PBL: bringing together divergent theories, strategies and tools #EDMT5500

My last blog post was about what my students in the Introduction to Teaching and Learning course at Sydney University have been learning about this semester. A lot of the conversations that we’ve had are around bringing together this broad range of ‘edu stuff’ in the classroom? Well, it’s become a bit of a running joke that my answer to everything is ‘PBL’ … but, for real, all of these things DO come together beautifully in project based learning. Let’s have a look at just how that can be the case.

I break my PBL into three parts (I call these ‘cycles of learning’ in my class) that roughly equates to the assessment that takes place during each project – they’re being assessed formatively twice and summatively once. Each cycle of learning engages with a variety of the learning strategies, tools and theories. (Sorry about the randomly coloured fonts … this post is kind of a thinking post for me as I prepare for tomorrow’s seminars, lol!)

PROCESS 1: EXPLORE/RESEARCH/INQUIRE/DISCOVER

BIE 8 ESSENTIALS OF PBL: In-depth inquiry, Driving Question, Need to Know and Significant Content

METAPHORS FOR LEARNING: Campfire, Waterhole and Cave

Punk Learning: students generating punk questions and designing own projects

DESIGN THINKING: Intending – Establish needs wants and goals. Defining - Name, list and describe what is involved. Exploring – Imagine, organize and analyze possibilities.

STRATEGIES: KWL table, speed-dating, think/pair/share, think/puzzle/explore

TOOLS: Diigo, YouTube, Edmodo, blogging, ClassDojo

THEORIES: Blooms Taxonomy (Remembering, Understanding, Analysing), SOLO Taxonomy (Unistructural, Multistructural), Quality Teaching Framework (Deep Knowledge, Deep Understanding, Problematic Knowledge, Higher-order Thinking, Engagement, Social Support, Students’ Self-Regulation, Student Direction, Students’ Self-Regulation, Background Knowledge, Cultural Knowledge), 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning (Story Sharing, Learning Maps, Symbols and Images)

PROCESS 2: CREATE/PRODUCE/DESIGN/COMPOSE

BIE 8 ESSENTIALS OF PBL: Voice & Choice and Revision & Reflection

METAPHORS FOR LEARNING: Cave and Waterhole

DESIGN THINKING: Suggesting – Decide, present and explain your proposal. Innovating – Continually improve as you produce what is proposed.

STRATEGIES: hexagonal thinking, master and apprentice, think/puzzle/explore, goals/medals/missions,

TOOLS: Edmodo, ClassDojo, blogging

THEORIES: Blooms Taxonomy (Applying, Creating, Evaluating), SOLO Taxonomy (Relational), Quality Teaching Framework (Higher-order Thinking, Substantive Communication, Engagement, Explicit Quality Criteria, High Expectations, Social Support, Students’ Self-Regulation, Inclusivity), 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning (Deconstruct/Reconstruct, Non-Linear, Symbols and Images, Non-Verbal)

PRODUCT 3: SHARE/PRESENT/CONTRIBUTE/PUBLISH

BIE 8 ESSENTIALS OF PBL: Public Audience and 21st Century Skills

METAPHORS FOR LEARNING: Campfire and Life

Punk Learning: self-assessment using the ‘Punk Learner’ rubric

DESIGN THINKING: Goal-getting – Judge, measure and evaluate your success. Knowing – Remember, integrate and apply what you learn.

STRATEGIES: goals/medals/missions, master and apprentice, think/puzzle/explore,

TOOLS: Edmodo, ClassDojo, Slideshare, Scribd, Blurb, Twitter, YouTube

THEORIES: Blooms Taxonomy (Evaluating), SOLO Taxonomy (Extended Abstract), Quality Teaching Framework (Engagement, Explicit Quality Criteria, High Expectations, Social Support, Connectedness, Narrative, Cultural Knowledge, Knowledge Integration), 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning (Community Links, Land Links, Story Sharing)

Teaching teachers is fun but challenging …

For the last three months I have been working at Sydney University each Tuesday. I’ve been running seminars for the #EDMT5500 course, Introduction to Teaching and Learning – kinda mental, huh? I’ll admit that it has been a really challenging experience for me. Not because the content of what I have to teach is difficult of foreign to me, but simply because I have only two hours a week with these awesome people who have chosen to be teachers and I feel it simply isn’t enough time to get to know them. I mean, I’ve tried really hard to get to know their names and how they learn (super important to me as an educator) and to also cram into that time everything that I think a new teacher should know and be able to do.

