Mark Treadwell presented this Prezi Learning to Learn as the opening Keynote at the CEFPI conference in Auckland last week.




Mark provoked us to stop using the term - preparing for 21 century learning - after all we are in the second decade of the 21 century so we just need to get on with it!

He discussed how learning happens! An important prerequisite for anyone involved with learning including businesses and corporate organisations, Imperative information for educationalists who need to know how the brain works and how we actually can rewire the brain to make learning happen!

Mark then linked brain / learning theory on what should happen int school building design - where students should have the opportunity to:

• Have different spaces to do different things
• Have spaces to collaborate, work in groups and work in teams
• Have quiet places to work on your own and to loose yourself 
• Have spaces that can be reinvented - that are flexible
• Have spaces that meet the needs of individuals differences
• Have interesting views and outlooks
• Natural light
• Great acoustics
• Explore concepts and ideas when learning

I recently ready Noreazena Abu Samah, Noraffandy Yahaya and Mohamad Bilal Ali,  paper called,  "Individual Differences in Online Personalized learning Environment,"  which has some correlations.

They conclude:

" In order to develop a learning environment, individual differences need to be taken into consideration to ensure the impact on students' achievements and satisfactions. Therefore, the learning environment must be suitable for their differences, to include their learning styles, learning orientations, preferences and needs in learning. In addition , there is a need for instructional design  to include new conditions of learning, such as; new information, context for learning and practice, feedback, transfer, organizers and attention devices. For this reason, the integration of interactivity functions in the learning environment could ensure that those external conditions of learning are provided to students."

We need to think about the types of teaching and learning practices that school design enables and the way design and teaching pedagogy can support the way the brain works and the ways we learn in both physical and digital environments. 

What is your thinking about linking how the brain works and school design for learning?

Student weekly learning reflections

Our learning is about enriching, empowering and engaging students in authentic learning tasks. As part of the weekly programme, student make reflective comments on their learning on the class authentic student centered enquiry.

This example is from a Year 3 and Year 4 composite class. They have been studying about birds and their enquiry has been around how to attract birds into our city school playground.

This group has designed bird feeders.

They have been asked to reflect on their design and what they would do change if they made another bird feeder in the future.

Here is a selection from this class blog this week.

Parents are able to check in on the class blog, view the student and teacher comments and support the learning at home.

I wonder what other strategies educators have utilised to encourage feedback from student peers, parents and teachers in an online environment. What has worked? What has been tricky? What are the challenges and successes? I look forward to your sharing.

Student reflection and feedback on KnowledgeNET Online Learning Environment

Our students have just completed their reflections on their learning goals for term 1. They could do this by video, audio or text reflection.

Here is an example of how the goals are set up.

The student is a 6 year old yr 2 student. The first column on this page is the goal in either reading, writing or maths. The second column is the learning intention for the period and the third column is the success criteria - what would it look like if the goal was achieved.

The student clicks on the area they wish to comment on. This is an example of a 6 year  old student's learning journal - notice that each area has comments on it. In this case the comments have been made between the student and the parent from home or work on the reading goals in a combination of text and video. Sometimes the dialogue goes on while the student is in class and the parent is commenting from work (having got an email notification).

Notice how the parent is giving feedback to the student about their learning as well as to the teacher. Teachers and peers can also give feedback. This framework supports collaboration, home and school learning partnerships, engagement, learning anytime and anyplace.

I am interested in finding out what other systems people have put in place in their schools to encourage student / parent partnership in schools through an on-line environment? What have been the challenges, successes? What works and what would you suggest to do differently?

Parent Portal is launched at Freemans Bay School

This week we launched our Caregiver Area on our online learning environment - Knowledge Net. This is a screen shot of the home page of our parent portal.

Parents can:

-View their childs learning goals and learning journals.
- View their child's attendance records.
- View their child's school records,
- See their child's profile, class and groups that the child belongs to
- Visit websites to support thier child on their learning journey

Parents can put in their on reflections on forums about school activities as well as comments on their childrens learning pages about how they see their child in doing with their learning goals.

This is very interactive and supports parents to support their children in their learning. It helps to strengthen the learning partnership between parent, child and school.

South Korea digitizing educational material

South Korea has announced that by 2014, their educational materials will
be digitized, and by 2015, the entire school-age curriculum will
be delivered on an array of computers, smart phones and tablets.

It is estimated to cost South Korea's education ministry $2.4
billion buying the requisite tablets and digitizing material for them.


http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26960/

While we can envy this level of resourcing being spent on e-learning we would not want to go down this path as it is systematic of a 20th century learning model. Chalk (even if it is digital chalk) and talk. Rote learning and worksheet mentality.

At Freemans Bay School we are using Knowledge Net as our integrated Learning Management e-learning environment. Our use of Knowledge Net allows our students to reflect on their learning and thinking and have their peers/parents/caregivers and educators provide feedback on their progress towards their goals.

We believe our students should have opportunities to collaborate with others, self manage their learning through their use of habits of mind and reflect on that learning and thinking.

Some further resourcing from our Government to support 21st century learning would be appreciated as we would like to be able to have 1-1 netbooks and fibre instead of asdl to support our access to the WWW. However I expect this will be a reality in the next few years.

Meanwhile I do not believe that we will go down the path of South Korea but we will continue developing a pedogogy for the world of our students live in- this way they will be engaged and motivated to learn.