Hi My name is Sandra Jenkins.
Across the globe there is a movement to re imagine education to provide settings that are learner led and relevant to the future lives of learners. This blog captures some of my journey as part of that movement
Showing posts with label Integration of e-learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Integration of e-learning. Show all posts
I always remember reading in one of Fullan's leadership article "Visions That Blind" the statement, "Extend what you value". Fullan quotes Shein, (1985) observation "The process of developing collaborative work cultures is complex. It requires great sophistication for school leaders: to express their own values without being imposing; to draw out other peoples values and concerns; to manage conflict and problem solving; to give direction and to be open at the same time". I often think we feel locked into organisational systems in terms of the way that we do things, and that these ways often go back to how schools were organised in the 1960s or back in even further. We need to rethink last years organisational structures in our schools to align with what we want to happen today, to drive our vision around personalizing learning to a reality. In the article above Fullan expresses the need to have recruitment action to allow for the development of leading collaborative culture in schools. He contends that teacher professional development based on collaboratively developing the school vision is required in the short and long term. This will allow the development of a collective understanding of the learning vision of the school. The areas of focus he suggests are:
collaborative inquiry
reflective practice
growing technical expertise
restructuring
A key organisational event that ticked the boxes above that we employed was to create a new leadership position where the school leader, with prestige of salary and release from classroom teaching would lead professional learning and e-learning (blended learning) throughout the school. Effectively this school leader would map the professional learning, curriculum and ICT use in the school. This was an unusual move for a school in New Zealand of under 400 students at the time. It was pivotal to the first restructure of our infrastructure to support strengthening collaboration and personalising learning and coherence around our vision development. We decided a good place to start was to define what we want in terms of teaching and learning. What would that look like if it was in place in every learning area of our school.
This professional learning collaborative inquiry is ongoing. The model involves collaborative inquiry, reflective practice, growing technical expertise and restructuring. This professional learning model has developed a strong sense of purposeful teaching and learning practice which has led to new ways of organising teaching and learning. This has supported the process of redesigning old spaces, structures and practices that support our vision of "Engage, Enrich and Empower". This infrastructure change and inquiry based professional learning is a strong transition component for readiness to move into our new buildings in the future. It also led to other innovative organisational and physical changes that support transition and coherence of our school vision. These I will explore in the next few posts. I look forward to your thoughts.
Organizational culture and leadership: A dynamic view, by Edgar H. Schein. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1985,
I am fortunate to be the recipient of the Auckland Principal Association / ASB Principal Travel Fellowship, 2014. My travel to Europe and Scandinavia will enable me to explore how modern school designs reflect; the changing nature of learning, influence changes in the ways that teachers teach, engage diverse learners and meet current and future educational needs. My travel fellowship will enable me to explore recent trends in thinking about learning and design in new schools and what this looks like in practice. I plan to be in Scandinavia in June this year where I will be looking at the relationship between school design and pedagogy. I hope that I will be able to visit this Vittra school in Stockholm, Sweden. These students learn in a open learning environment with latest computer technology. I am very lucky to have some great contacts to put me in contact with innovative schools in Scandinavia (Lene Jensby Lange, Autens, Denmark) and UK (Terry White, CEFPI, London)
I wonder how the learning happens in the new environments that I will view. -How does the physical design support e-learning -What ways is personalising learning through e-learning supported by the physical design -What are the types of teaching and learning have emerged in the new spaces -What are the relationships between the virtual and built environments. I hope that my learning from the travel fellowship will influence our future building design at Freemans Bay School.
The second term has commenced at Freemans Bay School with excitement from teachers and students alike. I am pleased to be able to share the TVNZ clip about e-learning at Freemans Bay School. As some people said to me they found it hard to find it on the TVNZ site. Orcon have it up on YouTube. Orcon are our ISP and we can only run our blended e-learning curriculum if we have excellent service through our fibre connection.
The video shows how we use KnowledgeNET as our learning management system for students to reflect on their learning and share with their teacher, peers and parents. As you can see in the video clip, the reflections can be written, audio or video. The great thing about the video clips is that the students do not have to upload them. The system works with WYSISYG and the option is embedded in the system so the students can film off the screen camera and post!
It is a great facility and having a decent fibre connection means that several students can be doing reflections in a variety of ways to articulate their thinking about their learning. I believe that the opportunity to reflect and to consider where to next is very powerful for learners to consolidate their learning experience. Having the video facility is also very motivating and engaging. How do you get your students to reflect on thinking about their learning?
