Doing IT Differently - B: Personalised Learning

What will be different at HC in 2008?

B: Personalised Learning

2008 will be the first year that Tasmanian students beginning year 11 will have a well developed and formally submitted Personal Pathway Plan indicating their educational and vocational intentions. Pathway progress will be reviewed and plans adapted if necessary before the end of 2009/10 as part of the qualification process for the new Tasmanian Certificate of Education.

In 2008 all students who are doing a Computing subject at HC will develop a Personal Learning Plan where they will map out the learning, teaching and assessment they require for their chosen pathway. Within their timetabled computing course time students will be able to navigate through a number of learning options such as:

• teacher directed tasks
• student directed tasks
• teacher and student presentations
• online tutorials, presentations, expertise
• small group and one-to-one tutorials
• social learning options - see later post
• assessment options - see later post

Student attendance will be recorded from both attendance and participation - face-to-face and online. Students will be required to show evidence of a minimum participation of 5 hrs per week. This can be done in a number of ways:

• formal attendance at sessions - recorded ftf and online
• weekly online journal (blog with desired privacy settings) - RSS feed to teacher
• Microblogging using Twitter - RSS feed to teacher
• Social learning activities - RSS feed(s) to teacher
• Learning folio - tagged documents with RSS activity feed to teacher
• weekly email

Students and teachers will manage learning, teaching and assessment through the college Portal, college Moodle, college ELGG, RSS aggregators and/or other negotiated ICT tools and services (eg IM, Google Apps).

Previous - A: Team Teaching Next - C: Social Learning

Doing IT Differently - A: Team Teaching

What will be different in 2008 at Hobart College?

A - Team Teaching

Over the last couple of years a few colleagues have been doing some team teaching. This has involved teaming classes that are timetabled at the same time. In some cases classes were combined for tasks or presentations and at other times teachers have swapped to bring specialist knowledge or processes to a class. We have learned a little about what to do - and when...

In 2008 all Computing students will experience team teaching. We have deliberately 'lined' classes for more efficient pairing and we will use some 'off-line' time to enable even larger groups to meet occasionally from across the 'lines'. (We have a 5 'line' timetable with some 'off-line' times where no formal classes are lined.)

Some team teaching in Computing has become a necessity in recent years because no individual teacher can expect keep up with all aspects of many courses. We will now formalise and extend our team teaching.

Each computing teacher will be able to:

• meet a single class as usual in the classroom
• meet a combined class in a lecture theatre or a new 'double-classroom' - with both teachers present or just one thus freeing up the other teacher
• offer short 15 min presentations (teacher or student) which are recorded and made available via web or mp3/4 player - giving students the choice to attend in person
• meet students online - synchronously or asynchronously - giving the option of reducing face-to-face 'contact time' for the whole class
• offer tutorials or workshops to small numbers of students when required

In addition, some selected English classes will also be involved in team teaching - as they have in the recent past - but this time these classes will be located near the computing classes and Computing and English teachers will team teach across subject areas. eg Computing teachers will meet with English students to look at some online tools and English teachers will meet with computing students to look at digital story telling...

As part of the team teaching process we intend to advertise teacher expertise online so that advanced students requiring specialist assistance can contact the relevant teacher directly - either online or face-to-face. We hope to also include some student experts in this service - see Social Learning.

Team teaching arrangements will not affect other classes operating across the campus that are using the timetable as 'normal'.

Previous - Introduction Next - B: Personalised Learning

Doing IT Differently...

THE TIME HAS COME... to KNOW a new education system... to DO new things in education... to BE different in education...

Heard it all before? Well yes... these things were said in 1998 with the 21st century looming... and the recognition that education needed to change.

After a decade of talking and projects and reforms - and learning - it now might be time for actual transformation to occur... or at least the next stage of our (my) transformation where we (I) actually KNOW how we (I) want ACT and BE in education.

How different? My sense of difference comes as I reflect on my personal and systemic journey of the last decade - and in particular the last 2 years - and then attempt to project myself into 2008/9.

Over the next few posts I intend to reflect on the key initiatives and understandings of the last two years that I think will shape my - and my students' and colleagues - experience of education in 2008 and beyond in our State system.

Gee - did I just write that - this should be interesting... :-)

Next - A: Team Teaching

I Couldn't Resist...

After my last post on ARGs I could not resist the hype of CSI:NY going into Second Life yesterday. I put on my Hobart College T-shirt and followed Detective Mac Taylor into New York and a "compelling transmedia experience" as Henry Jenkins calls it. I certainly had fun... and I didn't even get to the serious part...

While on the CSI virtual set I spoke with others using the new voice chat - it was very clear - as were the US accents - and it added an odd kind of authenticity to the whole experience.

