Category: learning

Digging in to Te Tiriti o Waitangi

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a young man walks across a field. Rain clouds scud across a dark sky.
Ka mua ka muri

This post seeks to answer some questions from the learning I am doing through Tātai Pūmanawa. I will always have the voice of my friend and colleague Maria Tibble in my mind as I consider Te Tiriti o Waitangi and what it means to me, the people with whom I work and the way that I interact and live my life in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I can feel her looking over my shoulder, I can picture her smile and hear her voice. Her passion was infectious. So, I will try to honour her as I grapple with the questions and my jumbled thoughts.

Who would hold power after the Treaty was signed?

It seems clear from the articles of Te Tiriti that power would be shared equally; Kāwanatanga, Rangatiratanga, Ōritetanga but if we look at the history of colonisation by Britain, it is clear that the aim was to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories. The aim may have been initially to open trade opportunities but Britain also sought to benefit from the countries it colonised. The underlying sense of superiority that the British had contributed massively to the way that Māori and other indigenous populations in Australia and Canada were treated. The Church which had a powerful presence in Europe, it was at the cutting edge of colonisation across the world and it contributed and legitimised the actions of colonising powers. In “Healing our History” (Consedine & Consedine p.68) there is a quote from a J.M. Blunt; “A missionary might have great love and respect for the people among he or she worked, but would not be expected to believe that the culture and mind of those non-Christians was on a par to that of Christian Europeans.” Whilst the negative impact of colonisation on indigenous populations had been recognised in Britain, and ideas were beginning to change about colonisation the need to protect trade and British economic interests was stronger.

With those mindsets, how could the idea of shared power ever become a reality?

from Healing our History; The Challenge of the Treaty of Waitangi
Robert Consedine & Joana Consedine

Did the Treaty create new rights for Pākehā people? Did it create new rights for Māori people?

‘New rights’ or any rights? In theory, Te Tiriti formalised or set out a framework for governance and the way that Māori and Pākeha lived together with shared rights and responsibilities. In theory all Māori men had the right to vote by 1867, in practice there were so many conditions that they couldn’t. As long as Māori were seen to be inferior in terms of their intellect, their ways of interacting, working, living, communicating, their beliefs then their rights would be compromised.

What important things does the Treaty say Māori will keep?

Rangatiratanga: Māori would maintain independence and control of lands and all that is important to them. My interpretation of that would be that Māori maintained their taonga – their language, culture, stories, tikanga, beliefs and the values upon which their way of life was based.

However, in 1907 New Zealand government passed the Suppression of Tohunga Act which banned Māori traditional healers and religion. This Act meant that Māori knowledge with respect to medicine, the environment, the arts and links between spirituality and secularity was disregarded and not recognised. It was not repealed until 1962. This sort of approach amounts to systematic cultural genocide. George Tinker, American historian suggests this as a definition for cultural genocide;

the effective destruction of a people by systematically destroying, eroding or undermining the integrity of the culture and system of values that defines a people and gives them life.

What impact did the population of Pākehā and Māori have before and after the Treaty was signed?

At the time of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Māori outnumbered Pākeha by 200,000 to 2,000. The Māori economy was strong, communities flourished, traded internationally and had a sophisticated socio-economic system. Following the signing of the Treaty immigration to Aotearoa, New Zealand boomed. The conditions that ensued, the way that Māori were treated and the impact of that on their way of life, their economic status, the diseases that were imported with the new settlers to which Māori were immune all led to a steady decline in the population.

Linda Tuhinui Smith says in respect to the promises that were not kept by the colonisers which were enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi;

“Indigenous populations may have survived colonisation but the impact on their social, political and economic systems is huge.”

a collage of two photos. One of the carved entrance way to a Pā sute, the other are the words inscribed on the inside of the gateway.
Entrance gate to Rangiriri Pā “Without vision the people will perish” Kingi Tāwhiao

Is partnership the same as collaboration? Or consultation? What could Tiriti based partnership look like at CORE?

