Friday, July 22, 2016

Mindlab Week One

What a great group of educators to begin this journey with.  We were asked to reflect on two questions?
What is knowledge?
What is the purpose of education?

It has been interesting to see the results on our Google plus community.  There are many similarities and I am left asking myself if this is a result of how we have been educated?  Do we all really believe the same things or are we, as teachers, confined within the box of pedagogy?

I am hopeful to find the answer to this question over the next year as we take this journey together.

Tony Wagner in his talk on "7 skills students will need for the future"  provokes  us to think about the capabilities that students will need in the future; for  a successful career, for continuous learning and for active and informed citizenship.  How do we re-imagine education for the future?
1. Critical thinking and Problem Solving
2. Teamwork and Networking.    Skills: Understand and respect differences and lead by influence
3.  Agility and adaptability.  Skills:  Being able to work across areas
4.  Initiative and entrepreneurism.  Be willing to set stretch goals.
5.  Effective oral and written communication.  Use analytical thinking and personal voice for       persuasive writing.
6.  Ability to access and analyse information.
7. Curiosity and Imagination

These skills dovetail beautifully with the aspirations of the NZ curriculum.  They also fit with key competencies and science capabilities.


MindLab Session 2

Reading Nicholas Tuleb, The Black Swan about bringing past experiences into the future.

What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?   Wisdom is knowledge plus experience where you use judgement to value the knowledge.

What is the purpose of education?  What are 21st C skills?

Grant Lichtman, what did he find out?  Lack of collaboration between schools.  If we want self evolving Ss we need to be self evolving establishments.  The anchors, the dams and the silos, the three things that stand in the way of learning.

Solutions:
Teach into the unknown
Self evolving learners
Self evolving organisations

How 20th C and 21st C skills differ?  Do we need both?

20th C  Literacy and Numeracy
21st C  Adaptive, collaborative,

How well do our thoughts align with the ITL research results?  Innovative teaching and Learning with Microsoft PIL
identifying the characteristics of strong and innovative teaching.  Connection between design of teaching activity and skills students are learning


Video
Three act structure required.  Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.  Worst type of video is slides with music, it needs human participation e.g. your voice or your classroom shots

Tools Tag Cloud

Tips and tricks for filming and editing:


How do the Key Competencies relate to 21C skills?
Are real world problems and ICT for learning implicit in the KC's?

How do KCs apply in a leadership context?  CORE video

In assignment think about practice and apply KCs or 21C skills to our own practice.

How much do we know about leadership theories, styles and attributes?

What did you gain from reconceptualising Leadership?

Do people want to lead or administrate and manage?
 Teacher Agency?  How does this fit with teacher agency?
As we move to ILEs does teacher Agency diminish?

Leadership is not about administration and managing.

Think about area of practice you want to focus on first, then come up with solutions.
The issue that i have is.....
What areas of digital and collaborative practice could i use that would help to solve this issue.








Saturdey July 23rd Mindlab

Adaptive Competence

SAMR and TPACK models  allows you to evaluate where technological innovation sits.  Is it innovation or substitution.
TPACK, technological, pedagogical and content knowledge  TPACK in 2 minutes
Content is the what
Pedagogy is the how direct instruction, inquiry
Technology is the partner, what tool will make the content more accessible to Ss

Substituition, tech acts as a direct substitution
Augmentation, direct substitution with functional improvement
Modification  tech allows for significant task redesign
Redefinition:  Tech allows for creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable.  SAMR in 120 seconds

Google Maps, Google Earth or Tour Builder.  Create a Google Doc where you can design a learning activity to last 20 minutes.  Go for an integrated approach.  Inform it with SAMR and or TPACK

What are the limitations of using a map compared to using google maps.

Article:
Technology proficiency of teachers plays a major role in classroom technology innovations

Knowledge of the enabling conditions for a technology.

Knowledge of whats out there

Doesn't align pedagogically with the way teachers are.

What is the difference between being innovative and creative?  There is a difference, to be creative is the process of ideas but as an innovator you are doing something with your ideas.

APA referencing  check out Daves screencasting on blogging and learning theories and check out the referencing.

Qualities of an innovator:  risk taker, confident, not fragile, curious, open to new ideas, persistent, collaborative

References can be got through google scholar.

Are dispositions as important as skills?  What is an innovation video.

Disruptive Technologies, advances that will transform life, business and the global economy.  A paper check out google scholar.

Gada, K. (2014) The education disruption:  2015  retrieved from http://wwwsingularity2050.com/2014/07/the-education

Google Project Loon for internet accessibility with balloons.

Google expeditions  accessible if kids have a device.
Tilt Brush by google, virtual reality art concept.


What are the potential uses of virtual reality in education?
Minecraft  Gallipoli in Minecraft.  Map and topography    Made for schools and teachers to use in education.  (use this in fish passages work)

See things through other eyes and in a new way.
The Sims









Saturday, July 9, 2016

I have been thinking about peer review and how this fits in with NOS in the classroom.  I have been attending weekly team meetings where one person presents their work and there is an open discussion about it.
It is not personal, and it is definitely helpful to the presenter.  How can I replicate this in my classroom?  As Andrea Benwell​  said in her post on NOS, we are surrounded by it in all aspects.
Under the values section of the curriculum we are asked to help students "develop their abilities to discuss disagreements that arise from differences in values and negotiate solutions."
It seems to me that science might just be the perfect vehicle for this.  How do you all go about this in your classes?