Like most teachers (I hope), I believe that learning through doing is more powerful than learning through listening. I’ve done my best to have my students engage actively in the types of activities and learning experiences that I’d like to see them create for their students. But it is a challenge to not stand up the front and just talk about my experience as a teacher. You see, these guys are super excited to have a practising teacher in the room with them for two hours a week. They have so many questions about teaching and learning (of course I don’t know all of the answers), that at times we just fall into semi-casual discussions about my experiences and my beliefs. That last bit is the rub, of course … when I’m up the front and they are all asking questions, it’s hard not to believe that my ideas and opinions are the most important, the more right. I think that’s symptomatic of the ‘sage on the stage’ experience – feeling superior because of our location within the room and the attention we garner. This is problematic in high schools but it’s down-right dangerous in universities.

Anyway, apart from that little bit of self-criticism, I think that overall my experience has been super positive. Mostly I’ve just been skimming the weekly notes/PPT for the week and then running with my own ideas about what is central and most relevant for my students. They have been introduced to so many teaching approaches, strategies, tools, theorists, practitioners and activities that I think none of them really have a reason to start their teaching career as a ‘sage on the stage’ unless it’s what they truly desire to be. I hope that from our course they’ve been challenged to think differently about teaching and learning and that they’ve discovered that the labels ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ can be applied to every individual who is participating in the learning experience.

Here is just a super quick list of what my #EDMT5500 students have been exposed to during the first 9 weeks of the Introduction to Teaching and Learning course. I’d really love it if you commented below with other approaches, strategies, tools, theorists, practitioners and activities that you think a new teacher should be exposed to before getting their first class!

- SOLO taxonomy

- metaphors for learning spaces

- Blooms Taxonomy 

- Quality Teaching Framework

- Australian professional standards for teaching

- 8 Aboriginal ways of learning

- Elmore’s instructional core

- Tait Coles’ punk learning approach

- Project Based Learning

- Design Thinking (iDesign)

- Thinking activities: KWL, speed-dating, think/pair/share, hexagonal thinking, master and apprentice, think/puzzle/explore

- edmodo, Diigo, slideshare, scribd, YouTube, classdojo, Twitter

- constructivism and constructionism

- Seymour Papert

I’m sure there’s a bunch of other things we have covered but I can’t remember, lol.

Project Based Learning and the Australian Curriculum ‘General Capabilities’ (Part 3)

This is the third part of my posts on the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities and Project Based Learning (PBL). The first part is here. The second part is here. What is PBL? Read about it here.

Well it’s taken me ages to get to this last post. School and life has been hectic. Isn’t it always? I intended for the three posts to be completed for SDD Term 1 and it is now the end of Week 2. Luckily these General Capabilities are so straight forward and everyone always covers them with their classes, right? Oh, wait … no. That’s NOT the truth. Whilst Ethical Understanding and Intercultural Understanding are essential capabilities for awesome humans, they can so easily be overlooked when teachers feel pressured to prioritise content.

ETHICAL UNDERSTANDING

According to the AC website, ‘Ethical understanding involves students in building a strong personal and socially oriented ethical outlook that helps them to manage context, conflict and uncertainty, and to develop an awareness of the influence that their values and behaviour have on others’. This is pretty important stuff, right? I mean, in high school we’re often working with young people who simply lack resilience or a deep appreciation for their own values and how these can impact those around them. Why? Because they are young people finding their place within the world. But maybe it’s because they don’t understand or can’t appreciate the relevance of what they are doing RIGHT NOW in their school lives. To teenagers, school can often seem like they’re in a holding pen waiting until they’re given the chance to be morally responsible. In order to support our students to develop ‘personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience, empathy and respect for others’ (Melbourne Declaration on Education Goals for Young Australians) we need to create learning experiences that foster and nurture these values and attributes.

Project based learning is about problem finding and problem solving. Not the problems in the back of the book, or the imaginary problems identified in a novel, but the REAL problems of our world that need addressing. It is in the driving question of a project that we see the centrality of problems. These problems might be based in the class (How can we design a learning space that supports the needs of all learners?), school (Can we, as students, prevent bullying in our school?), local community, (How can we educate our community about the impact that individuals’ decisions have on others?), national (Can we create a short film that will change politician’s attitudes to climate change?) or global (How can poetry be used to inspire people to donate money to combat the global food crisis?). The best problems, of course, are those identified by students through their own personal experience or through their own in-depth inquiry. To help students with their problem-finding, you could use this sentence from the AC as stimulus for discussion and brainstorming: Complex issues require responses that take account of ethical considerations such as human rights and responsibilities, animal rights, environmental issues and global justice. It simply is NOT enough to have our students writing persuasive speeches or research articles or poems about these issues, handing them in to teacher for a grade and ticking a box. We MUST empower our young people to actually actively take part in making a contribution to their world – to truly contribute their ideas to solving complex problems.This means ensuring that their learning has a public audience.

