The Power to Act - Agency

Well - my word for the year (ownership) is growing some really long arms and legs! Here are some of those 'limbs' and the impact they are having on our learners.

This video, by Derek Wenmoth, explains some terminology for me around the concept of 'student agency.' He explains agency as the 'power to act' and it has really captured my attention as we build our active learning approach at our school.

Ten Trends 2014: Agency from EDtalks on Vimeo.

In this video, Derek explains how student agency involves 3 dynamics and I've added some implications for our classrooms.

1. The initiative - self regulation of the student.

• this describes exactly what we are trying to do - engage the learner to be more and more independent and self starting.

2. The relationship is inter-dependent - mediates and is mediated by the socio cultural context of the classroom.

• the importance of a collaborative culture is key here. How we work together, give and seek peer feedback and create an environment where students want to learn together is incredibly important.

3. An awareness of responsibility of the learner's own actions and the impact on the environment and on others.

• our learner licenses approach is working really well in facilitating the right amount of support for each learner and I'm wondering how we can use it better to have student's mentoring / supporting and encouraging others learning behaviours.

I can see how this terminology is going to catch on as some shared vocabulary for our school. Especially with the parents. Interestingly - one thing I have learnt to do, when talking about this with parents is to emphasise the 'active learning' aspect rather than 'independent learning' as the latter has overtones of teachers trying to take a back seat to the process.

So - here are 2 aspects of our programme that we have recently invested in across our school to help develop the agency of our students. While not exhaustive, they both form some important pillars to help empower our learners.

Solo Taxonomy

One of our teacher only days this term was spent working with Pam Hook, exploring the ways to incorporate the Solo Taxonomy approach in our classrooms. Solo is an assessment method that involves students, at all stages of the learning journey, to help them see where their understanding is and what to work on next. Pam, @arti_choke, has a knack for explaining the approach in a way that makes sense for people and has developed some fantastic resources for teachers to use with their learners.

She is always very generous with her resources on her site and we have already started using the hexagons, thinking maps and assessment matrix tools. My goal for our class is to be able to use the assessment icons and levels to be able to understand and articulate how well they have grasped a skill or idea and what they should next. This should give us some important vocabulary to use during those crucial learning conversations.

e.g, "How well do I know how to use syllables to decode words? Well, my understanding is at 'multi-structural' but I need to understand when and why to use them when I read - that will move my understanding to the 'relational' level."

Learning Pathways and Self Selected Workshops

Last week our Senior Teachers travelled to Dunedin to visit St Clair School and we were hosted by @msbeenz (Claire Buist) AP and teacher, and her team. We have been hugely influenced by Claire's approach with empowering students to self assess their progress using Goal Sheets and then booking workshops with the teacher. We were very impressed to hear their journey with this approach last year and to see the development of this approach with her team this year.

Our Senior Team has begun to adopt this approach, with our own spin, and combined it within our team teaching approach which will have, I can already see, the following benefits.

• increased student agency
• increased quality and quantity of learning conversations to help guide and support the learner.
• more active and engaged learners!

One of the areas to explore from our visit is how to best develop the home-school connection and whether our current 'homework' programme is the best approach. I'm expecting that the ability for the learner to engage with their next steps is something that could and should be able to continue outside of school hours. So, there is enormous potential for our use of google apps, Ultranet and our other online tools carry on this journey.

Here are 2 other links to some docs we sent home for parents that explain how our learning programme has developed so far. This 'coalition' between school and home is something we are always looking to grow and the conversations these documents have continued has been crucial to the learning culture we are developing in the school.

MBS Team Teaching

Learning at MBS 2014

We are certainly in the midst of some exciting times and it feels like the pieces of the 'Active Learning' approach are falling into place. And when we combine all this with an increasing access to the learning tools we need (10 Chrome books arrived this afternoon!) then the road ahead just keeps getting more and more exciting. 

I hope our learners are starting to feel excited as well. I'm thinking it may be time for some student voice!

Planning and Assessment with Notability App

I replied to a question on twitter about how I use one ipad in the classroom. Last year we had 1 ipad (now we have 12 which is awesome!) and I decided to make the most of it as a teaching tool;

 - I achieved my goal of having a digital planning and assessment approach!

Here's a video of how I use Notability for planning and assessment.

Time Lapse Fun!

During the last school holidays I edited and posted a movie on our class and school blogs. I wanted to showcase the 'business' of our days for the parents of my class - a push back against the 'nothing much' response to that age old question from our parents, 'What did you do at school today?'