Viewers of this end-of-series episode of CSI:NY now have a few months to enter virtual Ney York and investigate the crime scene to solve the murders - before the series resumes next year. I saw many people earnestly following the murder trail while I was in-world. Could this be homework?

What are the possibilities for ARGs in education?

Ewan McIntosh has a good post with more links.

ARG TINAG - on a Quest

Arg Tinag was born in 1333AD. It's now 1352 and he is visiting Hobart College fresh from training at a prestigious Academy...

ARG and TINAG are also acronyms for Alternate Reality Game and This Is Not A Game...

To construct this game I've created machinima in Neverwinter Nights to tell Arg's story - and leave clues for others to follow in his footsteps. The clues are distributed across machinima, a web site, Arg's MySpace (he has a 'portal' to 2007) and our physical campus.

Episode 1 (above) introduces players to Arg's Quest. In Episode 2 Arg gets vital information from Joe - our real-life security guard - and some penguins (which are a bit of a MySpace meme with our students this year). To progress in the game students have to talk to Joe and decipher a clue given by the penguins which leads them to Arg's MySpace portal. Only players who make friends with Arg get to see further clues.

Episode 3 brings the promise of gold - virtual and real - if players can solve the clues which involves them in finding the campus dog Louis - in real life...

What's next? I've no idea - the story now has a life of its own... :-)

Only a few students have discovered Arg Tinag to date... so I'll now sit back and see who else wants to play... A bit of an experiment in viral marketing as well... :-)

I've found this to be a fascinating mix of the virtual and real - and quite new for some students who had to be convinced that part of the quest involved them leaving their computers...

Engaging Second Lives

Many - but not all - of my students are living part of their lives in or through digital environments - engaging and often exciting digital environments! Most do not see it that way however - but then I would probably not say that I live in or through print media. It's just everyday living - integrated living perhaps...

I'm continuing my exploration of the educational potential of online immersive worlds - summarised in the above presentation which perhaps simplistically refers to how some people have changed the way they engage with the internet from the information Web 1.0 to the participatory Web 2.0 to the immersive Web 3.0 (or Web 3.D).

This year I've noticed more students plunging into virtual worlds at every opportunity. Many of these worlds are now available through internet browsers. Angela Thomas from the University of Sydney has a brilliant presentation (with audio) on the role of play in immersive worlds and talks about their transformative potential on students and pedagogy. Well worth a look.

I've allowed students to play in these worlds in my multimedia class. Partly to see why they are so engaged, partly to see if I can compete with tasks I set, partly to see if I can use these worlds as a learning environment...

A few weeks ago I purchased several copies of Neverwinter Nights - it has a Toolset for game design - and students have really enjoyed it. After a short time playing it they moved on to designing their own landscapes dotted with characters and buildings and portals... They are now constructing stories with conversations to engage the player.

Neverwinter is not an online persistent virtual world like World of Warcraft or Second Life and that has some advantages for the classroom - although it is not without technical difficulties to get it to work in a school environment.

I'm still thinking about using Teen Second Life but there are security and safety issues to address - worth the challenge I think.

Integrating Science and Soul in Education

Sue has just completed a great presentation on Science and Soul for the upcoming CONASTA ICASE conference in Perth. It's in two parts and is 25 mins long. Great visuals!



Part 1:

Part 2:

Best Practice in SL Education 07

I've just attended my first conference in SecondLife - the International SecondLife Best Practices in Education 07

Here is a short clip that shows what it was like to attend one session... Apparently there were over 900 attendees with many venues - and overflow venues - full.

Presentations were simulcast by the SL Cable Network to screens in the overflow venues in SL and on the web.

I managed to get to 5 sessions - all very good.

• Cynthia Calongne (Lyr Lobo-SL) Colorado Technical University in Second Life: The Amusement and the Maze Game Class Projects
• John Jamison (Virtual Bacon-SL) Two Years of Introducing Educators to Second Life in 60 Minutes, or:Tips for Dinosaur Wrangling
• Peggy Sheehy (Maggie Marat-SL), Catherine Parsons (Victoria Gloucster-SL), Kevin Jarrett (KJ Hax-SL) K-12 Panel: "To Affinity and Beyond: Fostering meaningful and productive relationships in a virtual reality environment"
• Peggy Sheehy (Maggie Marat-SL) Ramapo Islands: A New Dimension in Learning
• Lindy McKeown (Decka Mah-SL) Action Learning in Second Life

CLIP: SL Best Practices in Education - Click for some snapshots

See also other participant's pics on Flickr.

I made a number of very useful contacts between sessions - some I hope to work with as I pursue the technical, educational and policy challenges of getting access to SecondLife in my school...

