download new apps, the library offers QR code-tagged apps to take students to relevant download pages.  In terms of storage and security, the school provides personal lock-ups, with power points, managed by the students.

e-Portfolios

Recording and reflecting on their own ‘Impact’ projects (e.g. Students monitoring waterways, starting bands, designing rockets, creating art) can be challenging for teachers who also have to support rigorous assessment. How to assess fluid, self-chosen learning? e-Portfolios allow for flexible conversations around learning, amongst students, parent and teachers.

Wikieducator, Google docs, and social networks

Collaborative, peer-tutoring can occur in the cloud. Mark described the power of Google docs, citing an example of over 40 teachers using them at the ULearn11 conference to collate notes during a keynote. These tools allows for differentiated approaches, peer review, structured and scaffolded approaches, and tracking for individual involvement. Many classes use Facebook pages, often administered by both teacher and students, focused around different topics and questions

Akō

Mark quoted Bishop, and the importance of tuakana-teina. All good teachers keep learning. He advocated for active reciprocal learning (touching on the Learning Pyramid).

At the start, Mark reminded us of Papert’s quote - ”Of course technology doesn’t work. Technology doesn’t do anything; people do.” – and asked us to consider the challenges in our classroom that we are hoping to solve. It was a good reminder to set aside the shiny tools and focus on a clear vision and learning goals for our students.

The keynote was a really useful set of touchpoints for BYOD, that put the learning and the curriculum in the foreground and spoke strongly to the importance of clear vision and strategy.

The e-Learning Planning Framework: Leadership dimension might be a good starting point for other schools looking to review the way they interate technology with their curriculum.

Thanks to Mark for sharing Albany Senior High’s experiences, and to PoriruaNet for hosting us:-)

ICT and learning: 5 myths – busted!

A recent conference I attended was a hotbed of exciting ideas, inspirational speakers and wonderful stories. Many of these focused on how to make the most of what technology can offer the learner.

But whispered amongst the enthusiastic conversation and bubbling excitement, there lurked a handful of myths.

Myths that need busting.

• MYTH 1: All students are Gen Z, they use technology all the time, they’re all on Facebook and so teachers should be too.

No, they’re not. Some of them are. Some of them are on MSN, MySpace, Twitter, their phones…some are on all, and some are on none (Check out the Pew Report, from 2010).  The concept of ‘digital natives’ has been debunked. And it’s naive to make blanket assumptions about learners. We should do our own research on our own students, be more nuanced as we plan learning with them. They’ll tell us where they are, what they like, how they like to learn. And they’ll appreciate it far more than being signed up for a site where they don’t want to be for a lesson that is driven by some mythical assumption about how young people learn. Myth: Busted!

Teach carpentry, not hammer | Future-proofing NZ schools

“What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology…No amount of technology will make a dent…. You’re not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a website in every school – none of this is bad. It’s bad only if it lulls us into thinking we’re doing something to solve the problem with education.”  (Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, Wired magazine, 1998)

Hands-up all those of you with a box of painstakingly drawn OHTs (=overhead transparencies, Google it if you’ve never seen them) or a beautifully tidy cupboard of VHS tapes, preserved on dusty shelves and neatly catalogued? I’ve got a few of those tapes knocking about at home – the six year old’s scan at 20 weeks, my first bungee jump, a few ‘80s movies (big hair! Big shoulder pads!). All of these are testament to a bygone era when OHT was cutting edge, and VHS was the way we all recorded film for posterity. Their poor, sad, dusty selves are testament, too, to the speed at which technology changes around us, developing incrementally at speeds never before seen. Top YouTube hits like ‘Shift Happens’  reflects this move, as does this infographic comparing the internet of 1996 and today [too large to reproduce here].

Schools would be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the task of keeping up with each new development. No sooner have we purchased interactive whiteboards, then laptops are in. We’ve just bought the laptops, and now iPads are de rigeur. Don’t buy that textbook, you can just download the e-version. How will you make the most of broadband on your doorstep? We would be forgiven, too, for feeling somewhat at the mercy of the technology corporations who seek to market each new device as the solution for educators. Certainly, Oppenheimer (1997)[1], Cuban (2001)[2] and Postman (2000)[3] have all explored the idea of schools being aggressively sold technology on the premise of improved results, efficiency, and the urgent need to prepare students for the digital future. There are certainly plenty of e-cheerleaders around to urge us on. And similar movements happened with the advent of radio, of film, of TV…

So, how can we keep our heads when others around us are losing theirs? Especially if they have the keys to the budget, to your professional development, or to your schools’ charter?

To future-proof a school, in terms of technology and ICTs, seems like an impossible task in which we are forever Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit, racing against time.

