Community UFB access

Government announces that communities will be able to leverage off their local school ultra fast broadband connections

http://beehive.govt.nz/release/green-light-schools-digital-community-hubs

Opens up lots of possibilities

Constructing learning...

How often are laptops nothing more than $1000 pencils as schools move to their much lauded 1:1 programmes?

In our own school 1:1 programme we have been working hard to make sure that we focus on the learning not the hardware, and that we look at moving as quickly through the Substitution and Augmentation phases to the Modification and Redefinition phases of the SAMR model.

We have more and more staff using Google Forms as a mechanism for helping students to collaborate and construct knowledge, and as we were sitting in another planning team meeting discussing our own 'next steps' in our programme of development I recalled a very simple technique used by Alan November in a Master Class I attend with him in Brisbane earlier this year at the K12 Edtech conference.

Alan asked three members of the audience to each contribute to a shared Google Doc, each recording different aspects of his presentation from the day. With over 300 people (I think) in the Master Class it was impracticable to have everyone editing the document, but the document was shared with us all so that we each took away our own record of the day's proceedings.

This technique can quite easily be adapted for use in a school classroom, and with a slight tweak gains power over  simple record. Here's how I plan to do it next year.

The students will be allocated to a group of three. They will create and share a Google Doc focused on a specific class topic. The Google Doc will have two columns. The left column will be a 'record' of the content. In the right hand column they will record their key understandings of the content. This is where they will note 'aha' moments, or maybe their reinterpretation of the content in a way that makes sense to them. They might record their own examples that help them to make sense of the content.

Why?

1. They are working collaboratively to make good notes, and with the right group partners they can model note taking ideas, and effectively coach each other in this skill.
2. The collaborate in creating good notes
3. They share understandings of the material with their own examples and 'aha' moments
4. They have a record stored in Google Docs that is not easily lost and, putting it into their subject folder created by Teacher dashboard, their material is kept safe and easily accessible
5. As their teacher I can look at their notes and add helpful feedback in a way that is more difficult (but of course NOT impossible) with the traditional large A4 folder

Now this is not Higher Order Thinking at its best, and you could argue that it is still effectively Augmentation, but it does take us beyond the $1000 pencil in a way that focuses on collaboration and co-construction of knowledge.

I'm going to try it anyway.

The optimal parent zone ...

Lists of critical success factors for schools often include strong parental engagement. Hattie ('Visible learning for teachers: maximising impact on learning", Routledge, 2012) cites 'strong positive relationships with parents' (Page 151) as one of nine such factors supported by the metadata.

My experience teaching in state schools certainly seemed to support the contention at the micro level of individual experience. However I have also seen situations in which there can be too much involvement from parents. This might involve the 'helicopter parent' behaviour in which children are not allowed the room to be themselves, to make their own mistakes, and take the consequences of inappropriate choices. It might also include that situation in which parents involve themselves overly in their children's' learning, completing work for them when it should be the children's work.

A recent work experience showed that the ubiquitous characteristic of e-learning tools seems to facilitate this behavior even more than before, or alternatively makes the same behaviour more obvious or transparent. After all haven't there always been parents who have to some degree 'done' the project or homework for their children? This specific experience involved a parent making direct edits of a student's work on Googledocs. Thank goodness for the 'See revision history' function.

So it seems that it is possible to have both too little and too much parent engagement.

It simply struck me that there must therefore be an 'optimal zone' in which you want this support to operate.

How would we measure it? No idea, but it's an interesting concept, and one that should engage us as professionals working in education. I do believe that it is a function of:

• school culture
• the degree of approachability of all professional members of the school community, 
• the ways in which we report to the parent community (the frequency, the tone, the quality of commentary, the 'accessibility' of the language, and the layout of reports
• the friendliness, the sense of welcome at parent interview evenings
• the degree to which parents are made welcome at school functions
• The welcome that new members of the school community (students and parents) receive when they first approach or join the community

I think the list is much longer, but that will do for now.