I believe that partnership means that we have a shared understanding of what our vision for the way our world should be and the way that we interact within it. When I think about my conversations with Maria I remember her fierceness and her absolute belief that her mokopuna should live in a world that recognised – not just recognised, celebrated, respected, revered and absolutely empowered them to know their whakapapa, to practise their beliefs, use and develop their language, to reach their potential and go beyond it. But she was also open to seeing things from different perspectives and acknowledging that the history of Aotearoa, New Zealand is a shared history. We shouldn’t blame the descendants of settlers for the wrongs their tipuna committed. We should encourage them to know the real history of Aotearoa, New Zealand, support them in understanding what happened and why and empower them to own the history. Vincent O’Malley says in the foreword of his book, The Great War for New Zealand, that the stories need to be told and heard if we are to reconcile ourselves with the past, we need to understand it and freely acknowledge it so we can move forwards.

The Waitangi Tribunal commented: “While only one side remembers the suffering of the past, dialogue will always be difficult. One side commences with anger and the other side has no idea why. Reconciliation cannot be achieved by this means.”

For us at CORE and indeed in all our kura and our nation as a whole, we can only work in true partnership if there is recognition, acknowledgement, empathy, understanding and forgiveness of what has happened in the past so we can learn from it and move into the future together.

Further questions I am still pondering;

If we are thinking about working in partnership with tangata whenua, ask yourself what you might know about tangata whenua. Does your own world intercept with the Māori world? If so, to what extent? What is Māori ‘worldview’? What is different about Māori culture to your own culture? If your culture was a ring, and te ao Māori was a ring (picture a venn diagram) how would the two worlds meet?


A thought or two about online learning communities

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a globe showing Africa and a hand pointing to the PacificJust a thought about the impetus for joining an online community and then staying in it. I have joined some of the groups in Edspace, which is the online community recently created by CORE Education. I have also created a couple of groups. Why did I join them or create them? And why have I chosen the ones that I have?

If I am honest, the initial reason to join was to support one of my colleagues who was instrumental in the vision and creation of the space and her mahi. She is so passionate about it that I couldn’t help but want to jump in and have a look around and explore.  It may also be that I felt a sense of duty or responsibility since this is ‘our’ space and as a CORE employee, I should support the product. But I didn’t have to and there are some people who haven’t engaged. Why is that?

Well, I think that partly it comes down to friendship and relationships. If we trust and respect people, we trust in their ideas and their passion that a place like EdSpace is a good place to be.  I am a loyal employee, I have a good relationship with the company and I want to support it. Maybe if those relationships didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have been so quick to jump in? But that’s not to say that those who haven’t jumped in don’t have a respectful and trusting relationship either. So there has to be something else, right?

I have had a positive experience already in online communities. Communities in which I have been welcomed, where dialogue and discussion have been challenging but positive and warm, where I have become ‘friends’ with others who are also involved in them. Some of those virtual friends have become ‘real’ friends!

I am also always game for a challenge, happy to try things out, open to new spaces and ideas.

So perhaps the willingness to get involved is about disposition too, about personality and about prior experience. If someone has had a poor experience in one online community, they are likely to be less confident or willing about getting involved in another.  If they are naturally reserved or risk-averse, they may not want to take the step.

Then I think about the times that I have had good experiences in online communities. What were the circumstances which prompted me to join? Mostly, because there was a clear purpose.  When I first joined Twitter (which I know is not quite an online community like EdSpace, but it is a community, and it is accessed online!), I really didn’t engage. I joined because it was new and because a couple of other people I knew had joined, but for a couple of years, I really didn’t engage. I didn’t have a purpose, I didn’t know what to do or say. Then, I went to an education conference, I was on my own and although I was in the middle of masses of people, I didn’t know anyone. BOOM! there was my purpose – the twitter feed was displayed on the screen, people were sharing ideas, I needed to capture those ideas, it was a way of connecting to people and having a conversation about what was energising me and exciting me about the keynotes.

Curiously, I became engaged in an online community whilst I was in the middle of thousands of people! Weird, I know!

Another online community in which I engaged was in a MOOC. The first MOOC (and the best) that I was involved in, EDCMooc. The online discussions in that MOOC were brilliant.  I communicated with people from all over the world, across time zones, on some amazing topics.  We challenged each other, shared resources, peer-reviewed artifacts we created for the MOOC, questioned and celebrated.

So, purpose is key. The groups I have created in EdSpace have had mixed success. The first really was right at the start and I don’t think there was anyone really there to join it except CORE facilitators. I created it to try to get some discussions going about Guy Claxton and his theories on Education as I was working in a school who had adopted his ideas as a basis for their teaching and learning. It has flopped big style. Was that because, whilst I had a purpose for creating it, there was no purpose for anyone else to join it? Since nobody joined, I stopped going there. Nor did I really populate it with any taonga – there didn’t seem much point in putting effort into something that was empty!