Of course, we can’t expect on class doing PBL to solve the world’s problems – but many hands make light work. According to the AC, Technologies bring local and distant communities into classrooms, exposing students to knowledge and global concerns as never before. With the capacity to bring others into our classroom vis Skype, edmodo, social media etc, we have the capacity to work together towards incremental changes to our somewhat shitty world. Giving students a taste of what their own personal capacity is, to develop their understanding of themselves as ethical human beings, is really central to our jobs as teachers.

Here’s a video of me talking about the importance of fostering Ethical Understanding in the young people in our care:

INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

One of the reasons I love the Internet is because it has made our world a little bit smaller. It’s made it easier for me to appreciate the shared nature of humanity and opened my eyes to the importance of connecting and collaborating with people all over the world. However, I do often ask myself whether that’s just me idealising the Internet. Chatting to my students and observing how they use the web, it seems to me that maybe it’s not actually being used in a way that bashes down contextual and cultural boundaries, bringing about a truly global community. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that my students are connecting with other young people from all around the world – especially those who are gamers. But is this reinforcing cultural divides as they seek out others with the same or similar cultural contexts to themselves? For the AC, intercultural understanding assists young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped through their education for living and working together in an interconnected world.

Creating learning experiences that provide students with the opportunity to connect and collaborate with students from backgrounds different from their own truly does nurture intercultural understanding. During PBL, students develop essential 21st century skills as they establish connections with other schools or with experts from outside of school. PBL provides the students with the the ability to relate to and communicate across cultures at local, regional and global levels. Currently my Year 8 class is connecting with a small rural school (North Star Public School) in northern NSW in their attempt to answer the driving question What can we learn from the life stories of others? This project requires them the engage with a text that explores the life story of an individual from a culture very different from their own – for my class they’re learning about the peoples indigenous to North America and learning about the impact of colonisation on these peoples. They are also connecting via twitter, edmodo and skype with the North Star students to share their own life stories and in doing so they are cultivating values and dispositions such as curiosity, care, empathy, reciprocity, respect and responsibility, open-mindedness and critical awareness, and supports new and positive intercultural behaviours. The project covers significant content for both classes as they are actively engaging in their wider world and discovering something new about others and themselves.

There are many more learning experiences such as the one I have outline above that my students have enjoyed over the years because of project based learning. Using this approach to learning truly opens our eyes, as teachers, to the potential connections our young people can make with others. It doesn’t have to be connections from outside of the school either. At my school, we have a number of students from Japan, Korea and China, who spend one to two years studying at our school. My colleague ran a wonderful project at the beginning of the year where his Year 12 students planned and ran the introduction activities for our new international students. This was a awesome opportunity for all of the students involved to learn about other cultures and it gave them the chance to identify culture and develop respect. My goal for this year is to have one of my classes to work on a project with a class with Aboriginal students. I recently discovered the 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning and am very keen to design a project that incorporates all 8 ways because I believe they are the ways my students learn also. Working at a school on the Northern Beaches in Sydney isolates my students from the potential to truly develop their understanding of the cultures of the original inhabitants of this country. It’s time that I use my PBL skills and the technologies we have available to break down these cultural barriers and create awesome learning experiences for both classes. I just have to find the right school to connect with!

As I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of the AC’s General Capabilities. I think it is essential that we continue to value our young people as the future of our world and support them as best we can to develop or strengthen these important attributes of awesome humans. I truly do feel that an approach to learning such as project based learning that is experiential, authentic and engaging provides our learners with the BEST opportunity to hone these very important values and attributes.

Just some things I have to say about edmodo …

At the beginning of this year, I was asked by the peeps at edmodo if I would agree to be interviewed by the Huffington Post for an article about edmodo. Um, hello – the Huffington Post? I always see their stuff being retweeted by my Twitter mates (and yes, I even occasionally read the articles which is a big deal for someone like me who skims everything!) – let’s just say I was a little bit stoked at the chance to be quoted in one of their stories! I also was stoked because I really love edmodo and it’s always super cool that they think of little old me down here in Australia – they really are a shining light of loyalty in the ever-increasing corporatisation of education. I really mean that. As you know, I’ve been using edmodo since 2009 and they have always made me feel valued as an educator and a contributor to their growing network of teachers and students.

Anyway, you can read the edmodo blog post about the Huffington Post article here and you can read the actual Huffington Post article here.

As is the way with people like me who live in the Southern Hemisphere, being interviewed proved difficult time-wise. To overcome this (and avoid me being up at 3am), the journalist (the very cool C.M. Rubin – woot!) sent me a bunch of questions to answer via email. Of course, I just rambled on and wrote waaaaaay to much and necessarily about three of the things I said were included in the final article. I thought someone out there might be interested in my original responses to the questions … maybe, haha. They were actually really great questions! So, anyway, here they are:

How have you used Edmodo in or out of your classroom to enhance learning? 

