Week 32 - Reflective Practice

Week 32 - Reflective Practice

The last mission to wrap up my personal 32 week journey is to reflect and critically evaluate one key change in my own professional practice and share my plans and dreams for my future professional development or practice. I will use the reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001). Sorry but I also found it hard to stick to the 400-600 word limit on this one.

Step 1 - What? One key change in my professional practice.

One key change in my practice has been the mission to more effectively implement personalised learning in the hope that this would encourage students to be more authentically engaged in deep learning.

Personalised learning is one of the 13 key future education concepts identified by the Hack Education project. This theme also fits well with the teaching code of standards value whanaungatanga. Which is defined as engaging in positive and collaborative relationships with our learners, their families and whanau, our colleagues and the wider community, Ministry of Education (2017).

Step 2 - Now what? Evaluate the identified change.

I will use Osterman and Kottkamp’s (2015, p.70) reflective model to evaluate the change to more effectively personalise learning.

Stage 1 - Identify the problem. In this case the problem I’ve found is that my students often seemed to be engaged with their learning at quite a surface level and are often not very able to articulate their learning and next steps. So I wonder how I could support them more effectively develop their learner agency and understanding of what and how they learn. I thought that exploring personalised learning might be a good strategy to help me achieve this goal.

Stage 2 - Observation and Analysis using data and insights to drive the change.
I conducted an investigation into personalised learning and have found that despite a lack of research done in this area personalised learning is an approach which through its implementation provides learners opportunities to develop their self-regulation, and maturity to drive their own learning thus teachers can empower learners to develop the skills required to develop their own learner agency and reach their potential and learning goals, Hargreaves, D. H. (2006).

From a Māori world view I found that the notion of Māori determining their own futures also fits well within the definition of personalised learning. Tino Rangatiratanga, the self-determination principle encompasses learner agency and engagement through meaningful control over one’s own life and cultural well-being which is also embedded in our Treaty of Waitangi, Katoa Ltd, (n.d.).

Stage 3 - Abstract re conceptualisation. What new learning, research or perspectives are relevant to consider for implementing change?

France, P. E. (2018) argues that sometimes our interpretation and and understanding of personalised learning falls short by putting student in front of devices to work at their own pace, but, this is actually depersonalising the learning. He also argues that gamification measures and encourages the results we want to see even if students are not really learning. One study was mentioned that found this kind of approach only had about 3% gains in math and none in reading. Hattie was also quoted with minimal gains from individualisation (0.23 effect size) and web based learning (0.18 effect size).

Stage 4 - Active Experimentation. We have to be careful that we are not using technology to isolate our children by over individualising their learning. We must make sure we are giving students time to collaborate and connect with one another. France presents 4 key questions we must ask ourselves as teachers when personalising learning through the use of technology:

1. Does the technology help to minimize complexity?
2. Does the technology help to maximize the individual power and potential of all learners in the room?
3. Will the technology help us to do something previously unimaginable?
4. Will the technology preserve or enhance human connection in the classroom?

I will continue to gain a deeper understanding of personalisation and use these questions to ensure I am using technology in the classroom more effectively.

Step 3 - What Next? My future plans for future professional development and practice.

I’ve learnt and gained so much from this Mindlab experience both professionally and personally. I have pushed myself outside my comfort zone on so many levels. I have reflected and taken action in many areas of my leadership and teaching roles, and enjoyed sharing this journey with colleagues. I have also truly valued the support and collaboration with other teachers on the course.

There are so many areas I could now dive into such as being more culturally responsive and looking further into how we can more effectively create and sustain learner centred pedagogy. I started a personal blog and I have also started to blog on behalf of my school to educate and connect with our community about digital citizenship. I hope to continue to build on this blogging and include our students and school practices more, in order to build and strengthen this partnership with our whanau and wider community.

Although it is the end of the Mindlab postgrad journey for me for now, it is just the beginning of many more opportunities for professional and personal development. I have found this process challenging and through this I have developed confidence and become more skilled and knowledgeable in making changes to enhance my teaching practice. I feel I am now much better equipped to undertake my current roles as a leader and teacher and have improved my practice considerably and am keen to continue. Thanks to the Mindlab team and my awesome colleagues -couldn't have done it without you all!

Mai i te Kōpae ki te Urupa, tātou ako tonu ai.
From the cradle to the grave we are forever learning.

References
France, P. E. (2018). Retrieved from Why Are We Still Personalizing Learning If It’s Not Personal? https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-02-why-are-we-still-personalizing-learning-if-it-s-not-personal?utm_content=buffer55e24&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=EdSurgeBuffer

Hargreaves, D. H. (2006). A new shape for schooling. London: Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

Ministry of Education (2017). Our code, our standards. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/our-code-our-standards

Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Corwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.itslifejimbutn otasweknowit.org.uk/files

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

The Mind Lab by Unitec. Hack Education. Retrieved from https://hackeducation.co.nz/

Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

This weeks mission is to demonstrate my critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness. Then, I will critically evaluate how my practice or school’s practice has been informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy in a couple of areas. I will be using a reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001).

Step 1 - What? What is my understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and the two areas that I want to focus on for discussion?

I found that Gay (2010) defines culturally responsive pedagogy as teaching to and through students’ personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, and their prior accomplishments. This is achieved through close interactions among ethnic identity, cultural background, and student achievement.

I found that these ideas were similar to the teacher development initiative Te Kotahitanga that captured key Māori whanau narratives. These narratives identified classroom caring and learning relationships being at the centre of educational achievement for Māori. Therefore the success of this initiative success was based around teachers actively rejecting explicit deficit theorising to instead assume agency (Savage, et. al., 2011).

The two areas of practice that I would like to discuss in terms of being culturally responsive are planning and assessment and school-wide activities.

Step 2 - So What? What does culturally responsive practice look like?

Russell Bishop in his Tedtalk (2012) outlines 6 key principles for being a culturally responsive teacher:

• Caring for Maori students as Maori on a daily basis.
• Caring for their performance and having high expectations.
• Manage classrooms, and the pedagogy promotes the following element.
• Interactions with Maori that provide academic feedback and feedforward and negotiated co-construction of learning. Learners amongst learners is the prevailing phenomenon. 
• Effectively use a range of strategies. 
• Use evidence of student performance to guide teaching and students also know this and are involved.

It is all about being relationship centered (caring and learning relationships). A culturally responsive pedagogy is based on relations.

Dr Ann Milne, CORE Education (2017), provides a culturally sustaining pedagogy continuum that I will use to reflect on the two areas of planning and assessment and school-wide activities. The continuum starts with having no awareness or paying lip-service to cultural aspects, through to the middle where we might make token attempts or limited changes. At the optimal end of the scale we would be aiming for taking action to normalise ‘being authentically Maori’.



In terms of our school-wide activities I think our school has taken a very proactive approach as a relationship centered school, our school culture is very supportive and encouraging of teachers to be culturally responsive. Our timetable is essentially optional (apart from having to take an English and Math Module each semester), so there is a lot of agency for our learners and we have a strong Learning Advisory programme that helps to build supportive relationships between our teachers and students. We also integrate curriculum, are very aware of using Universal Design for Learning strategies and often co-construct learning. We also have a great relationship with our local IWI and this has influenced many school wide activities and decisions ranging from how our cobble stones have been laid to the naming of our learning communities and spaces.

