Wednesday 7 October 2015

Just one of many critical issues for schools – the need and opportunity to rethink schooling

Leading a school in an age of disruption driven by technology is not easy. There are so many critical issues that schools are facing and need to be tackled.

In this blog we want to confine our thinking to one issue only – the need and opportunity to rethink schooling.

The need

Sounds desperate. But we are not desperate! Some talk about the issue of rethinking schooling as if we had never started. This is silly. For years keen educators all over the world have been exploring ways to rethink and improve schooling. We are not just starting now, much progress has already been made in transforming schools. What we need to do is to continue this work, moving at a faster pace than ever before, just to keep up with all the other changes in society – especially the immense opportunities afforded by the huge advances in digital technology.

Rethinking schooling does not mean that schools will disappear any time soon. It means that at every opportunity we will leverage all of our resources, knowledge and skills to make the contemporary schooling experience, challenging, stimulating, relevant and future focussed.

The opportunity

What role does and can digital technology play in this exciting movement? How can our schools continue to evolve? Digital technology is making many things possible now and our quest to continue to transform schooling is greatly enhanced.

Global collaboration and cooperation by school students is now commonplace and growing. No longer do students need to be confined to their four classroom walls. Team work, group work, sharing and collaborative problem solving, bring a refreshing new look to many classrooms, all made possible by the advances in digital technology.

No longer does the teacher need to be the expert. A myriad of technologies available provide diverse knowledge sources, a phenomenon which has drastically changed the role of the teacher in progressive schools. The potential for organising a classroom differently, is now very high.

Technology offers schools the opportunity to customise on a large scale. This is a far cry from the uniform learning practised in more traditional schools.

Standardised assessment has driven what we accomplish in schools for far too long. Technology changes this to the extent that it encourages students to forge their own direction, pursuing their own interests. Individualised lesson plans, specialisation and specialised assessment are the result.

Technology has shifted the need for knowledge to be stored in the head. Because of the explosion of knowledge and technology, knowledge can now reside outside of our heads in external resources and our reliance on these resources is great. In short, with technology, we can know and get through a lot more.

The knowledge explosion makes it very difficult for a school to cover all the important information students may need for the rest of their lives. Covering an overcrowded curriculum is nigh on impossible. The nature of learning has to change and thankfully the explosion of technology allows it. Students must now learn how to learn and search for the information and resources they need. A very different kind of interacting in the classroom emerges.

By its very nature technology fosters a more hands-on, activity based schooling experience, allowing “learning by doing”, in contrast to passively learning by simply acquiring knowledge. Creativity, making, robotics, imagining, hypothesising, simulation and augmented reality experiences are more possible and come to the fore.

We cannot underestimate the value of digital technology in developing students with analytical minds. One time complex problems are now made simple earlier in a child's development. Through technology, our students experience the joy of understanding concepts that were once out of their reach, allowing them to engage more fully with their environment and the things that truly interest them - and they are capable of doing this at a much earlier age.


Sustaining the change

The opportunities to change by leveraging technology clearly abound. However the trick to achieving sustainable change in schools is to learn how to scale innovation - how to take a great idea and have it reach every leader, teacher and student in the school. Scaling innovation will feature in our next blog.

If you wish to learn more about how to leverage technology to rethink schooling, why not attend the 2016 Leading a Digital School Conference to be held at the Crown Conference Centre, Melbourne on 25, 26 and 27 August 2016? Your colleagues will be more than happy to share their experiences with you.

Friday 28 August 2015

Will Richardson at Leading a Digital School Conference

Will is an author, speaker, publisher, consultant, parent and co-founder of Modern Learning Media/Connective Learning.

Keynote Address 22 August 2015 - Educating modern learners: the opportunities and challenges of schooling in the connected world



Summary and thank you.

Will you have described our new learning environment as:

  • Dynamic
  • A kaleidoscope of colour and movement and knowledge
  • Allowing us to: connect, network, engage in self-directed learning and to create.
All of the above is freely available outside of school. But what about inside school? No! Not always! Perhaps not often!

The picture you paint of what happens inside schools is a bit dismal. Not your fault! Compared with the picture painted above - it is!

You ask: How can/should kids learn in school?

And you suggest: Our job is to create an atmosphere/conditions where students want to learn.

Thanks for reminding us that we do "know" what these conditions are (we told you here today), but often we ignore them and do something else entirely.

Thank you for provoking us into questioning our current practice and structures so that we may continue to seek to change learning "inside schools" into the awesome, rich and passionate experience it can be.


Lee Watanabe Crockett at Leading a Digital School Conference

Lee is President of the Global Digital Citizen Foundation.