I’ve been using Edmodo with my students since May, 2009. I discovered it during a video conference on web 2.0 tools for education. It was a chance discovery because at the time my school was looking for an alternative to email and USBs as a means for students to share their work with teachers. I quickly discovered that edmodo is so much more than that!

Can you share any examples of things you have done in your classroom recently or even plan to do in the near future which illustrate the important added value/unique benefits of Edmodo versus other learning platforms/tools?

I’ve had so many wonderful experiences with Edmodo that it is almost impossible to choose between them! I think the there are three experiences that my students and I fondly remember. In March, 2012, I used edmodo to facilitate an online role-playing game with my students which became fondly known as #HG2212. Essentially, I created a Hunger Games narrative where students played the roles of the tributes or citizens of The Capitol. I used Edmodo’s unique features to organise the game – students changed their usernames and avatars to reflect their characters, all students joined a group called ‘Northern Ridges’ (our version on Panem) whilst some students were put in an ‘Arena’ sub-group and others in ‘The Capitol’. Over the course of two weeks, students used blogs, videos and Web 2.0 tools such as Voki (all embedded into the Edmodo group by students) to tell the narrative of their characters as tributes in The Arena. The Capitol residents determined which tributes lived or died and how this occurred. It was truly an amazing experience with students so engaged that they were on Edmodo at all hours of the night – they even downloaded the Edmodo app to their phones so they wouldn’t miss any action. Essentially this was a creative thinking and creative writing activity, but Edmodo allowed it to be immersive, interactive, engaging and fun! You can read more about it here and see student work as well: http://biancahewes.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/hunger-games-2212-my-rejected-iste-presentation/

Another amazing learning experiences was using Edmodo to connect my Year 10 class with a Year 10 class in San Francisco. My class was studying The Catcher in the Rye and I put a post on a couple of the Edmodo communities asking if any teacher had a class he/she who might want to help my students better understand life in America for teens. Within half a day I had lots of people offering to connect and ultimately chose one class – I would have loved to connect with them all and I plan to do so eventually! Our students joined an Edmodo group to chat about their lives and what they find difficult or inspiring. They also made videos and posted them to Edmodo, answering questions the other students had posed. It was such an eye-opening experience for my students! They learnt so much about American culture – especially the danger of stereotypes presented on television and in movies. My 15 years olds really believed that all American teenagers looked like the teenagers in Gossip Girl and were very surprised to find that this is not the case! Edmodo was the best place for this type of connection to occur as it is a teacher-monitored space where young people can develop those much needed collaboration and communication skills with a guide right beside them.

Finally, I’ve used Edmodo to get writing mentors for my students. My class were working on individual research and composition projects and I knew it would be impossible for me to give quality, personal feedback on all of their work. I decided to reach out to my Edmodo professional learning network and asked if anyone would be interested in mentoring a 15 year old. I had so many offers it! Eventually my 30 students had mentors from all over the world, including many states of America, South America and England. All of the mentors were registered teachers with Edmodo, which means that they were safe to work with children – something all teachers need to be aware of when considering these types of activities. Edmodo supported the mentor process perfectly as I could invite the teachers to join our class Edmodo group and then create sub-groups for each mentor and student. All interactions in these groups and sub-groups are visible to me, the teacher. This allowed me to assess the progress of each student and learn a little as well!

The internet is our children’s medium and many believe it is an unparalleled learning tool.  How does Edmodo handle the challenge of educating kids to be good digital citizens – can you share examples of what instruction (unique to Edmodo?) you believe Edmodo provides kids to better equip them for the social medial world they now live in?

I always so that Edmodo is the social network with training wheels. It’s a safe platform where young people can learn how to communicate and interact with other young people – and adults – whilst at the same time being guided and supported by an adult they trust, their teacher. By introducing Edmodo to students at a younger age, teachers are helping to develop the habits of mind that are essential for students to be good digital citizens. Students learn the important of a quality avatar that is non-offensive and presents them as a thoughtful and sensible person. They also learn the necessity to use appropriate language, to speak kindly and with compassion, to be supportive rather than critical and to ask thoughtful questions. One of the best lessons that students learn in Edmodo is the impact that a lack of tone can have on written text – they quickly learn how important it is to be clear in what they write! They even just learn the basics of managing a username and password!

Of course, I believe that Edmodo has some unique features that allows students to develop all of these skills. Edmodo has a massive user-base (over 10 million users, I believe) and this means that teacher like me can easily connect their classes with classes from all over the world, simply be requesting a connection in an Edmodo community. Providing students with a safe and facilitated opportunity to connect with students they do not know means that they can put their digital citizenship skills into action whilst being supported by their teacher.  Last year I ran a project where my Year 9 students used Edmodo to connect with Year 2 students from a local primary school. The students collaborated on a story-writing project and in doing so developed their ability to ask questions effectively, communicate their ideas clearly and give quality, non-judgmental feedback to young people they previously did not know. Teachers can see all activity in an Edmodo group and this gives them the ability to quickly post a comment and praise great digital citizenship, or to quickly address any potentially inappropriate behaviours.