An assault on Sir Ken Robinson

Well worth the read...

http://julianadamson.sharedby.co/nclsm9

Love your work, but where's your evidence Sir Ken?

More on the 'knowledge' debate

Jane Gilbert in her own words, in response to the attack on schools for supposedly 'losing the plot' on knowledge.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=11127235

Google simplifies the 'flip'

Checking out the Google Blog, I see that they have literally just made some changes to Google Forms that make the flipped classroom so much more accessible and useful.

Users can now embed video into a Google Form.

It  becomes much more practicable to follow the Professor Eric Mazur methodology of getting students to preview content AND do something useful/meaningful with it.

Responses can be collected analysed to look for common misconceptions, or  shared easily with students the next day to encourage co-construction of knowledge.

VERY powerful. Well done Google.

The fate of knowledge?

Over this past weekend I have read two articles in the New Zealand niggling in that 'under-mining' sort of way at the NZ education and qualifications systems are.

This article in particular got me going - "Let's bring knowledge back into schools"

I was staggered. By coincidence I'd just written the following as a part of my regular fortnightly 'Curriculum News' in our College parent publication:

The whole concept of knowledge has changed. In my student days, knowledge was still largely a matter of ‘knowing stuff’. Only at post-graduate level did it become important to be able to ‘do something’ with that knowledge. Today’s world is very different. Knowing stuff is still important, but today it is equally as important to be able to ‘do stuff’ with that information. In my opinion one of the great strengths of NCEA lies in the demands it places on candidates to take what they know and think deeply about it. In 2005 Jane Gilbert (NZCER) published a book titled ‘Catching the knowledge wave’, in which she “takes apart many long-held ideas about knowledge and education. She says that knowledge is now a verb, not a noun—something we do rather than something we have—and explores the ways our schools need to change to prepare people to participate in the knowledge-based societies of the future.” This is not the forum in which to discuss the implications for society and the economy, but it certainly reflects on the fact that the demands on your boys today are far greater than they were on many of us as students. In my own subject area boys need to ‘know stuff’ about economics, but more importantly they need to be able to ‘do stuff’ with that knowledge, to think critically, to explain and analyse, to create meaning. In this sense NCEA places far higher demands on secondary students than ever before.

Suggestions that secondary schools are not teaching knowledge are at best mischievous. As I said in my column, we teach thinking, but we cannot think in the absence of knowledge. Perhaps the problem is exactly what knowledge do we teach. The rate of increase in the world's knowledge is so huge that it is almost impossible now to say exactly what knowledge we should teach beyond certain basics.

For example, we would probably all agree that everyone ought to be able to read and write. By 'write' do we mean with a pen? A keyboard? Using voice recognition software? Or are we in fact talking about the skill of putting words together to coherently, accurately and effectively communicate meaning regardless of the medium that we use?

We would probably all agree that students need to be numerate.  What does that mean? Probably something different for an accountant when compared with a plumber compared with a games app developer. Do we try to prepare all students in case they want to be accountants or economists?

If I stop being facetious for a moment I think that we could all agree on basic levels of literacy and numeracy that are required, but whatever field of knowledge we discuss, reaching agreement about which parts everyone should know is probably more difficult than it appears to be at first sight.

So schools take a stand, they 'draw a line in the sand' about what knowledge is required, but more important than the knowledge itself is the ability to think about that knowledge. Schools endeavor to teach students how to think, how to 'do stuff' with the knowledge that they gain. You only need to investigate the 'Excellence' level demands in most (if not all??) achievement standards currently on the Qualifications Framework to see what I mean. To suggest that schools have focused on skills at the expense of knowledge is in my opinion wrong. Where is the evidence I'd ask.

What is true I would theorise is that as Jane Gilbert says, knowledge has become a verb rather than a noun, and too many people have failed to realise how fundamentally our world has changed in this regard.

Twittering away ...

I began using Twitter in the classroom several years ago. My early uses were:

1. Projection of a class twitter feed onto the whiteboard, encouraging students to 'tweet' questions as we worked our way through course material, and
2. Encouraging student responses to class questions via Twitter.

