Session 4 at the Mind Lab: Learning Theories DCL course and Research informed practice for the LDC course.

What a crazy week it has been. I think I am rather out of practice of completing assessments and have found the whole episode of getting my first assessment a rather bewildering and stressful experience (they tell me the first one is always the hardest). I am so very relieved to report that a couple of hours ago I was dancing around the sitting room celebrating the fact that I had completed and sent the assessment off to the powers that be. I actually have a little more sympathy for my students who have assessment deadlines. So this week was all about learning theories and research informed practice. The below clip is rather amusing. Do you think you would get fooled in someone came in as an expert and gave a lecture? Have a look, I reckon he does a very good job at bamboozling the experts.

Our task for this week was to look into the 10 most popular learning theories...they tell me there is 100's - I had a hard job getting my head around 1...Luckily I had the lovely Meeta and Karima to work with this week. I have to admit to just wanting to be around some creature comforts as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with my struggle to get a handle on the assessment so I made a beeline for them as soon as I got through the door. 
The thing is, it wasn't so hard coming up with a 'digital and collaborative learning innovation, and even writing about it and planning how it would work seemed straight forward-ish (I don't want to get too ahead of myself there - as I don't know if I have even passed it yet!) Anyway the bit I struggled with was the fact it had to be presented via a 6-8 minute video. This I found very difficult as I just had never done anything like this before...and I didn't actually want to be in the video. I have only used I-Movie a couple of times and that's my lot. I eventually, went for movie maker on my laptop...but from that It then turned out that I couldn't just copy and paste my power point over....instead I had to use a 'snipping tool' and then from there I had to put my photos on and then voice over it all. It doesn't sound like a long process at all does it.......





Enough said.......
Anyway, I suppose that is 'applied practice' in action. It did make me think a little about next year when a few hundred students could potential turn up with new 'devices' courtesy of Santa Claus... but I will save that for another time.

The session challenge this week was to pick one of the education theories from a hat and create a stop motion animation explaining the key principles of the theory. We got 'Social Cognitive Theory' by Albert Bandura (born 1925). The  video clip below give you a bit more detail..

.......and below is our stop motion clip....you have to keep your eye out for the poor frog on the left of the screen.

Thanks Meeta and Karima...as always it was funny as funny to work with you :) 

Session 3 at the MindLab: Virtual and Augmented Reality and Innovations for the DCL course and implementing Technology Innovation in the classroom for the LDC course.

My new buddy at MindLab 

Well, the elephant in the room this week has to be the first assessment which is due in on the 30th November. EeeeK!  I have to admit to feeling a little uneasy and overwhelmed at managing and balancing my time and lifestyle at this stage. 

It's one thing being a student the first time around. Although for my first time around at University I was in fact a 'mature' student, affectionately known by my peers as the 'immature' student, as I lapped up every moment of student-hood and I am told was much 'naughtier' than all the other normal aged students. This was understandable (and justified?) after being stuck in a unskilled job for 10 years previously it was like I had been reborn! Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy my time working as a postwoman (that just never sounds right, but then nor does being called a postman, when I was a young 21 year old female) and there is most definitely nothing wrong with being a, mmm lets call it a postal worker.  
But, the fact remains, being a student the first time around was an amazing experience and a breeze compared to what I am feeling right now. 
So lets try to get things into perspective, top of my priorities is (always) my family, then of equal disposition would be work and my MindLab study - although maybe work should come above, seen as without it I would not be able to afford to take part in this study and I wouldn't be trying out all this new stuff if it wasn't for my job. 

Anyway, I digress..again! So first stop is the 'to do' list..that will calm things for a while.

So what did we get up to yesterday? Now your talking, WOW! WOW! WOW! I stuck with my motto 'new week new table'..that is each time I go to MindLab I make myself sit somewhere new so I get to meet and collaborate with new people. I have to say I was very pleased that Meeta and Kim came and joined me again as I had such a laugh working with them last week. If you missed the video of it, see the last post - I reckon we rock at being naughty children in a classroom....Funny that. 
It was also nice to meet someone new, Hannah...who had a wealth of information on 'Google Cardboard and 360. This weeks session was all about Virtual and Augmented reality and innovations.
Virtual is defined as unreal environments Augmented reality means it adds things to real reality. I was pleased to get a definition of both as I don't think I really understood before this time what either were, even though I had been instructed to make myself an 'avatar' at smallworlds.com as part of last weeks homework. You might know this word from video games, where you create an avatar to represent you on screen. I now have a 'mini-pretend me' with a strange name.

