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