The second group I have created is for a group of teachers with whom I am working. They are sole charge principals in 5 schools. We meet together roughly once a month face to face and have really robust discussions. I wanted a way to keep those ideas sparking in between face to face visits. So I broached the idea of an EdSpace group. They were a little nervous but were willing to give it a go. It is still in its infancy, but we are gaining traction. One of the teachers is more engaged than the others, so she and I are really keeping it going.

I use it a little like a ‘classroom’ space where I post pre-workshop thoughts for them to consider before our sessions together, and post-workshop reflection activities. We have also added resources and links to readings, videos, and articles pertaining to the topics we are exploring, but also for other things that come up out of left field as we discuss face to face.

To help them get involved, we have the first 10 minutes of our face to face sessions discussing any ideas that come up in the online discussions. That gives those who didn’t have time to get online in between, a chance to see what the others had said and maybe that will also engender a bit of FOMO too!

I can’t make them engage, I can only provide a space that is welcoming and interesting to be in. And of those in the space, there are a couple who either aren’t comfortable discussing online or who as yet are not comfortable with the technology, so they contribute less although they say that they read the others’ posts. They need to be supported because they do see the purpose of it. For them, it is being able to continue conversations that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to have as they all go away to different schools. My challenge now is to keep the interest going, encourage them to be proactive in the group rather than only reacting to my posts, get them to join other groups and see what others are doing in areas they are interested in.

After reading the introductory article The Spinoff Ātua I got to thinking about the online space and how that relates to the space on the marae ātea.  If we can make it a space where we can:

  • trade and spar ideas in a respectful, robust and passionate way
  • acknowledge each other’s knowledge and experience
  • meet as equals
  • build partnerships based on mutual respect
  • nurture our minds and our souls with new learning

educators will be encouraged to engage, to share their knowledge, to question, to wonder and to learn.

 

I have considered trying to get other schools I am working in online too. But they are in a different position to my Sole Charge Principals. They already have a space in which they can share ideas on a regular basis – a physical space – their staffrooms or workrooms in school. They don’t see the point yet of sharing and discussing their experiences and ideas more widely. I am sowing seeds. Helping them to see what the benefits might be. Encouraging those who are more open to join individually and find some groups to get involved in. But for the time being I am encouraging ideas sharing in other spaces as part of the mahi. Maybe they will get there.

Story Telling, Our Place in the World, and Digital Technology.

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a dirigeable with a boat hanging beneath it seems to float in a garden.                           Storystarter by Anne Robertson via Flickr CC-BY

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Wittgenstein) 

We have always told stories. People from all cultures, all around the world, tell and listen to stories. They are passed down from one generation to another through legends, sometimes spoken, sometimes sung, sometimes acted out through plays or dance. We have a natural compulsion to tell stories; our own, our family’s, our friends’.  I remember the stories told over the years around campfires at camps, at sleepovers, in the pub, at dinner parties. We share our experiences and we are avidly curious about those of others. We have learned from the stories we listened to. They spark our imagination, they bridge cultures, help us to understand concepts we may not have direct access to, they support us in making sense of the past to inform our actions in the future. They help us work out who we are, form our opinions, make connections and build relationships.

For a while stories were always transmitted orally, but then came the printing press, and the written word started to be more accessible to more people. We learnt to read and write, and stories started to be written down. We could access stories even when there was nobody there physically to tell us. Our world grew. We weren’t limited to the stories that our immediate family and friends or travellers could tell us. We weren’t limited to single stories but had access to stories about things from multiple perspectives.

I remember Saturday mornings as a child. My sisters and I would all creep into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and snuggle into bed with them for Dad’s stories. They were stories of fairies and goblins, of wooden horses, of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, good overcoming evil, of derring-do. I later read Greek and Roman myths and realised where Dad got his stories from and for a while the magic was spoilt. But then I realised he was just doing what so many more had done before. He told the stories, embellished and adapted for three wee girls who just wanted to hear about magical things.

story dice red on a black background. Each dice has a different image on

Dice Story by Anne Robertson via Flickr CC-BY

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.” Hopi American Indian proverb

The books and stories we have access to influence the way that we think, the perceptions we have of the world, how we can limit our own understanding and what we, in turn, include in our own stories. Listen to Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie talk about The Danger of a Single Story.  As well as having multiple stories, she also talks of the importance of having stories in which we recognise ourselves and our culture, of us being able to be characters in our own stories.