Why is it about Edmodo that engages students most?

This is a question that I’m always asking my students and myself. I think that initially students are attracted to it because it looked like Facebook! Younger students are really excited about the idea that they can quickly connect with their peers online – something they may not have as much opportunity to do if they are younger than 13. Ultimately, though, my students have told me that what they like the most is the range of learning experiences that it provides them with. They love connecting with other students and teachers, they love using it to role-play and of course it gives them security knowing that their teacher as well as class resources, are accessible online 24/7. My students made a video about their thoughts on Edmodo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgl6kxq2tMQ

If there was one thing you could change about the Edmodo platform what would that be?

That’s a really tough question! It has so many great features that we teacher have already helped them introduce – they really are quite responsive to teacher suggestions and feedback. I think the thing that I’ve asked for the most is an embedded points system so I can gamify my classroom when I choose to. Basically, it means that during role-playing projects my students can be awarded a certain number of points for posts and comments. I think that feature would be awesome. But really, to be honest, Edmodo is such a flexible platform that I can make that happen myself just by being a little creative with the badge system and the reactions feature. I’m really excited to see what they introduce next because it is always based on the idea of a teacher somewhere around the world!

 

 

Visual representation of the ‘shadow’ concept for Yr 11

Below is a photograph of a diorama I made tonight as a model for my Year 11 advanced English class. They have their visual representations of the shadow concept due this Friday – with a 300 word rationale – and I thought I’d make one as a model to show them how they might be able to do it. Making it and writing the rationale only took me a couple of hours, so I reckon they can ace it even if they leave it until the night before, lol. It’s quite a personal piece, but it was rather cathartic making it and sharing it. My mum will be cool with me sharing it, she’s very open about her experiences and I think this is part of her healing process (and probably mine too).

This is the assessment task if you’re wondering what I’m going on about: Assessment Task 1-2013-2

VISUAL REPRESENTATION:

RATIONALE:

The process of individuation necessarily involves struggle and trauma as the individual acknowledges the role that social taboos and values have on the evolution of his or her shadow. It is only once the truths hidden in the darkness of the unconscious mind come to light in the conscious mind, that the shadow can be genuinely integrated into the True Self. I have chosen to visually represent this personal understanding of the Shadow through the diorama form. My diorama represents a truly personal inner journey, namely my developing awareness of the truth about my mother’s experience of Forced Adoption and the unconscious impact that this has had on my life.

 Symbolism of the question mark and barcode on the baby carriage represents my lack of knowledge regarding my half-brother and intends to provoke similar feelings of confusion in my responder. Contrastingly, the colour symbolism of the background washing from black to red and then to white, aims to inform my responder of my shift from being ignorant of mother’s traumatic past (black) to the embracing of the positive impact this discovery has on my understanding of my self (red then white). Finally, the tactile jutting out of the scissors and Band-Aid from the diorama dramatically illustrate my belief that social taboos and values impact the evolution of an individual’s shadow.  The scissors symbolise the cutting of the primitive mother/child bond. I also used key words on the scissors to represent society’s values and taboos in the 1970s such as BFA which stands for ‘baby for adoption’ – the acronym used on paperwork in hospitals that participated in forced adoption. However, the Band-Aid acts to signify a coming to light of the truth through the National Apology for Forced Adoption and the impact this had on my ability to heal through understanding my past.

 This diorama, whilst derived from personal experience, prompts the responder to consider their own shadow and how it may be shaped be elements beyond their control, specifically social taboos and values. Whilst bringing our shadow to light is painful, it is a necessary part of our inner journey towards Individuation.

Metaphors for learning: archetypal learning spaces

I self-diagnosed my teaching problem today. The learning space I have created for my students is too static. It’s all wrong. To quote myself:

What a classroom needs is flexibility of space and furniture as this allows for an ever-changing, dynamic learning environment.

That comes from this blog post, ‘Using archetypes to match learning spaces with physical and digital spaces‘, and in rereading it tonight the penny dropped. Currently I have four walls that can be used for students to display their learning/do some visible thinking … and that means less space for tables to be pushed around. Or so I’ve convinced myself. Tomorrow will be different. In the meantime, I have recreated my posters for the archetypal learning spaces that my students loved so much (the others were ripped by the guys putting in my IWB, sad face) … I’m putting them up as soon as I can convince someone to print them off in colour for me

Hunger Games 2212: my rejected ISTE presentation

I wasn’t ever going to blog about this, I really wasn’t. The project many of my Twitter friends know as #HG2212 was one of my most favourite learning experiences of last year – and a favourite of my students as well. That’s why I applied to present it as ISTE in San Antonio this year. Well, as you can guess from the title of this post, my presentation wasn’t accepted. I’m not writing this post to bitch about being rejected (because I think karma played a big role in my rejection and that makes things balance out in my head) but to share the project a little for the first time. Why? My very dear Twitter mate @carlaleeb asked me about the project today because a colleague of hers is about to teach the Hunger Games. My other great Twitter mate @pollydunning is keen to give this project a go as well.