Once I was clear with the above, and I had made my google cardboard, oh ok, so I didn't managed to construct it fully....luckily I had Hannah next to me who had Google Cardboard people into her school last week

...abracadabra!  

We then set to work exploring google cardboard. The idea is you can go to Google street view or Google 360 on you tube and with the google glasses on you can experience a 'virtual' environment, walk around the roads, visit famous ICONs, hang-out with some wild animals, explore cities and even go surfing...whilst trying not to bump into the 'real-life' furniture!

Below are a couple of the other Virtual and Augmented reality innovations we tried out. Remember all these apps are free but are in their early stages of development!




https://www.aurasma.com/  This was my favorite and I could see so many uses for this at school. Here is a website that talks about the uses in more details. http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/06/20-ways-to-use-augmented-reality-in.html




http://quivervision.com/  This consisted of printing off 'ready to colour' in pictures free from its site and then once coloured holding them over the app and the picture turns 3D in front of you. They have many different pictures from Science and Educational to just fun colouring in activities.

So, enough of all this fun! As well as educational in schools and lots of fun where else can this technology be applied? Check out this video, you can put on this helmet and be able to service and repair an airplane!

Once, we had the fun then we had a little look at 'Adaptive Competence and the SAMR... This linked into the implementing Technology Innovation in the classroom for the LDC course. I haven't had much time to look at these yet (too busy playing?) But will get onto this shortly. I would love to hear back from anyone who can 'educate' me a little more on the SAMR or the experiences they have.

Right, back to the MindLab assignments, school reports, lesson planning and most important the family...mmmm how come the family came last there? 

Have a great week everyone and I look forward to seeing you all at the next session.

Week 2 Homework Digital & Collaborative Learning in Context (DCL)

TITLE:  21st Century skills

overview

This week allows us to look into the purpose of education, does education form society, or does society dictate what education should look like? On a more detailed scale we ask what skills do our learners need in this ‘Knowledge Age’/time of hyperchange and examine the Key Competencies - discussing their relevance in the 21st Century with particular reference to the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) research. Below are key elements of the ITL research rubrics (attached media below)

• Knowledge construction
• Self-regulation
• The Use of ICT for learning
• Skilled Communication
• (Real-world problem-solving and innovation - although this one we'll leave for next week)

The key findings in the ITL Research were that innovative teaching supports students’ development of the skills that will help them thrive in future life and work. However, students’ opportunities to develop these skills are typically scarce and uneven, both within and across the sample of schools in the study.

Click the following link to download 21st Century Learning Design - Activity Rubrics”

How things are changing in the classroom

TASK: Reflect on how 20th century and 21st century skills differ? Do we need both?

I love this above video clip, it kind of reminds me of my son and how he takes things apart and puts them back together again....new and improved...usually! His recent antic's have been focused upon improving his scooter and getting it 'dialled' (I have learnt this means it doesn't rattle when you try to bounce it and goes way, way smoother and faster).
I love to see my son - and also the students I teach enjoying their learning in this way. I find boys in particular love this style of learning. This 'ownership' and 'inquiry' and 'problem-solving' style is just fabulous to sit back and observe their engagement and to take it all on board. 

The scooter in pieces 

My son's new 'dialled' scooter and his new work space

My husband on the other hand, is far from impressed and I think he finds it a bit scary that our son is taking apart a rather expensive toy's that we have brought him. My parents were pretty much of my husbands mindset when I was growing up. I used to take apart expensive, electrical Christmas gifts (a bit scary at times but we all survive a few electrics shocks and such like) and once I even dismantled a brand new bike they had brought me one Christmas. Not because there was anything wrong with the bike you understand, but....well I needed certain parts of it to build a bike I had been building from scratch at the local adventure playground we used to hang-out at.

So, how is this related to the question posed above? 

As a child, I experienced the 20th Century 'industrial' style of teaching and education. The majority of my learning took place with me at a desk and the teacher doing the talk and chalk thing, or us just doing our work individually from a workbook. I did not thrive academically at school, in fact I will openly admit to being labelled a 'disruptive' and a 'delinquent' student. 

Disruptive or Model student? Well that would
depend upon which subject teacher you spoke to.

The funny thing was though, the transformation that took place when I was in a practical lesson or in a hands-on learning environment. In practical subjects, I thrived, I was responsible, competent, gained excellent grades, innovated, demonstrated leadership skills and creative..... the list goes on and I was also a very happy and compliant soul. You could of been mistaken when reading my school report, it actually looked like the teacher was writing about two different student. 

