ULearn20 – Keynote #4 – Peter O’Connor

The final keynote of the conference was a passionate argument for the central place of the arts in education. Professor Peter O’Connor promoted a discussion that questioned the purpose of schooling and what the real meaning of success is. Below are some of the key themes of his presentation:

Imagination

Traditional measures of success take little account of creativity, but perhaps a true measure of success can be found more from the way John Dewey talked about education as a national treasure. Dewey understood that we are not just consumers, but producers and makers in the world which required our imagination. The arts train and develop the imagination.

If we can’t imagine the world better than it is now, then we are doomed to live in the world as it is.

An interesting link was made between imagination and democracy. Peter talked about the way that history is made by those in power and the rest of the world is a powerless audience. But through the arts we get to make things, use our hands and our bodies and contribute. This participation is fundamental to being a connected, creative citizen. Our imagination can be used to make the world a better place: “hope is but a leap of the imagination – reimagination is an act of hope”.

Community

In his breakout Petter talked a lot about a new resource Te Rito Toi designed to support returning to school following major traumatic or life changing events. Created in response to the impact of Covid-19, it has a wonderful collection of resources and supporting research to help navigate difficult times. Teachers bind together communities; schools are the glue that pull together communities in ways no other institution can. But we have never trained our teachers to deal with that responsibility and this resource helps us to use the arts to navigate these challenges.

I was struck by the connection of this resource to the the idea of community. Returning to school is often a return to community, where trauma or life changing events are experienced more as an individual. The arts is a return to the collective, and it is the strength of togetherness that can help to process difficulties.

What Matters?

To illustrate the idea of ‘what matters’, Peter gave the example of a discussion with Dorothy Heathcote who despite her specific drama background wanted to know just two things about NZ education:

“In New Zealand, do children do things that matter?”

“In doing those things, do children understand that they matter too?”

Peter challenged the idea that the curriculum is overcrowded. When we ask ourselves what matters and interrogate our values we can get rid of a lot of the noise. Numeracy and literacy are not the only game in town; in fact he referred to significant research that shows schools with arts rich curriculums do better in literacy and numeracy. There were strong parallels here with Dr Lucy Hone’s discussion on well-being. The arts have always had a focus on well-being, and perhaps there is a correlation worth investigating between the declining measures of well-being that Lucy presented and the squeezing out of the arts subjects from our curriculum. We have to make sure regardless of the subject that children understand they matter, not because of what they have achieved, but because of who they are.

uLearn20 – Keynote #3 – Dr Pedro Noguera

Dr Pedro Noguera‘s sociological perspective raised such important questions about how we are serving the needs of rangitahi that have historically not been met. When we focus on the most marginalised it benefits not only them, but all of society. Dr Pedro began by acknowledging the disruption of the pandemic which he fears might be missed as an opportunity for change. Can we use this moment to make our schools more responsive to student needs? To a large degree the background of our students predict their outcomes – this urgently needs to change.

In order to change the system we have to see the system. We have to know what needs to change and what isn’t working for our marginalised communities. As Janelle’s keynote covered education has historically been used to assimilate marginalised cultures to the dominant culture. To what degree is this still occurring? The framework that Dr Pedro put forward is race neutral, but needs to be adapted to our community contexts.

Some of the key themes that emerged for me, roughly bulleted pointed out, from his presentation:

• Complacency is the biggest barrier to equity in schools – blaming parents or students. Like a chef cooking good food; teachers have to take responsibility for their teaching.
• We have to immerse ourselves intentionally in cultural practice.
• Empowerment is key – not only for students, but for communities that surround the students. Whānau need a voice just as much as the students do.
• Our job is to dismantle the structural hierarchies that limit the potential of our students.
• Disengagement can be viewed as a progression: from task to subject to school and structural. Intervention needs to come early to avoid this trajectory of marginalisation.
• Reforms are too often fads; the response should be creating sustained conditions that promote security a safety in a community of learning.
• Holistic views of rangitahi, not limited to the school context, are needed to ensure we are developing the whole person.

Dr Pedro’s presentation was a board consideration of various considerations that are pin-balling around education discussions at the moment. While not rooted in the New Zealand context, it felt relevant and vital. The key shift he was promoting was to move past technical and logistical considerations and ask adaptative questions to allow deep reflection to create meaningful change.

ULearn20 – Keynote #1 – Janelle Riki-Waaka

Wāhia te tahā | break the calabash

Reimagining success, one of the themes of uLearn20, was explored by Janelle Riki-Waaka in the first keynote, illustrating in particular the failure of the education system for Māori. A familiar foundation was laid: ‘if we do what we’ve always done, we will get what we’ve always got’. What was built on top was challenging and provocative. Here are three things that stayed with me afterwards along with a few thoughts:

Who is defining success?

