Janine’s blog

I have just come across this blog of Jo Macleay from Melbourne and her latest posting is about the notion of “blogging across the curriculum” which she describes in the context of Victoria’s VELS curriculum - a curriculum heavily influenced by the Tasmanian Essential Learnings curriculum.

How ironic it is that as the Essential Learnings in Tasmania begins to be modified and certainly renamed, its influence elsewhere grows daily.

Dr Jeremy Roschelle provided summary reflections of the Curriculum Corporation 2006 conference. He identified two main themes from the keynote speakers and group discussions:

1. The challenges of the Knowledge Economy
2. ICT in schools – not just about doing things better, but also doing better things 

He also challenged whether Australia becoming less critical, suggesting that what is needed is critical inquiry into the relationships among learning, school and the future economy. He suggested two key readings that are pertinent to this - The Education Gospel and The Power of Productivity. As Bill Gates has said:

We tend to overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in the next 10 years. [the earliest reference I could find to this quote was December 1996 http://www.samachar.com/tech/archives/techtalk65.html]

Learning for the Knowledge Society

• James Gee – games as a resource for important learning
• Jillian Dellit – access to infinite possibilities and school is important

Doing better things in schools

• Jeremy Roschelle - diffusing the vision of the early adopters to the pragmatic and conservative masses. Simple tools Build teacher networks that sustain, plan for growth in innovation and efficiency, provide compelling research evidence
• Peter Freebody - Learning objects are working: students are engaged AND learning is happening…..particularly with complex concepts….but note how slow schools are to change

Conclusions - let’s note that:

• Our historical moment is challenging and full of infinite possibilities
• Learning is going to be central to future society success
• Technology is important to learning – make changes, help us communicate
• Schools will change, technology will be important but school is a very complex institution and diffusion of innovation into schools will require much more than building IT

He posed two key questions:

1. Can ICT make improvements in education happen faster?
2. What is effective integration of ICT?

Drawing on a book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore - the chasm being the gap between techno enthusiasts and the pragmatic/conservative bulk of the population, this observation was made:

Most educational technologies start with visionary promise but never achieve the promise beyond a few exciting demonstration classrooms

The example of the Graphics Calculator in Mathematics was used to illustrate some general principles for effective integration of ICT:

Why have Graphics Calculators been successful?

• they reduce cognitive load  (takes over the tedious tasks)
• dual coding - graphical and linguistic coding enhances learning
• multiple representations - effectively mediating social construction of meaning

How does this success happen?

• STARTS with
  • simple, inexpensive, robust technology
  • symbiotic innovation by teachers/technologists (refer to Eric von Hippel Democratising innovation, Tom Ferrio, Building a breakthrough husiness concept
• RESULTS in system support to “cross the chasm”
  • build a huge teacher training network
  • integrated into national standards
  • incorporation into Curriculum
  • required in assessments
• BACKED by
  • research results demonstrating effectiveness

What Education Needs: Simple tools for Revolutionaries -  What are the simple tools that teachers can grow with? These tools do not replace or automate human intelligence but rather they augment (teacher) capability.

Future such tools? …perhaps Student response systems

Dr Roschelle highlighted Student response systems as a relatively new example with the potential to have similar success. These small handheld devices allow simultaneous input by multiple students to questions posed. Responses are rapidly processed and displayed in graphical form on a large screen.  Tests have shown that peer feedback leads to a convergence towards the correct responses.

Currently about 12 companies offer products of this nature and teachers are showing very high interest. An overview of them is at http://clte.asu.edu/wakonse/ENewsletter/studentresponse_idea.htm

Refer also to Eric Mazur’s work on Peer Instruction

A workshop session at the Curriculum Corporation conference in Adelaide last week.Ann Langman and her two year 6 presenting students gave an inspiring overview of the “Round Table Assessment” (RTA) process used by many schools, but in this case the Grange School in South Australia.

RTA involves

1. students selecting an area for inquiry based on their own interests and/or expertise from heart, head and mind perspectives
2. Undertaking an inquiry and in the process incorporating new learning
3. Choosing a small community of people to present to (teacher, parents or relatives, community member) and writing letters to them
4. Planning and developing a presentation (as culminating performance)
5. Performing the presentation
6. Being assessed by the community

As part of the school learning culture students learn about Art Costa’s Habits of Mind and incorporate these into their learning. They are required to reflect and document 5 habits of mind that they have used during their inquiry. Ann (the teacher) described a rich classroom environment that incorporated a wide range of powerful pedagogies, with students in charge of their own learning.

I found this session particularly inspiring because it was a powerful, achievable, practical example of putting the principles described in other more theoretical sessions (eg preparing for the knowledge society). I understand that Round Table Assessment is also widely used in the ACT.