learning

The more the vision of the future changes…

Posted on by ColinJagoe

… the more it stays the same. I was talking to a colleague at school yesterday about our NPDL project, and some of the things we are working on. She shared with me video that Pearson Ed has put out called Rey’s Storey: School of Thought – A vision for the future of learning.

As I started watching it, I was struck a memory, so did a quick search and found the video by Apple called Knowledge Navigator, which was their vision of the future. But from 1987. Take a few minutes and watch them both.

So. What do you think? If Apple has the ‘vision of the future’ in 1987, and I don’t really see it as much different from Peason’s ‘vision of the future’ in 2014, what has changed? Have we made any progress toward this vision? I’ve been thinking a lot about barriers to progress in edu and wonder how to move ’em.

Learning as Teachers

Posted on by ColinJagoe

We had a PD day today at our school, and we spent some time engaging in self-directed learning. Our VP @scottjohnsonVP gave teachers an opportunity to engage in whatever learning they wanted to. We are piloting a new digital tool called Edsby at our school this semester, and myself and a few other teachers were charged with running a session on getting teachers introduced to it and up and running with their classes.  He also asked each of us to report back to him about what we learned over the morning in whatever it was we chose to do. (This was met with an interesting chorus of groans from some teachers… 🙂 )

My hope was that we’d not do a presentation, but rather that the teachers would just dive in and play in Edsby to learn and figure it out. Interestingly, many were expecting a ‘show me how’ type session. In the end, we pulled Edsby up on a projector and basically did a Q&A for an hour about how to access and use different aspects of the tools. I also sent the VP my reflection for the day which is pasted below. Wondering if others have experienced similar things, and how to best approach the idea of giving teachers autonomy to self-direct their learning. Any comments or experiences to share?

In the introduction to Edsby session, I learned that teachers sometimes need a kick start to learn a new digital tool, but once you cut them loose in the right direction they dive right in, and ask questions and help each other learn in ways that make sense to them. For people who are comfortable with digital tools, they have a shorter learning curve, but still benefit from having someone who can maybe work with them to find answers, even if they don’t know the answers themselves. In the effort to help students become more self-directed learners it is important to recognize that many of us are still used to other ‘experts’ tell us how to do things, and that if we’re going to become better at helping students become self-directed that we may first have to start with helping teachers learn how to self-direct their own learning processes.

Lessons from Lessons

Posted on by ColinJagoe

I did something last night that I haven’t done is more than 30 years. I had a guitar lesson. I took a few years of guitar as a kid but gave up on the lessons at some point due to lack of interest on my part. I later picked up the guitar again and taught myself to play, mostly by using magazines with music from bands I wanted to learn.

There’s a lesson there about the nature of motivation in learning, but that’s not what this post is about.

I had an interesting experience with my new guitar teacher yesterday. He was showing me a system and way to learn how to use scales to quickly improvise over different chords. I was able to follow it for the most part, but not as quickly as he was explaining. After a short time, my mind was a blur as I struggled to mentally keep up with what he was showing and explaining. I know that my goal is to take the next week and practice this idea at a much slower pace, but it reminded me of what it feels like to be a learner. In particular, it reminded me what it was like to have a grasp of some information but know that there was large swathes that were passing you by.

Kind of what its like for many of our students on a day to day basis.

It’s good to be reminded what it’s like to be a learner.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/colinjagoe/5334354490/in/photolist-a4AgvS-dKsV18-7t9VqF-a7mTUZ-7xLBg4-9RTPvx-aoqtW9-9xPyZz-7vf3P9-a8sQo8-8RXJEh-6QMVs1-6QMUTj-9agBoq-98nXK9-dS89S1-7Vmo7w-9uHceY-7z2DNF/player/

Who are you working for?

Posted on by ColinJagoe

Promesse de l'avenirI’ve had this idea in my head for a few weeks now. I was talking to a teacher in our school about a really cool project she was running with her class. She was worried that taking 5 or 6 days out of the semester was too much. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to cover everything. I told her not to think of it that way, as she was replacing some other activities with something far richer and deeper. She still was having trouble thinking of it that way. She said that there are ‘certain things that they need to know for the next level.’

So it got me thinking, who was she talking about? Was she thinking that she had to provide the kids with some specific knowledge or skills that they absolutely needed, or was she thinking about the next course they may take and that if the students seemed to be lacking in something it would reflect upon her as a teacher in the eyes of another teacher?

Then I got thinking about the all-too-common phases that teachers use to ‘motivate’ kids. “You’ll never be able to get away with that in (fill in some upcoming level above current level here).” Or the oft uttered “Why didn’t they teach them this in (fill in some prior grade here).”

Then it struck me. Who do we work for?

Are we working for the kids in front of us, or for the imagined future-teachers that the kids may have? Or are we working for our colleagues in the next grade, or the senior courses in the rooms down the hall?

