The latest from dougbelshaw.com/blog
- 5 things I can do with my Kindle that you can’t with your dead-tree books.
- Free schools: the good, the bad and the ugly.
- Your anti-ebook rhetoric is like a broken record.
- Things I Learned This Week – #36
- Weeknote #17
- 10 reasons I like reading ebooks more than paper books.
- Greplin: potential solver of a huge problem?
- Go to conferences? Use Lanyrd.
- Methodology for Pragmatists
- UX: 5 valuable resources
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Weekly Roundup (24 September 2006)
8 CommentsI’m loving my new job. The school I’m in is about a thousand times more organized than any one I’ve been in previously. Everyone knows what they’re doing and supposed to be aiming towards. This means that the lessons I need to deliver are already there for me; whilst I need to prepare for them and put my own ’spin’ on them, I’ve nowhere near the amount of work I used to have. This is great: it means I can spend more time with and doing things for my pregnant wife – but also, dear reader, spend more time reading and getting involved in the edublogosphere… :D
Perhaps I’m getting fussy but I’ve noticed a bit of a tendency towards sloppiness and loose thinking in some of the blogs I read regularly. Anyway, here’s the posts which have steered clear of this pitfall and that I’ll be referencing in this week’s roundup:
- Will Richardson – Isn’t it Ironic?
- Jeff Utecht – Building an IT Plan and a 21st Century Learning Environment
- Dave Warlick – Best Field – Final Appeal
- Clarence Fisher – Priorities
The above posts are not about the theory of transforming education, they are about the practice – actually getting out there and doing it! There’s a lot of talk in the edublogosphere about ‘transforming learning’ and ‘fundamental shifts’, yet there don’t seem to be that many walking the walk. I’m trying to change that myself by beginning to use the social networking and blogging features of Think.com with my students in the next two weeks; after that I plan to move onto wiki creation and development. One person who is walking the walk as well as talking the talk is Clarence Fisher. In his post Priorities he ponders a new year in which he hopes to move towards what he calls ‘Classroom 2.0′:
This morning I was thinking about some of the things that we have “on the go” in my classroom and was already wondering about fitting in some of the things I want to do. I was truly struck by how much you need to prioritize the things that you want to take place and the things you want to happen in your classroom.
This includes 2.0 plans and projects. Teaching this way cannot be an aside or an added on thing. Teaching in ways that place blogging, knowledge building, and online content creation at the centre of a classroom require daily work, persistence, and prioritizing how time is used in classrooms in new ways. Instead of spending time working on spelling programs and worksheets, we blog and create a community of learners. Instead of working through canned anthologies of stories, we podcast, and edit videos. Instead of handing out chapters of text book readings, we make our own on a wiki, and put together project plans online. It requires time and patience with ourselves and our students as they adjust to learning in new ways.
So my planning has required realignment with the priorities I have for my classroom and for the learning of my students. I’m done with being there only halfway.
All the things that Clarence does take time to prepare and set up. But what he gets in return, I’m fairly sure, is motivation, engagement and an amazing quality of educational experience for the learners under his charge. Whilst Clarence is focusing on blogs and wikis, Jeff Utecht is using YouTube with his students: they shoot and edit videos which are then uploaded for the world to see. As Will Richardson notes in Isn’t it Ironic…, however, the extreme filtering resulting from DOPA means that American (and some British) students won’t be able to see their creations.
Clarence and Jeff’s students are benefiting from having excellent, motivated, innovative classroom practitioners. This means nothing, though, without some kind of IT and structural support. In Building an IT Plan and a 21st Century Learning Environment, Jeff wonders what would happen if the school you were part of had the following mission statement:
By 2012, (your school) will be recognized as a leading international school in Asia and the world by providing a rich cultural and social learning environment for families who seek an exemplary core American educational program. (Your school) will prepare each child for academic and personal success in higher education and life in a global society.
Jeff asks what we would need to do this year, in 2006, to move towards that goal of 2012. He comes up with the following:
- Flexibility – ‘The system needs to remain flexible so that we can change and evolve as the technology does.’
- Supportive – ‘Educators should have support both from the IT department and from the Educational Technology side.’
- Robust IT systems
- Information Specialists – These should ‘roam the schools helping teachers teach information literacy skills, helping to brainstorm lessons and using tools in new and innovative ways. These Information Specialists would have specialties of there own be it Video editing, Web tools, Publishing Software, Networking, etc. They would not be tied to one school but would use their skills where needed depending on the teachers needs.’
