I Am One Of Those People!

I am the first to admit, that I blog a lot with my kids.  It is a part of our regular day and a vital part of getting feedback from them about what they know and how they are going.  I almost make it compulsary for them to comment on each others blogs and particularly mine.  They generally do a good job at adding comments, but the quality of their feedback is often lacking. 

So the other day, I posed the question to them: “Why do we find commenting so hard?”  I got some really interesting feedback from ‘Well i think that we find it hard because we have to read it and then think about what we are going to say. Some of us comment really well, but others just do not enjoy it or think that it is to hard,’ to ‘I agree that people think commenting is hard becuase they don’t want to hurt others. I try not to offend anyone because I always finish my comments with something posistive.’  This one was my favourite ‘I think I know why people don’t want to comment is because they either can’t be bothered or maybe they are scared of you because of your deep loud voice.’  Lucky that kids was only joking!

So is it just me or is commenting really hard?  I know that I constantly lurk and read but struggle sometimes to add productive information to the usual outstanding pieces of information that is presented to me.  I stuggle to add value and don’t want to sound like an idiot by just saying ‘I agree David’ or ‘Awesome post’.  If I contribute, I really want to add value to the bloggers entry.  If I can’t add value, I just don’t feel right adding.

So isn’t the whole purpose of web 2.0 to contribute and share?  Is it just me or do others feel this way?

Leave me a comment (ha ha) outlining your thoughts on this important issue.

For some reason the other day, I was reading Tom Barret’s blog, who I follow on Twitter.  Tom seems to have a bit of a following out there in the Twitterverse on the way he uses tools within his schooling environment.  He encourages educators to use Google docs and other collaborative tools to reflect on their practice and tools they can use to help them achieve quality educaitonal outcomes for thier students. 

For some reason, I scrolled down and checked out his blog extensively for the first time and I found this little gem called ‘How to bookmark Twitter links’.  I know that I feel very overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Twitter links that pass me by every time I log in. 

Packarati.us links your Twitter account to your Delicious account automatically and bookmarks links you place into your Tweets.  This process of automation certainly seems to be helping my Delicious links grow and it is so much easier than manually entering each one. 

Packrati.us seems to be doing the job for me so far – hopefully it will for you as well!

As some of the readers of this blog may be aware, I am currently undertaking the exciting journey which is called the Digital Pedagogy Advanced License which my employer encourages through it’s Smart Classrooms Professional Development Framework.  As a part of this journey, we are required to do certain things each week and produce a portfolio of evidence outlining projects which show leadership in the field of ICT within the wider educational community.

Our task this week was to explore Transformative Learning.  We had a series of readings / videos that we needed to consider and reflect upon them within our particular context.  One of the base readings that we needed to consider was Shane Roberts summary of his understandings of this concept.  Within his synopsis, Shane outlines interpretation of the major aspects of the underpinning concepts behind Transformative Learning.  They are:

1. Learners learning to think for themselves.
2. Freedom from unquestioning acceptance (negotiation of learning, practice and assessment).
3. Teacher as a model learner.
4. Reflection.

Within my particular context as a year 7 teacher in a 1-1 laptop environment, I can easily identify some of those aspects that I embed into my class on a daily basis easily, whilst others are quite difficult.  The biggest challenge that I have had with my students this year is the concept of reflection.  It just seems as though this important aspect of student learning has not been focused on and questions such as ‘Why are we bothering with this Mr Proud?’ or ‘Are you serious?’ were commonly heard in my classroom at the start of the year.  Now, reflective processes are incorporated often and the feedback from the students is that it actually helps them think more about what they did and how they would do it better next time. 

The other concept that my learners are working hard to develop is learners learning to think for themselves.  As I stated in an earlier blog post, I feel that throughout most of my primary educational career (wish I made some money out of it!) I was a passive recipient of content / information and the educator in front of me was the ‘Grand Pooba’ and his / her word was right.  Once again, I was surprised at the start of the learning journey with my kids this year on the lack of higher order thinking skills my students possessed.  I have always encouraged my kids to explain themselves, ask questions and enquire about concepts covered within our learning environment.  My students are now starting to develop these thinking skills but it has been a very hard slog. 

Jodie Riek left an interesting comment on Shane’s blog entry about Transformative Learning.  She stated:

‘As an early years teacher, I truly believe that we teach kids out of being self thinking and risk taking learners’. 