I don’t plan to write a long and detailed post about the project. What I will do is share the recording of my presentation from edmodocon12 in August last year. It was a truly emotional experience sharing this project – yes, I cry in the video – simply because the project was such a moving learning experience. It was my life and my students’ life for two weeks straight, 24/7. There are some aspects of the project that I am not at liberty to disclose because they do not belong to me – they belong to Dean Groom who helped me nut out the project and sort out the annoying details that involved numbers. The idea for the project was also pretty much stolen from @Towney77. However, when I run this again this year I will definitely be simplifying the gaming elements and using edmodo much more cleverly to tally XP. It can be done.

So here is the video – be warned, it goes for well over half an hour and I do literally cry in it. You need to click on the link here and scroll down to my name and click on the little arrow beside it. It’s a lot of scrolling, haha!

I’d also like to share some of my students’ blogs from that project. Their writing still gives me goosebumps and will serve as wonderful models for my class this year.

Leefern R Skipberi

Harlow Lilywalk

Daniel Giunter

Leigh Walk-lily

Ruchit Seeaster 

Finally, I’d like to share the storify of the #HG2212 tweets carefully curated by my friend @missjessm. I am so very grateful that she did as it has given me a lasting record of the experience. Here it is: Bianca does Hunger Games

KEEP YOUR EYES OUT FOR THE NEXT … #HG2313

Prac students are awesome: go get one!

I’m always keen to have a prac student. I find them super useful because it means that I can get on with my own work whilst they teach my classes. I’m joking, obviously. I like having prac students because they help me to think critically about my own practice. I also learn a lot from them – they are in the guts of current edu theory (or should be) and eager to try out new things in the classroom (or should be). The best types of prac students are those who aren’t afraid to take risks. Usually if I have a timid prac student my whole focus during their placement is to make them relax: with the content, their lesson planning and with the kids. I like to remind them that this is the time to make mistakes, to try new things, to have epic failures and unexpected successes.

I have been very fortunate to have an awesome prac student with me for the past month. Having a prac student this late in the year was not something I had planned – in fact, I can happily say that I was ‘head-hunted’ by my prac student, Peter, because he wanted to experience PBL in a high school setting. A public high school setting. How cool is that? I have to admit, it was a really cool time of year for him to observe PBL because three of my classes were at the pointy end of their projects – the production and presentation end. Year 8 were working on creating short films for our annual RockFest, Year 9 were composing fantasy stories in collaboration with a Year 2 class at another school and Year 10 were composing their products for the English Composition Project. There was a LOT happening for Peter to see and be a part of.

The cool thing about having a prac student is that they are another human being in the classroom – this means more knowledge, life experience, opinions and support to contribute to each project. Peter did this and more! His experience as an educator at the Powerhouse Museum was invaluable. He taught my Year 8 students and I about the importance of production management when making a film – you gotta have lists and keep things organised! He reminded us all about the importance of delegation of tasks and the reality of time-frames. His expertise when it comes to editing – especially sounds – was really valued by my students. Just having him there in the room gave a degree of authenticity to their projects. Year 8 managed to produce some great short films because of Peter. But because Peter was there, my students were also happy to discuss what didn’t work (their failures) and why. Their post-project debrief today really demonstrated their learning as well as their appreciation for the process over the perceived quality of the final product.

Having another adult to share the anxiety and stress associated with the end point of a project is absolutely essential to your sanity! I do project-learning as a solo teacher and mostly use this blog and twitter as my outlet when things get all too much. Having Peter there to reassure me, and to kinda share the pain so to speak, helped me survive a week of potential mayhem. I guess the cool thing about prac students is that they kinda have to share the journey with you, otherwise you can just write on their final report that they’re not cut out to be a quality teacher, right? Haha. Peter happily ran crazy errands for me: today he did a round trip of about 50kms to buy a replacement microphone clip just to save me from the wrath of the executive; last week he drove 20km to support the Year 2 teacher I was collaborating with as she tried to use Skype for the first time. He was so patient with me!