In terms of how we as teachers at this school personally plan and assess learning I think I like many teachers have room for improvement and I would put myself more in the middle of the continuum, I think primarily due to my lack of a deep understanding of Māori culture as this has not really been part of my worldview growing up with parents who are from Switzerland. Despite being very openminded and growing up in NZ I still have much to learn due to having a very european upbringing.

Therefore, despite our school environment being setup to be culturally responsive I feel like I often personally drop the ball. My knowledge and confidence with Māori Language and Kaupapa is not great, we have these beautiful Māori names, however, I’m often not confident with using them and I lack a real authentic understanding of the terms and concepts. I know I have more to learn in this area. What am I really doing to improve in this aspect of my practice? This course is a good step in the right direction in developing my self-awareness of this issue.

Step 3 - Now What? What can we do to move up the continuum?

I think I do personally need to focus on this area more and I could do this by formally reflecting and setting myself some practical goals based on some of the key Effective Teacher Profile Elements identified in the Te Kotahitanga initiative. I could start by using more Te Reo Māori and exploring relevant Māori culture within my classes rather than shy away because I lack confidence. I realise I default to a very European worldview and to move up the continue I must take more explicit action to develop a deeper understanding of Kaupapa Māori. Being a student centered school maybe I could also ramp up and expand the ways in which I am trying to connect and learn with Māori students in my classes in order to gain a better understanding of being Māori. I could simply start by spending more quality time getting to know my Māori students to gain a better understanding of this world view, the strengths and treasure this uniqueness, therefore, actively working together to reject Māori deficit theorising.

References

CORE Education.(2017, 17 October). Dr Ann Milne, Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cTvi5qxqp4&feature=em-subs_digest

Edtalks.(2012). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198: (Available to download from Unitec Library)

Week 30 - Trends Influencing NZ or Internationally

Week 30 - Trends Influencing NZ or Internationally
This weeks mission is to look at trends influencing NZ or Internationally that is relevant to my practice. I will be using a reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001).

Step 1 - What?

I conducted some research into trends and feel like I already have a good handle on many of them as I am a digital technologies specialist that tries hard to use applied learning, support computational thinking, and creative inquiry etc. However when watching the video from New Media Consortium (2017) ‘wicked problems’ were mentioned and this captured my attention as I have not explicitly been focused on these and am unsure about how these might impact my current teaching and learning in the classroom. Have I really been using authentic and complex contexts based on wicked problems?

Step 2 - So What?
I went on to have a closer look into wicked problems and in the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report (2017) I have found some definitions of problems ranging from solvable challenges that we both understand and know how to solve; difficult challenges that are more or less well understood but for which solutions remain elusive; and wicked challenges, the most difficult, which are complex to even define.

So if these problems are complex to even define how do we help students develop the skills and knowledge to deal with these? What is required to successfully consider these in our daily teaching and learning? I found some suggestions and useful information on a Forum from the Ministry of Education Enabling E-Learning website suggest they are difficult because they involve:

• incomplete or contradictory knowledge
• the number of people and opinions involved
• the large economic burden
• interconnected nature of these problems with other problems

Some tips from the website include making sure we look at the potential behaviours that are linked to social problems, and identify what behaviours/action we want to endeavor to change. Also that we can break down the problem, into more a manageable ‘project size’ where students work in teams to collaboratively address elements of real world issues. Also in our NZ context it might be appropriate to include a whole-system perspective that requires us all to be invested and respectfully integrates Māori understandings of our natural world. So some good ideas from here that I could implement.

Step 3 - Now What?
In my teaching I could probably make sure I start with more socially fuelled and value ladened topics and then break down these real world problems into smaller ones that can be tackled by our students. For example next semester I am part of a learning module that integrates Digital Technology with Physical Education and Health. We could look at the positive and negative impacts of technology on our hauora (health and wellbeing) and the impact of hauora on our technological advances. We can look into how we can more explicitly incorporate these kinds of wicked problems into our teaching contexts.

References
Source: Daggett, B. (2014). Addressing Current and Future Challenges in Education. Retrieved from http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

New Media Consortium. (2017, August 29). NMC and CoSN Release the Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition [Video]. Retrieved from Youtube

Freeman, A., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., and Hall Giesinger, C. (2017). NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K–12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Ministry of Education. Enabling e-learning (n.d.). Forum: Wicked problems and real world issues. Retrieved from https://vln.school.nz/discussion/view/961940.

Week 29 - The Use of Social Media in my Teaching or Professional Development

Week 29 - The Use of Social Media in my Teaching or Professional Development

I will use the reflective model from Jay and Johnson’s (2002) to critically discuss the use of Social Media in my teaching.

Step 1 - Descriptive
There are many benefits of using social media such as being a communication channel, engagement tool, and a collaboration platform (Faizi, Afia & Chiheb, 2013). In my current teaching role I have not really used much social media, there are a few barriers that seem to make it quite difficult such as our student's ages. I teach in a Junior High School and the recommended age for most social media use is 13 so ethically it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to encourage the use of social media with our students. Another barrier is that most social media is blocked at our school and can’t be accessed through our school wireless.

Step 2 - Comparative
After looking into other teachers practice I have found that when faced with the age and access barriers the teachers have engaged the caregivers. I also realised I hadn’t really thought of blogs as social media and I am currently using these very successfully to empower the students to share their learning with a wider audience. This was also found by (Magette, 2014) who stated that use of social media can lead to an engaging learning experience.

On the flipside social media use can become a distraction if it is not managed well and is implemented with a clear learning purpose as outlined by the Teachers Practice video. Mao (2014) who found that teacher attitudes and beliefs about technology can be one of the biggest barriers to effective technology integration and that students are generally very positive about the integration of social media.

Step 3 - Critical Reflection
So how might I change my attitude or more proactively problem solve and work through the barriers to include more strategic social media use? I have had a think about the tools that might be available in my context and realised that this year we are implementing a new learning management system that includes many social media features like a live news stream and that we will be opening up to our caregivers and community later in the year. So I could be using these features like updates and discussions more proactively with posts and comments focused on the learning and not just using the more formal and less collaborative assignment features. I could be exploring more of the interactive features to get the students collaborating and sharing more amongst themselves and the wider community using our LMS in a more proactive and engaging manner.

References
Education Council. (n.d.). Establishing Safe Guards. Retrieved June 21, 2018, from https://vimeo.com/49216520.

Faizi,R., Afia,A. & Chiheb, R. (2013). Exploring the potential benefits of using social media in education. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy. 3(4), 50-53.

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85..

Magette, K. (2014). Embracing social media : a practical guide to manage risk and leverage opportunity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Mao, J. (2014). Social media for learning: A mixed methods study on high school students’ technology affordances and perspectives. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, 213–223. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.01.00

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstr eam/han…

Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Professional and personal digital worlds are quickly becoming more and more blended and sharing of personal and professional information happens so quickly using digital tools - how much control do we really have in this process and where do we draw the line?

Recently I was on a school trip and a teacher suggested we should take a selfie and share this with a few of her students who were also on this school trip via an Instagram group. Before I knew it the picture was taken and shared by this teacher. After this occurred I felt quite uncomfortable about what had happened.

I will use a model from Ehrich et al. (2011) to try to explain the moral decision-making process involved in unpacking this ethical dilemma.

Step 1 (What): Step one starts by describing the critical event that has triggered the ethical dilemma which I have explained above.

