learning – Page 3 – A Box of Thistles

The #blimage challenge

Published on 1st August 2015 by robeanne1 Comment

I saw this on my Twitter feed this week; “lf you don’t know where you are going you’ll end up someplace else.” (Yogi Berra) And so what? What if somewhere else is better than where you were going? And how much more might you learn on the way there? Travel broadens the mind, they say but your mind has to be open to being changed.

I had an interesting conversation with some language colleagues recently about this. We were in Spain, all recipients of a scholarship to study Spanish at Salamanca University. Our discussion was about how speaking a language helped to understand the culture of the country and the people. We all spoke at least one other language than our own and we had all travelled widely. Some of us had lived in other countries and we reflected that we all had the “travel bug”. We wondered what prompts people to travel the world and to live in different countries. We do it to learn more about the world we live in , to learn about the people who inhabit our world, to learn about the history of the countries and how it has shaped the culture, the landscape, and the people . For adventure, for new experiences, to make friends , to meet new people.

black and white drawing of torso of victorian woman on top of an old fashioned cash register. Holding her head in her hands

Robot high fiving a man wearing casual clothes in a run down part of a city

On the plane from NZ to Madrid l watched two films which dealt with the idea of Artificial Intelligence – Chappie and Ex Machina. Just recently I read “For want of a Nail” by Mary Robinette Kowal which, like the films raises some fascinating questions about identity and how we learn about who we are and our place in the world.

How is knowledge given to the “machine” or robot? Where does the intelligence come from? Whose intelligence is it? Can it “learn” or does it just acquire information or facts. Is it able to attach meaning to the information? Just like an online translation service the output is only as good as what has been input. The words are there but the nuances of the language are missing.

We can learn about the world from books, from the internet, we can “see” the world through the millions of photos , videos and TV documentaries and we can learn about cultures and people. But travel offers the chance to touch and feel and smell and taste and hear. How do you transfer those tangible aspects of knowledge to a machine? These are the things that give understanding and compassion to knowledge. Those two films and the book dwell on that idea of humanity. A sense of belonging to the world, of having your place in the world, interacting with people , the culture and the environment.

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible” said Frank Zappa. So as those of us with travel lust stand looking out across the ocean planning our next adventure we have to be careful not to just “collect ” experiences like souvenirs. We mustn’t allow information to be simply stored in our database. We need to go out of our way, deviate from the norm, go off the beaten track, immerse ourselves and be open to having our perceptions challenged. To truly learn we have to connect with people and touch, feel, see, smell and taste and we must let those experiences inform who we are and make a difference to our lives.

BYOD: An ongoing process

Published on 27th April 2015 by robeanneLeave a comment

I recently received an email from a young lady who is researching schools that have adopted BYOD for her Level 2 NCEA Accounting. As I answered her questions I was prompted to consider more deeply the process we went through and I thought it might be worthwhile sharing. We are in our second term of compulsory BYOD (I posted some reflections on the first few weeks in this post) and we are still learning. I am sure that our progress will be a constant theme of my blogs this year as we reflect on how we are going. These are just some initial thoughts.

Preparation and Planning: What did we do?

First of all it is worth pointing out that I work in a State Integrated Secondary School and we are relatively well-off in terms of infrastructure. I appreciate that State Schools may not have the same finances at their disposal as we do and it may take longer to put the infrastructure in place. However, I believe that preparing the school community to cope with the changes to the way we teach and learn are similar wherever you are.

Planning a pathway

We restructured our ICT Committee so that there was a balance of technology and pedagogy to ensure that teaching and learning drove the decisions about technology. Discussions were focussed on what we needed in the way of technology to deliver robust teaching programmes and enable our students to own their learning.

We formed a group, affectionately called the “Bling” group (Blended Learning Instructional Group), which consisted of early adopters from different subject areas to look at the bigger picture. We used the eLearning Planning Framework as a starting point and mapped out a pathway for integrating blended learning opportunities within the curriculum plans. We were very clear from the outset that we wanted to use technology to enhance the already very good teaching and learning that was going on in our school, rather than replace it. Blending a range of strategies that work for all our teachers and students is essential.

The BLING team were also responsible for encouraging members of their departments, providing them with moral support and worked on a Professional Development programme.

The key component for all of this was, of course, Professional Development. Our school academic goal three years ago was focused on building personal competency and confidence around using technology on the basis that if teachers are not comfortable using tech themselves they will be reluctant to use it in the classroom. The following year it was consolidating on that and developing skills within the classroom, embedding technology into the curriculum and looking more deeply at learning approaches such as SAMR, Blooms and Solo Taxonomy. Our aim was to build a sense of “it’s ok to have a go and fail” in fact, it’s better to have a go and fail than not have a go at all. Since resiliency, problem-solving and creativity are what we want our students to aspire to then we should model that behaviour and be prepared to stretch our limits too.

