Last week was supposed to be the week I attended the Saturday class. However unfortunately I have been really unwell and had to miss Week 6 altogether. Before writing up Week 7's session I thought I would just write down a few thoughts and put a few links from Week 6's topics, gathered from the readings and from my classmates' extremely helpful blogs :)
Week 6 was all about the leadership theories and connectivism. Sounds like it was a really great session and highly relevant for the next assignments, so it was a pity to miss out!
Leadership Theories and Styles It is important to distinguish between theory and style. The theory is more the formal 'label' that describes a certain type of leader. Whereas someone's leadership style refers to their characteristics and behaviours and ways they react and respond as a leader.
Some of the main leadership theories are summed up nicely in this video:
Leadership styles are nicely summed up in the below table:
People will not necessarily stick to one style or theory at all times. Certain approaches are useful in different contexts, such as applying Transactional Theory in a crisis situation.
Connectivism
This is a new theory that is still being debated and not entirely accepted as yet. It suggests that learning takes place in networks, and puts forward the idea of knowledge as a networked product. There is no doubt that these days learning is a socially connected process and that a lot of learning takes place outside a traditional, formal learning environment.
This is an excellent image that gives an overview of connectivism:
This video also gives an interesting overview of where connectivism came from:
During the session everyone made an infographic of a classmate's PLN (Personal Learning Network). They used one of these three sites to create the image. All three look useful and I look forward to going back and having a play at some point.
Before I get into the session, I promised I would report back on my kids using the new maths weebly. They had their first play this week, and I can happily say it was a great success! They enjoyed working in their wee group and were pretty chuffed to have something they could do independently. I had the great outcome of them working away while I spent time with another group, however the real measure of success was the feedback I received... "better than pie and donuts!" If that's not a career high I don't know what is!
Anyhow, back to the Mind Lab. The practical component of tonight's session was having a go at making a short stop motion film. I have a background in animation so was thoroughly looking forward to this, and it didn't disappoint! We used a simple webcam set up with a programme called Monkey Jam - sadly not available on Mac but there are many alternative apps for computers and devices. Our goal was to represent the key elements of a learning theory we pulled out of a hat.
Our theory was Distributed Cognition. We decided to represent this by showing a series of tradies all contributing their separate skills to come together and create one fabulous house. We had a star-studded line up of action figures, cowboys and crazy-eyed dolls. Thanks to Paul for the great costume work on our plumber!
Making the film was great fun and I found it a really useful way of learning - I got my head around the learning theory much more easily than just reading a definition. We needed a clear understanding so that we could portray the key ideas.
Sadly the downside of working with technology is it doesn't always work as planned!! We hit a technical glitch at the last minute and couldn't save and export our amazing production :( This was a shame and disappointing, but it is the reality of things sometimes and we still took part in some awesome learning.
Our discussion in the second half of the session centred around the concept of Growth Mindset. This is a pretty hot topic at the moment and it sparked some interesting comments. Basically the term comes from Carol Dweck's work that compares a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset. Fixed is the view that intelligence can be measured by an IQ test, and no matter how much you learn or how hard you work, it stays the same. Growth is the view that the brain is malleable - like a muscle that can get stronger and work better as you learn and stretch yourself. Ultimately, over time you can get smarter.
People tend to have a mixture of the two mindsets across different areas. I have a fairly good growth mindset towards the learning of kids in my classroom, but I find it difficult to believe I'd ever be capable of doing higher level maths, and tend to default to those phrases like "I'm just not a maths person" or "it's just not my thing". We need to remember that kids will have a mix as well, and may be fixed on their ideas about some things but not in others.
The big things to remember from this for me were around how we praise kids. Being really careful to praise effort, process and perseverance rather than intelligence. It is so easy to let "you're so clever!" slip out! I also liked the idea of using wall displays to document the learning process, rather than always just the finished product.
It was, however, pointed out that we do have an innate contradiction in our system currently, with a push towards formative assessment and praising progress, while at the same time having to report against the National Standards.
For a bit of fun to finish, have a watch of this clip called The Backwards Bicycle. It is a fascinating look at how our brains work!
Due to a school commitment I have to attend the Saturday session this week. I'll miss my Thursday crew (will be thinking of you guys!) but it will be good to make some further connections.
It was another great session in the Mind Lab for our fourth week, however I feel I need to briefly reflect on the first two assessments of the course which are now (thank god!) finished and submitted! These took up most of my headspace last week and as due dates loom close it is difficult to balance keeping up with weekly coursework. I've enjoyed the last couple of days being able to just relax and absorb information again!
But even though it was a bit of a struggle getting myself into essay writing mode again, I actually really enjoyed the thought process behind our first two assessments. One of the big attractions of this course in the first place was the fact that it would be applicable to our every day teaching, and sure enough our first task was to solve a problem in our own practice. I chose to try and extend some advanced mathematicians in my group with a Weebly site they can work on independently. I've been working on getting it up and running and am very excited as tomorrow I plan to introduce them to it for the first time. It is the sort of thing that it is difficult to find time for ordinarily, so to be 'forced' to do it through my study has been a great bonus. I'll report back on how it goes!