 I think many of our students need to be engaged in real-learning activities like this, in particular boys. This is not to say that there are not those students who would much prefer doing book work and being teacher-led. Overall, the 21st skills are enabling teachers to offer a larger choice of pedagogical styles of learning to a larger percentage of students in one class, 'personalised learning' you may say.  Mixed together, with the problem-based learning and inquiry learning models which are now coming to the fore, 21st Century Education is also allowing students to develop skills that were not actually seen to be needed in prior years, for example, collaboration, self-regulation, critical thinking, communication and creativity.

Let's be clear here, the skills that were required for school-leavers in the times gone by are valid and in my opinion, still needed for today's students. They focus on a factual and procedural society, preparing students for some of the different roles they may take up during their working life or for further education.

However, in saying that, if we only prepare them with industrial type skills, they will not fair well in today's and future societies. Students also now need to be equipped to deal, thrive and to make a difference in this rapidly changing and 'future unknown' environment we are now a part of.  By providing learning environments that seek to foster and develop both sets of skills, we enable the learning to get the most from their time at school and hopefully set them up well to have a good set of 'soft' and 'hard' skills which will be of great benefit to them in the future. 

We do not know what opportunities or careers will be available to the young people of today in their future lives. It is know that many of the job we have now will not exist and new,  presently unknown careers, will be be available to our students.

Therefor I believe, and my thoughts may change as my understanding deepens, we need to do our best to give them as many useful skills and tools that will allow them to be knowledgeable, informed, digital, flexible, sociable and lifelong learners.

It is not just about this though, it is also how each individual students learns best, and providing a variety of learning activities and environments that allows that to happen to as many different students as possible. We now have evidence that supports the fact there are may different learning styles and we owe it to our students to educate ourselves to teach in a way that engages these different learning styles. I also believe we need to role model these soft skills that we are expecting them to learn, such as the key competencies skills. 

The more versatile, innovated and varied my lesson are will hopefully results in more students becoming engaged in learning and realizing and achieving their full potential.

Session 2 at the Mindlab: 21st Century Skills for the DCL course and Reflective Practice and Key Competencies in Leading for the LDC course

Hi Everyone,
                Had a fantastic time yesterday, collaborating with everyone. I arrived a little early and had the dilemma of where should I sit? What is the etiquette of seating in a collaborative world? On one hand I wanted to get to know the people I sat with last week a little more...but on the other hand I wanted to meet new people and learn as much as I could on these collaboration sessions. I took the plunge, hoping I wouldn't offend and I sat on a new table with a new colleague. Within a short space of time we were joined by another 2 other ladies. We all seemed to bond really quickly and confessed to our thought of being overwhelmed and a little scared of keeping up with everything that was happening. It feels like there is so much going on, looking at professional readings and videos, keeping up with our blog, trialing new things we have to learn, getting to grips with new apps and new ideas, keeping up to date with our task list 'check off' and preparing for our assessments...the list seems to go on and on...in a positive, I might add, but daunting way.

The title of the session this week was all about -

21st Century Skills for the DCL course
and
Reflective Practice and Key Competencies in Leading for the LDC course

...It all gets a bit confusing as it is so new. What I do know is that the DCL course the first assessment is due in Monday 30th November ...eeeekkkk. It's ok tho, I have an idea!

Today discussion centered around - What are the most important skills of the 21st century?

and how well do our thoughts align with the ITL research results:

1. Collaboration
2. Knowledge construction
3. Self-regulation
4. Real-world problems/innovations
5. ICT for learning
6. Skilled communication

I will reflect and talk about this later in the week...when I have done some more homework/professional reading and gathered my thoughts more fully. Here is a wordcloud I made to show some of the skills I think students need to be equipped with for their future. You can make a wordcloud yourself at the following sites: www.tagul.com or wordle.net

So then the fun bit.... We then had a brief tutorial on 21st century skills/film making and were then set to task. We had to make a short video to tackle the question and difference between students being passive consumers of ICT and active users and designers of ICT.

We chose to focus on the use of ICT to support knowledge construction....enter our video...I shall set the scenario as we kind of run out of time at the end to add and edit a brief narrative to the video.

So, 

Act One.... Teaching being a control freak of ICT, students not using ICT to support knowledge construction, talk and chalk/industrial learning style, students being naughty...especially me lol, teacher trying to teach 'angles' but no relevance to student interest and their lives etc.

Act Two... Staff room chat and one very stressed teacher, shares and collaborate with others to come up with a better way to teach the topic

Act Three...Conclusion - following lesson, students allowed to use their skateboards to demonstrate angles e.g doing a 360, IPad used by one student to video and use an app that measures, interpret and analyse results, student even teaches teacher how to do do a 360 on a skateboard. Engaged, interesting fun lesson and students using ICT to support knowledge construction.