Step 2 (So What): The next step involves exploring the key competing forces that impact decision making from their own bias viewpoint:

Organisational Culture - The teacher obviously thought this was a great way to connect with some of her students. The reasoning could include that connecting with students is part of our school's vision statement which includes being connected and community-minded and includes the importance of social and emotional aspects. The teacher probably genuinely thought that this was a great way to connect and share aspects of the trip with her students.

Public Interest - The public and school community including the caregivers might not be so supportive of a teacher sharing a picture with a private group with students and could see this as inappropriate and intimate in nature. Why was the picture not shared with all of the students involved in the trip and just a few select students?

Professional Standards - The Education Council (2017) outlines our standards which include ‘2.2 Engaging in ethical and professional relationships with learners that respect professional boundaries.’ An example of a possible breach is given which states fostering online connections with a learner outside the teaching context like ‘friending’ without a valid context. So this example could be interpreted by people as similar to the example and thus be crossing this professional and ethical relationship boundary line.

School Policy - I have also checked our Staff Social Media Policy which also provides guidelines that state that personal use of social media by staff must also be governed by confidentiality and professional standards. We are also warned to consider whether it is appropriate to extend or accept friend or connection requests with parents, students, or others involved in the school.

Step 3 (Now What): This step involves discussing how the Code and Standards should be interpreted to assist in the ethical decision-making process. In the future, as this type of digital sharing may be perceived by others as crossing a professional boundary next time I would state that I would prefer not to be in the photo and not to be shared with students. I would also explain why so the teacher who instigated this idea would also stop and consider this ethical dilemma for themselves. PPTA (2014) have also provided some guidance on the use of Social Media and also highlights the obligation to maintain appropriate student/teacher boundaries when using any social media.

References:

Education Council (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved 21th June, 2018 from:https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794

New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (2014). Digital Communication. Retrieved 21 June, 2018 from: https://www.ppta.org.nz/dmsdocument/139

Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Carrying on from last week we are now looking at pulling together relevant research as part of our literature review and we have been provided a few tips and ideas to keep us going.

This week included pointers and tips about how to find, record, manage and analyse resources to help prepare and work on our literature review project. We have also been reminded about using a dedicated reference management software such as Mendeley, Zotero, EEWOWW, and Citeulike etc.

I've found Mendeley works quite well for me so have continued to use this one and have installed the Chrome extension too which allows for quickly adding a reference to my library.

We were asked to start by reading an annotated article by Jennifer Duncan-Howell. Extra annotations were added to provide an indication on how to analyse and evaluate literature, and how to extract the key information for the literature review:

• Reading the abstract to get an overview of the article and research question it addresses.
• Finding the key problems the research is trying to address
• Looking at themes and definitions
• Checking out some of the articles that were referenced
• Asking yourself if you agree or not about definitions and why etc.
• Questioning surveys, how they were conducted, who involved, how many etc.
• How does a finding relate to your research theme in a positive or negative manner?
• Questioning the interpretation of the findings.
• Finding relevant links to your research question.

We were also introduced to a Synthesis Matrix to help us organise our literature. I had a look the example that was shared and have come up with my own simple version of it as follows, which basically lists the sources across the top and then I can add details about the key ideas for each source down the columns so that I can complete the sections and then look at the big picture and complete the analysis and synthesis by comparing and contrasting themes, patterns and findings. This is the structure that I came up with and I think it will be quite helpful for me to organise my research and literature review:

Topics: Personalisation, Agency and Engagement
Research Question: What factors of personalised learning might impact learner agency and engagement?

	Source 1	Source 2	Source 3	Source 4
Definition of personalised Learning
Benefits of Personalised Learning
How personalised learning impacts Learner Agency
How Personalised learning impacts Engagement
Challenges of personalised learning
How to implement Personalised Learning

Week 21 - Inquiry Question

Week 21 - Inquiry Question

This weeks challenge is to develop my research question that I’ll be using for the base of my literature review. Last week I came up with my topic - “Agency and Engagement”. This article by Martyn Shuttleworth explains a literature review. I will use the suggested break-down question template adapted from Riel (2014) to turn my topic into a research question.

Step 1 - Topic to Breakdown Inquiry Question
My Inquiry Topic: Personalisation and Agency and Engagement.
Action Plan: If I personalise learning...
Measuring the Reaction:  how will this affect learner agency and engagement in digital fluencies...
Group of People:  for learners at RJHS

Step 2 - Breakdown Inquiry Question to an Initial Teacher Inquiry Question
How does personalised learning (how) affect agency and engagement in learning digital fluencies (affect) in a range of learners at RJHS (in)?

Step 3 - Change Initial teacher inquiry question into an initial literature review question
Now I need to broaden the scope of the question to remove the context/subject/target group etc so that it is easier to find relevant literature.

So my final ideas for my research question:
How does personalised learning impact learner agency and engagement?
OR What factors of personalised learning might impact learner agency and engagement?

I would appreciate any comments or feedback.

References

Riel, M. (2014, Feb 18).T6-Beginning the first cycle of action research.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWPwyv60E4

Week 20 - Inquiry Topic

Teacher Inquiry Topic
This week I have been asked to choose a topic area that I am passionate about or interested in investigating in my teacher inquiry. I will also explore the principles of Kaupapa Māori and how they relate to educational research and my inquiry.

Choosing a Topic
I started by watching a video from Dr David Parsons in unpacking Research and Research Questions. He has identified 5 aspects of research:

• Aims - challenge thinking, apply, test assumptions, justify, discovery, investigate etc.
• Ways - research methods, approaches, reasoning, data etc.
• Sources - books, journals, experts, conferences, websites, blogs etc.
• Problems - personal agendas, funding, ethics, bias, peer review etc.
• Outcomes - increasing knowledge, finding answers, multiple views, infer new understandings and future work etc.

We should choose what fits best with the topics, interests and desired outcomes of the research. Research can also be defined as original investigation to contribute knowledge and understanding to a discipline, culture or social context. Research is important in feeding back into our own professional development.

Educational Research as defined by the American Educational Research Association - “Education research is the scientific field of study that examines education and the learning processes and the human attributes, interactions, organisations, and institutions that shape educational outcomes."

John Creswell (www.johncreswell.com) suggests an approach for scripting inquiry questions. Agile stories can also be used. Here is a basic structure that could be followed for qualitative inqiry questions:

1. How/what
2. story/meaning of/theory of process/culture sharing pattern/issue/case/ of
3. the central phenomenon for
4. the participants at
5. the research site.

This reminds me so much of developing a concept statement as part of brief development in the Technology development process curriculum which basically covers who, what, where, why and how for an issue or problem to solve as the starting point of technological innovation.

Here is an example that Dr David Parsons gave “What is the impact on engagement in learning of device addiction for students at my school?”

For quantitative inquiry questions that are a bit more focused the following structure is suggested by John Creswell:

1. Does (the name of the theory)
2. explain the relationship between (the independent variable - stable)
3. and (dependant variable - moves by management independent variable)
4. controlling for the effects of (control variable/s)

An example of this kind of inquiry question from Dr David Parsons - “Does social constructivism explain the relationship between student activity and learning outcomes, controlling for the effects of prior learning?”

Integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori Research into My Teacher Inquiry

Katoa Ltd has some great information about Kaupapa māori - http://www.katoa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori. Kaupapa Māori is literally ‘a Māori way’. Graham Smith describes Kaupapa Māori as:

• Related to ‘being Maori’,
• Connected to Maori philosophy and principles,
• Taking for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori,
• Taking for granted the importance of Maori language and culture, and
• Concerned with the ‘struggle for autonomy over our own cultural well-being’.