Both approaches seemed to achieve pretty much what other teachers have found. Some students have become more engaged with the class and the material, and the traditionally quieter students have been given a 'voice' that they might otherwise lose simply because they are more retiring or less confident in class discussion. Better engagement is not universal however, some students choosing not to use the medium at all.

Inspired by some examples of the use of Twitter to support and extend student learning at the recent K12 ICT Leaders' conference, I have extended this. I now 'tweet' interesting course ideas, examples and questions, using a class 'hashtag'. Here is today's example:

You need to live in Christchurch to know why this building is significant.

Responses at this early stage are slim but promising. Students will either DM me via Twitter, or give a response using the class hashtag so that other students can see what they think.

As a teacher of economics, my focus has always been on taking the theory and helping students to see its relevance in the world around them. The use of Twitter to achieve this seems to help some (but not others). I quickly discovered that Twitter has yet to reach across to all younger people, it seems to be largely a tool for the slightly older. Early signs are promising, I'll persist.

Challenges of the laptop environment in schools

The first full year of our own 1:1 laptop programme is fast approaching. Our 'soft start' (as we like to term it) has meant that mobile devices of one sort or another have crept into the hands of approximately a third of our boys' hands on any one 'average' day. Of course these devices range from iPods to smart phones, iPads and laptops, and uses range from distraction to what I would describe as nicely rounded construction of learning using the Google suite of tools.

One of the earliest uses that boys have taken up is simple note taking. I heard a delightful phrase at a conference last month in which laptops were described as little more than $1000 pencils in some schools, and I'd be worried is this was the limit of use in our case. I'm glad to be able to report that that doesn't look to be the case, although it is still something that a number of boys have simply gravitated towards of their own volition.

This has presented an interesting problem. In our experience a significant obstacle for boys in their learning is that they are often (NOT universally I hasten to add) not well organised. They have traditionally kept an A4 arch file for each subject with pages kept inside the folder - sometimes. The pages are filed according to topics - sometimes. The pages remain in the file - sometimes. You get the picture. Consequently we have tended to stress organisation for the boys, guiding them in how to organise their learning materials so that they can readily access them when they need to revise.

The problem that we are already seeing with boys is this. They may start by taking some notes, or completing some work on paper. They might then open a MSWord (or equivalent) document and record some work. They might then complete some work on Google Docs, so now they have work in at least three different places, one of which isn't even electronic. This is shaping up to be an organisational nightmare. As adults we'd struggle to keep  a track of things. How will the adolescent boy brain cope with this fragmentation of learning resources?

We've been talking about this. Here's a possible solution: ePortfolios. In New Zealand the most likely tool is Mahara. If boys could put all of their electronic documents into their ePortfolio, and then use our copier technology to scan paper activities, resources etc (although it begs the question of why activities would be in paper form) then it may just be possible to give boys the tools to organise their work, with the added advantage that once it's there, it won't get lost, unlike the pieces of paper that occasionally populate their arch files.

At least with this solution, we are back to the status quo, it reverts to the same organisational problem we have now, with an electronic tool replacing a paper one.

I'd love to get other perspectives on the problem.

Constructing learning the 'Google' way ..

I could never claim to have been a 'constructivist' when it comes to learning. 'Teach at 'em' was the way I'd been taught, the way I'd been taught to teach, and the way I've always done it. In his book 'Visible Learning'  Hattie talks about the quality of 'direct instruction' as having a high effect size, and so it seems reasonable to assume that I should just keep on 'teaching at 'em' as I've always done.

However I'm always open minded when it comes to anything that might improve the learning of the students in front of me, and my enthusiasm for eLearning has offered some interesting opportunities for improving student engagement and learning

At a recent elearning Seminar I found myself quite excited by a demonstration from a young teacher from Dunedin on how she was using Google Forms to engage her students, so I decided to give this a go.

As a revision and extension task I created 5 questions structured around the SOLO framework. The questions ranged from Uni/Multi-structural, to Extended Abstract. That is, from simple recall, to deeper critical thinking.

