I Am Teacher 2.0

I've now completed Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth, and overall found it to be a very beneficial process. The workshop day back in August was a great introduction, covering many of the same concepts, and I benefited from being able to go back over the ideas in my own time, to really take in the big ideas.

How often do we give our students the opportunity to slow down and process something they have been exposed to? Particularly if they already appear to have achieved competence. There is a difference between being able to do something, and seeing the big picture and significance of the ideas behind it.

For me, that's an important take-away message.

You might like to check out my 'Personal Web Presence', created during completion of the above series of tasks: http://www.natashaglaister.com

I would love to receive feedback or suggestions on it!

All In a Day's Work

It took me a little while to get around to blogging about it, but I really wanted to share what we got up to on Thursday of this week.


Thursday morning, we had an extended Pastoral Care session, in which my students commenced writing their proposals for their Personal Learning Projects that they will be completing next term. Once they have decided on their area of interest, I will use my professional network to link them up with a mentor, who will help them in the completion of their projects. They were blogging, posting on our class website message board, and beginning to establish their own Personal Learning Network by setting up their Google Reader accounts.

Hopefully they can become truly networked!

After recess, they were finalising their Ancient History research projects, the product of 6 weeks' work. Tasks like comparing and contrasting ancient and modern religions, redesigning a legacy of a civilisation, and creating the laws that they would have invented had they been in power are rich, promoting deep learning. Not having had an opportunity as yet to have an in-depth look at the work they have produced, I am very excited to see what they have developed.

In the next session I had arranged for the students to take advantage of an opportunity set up by the Department of Educatoion and Early Childhood Development's Next Practice Division - a video conference with NASA astronaut Rex Walheim! The topic for year seven next term is 'Space Rocks', so it was a great opportunity to hook them in, and although he didn't get to answer the questions the students had prepared, they were still enthralled, finding out the truth about going to the toilet in space (vacuums are involved!) and discovering that after a few days in zero gravity, your back starts to ache because you grow a little bit. Thankfully, the technology even played nicely, the only glitch (a faulty cable to the theatre's sound system) being overcome with a microphone held up to my laptop speakers.

The day finished with the students presenting their terms' learning to an audience of year nine students and some other teachers. We heard the story of Cleopatra's life, the story of a young Aztec girl sold into slavery, and saw a functional recreation of Roman aqueducts, among many other amazing presentations. They assessed each others' work, providing praise and constructive criticism.

While I was there the whole time, guiding, leading, monitoring, providing feedback, suggesting new directions, the day was not about me, it was about my students, and what they were learning. It was amazing to finish the term on such a high, and makes me dread leaving them in just 10 short weeks.

Is it weird that I feel like Zuckerberg?

Something amazing is happening in my class at the moment.

The idea has been cooking away, like all big ideas do, for some time now. Little tidbits of information would be added to the pot, I would hear or see or read something new, that would lead me in a new direction.

Like the ingredients for a great recipe, these thoughts gradually accumulated.

Yesterday, my online community was born. Research tells us that prospects are poor for online communities that are unsupported by offline contact in some form. So my existing community of learners, my year seven class, were offered something new to try - a simple, closed social networking page (a Ning to be precise).

I was at a PD last week, run by Steve Hargadon, who spoke of his teenage daughter who had recently been allowed to sign up for Facebook. He said he could see her transforming in front of him, as her world-view expanded. In the last 36 hours, I have started to see the same thing happening for my students.

There was a buzz in the room as they played with it, tinkering, tweaking, personalising. Taking ownership. Later in the day, they were completing some online tasks, and the website was open in the background. It wasn't a distraction, they still worked, but they remained connected behind their computer screens. We started a conversation about the guidelines for their community, how we could make it a positive environment. Nobody needed to have an acceptable use policy shoved at them, yet the phrases they chose could have been taken from one.

After school, they kept playing. Exploring, seeing what it could do. They shared photos, comments. Connections.

They were talking about it at school today.

I knew from the buzzing of emails pushing through on my phone during a lecture tonight (I heard John Hattie speak, which is a whole other blog post) that there had been some activity, but I was amazed at what I found when I opened up the site. Aside from the chatter, which is valuable enough in itself, aside from the shared and appreciated photos and videos, here were 13 year old kids, online at 9:30, having message board conversations about how they as a class had slacked off in the last few weeks, and organizing to meet up before and after school to catch up on homework. Ideas sparking other ideas, with another wanting to create (quote!) "a list of educational websites".

These kids don't often say a lot in class.

But I think I'm helping them to find their voice.

Why? Why not?

Why not try unblocking access to social media sites?

If we block them, really, we might as well block the entire internet, because the whole web is transforming. NON social media is going the way of Geocities - the 1990's dodo.