I submit that if we spent more time worrying about providing quality educational opportunities for the students we have in front of us now, that we’d be better off in both cases. That the students now would learn more and better things, and that the future-teachers will appreciate their skills. For my part, I’ll get over the fact that maybe students haven’t had the chance to master some specific bit of knowledge if they are better learners, and eager to give things a shot in my class.

So, as I thought about it, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to be concerned what the teachers next year, or any year after that, (university prof’s I’m looking at you!)  may wish for me to do in my class, I’m only going to worry about what the students in my class need, and what will work best for them.

How about you? Are you working for another colleague? Or some imagined future-teacher?

Who says you can’t go home?

Posted on by ColinJagoe

Tomorrow marks the start of another school year, and for the first time in 5 years I’m heading back to a classroom. I made the decision last year to not return to my role as a consultant in our school board. There was a few factors that played into the choice, most notably the arrival of Andrew in our family. Other factors included being tired of the distance to get to the office when we had purposefully chosen to build our home 7 years ago in-town. I now have 3.4 km one way to school, when it was 86 km to the board office. Crazy. It feels like I get 2hrs of my life back everyday.

Over the summer, I had more than a few people give me odd reactions to the news that I was returning to a classroom. The most common was to ask me if it was my choice? I’m not sure what I was supposed to answer to that. It was my choice, but is it one that people aren’t expected to make? Do not many folks move from those central board-level positions go back to where they can actually interact with students on a daily basis and, ya know, teach? I know of several who have. Granted, there are others that move on to administration positions as well. But there was enough people who gave me the same reaction, that I noticed it as a trend. Odd.

At any rate, I’m back in the classroom, have a great timetable that I was totally not expecting to get, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the year will bring. Lots of ideas of things to try out in the class are in my head, and I think the biggest thing will be trying to decide how to narrow down those ideas to make it manageable. Small steps to start I suppose, but I’m excited to be getting back to the science classroom. Hopefully my Jedi teaching powers are still intact…

My classroom awaits!

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Clean for a fresh start.

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Andrew and #learning2030

Posted on by ColinJagoe

Warning: Tired parent. Rambling ahead! 

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a taping of TVO’s The Agenda at Trent U in Peterborough. They are doing a series focused on education, and this show focused on the use of technology by teachers and students. I was fortunate enough to get to speak a bit during the show and rambled on a bit towards the end of the program. There’s been lots of great discussion around the issues raised, and I hope that this serves to continue to elevate the level of conversation about changes to education in Ontario. TVO has called their series Learning 2030 because a child born last year when they started would be due to graduate high school in 2030

I’ve been considering all the challenges and changes in education a lot these past weeks. Due in no small part to this.

Andrew
Meet Andrew. Andrew was born this past weekend on March 16th. Andrew has an older sister Anna who is currently in Grade 4 as well. So our family now has doubled our stakes in the value of the Ontario education system. Andrew enters a world where he will never not know about the iPad. Where he will always be able to see his grandparents face to face, even though some of them live 1200 kms away. His world will include video surveillance and real-time tracking and analytics about many aspects of his life. His generation will face challenges that we are still in the process of uncovering, let alone dealing with.

Of immediate concern is the education system that he will be entering shortly. Full day kindergarten awaits him (at the moment anyway, political winds of change notwithstanding). Will it be helpful to him or not? Will Ontario continue its path towards more high-stakes, full-scale testing in the name of ‘improvement’ that can be measured in numbers that make for happy real-estate agents and politicians? Will his teachers continue to be maligned in the pubic sphere by politicians and a populace that think they understand what’s wrong with education and how to ‘fix’ it. Will his education consist of problem-solving, deep thinking and understanding, or will it be a ramped up version of worksheets for a digital age?

As you can sense, I have some questions…   As a teacher, I’m not sure that I see answers that I deem worthy of implementation. I wonder how to do some of the things that I think are required, and look at the whole Titanic-sized system and wonder how we can change the course of the ship. Sometimes I think that the answer is to reboot it completely, and rather than make change in the one we have, to think of ways to re-invent it from the ground up. Of course, there are numerous questions that arise with that, due to the highly politicized nature of education that is funded via public coffers. Everyone deserves a say, and everyone thinks that they deserve to be not only listened to, but obeyed. Democracy works on principles of the value of debate, but not every idea is created equal, or can be implemented.

So what to do? Do we examine the concept of curriculum itself? Change the way we actually produce and write the documents that are meant to guide learning because those documents are predicated on everyone learning the same thing at the same time. Will modern learning look like this? Do we examine the point of schools themselves? Do we examine what it means to be a teacher? Is what happens in a classroom the only thing of value? Do students learn valuable things when we engage them in things that are traditionally ‘extra’-curricular? Does this mean that they are not ‘extra’? Does this mean that things like the workday, job descriptions and pay need to be examined to critically assess whether or not they would actually meet the needs of a learning environment for not just 2013, but off into the future of 2030 and beyond?