I created a Google Form with these questions, and set a link to the form on our Intranet. The class then opened the form in class and, working in silence as if in a test, they individually answered the 5 questions to the best of their ability (the silence thing is important).

Once they had finished, I then took the results and shared them with the class as a spreadsheet.

The boys were put into groups of three, and were then required to set up a Google Doc in which they had to construct a group 'model answer' for the 5 questions. As input they had the collective class responses, and any web or text resources they chose. The Google Doc had to be shared with the other group members, and with me as their teacher.

This is where the test-like completion of the initial responses was important. It meant that it was likely that many of the answers would contain inaccuracies, and so individually and collectively they had to critically analyse this data, looking for errors as well as correct answers.

Several really interesting things happened. They began (without any direct instruction from me) to use the Google Docs tool to 'collaborate' in constructing the correct answers. They worked on this material for one class period, and then completed it that evening. To varying degrees they began to use colour to distinguish each member's contribution. They used the comments function to offer ideas, and question each others' contributions. The comments began to create a dialogue between group members.

Then as we went over their answers as a whole class, boys began to edit their work, correcting as we went.

The level of engagement appeared to be huge. The learning appeared to be huge. Do I have any quantitative data to back up these claims? No. Do I have any qualitative data? Certainly their feedback at the end of the exercise was overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps next time I'll make sure that I have an 'exit survey' prepared in which the class evaluates the exercise.

Fascinating!!!

It's not about the technology ...

I've 'followed' Prof Steve Wheeler of Plymouth University for some time. A recent blog post of his,  'Blogging with Freire', struck a chord. We have said for some time that it's not about the technology, it's about the learning, and Prof Wheeler's post makes exactly this point, looking at what Freire might have said in the 'Web 2.0' era.

Worth a read.

eLearning reflections

With EduTECH 2013 behind us (only just), I wanted to to ponder the legacy of affirmations and revelations that the 3 days of intensive learning have left.

Of most significance is the affirmation that it isn't (and has never been) about the technology. It is about the learning but, perhaps more importantly, it is about the thinking - creative, analytical and critical.

The technological revolution has laid before us all a series of challenges, challenges that exist because of the access to information, and the degree of interconnectedness, that changing technology has created.

The nature of the game of education has changed. It seems that we can learn almost anything that we choose from the web today. Knowledge is power, but it is no longer a matter of dishing out information carefully in order to safeguard our positon of power, because our constituency can simply bypass us if it chooses. Learners can use the web, and their inter-connectedness, to access knowledge at any time that they choose.

What may prove to be slightly more difficult to acquire without some guidance is the ability to think critically, although the web offers an increasingly powerful set of tools with which to develop these skills.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that one of my own revelations was the powerful set of Google Operators that lie behind a Google search. Google gives us access to so much information that it is essential to be able to sort the information  and critically evaluate what you find. The operators allow the searcher to select specific information sources. So for example the searcher might want to compare and contrast views of a specific event formt he perspective of the protagonists  Imagine being able to see how the British and Argetinian Press portrayed the Falklands/Malvinas war of 1982.

Of even more interest and perhaps significance was the discovery of the software 'Wolfram Alpha'. This software allows the learner to select two different things to compare. The software then selects a wdie range iof dta formt eh web about these two things/ideas and assembles the data in a form that allows analysis and deeper thinking  The viewer can look a trends, similarities, differences without having to spend a large amount of time collecting and laboriously processing this data.

Steven Wolfam can be seen here discussing this amazing tool.

The biggest gain for me was the motivation to try out the use of a couple of Google tools in a constructivist lesson. The opportunity to reflect as a learner was also valuable.  I'll describe and explain these in a later post.