She also adds:

‘They want to EXPERIENCE the answers. They want to think for themselves, come up with theories, test them out, and discover results. They want to learn by doing. But somewhere early in their journey of learning in the school system we train them out of this innate need to experience the answers and we mould them to understand and perform as required in our system.’ 

I found Jodie’s comments very insightful.  Learners enter the school system eager to tackle the world and believe that they can solve / figure out anything.  At the beginning of each year, I openly encourage students to take risks and I truly believe that this is the best way that we learn.  Our practical example of this is the use of ICT within my class.  For some tools / software items, I just say to my kids ‘Go for it, figure it out and then teach me’ is such a powerful learning experience for my kids.  They learn by doing, not just passively watching me demonstrate concepts at the front of the room. 

Having students experience solutions to problems is such a powerful experience for both the student and the teacher.  The teacher feels enriched because the students ‘get it’ and they are engaged.  The student is feeling like they are on top of the world and eager to learn, which is half of the battle one.

In summary, Transformative Learning has a place in a primary school classroom but traditional expectations of primary school students need to change for it to be effectively implemented.  If we keep have the same expectations of students, a transformation of practice will never take place and we will be failing to prepare the students under our guidance for the journey called life!

Excuse my rambling on with my thoughts.  I really need to nut this out further.

Okay.  Before we begin, I have a confession to make:

My name is Ashley and I am a podcastholic.  I am addicted to them and my life is so so much different now that they are in it.  How could I live without them? 

Now that is off my chest, lets begin to discuss one of my favourite forms of listening to audio – podcasting.  My journey with podcasting only began a couple of years ago.  Before I knew about them, I thought that the only way you could access podcasts were by downloading them to your iPod or mp3 player.  I had neither, so I didn’t worry about this new trend and thought that it would either: a) go away and fade into nothingness or b) I would eventually figure it out and decide to explore it.

Two years ago, I made the big step.  I was over at a friends house and they had iTunes on their laptop.  I was looking at it and they were exploring how they had access to audio content, not just their own music or music they purchased.  I thought that this was pretty cool and decided that I would jump into the iTunes world and downloaded it to my laptop.  I thought I would check out the ‘Podcasts’ section and hunt around and see what I could get for free.

The very first podcast that I subscribed to was Hamish and Andy.  I thought that this was fantastic because I got to listen to these two guys (who crack me up) without being having advetisements or music interupting my listening pleasure.  This was fantastic and I was well 0n my way to becoming addicted.  Then I decided to venture in and look for some podcasts on another thing that I enjoy – Harry Potter!  It is very sad that a 33 year old man loves Harry Potter so much.  I think that I have read the books over 20 times.  The first podcast that I got into was called Mugglecast.  It was basically a whole bunch of people sitting around talking about Harry Potter.  This was fantastic to me.  I finally realised that I wasn’t alone and my addiction to the world of Harry Potter was shared by others.  Then some how I stumbled upon the world of Harry Potter fan fiction.  Fan Fiction is an interesting concept and I was a bit sceptical at first.  I then stumbled upon Spell Cast – the ultimate Harry Potter Fan Fiction Site.  It was awesome.  I didn’t even have to read the story, it just came through to my computer.  Finally, I looked into basketball podcasts (another passion of mine) and found out that there was an awesome Australian basketball podcast called ‘The OT – with DJ Rod and John Rillie’.  This was heaven to me.  My world was becoming more complete. 

Then a brain wave hit me (they happen about once a year!) Would there be any educational podcasts out there that I could use to aid my teaching or stimulate / give me new ideas?  At first, I was disappointed.  I found lots of things under ‘Education’ but nothing overly relevant to me and my setting.  A lot of the podcasts that I found were very American and I was just about to give up. 

Then I stumbled upon two podcasts that I follow religiously and do not miss an episode.  The first one was Ed Tech Crew with hosted by Darrel Branson (The ICT Guy) and Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com. They discuss all things digital in education – technologies, issues, great websites, web 2.0 and much, much more!  The thing that I love about it is that they content they cover  is relevant and they have guests who are usually real teachers from out in the field. 

The second one that I found was The Virtual Staffroom hosted by Chris Betcher.  Chris states the purpose of his site is to provide those of us involved in educating young people with the opportunity to engage in conversation and dialogue which explores the impacts that these new technologies will have on our classrooms.  I really enjoy listening to his podcasts as well.

I have used podcasting extensively with my kids in class and I will share my thoughts on that at a later date.  Just remember – next time you suspect somebody is a ‘Podcastholic’ be sympathetic towards them.  It is a real disease! 

