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.
Hi Sophie. I am feeling the same way in that I can't switch off at night. Trying to catch up on the readings and clips for the LDC that I didn't know about until last Thursday. See you tomorrow.
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