Infrastructure

We have a strong tech team and we worked closely with them. Once they were clear about what we wanted in terms of learning they set to to make sure we had enough wireless switches and that they were in the best places to ensure wireless coverage was consistent across the school. The materials from which some of the buildings in school are constructed cause issues with wireless reception. Our tech team have found work-arounds for these places but we still have to work within those constraints. We planned well but still have a few “dead spots”. These are being picked up and sorted out on an ongoing basis.

Technology Adoption

We decided to adopt Google Apps for Education (GAFE) after some teachers trialled using Google Docs with classes and found that it impacted positively on student achievement. This gave us a common platform for curation, dissemination and creation of materials for both staff and students. However, that doesn’t mean that other software, programmes and apps are not used and we encourage a broad spectrum of resources to promote effective learning.

Training & Preparation of staff

Preparation for all staff, both teaching and admin, was undertaken to ensure that staff were as ready as they could be for the transition to BYOD. This happened over a two year period prior to full adoption of BYOD. Building confidence and integrating use of tech in teaching programmes has been successful as a result of the time spent preparing teachers. All staff were involved in GAFE training to familiarise themselves with a new email system, calendars and the collaborative elements of Google Apps. This happened more quickly than we had intended and required a significant mindshift and willingness to be flexible and open to new ways of doing things from all staff. It wasn’t plain sailing but I have been amazed at the resilience of our teachers and support staff and how positively they have approached the change.

Phased roll out of BYOD

In the years prior to BYOD adoption, some teachers encouraged the use of devices and trialled using technology tools for teaching and learning. Then students in Senior classes were invited to bring in their devices, followed by Juniors but they were not compelled to do so. The challenge here was that some students would have devices in a classroom and others wouldn’t, making it difficult for teachers to manage and plan. We soon realised that we would need to make the transition to compulsory BYOD.

Research & choice of devices

We looked carefully at what had worked in other schools and decided to go with an agnostic device BYOD rather than mandate a brand or type of device. The benefits of this are that the learning is the priority not the tool to achieve it, parents don’t have to buy new devices if they already have one from a previous school, they have choice over how much they wish to spend and students use what they are comfortable with and know how to “drive”.

Battery life is a huge consideration and to avoid health and safety issues of cables trailing in classrooms we made the decision to buy charging lockers and installed them throughout the school.

Preparation for students

This has been one area that I feel we have neglected in a way. Although we were aware that not all students are “tech savvy” we did still assume that they would adapt quickly to using devices in the classroom. However, they are not all good at managing their own devices and knowing how to use them for learning. Digital Literacy is something that we are addressing on an ongoing basis in the classroom. The Junior Curriculum provides opportunities in the first term for the different subjects to build capabilities sharing, collaborating and creating documents, presentations and videos. There is time to explore what plagiarism is, how to conduct research, use media and effective referencing. Digital Citizenship is also a key factor for both staff and students and we have put in place strategies for dealing with inappropriate use of devices. As with Digital Literacy, Digital Citizenship is being addressed in the classroom in context.

Preparation for Parents

A BYOD booklet explaining our rationale and giving examples of the sort of learning that can happen has been prepared and distributed to all parents. It includes a guide to the sorts of devices that are suitable. We have run Netsafe workshops for parents to raise awareness of Digital Citizenship and we are building a section of our website with useful hints and tips for parents of digital teens. We are still working on other ways of engaging parents in the BYOD process as this is an area that we identified as being relatively weak when we used the eLearning Planning Framework.

The process of going BYOD has not been without its challenges but we think we have been successful so far as a result of the planning and preparation we have undertaken. Change needs to be managed and we need to have everyone on side for that; too fast and you lose some on the way but there has to be drive and you need to build some momentum. I remember hearing a Principal talk about “getting everyone on the bus” so that you have a common approach, and if people aren’t packed and ready then there is no place for them. We all learn at different paces and as long as there is a common will and understanding then we will all get there. So I think you need to be prepared to let people get off at different stops along the way to process what they have learned, have a break and then get back on again when they are ready.

After two years we took the eLPF to our staff and spent an afternoon exploring it. They put us two places higher than we had put ourselves two years ago. From Emerging we were now Engaging in all areas and Extending in many. Not bad, I reckon but there is still a way to go and the technological landscape will continue to change but I think our teachers and our support staff have the positive, flexible mindset to cope with that.