The video was posted on the Core Education blog here, a few weeks later.  It was great to see the comments coming in and a few questions asked and the gawker software I used to create the timelapse video is something I'm keen to use again.

Blogging with Zing

Last week I spent some time with some teachers from our school at our first 'iTips' workshop. We looked at how to create some extra Zing to our classroom blogs and I thought I'd share 3 things I do to personalise them and make them stand out a bit more.

1. Headers

- I use Comiclife, which is a mac and pc programme, to create a lot of graphics and visuals for my blogs. Pretty much all my classroom titles, labels and posters are made on this. By downloading and inserting some images from google, even the examples in this picture of some free icons I downloaded (by searching 'free icon download png') to put behind the text. Gives it a bit more bling , I reckon.

The best kinds of graphics to download and put on your header is the 'png' file. These graphics have the file with ONLY the image in them. It;s like they have the white background sort of cut away with scissors. These are great to put on top of other images or even the text as there isn't a white box around the image. Try it. You'll see what I mean. Use the 'arrange / bring to the front or back' feature in comiclife to change the orientation of the images.

Here's a review video of comiclife as a taster. Search around and you'll find LOTS of tutorial videos on youtube to get you more confident!

2. Pictures as links

The side bars on blogs are a great way to direct your readers, students to the sites you want them to visit. One obvious way is to use text as a link and there are a few different standard gad

gets to help you do this. I use these for lists of links but one of my favourite ways to link on the sidebar is using a picture as t

he link. I think this is far enticing for the reader and adds some visual effect to the look of your blog.

You can insert a gadget called PICTURE and use a screen shot of the site you want the link to go to. There's a space to include the website link (URL) and away you go! Screen shots are one of the greatest things ever - hold down shift / command / 4 and 'frame' the image that you want to capture. (For PC users the keys are different. Try this link)

3. Installing a 'third party' blogger template.

This is one of the greatest tips for revolutionising your blog - and one that I've noticed is not readily used by many teachers. Third party refers to a source away from the original, in this case blogger. You can alter your blogger blog (or most other platforms*) inside the design feature which can look great. But for an even more custom, original look you can search through a massive range of templates by google searching 'blogger templates download' as an example.

Here's a site I've used a few times - btemplates.com. It has some great search filters that help you find the template for you, such as searching by colour, structure or even key word tags. There are a lot of videos that show you how to complete this process and, with a little playing around (a few templates might have some gadgets that aren't working or might not allow you to add you're own zingy header at the top) you'll find one that suites you.

Here's a tutorial from a guy with a fascinating accent. There are plenty out there!

So, there's just 3 little techniques that can create a great blog. One last thing to get you going even further is to look at lots of other blogs and see what they're using. It's a great source of inspiration to 'borrow' another person's idea. Just click on the gadget or look for clues at the bottom for a website where it originated. There's nothing like a little google search to satisfy that curiosity of ours.

Here are some links of some blogs to inspire you!

Top 20 Teacher Blogs

Blogging Tips

Great teacher blogs

Classroom Blogs

* This is my new 'Bazinger' footnote - a word I've stolen from 'The Big Bang Theory' and my signal for a jargon word.

Platform - in this sense it's a form of blogging programme that you can use. Examples could be blogger, wordpress, tumblr or posterous.

Improving our teaching practice

Ever since I started training as a teacher I realised there was lots for me to learn. Now that I've been teaching for a while I've realised that I didn't know the half of it! Any teacher who thinks they know it all - or even feels satisfied with their own practice - probably looks like this guy!

There's a saying I started using a while ago (and have probably used on this blog a few times over the last three years) and repeat often - 'Every teacher has a veneer of confidence covering a sea of insecurity!' Every time I use it with another teacher I see a wry smile of familiarity with a touch of relief thrown in that says, 'Oh, ...I'm not the only one!' We feel insecure, I think, because teaching is such an art with so many constantly moving variables... many of which are out of our control. But - many aren't, which is why we are always learning and striving to be our best - or should be.

This year our ICT cluster has begun a journey of using the Teacher Inquiry Model to improve the use of eLearning and ICT in our classrooms. The focus is the area of student learning we would like to see developed with improved outcomes while the strategies are the tools / practises or techniques we will use to achieve those outcomes. The shift that many teachers are making this term is seeing an ICT tool as the strategy, not the focus. So, podcasting becomes a strategy to improve my focus of engaging reluctant writers rather than wanting to use podcasting in my class and seeing how it benefit the students writing. This has been an important part of the process and many teachers are beginning some amazing projects - from yes, podcasting to blogging and all sorts of other 'mashups' of technology that are looking like making some fantastic gains for our students.