Being able to tell our own stories gives us the power and to raise our aspirations and open our minds to possibilities. But, “stories are defined by the principle of nkali (an Igbo noun that loosely translates as ‘to be greater than another’) How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.”

So what?

There is a great emphasis put on literacy in schools. It is the measurement by which all children and teachers and schools are judged. Over the last hundred years or so, we have been taught that if we can’t read and write, we can’t get on in the world.  Those who are illiterate, have no future. No power.

But let’s consider how we learn again. We learn our language from the day we are born by listening to those around us. We develop vocabulary, we learn how to pronounce words by listening and speaking. Through repetition, through getting it wrong, being corrected and trying again. We learn language through a context that is meaningful to us. I always remember my son, aged 6, coming home and telling me that that he had to collect the toucans from the crisp packets to get sports gear for school. He searched the crisp packets in the supermarket for toucans and was disappointed when there were none. Of course, the teacher meant tokens, but his wee brain knew what a toucan was because it appeared in one of his story books and so in making the connection between the sound he heard and a thing he knew about, he came up with toucans. I won’t even start with his story about cheeses curing diseases in the cinema….

The point is that we make sense of what we hear by relating it to a context that is familiar to us. If we don’t have exposure to a wide range of contexts, we are limited to narrow interpretations that don’t make sense to us. So, we need to ensure that all our children have access to lots of stories.  I think what has happened over the last hundred years or so, and this is just a hunch, no research here (please let me know if there is some), the oral storytelling tradition has diminished. We have focussed on reading and writing, not listening or speaking, and that has deprived a significant number of people from the opportunity to hear stories and tell their stories in a meaningful way. Storybooks in schools tell ‘single stories’ that kids can’t relate to. Those kids that aren’t ready to read alone or write, at the age specified by the powers that be, are targeted and more time is spent focussing on reading and writing than developing oral language. They don’t necessarily have access to spoken stories at home either. This is a situation that may be (I hesitate to generalise) compounded if they come from lower socio-economic backgrounds where family members either don’t have the time to read to their children, or in families that are isolated from a community that support them, or they themselves don’t have the ability.

If we don’t have a wide vocabulary, we won’t be able to make sense of new words or express ourselves effectively. As a teenager learning French, my teacher once told me that what was holding me back from progressing in French, wasn’t my ability in language learning, but by my lack of a broad vocabulary in English. Now, I had a pretty good vocabulary, I read avidly, but the problem wasn’t my general vocabulary, it was my specialist vocabulary. I didn’t read or listen to the news or documentaries. I read novels and watched Coronation Street and Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green (sorry, showing my age now!) I needed to widen my range of input to improve my output.

However, in the rush to give kids access to wide range of contexts, are we in danger of not recognising that to start off with they have to develop language in a context that is culturally and socially familiar? And do we also need to give them a voice so they can tell their own stories? And do they need to tell those stories in their own way?

I hark back to the last hundred years in schools. What opportunities did you have to tell stories? What medium did you have to tell those stories? When I was at school and for most of the years I was teaching, despite there being other ways to tell stories, writing has been king. That wasn’t too much of a problem for me. I was a good writer – well physically at least. My handwriting was neat and tidy, I liked writing in exercise books and I was quite fast too.  I wasn’t particularly creative, I don’t think, but I never had too much trouble churning out what was required to get by. Fast forward to my sons. Both full of ideas, they had broad vocabularies and their stories were creative. But they both struggled with writing. As soon as those stories had to be put on paper, they were condensed into as few words as possible and they didn’t achieve success as measured by the system.

I wonder if they had had the opportunity to tell their stories in other ways, if that would have helped?

a double exposure image of an airport lounge. Advetisinghoardings and people sitting at tables luggage at their feet.

Tell me Your Story by Anne Robertson via Flickr CC-BY

 “…new technologies give creative people new ideas. Art is affected by the technology of art, because artists love to experiment, and every new development is a new tool.”

Naomi Alderman, 2017

I am a firm believer that the technology we have available to us today provides opportunities for all our children to have a voice, to tell their stories. Learners can record their own voice, create a video or an animation, they can write by hand, they can type. They can speak to the computer and it will type for them, they can tell their story through song or dance. They can use a variety of media to enrich their stories.  If we let them.