Keynote Address 22 August 2015 - Present tense and future perfect



Summary and thank you.

Lee thank you for a fascinating, very humorous and highly polished presentation about the exponential growth of technology and what it means for the future.

As you say: "slightly disturbing"!

What I think is also disturbing is school as an information delivery system competing with many other efficient and smart information delivery systems.

Schools will win this competition only if:

  • They innovate
  • Allow and foster curiosity
  • Are grateful for the past
  • Have an eye on the future and above all
  • Give themselves the freedom to dream.
Your idea of us dealing with the tyranny of the urgent while focussing on the future as a way forward, is an incredibly big, but important challenge for all of us. 

Phil Stubbs at Leading a Digital School Conference

Phil is Education Director at Verso Learning.

Keynote Address 21 August 2015 - Making learning irresistible

Summary and thank you.


Phil thank you for presenting an alternative response to Flipped Learning. May be it's not an alternative response though - in your words what you had to say is probably better expressed as a cautionary tale.

A cautionary tale drawn from the work of some of the best educational thinkers in the world (November, Fullan, Hattie and Dweck).

You have demonstrated well that there is no one way to flip a class - as you say there are 50 shades of flip.

I really like your idea of what I call an alternative resource to flip the learning.

  • Developing content to provoke and activate learning
  • Allowing talking, sharing, a multitude of voices and hypothesising and then
  • Analysing the spontaneous student response or voice
  • To inform the next provocation.

Phil with your range of quality ideas and passion for learning you have certainly helped us to flip our thinking.

Jon Bergmann at Leading a Digital School Conference

Jon is a teacher, author and flipped learning pioneer.

Keynote Address 21 August 2015 - Flipping your class: reach every student in every class every day


Jon Bergmann in action

Summary and thank you.

Jon it is amazing that it all started with 170 videos after you and Aaron Sams asked a very simple question: What is the best use of face-to-face class time?

I believe you have resonated with all of us today.

You are right about homework. We are sending kids home with the hard stuff! Let's bring higher order learning activities back into the classroom to be facilitated by the experts - the teachers.

I wonder what our delegates think? I am sure you will hear from them over the course of the day.

Thank you for giving us sound practical and theoretical reasons and advice about why it is worth considering "the flip" - in a nutshell it has huge potential to improve learning.

A most engaging, informative and humorous keynote Jon - thank you for challenging us to flip "one lesson" and to make up our own minds.

Mal Lee and Martin Levins at Leading a Digital School Conference

Mal is an Education Consultant and Researcher at malleehome.com and Martin is Director of Information Technology at the Armidale School, NSW.



Martin
Keynote Address 20 August 2015 - BYOT and the digital evolution of schooling

Summary and thank you.

Challenges, challenges, challenges! Thank you Mal and Martin for provoking us.

A paper based school with paper based technology! Are there any? Are you teaching in one? Is your continued existence on line? Has your school normalised the digital?

Mal and Martin have unashamedly reminded us that:

  • Schools are organisations
  • Organisations are transforming
  • Therefore schools must transform and continue to transform or their viability will be jeopardised.
Thank you for the very useful model of school evolutionary stages.

  • Paper based
  • Early digital
  • Digital
  • Early networked
  • Networked
  • Digital normalisation.
Mal
Your thesis is that on the whole, schools must move through all of these stages to sustain progress - and it takes time!


I am sure the delegates here today have already plotted where their school lies in this staged model and your powerful message to them is move, move through the stages, you cannot afford not to.

Thank you for this meaningful and insightful analysis and the work you continue to do in understanding the importance and power of the eco-system in which we all operate, an eco-system that goes beyond the digital.




Jill Hobson at Leading a Digital School Conference

Jill is Senior Education Strategist at Promethean.



Keynote Address 20 August 2015 - Transforming the learning landscape with BYOT

Summary and thank you.

Thank you Jill for confirming absolutely that BYOT is transforming the learning landscape.

Every school is a BYOT school. That is a very useful way of looking at things. We know that all students are bringing devices with them all of the time. You painted a very clear picture of what choices we have as educators to handle this BYOT phenomenon.

Do we hold onto standardisation or do we open up access and opportunities for students?

Do we create long lists of "don't" ending with "we are watching you like a hawk" or are we better off creating short lists of rules ending with "we trust you"?

Are our considerations about BYOT focussed on "policy" or "no policy"?

You mentioned several challenges including the big ones of equity and the importance of the school's partnership with family - great ideas here for a BYOT program for everyone.

For any school on any point on the scale of BYOT implementation, you offered fantastic insight into what works and what does not - and very importantly how to structure a BYOT program where students control their own learning.