Katoa also describe the potential of Kaupapa Māori being based upon six intervention elements or principles:

• Tino Rangatiratanga - The Principle of Self-determination
• Taonga Tuku Iho - The Principle of Cultural Aspiration
• Ako Māori - The Principle of Culturally Preferred Pedagogy
• Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kainga - The Principle of Socio-Economic Mediation
• Whānau - The Principle of Extended Family Structure
• Kaupapa - The Principle of Collective Philosophy

Therefore, I should consider how these elements might be integrated into my Literature Review and Teacher Inquiry project plan.

There are also interesting points made by Macfarlane, H., Glynn, T., Grace, W., Penetito, W. & Bateman, S. (2008), about our NZ Curriculum Key Competencies not being consistent with Maori world views as they don’t really take into account these competencies in the bigger picture of how they are impacting on the natural world and survival. Also some other interesting points made about the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki being more inline with a Māori perspective. There is probably much I can learn by including further investigation into these contexts.

My Inquiry Topic Selection
In my teaching and leadership practice I am still grappling with how to best support and inspire teachers and learners to drive their own learning and development in the area of digital fluencies as everyone is on such a different journey in this respect. So for my broad topic I would like to look into Learner Agency and Engagement.

I think this inquiry would link in well with the principle of Tino Rangatiratanga (Self-determination). This is all about having meaningful control over one’s own life and cultural well-being.

I look forward to diving into this in more detail over the next few weeks.

References
Creswell, J. W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Katoa Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.katoa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori

Week 19 / Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Week 19 / Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Reflection Objective: To critically reflect on how two potential and inspiring digital and/or collaborative learning related teacher inquiry topics would contribute to my communities of practice

Method: I will use the model from Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) to reflect in three stages.

Step 1 - Descriptive
I have identified two possible inquiry topics:

1. How can I more effectively support students to develop their learner agency and take action to engage in deep learning opportunities?
2. How can I more effectively lead, support and inspire staff with the implementation of digital fluencies and digital technologies curriculum. 

Wenger (1998) defines a community of practice (CoP) as a “group of individuals participating in communal activity, and experiencing/continuously creating their shared identity through engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities”.

(Wenger, 2000, p.229) suggests that a CoP is defined by and comprises of the following three aspects:

Joint enterprise (domain): is a shared domain which is the “collectively developed understanding of what the community is about”.

• Mutual engagement (community): the members engage through interactions within the community, building mutual trust in the relationships.
• Shared repertoire (practice): is “the communal resources” that the community of practice produce.
• Another definition from (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4) suggests CoPs are “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis”. 

My CoP

• Domain - I currently lead the school wide digital fluencies initiative and am always looking for more effective ways to implement this and support staff. We also would like to more effectively develop learner agency and help students to access deeper levels of learning in this area.
• Community - consists of the Advisory Teachers who are implementing this initiative, as well as Hapu and IWI leaders, myself and the Senior Leadership Team. We currently engage and interact through leadership meetings, Hapu meetings, informal chats and drop-in sessions, and PD sessions. We could investigate how we can use these opportunities more effectively to develop a more active and effective CoP. 
• Practice - We can continue to develop and share relevant resources, our challenges and successes with each other via our learning management system, shared Google drive, emails and in our conversations and interactions. 

Step 2 - Comparative

Current barriers that prevent staff from being more active and engaged include time and work pressures, we are a relatively new and large school whose culture of learning is still developing.

Another barrier might also be the confidence levels of the teachers in this area, many might be reluctant to assertively engage with the future focused contexts and digital technologies as also found in research by Jamieson-Proctor, R. M., Burnett, P. C., Finger, G., & Watson, G. (2006). Another study as discussed by Hsu, H., Wang, S., & Runco, L. (2013). Even when confidence was high in use of digital technologies, meaningful technology integration and new literacies practices were scarcely observed in their classroom practices.

Staff members are keen to pursue more student driven, personalised approaches that we can explore next term to try to mitigate the confidence and engagement levels of staff, as the staff can learn alongside the students who are taking more of the lead.

Step 3 - Critical Reflection

To continue to grow my CoP I must seek ways to more actively engage and explore the domain and use the CoP to work through the barriers and challenges together to improve our practices as a collective. As Bruce Knox suggests the success depends on the energy of the community that the community generates.

References
Hsu, H., Wang, S., & Runco, L. (2013). Middle School Science Teachers' Confidence and Pedagogical Practice of New Literacies. Journal Of Science Education & Technology, 22(3), 314-324.

Knox, B (2009) - Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making the Grow. Retrieved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk.

Jamieson-Proctor, R. M., Burnett, P. C., Finger, G., & Watson, G. (2006). ICT integration and teachers’ confidence in using ICT for teaching and learning in Queensland state schools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(4).

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Week 18 - Future Oriented Learning and Teaching

Week 18 - Future Oriented Learning and Teaching

This week we have been set the challenge to reflect on changes in our future oriented teaching practice. Last week’s reflection model was about multiple perspectives. This week I will be using the Gibb's Cycle of Reflection from the reading Reflecting on Reflective Practice (Finlay, 2008, p. 8)



1 - Description
We have been asked to read the Executive Summary of “Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective” (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins, 2012). This includes many future focused themes that I am familiar with as our new school was founded on many of these findings. One of the themes that fits well with the changes to my practice I have been trying to implement would be ‘Personalising Learning’.

2 & 3 - Feelings and Evaluation
I initially was very excited about helping students to develop more in-depth reflections about themselves as learners during our induction weeks with loads of outdoor education opportunities. However, I was disappointed to find that the new approaches had very limited success. Despite providing engaging digital tools (such as cameras, drones, Google Tour etc), setting up interdependent groups, discussing meta-cognitive prompts and scaffolding the activities, when undertaking learning, students still seemed to focus on the tasks and recounting what and when they did things rather than how and what they learnt.

4 - Analysis
I conducted more research around why this might have happened and found that using personalised goals and constantly self monitoring the progress towards the goal might have proved to enhance this process as discussed by Yıldız-Feyzioğlu, E., Akpınar, E., & Tatar, N. (2013).Working with learners to truly understanding why reflection is important would have probably helped to set this up to be more successful. I also now realise that when implementing servant leadership it is important to acknowledge both sides of a humble service-oriented side and an action-driven side, both co-existing and complementing each other as discussed by Sousa, M., & Dierendonck, D. (2017). In the future personalising this goal setting rather than simply providing prompts, tools and helping learners with the activities without some way for the learners to monitor and reflect on how well they are progressing was not ideal.

5 - Conclusion
It might seem quite obvious looking back on what I could have done differently to help our learners but I guess sometimes we put so much energy into what we are planning to do much like the learners and we must put the time into working out how the learners might have more agency to take action and personalise the learning themselves to come up with their own goals and reflective practices. As a learner if I am clear from the beginning about what I am hoping to achieve and how I might get there and routinely check this along the way I am probably more likely to take appropriate action to drive my own learning in the right direction.

6 - Action Plan
When implementing changes and supporting learners and followers I now realise I should try to help and support people in setting their own learning goals and progress indicators so that they are more engaged, and support them to monitor their own practice and learning so they can make changes as needed to gain a better understanding of themselves as learners and reflect more deeply. I now also realise aspects of this process I have just completed would also be a great to share with our learners.