Peace Poppies

Published on 9th April 2015 by robeanne2 Comments

As part of our Poetry Unit and theme of Globalisation we looked at a picture book called “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”. The book brings to life in images the song of the same name written by Eric Bogle in the 1970s. We listened to the song whilst watching a video of the book. I also had a copy of the book for the girls to read in their own time in class.

I introduced the idea of “Micro Poetry” to the students. The idea is to create powerful visual images through words in short poems such as Haiku or Twitter Poems. These were the starting point of our exploration of similes, metaphor, personification, alliteration and onomatopoeia. The girls took to micro poetry easily – they found them non-threatening, they weren’t faced with having to write a long poem, make lines rhyme and they didn’t need to write sentences. We scaffolded the process by looking at what nouns, adjectives and verbs were and brainstorming words that they could use that summoned up the images they saw in the book. Then they set to creating their poems. I was amazed at the ideas they come up with and the way that they naturally used poetic techniques without really thinking about them. We then used their own poems to identify examples of the poetic techniques they had used which was far more effective than trying to identify them in poems that they had never seen before. The girls realised that they could write poetry which was empowering for them.

I also wanted to connect the ideas from the book and song with something that they had experience of. I originally had the idea of knitting poppies and sending them away as part of the “5000 Poppies” project for the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli. However, time was running out and I felt a bit daunted about teaching 28 girls how to knit! One of my colleagues suggested I could help her and a local group out as they were making poppies as part of the “Peace Poppies” project. These were cut out of felt, sewn together and then a button added. The idea is that they will be “planted” all the way from the Court House in Hamilton along the river to Memorial Gardens for ANZAC Day. The girls loved having “practical” lessons. I was astounded at how many of them had never sewn before, threaded a needle or sewn on a button. Even those who were reticent at first because they said they didn’t know how to sew were confidently sewing by the end of the three lessons we spent making poppies. I never would have thought I would have girls coming up to me excitedly saying “Mrs Robertson, look, I threaded the needle!” or “Mrs Robertson, I made one – I sewed the button on!”

Although this whole unit took much longer than I planned, I think it was extremely worthwhile. The girls gained so much from it in terms of confidence, I think that they had plenty of opportunity to produce their own poetry and I am convinced that it also helped them to identify poetic techniques in other poems too. Having said that, I believe that having the confidence to express themselves far outweighs being able to identify similes etc in poems. When in their lives (apart from English exams) will they need to do that? And how often will they need to express themselves? They also learned about the context for ANZAC Day and understand more deeply the impact of war and the implications for survivors. We had some very interesting discussions after listening to the song, watching the video and reading the book. The girls also came back to class after sharing what they had been doing with their parents and told us of family members and friends who had been in Gallipoli as part of the ANZAC forces.

Here are some of the poems. (I have edited the spelling and punctuation where it hindered communication!) Not all of them fall into the category of a Twitter poem or a Haiku but they are short and powerful. It was interesting that they struggled with the concept of 140 characters and not writing sentences. With more time, I would have liked to explore strategies for identifying words that are essential for conveying images and how they can use poetic licence to leave out unnecessary words.

Blood, bodies, bullets in every direction like bees gathering. Bodies scattered the ground like shells on the sand.
Taylor

Poppies on the hills
Sons and fathers lay fallen
We remember them.

Flags, marching, last post
And poppies to remember,
Our fallen soldiers.
Madison

Blazing Red Fire
Bullets flying everywhere
Ash, sweat, tears, blood, pain

Thousands of men marching. Brothers, fathers, cousins, neighbours. In their not yet blood, ash, sweat, tear stained khaki coloured uniform.
Charlotte

As the Poppy’s blow in the wind
I think about all who died for me.
The sick, the blind, the deaf, the scared.
Bullets screaming through the air
The deafening gunfire
That hit the poor hard working men.
The blood flows painfully through the army uniform,
The thousands that cried
For our heroes
Daan

soldiers hide in their fox holes
rats nibble on their toes
bullets shot through the sky with a bang
death and destruction everywhere
christmas day all fighting stops as they sing their christmas song.
letters from home touch their hearts
we thank you anzac boys.
Alex

Blistering hot sun
Bullets flying everywhere
Blood stained fields

Marching into battle
The sound of wild guns
Will we ever see another day?
Laying in the poppies
Family in the front of my mind
I see blood.
Madi

In the light of dawn, the break of day
Remembering the soldiers that fought all the way
Wearing the poppies red as the blood they shed before
Recognizing the heroes they fought with in the war
A symbol of respect
To the men they will never forget
As sun shines down on the scene of strife
But fear they will be forgotten with each new generation of life.
Emily

Micropoetry

Published on 5th March 2015 by robeanneLeave a comment

This year I volunteered to teach English. After being given an English class last year and spending an inordinate amount of time learning how to teach it and develop resources, (and creating a class blog to celebrate the students’ learning) I decided it was better to volunteer to teach English again rather than find myself with another new subject to learn. In New Zealand it is the lot of an option subject teacher to have to be flexible; there will never be enough Spanish classes for me to have a full timetable so I have to make up my time with other subjects. So, here I am with another English class. The challenge is that last year I had an A band class, and this year I have a B band class. There is not a lot of what I prepared last year that will work with my new class! Never mind, I always like a challenge!