When Aotearoa was colonised, education was used as a tool to assimilate Maori into the dominant culture. In this process, success was defined by Pākehā for Māori, and not much has changed since. Recognising who is defining success is an important part of deconstructing and “flipping the system on it’s head”. Some suggestions that emerged included challenging the values of literacy and numeracy which are commonly reported on before identity and culture, and letting the student define what they are reported on. We need to ask when this dialogue is happening: ‘who is there?’ ‘Whose voice is missing from the conversation?’ Greater awareness of who is defining success will enable us to be more cognizant of the system, and better prepared to dismantle it.

Failure

The statements teachers make about ākonga are usually based strictly on the context of school; yet the ripple effect can be massive. A more holistic view of a child would challenge a lot of the comments we make in formal reporting and would challenge the perception of ‘failing’. This is word that Janelle vowed to eliminate, citing the damage on students who believe they have “failed high school” or words to that effect. This discussion challenging the idea of failure reminded me not only of Carol Dweck’s work but also Karen Boyes’ breakout on the Thinking Dispositions and the way we frame effort and success. We need to reframe the perceived failure of students (not ‘I failed’ but ‘we failed you’). I’m interested in how we model the acknowledgement of that failure to ensure we are holding ourselves to the same standards as students. How can we use our failings as educators to help change what the word ‘fail’ means to students?

Grades

Aligning with recent reading from Yuval Noah Harari – where he traced the introduction of measurement systems to the industrial age, a system we continue to maintain – the limitations of grades is a key part of reimaging success. Janelle suggested a range of different approaches to reporting that avoided labelling students with negative effects. Comparing a child to where they should be is dangerous – whose worldview are these judgements based on?

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way”

2017: In Review

Last year I wrote a 2016 in review to reflect on a year of professional learning and the blogposts that I had written. It was an interesting exercise, reaffirming the reason for writing this blog, which is more for personal assimilation than for any potential audience out there (the potential audience pressures me to assimilate). Three trends from reflecting on the blogposts I wrote in 2017:

Technology in the Back Seat

I’ve felt the ubiquity of technology (the second year teaching in a full BYOD environment) has made it less of driver around professional learning conversations. This came through my own refocusing on inquiry through the work of Kath Murdoch as well as the action research of my eFellowship.  The keynotes at uLearn also reinforced this shift. Eric Mazur’s focus on shifting from transferring information to assimilating information and Abdul Chohan’s articulation of the role of belief in change initiatives both moved away from the tool to the pedagogy.

The place of technology in education was really nailed for me by Richard Watson in his book ‘Digital Vs Human‘. He was very clear that technology needs to be purposeful and not driven by capitalism. Derek Wenmoth contextualised this when presenting the 10 trends, suggesting that any technology, any new trend in education, needs to be explored through lenses of ethics, citizenship, safety and equity. Using technology just to grab a student’s attention isn’t good enough in 2017. What is the point of presenting a new technology tool to a staffroom if you aren’t going to discuss how it impacts on student learning? Pedagogy is the driver.

The Politics of Diversity

In 2017 I continued to present the Safer Schools for all workshop also got to share this work at the CTU Pride Union Conference. I discovered the work of Peter DeWitt, which was inspirational to read. I was also very proud to peer review the vital ‘Supporting LGBTIQA+ Students’ inclusive guide on TKI. But it was Welby Ings and his book ‘Disobedient Teaching’ that really gave a political context for this work. He stated “waiting for permission means very little ever gets changed” and this work with promoting diversity is so often dependent on permission from straight white cis-males in leadership positions. My eFellowship research took aim at this in a way by working with teachers in the middle and making ripples to impact change. Going forward I want to hold this work with strong values while remembering being inclusive isn’t something that teachers need permission for.

He Tāngaga, He Tāngata, He Tānagata

The overwhelming trend in my thinking this year has been the importance of putting everybody (not just students) at the centre. From professional reading on this to a class EduCamp, there has been a clear theme of stories that has connected a lot of my journey in 2017. The eFellowship brought together seven stories to work alongside one another and the intersections between those journeys was often the most rewarding. One of those eFellows, Heemi, was exploring specifically indigenous narrative frameworks and story as data. Another moment this year that bought stories together was the ‘Learning with Our Community’ day. Having so many people from the community in the school inspiring the students with their personalised stories was a real special opportunity to be involved in.