I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with prac teachers. I think that we teachers really need to become more willing to open up our doors to training teachers. It’s not enough to demand better teacher training from universities – it is our responsibility as professionals to offer challenging, rich, exciting and memorable learning experiences for preservice teachers. If we don’t, how can we expect them to get into the classroom and be awesome educators willing to take risks and try cool new stuff? So … what are you waiting for? Contact your local uni and tell them you’re keen to get a praccie for next year! I’m sad that I’m losing Peter (I already asked my HT for a personal-Peter to keep for good, lol) but I know that next year I will get the opportunity to meet another pre-service teacher who will be just as keen to shadow my craziness.

 

Hanging out on the fringe #aarefringe

I wanted to write this blog post yesterday but my yesterday was crowded with so much awesome that I didn’t have time. (More about that later). On Wednesday night, Lee and I got the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with some wonderful people. People we have spoken with many times on twitter but never met in person, plus other people we have never chatted too ever before. To non-twitter people this seems like such an odd notion. Going to the pub with semi and complete strangers. OK, maybe it’s not abnormal for people seeking a date, or something, haha.

Lee and I were late to the Abercrombie pub. Why? Because I was driving and for some reason selected the slowest, most congested route possible. We arrived at the pub over half an hour late. The cool thing was, though, that those already there waited for us to arrive before beginning the provocations. That was so cool. Provocations? Yeah. That’s what we came together for. To share ‘dangerous ideas’. The gathering was planned by education researcher and all-round great human-being, Greg Thompson. You might know him as @effectsofNAPLAN on twitter. Greg and a bunch of other edu academics (including the lovely Nicole Mockler and the very genuine @tloughlan) were in Sydney for the AARE conference and Greg organised #aarefringe as an informal opportunity for academics, teachers and preservice teachers to come together for a chat about education and all of the other crazy stuff that comes with our world.

I don’t know what I want to say about the evening. Seriously. I think (weirdly) that I’m a bit lost for words. Hmmm. I’ve been to quite a few conferences in my time (and a couple of teachmeets) and I have to say that they just pale in comparison to this type of ‘event’. I don’t even think the word event is right. I remember being at the big Sydney TeachMeet earlier this year and watching side-stage as Ewan McIntosh spoke about the origins of teachmeets – the pub meet. It just sounded awesome and I loved the fact that grog was right at the centre of it all. It sounds so wrong, but drinking a cider, a beer or some wine whilst chatting with smart and passionate people about education is what we need more of in Australia. It happens weekly at schools all around the place – the Friday arvo drinks. I think that this conversation – where you can talk backwards and forwards between human beings about an idea, nutting it out, getting passionate, asking questions – isn’t possible on Twitter. What we had on Wednesday night when deeper and was more real. Sometimes 140 characters just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes your voice is lost in a ‘chat’ and your questions go unanswered or your concerns unheard (with loud-mouths like me around, I’m surprised anyone ever gets to say anything!). That may have happened on Wednesday night … I, for one, have to learn how to shut up and listen … but I think everyone there was just so stoked with the conversation whether they were contributing or listening.

Greg did a great thing and I know that there will be more of these grog-assisted edu chats. They need to be in a place like the Abercrombie (well chosen, Tony!) because it is gritty and gungy and darkly lit. The atmosphere of dangerous ideas about education, provocation and honesty was enhanced by the venue. These things can’t happen in the sterility of a school library. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the #aarefringe was teacher PD like Teachmeets are … it wasn’t about learning to use a particular took with your class or a particular pedagogy. So I’m not suggesting that these pubchats replace teachmeets. I also know that often the teachers who attend the TMs go to teacheats and I’m sure their conversation flows more freely their about all sorts of things. But what Greg did was he brought together the different sectors of education and gave us the opportunity to share radical and risky ideas in an environment free of the anxiety that we might tarnish our online relationships or digital footprints by being honest and giving constructive criticism.

I wonder if the messiness of this blog captures the necessary messiness of something like #aarefringe. There was no PPT, or plenary or speaking order. There were drinks, passionate people and one small request: share a dangerous idea about education. If you want to read a more succinct and articulate wrap-up of the evening that references that actual speakers and their topics, read Greg’s post here.

Finally, I just want to say a great big thank you to everyone who was there. Lee and I felt so welcomed and supported whilst we shared what we think are our pretty challenging thoughts about education and academia. We were nervous (just being newbies really) but we loved the conversations about our ideas and it has helped them to evolve further – you should have been in the car on the way home! It was a delight to meet people in the flesh for the first time – especially Greg, Denise and Nicole. The next day both Lee and I got heaps of tweets about our ideas regarding leadership and research … which made us feel proud that our ideas had been dangerous enough to provoke a mini debate/discussion online as well. So awesome.