References
Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

Sousa, M., & Dierendonck, D. (2017). Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement. Journal Of Business Ethics, 141(1), 13-25.

Yıldız-Feyzioğlu, E., Akpınar, E., & Tatar, N. (2013). Monitoring students’ goal setting and metacognitive knowledge in technology-enhanced learning with metacognitive prompts. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 616–625.

Week 17 - My Reflective Practice

I have always been quite a reflective person often analysing (and probably often over-thinking) and asking questions to gain a view from many perspectives which I have often found useful. However, using a formal model is probably a great idea at this point as I have been finding it difficult to teach this to our learners and so looking at this from a more structured point of view might be quite helpful in sharing strategies with students and other colleagues.

Today I will use the suggested reflective model from Jay and Johnson (2002) to critically evaluate my current reflective practice as shown below:


Step 1 - Descriptive Stage
At the start of this course I have been writing weekly blogs to reflect on my learning and enjoy reading and discussing research, problems, challenges and improvements. Over the past few years I also started using Twitter to learn from other educators and gather interesting professional articles and readings. I think over the past few years I have become more open to new ways of thinking and teaching and more reflective than ever thanks to being part of a newly opened school. I am constantly working through many professional challenges in my leadership and teaching practices and am continuing to try to make sense of these challenges through reflection which at times can be quite confronting. I think this quote from Ghaye (2000) sums up fairly well the day in the life of a teacher “Maybe reflective practices offer us a way of trying to make sense of the uncertainty in our workplaces and the courage to work competently and ethically at the edge of order and chaos…”

Step 2 - Comparative Stage
In discussions with other colleagues and learners etc I would say they would agree that I am usually quite open to discussions about what is working or not and that teaching and learning is a complex issue. I am currently finding that this course a great way to reflect on my practice and have already learnt so much from the process of completing the assignments and undertaking research and making changes to my teaching and leadership practice. Some new ideas and perspectives I have been able to apply straight away and others are more long term and I am taking steps forward in a more future focused long term view of changes to my practice. I have also realised that I am sometimes much more comfortable gaining feedback from students than from my colleagues at times. I am also very aware of my blog being public and so maybe I am reluctant to truly share some of my major struggles and concerns given the public nature of a blog so I would also like to explore a more private platform like a reflective journal that I could share with a trusted mentor or critical friend to voice more private concerns, doubts, struggles, successful and unsuccessful learning experiences as Yang (2009) suggests sharing these with others who have shared similar situations. I could also be more brave in sharing these experiences with a wider audience through my blog and via Twitter. I should walk the walk more as I am helping students to become creators and constructor of knowledge vs being a consumer, I should do this more often in terms of my professional learning. I often worry and wonder if I am like many people who are simply confirming their own biases rather than truly exploring other perspectives on the truth and realities of professional practice and coming to new understandings given our unique situation.

Stage 3 - Critical Reflection
I think this 3 stage process has been useful to reflect broadly on my current practices and what it might take for my reflection to reach the next level. I think using this process regularly might help me in terms of the varied roles I have in my current job. I would like to go through this process with my e-elearning hat and IWI leader hat on and see what new insights might be uncovered. I also wonder what this model might look like for our students to use to reflect on their learning? Can this be slightly modified for student use or is there already a student version of this? I wonder if there is an opportunity to do this in the upcoming weeks? I would appreciate any comments on these ideas. Thanks for reading this!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am excited to start the new journey of the second half of this course and have already learnt so much about the reflection process. I hope I am able to transfer some of these ideas to help our learners and colleagues become more thoughtful and active in their reflections to become even more successful learners and leaders.


References

Ghaye, T. (2000) Into the reflective mode: bridging the stagnant moat. Reflective Practice, 1(1) 5-9.

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.

Yang, S., H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology & Society, 12(2), 11-21.

Education - Sensors and Sensibility

Week 16 - Sensors and Sensibility

Despite not being able to attend the whole class session this week, I was able to participate in a couple of the activities as follows:

Mobile Sensor Inquiry - in a small team we used http://www.nquire-it.org/ and installed their app then joined a mission to record noise levels and compare with other peoples samples using our mobile phones. This was an interesting process and it was great for gathering baseline data to compare with other samples. A great repository of information that could potentially be used in many different ways in a class.

We moved on to the Action Bound Mission. We used https://en.actionbound.com/ on our phones to complete a mission our facilitator had setup. This particular mission was like a scavenger hunt that involved particular selfies, pictures, video and audio. We were encouraged to collaborate and come up with creative outcomes.

From these workshops I could see that you could use your mobile devices in a number of ways. Our mobile phones have useful features like GPS, camera, and sound sensors that we probably don’t always make the most use of and would provide other means of engagement with our learners.

Education - Teacher Inquiry into Student Learning, Inquiry learning, Robotics and AI

Week 15

Teacher Inquiry into Student Learning

Inquiry Learning, Robotics and AI

This class started by pondering about which jobs might still exist in 20 years time, our group came up with jobs and industries such as Pro gamer, IT Infrastructure, AI and Singers. We then searched for them in this website to see if our hunches were correct.

Apparently the word robot originally came from Czech ‘robota’ which translated means ‘forced labour’ or ‘slavery’. We discussed many different definitions, and I teach aspects of robotics to our students at school. Our Lego Robots consist of motors for movement and sensors to react to the environment. Sensors include sound, light, colour ultra-sonic etc. It is always fun talking about how robots can be used to automate what humans can do and how they can sometimes even do a better job. For example the ultrasonic sensors are a sense we humans don’t have, bats and dolphins use echolocation for navigation which is what these sensors are replicating. I also love talking about our cars like my Lexus which has this kind of sensor to help me park and plays a huge part in the safety of using the cruise control features. Through the use of ultrasonic/sonar sensors our cars know how close they are to other objects.

We also breifly looked at Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics:

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

There are many ethical dilemmas that will be programmed into AI systems and robotics. We must educate our future developers to understand the complexities of the ethical dilemmas that are presented because of our technological capabilities. Sometimes we must ask ourselves just because we do something - should we do it? What is the impact of our technological advances to all stakeholders? Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have also backed some principles to ensure humanity benefits from technological advances.

We then moved on to looking at an Inquiry Based Learning Video - We have experienced this growing up and trying to make sense of the world. We have asked questions like how do cars move? It is our natural urge to inquire, and think to make meaning. IB learning starts with a question. Traditionally done as Sage on a Stage with teacher knowing correct answer. Now days inquiry is more dynamic and involves student agency as they drive their own learning through constructivism, asking questions and gathering new knowledge and reflect.

Here are some ideas from Harpaz (2005) on six characteristics of 'fertile' questions that might be used in an inquiry:

• Open - there are several different or competing answers
• Undermining - makes the learner question their basic assumptions
• Rich - cannot be answered without careful and lengthy research, often able to be broken into subsidiary questions
• Connected - relevant to the learners
• Charged - has an ethical dimension
• Practical - is able to be researched given the available resources

We also had a brief look at the NZ Ministry Teaching as Inquiry Model and the updated Spiral of Inquiry Model also often used with more focus on agency and collaboration.

One of the last activities was to have a go with some different kinds of robotics kits. As my partner and I were very unfamiliar with the robotic arm we had a go with this. I had no real idea about how to work the electronics and programme the Arduino in the time frame given would have had to look up most of it. So my partner got it going and after the coding was done I got the gist of it. A great day all round.