We have chosen, this year, to develop a cross-curricular approach to our Junior Programme. Our first term theme is Globalisation so across four subjects in Year 9 we are trying teach the skills our students need under the umbrella of Globalisation. English, Science, Social Studies and Maths. Other subjects such as languages and the arts can choose to do so.

It is Week 6 and it is time for poetry. I saw a neat link to “Tweetspeak Poetry” on Twitter last week and discovered the idea of Twitter Poems and Micropoetry. This seemed to me to be perfect – the globalisation of the poem, disseminated across Twitter, published globally. It also fitted my class of students who struggle to write but who have awesome ideas.

We started off discussing in groups and I asked them, “What is poetry?” This is the mindmap they come up with. I loved the suggestion that poetry is “something that paints a picture in the reader’s mind”.

So that got me thinking and I came up with this activity. The girls really engaged with the task and some of them rose to the challenge of writing poems that drew their peers towards one photo but then revealed the real one in the final line! Using only 140 characters for the TwitterPoems was a challenge and there is still some work to do on these but I think they did a really neat job. They loved reading them out for each other and were proud of their writing. Can you work out which poems describe which photos?

Bright colours glistening
Floating in the summer breeze
Life full with beauty

Fluorescent Colours
Exploring perfect flowers
so small and fragile

The day was old,
the clouds were flowing over the
tall elegant brick buildings
as the wind blows the trees lightly

Sun begins ascent.
Red rays dance into ocean
The waves start to stir

Sunset’s reflection
He with brushes and paint
the ocean he creates

Empty hallways full of gloomy darkness. Brick walls are faded brown stones. At the bottom no one hears the prisoners yelling for help to get out. The view is outstandingly beautiful. The windows are as old as a bristlecone tree. There are so many different parts you get lost. This place is so old it has become abandoned.

Shimmering Sunrise
Over the horizon and
Over Golden sand

Colours spiral around like the waves in the sea
Eyes stare at me like a tiger surrounding its prey.
Colours play with my mind and pull me into a mysterious world.

Enchanting ocean
Shimmering beautifully
Night’s song soon begins

Colours mix in wind
glooming bright sky shining down
flowing in a bowl

Blue sky hovering over head
white bubbles floating in the wind
Crunchy grains underneath my soles
hair flying in the Lord’s CO2

#28daysofwriting Day 28 Reflecting on a month of writing

Published on 28th February 2015 by robeanneLeave a comment

So it is the final day of Tom Barrett‘s challenge. I am not sure whether, for me, it has been a challenge I have succeeded in. Certainly, in terms of writing 28 minutes every day for 28 days, i have not been successful. I missed out days, I doubled up on days, and I often spent more than 28 minutes writing.

I teach English. I am a very new teacher of English. This is my second year teaching English to Year 9 students after teaching French and Spanish for over 25 years. I still teach Spanish. For some reason, the fact that I speak English, means that I am qualified to teach it. I have had a very steep learning curve and have spent many evenings and holidays researching how to teach English, how to teach students how to analyse a film or a piece of poetry or a novel, or how to write an essay and give a speech and how to create the wonderful artefacts that are “Static Images”.

One of the things that is always suggested to develop students’ writing skills is to write something every day. We are encouraged to get the students to keep a journal and write for a short time every lesson. The problem then is, how do I assess that? How do I find time to read 30 pieces of writing every day and give feedback? Anyway, I tried. I asked them to write for ten minutes each lesson. “What about?” they asked. “Anything,” I said. “But we can’t think of what to write about,” they said. “It doesn’t matter,” I replied. And they sat, and sat. Some wrote frantically, scribbling madly to get their ideas down on the paper. Some wrote bland descriptions of their day; what time they got up, what they ate for breakfast, what they watched on the TV. Some wrote complete nonsense and some, well, they wrote nothing.