Why is it ok to create a false bubble that functions nothing like the real world for our students?
Why does the notion of "real world" even exist as a concept that exists outside of school? What is school if not the real world?
Why do budgets and policy and FEAR have to control the way I teach?
If we want our students to be creative - why is MY creativity as a teacher being stifled?
Why is "not enough people will use it" a reason to prevent usage by the people who will?
Why isn't monitoring enough? Since when is it enough to rely on electronic systems in place of actual human beings' judgment?
Why won't schools believe that filtering doesn't work? Since filtering was implemented, has cyber-bullying and inappropriate content access disappeared? Didn't think so.
Just because we can "prevent" misuse by blocking access, why does that mean we should?
Why shouldn't my students be allowed to contribute to their digital footprint in school? So they might use their gmail accounts to access chat - so what? Since when do we ban speech in schools?

Instead...

Why not teach using social media - or at the very least help kids understand the values behind it while emersed in an authentic environment, and help them shape the social media - rather than just passively letting it shape them?
Why not do what we always talk about our students doing, and take a RISK! Sure, it might not work, but so what? Risk averse, safe behaviour, doesn't lead to progress. It just means we keep doing the same things over and over and over again. Not only are we not learning from history, but we're failing to even acknowledge that it exists! We've managed to work out that abstinence in sexuality & drug education doesn't work - instead we teach pros and cons, we teach about personal responsibility, and heaven forbid - EDUCATED CHOICE!

So why, when it comes to social media, are we so afraid to do the same thing?!?

Creativity Is...

 Found Here: moonstarsandpaper (Original Artist Unknown)

"An inherent curiosity, and ability and willingness to challenge convention; to engage with ideas, make connections and draw conclusions, then intentionally think and act beyond these."

Please share your definition.

Creativity: A Gift for the Gifted.

Gifted students rarely let on that there is something missing from their learning. The creative world of their earliest years has lost its validity. They have been forced to let it go. Their sense of wonder has begun to fade.

Learning has become less about them as individuals and more about their ability to comply with a set of arbitrary expectations. These gifted learners who had an abundance of curiosity and inspiration become particularly disheartened.

While traditional extension programs focus heavily on vertical extension, they ignore the creativity that arises from lateral exploration. Creativity revives unused talents and interests, and extends the gifted learner in significant ways. Academics and creativity do not belong on separate poles. Gifted learners, when freed from artificial constraints, will pursue learning at their own level AND explore its creative edge.

It is a great tragedy that surprisingly few gifted children become creative adults. simply being intelligent does not guarantee a creative future. Over time, gifted students tend to approach their education as a means to an end.

Gifted learners need time to step back from destructive conditions and make their own contributions to what they are learning. If we can integrate creativity into the curriculum, we can awaken inside our learners their own freely creative spirit.

We need to give gifted students power over their learning. Many struggle with motivation. The creative process motivates, through its positive contribution to emotional well-being and intellectual growth, through promotion of higher order thinking.

Academics and creativity can naturally be woven together:

1. Allow the gifted learner to delve into material head first. They will draw on a wide range of sources, pose questions and gather the data they require
2. The gifted learner will then cast off into the depths, seeking a path of their own
3. Often, they will discover areas where their understanding or skills fall short
4. They will return with new questions and new problems
5. The process will continue

 

Above is my response to the first chapter of "Igniting Creativity in Gifted Learners, K - 6"; entitled Creatvity: a Gift for the Gifted.

Four ways to explicitly teach critical thinking

Teach about brain function

Students should learn how the brain works.

• How do we think?
• How does memory work?
• What causes emotions?
• Why do we dream?
• How do we learn?
• How/Why do mental disorders occur?
• What happens when part of the brain is damaged?

Teach Metacognition

Encourage students to be conscious of their own thinking during problem solving.

• Have discussions about what is going on in their heads
• Compare different approaches
• Identify what is known, what needs to be known, how to produce that knowledge
• Think aloud
• Teach students how to learn, how to study for a test, how to ask effective questions
• Help students discover their learning style, and teach them how to tackle learning that is outside of their preferred style

Share Great Thinkers

 Expose students to role models who solve problems well, particularly those who have left a mark on society.

• Noteworthy scientists, artists and historians: Einstein, Van Gogh, Mozart, Da Vinci, Gandhi, Newton, Currie, Pasteur, Franklin, Edison.
• Those upon whom they depend: mechanics for their efficient and precise ways of repairing cars, parents for their ability to deal with irrationality by withholding impulsivity, entrepeneurs for their creative ability to offer innovative products and services and teachers, for their ability to plan, monitor and evaluate
• Apply critical thinking to everyday life: How would a critical thinker go to the supermarket? What about an ineffective thinker? How would a critical thinker read a newspaper? Choose a dentist? Buy a car? Do homework? Vote?

Study the thinking of varying disciplines

Study and compare the thinking methods of artists, scientists, scholars. Examine the differential processes of investigation, inquiry and creativity.

•  How does what scientists do differ from what artists do?
• What are the processes by which scientific truths are discovered and proven?
• What are the processes of inquiry used by anthropologists as they live with and study a culture?
• What goes on in a maestro's mind when they conduct an orchestra?
• How was Mozart able to 'hear' a total musical composition before writing it down?
• What is the process by which poets create?
• Why can't scientific inquiry be used to solve social problems?

Further Reading: Arthur L Costa, California State University, Sacramento