But equally, we can use digital technologies to provide access to the stories in the first place. When we provide a stimulus for kids to tell their stories we can offer videos, podcasts, picture books, cartoon strips, songs, sound files of different contexts, artwork – the options are varied and limited only by our imagination.

There are blogposts that list the ‘top ten digital storytelling tools’ and there are any number of them out there. This one, this one, this one, this one, and this one (which is probably the most up to date one) to post just the top links on a google search.

There are a few that I have tried and found that students enjoyed using them too, not just because they were fun but because they gave them more options for expression.

  • Storybird – choose a theme, or an artist and be inspired by the artwork or read a story and respond, or co-create a story with a friend or even a complete stranger!  Example here
  • Book Creator – tell your story using text, sound, images and video Example here
  • Thinglink – interactive images, plot your own story linking sound, video, images and text. Example here
  • Puppetpals – chrome and iPad app, animate stories, choose your characters, upload sound or use the inbuilt voices
  • WeVideo – create videos from video clips, images and annotate with text and sound
  • Animoto – create animations, upload your own sound, add text
  • Piktochart – visual infographic type format. Upload images, text, sound and video to tell your story.
  • Google Cardboard – VR and AR – explore different worlds, connect stories, unleash the imagination
  • My Maps – create maps that tell a story, link images, history, video, sound files and text. Examples of how My Maps can be used can be found here. 
  • Adobe Spark Video – easy to create videos
  • Scratch – code a story – see a very simple one here

Each of these needs researching before you try them out with a class and they all meet different needs. Allow time for exploration, but the starting point is always going to be your learning intention. How can they express their ideas in a way that works for them and also achieves the learning outcomes you have set or co-constructed with them?

And…. telling stories through a multimedia approach provides opportunities for learners to solve problems, be creative, innovative, and develop soft and hard skills that are sought after in the workplace.  This post suggests that there is a huge shift in the way that traditional text based businesses like advertising are now developing stories.

PD in a Box

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An outside concert in a park with lots of attendees. Inset are other photos or different types of people attending, a middle aged couple, children, three men holding hands
photo credit: Anne Robertson 2018 CC-BY 2.0

I was at Womad last weekend in Taranaki ,and the range of different people, all ages, all walks of life, was phenomenal. They were all there because of a common passion – music. Conferences also bring together lots of different people. Their passion? Learning. Because they want to interact with like-minded people, they want to learn, they want to share their passion and their learning.  Just like music festivals all conference goers are the ‘converted’; most have chosen to be there and they have often given up a Saturday or a holiday to be there.

Professional Development (PD) in school is different – people don’t usually choose to be there. For many, it’s a ‘must do’ as part of their professional standards, it is another thing on top of a very busy workload. And just like National Standards and NCEA credits, doing something because you have to, leads to ‘ticking the box’, compliance, low level thinking and no improvement to pedagogy and learner outcomes.

So, how do we make the PD pill palatable? Even more, how do we make the PD pill into an exciting and mouth watering feast? OK, maybe I’m getting carried away….

I am fortunate to work as a facilitator for PD and feel privileged to be invited into schools  to ‘deliver’ their PD either for a one off session or on an ongoing basis over 6 months, 12 months or longer. With that privilege goes a huge responsibility.

Some schools want their ‘PD in a Box’. ‘What sort of package can you deliver?’ they ask. ‘We have an hour every Monday morning. That’s our slot. What do you have that fits in there?’ they say. And what do they do with the PD in a box? Unwrap it, enjoy it for an hour or so, then put it on the shelf and forget about it. Box ticked!

As facilitators, we need to support schools to align the differing PD initiatives – Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L), Digital Technologies, Change Leadership, Culturally Sustainable Pedagogy, Health and Wellbeing, and so on… so that teachers can see the connections, workload is not massively impacted and that they build sustainability and it leads to improved pedagogy and happy, successful teachers and learners..

I have asked myself more than once why schools have a “PD in a box” approach?
Is it because they don’t have a big picture vision?
Is it because they don’t have a plan?
Is it because of a lack of SLT engagement? – e.g. one DP given the PLD portfolio and the rest just checking out?
Is it because SLT have different portfolios and they don’t work as a team to align them? – each initiative is separate and piled on top rather than overlapping and enhancing?
Is it because of failing relationships, high staff turnover, unstable rolls?
Is it because they don’t get the WHY?

