Tagged with "#teaching Archives - Mark Anderson's Blog"
Curation has always been an important weapon in the arsenal of a student but never before has it been easier to curate, gather, organise and collate information on topics. It is going to change the way in which we teach and the way in which students learn and can access information.
Robin Good is bang on in his detailed article here on the topic when he gives his ten reasons why curation is transforming the education landscape:
- An Overwhelming Abundance of Information Which Begs To Be Organized
- A Growing Number of “Open” Teaching / Learning Content Hubs
- Constantly Changing Information
- Real-World Info Is Not Held Inside Silos
- Fast-Food Info Consumption in Decline
- Job Market Changing – New Skills Needed
- Alternative Certification Systems Emerging
- Teachers Can Curate Their Textbooks
- Educational Marketplace Open to Thousands of Competitors
- Demand for Trusted Guidance
Link: http://www.masternewmedia.org/curation-for-education-and-learning/#ixzz23HvVB897
The management of these curations is becoming increasingly easy too with different providers giving you superb tools to support with this. Not only this, but with students being asked to organise and sort the information that they gather whilst completing tasks linked to their learning, curating the information in to a manageable format is critical to success. Curation is a key skill that students need to have and the providers give you the tools to facilitate that. You have got web clippers, little shortcuts that sit on your toolbar in your browser which make clipping snippets from your browser straight to your curation tool of choice. Many of the providers have multi platform apps too to support you in your ease of curating your tools. Take Pinterest for example, one of the most popular curation tools. You have it on your mobile device, your tablet, your browser and with social media tie ins too with Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy to get information on to your ‘board’ quickly, easily and effectively. Check this Pinterest board on iPads in education for example:
http://pinterest.com/techchef4u/ipad-lessons/
So how does this help students learn?
Well, it depends on what students are ‘learning’ and how you are managing your classroom and how they are either choosing to learn or being asked to learn. In my experience, thinking of the technology use as being cross curricular, having access to a curation tool means that students, wherever they are researching, finding out information, reading given articles or links, even if it’s simply notes (and Evernote provides itself here as a brilliant curation tool too – especially when you tie it in with some automation sites such as IFTTT (ifthisthenthat.com), curation can help a student to sort through the mire of information and put it in to some sense of order.
What are my top curation tools?
Pinterest
Evernote
Scoop.it
Pearltrees
What are yours? Would love to hear from you.
This past year preparing for the launch of iPads has been an interesting one for sure. I’ve been privileged to be able to work with amazing colleagues, students, parents, ADEs, other luminaries such as @fraserspeirs, @drdennis, @simon_elliott, @digitalroadtrip, @ostringer – it has provided yet again another brilliant learning curve for me.
I’ll go ahead and say it – I think the discussion on the iPad and Pedagogy needs to go further. Too many posts (and I am guilty of this too) focus on, “check out this cool app”, or “did you know the iPad can do this”; you’ve all seen them. I really feel we are past the time where we should be looking at the functionality of the iPad as a device and be looking at it in a way which ensures we are looking more at how learning can be redefined and modified through the use of the iPad.
@fraserspeirs wrote in his recent post following #ADE2012 institute in Cork about the next step for large educational organisations using iPads – he talks about the loss of networks (in a positive way), the changing of the school day because of how learning is changing and has changed in his environment. He goes on to talk about a point in time coming where there are no desktop machines for students anywhere as the mobile device caters for all needs. These things are great, but clearly Fraser and is well ahead of the learning curve than most. That said, we can learn a lot from his example.
I think a Critical Pedagogy is key when looking at iPad. Pedagogy at its definition level says “The method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.” Critical Pedagogy goes much further however and links far more, I think, to how the iPad should be used to transform learning (more on transformational learning later).
Critical Pedagogy is a philosophy of education by Henry Giroux as an “educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action.”(Giroux, H. (October 27, 2010) “Lessons From Paulo Freire”, Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 10/20/10).
Ira Shor defines Critical Pedagogy as
“Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning…”
…and this, surely, is what we want our students to achieve with their learning, supported by the iPad.
How does this take place though? How do students achieve this learning state through their leadership in the classroom by teachers?
Proponents of Critical Pedagogy go on to say:
“Critical Pedagogy includes relationships between teaching and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a continuous process of what they call “unlearning,” “learning,” and “relearning,” “reflection,” “evaluation,” and the impact that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom they believe have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call “traditional schooling.””
This I believe is key in ensuring success in how new technology, in this case iPads, can be used in education to bring about transformational learning.
@oldandrewuk (and I can’t believe I’m including him in a post about progressive, new world learning and education but here goes…) recently said in a tweet:
“Does your school have a member of SMT or senior teacher in charge of “teaching and learning”? Makes you wonder what the others are for.”
He has a point here, in that all teachers in a school are in charge of all of the teaching and learning that goes on within their educational setting. What he misses though is the importance of those teachers being challenged, supported and provided with skill sets that enable them to develop their own Critical Pedagogy; that comes from the leadership he mentions. Just as our learners develop over time and as such require new and innovative techniques to engage, inspire and support with their learning, so do teachers need to continue learning, both in terms of the skills they have and in the techniques they employ in the classroom. This is where ideas such as the SAMR model (among others) put forward by Ruben Puentedura play a massive part.