Last year I drove away from Newlands College for the last time. After eight years I needed a change and shortly I’m going to be making my way to London to teach in a new system in a new country. I’m disappointed this comes at a time just as I’ve been woken up by Ann Milne who has helped me find my internal bias and my need for action to truly become a culturally responsive teacher. I’ve found through the process of reflecting on leaving along with Milne’s book and uLearn presentation this year that ‘people’ is the key to my educational philosophy. Something I tried to capture that in some of the last words I spoke at Newlands College:

Celebrate our differences, our uniqueness, our diversity. Champion our people, because it is the people that make this place so special. It is the people here that have made the difference to me. It is the people I will always remember. He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.

 

uLearn – Abdul Chohan

Keynote #3 – Changing belief: Apple technology in the classroom

Abdul’s storytelling approach to his keynote made him a joy to listen to. From the challenge of the laptop trolley to the tale of the photo he found of a innovative learning environment, he could certainly spin a yarn. From his time at Essa Academy and the Olive Tree Education Trust (see Olive Tree Free School) in the UK, his intent is to see mobile technology to support student learning.

James Hopkins captures this keynote in incredible detail in this blogpost. In reading this summary, the weight of the keynote became truly clear. Some parts that I at first dismissed as an Apple advertisement became clearer as an inspirational story of educational change.

An underpinning idea was the difference between behaviour and belief. To create change we need to focus on changing beliefs and the behaviour will follow. This resonated with me as it rung true of feedback we get internally from our Professional Learning structures. Some teachers talk of wanting tools and things they can try in the classroom: “good PD is when you can take something away and try it out in the next lesson”. Abdul’s affirms that the focus is right, on the thinking behind the tools and the strategies. The belief will lead the behaviour. Admittedly there needs to be a balance but this was reassuring.

Abdul unpacked the mentality of ‘we’ve always done it that way’ – calling the phrase the six most dangerous words in education. I would challenge that and suggest that ‘we already do it like that’ worthy of more concern. Resistance to change is one thing, thinking that change has occurred when it really hasn’t is another.

Digital skills we must teach: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/8-digital-skills-we-must-teach-our-children/

What makes good teaching and learning? The underpinning ideas of Olive Tree.

Takeaways and Observations

• ‘Believe You Can’ – the motto of Olive Tree. The motif of belief came all through Abdul’s keynote; this philosophy must have a strong connection to the success his students have experienced.
• Are we translating or transforming? While it can be limiting to think in binaries, this is a provocative reflective question.
• Digital quotient – build your DQ, not your IQ. 
• Teachers are the best app for students.

uLearn17 – Brad Waid

Keynote #2 – Engaging the “globally” connected student of today

Technology is changing – but not for the first time:

The key questions posed by Brad, as collected by Jo Robson in this blogpost were:

What are kids learning? Where are they learning? What is our role? Are we changing? How are we connecting with our 21st century learners? What is happening when the students leave the classroom? What are they sharing? Would they share what we are teaching? The role of educators is changing, yet have and are we actually changing?

Brad enthusiastic shared futurist visionary videos and personal anecdotes. He suggested a framework to help change the world, to make a difference to young students in education: RULE(e)

• Relationships – a key driven behind learning (like here)
• Understanding – what unites us is stronger than what divides us (like here)
• Learning – fail…fail…fail…success (felt Karen
• Environment – flexibility is key
• (e)xpression – SHARE!

Several videos were shown through the presentation and there was a clear futurist lean to them. While the below wasn’t the video shown – it certainly does help capture current socialnomics trends:

Takeaways and Observations

• Like Eric Mazur, a key theme that emerged was that the learning relationship is more important than the tool. 
• We can leverage the technology for some really great outcomes – one example was Pokemon Go and the way that it go people active and outside. 
• Comparison has been drawn with Kevin Honeycutt‘s keynote. I went back into my archives and found some of the gems I recorded in 2012:
  • “It’s a beautiful time to be a human being. Anything is possible”
  • “Even good kids will do stupid things if no one is watching: They need us on our digital playground”
  • “A student that asks ‘why do I need to know this?’ is asking a legitimate question!”
  • “How can we make it OK to invent? Do we have a culture that can sustain invention?”
  • “If we all we are doing it to prepare students to pass tests then what is the point? We are just building middle managers.”

uLearn17 – Eric Mazur

Keynote #1 – Innovating education to educate innovators

Eric Mazur keynote (collaborative notes) was a story that captured his journey from being under the illusion that he was the best Physics lecturer to someone that reformed his approach to teaching.