Tuesday 25 August 2015

Is flipping for you?

Learn more

There are many valid reasons why teachers are flipping their classrooms. Flipping is a proven pedagogy, not a gimmick or just the latest buzz word. 

Attend the FlipCon Australia 2015 conference to see flipping in action and be convinced too! Flipping as synonymous with good teaching will resonate with many teachers.

The conference sessions address all the key reasons why flipping is good and provide plenty of examples to demonstrate that flipping stands up to careful scrutiny. Engage in presentations, hands-on workshops, discussions, debates and networking sessions that promote flipping as a great way of teaching well. Is flipping for you?

To learn more about FlipCon Australia 2015 which will be held at Saint Stephen’s College, Coomera, QLD, on 22, 23 and 24 October 2015, and to register, go to: ereg.me/FlipConAUS15

A possible answer

Teachers are increasingly flipping their lessons. Not necessarily all, but some, and that is legitimate.

Before teachers can decide whether flipping is for them, first let us explore what flipping is. 

Definitions and models abound. The explanation that follows makes the most sense of what flipping is and its potential as a vehicle for great teaching and learning.

The concept of flipping is driven by answering two fundamental questions:

  • Am I teaching to the group from the front far too much?
  • Am I using my face-to-face time with my students well, befitting the trained professional teacher that I am?

When teachers begin to unpick and answer these two questions, their practice begins to change and the elements of good teaching come to the fore.


Taking it outside the classroom

The first thing that changes in establishing a flipped classroom is the amount of time spent “lecturing to the class”. The time spent doing this is cut right back – slashed! Quite a drastic step and it must be replaced with “something new” or the teacher and the students might as well go home. It is what this “lecturing to the class” is replaced by, that begins to define flipped learning. Out with “lecturing to the class” – in with “something new”!

In flipped classrooms the “something new” can take a variety of forms. In one popular brand of the flipped class, the “something new” is the video. The video replaces the teacher “lecturing to the class”. The creation of these videos needs a fair bit of attention. They need to be engaging and polished, but with a bit of effort, assisted by today’s great capture and distribution technology, quality videos are easily developed and made available to students. In this form, the teacher gives the lesson through the video and the students watch the video, usually outside of the classroom for homework.

With the production of these videos the flip has begun. The teacher is now able to give the lesson outside of the classroom and in class time is freed up.

As an aside, it is important to say that videos of this nature are not the only resource available to give the lesson outside of the classroom. There are many commercial and open source products available to teachers that allow them to put together a quality lesson for students to engage with, outside of the classroom.

What happens in the classroom?

This is where it gets exciting and it is a very simple development that changes the nature of teaching. The teacher now has more time in the class – for what? To exhibit the skills and knowledge acquired through their professional training. Now that the lecturing is gone they simply have more time to teach in the true sense of the word.

With time freed up, many of the elements of a flipped classroom begin to emerge - elements that are synonymous with good teaching. It is the flip that started the change!



The teacher encouraging and fostering higher order thinking in their students, is now more possible. Learning can be taken deeper for every student no matter what their capabilities. Students have a better chance of getting help on difficult topics, the teacher has more time to allow for differentiation and students are able to learn at their own pace. In short, flipping facilitates deeper and personalised learning.

With this important change the classroom dynamics change from one of teaching, to one of learning. The dynamics are student-centric not teacher-centric and that brings with it another element of good teaching – learner agency. Students are given a greater chance of being autonomous and being heard.

Through flipping, relationships are affected. Relationships between teacher and students change for the better. Students get closer to each other. All brought about by the increased two way communication and rich dialogue made possible because in class time has been freed up.

A not insignificant feature of the flipped class is the teacher’s ability to manage those things which are traditionally difficult to manage. Teacher and student absence is no longer the problem it was. Direct instruction is now rarely missed because it is available 24/7 in the videos or some other resource. Through absence, students will miss out on the in class higher order activities, but with the learning now personalised, quality teachers can quickly and expertly assist a student to move forward.

Some bits are tricky

Moving the lecture out of class time and replacing it with a quality resource to be viewed by students outside of class, creates significant work for the teacher at the front end. Creating resources takes time and skill. Designing personalised activities for students in the classroom that will enhance the subject matter and motivate students to participate in deeper learning and higher order thinking calls on a teacher’s professional training, knowledge and skills more than ever. 

Will students watch the videos or engage with other resources for homework? They may not, but nothing has changed there. It has been ever thus that students at times fail to do their homework. Teachers will manage this aspect as they have always done – holding students accountable, encouraging and monitoring.