References
Harpaz, N. (2005). Teaching and Learning in a Community of Thinking. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 20(2), 136-157. Retrieved from http://yoramharpaz.com/pubs/en_learning/teaching-learning.pdf

Education - Multicultural & International Perspectives, engagement & agency.

Week 14 - Multicultural and International Perspectives, engagement & agency

PISA

This week started by viewing this video about PISA. Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing is used to measure international success of students from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD is a combination of 34 countries who come together to come up with better policies to improve people's lives. In the 1990’s they looked at how prepared 15 year olds were for their futures as most have finished compulsory formal education by then. They came up with a 2 hour test for core subjects like reading math and science. Participating countries ran this test every 3 years, rotating the 3 subjects each year.

PISA tests if students can use what they have learnt in school and apply these to real life situations and problems. PISA takes the results of all students and analyses this data to compare how countries have ranked. Similarities and differences are shown so governments can analyse results and change education policies if needed. PISA looks at how successful all students are and looks for the characterics of the more successful countries and trends and patterns. Such as girls often outperform boys in reading, and in math boys tend to outperform girls. Another finding is that deciding student pathways early on does not necessarily impact the performance of the student. Also all children have the potential to succeed if given the opportunity and are supported despite their home background also having a major impact on student success.

Engagement

Prior to class I also read an article from Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2016). ‘Engagement in Australian Schools’. This discussed the ambiguity of ‘engagement’ which is hard to define. Often policy makers have been focused on ‘disengaged’ behaviour rather than promoting engagement. Some ideas from Fredericks et. al. (2003) suggests it involves three types of engagement:

Cognitive - which is hard to measure, involves students investment in their own learning. Cognitively engaged learners are focused, resilient, flexible, and goal orientated. We can use physical signs to measure this such as facial expressions, reaction times, question asking/answering etc.

Behavioural - involves behaviour that enhances high performance such as collaboration and communication with others, and participation in other areas of their lives. Essentially are the learners ready to learn and this will help with being cognitively involved. Physical signs may be easier to measure such as attendance, reading and writing achievement data, social withdrawal, negative interactions etc.

Emotional - how the learner is feeling in relation to other learners, teachers, family and friends do they feel emotionally bonded with others. Can measure by asking students about their attitudes and beliefs etc.

We can improve engagement by having flexible, individualised teaching, in a supportive learning environment, like project based learning. Also by strong student-teacher relationships and regular monitoring, trying to make learning feel more relevant to the student, providing choice in future pathways and developing an environment where it is OK to make mistakes.

We then moved on to the ‘don’t ask me where I’m from video’. This was about how to define culture. Nationality is quite different to culture. Essentially your culture is about where are you might be a local. This includes rituals, relationships, and restrictions (where you are able to live, work, travel etc).

The World Economic Forum (2016) lists 16 skills for 21st century learning and they have included cultural & civic literacy and social and cultural awareness etc.



I think this is a great way to describe a holistic approach to curriculum development as it takes into account relevant competencies and personal character, not too sure about how the foundation literacies have been split up but good to see cultural and social awareness were explicitly included.

It was also interesting to learn which three NZ curriculum principles were the least well represented in classrooms based on research by ERO in a review done in 20012. Cultural diversity, future focus and treaty of waitangi were least well represented. I guess for most schools we are all trying to improve in these areas and probably could do with more help and professional learning in these areas.

We then dived into having a look at curriculum in other countries, and having spent a bit of time in Singapore back in the day I suggested we could have a quick look into this curriculum. We found some interesting information. Singapore includes civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills and social awareness as part of their 21st century competencies;



We were also wondering how well students from Singapore were rated in PISA and found that they were ranked top in math, science and reading in 2015 and also ranked highest in collaborative skills. They also seem to have a small number of bottom performers and a high number of top performers so the education system appears to be very successful for all students.

Agency

We then moved on to looking at learner agency which can be defined as the capability to make choices and act on these choices in a way that makes a difference to the learners life.

We watched a video from Tim Gander about learner agency. He was a teacher who inquired about how he could give his students more choice and how best to help develop their own agency. He developed and co-constructed what this would be for individuals. He create agency with the learners, and looked into how they could take action and deal with barriers, credits, timetables time pressures etc. Many of this they could not change but they did implement 20% time for self directed learning which they shared in an online learning community that also fed into assessments. They created a credits barrier hack by rewriting all the internal assessments to make them more authentic for the class. They developed a flow chart about what they were interested and boys could choose their own path and what they did to enable the choices. Many learners were initially lost and had trouble making the decisions and Tim wondered if by having agency essentially they had chosen to opt out. So they went back to redefine agency to include choices needing to make a difference to yourself and others. There was the ongoing tension of freedom to choose meaning they could choose to engage or not, and having a balance of academic rigour and freedom. This video brought up loads of themes around ways to engage students and how to handle assessments. Some food for thought.

We have just introduced some independent learning time at our school and have been looking at ways to support students to set realistic goals and actions. Many teachers have found some simple ways to engage students in meaningful learning and I look forward to seeing how this evolves over time.

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2016). Engagement in Australian schools. Retrieved from http://www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au/features/engagement-in-learning/workshop-1/Handout_4_Engagement_in_Australian_Schools.pdf

Fredericks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C. & Paris, A. H. (2004). School Engagement: Potential of the Concept, State of the Evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59-109.

World Economic Forum. (2016). New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning through Technology. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_New_Vision_for_Education.pdf

Education - Games and Educational Game Design

Week 13 - Games and Educational Game Design

Prior to class we were asked to play a game for 10 mins and think about what makes us play and keep playing the game? So as I was reading this instruction at home I was sitting at our kitchen table with our two children Mr 7 and Miss 8 who were playing Roblox. They are now only allowed play for limited times on the weekend as they were getting so addicted and turning into rude zombies during the week. So I asked them why do they play and what makes them keep playing?

Mr 7 said “I play because it’s fun and entertaining, and I keep playing because it it gets more fun and I save up for something like more than 3000 so I can buy my 2nd floor of my noob invasion house.”

Miss 8 said “I like listening to all the music, and I like saving up for stuff I even make lists of all the stuff I want to save up for. I love being pretend characters too”

I have on occasion played things like Tetris back in the day or the Farmville game on Facebook and I guess for me it has been a way of escaping, switching off or procrastinating from doing other things and there was always something just out of reach that I could achieve if I just kept playing. So I guess in terms of learning it is bit like how we scaffold learning or work on things just out of our reach or our comfort zone and then when we get there we a satisfied for a moment then start working on learning the next thing. It also reminds me of my martial arts training, there is always another belt grade to look forward to or something to improve or new to learn, there are others just ahead of us showing us the way which keeps us motivated and inspired. There is something addictive about ‘levelling up’. But are we ‘addicted’ to healthy habits/games or unhealthy habits/games or both at times? Despite doing a fair bit of exercise during the week I do enjoy indulging in food too.