Electronic discussion forums: enhancing critical thinking

Discussion forums - enhancing critical thinking

A short description of some practical experiences with the use of on-line discussion forums to improve student critical thinking in the secondary environment (Please note that this is not intended to be an academic article)

Introduction

Year 10, 11 and 12 students in Economics classes engaged in teacher moderated on-line discussion using a range of academic and topical issues. These 'conversations' took place with successive classes over a period of six years in a boys school in New Zealand. The forum tool was intended to enhance student engagement and build deep thinking skills by engaging students in the construction of economic argument.

Definition:

An electronic discussion forum is an electronic tool that allows participants to engage in asynchronous dialogue. I have been using electronic discussion forums with classes from Year 10 to Year 12 for 6 years and it seemed timely to pause and reflect on the tool.

The benefits of electronic discussion forums

I have found the following advantages for students from my use of these forums.

1. Engagement. With careful topic selection within your subject students can find their voice, with no student being 'drowned out' by others. EVERYONE contributes, and I have observed much higher levels f 'contribution than I might find in more traditional forms of discussion.
2. Improved critical thinking. Because the activity is asynchronous, all have TIME to think through their responses, the ultimate 'think time', and so the quality of their 'thinking' is better, or 'deeper'.
3. Writing. Students create lots of short arguments, I use the TEX framework: Topic statement, Explanation, eXample, and so they are getting more practice at writing.
4. Differentiation. My teacher responses are constructed to suit each individual student
5. Better feedback. Perhaps the ultimate in 'formative feedback'? ('Visible learning for Teachers', Hattie J, Routledge 2012). Evidence has suggested that students write more, and write better, electronically. This has been my observation. But interestingly so do I. I write such that students can actually read my feedback (my hand writing is awful), and I write MORE, so students are getting better quality feedback. Of course this may be a personal response.

The keys to successful use of forums

I have found that there are a number of simple rules to making forum discussions work.

1. Careful selection of topic. The topic must allow students opportunities to engage in the type of debate that you plan.
2. Safe environment. Students must feel safe (intellectually and emotionally) to contribute as they believe appropriate. Provided this isn't treated as a genuine discussion and not an opportunity to allocate marks/grades, then forums also represent another opportunity for students to feel safe to make mistakes, and seize the learning opportunities that might arise.
3. Clear rules. Clear unambiguous rules about student behaviour must be established from the beginning. Mine are: a) Respect each other, (no flame wars, attack the argument not the person) & b) No cyber-grunting ('Yer, nice one mate')
4. Teacher engagement. The teacher must actively participate just as you would with an in-class discussion

In summary, forums require exactly the same teacher disciplines as every other class based activity or discussion.

Teacher moderation

It is at the least unhelpful to simply allow forum discussions to meander along unwatched. What role can the teacher play in the discussions?

1. Correcting errors: The simple process of saying "Gail, that statement is wrong. Rethink how XXX affects YYYY and try to edit your post" can help students to improve their knowledge base in an environment where no grades are attached to their work, encouraging students to see this as a safe environment in which to make errors.
2. Extending thinking: Students can be easily guided to their own next steps in their thinking. Comments like "Jane, have you considered what might happen if..." of "Henry, how could this happen when.." etc are good feedback starters to assist students to push their thinking on.
3. Posing new questions: Students can be prompted to consider different directions in their thinking. Questions like "You have explained how and why that happens. What are the ethical considerations that we need to take into account when this happens?" or "How else might this affect the economy/world/landscape/character's development ...?" might help to push students thinking to deeper levels.

The SOLO taxonomy is a useful model to employ when coaching students in how to structure their posts/argument. This helps them to evaluate the depth of their own writing.

Models of use: Debating an issue

While there may well be a number of different models that may be used when setting up forum discussions for students, here are two.

Traditional argument & counter-argument.

Select a topical issue or an argument fundamental to your subject. For example:

1. That the planet Mars can sustain life

2. That plastic drink bottles pose a risk to society's health

3. That the market delivers the best standard of living

4. That time series data allows accurate predictions of future behaviour

Demand that students support arguments with evidence and give a source, a 'mini bibliography'

Differing points of view

Select your topic/create a contention

1. Create separate threads in which students construct arguments for, and against, that contention. Gives them practice in constructing argument/thinking
2. Ask everyone to select one other student's argument, and critique it. Gives practice in critical thinking

e.g. Arguments about economic growth

Thread 1: Create arguments in favour of continuing economic growth

Thread 2: Create arguments against continuing economic growth

How much should we expect from students?