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?
This week I held a workshop with our teachers as we move to prepare for student led conferences to be held this term.
We know that effective reporting systems are the ones where 'student voice' is an integral part of the reporting process. The focus of student led conferences is the students talking about their learning goals and their next learning steps and how to get there.
The issue we face is also around accountability to parents. Parents need to know is where their child is achieving is OK for their age. If the teacher has this conversation at the student led conference with the parents then we risk disempowering the student.
I really enjoyed working with two Infotech Engineers with a team of teachers and students to development of water collection and distribution system. This project included everything we believe in: E-Learning, Collaboration, Higher Order Thinking, Team, Authentic Learning, Reflecting, developing a solution to an authenitic challange and reaching out to our school communities.
We developed this Prezi which summerises this project.
This term we did our goal setting conferences a little differently. Each student now has a home page that has a section for learning goals. Prior to the conference the students set up learning goals in four areas: Reading, writing, mathmatics and habits of mind.
Most students were able to utilise the class interactive white board and present the goals to their parents. Parents were given log-ins to access the information from home.
As part of the work over the term, students will update their reflections on their goals. We are aiming for the updates to be scheduled twice a term.
We are hope to strengthen parent access through this and e-portfolios through our parent portal - this is work under development but should be fully available by the end of this term.
Integrating e-learning across a school is challenging and complex. It is really important that the principal and other school leaders understand the complexity of the change process. I have been principal of my school for 18 months and what we are trying to do to implement e-learning across the school actually challenges the existing systems and infrastructure on many levels. Change is always challenging - and can be quite an emotional journey with many ups and downs. I think this brilliant clip expresses what can be a stressful roller coaster ride associated when making changes to integrate e-learning in our schools really well.
Dean Fink (2004, p3) argued that: ‘Leadership for learning is not a destination with fixed co-ordinates on a compass, but a journey with plenty of detours and even some dead ends. Effective educational leaders are continuously open to new learning because the journey keeps changing. Their maps are complex and can be confusing. What leaders require for this journey is a set of interrelated learnings looking at school leadership in a holistic rather than reductionist way. These learnings can be deepened, elaborated, nurtured, abandoned, and connected and related to other learnings as the journey progresses.’
We have introduced deliberate changes with many detours to encourage our teachers to be reflective practitioners engaging in strengthening effective integration of e-learning with the new curriculum
At our school we are promoting as part of our teaching and learning philospophy:
Habits of Mind (Costa & Kallick 2005)
The school inquiry learning model
Assessment for Learning Pedagogy
Student Led Conferences
Incorporating ICTs into administration ( in 2009 we have introduced electronic register, remote access, changes to reports, remote access from home, new electronic smart boards, online calendars, timetables etc, Online Learning Environment )
While integrating ICTs into administration is seen as easier that integrating e-learning into teaching and learning what has been achieved in 2009 was fraught with technical difficulties and has caused many frustrations. Teachers and students will not persevere and continue to try to use equipment that is either faulty or difficult, so keeping the systems problem-free has been very difficult.
The extent of the changes that we have embedded over the last year to encourage integration of e learning into curriculum and improving pedagogy at our school has been wide ranging. These include:
Making the change to the New Zealand Curriculum
Assessment for Learning whole school contract
Numeracy Catch Up whole school programme
Changing the school management structure to give the ICT / Curriculum Manager high status
Creating new roles – including e-learning team leaders, Assessment for Learning Team leaders – roles that support the curriculum development, pedagogy and e-learning integration
ICT team leaders, one person in a year across teams, work regularly and systematically with teachers in their team
A rigourous professional development meeting schedule that addresses what e-learning is, what it isn’t and why it must happen.
Changing resourcing to ensure equity of access to technology across teaching teams to support e-learning ( electronic boards, data projectors, COW, mini books)
Team planning meetings on Classroom Release Days to encourage collaboration and a culture of support
Team planning meetings emphasise pedagogy, integrated curriculum, habits of mind, inquiry model and e-learning
Rewarding the early adaptors – (with status and resources)
Supporting staff who are prepared to take risks – (opportunities to attend courses, showcasing work)
Fostering change through opportunity to participate in the digital classroom project
Changing the planning expectations to ensure learning opportunities are based on authentic learning opportunities, habits of mind, new curriculum , e- learning, integrated approach.