As a Physics lecturer at Harvard, Eric was repeating the teaching style that he had experienced as a student. Transmitting knowledge by lecturing to the class. He told humourous stories of approaching teaching with a textbook such as finding a textbook that was out of print so the students couldn’t just teach themselves from their own copy. If you have the same textbook as the students, what do you teach them? If you are just going to hand out the lecture notes at the end of the class, what was the point of the class?

Learning, he proposed, is a two step process:

1. Transfer of information
2. Assimilation of that information

For example, the keynote transferred information, and the dialogue I had with colleagues after the presentation and the writing of this blogpost is an opportunity to assimilate that information. The assimilation is the hard part, but it’s the part that gets the least attention. How can we shift our pedagogy to focus more on assimilation. The curse of knowledge is that once you understand something it’s hard to remember the difficulty of learning it. His framework is displayed on the right. It is explained fully in this blog.  The learning takes place in the discussion phase.

At times I found myself wandering into a cynical state of mind listening to these ideas. I was listening for innovation, but all I heard was the learning process being broken down into a simple understandable formula. These moments were quickly challenged by reflection on my own classroom as I realise how little assimilation space I’m providing. Eric’s ideas seems simple because they should be. However, the default is transmission, and too often do I revert back to this. I feel very enlivened by Eric’s ideas and also confident that this is going to make a big impact on my practice.

Takeaways and Observations

• If you are explaining something on the board – you aren’t engaging with your students. Face them.
• Relationships again affirmed. Emotional engagement in the learning another key theme.
• Mentimeter is a tool to help facilitate the framework; perusall is the platform Eric suggested.
• How much are students dependent on a correct answer for emotional investment in a question? How do open ended questions fit in the framework? And most importantly: what skills do students need to be able to actively engage in this way?

uLearn17 Preparation

In the past I’ve found it really useful to synthesise lots of information about the upcoming conference through preparing this kind of blogpost (see uLearn15 and uLearn16). It develops my prior knowledge giving me the opportunity to get more out of the conference. This is just a post to process some of the prior information about the keynotes and key threads to get me in the zone. I’m doing this in a self-beneficial way but something might be interesting here – the preparation for ulearn16 post that Anne Kenneally put together is a much better general audience resource.

Conference Themes

• Connect: Sharing knowledge and ideas
• Collaborate: Working together and developing relationships
• Innovate: Innovation and sustainability

Conference Strands

• Learning digitally / Te ako ā-matihiko
• Learning in communities / Te ako ā-hapori
• Learning for success / Te ako kia angitu

Keynotes

The four keynotes this year have a range of exciting topics and perspectives to share:

Eric Mazur – Innovating education to educate innovators

I will show how shifting the focus from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes independent thinking.

Eric Mazur has a long successful history of promoting ‘interactive teaching’ or ‘peer instruction’. His website contains some previous keynotes which all link back to these themes. He is part of a team that developed Learning Catalytics, “an interactive student response tool that encourages team-based learning by using students’ smartphones, tablets, or laptops to engage them in interactive tasks and thinking.” It would be great to see this approach modelled in a uLearn keynote!

Dr Ann Milne – Colouring in the white spaces: Cultural identity and community in whitestream schools

She will challenge us to find and reflect on the white spaces in our own thinking and practice, and to actively work towards changing them.

I had the pleasure of reading Dr Ann Milne‘s book “Coloring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools” recently and was absolutely blown again by the ideas in it. She talks extensively about colonisation, white privilege, systemic racism and has a very practical approach to changing things. The video below (plus a companion blogpost) and the her Q&A with Core Education give context to where Milne’s thinking is at. I’m expecting her keynote will lay down a real challenge to the NZ teaching profession.

Brad Waid – Engaging the globally connected student of today: A look at emerging technology, gaming and digital citizenship

Brad pushes us to look at the engaging factors students are faced with on a daily basis and how to leverage them in a learning context.

Brad Waid is a futurist with lots of experience with technology and education. His website shares some impressive achievements, recognising his leading thinking and ideas around technology and education integration. It is exciting for me to read about his interest in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality as this year is the first time I’ve been exploring using immersive technologies in my Media Studies classroom. I’m interested in how his ideas might align or challenge Richard Watson’s book Digital Vs Human.

Abdul Chohan- Changing belief: Apple technology in the classroom

Abdul will discuss how the transformational redesign of learning with Apple technology has been essential for the success of every student and wider community.

The 4 minute video below captures Abdul Chohan’s educational perspective, which is clear through his journey of turning around ESSA Academy.  The story of what they achieved through mobile based learning is captured in this article and this conference presentation. To me the story speaks of the democratising power of technology and the importance of access in order to achieve equity. I’m interested in what angle Chohan brings to uLearn and how the story might be different for schools in 2017.