Please leave a comment below.  I am interested on finding out some more educational blogs and would love to add them to my iTunes account!

So as a new term dawns after Easter, I am once again in charge of 24 eages year 7 students who are attempting to make meaning of the world that they live in.  They were are so eager to get back to school (I had students emailing me during the holidays telling me that they had found this blog and it was to ‘wordy’ for them to read!) and it was great to see that they all are eager and as engaged in their learning after the holidays. 

But a number of significant challenges face the class (and me!) over the next term.  The biggest challenge that we have to face is the hot topic in education at the moment – NAPLAN!  For those who have been out of the loop, please check out this article.  This is not really the forum for to be outling my personal views on this topic, but I will still be preparing my students using various resources such as this one so that they can achieve the best possible results that they are capable of. 

In one of my previous posts, Joseph Perkins left a detailed and thought provoking comment.  He stated:

What are your goals going to be for Term 2? What do you hope to achieve by the end of the year? How do you know when you get there?

He also went on to say:

There is so much you could focus on, perhaps it’s best to really drill down into one aspect of eLearning (in alignment with what your vision is) and get that right.

This detailed comment (and I really thank him for it!) really got me thinking.  I feel that during term 1 we did a lot of things really well but we could have done certain things better. 

For example, in the last two weeks of term 1, we worked really hard to provide students with flexible learning opportunties that put them in charge of when they did things.  They need to engage with various forms of digital content, work offline, work together and work through simple board work ‘drill and practice’ tasks.  This concept, whilst simple in nature, really blew the kids away.  I told them that it really doesn’t matter what order they do things in, as long as they get the job done. 

Another aspect that I want to drill further into is the concept of flexible assessment.  Our major piece of assessment this term requires students to produce an educational resource on their favourite SOSE topic – government.  You should have heard the groans when I told them that we would be doing it.  Last year, some of my students produced some great assessments showing their understanding of concepts covered throughout the unit.  I think the students from this year will take it a step further.  I have already had a number of kids ask me if they could produce a podcast (watch out for my next blog entry on my podcast obsession) or design webpages.  I am looking forward to what they are going to produce.

So I guess that the fun has just begun!

 There is a lot of resistance to change in teaching as I am of the pesonal opinon that we are all control freaks in our own ways.  I know that I certainly am and like things to be done in certain ways.  In my previous blog post, I outlined what I have learnt throughout this term and how the journey in my 1-1 environment has been going so far.  As I am sitting here on a pupil free day, I guess the questions that many of my peers in the staff room is ‘Why are we bothering with using technology in our classrooms?  Can’t we achieve quality educational outcomes without the bother?  Is there any computer stuff on NAPLAN?  Why bother then?’

My journey with ICT in my class has been ongoing process that is constantly evolving and changing.  My answer to all of these questions come back to this key message: We need to educate 21st century kids using 21st century methods for the 21st century.  If we do not do this, my opinion is that we are failing to give kids the skill set that they need to function as a productive member of society now and in the future.  That certainly is a mouthful but I truly belive that this is to be the case.  Our Digial Natives deserve the best learning experiences that can be delivered and they don’t know any different. 

This does not mean that I think we should ‘chuck away’ all of the old methods.  As a 33 year old man, I was educated in an environment that was not very technology rich.  I remember the first time that I saw an old ‘Overhead Projector’ and my teacher pulled out an OHT and projected it up onto the big screen.  As a 7 year old, this was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen.  I remember ‘ROTE’ learning number facts etc and this whilst it was a boring experience, I still learnt.  But was I an active participant in my learning?  The answer to that question is ‘sort of’.  I had some fantastic teachers who inspired me but I was a passive recipent of information and reliant upon the person at the front of the room providing me with the ‘stuff’ I needed to survive and thrive in the world that I lived in.

So why do I bother?  I bother because I feel that I have a responsibility to the students to prepare them for the world that they live in.  I feel that technology enhances the learning experiences of students and motivates them to question / reflect / investigate their environment.  The reluctant students in my class seem to engage better in their learning by using technology.  If technology wasn’t integrated across all key learning areas, I am positive that they would not attempt to participate in the classroom environment at all.  I am sure that they would disengage and look for avenues to vent their frustrations. 

Technology helps engage and empower all students (even the reluctant ones!) and we need to look after our 21st century learners to the best of our abilities. 

Feel free to add a comment. 