Big questions I know, but I’m not sure that we can do anything without asking some of those deep questions. Do I have answers? I’m not sure, I have ideas, but most of the ideas I have seem to require a fundamentally different system that the one we see now. And I’m not sure how to address that.

I do know one thing. As a teacher, I’ve been convinced of the value of open-ended, deep learning that gets beyond a surface approach to curriculum topics, so I will continue to advocate and promote that in my work. As Anna & Andrew’s dad, I’ve got a new sense of urgency. Change takes time, and deep, systemic change takes that much more. We may have been talking about what learning will look like for Ontario students in 2030, but now I’m talking about what learning looks like for my kids. Not just in the future.

Today.

Intro Guitar Class

Posted on by ColinJagoe

I’ve just joined a open class offered up by @bryanjack. He’s teaching intro guitar at his school, and opened up the class to the web. I’ve been thinking about how to play more and learn more guitar and music lately, and this seems to be a great idea. A community of players of all abilities working together, jamming and learning. Mostly I hope to get some motivation out of it. Learning some new things about songwriting, recording etc.. but mainly its the community of players that is the best thing. Really looking forward to seeing what students create, both in his class, and the online motley crew that he’s gathering together.

You can see my intro post and video over at the class website.

Rock on!

 

Maintaining a Web Presence

Posted on by ColinJagoe

So, today was fun. I got an email this morning that I had a new comment to approve on my website, and tapped my way to the WordPress app to do just that. When I did it, I recieved an error message. Then I moved to my laptop and attempted to get to it that way. It wouldn’t load, and I was getting server error messages.  I logged into the admin section of my web hosting service, and was unable to get to specific management components. 

uh oh. Sigh…. 

So, I sent off some messages and tweets to them, and waited. Quite soon, they replied to me and I went thru a series of troubleshooting with them via Twitter, live chat and email. Turns out, for some reason, my IP was being blocked on their server end. So I couldn’t get to my own site, even though it was freely available on the web for everyone else. I’m still not sure what the cause of the blacklisting was, and I’m hoping to hear back from the that it was just a glitch and not something I need to worry about.   But after my email hacking earlier in the week, I’m a little bit nervous of my web security. 

So, huge kudos to the folks at Doteasy, as they are quick to help and come to my rescue. Thanks a bunch! 

BUT, and there’a always a but, I’m not starting to wonder about the value of maintaining my own webspace. It seems that it might be simpler to leave this kind of maintenace to another provider. I’m also wondering about dumping some of my lesser used spaces online, as I’m not sure that having them has provided me any value, other than a long list of sites and passwords.

Something else to ponder as we head to a new year. Time for a cleanout maybe? 

Security Woes

Posted on by ColinJagoe

You know how you have things that you mean to do, and you keep putting off? Yeah. I’ve been meaning to beef up some of my account security with new passwords and stuff. It was on my list of things to do for the end of the year. But, as luck would have it, I was forced I to an early change. Somehow, on the night of the 25, someone accessed my email account from Albuquerque New Mexico. Since, I’ve never been to NM. It sure wasn’t me. Guess it was a wrong turn at Albuquerque. The hacker/bot then proceeded to email a ton of people some spam mail with links and phishing things.

So, after being notified by the ever vigilant @dougpete, I quickly changed passwords, the assessed what damage had been done. I also updated security on my email and other accounts.

Lesson learned. Never put it off.

And I apologize to anyone who got the spam from my account. It shouldn’t happen again.

Learning from learners

Posted on by ColinJagoe

Yesterday, I was able to help support @beachcat11 as she orchestrated a learning session for elementary teachers in KPRDSB. Cathy has been working with a small group of teachers as part of her TLLP project for this year exploring the use of social media in elementary classrooms. They’ve been working with a few different ideas and investigating the purpose and procedures for incorporating some of the social media tools into the classroom. photo

In the session, it was decided to focus on 2 areas, setting up a simple classroom blog that you can use with multiple authors (students) and using Edmodo as a social network for in-class use.

As part of this, Cathy brought along 2 of her students who have been acting as blog masters this year, co-coordinating the writing and posting process by the class. These two students wandered the room and helped the 25 teachers in attendance with getting their blog set up. Of the students’ mom was there, having driven him to the Education Centre. She was sitting in the back working away on her phone.

Later that day, after the students had left, we were talking about the concept of a Professional Learning Network and using Twitter as a source of professional learning. While we were doing this, a tweet came across my stream from @AlanaCallan and referenced our session. I was curious as to who she was replying to, and clicked the link to see more. Turns out the mom who had been sitting there had tweeted out via 4Square about what she and her son were doing.

proudmama

I quickly brought this up on-screen for all to see, and we talked about how this is only possible through the networked learning environments that we participate in. So, not only were we learning from students, we were able to see how this has impacts beyond our classroom into the community and parents that we connect with. A pretty powerful statement on being a learner, no matter what your age, and on being a networked learner.