ICT / Curriculum leader and Deputy Principal (current Acting Principal) leading learning – attending planning meetings , leading discussions about pedagogy and learning
Insisting on student led conferences rather than teacher led conferences
Parent meetings promoting the pedagogy and learning philosophy (evenings on assessment for learning, habits of mind, e-learning, cybersafety and student led conferences.
Mandatory class weekly reflections on learning posted on Knowledge Net.
What we are trying to do is to create a learning environment that encourages a metacognitive and constructivist approach to teaching and learning and loading teachers with lots of professional development around the concepts that we want incorporated in teaching and learning.
In terms of ICTs our teachers have been involved in the following in 2009:
Communication tools: (e-mails, bulletin boards on knowledge net) Administration tools on the network and knowledge net: (Calendar, booking rooms, help files, minutes, electronic register, remote access and updating files and reports from school to home, cybersafety protocols, shared learning resources)
Workshops promoting the school vision, and understanding the nature of e-learning integration with teaching, learning and pedagogy
Reviewing curriculum statements and reflecting on planning practices
School appraisal system and observations focus on the school pedagogy philosophy revied. Management team have had professional development on mentoring, coaching through University of Auckland and Principals Leadership Centre and Assessment for Learning professional development.
Where to Next?
Dias (2007, 11) suggests that e-learning needs to be “used in a seamless manner to support and extend curriculum objectives in a seamless manner to support and extend curriculum objectives and to engage in students in meaningful learning. It is not something one does separately; it is part of the daily activities taking place in the classroom.
The Ministry of Education publication Digital Horizons: Learning Through ICT: A Strategy for Schools, This publication advocates “systematic opportunities to develop digital and information literacy, and enjoy using ICT creatively and critically in extending their horizons and growing as lifelong learners.” (2003, p12)
Cleaverley (2004) promotes the idea that schools have successfully integrated ICTs into their curriculum when they align higher order thinking skills and the teachers capacity to utilize a range of teaching strategies.
Moyle, (2006) advocates that “ a team-based approach to leadership, where the leadership capabilities of others are fostered and developed and the leadership responsibilities are shared was identified as a useful strategy for identifying the extent an complexity of the work involved in incorporating ICT into teaching and learning.”
Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009) in their TPACK framework for planning for e-learning integration suggest that teachers hold planning meetings to collaboratively develop the types of e-learning activities that support specific learning goals and pedagogy. This will provide a team approach to systematically improving focus on the pedagogy while improving the range of ICTs utilised for teaching and learning as a next step on our e-learning journey.
For example if the learning intention was around using descriptive language and one of the learning activities was to write a poem a set of possible e-learning activities could be:
Create collaborative poems on Google Docs or Knowledge Net – and include reflections on the success criteria and habits of mind
Class Blog of students poetry , where students post their poems and reflect on the success criteria for their own and partners poems. Include habits of mind reflections.
Use digital cameras to take pictures around school that relate to their poem, create a photo story presentation and include their learning reflections as above. Post on class blog.
Children present their poems on Movie Maker – followed by interviews by a partner to present their reflections. Embed in class blog.
Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009,7) TPACK “approach is designed to help teachers to plan effective, efficient, and engaging learning experiences for their students. The process is based upon a series of deliberate,balanced, and well-informed pedagogical choices, which, when taken together, can result in an instructionally effective plan for students’ learning that incorporates digital and non-digital tools and resources in appropriate ways.”
Following the planning, the ICT team leaders supported by the ICT co-ordinator can provide team based professional development at the team level around the chosen learning experiences, incorporating peer to peer workshops, observations and coaching to encourage the shift from the lesson planning to adoption in the classroom.
This logic of strengthing teacher planning aligns with the five critical elements essential for developing a culture of support for building a professional community in schools identified by Kruse, et el, (1994, p2): “Reflective dialogue, de-privatization of practice, a collective focus on student learning, collaboration and shared norms and values.
This revision of the e-learning development plan will address the commitment to meaningfully integrate e-learning with the new school curriculum and achieve our goal of embarking on an exciting journey – Utilising ICTs to transform learning : To ensure our school students are digitally capable and confident learners.
This support will go a long way towards challenging our teachers to make the changes needed and commit to the intregrating e-learning into teaching and learning and make it happen.