Teachers are professionals and have the skills, technique and experience to create engaging lessons that can lead to outstanding learning and teaching; when dealing with new technology however, some teachers don’t. As such there is a need to think carefully about how they use their technology and the technology in the hands of the students in their lessons. It is important that teachers are provided with the toolkit to ensure transformational, or has he calls it ‘Modification’ or ‘Redefinition’, learning and tasks can be created by staff to ensure the Critical Pedagogy takes place.
I’m looking forward to learning more and working further with inspiring colleagues in particular, but also my amazing PLN on Twitter, ADEs and other specialists, such as Daniel Edwards (@syded06) whom I have worked closely with this year to discover Critical Pedagogies to support transformational learning. I can’t wait.
Further reading:
http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digiemerge
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/digilifelong.aspx
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies.aspx
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/ipad-or-ifad.html
http://syded.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/the-challenge-of-ipad-pedagogy/
http://speirs.org/blog/2012/7/20/the-2012-ade-institute.html
I’ve been wanting to write a follow up to my popular 1st little book for some time now, but I really wanted to make sure that all of the ideas that I put in to it were really tried and tested. That they really have got the pedagogical impact that teachers want from tools that students use in their lessons. It is really important to me that teachers don’t just take these ideas as an alternative to engaging students with engaging learning opportunities, but that they use them as tools to enhance the learning experience for students as part of a big picture planned scheme of learning.
To that end, here it is. I hope you find it useful.
The Little Book of Superb ICT to enhance Teaching and Learning in the C21 classroom
Thank you to Chris Allan @infernaldepart and Martin Burrett @ictmagic for helping proof the final version.
Feedback from students who have been trialling the devices recently, 24/7 for over a month, can be found on the iClevedon blog here: http://iclevedon.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/10/
You can find out more by following the iClevedon twitter feed.
Among most of my friends it is common knowledge that from the ages of about 19 to 35 I DJ’d at umpteen bars and clubs across Europe and got to play at some enviable clubs and locations. From Ministry of Sound in London on their radio station and in their club to Ibiza, Edinburgh and beyond. It was a great experience and one that, even though I was still teaching Monday to Friday, brought me many brilliant learning experiences. It helped shape me in to the person I am now.
I’ve given it up now so I can spend more time with the family but when I was talking recently with some colleagues about my past as a DJ, we started discussing how I planned my sets before going off to a gig. I regaled at how I never really planned them, but had my bag full of vinyl (or more recently CDs for use on CDJs) with songs that I liked and might end up playing, but that I never planned my sets – I just read the crowd, listened to the previous DJs, got a feel for what music people were enjoying and explored those types of tracks. Certainly though, I knew of many DJs who would knew exactly what they were going to play, exactly when they were going to mix it in and exactly what BPM the tracks needed to be at in order to fit all the tunes in they wanted in to their sets. Certainly, if you’re one of the very talented and amazing scratch DJ’s that are out there, who have to plan their sets to the nth degree, that sort of thing is really important:
Reflecting after the conversations, I started relating it to my teaching – certainly, my classroom are an audience and as a teacher, whilst I plan my lessons and I have an endgame, i.e. my outcomes, I do read the audience and go with the flow. Like some of the DJs I knew, who would plan their sets religiously, aren’t there teachers who teach like this too? Surely, if teachers do that, they’re missing the point? I know it’s helpful (especially when first starting out) to have clear ideas about the language you’ll use, the questioning techniques you want to employ, so forth and so on, but as you progress in your teaching career, don’t you want to be able to stop and explore a point that might come up? To be able to change direction if required? After all, no two lessons are ever the same. I have a Year 9 ICT class on a Tuesday morning and I have a repeat of that lesson on a Friday afternoon with a different Year 9 class. Here, the timings, the audience and other variables are completely different, so I need to be mindful of all these things and adjust my ‘set’ accordingly, even though I still want the same successful outcomes. It’s just that the songs I play are different.
The same is true of other careers too – chefs for example taste as they’re going along, they drop in a pinch of salt after tasting or a grind of pepper, just to get the perfect blend in the meal they’re cooking. Teaching’s the same, you just have to test and read your audience and adjust your style to suit them so they learn the most and enjoy the best teaching you can provide.
The lovely Kat Crocker spoke about rocketing up your tutor group. She spoke about top tips for tutor time and things that have worked well at Clevedon School…
- go vertical
- give them jobs to do
- get organised by tracking students carefully
- plan your time together, quality time
- predict the news: watch the news and then predict what the news will be on the Friday, allows time to be used mentoring other students while rest of group do activity.
- Brainpopuk: daily video, links to lots of other curriculum areas
- Sporcle: quizzes can be made by students or completed by the whole tutor group by guessing particular words for a variety of categories
Jamie ‘virtually’ talked about in school TeachMeets to improve teaching and learning. Presentations which are 2 or 7 minutes long can take place within a meeting, turning the environment into a relaxing and stress free place and the ability to share ideas and thought easily. The length of the presentations are non-intimidating and gives confidence to those who are less brave at speaking in front of their colleagues.
TeachMeets are not about whole school priorities but other people’s ideas and learning from each other.
How good do you want to be?
Teachmeet Clevedon from Jamie Portman on Vimeo.
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