 

uLearn16 – Digital and Learner-Centred Delivery

‘Digital and learner-centred delivery: what’s different and how does it work in reality?’

By Cornel Fuhri (Scots College) and Shanan Holm (iQualify/Open Polytechnic)

When learner experience is put at the centre of learning design at a platform level, what changes? In this technological age, when students have constant access to devices, how do we teach them in a way that they want to learn, and that we can manage to teach? Is there a balance between pre-packed learnings and just-in-time teaching and learning? What changes are needed in tools to support assessment in this world? How do we make sure key concepts are covered while allowing for flexibility and discovery? This session will explore these questions and provide ideas on how they can be achieved.

Raised some general questions about e-learning and what digital learning looks like. Breakout covered familiar territory in terms of this area. But this neatly moved into a sales pitch for iQualify which is focused on the L in LMS. Effectively, it’s a really polished and sexy version of moodle. The perspective was a well worn pathway of contemporary thinking around digital tools. The selling points o the system stem from:

• Learning experiences
• Flexibility
• Digital Assessment

There were some interesting points and reminders about good practice. The comments on assessment contained strong ideas, deconstructing the notion of summative assessment as authentic, affirming that assessment needs to be early and often. It also provoked my thinking around using a Learning Management System and the restrictions that are imposed by locking down a course. The focus on learning outcomes is something that sits uncomfortably with me as the learning is so teacher-directed. Why determine the learning outcomes before meeting the students? The presentation didn’t offer much clarity in terms of differentiation and how this promotes learner agency or student voice. The tool claimed to be learner centred, but I’m cynical as a student who can determine what pace they go at doesn’t necessary get to be at the centre of their learning. I don’t think the tool supports this – it is still the teacher and their philosophy who dictates how agentic their classroom is.

What is frustrating about this breakout is that the conversation was directed into practice around the tool, investigating how to deal with the unexpected and the ins and outs of how the tool works including how to share URLs with students. This confused space between pedagogy and practical wasn’t particularly supportive to a deep learning experience, but it really did just shape itself as a sales pitch. I feel like jumping into a LMS like this closes off the learning experience rather that opens it up. Great for a Polytech – not appropriate for my classroom.

uLearn16 – Assessing Deep Learning

By Margot McKeegan and Derek Wenmoth

Deep Learning is the key focus of an international collaboration led by Michael Fullan, involving clusters and networks of schools working together to build knowledge and practices that develop deep learning and foster whole system change. In this workshop participants will be introduced to the measures being used to evaluate the deep learning in this programme, and experience how these are applied in a practical way to form judgements about the learning that is occurring.

Notes below are a bit sporadic representing the sort of spitfire nature of the session where Derek threw out a lot of provocations. The notes written here are largely responses captured from my own thinking or something contributed from the group attending the workshop. Lots of things to continue unpacking.

Key questions:

• What is deep learning?
• How might we measure it?
• What evidence would we use?

What is deep learning? Collaborative padlet. No one was talking about tests or national standards etc. Connecting this to the learning stories that we’ve experienced. What indicators do we use?

What does deep learning look like? What does it sound like, look like, feel like? When learning is deep it will feel hard and frustrating. The challenge of overcoming something because it is hard is what makes the learning worthwhile. It will involve emotion where the students and the teachers are excited – mutual respect. Zone of proximal development – it stretches people. Challenge for educators thinking about scaffolding the processes so that the learning is accessible. It sounds like students being about to articulate their learning, using their voice.

How is this measured? Consider the models of Bloom’s Taxonomy, SAMR, AsTTle, and SOLO Taxonomy. How do you know if someone is successful? Co-construct the success criteria with the students. Allows deeper learning of ourselves – how has the learning changed you as a learner? The idea of self-empowerment and leadership allowing the learner to become more self-aware and global citizens.

Connection to the movement in the media whereby news stories are about the soundbite or the headline. Do we still value the 6 o’clock news? Is news coverage now surface level, or deep.

New pedagogies foster deep learning. It has to occur in four dimensions: pedagogical practices, leaning partnerships, learning environments, leveraging digital. Building precision. The focus of most of the workshops discussion was pedagogical practices.

This image on the right is taken from this blogpost which unpacks the new pedagogies for deep learning. The model below gives criteria and indicators that can be used (and were used) to assess a lesson plan:

While it is easy to be critical of something in this context, the challenge is to apply the same critique to our own lesson plans.

If you think you’re already doing it. Ask for a second opinion