Janine’s blog

Pictures of Practice In Schools (LS-South East schools) http://popis.edublogs.org/

Windows into the classroom (LS-South schools) http://winclass.edublogs.org/

Background

The Tasmanian Education Department has undergone massive restructure in recent years (and it is an ongoing work in progress). One of the elements of the restructure is that the central statewide bureacracy has now been transformed into 4 regional ”Learning Services”. So we have Learning Services South, Learning Services South East, Learning Services North and Learning Services North West. Each makes their own decisions about various support structures depending on the needs of the local schools.The two Learning Services for the South of the State have decided for the time being to continue having a full time person whose role is to provide ICT Professional Learning services to schools, again in response to school identified needs.

These two educators (Ros and Julie) have been working in such roles for many years. Last year they both decided to start documenting their observations of teacher practice in schools via  blogs with monthly postings. What I like about this use of blogs is that the unique opportuniries they have to observe classroom practice are being documented and shared. That knowledge (dare I suggest wisdom?) is preserved regardless of the longevity or otherwise of their current jobs. Of course the other side of the coin is that such writing in the public domain requires a high level of personal awareness of privacy, copyright and professional ethics else (to quote a learned colleague) the excrement can hit the rotating device big time.

In their own words from a posting to the local ICT-learning email discussion list …..

“Hello everyone,

During 2007, Julie Fielding and I both kept a blog relating to the work that we do in southern schools, and we will be continuing our blogs this year.

We each make a new posting approximately once a month and choose a focus that reflects what is happening in our schools at the time.

We hope it provides teachers and principals with general information about what is happening in the ICT area, along with examples of local teachers using ICT to enhance learning for their students, as well as giving them the opportunity to ask questions, share their own experiences etc. using the ‘Comments’ facility at the end of each posting.

Here are the links to the 2 blogs so you can have a look:

Pictures of Practice In Schools (LS-South East schools) http://popis.edublogs.org/

Windows into the classroom (LS-South schools) http://winclass.edublogs.org/

If you would like to subscribe to the blogs and be automatically notified each month when there is new material posted on the blog, use the ‘Subscribe by email’ facility on the right hand side of the pages, or use an RSS feed if you would prefer.

[copied from http://lyris.education.tas.gov.au:8080/read/messages?id=40717]

I am fortunate to be attending a ten day Summer School for Science teachers being held at Flinders University in Adelaide.  I have set up a separate summer school blog  as the focus is somewhat different (though related) to this one.

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.

An article by Miles Berry, dated January 2006 which describes how a primary class (year 6) is using Elgg (open source) effectively as a blogging tool. Interesting the he promotes the idea of developing simple html code from scratch in Notepad to develop understanding of what is behind web pages – I have seen that same “wow” factor with adults when they realise how simple the magic is! http://elgg.net/mberry/files/-1/3567/primary_blogging.pdf