The educational benefits to students were made very clear by the above presenters - and the oft repeated advice in many sessions was to get educators and technicians and policy makers in there to see and experience an immersive world for themselves.

A Folio of eFolios

We are using a number of digital folio technologies this year - and we may continue using most of them. Each seems to suit a different student and teacher needs...

MS SharePoint (2003)

We host and administer SharePoint on campus. Every student can create a personal space with:

• room to upload and share documents and digital media
• message space
• tasks list - with task management functionality
• links and other modules such as discussion forums and surveys
• access control - students can set who has what level of access
• presencing - the system indicates who is currently online - integrates with MS Office
  
  

It's also possible for users to add modules that display del.icio.us tags and flickr feeds from mobile phone uploads:




Moodle

We use an off-campus service with web administration. Several teachers are using Moodle for their classes with

• space to upload documents and digital media
• forums and blogs - with tagging
• news, calendar, messages
• student management and statistics
  

Teachers find that Moodle provides a more controlled on-line learning environment that is particularly suited to Open Learning classes - although a few other classes also use it.

ELGG - Social Networking

This is the first time we have tried a social networking learning environment. We are using a hosted Elgg service while we evaluate it. We are currently using it:

• for some classes and special interest groups (SIGs)
• to host learning journals
• as a digital folio for tagged multimedia
• to aggregate RSS feeds
• to connect students with similar interests and learning goals
  

Although we only have 80 users on this system at the moment the tags are beginning to build and link people and resources:

Some of our current questions are:

• How can year 12 students take their digital folios with them as they move on to work and further education?
• Should we attempt to provide one solution that attempts to fit all needs or should we offer several tools for students and teachers to choose from?
• How can students manage digital folios for assessment and potential employers and themselves?
• What is the relationship between our 'official' digital folios and other online spaces that students use to upload multimedia such as DeviantArt or YouTube or MySpace?
  

Making Worldviews Explicit

I've tweaked my worldview presentations to English classes this year... partly to fit in with this year's texts and themes - and partly to say a little more about postmodernism and relativism.

The year 11/12 classes appeared to have stronger relativistic assumptions this year with many believing that we can do little more in dialogue than agree to express our own views and hear and respect the views of others.

The possibility of complimentary, inclusive or integral worldviews were very new concepts for most of the students. I spent a little more time this year introducing traditionalism, modernism, postmodernism and integralism.

Our discussion around "What is Love?" covered all four integral quadrants:

As did group discussion on "The Meaning of Life."

I was then able to generalise the 'integral mapping' of any issue like this:

Both the students and their teachers have used this generalised integral map in subsequent classes. I'll do some further evaluation later on in their courses...

Mobile Learning Fun

A few weeks ago I bought my first mobile phone - yeah I know... not many other people can believe it either - and me an IT Manager :-) Anyway I've been learning just what a (Motorola Maxx V6) mobile can do in the classroom - and I'm really enjoying it.

I recently polled 200 of our students (out of 900) and found that mobile phone ownership is very high - and 91% of student mobiles have a camera and 75% can record video. 70% of students spend up to $30 per month on their mobiles... 20% spend $50 or more.

Not only are students carrying mobiles but more are bringing laptops and gaming devices such as PS2s and DS Lites on campus. After Easter many of these devices will be able to connect to our new campus-wide wireless network.

I wanted to explore the educational potential of mobile phones for several reasons:

1. they enable multimedia capture of student learning - pictures, video and audio
   
2. they enable direct SMS communication with students - less than 20% of students are using our official email service (it used to be 70% 3 years ago)


3. they have potential use for delivery of mobile learning


4. every teacher now has a wireless laptop greatly improving networked access in the classroom.
   

After learning how to use my phone - which was no easy task since manuals are written for people who already know how to use a mobile phone (yes I read manuals) - I launched into the mobile worlds of moblogging, bluetooth, java applications and 2D barcodes. My main guide was Leonard Low's Mobile Learning Blog.

I learned how to send pictues to my Flickr account which I linked directly to my Journalism class MS SharePoint portal. This proved to be very useful because I could immediately share pictures with my students.

I use this in all my classes taking opportunistic photo's whenever I want to capture individual or group experience or evidence.

I then discoverered bluetooth! I bought a $30 USB Bluetooth adaptor, plug it into any computer and send and receive files to and from mobiles and laptops in the classroom - for free!

And as a bonus I now know something that many students do not - their mobiles have bluetooth. After telling them how to turn it on my PC monitor began to pick up their devices - we had a personal area network - PAN.

My next adventure was in running java applications. I downloaded Remote Control and was able to start applications on my laptop from my mobile. I used it to start PowerPoint, browse for the presentation I wanted and then move fowards and backwards through the slides.