We were also asked to watch the Seth Priebatsch's 4 game mechanics video. He talks about 4 game dynamics that can be used to influence behaviour. He describes a game layer on top of the world that has started to develop but it is just kind of boring and sux. He talks about examples such as loyalty cards etc. He says we can design better games and it has started in the last decade with the social layer of connections with Facebook etc. The next decade is the game layer which we will develop further which is all about influencing behaviour, including what, where and how you do things. The tools to build this layer are game dynamics which we have to be purposeful about using. He talks about 4 important ones:

• Appointment dynamic - Players do something at a particular place and time. In real life this is like the ‘happy hour’ idea. An extremely popular game example is Farmville, you have to water your plants within a timeframe or they die. Another example is an app that helps people take their medication on time.
• Influence and status dynamic - Players want to work hard to achieve something like a badge/status etc. For example in games you play to move up levels like school.
• Progressions dynamic - Gradual success displayed through completion of tasks. For example % complete displays for setting up profiles on Linkedin. We want to finish things when reminded such as progress bars.
• Communal discovery - everyone works together to achieve something. On Digg.com people find and source the best stories and you get points, people worked together to remain on top of the leaderboard. This made me think of countdowns cards, where together people swapped cards etc to get complete sets.

So the challenge is how can we build in some game dynamics to keep people motivated and influence desired behaviours when learning and leading?

We further explored these ideas by playing as a whole class group. The game was called Cat on Yer Head, it starts with everyone standing around but within touching distance of others, then one person starts as the cat who repeats ‘cat, cat, etc’ until they touch another person who becomes the cat. At the same time someone starts as the mouse and repeats ‘mouse, mouse, etc’ until they touch someone and they become the mouse. The objective is for the cat to catch the mouse, so if you get tagged by a cat or a mouse you are switching roles to help the mouse escape or get the cat to catch the mouse. It was crazy trying to switch and keep up at times.

We had a few goes then went inside to reflect and try to modify the game to try to enhance the experience. To make it more engaging we decided to use ping pong balls as the mouse or the cat to pass around rather than speaking and the balls were more easily hidden so everyone had to pay more attention in the game. This kept everyone on their toes. Then we decided to add a dog to chase the cat and mouse, this kept it even more interesting.

So we found ways to improve the flow of the game. Flow theory is the essence of games, it is the balance between the skill you have and the difficulty of the game. So it is a moving target and your target changes as your skills develop. You can change the rules of a game to improve the flow experience. I guess as a teacher I have always thought of this as knowing the learner so you can provide collapsing scaffolds and try to find that zone of proximal development (Vygotsky). I just hadn’t really realised how much this flow idea in good game development was related to effective learning experiences.

We also took a look at 4 keys to fun from Nicole Lazzaro which is focused on 4 key emotions as follows:

• People Fun (friendship)
• Hard Fun (challenge)
• Easy Fun (novelty)
• Serious Fun (meaning)

According to Amory (2007), Educational computer games should:

• Be relevant, explorative, emotive and engaging
• Include complex challenges, puzzles or quests
• Be gender-inclusive and non-confrontational
• Provide appropriate role models
• Develop democracy and social capital through dialogue
• Support authentic learning activities
• Support the construction of tacit knowledge

We played http://www.kupuhono.co.nz/ and looks at aspects of game design within this game. James Paul Gee also has some interesting ideas about video games, theory of learning and how you can play games instead of teaching and taking tests because while you play the game you are completing the test and learning as you go along so you don’t need at test as such at the end.

Now going back to Mr 7 and Miss 8 maybe they weren't so much turning into rude zombies, they were actually in the flow state of playing the game, but I guess the bigger question is about the impact of particular games on our children and how can we harness this flow state for purposeful learning.

So lots of great themes this week and I guess it boils down to the classic reflection as a teacher about how can we have more fun with our learning as well as what can we do to make sure we are supporting students with challenges that push the students enough to not be bored and on the flip side are not too tricky leaving them to struggle too much as we want to ensure the learners are often in the flow state. So this must involve getting to know your learners and understanding the impact you are having in trying support students in their flow of learning and maybe ultimately helping them to be more aware of how they can take charge of their own learner agency and flow state. Much to ponder after this weeks learning.

References
Amory, A. (2007). Game object model version II: a theoretical framework for educational game development. Educational Technology Research & Development, 55(1), 51–77

Davis, R. (2014). Cat On Yer Head. Playniac Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.catonyerhead.com/

Education - Innovative Learning Spaces and The Maker Movement

Week 12 - Innovative Learning Spaces and The Maker Movement

So I started by checking out this video before class - Steve Collis: Different spaces within a learning environment : Cave, Campfire and Watering Hole. Having now worked in an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE) at a new school the purpose of the different kinds of furniture and classroom setup makes a lot more sense. The way the environment is setup does allow for flexible learner centered activities. The video discusses how ILE ‘s puts relationships at the heart of the learning. Steve talks about these three broad kinds of spaces and intended relationships:

• Cave - reflective space, free of stimulation, so learners can withdraw slightly, relationship of student to self. In a virtual space an example could be blogging as I am doing now. In our learning spaces we have some furniture that is a single desk with sides for time when students wish to complete work on their own with minimal disruptions.
• Campfire - one to many relationship, essentially broadcasting expertise from a guru shared with the learners (often the teacher I guess could be another student too as we often get students to share expertise). In a virtual setting this could be like the flipped learning idea where students complete some online learning prior to the class where time can be spent refining, applying and consolidating the learning. In our learning spaces examples of this could be groups of students together on desks or seats with a teacher/student using a screen or whiteboard or other resources to facilitate a workshop or discussion etc.
• Watering Hole - many to many relationships, free improvised problems discussions, great for collaboration. Virtual examples would be any web 2.0 tool, an example I think of would be any kind of collaborative tool such as a Padlet or even a shared google doc for brainstorming or sharing or reflective learning etc. When I think of physical spaces at our school for this to occur I think of students working in small groups of tables joined together or seats/ lillypads/beanbags on the floor with a whiteboard table in the middle etc. 

During class this week we started by looking at Maker spaces - Learning by doing, hands on, student centred, can be as big or small as student wants and students have control over their own learning. I really love the idea of maker spaces and I run a class at our school which is focused on Robotics which is much like a maker space but I guess with a narrower focus. I have to say that it is extremely popular as the students love the tactile learning involved and learn to code the robot in a practical trial and error way, learning throughout the whole process.

Then we moved on to selecting and completing 3 out of 6 learning stations. Station 1 caught my eye as it was about having a look at ILE research. We are often questioned about our approaches to teaching and learning in our new ILE and there are many pros and cons so I was keen to find out what the research had to say. This research by Imms, W., Mahat, M., Byers, T. & Murphy, D. (2017) is from the University of Melbourne and included a number of NZ school so is quite relevant.

Basically what we found after wading through a lot of graphs and analysis was that deeper learning is related to the teaching approach and teacher mindset. An ILE helps with moving towards a more learner centred approach, however, it is actually the teacher mindset and willingness to move from the more teacher centred traditional approach to more learner focused pedagogy that really makes the difference. This can be done in an ILE or a more traditional classroom, it's all about the pedagogy.

References
Imms, W., Mahat, M., Byers, T. & Murphy, D. (2017). Type and Use of Innovative Learning Environments in Australasian Schools. ILETC Survey No. 1. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, LEaRN, Retrieved from: http://www.iletc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/TechnicalReport_Web.pdf

Other related articles that refer to the ILETC report:

• Classroom design should follow evidence, not architectural fads
• Learning Spaces in Australia and New Zealand
• How open should a learning space be – acoustically?

Education - Entrepreneurialism, Real World Learning, Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing

Week 11 - Entrepreneurialism, Real World Learning, Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing

Well I have to start this weeks blog with a bit of a confession - I really like being on time and organised, however, this week I never made it to class or did the flipped learning requirements. There was loads going on in my life and it included a 3 day school camp etc. So I’ve got some good excuses and I’m now backtracking and have spend a little time catching up so this one has been done in retrospect of the class.