My top three cool learning moments (from last week)

Today I felt like writing. I didn’t feel like writing the overdue chapters for the latest edu book I’m writing. It’s not the creative type of writing I felt like doing. I enjoy writing this blog because I am free from the gaze of the editor. Maybe I need to have an editor in my mind to focus or censor me … I guess Freud would say that I have my Super-Ego, but sometimes I think it lets some crazy stuff slip through … or is that the Ego that chooses to let the stuff slip through? Only I’m not conscious of it, right? Oh I digress … sorry.

So I didn’t know what to blog about and (of course) I asked Twitter. My new Kiwi mate Christine Wells suggested this: ‘Maybe a blog on your top 3 cool learning moments?’ I tell you what, she’s a fountain of great ideas, that one! So this is my post about three cool learning moments from last week.

Cool learning moment 1: Monday … period 6. Year 8 have been watching Tim Burton films in order to discover what makes his style distinctive and thus earn the title ‘auteur’. It’s part of our current project. I’m pretty sure I posted that on here a little while ago. Anyway, as a way of summarising what they have discovered, I got them to write a collaborative essay. Basically each team of three is responsible for writing one paragraph of the essay – that’s one paragraph per team. These paragraphs will all be smooshed together to make a collaborative class essay that I will post outside our classroom for the world (or at least passing students) to see. Teaching paragraph writing to students is hard and that’s why I set them an attainable, collaborative goal.

On Monday afternoon last week, Year 8 were tired. Despite this I had my mission – to teach how to write a great statement to begin a paragraph – and I was determined to achieve it. After about fifteen minutes of instruction/discussion (e.g. what is a subject, object, verb; what is a clause, a dependent clause, an independent clause) my students got to have a go on their own. Each team had three different pieces of coloured paper on which they needed to write the subject/verb/object of their statement addressing a question (e.g. What is distinctive about the characters in Tim Burton’s films?). The result? Well it was mixed. Learning the ‘parts’ of a sentence had confused the ‘natural’ writers and had empowered the struggling writers. My learning? We all need to have a basic understanding of the building blocks of language, even if writing comes naturally to us. My mission? To spend more time discussing the parts of language with my students to empower them all.

Cool learning moment 2: On Wednesday I had the pleasure of hosting an English teacher from another school. She was visiting because she wanted to ‘see PBL in action’. I was terrified when I read her request via email … I’ve never had anyone watch me ‘do’ PBL. I talk a lot about it – on my blog, on twitter, at presentations, during workshops – but is it all talk? I kinda felt like it was and the impending visit was making me belly-sick. Luckily Jessica is a gorgeous, calm, lovely person and made me feel at ease straight away. She came into my Year 9 class and my Year 10 class. I introduced her as Jessica – it’s my dream for my students to call me Bianca. I hate titles. They are silly. Anyway, knowing her first name seemed to calm my students too. Both lessons went really well and I was stoked that they weren’t staged lessons … they were real lessons. Students were still silly with me, I said good bye to a student leaving and I just felt comfortable.

Chatting afterwards to Jessica about the lessons, she was really positive and enthusiastic about my approach. She said she was surprised by how structured my lessons were but also by how self-directed and engaged my students were. Even the ones pretending to shoot each other in a mock duel knew what we were doing for the project and could explain what this lesson was for, what the last one was for and where the project was heading. That was pretty cool – their awareness of why they were learning and what they were learning … even the seemingly boring basic stuff is purposeful in PBL. My learning? The best things I learnt from this experience was the growth of my students’ understanding of PBL (one student had told Jessica at first he thought I wasn’t doing my job properly but later he realised how important it is to control his own learning) and how much I know about this crazy PBL stuff. My mission? Keep in touch with Jessica and open my classroom to other teachers who want to visit.

Cool learning moment 3: If you’re one of the people who has read my feedback post from a few weeks ago, you’ll know that I’ve made a big shift away from quantitative feedback to qualitative feedback/feedforward. Recently students had their yearly examinations. For the writing component I used a checklist – a series of criteria written as questions and a yes/no column for ticks. E.g. Did the essayist establish a personal voice? Yes/No. I also used code annotations (read the post and this will make sense). That was the only feedback/feedforward given. No numbers. When I gave back the papers to my students, they were desperate to know their ‘percentage’ … and I directed them to the criteria checklist and told them to read through the feedback and then allocate themselves some ‘medals’ (what they did well) and set some ‘missions’ (what they need to improve on’). Then I told them that was all they needed … our focus in English is on learning, not on catergorising each other as a number or rank. One girl asked, ‘What do I tell my mum when she asks how I went in English?’ and I said, ‘Show her your medals and missions. If she doesn’t understand, tell her to call me.’ I haven’t had a call yet, but maybe I’ll get one this week. We’ll see. My learning? Students really need to be ‘unschooled’ … they are programmed from Year 7 to expect numbers as feedback and they will align themselves (and their fragile egos) to these numbers. Scary stuff. My mission? Start using this feedback/feedforward method at the beginning of the year.