Student will typically meet out expectations. If we expect poor quality debate we are likely to get it. If we expect and nurture higher order debate that is what we will get. On the question of how much can we expect form them, research in the tertiary environment suggests that students will meet the minimum  teacher expectation. 

I have three approaches to defining how much is enough.

1. When beginning a topic I might specify one post by the next day in order to 'get the ball rolling'. I will often discuss these first posts in class the next day, using examples of specific posts to illustrate acceptable posts, posts that tackle the issue or go off topic etc.
2. Once the topic is underway I am more likely to demand a set number of posts within a given time frame. For example I might ask for four posts by the end of the week. This seems to encourage students to match their posts to the intensity of debate. I may occasionally discuss posts in class but prefer to limit the discourse to the on-line environment.
3. When I prompt a student to expand, amend or edit a post I expect an answer. I point out in class that if I were to ask a question in class, face to face, I would expect them to answer. I see on-line discussions no differently.

On occasion students will exceed the minimum. At times they find themselves caught up in an argument with a peer, one that they are determined to 'win'.

Bibliography

Here is a small selection of research papers on the subject of the efficacy of on-line discussion forums.

"Discussion facilitation", Pedagogical Repository, Teaching Online, http://topr.online.ucf.edu/index.php/Discussion_Facilitation, last Accessed 1 May 2013

'"Effective use of discussion forums"

http://etec.ctlt.ubc.ca/510wiki/Effective_Use_of_Discussion_Boards, last Accessed 1 May 2013

"Pedagogy in cyberspace: The dynamics of online discourse", Cindy Xin & Andrew Feenberg, Journal of Distance Education, Fall 2006, Vol 21, No 2

"Student Interactions in Online Discussion Forum: Empirical Research from ‘Media Richness Theory’ Perspective", M S Balaji, Diganta Chakrabarti, IBS Hyderabad, IFHE Universtiy, Hyderbad, India 2010

http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/pdf/9.1.1.pdf

"Teaching critical thinking with electronic discussion", Steven A Greenlaw & Stephen B DeLoach. Journal of Economic Education, Winter 2003,

Contemplations on the demand for money...

Last week I was teaching classes about the quantity theory of money. We’d started with the crude quantity theory (price level is proportional to the money supply) and discussion shifted to a discussion of the concept of the market for money, and specifically the demand for money. Analysis of the money markets doesn’t feature in Level 2 Economics, but our discussion came in response to a really interesting and perceptive student question about interest rates.

I described the three determinants of the demand for money as theorised by J M Keynes: transactions demand, precautionary demand, and speculative demand, and we pondered possible changes to the transactions demand amongst Christchurch residents.

I related my own experience post 22 February 2011. At that time we were in the habit of carrying very little cash in our wallets, being more used to using cards to either purchase on credit or draw down on demand deposits using those same cards. In those dreadful days immediately following 22 February power outages meant that access to demand deposits was effectively cut off as ATMs and credit card terminals were not operational, and so we found it difficult to make purchases because we had little cash.

We would expect the transactions demand for money to increase in the weeks and months immediately after 22 February, and we speculated on whether t there was at ‘legacy behaviour’ amongst Christchurch residents. We wondered whether Christchurch residents still maintained larger cash balances in their wallets now than they might have done prior to 22 February. I suspect that many Christchurch residents are experiencing relatively unusual post earthquake behaviours/habits. For example I feel anxiety when separated from my cellphone, and hate to see my car fuel tank drop below half full. It is always filled when I go to the service station.

On the subject of the transactions demand for money, I tend to carry a little more cash on me than I would have done prior to 22 February 2011. Were we able to measure changes in the transactions demand, would we find a regional variation in Christchurch? Worth pondering!!!