Anywhow, back to the Mind Lab. Our practical focus this week was AR or Augmented Reality. I have only ever dabbled in this very briefly so I was excited to learn more about it. Aurasma was the primary app we played with, which involves setting up a 'trigger image' which you point your device at, and it will open up whatever you choose - a website, movie, image etc. The possibilities for this are of course endless, and I feel I need to devote a bit of time to getting my head around great ways to use it in the classroom. I found this video useful to get some thoughts going:
Another app we mentioned but didn't get a lot of time to play with was Quiver. This one involves kids' own colouring coming to life and I think it would be especially fun for younger kids so I'm definitely keen to have more of a play. Check it out:
My immediate thoughts and reflections around AR are that it could be a fantastic way to introduce more student voice and ownership into the learning space. Especially having little kids who can't all read and write - if instead they could get information about something in the room by having one of their classmates pop up and tell them about it... well it could be extremely valuable. Another great idea someone mentioned was using it for showing people around the school. I'm working this year with another teacher on our Transition to School processes and we have introduced tours for our little New Entrants on their first visit...how cool if they could take a device around and find out little tidbits along the way!
It is incredibly exciting learning about these new tools and ideas every week, but it can be a little overwhelming as well. I think it will be a matter of just picking one thing at a time to focus on, and choose small goals that can be implemented straight away. A little bit of AR around the wall displays could be a nice next step though!
After our practical part of the session we got stuck into a discussion about innovation.
We spoke about the idea that previously, people relied on the generation before for information and knowledge. However now we are entering completely new territory, and it is the kids that are teaching us. We also discussed how the lines were getting more and more blurred between offline and online, and that it would get to the point where kids won't see those boundaries. There has always been innovation, however now the possibilities are so huge it is quite mind boggling! We can have absolutely no concept of what could be around the corner. On that note, that's it for this week!
So I am only getting my blog fully underway now, however we are actually 3 and a bit weeks into the course. I had high hopes of getting some thoughts down about the first three sessions separately, but life is a little hectic at the moment so I've decided to do an all in catch up to get myself going. So the following is some general reflection and notes about some of the things we've covered so far.
As I said in my opening post, I am loving the course and finding it incredibly thought provoking. It is fantastic networking with other like-minded people and having time to share ideas. We have covered quite a range of topics already. The sessions are well balanced between playing with new gadgets (and therefore learning practical skills to take back to the kids) and having deeper more academic discussions.
A lot of discussion has been around 21st century skills and the new world that our learners are growing up in. This video gives quite a nice summary around teaching in this new modern context.
It was while watching this that I had an epiphany of sorts. There is a lot of discussion around technology and modern learning environments in schools at the moment. But what has really struck me while watching this video and engaging in the course material, is the inevitability of all of these ideas. It is not just about 'keeping up the times' or doing ICT (often separately) because you should or because it is what the cool kids are doing. Watching this video it really hit home for me that children have instant access to knowledge now - we as teachers are no longer the (only) source of knowledge. We need to be the source of skills. I am really realising that the reality is, we do not have a choice! We don't actually have the luxury of choosing whether collaboration or digital skills is for us or not - it is the absolute reality of where education - not to mention the rest of society - is going.
In discussions about skills learners need we have been referring a lot to the 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. This document identifies six important skills that students need to develop:
collaboration
knowledge construction
self-regulation
real-world problem-solving and innovation
the use of ICT for learning
skilled communication
The full document can be found here: 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics and is an incredibly useful and practical outline of how we should be targeting activities to best teach these skills. It has given me a lot of food for thought about how my practice currently looks, and how I would like it to look! Being in a NE/Y1 space it is a constant balancing act between important pre-skills and implementing these 21st century approaches. I am putting a lot of thought into how I bridge that gap, and how much structure and explicit teaching is too much (and potentially defeating the purpose)? I expect to delve into this topic a lot more as the weeks go on.
Last week we focused particularly on collaboration and our group had some good thoughts around what successful collaboration actually looks like:
Finally, the fun stuff. I am loving having the chance to get some toys out and have a play! The first two sessions focused largely on making videos, which as the basis of our first assignment was a valuable learning experience. I've dabbled in iMovie before but am looking forward to getting stuck into it a bit more this week as I put my video together.
Last week we had a chance to explore Scratch and use a Makey Makey to do some electronics and coding. I have had a small amount of exposure to Scratch through our school's code club but it was great to have a chance to get some hands on experience. I was quite won over by the Makey Makey also and the concept of bringing the experience outside the computer itself. We had fun attaching noises and sound effects to different objects around our table! I've suggested we look at trying out something like this in our code club to extend it a bit and try something new.
Lots of new learning! The main problem I'm having with the study so far is trying to turn my brain off late at night after evening reading sessions! But it is definitely inspiring me and motivation is high for trying new things in the classroom.