View Video here         https://app.themindlab.com/media/15151/view

Hope you enjoy :) 

Thanks to Kim, Karima and Manmeet that we so much fun and I learnt how to use imovie :)

Week 1Homework Digital & Collaborative Learning in Context (DCL)

CISC 8110

The purpose of education

Mind Lab overview:
On this week's session we are challenging you to think what is the purpose of education. Why do you do what you do? And why is there suddenly such a huge focus on education transformation? What is driving the evolution?

Developing Essential Digital and Innovation Skills for 21st Century Education Delivery

Education is being challenged by the impact of new technologies and unlimited online access to user driven content.Today’s student is increasingly in conflict with the traditional analogue education system and education delivery practices.

While the adoption of technological practice is core to the unprecedented transformation that is taking place, the shift has been further compounded by the need to prepare our students for careers that don’t yet exist. Educators have found themselves in needing new skills and knowledge that blends digital connectivity and collaboration with the converging world of learning innovation, digital pedagogy, online education and global networks. 

‘The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn’t need to be reformed- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardise education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions” (Robinson, 2009)

TASK:
Reflection: What is my understanding on the purpose of education?

TASK:
Reflection: How is your understanding of the purpose of education visible in your classroom.

In my learning environments I like to offer the students time to learn. I like to allow them to engage in practical and problem-solving tasks. Once set-up I try not to interfere. I encourage them trial and error different scenarios, relax about make mistakes and to think critically about what they are doing and why they are doing it. I try to offer variety so all learning styles are catered for and a blended learning environment. I find a circus of activities works very well for this, so students have a choice of the approach and learning activity which best suits them.

               Making beetroot choc cake using the beetroot
they grew in their gardens

I like to offer opportunities were the students successes are celebrated...this student grew all of these vegetables from seed, not only was she able to take the food home to her family, she also learnt that she could make money out of selling her excess produces.

Balle Bros Visit

Auckland Botanical Gardens

The students grew all of these plants from
seeds at the start of the year.

I like to connect the community to the students and the students to the community. Here we are out on a visit to learn about the Horticulture Industry in New Zealand. A interesting visit that allows them to gather the required information for their knowledge-based assignment, but also an opportunity to widen the students minds to career opportunities that are available and also how our country relies on the Agricultural income from NZ and oversea countries.

                                                 

'mmm I wonder'

Students teaching the class

Going 'off-task' . I love these moments when student become inquisitive about other ideas, Here the student should be measuring the temperature of the air..but starts measuring the puddle..this can lead to so many new ideas and students interest.

Change of plan...

I like to model flexibility and adaptability. I arrived to school one day and the Arborist was at school so I took the class out to watch. The 'boss' was kind enough to talk to the kids and the kids had a thousand and one questions to ask...mostly relating to gruesome injuries and how much they could earn

I try to find alternative ways of student recording data or working together. These boards were donated by a NZ paint shop and the kids love to work on them. Here they are learning about Native trees and using samples they collected from around the school during the early part of the lesson. I try to provide a selection of resources from books, worksheets, models, digital resources.

Session 1 at the Mindlab

Hi Everyone,

                 My first day at MindLab was awesome! It was great to be in such a positive environment with such positive people who were open to learning and sharing new ideas. We were set the task to try to define what we thought knowledge was. Below are some of our ideas we came up with in our group.

We has the idea that it was about making 'links' between information and putting this information together to make sense of the world we live in. Well, that's how I felt and interpreted the words and symbols we used to try to explain what knowledge is.

It's interesting how once you start thinking about just a simple 3 words "What is Knowledge" your mind starts to open and consider all sorts of new and profound thinkings about what things are and why we do them. It also make me think about how sometimes we just do things because we are taught that is how it is or because that is how everyone else has done so. I think this is very true with teaching and education.

There are big, big changes happening in schools at present and although this can be rather overwhelming having to think, act and learn new ways, it is also very exciting and a very positive road to be walking down.

For many of our students they have had to put up with years and years of not enjoying school lessons and being made to feel it is their fault or they are a problem because they are not engaged during lessons.

As a learner who left school with little formal qualifications, One who was classed as a 'disruptive student' and one who lacked confidence and felt she wasn't 'smart' like the others because the only lessons she was engaged in were the practical and hand-on ones. I say bring on these new changes in Education!

By taking on this study, I am hoping that I will be able to work with other like-minded people to gather the knowledge, the understandings and the tools that will allow me to make this needed and positive change to the way we educate young people in schools.

Session 1: The Task: What is Knowledge? 

Lots of individual words that we came up with to describe what we understood or thought to be knowledge