I think it is some of all of those things and maybe many more as well. But let’s take the last one. I think lots of schools do get the WHY, what they lack is the ability to fit the WHAT into the HOW given all the other constraints and competing imperatives they have. It’s very difficult to see the wood from the trees when you are lost in the forest.

Maybe we should help them to shift thinking from the PD Box to the “The PD Puzzle”.
They have the picture on the box lid – their vision, so now how do they go about fitting all the puzzle pieces of PD to make it?

wooden puzzle showing stages of development - jumbled, almost complete, complete
Photo Credit: Anne Robertson CC-BY 2.0

Upoku Pakaru

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a black and grey photo of a boy, head in hands and the words Upoku PakaruA few weeks ago I talked about kickstarting my reo.

As usual, good intentions turn to custard when other, more pressing things take over my time. So, my daily half hour has turned into a weekly, manic rush to catch up before the next webinar!

Anyway, these are my musings this week…

In this week’s mahi we had to make an image to express something about ourselves and use the structures;

Ko _________ tōku wāhi pai rawa.         My favourite place is _______.

Ko ____________ tōku papakāinga.        __________ is my home.

I had a go at saying that my favourite places were the mountains and the ocean.  I created this image;photo of mountain overlaid by a beach with tress framing the image and the caption Ko ngā maunga rāua ko te moana tōku wāhi pai rawa.

I posted it on Twitter with my image and then when I saw a Māori colleague, I asked her if it was right. She helped me correct it to this:

Ko ngā maunga me te moana tōku wāhi pai rawa

So far so good. I will go back and edit!

Then, today, I spotted roses in my garden with raindrops on them which made me think ‘of my favourite things‘ –  “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…..”.  So I thought I would have a go…

I tried to adapt the base sentence – changing ‘wāhi’ to ‘mea’ – thing (though not sure if that is the correct word for ‘thing’ amongst the hundreds in the Māori dictionary!) and came up with this;

My favourite thing is = Ko …………tōku mea pai rawa.

Then to add ‘raindrops on roses’ – more searching in the Māori dictionary and who knows if it is right!?

Ko ngā tōuarangi ki runga i te rōhi tōku mea pai rawa

My favourite things are raindrops on roses

BUT.. then I thought, I actually want ‘things’ plural not ‘thing’ singular, so does that mean that tōku becomes ōku?  Aha! Good thinking methinks! I might be getting this, feeling a little smug!

BUT THEN …. places take ‘ō’ but things take ‘ā’ – so surely I should change it to ‘āku’ instead of ‘ōku’

Ko ngā tōuarangi ki runga i te rōhi āku mea pai rawa.

OR does the fact that they are favourite things and therefore precious make them ‘ōku’ ??

a yellow and an orange rose with raindrops on and the caption: Ko ngā tōuarangi ki runga i te rōhi āku mea pai rawa.

AND THEN that took me back to my original sentence about mountains and ocean and I thought, that too is plural so ‘tōku’ should be ‘ōku’.  So should my original sentence be?;

Ko ngā maunga me te moana ōku wāhi pai rawa.

My head hurts – I’m not even going to “whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens”!

 

 

 

‘We’re all doomed, I tell ye’. ‘We’re all doomed!’

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20171024_162939-02.jpg

Just found this post from a while back which I started writing after the announcement about CoLs and CoOLs.  I never finished it as plenty of others responded in a similar vein to me and in a much more eloquent way.  See this post ‘Keeping our cool about CoOLs’ from Claire Amos.  There was a lot of ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’ and cries that ‘the sky is falling’ about online learning. Things have gone quiet since then and we have seen the introduction of the new Digital Technologies|Hangarau Matihiko Curriculum and, of course a new government. The reason that I have come back to this post is, partly because I found it in my drafts, and having found it, it resonated with me as I am currently reading “Different Schools for a Different World” by Dean Sharesku and Scott McLeod. Now I don’t think that, for many of us who are steeped in the NZ education system with our flexible and forward thinking curriculum, they say anything particularly groundbreaking. Much of their commentary is of US schools and school system. But despite seeing plenty of excellent contemporary, collaborative, student centred learning happening in schools, I also know that there is plenty of mediocre teaching and learning happening which is not meeting the needs of all our learners. 

In the book, the authors offer 6 arguments for why schools need to be different. As I read the book I am tweeting the thoughts and questions it is provoking in me. The first deals with information, where we get it from, how we get it, and what we do with it.