This is great and forward-looking, but the problem is that the majority of teachers I come across have very basic IT skills. We’re talking the ability to perhaps type two-fingered into a Word document here and with some you can see the pride bursting out of them if they tell you they’ve put together a Powerpoint presentation. What’s needed is training, and lots of it. We need change agents going around schools planting seeds and working long-term with schools and educational institutions to develop capacity and capability. Otherwise it will just be ‘computer whizzes’ who are left to go it alone… :(
Teachers need more time for professional development (PD). My transition to teaching ICT (having never taught it before) has been pretty much seamless due to the fact that my school has given me half the timetable of a regular teacher in my first half term. In my non-contact time I’ve been able to develop ICT skills which I’ve never had to master which are required in the syllabi I teach, get used to the school, and plan interesting, engaging lessons (I hope!) That teachers need more time for PD is something that Dave Warlick brings up in Best Field – Final Appeal. He suggests that every teacher should get ‘three to four hours of supported professional planning time every day.’ In the comments (which I can’t hope to summarize properly) the discussion is widened but revolves around the nature of the ‘professional teacher’: should there be a para-professional level of teacher? In the UK, the creation of Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs) seems to be going along that road. But, as ever, this seems to be a money-saving measure rather than a professional development and quality of learning move.
I’ll end there, but I’d encourage you to get involved in the debate! :D
Published on September 24, 2006 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
8 Responses to “Weekly Roundup (24 September 2006)”
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Hey Doug,
I wonder if you caught the RSA Lecture from Professor Stephen Heppell on Teachers TV? – http://www.teachers.tv/oneOffProgramme.do?transmissionProgrammeId=412755. It certainly got me thinking about ways of trying to break out of the pigeon holes we seem to find ourselves in – more of which when I get round to setting up a blog facility on my site, hopefully this week!
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Jen205 said on September 25th, 2006 at 2:56 am
I really want to commend you. It’s refreshing to hear an educator speak of the need for technology to be incorporated in, not only the “tech” classrooms, but “core classrooms” as well. Technology is our future and trying to deny it will not hurt us as much as it will cripple our students when it comes to stepping out in the “real” world. All teachers need to join in the effort. It will not only get students to learn about a new way of learning, it will also refresh and give new life to the subjects we have been teaching the same way for years.
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Thanks for your comments Dave and Jen205. :)
Dave – are you going to use Multi-User Wordpress?
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Neil McDonald said on September 25th, 2006 at 8:48 am
Doug,
The concept of classroom 2.0 or any development of new technology to develop education is I feel in essence to the development of the exisiting teaching ideas incorporating the abilities of the new technology. I attended a brilliant conference this summer at Bradford run by the SSAT which looked at web 2.0 for education as well as the project based learning through wikis but what is really needed for people – educators to ‘walk the walk’ is the tools to do the job and the training to make it so. Until leadership share the same vision and the support is there from ICT support then I feel such ventures will remain the domain of the few enlightend educators and not for everyone.
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Dave Warlick contacted me by email. He didn’t have time to post on here as well, so here’s what he had to say:
Doug,
I’m preparing for a full day of presenting, so I do not have the time to comment on the blog. I did want to thank you for talking about my post on your roundup blog and also agree with you enthusiastically, about the extended hours.
That was one of the reactions here to our NCLB laws and the just now ripplings of Flat World warnings. “More is better” is an industrial age notion, and we from the industrial age find it hard, for some reason, to fathom a “better is better” scheme.
I believe that we are going figure out, over the next few years, that students learn some things better, while sitting in a traditional classroom, and they learn other things better, sitting in front of a computer, researching, collaborating, building, and constructing knowledge. I suspect that we’ll learn that students need to be in school for less time, no more, but homework is going to take on an entirely new character.
Thanks again!
Got to get back to my slides!
– dave –
Thanks for your comment Dave – keep up the good work!
Oh, and Neil – I agree entirely. Most SLTs are very sceptical about anything that rocks the status quo… :(
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To quote from David’s comment above: “I suspect that we’ll learn that students need to be in school for less time, no more, but homework is going to take on an entirely new character.”
Yessss! (Insert own choice of totally immature gesture of vindication)
I engaged in a similar debate on Harold Jarche’s blog: http://www.jarche.com/?p=887 and got myself royally lambasted (not by Harold) for my troubles.
Since the moment I set foot on these English shores, I have maintained that the school day is too long and kids are packed off to formal education too young. The flaws of the education system of my home country are many and varied, but they do not include packing thumbsucking, afternoon-napping babies off to school, or attempts to keep kids barely out of night nappies focused on formal learning for more than 7 hours a day. And no-one has yet explained to my satisfaction what the thinking is behind that.
Swedish occupational therapists identified that a child’s hand is not yet ready to perform protracted writing tasks before the age of 7. So when do Swedish kids go to “big school”? The year they turn 7. Logical.
My elder son started school in South Africa at the same age. My younger son started school in the UK aged 5, and lost out on the first year of schooling altogether because kids here are grouped strictly (and almost exclusively) on age. His journey to literacy and numeracy was fraught as he tried to catch up with his peers with the help of a private tutor (who cost us a fortune). His older brother meanwhile, sailed into the top set of every lesson. So where was the benefit to all his classmates who had started their formal schooling 15 months earlier and had spent nearly 2 additional hours in school each day?
I know. I know. Sorry – soapbox moment (again!). But this really BUGS me.
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A very interesting blog post. What would you say was the most common problem?
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