Cleverley, B (2004). Practical straegies to consident when integrating ICT into new entrant classrooms. Computers in New Zealand Schools, 16(1), pp4-10
Costa, A. & Kallick, B 2005. Habits of Mind, http://www.habits-of-mind.net/ [accessed 2007, September 20]
Dias, L. B. (1999). Integrating technology: Some things you should know. Learning and Leading with Technology, 27 (3), 11 – 13, 21
Fink . D (2004) Best Practice: A technocrats dream. Article accessed from ICP online.www.icponline/index.php?option=comcontent&task=viewid=81& itemid=50
Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Instructional planning activity types as vehicles for curriculum-based TPACK development. In C. D. Maddux, (Ed.). Research highlights in technology and teacher education 2009 (pp. 99-108). Chesapeake, VA: Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE).
Kruse, S., Louis, K.S., & Bryke, A.S. (1994) Building professional learning communities.Madison, WI: Centre on Organization and Restructuring of Schools
Ministry of Education. (2002) Digital horizons: Learning through ICT: A strategy for schools. Wellington: Learning Media Limited
Ministry of Education. (2006) Enabling the 21st century learner. An e-learning action plan for schools 2006-2010. Wellington: Learning Media Limited
Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media Limited
It was interesting reflecting on Tony’s study guide notes on “Changes In E-Learning”. He writes about the journey of schools use of computers. On reflection the early use of computers in schools parallels my own experiences of computers in teaching. I first had computers in my classrooms in the 1980s and have been using them ever since. I remember utilising the CD encyclopedias, databases and games prior to accessing these functions from the web. In the early 1990’s we were involved in the Telecom project where the students had regular contact with scientists working in Antarctica. Kellow (2007,24) states “ Computing in education has changed dramatically since those early days when all we could do was basic programming and play a few games. Then the computer was mainly cast in the tutor role and used for computer assisted learning, Now the range of information and communication technologies being used has dramatically increased, the Internet being, in my opinion, one of the most influential”.It is the responsibility of every primary and secondary school in New Zealand to develop students into “confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners” (MOE, 2007, p4). To fulfil this responsibility every school needs to ensure that all students are becoming digitally capable, and confident.
The challenge for me these days as a principal of a large urban school is to facilitate the vision, motivation, school culture and resources to make this happen.
Dias , (1999,11), exploration of the typical stages teachers work through towards technical integration (integrated e-learning) and pedagogy is interesting to reflect on. Dias poses four questions that she contends are not commonly raised as school implement e-learning into their curriculum. Dias (1999), suggests that addressing these questions could assist schools to clarify their expectations. 1. “What is technology integration, and what isn’t it? 2. Where does technology integration happen? 3. What are the barriers to technology integration? 4. What are the stages of technology integration?”
Dais also makes the point that integration takes time. In my experience it is an iterative journey not only for the school but for each individual teacher. I believe it is up to each school to provide the vision, culture, leadership and resources to give the motivation for teachers to want to move forward on this journey. Dias makes the point that it is important to have clarity around what do the teachers see as important to define what e-learning integration will actually look like in their school.
These questions would certainly be useful when conducting a school review on this area. Misha and Koehler (2009) article promotes a framework called TPACK which could be utilised to as a way of conducting a school review to establish a way forward in the integration of e-learning and pedagogy journey. “The TPACK framework suggests that content, pedagogy, technology, and teaching / learning requires continually creating, maintaining, and re-establishing a dynamic equilibrium among all its components. It is worth noting that a range of factors influences how this equilibrium will be reached.” (2009, p 67)
The implications of the TPAK framework for educators is to be able to clarify the professional development ( either content, pedagogy, technology ) contexts or their interactions both in terms of review and subsequent action plans to meet teachers needs.This framework enables schools to clarify what is needed to encourage a more ecological approach to e-learning practice.
Both these readings have given me ideas on how we can approach our review of our e-learning development at our school and the development of our action plan for 2010 – which is my focus for assignment 2 of this course. The challenge is how to bring these big picture ideas down to a framework that is manageable and useful in a way that will engage both teachers and learners!
References: Dias, L. B. (1999). Integrating Technology: Some things you should know. Learning and Leading with Technology , 27 (3), 11-13, 21.
Hunt, T. (2009). Study Guide 6: Vision and Policy for E-Learning, Part A - Integration of E-Learning. Retrieved September 17, 2009 from University of Auckland course, Edprofst 714: Educational Technologies in Practice
Kellow, J. M. (2007). Inquiry Learning in an ICT- rich Environment. Computers in New Zealand Schools , 19 (1), 24-31.
Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media Limited.
Mishra P., & Koehler M.J., (2009). What is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technolgy and Teacher Education , 9 (1), pp. 60-70.