Screen Shot 2017-10-27 at 16.58.57

We, and our students, can find all the information we need online; what our kids need is to ‘master the skills of information filtering and critical thinking’ so that they have the skills to thrive in their world. That is the role of the teacher.

The 2nd argument is that of economics. We’ve all heard it said – the jobs our kids will do haven’t even been invented yet, automation has taken our jobs, a job won’t be for life. Shareski and McLeod suggest that manufacturing jobs are being replaced by higher skill service jobs and creative jobs. They ask ‘what value do human workers add that software robots don’t’? Critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, high level communication, collaboration…

Screen Shot 2017-10-27 at 16.51.28Then we come to learning. How we learn, how we teach, what our role as teacher is, whether we are meeting the needs of our learners.

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A blend of digital and kanohi ki te kanohi learning provides both content and the interactions necessary for developing the soft skills needed to manage the information.  We need to prepare our students to be fluent navigators of an online world, to have a positive digital presence, to understand the ethics and legalities of a digital landscape, to be able to share their knowledge and skills as both consumers and creators. We need to prepare students for learning agility – they need to know how to ‘flounder intelligently’. (Guy Claxton)

I think online learning offers us some really positive options especially for kids who are isolated or marginalised, but also for those who sit in a system that sort of works for them but sort of doesn’t.  I’m thinking of the majority of middle of the road kids who get by in spite of a school system that is out of date and not a good fit for them.  The kids who are ‘passively disengaged’.

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This is dealt with in Chapter 4: The Boredom Argument.   A question for every teacher….

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How much time is spent in your classroom when the student is ‘passive’?  What activities motivate your students to learn? My wero to you is to time some of your lessons, or someone else’s, and reflect.

George Couros asks in one of his blogs;

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‘Different’ schools could be online schools but there is a danger that all we do is extend a traditional model of learning into an online environment.  We need to think of ways to allow our kids to learn without just replacing an exercise book with a device.  Teachers need support to design blended learning opportunities that allow pathways for all learners.  Students need to collaborate – the classroom should be a space for ‘doing’, asking, sharing, exploring, then go home and use a computer to reflect on content, write up notes etc. So, there has to be a lot of thought as to how online education is blended with face to face interaction. And online doesn’t mean ‘robots’ delivering courses as some have said. It means carefully constructed pathways of learning created by teachers, with discussions facilitated by teachers and learners with multiple ways of accessing content and creating responses.

This brings us on to the Innovation Argument; Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen (2009) suggest that innovators possess 5 key skills;Screen Shot 2017-10-27 at 17.40.43

and that we need to create an environment in school which allows for those skills to be developed and flourish. My question is;

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We are constrained by top down drivers – results and standards, which can be used as an excuse not to provide opportunities for genuine inquiry and experimentation, to limit questioning, to stimy divergent thinking, and to prevent kids from forming and using networks to amplify their learning.  I can see so many possibilities to support and develop these 5 key skills by using a powerful blend of online and face to face learning.  At the moment, though, our assessment system isn’t playing ball and too much testing is still geared towards passive ingestion and thoughtless regurgitation.

The final argument is one of equity.  The obvious is a lack of access to digital technologies and thus online opportunities. But it is also a question of usage – even with access what do kids from different socio-economic backgrounds use digital technology for?  Studies done in the USA suggest that substitute tasks such as drilling and practice are overwhelmingly done by African American kids whilst more affluent students use technology for creative, higher order thinking activities.

I haven’t had time as yet, to explore my thinking about how online learning would solve the issue of equity – my initial thought is around attendance.  It is clear that lack of attendance at school has a profound effect on kids learning outcomes. Barriers to getting to school are many but if kids can access learning from home when they can’t get to school, surely that helps to reduce the inequity in some small way?  It is also a question that Shareski and McLeod don’t really answer either apart from suggesting that we ask questions of our communities to get a clear picture of who has access and who hasn’t, and to build partnerships with community and businesses to support access.

When we think about ‘different schools’ we are not talking about the physical or virtual space, we are talking about pedagogical philosophy.  As teachers we can all be part of the conversation, pushing for dialogue, questioning our own assumptions about how we teach and how our kids learn. We can demand (in reasonable terms) that those in power think very carefully about how to implement what could be a very positive model for learning. We also have a responsibility to read widely all of the information and assess critically, not jump to conclusions and onto the ‘sky is falling’ bandwagon. Online learning in some shape or form is going to happen so we might as well work together to ensure that we implement the best model possible which works for all our learners.