This graph, below is something I've been creating in popplet - a mix between wallwisher and mindmeister (or a graphic organiser and online yellow stickies). It's been a brilliant tool for guiding a teacher to create some strategies they will use to help them achieve their focus. The inside (coloured) ideas are some different forms that strategies could take. The outside (grey) ideas are the kinds of eLearning strategies that could help those strategies.

This example of the popplet is just a screen shot of the dynamic version - which you can embed into a blog and people can add to. Because I'm adding to it as we go I've posted a jpg as an archive. I imagine that this chart could be used to reflectively examine our teaching practice at any time, regardless of whether we are completing a formal teacher inquiry or not.

Some questions to ask...

- in what parts of our practice are we simply missing the mark?

- what kinds of strategies could we try using to improve it?

- what or who could help us?

- how are you sharing / reflecting your ideas?

iPads in Education - resources

We've all been seeing the hype created by the iPad, especially when it comes to being used in the classroom. Mobile devices are being identified as the next big tech tool for learning so... here are some links I've collecting.

Here's an example of one of MANY educational apps for the iPad.

Toontastic from Thushan Amarasiriwardena on Vimeo.

An amazing wiki, and another here with LOTS of resources for both the iPad and the iPod.

A blog post about using the iPad in classrooms.

Some student achievement data for use with the iPod (lets face it, the iPad is just a big screen iPod, essentially)

Some info from a blog post about the iPad2.

This video shows the iPad in action - specifically how students might use them.

And lastly - the MAMMOTH wiki for Ipad resources, created by Mike Fisher!

Samsung Showcase

There are some pretty cool concept technologies here.  My observations

1.  It's all about the touch screen - the clam shell, case in point.  I heard at the ulearn conference a speaker comment that the ipad is the first new technology in a long time to actually revolutionise personal computing - it'll be the death knell of the keyboard and mouse.

2.  Why do we need curvy screens?  Because we can!  Love it...

3.  The see through screen at the end reminds me of a vid I saw a few months ago.  A Concept is closer to a prototype. - Puts this fact in context - 'Half of all the knowledge that exists wasn't known 10 years ago.'  Scary - that was said in 2005.  Even scarier - 'The knowledge keeps doubling every 5 years!'

NZ schools face a 'Tech' flight

I came across this post on Drapes Take that struck a chord over my morning coffee. He quotes some research from 2000 that shows the importance of school administrators and leadership 'modeling' effective use of technology for school's to really move effectively in a tech direction.
I made this comment - something I think will be a REAL issue for schools in the next 10 years. What will be the flow on effects of a 'Tech Flight' in NZ?

"I would absolutely agree with the comments above and the post. In New Zealand we're seeing schools with a strong tech direction, and then some with one computer in the corner of class rooms not even connected to the net!
We had something called 'white flight' a decade ago where affluent families left less affluent schools for private ones. I'm predicting a 'tech flight' of younger, progressive teachers leaving these 'regressive' schools in favour of ones with a tech postive administration. I know I would never join a school that wasn't on the digital move.
This will only create an even bigger gap as these regressive schools with 20th Century administrators and teachers (and there MANY of them around) become even more entrenched. What is the solution? The best remedy at the moment are parents - putting pressure on their community's schools to provide education in and for a digital world!"

Why do I Twit?

I often find myself trying to explain why someone should get into twitter. Ironically it's usually part of a conversation about something I found out about from some twitters I follow. More often than not they like what I found out but still don't buy the twitter thing.

A blog I read explained that those who use twitter LOVE it and those that don't, just don't get it!

Here's an attempt to explain it on video. I'm finding it INVALUABLE as a connection point, a 'similar minds' network and a goldmine of teaching resources and ideas.

Use a computer. don't ACT like one.

I'm often telling the kids in my class to not shut down when they strike a problem. "You're like a computer that puts up a, 'Can you tell me what to do?' window."

They either walk around the room aimlessly or stand near me waiting for help (and they could figure it out themselves - as proven when I walk them through some self dialogue).

I think problem solving skills is on of the most important skills for kids to learn these days. (Is it becoming an increasing deficit?)

Laptops in their bags?

Here's an article from the U.K. about technology in schools.

"Children will soon be back at school and will carry much more than books and a new pencil case in their backpacks. Laptops, PDAs and memory keys will accompany mobile phones and digital music players as technology begins to merge classroom and home."