Even better my mobile showed me what the next slide was while giving me the notes for the current slide - brilliant! (You can see the bluetooth adapter plugged into the side of my laptop.)

My plan is to put bluetooth adapters into every computer lab so that students can transfer pictures, video and audio to computers for free.

I also played with 2D barcodes - fascinating - although I can't think of how I might use it at the moment...

In a related project we have signed up to an online SMS service so that teachers can send and receive text messages on their computers - using a normal keyboard. Early trials were very positive and now ten teachers have joined the project. Some teachers have free SMS available on their mobile plans and will use that to message students about their attendance or courses.

As you can see I'm enjoying my new mobile - and I'm also engaging my students :-)

Integrating Science and Soul in Education

My wife has just put her recently completed thesis online!

To quote from her abstract:

"This is an auto-ethnographic study into the lived experience of a science teacher as she attempts to transform her science teaching practice and the practice of other science teachers over a period of 15 years. In exploring what it means to be a holistic educator she is faced with disorienting dilemmas which cause her to question underpinning assumptions, values and curriculum frameworks which inform traditional science teaching practice and culture. In trying to reconcile science and soul in the pedagogical space of a physics classroom her journey requires a deep investigation of self in various cultures – science culture, educational culture, modernist and postmodernist cultures."

Check out the contents... check out the cartoons and art work... listen to her introduction...

Phenomenal work!

Teaching for Engaged Learning

I'm still mulling over what "engaged learning" might mean - this time from a teacher (or teachers - no single teacher can do all this!) point of view. There are a number of ways of mapping this and the following may not be the best - it tends to imply some isolation of concepts that are very much connected and interdependant.... but too many lines begins to look very messy - which it is!

I might just let this sit a while... it needs work... and i'm not sure how useful it is - except to show how messy learning and teaching really are... :-)

Engaging Learners - What's Different?

What's new about engaging learners? Following the thread of the last post I've attempted to map out some of the factors I believe have changed the way we might need to engage learners.

I've shown four areas (pink) that have changed significantly over the last few decades - some incrementally such as educational research informing learning, teaching and assessment practices - and some transformationally such as new worldviews or transdisciplinary inquiry.

Briefly with a couple of examples:

Engaging with ALL Students: Today we recognise that all human beings are natural learners and that learning should be meaningful and joyful for everyone. For educational institutions this means providing engaging learning environments and experiences for a wide diversity of learners. For teachers it means catering for individual learner differences.

Educational Research: Most of what we know about how the brain learns has only been discovered in the last decade or so. Today we have a much better understanding of assessment - of, for and as learning. Our knowledge of the advantages and limitations of different curriculum structures has improved.

Knowledge and Disciplines: Today we have immediate access to a rapidly increasing knowledge base. Over the last few decades multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary inquiry have become increasingly important. New worldviews have transformed many disciplines - eg deep ecology, quantum physics, transpersonal psychology...

Social, Cultural and Planetary Change: Today's learners are living with, and being affected by, social, cultural and planetary change. Some of this change is incremental - faster, bigger, better... but more of the same - albeit at fast rate of change. Other change is transformational involving new ways of thinking, doing and being.

• Values and Worldviews - There is an increasing recognition of the need to balance reductionistic, positivistic and materialistic thinking with systems, ecological, quantum, and network approaches. Organisations are increasingly considering 2nd (people), 3rd(planetary) and 4th (spirituality) bottom lines.
• Globalisation - Through agreements in global trade, technology, economics and politics the world has become more closely connected and interdependent.
• Technology - Advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence... are beginning to transform society. Information and communication technologies have already transformed many aspects of society and culture. A significant proportion of youth think and behave differently because of these technologies.
• Sustainability - There are several challenges facing the planet that require us to adopt different ways of thinking and being.
• Social Justice - Issues of equity and social justice requiring systemic approaches have become more prominent.
• Workplace - Employees now require so-called "21st Century" skills such as information literacy, problem solving, metacognition, collaboration... for the workplace.
• Authority - Church and Nation, family and career do not provide the same sense of authority and purpose for many people - particularly youth. On the other hand there is a rise in fundamentalism.

What have I missed?

It needs a list of references... (although you can see many in the list of books on the side of this blog - not to mention the delicious tags...)

Anyway... in summary...

The conversation about engaging learners is different today because:

1. We are talking about engaging all learners.
2. We know more about how to engage learners.
3. We need to engage learners in 21st century knowledge, skills and understanding
4. Many learners are enculturated differently through new and different technology, commercial values, worldviews... Traditional sources of meaning are not as relevant for many young people.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly we recognise that this issue is complex and requires systems thinking. We also know that there is no ONE solution. One size does not fit all.