WPA Catch Up - Session 2

Editor's Notes

• #3: This is a story of us and themIt has always been a story of us and them – it is just that we now have stiff competition from the sources of learning available to our students and we are potentially losing the battleKids are differentLess respectHarder to motivateWe need to reflect on what we need to change to ensure that our students get the most out of their time in school.Time to reflect on the reality of what is happening in your classrooms, what is learning like for our students, how does it really meet their requirements and not a school wide top down perception
• #4: There are many factors for disengagement, but relevance is a key one, it is not a process that starts at year 9 and is a secondary school phenomenonDisengagement starts on the first day of schoolWe need to realise that we have competition and if we do not adapt our kids will continue to vote with their feetBehaviour issues in class have increased, respect has decreased we have to look at the causes and reflect on how where we can make changes to alter these behaviours
• #5: How effectively are we actually using the resources of the Internet?How integrated is elearning into the school curriculumIs elearning still a negotiable give away at stress points in the school week or dayIs it time to acknowledge that we are the problem, not the kids?How are we supporting staff to grow, it is now more that just PDWe need to grow capacity internally, Nurture elearning intellectual propertyIntegrate elearning into all facets of the school curriculum, create tutorials, resources, exemplars for teachers to use
• #6: Why do we have to do this?Kids are now exposed to more digital interactive media than ever before and at a younger ageOur kids are subsumed with interactive multi media stimuliWE know thisBut how have we adapted our classrooms to reflect this? How have we adapted our pedagogies to reflect this?
• #7: Study by Heather Kirkorian“Kids who are interacting with the screen get better much faster, make fewer mistakes and learn faster”The more interaction the better. Kids not getting smarter, just acquiring the skills and knowledge faster and with a greater degree of accuracyThis knowledge is crucial for teachers, they should reflect on their pedagogies to see how their actions are impacting upon their studentsIs the delivery to slow, to linear, not interactive enough to engage and keep engaged their students?This is great news for time poor teachers, interactivity enables students to get through work faster, but we need to change our pedagogies in order to take advantage of thisThe digital divide – is it a myth?In UK only 9% of students do not have access to computers at home or at school. The debate over screen time is over, students aspire to this way of learning, interacting and communicating and are finding ways to engage with it at all times
• #8: In 18 years the Internet has gone from Geek based curiosityTo integral part of how we live, socialise, interact, communicate, learnWhen Amazon arrived in the late 90’s pundits predicted its success would be limited to “letter box purchases” ie just books – how wrong they were In other words only small stuff could be sold successfully online, then came everything else….Record companies woke up too late to the impact of iTunes, Napster, and now are trying to pass draconian copyright laws to protect their traditional business model and revenue streams, rather than adaptWe are witnessing the demise the traditional methods of delivery and seeing the rise of a more distributed, consumer driven, choice based, individualised economy,News Papers, Music, books, real estate, banking, publishing, there is more information, more ways to access it and the ability to do it yourself. Rapid evolution of ideas and methods to create new contentEducation?
• #10: How well do you think we are doing?A traditional classroom is inward looking, linear and teacher centricThe interactivity of the Internet offers students the opportunity to collaborate, is outward looking and student centricTeacher role needs to change to one of facilitation
• #11: Just because it has always worked in the past does not mean that it will always work in the same way look how consumer habits have changed as a result of the Internet, what are the unintended outcomes of this, what are the parallels with education and our delivery mechanisms?Are we the tree standing staunch in the wind, eventually succumbing or are we the grass which bends and moves? Our students want to learn, we are not good at making the work relevant to them and their world, we have to move not them
• #12: It is as if we are are on different train tracks, Speaking the same words but it is being translated and interpreted differently by both partiesWe need to move towards the students and not expect them to come to usWe need to start using the tools and methodolgies of their world and not expect them to want to use the paper based linear world of ours – it has no relevance to them
• #13: Games tell us muchReward structure, clear objectives, with many paths to obtain the goals, multi threaded, multimedia, collaborativeNo instructions, discovery learning by trial and errorEducation needs to harness the potential for learning that games can offerSim City exampleWhy does a seven year old soak up the intricacies of industrial economics in game form, when the same subject would send him screaming for the exits in a classrooom?“novels may activate our imagination and music may conjure up powerful emotions, but games force you to decide, to choose, to priorotise.”Game learning cycle:Probe, hypothesise, re-probe, re-thinkReflects scientific thinkingOur children are growing up in a non-linear, light and sound based culture. Are our classrooms reflecting this change?
• #14: Neuroplasticity research that the brain is not immutable and fixed, but dynamic and self healingNew neural pathways are created as a result of intensive inputs and constant stimulationOur children have spent 1000s of screen hours honing enhanced digital skills such as parallel processing, graphics awareness and random access all sophisticated and valuable thinking skills and we largely ignore or do not cater for these skills in educationPrensky calculates that by the time they are 21 the average student will have spent10 000 hours on video gamesSent 250 000 emails, textsWatched 20 000 hours of TVThey are visual, multi media centric learners
• #15: If they approach text differently from us, how much information are they missing by us not knowing how they attack information on a page?If we put too much emphasis on text and they rely on images first, we are already talking past each other
• #18: We should be questioningHow we can turn You Tube from a content consumption repositoryTo a content creation opportunity for teaching and sharing of new learningHow can You Tube be used as a literacy tool for students?WE should be thinking about the possibilities that Minecraft has for learning how we could integrate this tool into a literacy or numeracy programmeIt will take effort on our behalf, but the rewards will be worth it
• #19: Teaching has become a bit of a gameA game which the students understand the rules to pretty quicklyYou have the answer and I have to pretend to find out until you tell me the answerWe need to facilitate learning
• #20: WE need to give our students time, the work we get them to do needs to be student led/centricIt needs to be open ended and it needs to allow them to explore and express themselves digitiallyWe need to design situations, scenarios where the students get stuck, where they can collaborate with virtual and physical peers to solve problems that have real meaning to themWe need to teach them to dive deep, not to skip lightlyWe need to respect their need for information from multiple sourcesWe need to teach them skills Just in TimeWe need to facilitate their learning and not lead the learning in a pre-determined linear way
• #21: We need to recognise that the Internet its collaborative, multimdeia, social networking opportunities has won the competition for the attention of our studentsTo keep re-gurgitating the same old stuff will further alienate us from themWe need to bring the tools and resources of the internet, the social media, the collaboration opportinities into the classroom and harness these tools to the learning we want the students to attain
• #30: Talked about this in Interface MagazineDry subject for city kids, always hard to motivateTurned it into a game based scenarioKids collaborated, identified roles for each member of the group, got stuck, solved problems, showed resilience, were given timeScored higher than other classes who did not take this approach