I watched the Crowdsourcing Video, basically crowdsourcing is about connecting with people online to solve problems and produce things utilising people’s time expertise or resources. Crowdfunding is about raising capital funds from many people who donate a small amount of money towards what is required. This is becoming quite popular and is how real problems can be solved and makes use of how connected we now are with other people via the internet etc.

These are examples of how we can utilise technology to solve real world problems which is one of the key 21st century skills we would like our students learn as per the ITL research mentioned in previous blog posts. Authentic real world problems should involve real people, solutions for a particular audience (not the teacher or student etc), have specific/explicit contexts, and involve real data. We should be designing these sorts of learning experiences. There are many online tools that could be used:

Zooniverse - is a large people-powered platform for research problems are solved by enlisting volunteers to help out. People work with scientists to view, record, analyse, process and answer very large amounts of data that would not be possible by the scientists doing the research alone. The first project, Galaxy Zoo, received 70,000 classifications per hour and more than 50,000,000 classifications in the first year (Graham et al., 2015).

OpenIDO - This is another online site where people can connect and design solutions for the world’s biggest challenges.

Hacking NZ Education - a crowdsourcing platform set up by The Mind Lab by Unitec to collaboratively brainstorm ideas of what the future of education in New Zealand could look like.

Along with problem solving skills it is vital that students are supported to develop skills in enterprise and entrepreneurship it may help them to setup their own enterprise and take part in global enterprises which is part of the NZ Curriculum (2016).

Aileron (2017) suggests the following skills are vital for being an entrepreneur - resilience, focus, invest for the long-term, find and manage people, sell, learn, self-reflection, self-reliance. If we design learning around solving real world problems I have no doubt that students and teachers would develop these skills and dispositions as part of the journey. Lots to ponder and think about and I guess the challenge is to explore some of these tools with the students in class to see if there are any problems they would like to get involved with that are relevant to the learning in our classes.

References
Aileron. (2017). The Top Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs. Forbes.com. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/aileron/2013/11/26/the-top-skills-every-entrepreneur-needs/

Graham, C.G., Cox, J, Simmons, B, Lintott, C, Masters, K, Greenhill, A. & Holmes, K. (2015). Defining and Measuring Success in Online Citizen Science: A Case Study of Zooniverse Projects. Computing in Science & Engineering, 17(4), 28-41.

The NZ Curriculum Online. (2016). The NZ Curriculum: Vision. Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum

Education - Agile Leadership , Servant Leadership, Agile Education and Lean Education

Week 10 Agile Leadership , Servant Leadership, Agile Education and Lean Education
We started with the provocation - “Can the notions of servant and leader co-exist, can someone who puts the needs of others before their own also gain respect as a leader?”. We may not necessary believe this is possible but Greenleaf suggests this is possible.

Greenleaf, R. K. (1970) suggests servant leadership starts with the desire to serve and secondary to this is to leading, as opposed to leading first, it’s not about power or acquisition. A servant ensures that the needs of others are meet first. However, does this result in the people served becoming healthier, wiser, freer, or more independent etc? Greenleaf suggests we have new views of power and authority and we can relate to people in more supportive ways.

If we look at it from a teaching perspective the servant teacher tries to remove barriers to students learning and helps them to find their passions and motivations to learn leading them to discover their own destiny.

I then checked out this video about Lean Education and came up with these key points:

• Lean is manufacturing approach which came about in the 20th century
• Then applied in 21st century to software development (post agile) 
• Can be applied to educational context
• Book ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ by Womak J, Jones D, and Roos D, (1990) explains how Toyota moved from mass production to lean production.
• There were many benefits, cut waste, improved quality and variety of products
• The next book ‘Lean Thinking’ looked at how these methods could be applied to other industries.
• Lean is a slow and complicated long process and when applying this to the educational context it doesn’t make sense if we look at cutting waste etc as we are an ‘intellectual’ business not a physical ‘product’ as such. So must view education from a different lense about quality and value.

Womak says education is a process involving designing of knowledge, making learning experiences and use these experiences to continue learning, essentially design, make and use. Can we make these three processes lean?Value in education can be tricky to define, educators tend to do what they already know, and learners tend to expect something similar to what they have previously experienced.

A Lean approach looks at the value stream and constantly questions does this curriculum/approach/activity add value for the learner? It also looks at waste that can be eliminated. Move away from batch and ‘pushed’ content to the learner in time frame decided by the organisation and move towards the learner ‘pulling’ from the system what they need.

The value chain involves all stakeholders and may span organisations. Lean approach in education might involved personalised self paced learning, life long enrolment, no set time/place, blended learning modes, and instant feedback. The focus should be on thinking and problem solving, this should be visible and rigorous.

Agile is about creating a culture of learning - www.agilemanifesto.org. There are four values that are involved. A slightly different version of these values was adapted by Steve Peha to make them more relevant for educational organisations:

• Individual and interactions over processes and tools
• Meaningful learning over measurement of learning
• Stakeholder collaboration over constant negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile teams are self organising teams so we moved onto the next activity which involved forming some small teams. The objective of the team was to get as many pingpong balls to pass through the hands of each team member in 2 minutes Boris Gloger’s Ball Point game (Gloger, 2008). Each team were ask to estimate the number first, then have a go, then repeat this process 4 times. There were 4 rules:

• As each ball is passed between team members, it must have air time
• Every team member must touch each ball for it to count
• No ball to your direct neighbour on either side, you must pass to your front
• Every ball must end where it started. For each ball that does, the team scores 1 point (make sure you count your points)

Our team had a lot of fun, we started with a W formation passing the balls in a zig zag. Then we thought about doing more than one at a time so went with handfuls. Then the idea of coming close together and dropping the balls down like a waterfall marble run. So in each iteration we came up with better and better ideas. After small quick iterations or Sprints we learnt and applied new ideas with great success we did at least 4 times better by the end of our quick 2min sprints.

The idea of the 4 iterations has come from Mike Rother’s Kata in the Classroom (Rother, 2015). Kata is a term used in martial arts. It is a way of practicing and refining techniques. The Improvement Kata is a repeating four-step routine for continuous improvement: Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA).

After reporting back we had done very well and worked well as a team. One other team basically stopped after a couple of goes and thought that was the best they could do and were happy - do we often tend to stop when we think solutions are good enough or do we keep trying? Agile is about a mindset of continual improvement. Being an agile leader involves Scrums which are a lightweight process framework for agile development which involves a series of sprints that each deliver something useful.

We then moved on to looking at Kanban (visual cards in japanese) & Trello a great online organisational tool that I’ve used before. Basically a kanban is a bunch of visual cards orgainised into three categories/lists - to do, doing and done lists with a set number of maximum cards to limit the amount of things to manage.

In a classroom this could be based on the learning backlog - what do we need to learn, things we are learning, things we have learnt. User stories should be short and actually able to be achieved. A story that is too big is called an Epic and needs to be broken down into smaller stories. These user story needs can then be written down as things to be done and organised via a form of Kanban.

References
Greenleaf, R. K. (1970). The Servant as Leader, The Robert K. Greenleaf Center, Indianapolis, IN.

Gloger, B. (2008). Ball Point Game: A game to feel what Scrum is. Retrieved from https://kanemar.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/theballpointgame.pdf

Peha, S. (2011). Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would). InfoQ. Retrieved from https://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-schools-education