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'.

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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