As I sit here on the last Friday night of my school holidays, I reflect thoughtfully (which is a skill in itself) on the term that my class has had in our new learning environment.  At the start of term 2 last year, I began to investigate the possibility of setting up a 1-1 class at my new school.  I was new at the school last year and was not overly sure how well this would go down with my colleagues / administration.  After looking at the fantastic 21 steps document produced by my employer (note: great sucking up!) and talking to a teacher of a year 7 class at a nearby school (Arlene Smertherst) it was decided that our school was going to take the plunge and dive into the world of 1-1 computing in the primary school.  All systems were ‘go’ and we were going to implement this in 2010.

Various other things came up throughout 2009, and around half way through term 4 (October) it looked as if it wasn’t going to go ahead.  An expression of interest was sent home to parents and my principal warned me that he didn’t think that it was ‘going to get up’.  I began to get disenchanted and prepared myself for the worse.  I then went of paternity leave for 5 days and came back to school to a pleasant surprise.  Out of our 90 odd year 7 students, over 60 had applied to be a part of the program.  Now our principal decides that we are going to have two classes in year 7 involved in 1-1 learning. 

So our year begins and our kids receive their laptops and they are so excited.  My fellow teachers on my year level were very supportive but there was some apprehension from other staff members.  One actually said “I would love to do it but I don’t know if I could use it enough to make it worthwhile.”  I just smiled at this comment and thought to myself “Got to love teaching in the 21st century!”

So what have I learnt throughout this term in 1-1 environment?

So many things that I already believed in were reinforced and it was amazing to see the risks that some of my kids took.  The hardest thing that the students have had to adapt to was the fact that they were more in control of their learning and had flexibility to demonstrate their understanding in lots of different ways.  One example is that we did a science experiment early on in the term and I asked the students to demonstrate their understanding of the experiment however they wanted.  They all were a bit dazed for a moment (it was kind of freaky actually) and then a light bulb switched on.  I received very different pieces of work all getting to the same destination (note to self: a new blog entry – does it matter how we get to the destination?)

I have also had reinforced that technology is a very engaging tool for learners if you can tap into what works for them.  If I use the analogy of a piano player playing the guitar, it is going to be ugly and not a lot of fun.  If learning is not engaging, authentic and meaningful to students, then we are going to struggle to get to them excited to learn.  I realise that engagement is not the ‘be all and end all’ of 1-1 learning but boy does it help!  My students regularly come into the room before school starts and students emailing me throughout the holidays and uploading items to their blogs. 

So has 1-1 learning lived up to its hype so far?  My definitive answer is yes and much much more!  I can only see the learning experiences of my students improving as we try and implement more flexible learning situations.  If I can be inspired by the great work of educators such as Shane Roberts and Joseph Perkins, my kids will receive the quality educational outcomes they deserve (and hopefully go well on everybody’s favourite test: NAPLAN!)

One final thing: thanks to everyone who left a comment on my previous entry.  I am looking for feedback.  I am enjoying using Twitter as a means of spreading the word.  Comments just inspire me to keep on going.

So I have been wanting to start blogging for a while.  I have been extremely hesitant to get started but I decided that I couldn’t wait any longer.  For those who follow me on Twitter, they know that i am extremely active on the ‘Tweet Stream’ and am a big believer in the power of the PLN and how it can help us achieve what we are employed to do – quality educational outcomes for the students that we educate.  Before I had discoverd the world of Twitter, I used to follow a number of blogs via RSS (which I got the idea from Sue Waters and the Edublogger) and the sheer volume of information that I could access in my own way amazed me.  As my Twitter journey has continued, I have decied to reconnect with my RSS feeds and in turn blog my own journey.  What an exciting journey it has been and will continue to be.                                                           

So how did I come up with the title for my blog?  Over the past three years, all teachers in Education Queensland have undertaken (or will undertake) compulsary literacy training.  One afternoon, I was talking to my neighbour across the road (who is also a teacher) who was doing her literacy training at a different venue.  We were comparing our training and what we had got out of it.  I realised that Jonathon Nalder, a very prolific blogger / tweeter was at the same venue.  I mentioned to her that he was there.  Her response was “Oh, he is one of THOSE people!”.  I was a bit stunned by that comment and then realised what she was talking about.  He was a digital immigrant living in the digital natives world trying to engage 21st century kids using 21st century methods.  I then informed her that I was one of THOSE people as well and our conversation came to a polite end.

I am thinking about using this space in many different ways.  I will use it to report on some of the things my kids are doing in class, look at web 2.0 tools and their possible uses in the classroom and reflect on my lifelong learning journey. 

Let the fun begin!