What do we mean by ‘future-proofing’?

I think it’s important not to think of future-proofing as making decisions so sound that they won’t need to be changed.

But in the context of schooling, I would suggest that future-proofing is understanding that we have always lived in changeable times, and that schools need systems, processes and people in a state of preparedness to anticipate developments, to respond to possible challenges and to embrace opportunities. Sound curriculum and effective pedagogy may change, but we don’t have to update to a new version of these every few weeks. Much of what we know about effective schooling, change management and leadership is supported by sound, longitudinal, international research; this is our rock to cling to when the waves of technological change threaten to swamp us.

As the title of this piece asserts, we need carpentry for tomorrow, not a hammer for today[4]. In other words, we should think in terms of fostering schools’ reflexivity and students’ competencies for a changing future, not (just) to manage a single task for today.

If schools are to think about future-proofing themselves to manage the technological developments ahead, they need the capability to review what they can already do, understand where they want to go next and plan how to get there, as part of an on-going cycle of review and reflection.

So….how we might future-proof ourselves? Here are five thoughts to get you started…..

1.     Keep the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa as our touchstones

These are our foundation documents for visioning, strategic planning, curriculum development and pedagogical design. If this is the starting point for decision-making, schools can feel sure that the rationale behind their choices, during periods of change, is more justified than making decisions on gut-feeling or because the school down the road is doing it.

2.     Inquire, inquire, inquire

A school that is flexible, secure in its processes and strategy is one that can respond to change in an uncertain environment. The inquiry model (adapted for the Best Evidence Synthesis series) is one that has permeated through resources on leadership, professional development and quality teaching, because it is crucial that schools, and teachers, can reflect and review on what they do, based on evidence purposely gathered. Again, decisions can be made based on firm foundations, not spur of the moment hunches.

3.     Build capability to use technologies effectively for teaching and learning

Part of a schools’ inquiry into how it is progressing might be done using a self-review tool (an e-capability model) and there are several to choose from, depending on your focus. The Ministry of Education is currently developing e-Learning Planning Framework for use in schools in 2012. The Māori-medium framework will be scoped in 2012, for possible development and use in 2013.

This framework will be a planning tool to help all teachers and organisations in New Zealand undertake a self-review of how effectively they use ICTs to enhance students’ learning (their e-capability).  The framework will provide a ‘road map’ for schools to identify where they are, the practical steps they can take, and relevant information or services to support them. Key areas of focus include the way e-learning can be enhanced through: leadership, professional learning, teaching and learning, digital citizenship, connections to the community, and technologies/infrastructure.

4.     Keep your finger on the pulse

Change is certain – but what is not so certain is how much we know about what is changing around us. This is where keeping in touch comes in – and technology can make this efficient and accessible. Teachers and school leaders can build their personal/professional learning networks (PLNs) to connect with other schools and clusters. Where to start?:

• Subscribe to useful news feeds and blogs using RSS/Google Reader.
• Participation in forums and online communities, such as Enabling e-Learning communities, can provide a flexible space to share ideas, resources and aspects of our practice.
• Build your PLN.

5.     Foster digital citizens

Can we future-proof our students? This is where the Key Competencies comes in – and, through a digital lens, these can be described as competencies for digital citizenship. Through effective curriculum planning and teaching, we can enhance students’ abilities to behave with integrity and responsibility online, build their digital literacy skills and maximize the opportunities online safely.

• Find out more on Digital Citizenship on Netsafe’s Learn-Guide-Protect site.

Further reading: New Zealand

• Future proofing schools: Emerging technologies.
• CORE Ten Trends: The ‘big ideas’ in technology of which New Zealand educators should be aware.
• The Horizon Report 2011: Synthesises short, medium and long-term trends in technology development.
• Future proofing our web 2.0 students
• Future-proofing our education system.

Further reading: International

• Making your schools future-proof
• How to future-proof our schools.

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[1] Oppenheimer, T. (1997). The computer delusion. The Atlantic Monthly 280(1), 45-62.

[2] Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[3] Postman, N. (2000). Some new gods that fail. In The Jossey-Bass on technology and learning. San Francsico, CA: Jossey-Bass inc.

[4] The original quote is from Oppenheimer’s The Computer Delusion: “Michael Bellino, an electrical engineer at Boston University’s Center for Space Physics, stated in a protest against computers that, “The purpose of the schools [is] to…’Teach carpentry, not hammer,’” he testified. “We need to teach the whys and ways of the world. Tools come and tools go. Teaching our children tools limits their knowledge to these tools and hence limits their futures.” (http://www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/computer.htm)

 

[This piece was originally published in the NZATE English in Aotearoa Journal, October 2011. Theme: Future-proofing education.]