I didn’t find the exercise a very positive one, and most of my students didn’t either. So I abandoned it and looked for different strategies to encourage writing. One thing I came across when I googled “encouraging writing” was the idea of Story Bursts. These entail writing from a visual or written prompt and rather than limiting the students to ten minutes (which those with ideas found frustrating and those with no ideas found an eternity) I let them have all lesson if they wanted. I also allowed them to write in any form they wanted – they could create memes, write haiku, poems or stories. Different activities were available for those who finished earlier such as reading each other’s stories and commenting on them, reading their chosen book or article, or “Fast Finisher” games such as Boggle, Scrabble or Pictionary.

We would have a lesson like this once every month or so and it also became a “Fast Finisher” for those who enjoyed writing. My girls rose to the challenge and although some still struggled with ideas, having a starting point helped get them on their way. They even started bringing in their own prompts!

So what has this to do with #28daysofwriting? I think I have understood more fully the difficulties some of my learners had in terms of getting started, thinking of a topic and maintaining a time limitation. Some days the idea of my blog was clear, on others I really had to search for it. When I was tired, it was hard to write coherently (I am not sure I always did!) There were times when the subject about which I was writing was so absorbing that I ran way over my allocated 28 minutes. But I have also had to push myself and found that sometimes the imperative of fulfilling a challenge actually focusses you to do it and if that imperative isn’t there, then it is much easier to give up. I have also learned that it may sometimes be better to not write at all than to write a load of rubbish! So, I apologise for any of my posts that seemed rambly and pointless, but I think they have all been part of my writing journey. Thank you, Tom Barrett for putting out the challenge.

#28daysofwriting Day 20: eportfolios & student centred learning

Published on 20th February 2015 by robeanneLeave a comment

Last week, as I have already blogged about, I was fortunate to work with Dr Helen Barrett, the guru of portfolios. Her wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm and excitement about the power of portfolios for deep learning and personal growth is infectious. We had already decided that we would like to introduce portfolios with our Year 9 students as we implement a whole new cross-curricular junior programme. As we are a GAFE school, it made sense to trial using Google Sites as our platform.

The English department have assumed responsibility for guiding the students as they create their sites. I started off with my class asking them what they thought a portfolio was.

A place to put their best work
A folder with writing in
Somewhere to store paintings

I asked them where they thought the word “portfolio” came from and gave them 2 minutes to find out. Google gave them an answer but did they really understand it?

No! But are these definitions of “portfolio” what we mean in education? Well, as Helen Barrett says, the purpose of a portfolio is many things to many people. And as technology has developed so has the function, purpose and meaning of a portfolio.

The girls then looked to find out where the word “portfolio” came from.

But were we any further forwards? Most of them had created portfolios of “best work” at Primary School, they had also “led” student parent conferences at Intermediate school where they explained to their parents, under the guidance of their teachers, what they had been learning. So they had some understanding of what a portfolio might mean for them in terms of their learning.

To make it meaningful to them we really needed to explore what they could use a portfolio for, what it would mean for them, how they could have ownership of it. So I asked them to brainstorm ideas of what they could put in a portfolio of their learning.

Interestingly, they came up with the same things that Helen Barrett had suggested could be incorporated into a portfolio. I started them off with the idea of a “Splash” page but after that it was all them.

We talked about the idea that their portfolio should be all about them, that they could choose what they put there and who they shared it with. Although we also talked about how it may be helpful for their teachers and their parents if they felt they could share it with them for them to have an insight into what they were learning and how their learning identities were developing.

I think we have made a positive start. The students in my class were very excited about creating their space. They loved being able to make their sites their own by creating their own themes and colours and adding photos and quotes. In the first few weeks of term we had created our “Mihi” and presented them to the class. They were very keen to embed them into their “Splash” page.

I think, though, that we have only just started in our journey of portfolios and our challenge is going to be working out who has ownership of them and maintaining a sense of excitement about them. I am convinced, after talking with Helen, that if they are to be meaningful for our students, if they are to really be a way of making their learning visible, and a way of expressing their identity, then we have to let them have total ownership of them. We must not hijack them and make them a tool of assessment. One of the questions I was asked was, “Will we get marked on what we put in our portfolios?”. My answer was unequivocal, but I am not so sure about some of my colleagues. I said that some of the work they may choose to put in the “showcase” part of their portfolio might have been graded and reported on, but the portfolio itself was theirs. It is their journey, their learning, their identity.

It is clear that, increasingly, employers and universities will be looking more at a person’s ability to reflect on their learning, how the experiences they have had affect the way that they learn and the decisions they make, and the direction they go in rather than the qualifications they achieve. I believe we have to encourage good practice and also model it as professionals.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has used portfolios in secondary schools as to how they have worked and whether students have continued with them as they have moved through the school.