A Fun Start - Exploring Possibilities

On our teacher only day to start this year - we worked with Steve Collis from Northern Beaches Christian School, SCIL Centre,  in Sydney. We worked with Steve on a one day professional development programme called; "Re-Image Learning". 

We explored video footage from Northern Beaches Christian School - we are interested in the work at this school around learning design, personalising learning and collaboration. 

SCIL Building tour - Stephen Harris from SCIL on Vimeo.

Our teachers are exploring ways to strengthen team teaching, experimenting with more open layouts and technology. We are in process of redesigning most of our school. Effectively a whole new school will replace most of our current buildings over the next two years. We have a sense of urgency around preparing our teachers and learners, in fact our whole learning community for the changes that are coming.

The modelling exercise allowed our teachers to think through what learning in our new hubs will look like and dream big. The task was to build a profile of a learner in 2017 and create a model that demonstrated a snap shot in the day, at school - a moment in time, that reflects our vision around learning. The models could be created in a range of ways (giving choice). eg virtually or cardboard, modelling clay etc. 

The teachers reflected that this was a fun, non threatening play way to integrate and develop their ideas.

This activity was a creative way to explore the possibilities of teachers working in learning hubs in a way that supports the vision of the school: Engage, Enrich, Empower. The activity put us in the shoes of the learner and reminded us the importance of having fun when learning. 

Having fun in a creative way is  an empowering way to learn - for all of us learners

Hellerup School - a great place to learn

Hellerup School was built in 2001. It has learning home zones instead of classrooms. Each learning zone is a  home base for 3-4 classes. The learning zones are shared with the pedagogs who take the after school programme. The building is multi storey with connecting areas utilised for learning. Internal timber cladding is a feature and gives a warm feeling with lots of natural light. The library zone is central on the ground floor. The library or information centre is central on the ground floor, creating a welcome through zone for the learning community and with high visibility from every floor.  There are around 100 students per learning hub with about 4 teachers plus support staff. The design incorporates lots of breakout spaces including: ·        rooms within rooms ·        Mountain tops ·        Breakout spaces ·        Specific areas for art / science ·        Physical activity encouraged eg climbing walls / table tennis inside buidling

The staffroom is a particularly impressive. It is an open comfortable space which encourages staff to relax in a 

informal atmosphere. I think it is important for staff to have their own space to take a break from the business of 

the learning zones - and good to give something back to staff to appreciate the work they do.

Visits in Scandinavia Schools via Lene Jensby Lange

The visits in Scandinavia were arranged by Lene Jensby Lange. Lene is founder of Autens which is an educational consultancy that works with schools, local authorities, charities, architects and others to innovate learning spaces dedicated to personalising learning. www.autens.dk   

Lene and her family hosted us in Copenhagen - we had a great time sharing philoophies about curriculum and school design.

Lene took us on a tour of schools that she has been involved with in design. The next few posts are a synopsis of the schools visited in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Utterslev Skole is a  new school with a focus on nature and science. Their curriculum encourages  project based learning to encourage creativity, curiousity and innovation. The school has regular classroom spaces – whole class teaching with some break out spaces. The curriculum is subject centric – teachers are subject teachers and have their own classroom spaces with breakout spaces that can be used for independent learning.  Creative and personalised teaching based on student choice happens when the students are  with the pedagogs. Their primary department has an integrated after school club – run by pedagogs. Pedagogs are trained to teach creatively with a holistic whole child approach. The science facilites at Utterslev Skole were very impressive. It is an honour for students to be selected to look after the range of animals in the science laboritries.

Flipping Learning Design - the start of the journey in UK and Scandinavia

Over the 10 weeks as recipient of the 2014 ASB / APPA travel fellowship, I had conversations with educationalists, designers and architects – during visits of twenty two schools in five countries. These schools were actively engaged in new school design and new ways of teaching and learning.  My next few posts will  explore school design and aspirations around personalising learning of the schools visited.

The school  types  visited in UK and Scandinavia , included state, church, international, independent, primary, secondary, academies and free schools. It included new school builds, remodelled schools and schools that were built in refitted commercial buildings. 

The visits in UK were arranged by Terry White. Terry is a director of UK  Learning which is the UK chapter of CEFPI  (Council of Education Facilities and Planning International).  He is  an educational design solution consultant for Nova Co-Design which supports schools through the process of designing new schools and developing  and supporting the teaching vision to be implemented in the new builds.

The visits in Scandinavia were arranged by Lene Jensby Lange. Lene is founder of Autens which is an educational consultancy that works with schools, local authorities, charities, architects and others to innovate learning spaces dedicated to personalising learning. 





Both Terry and Lene were incredibly generous with their time and hospitality. I found it really interesting that in the UK and  in Scandinavia the local authorities funded talented project leaders like Terry and Lene who seemed to have ownership / leadership over the design project at all phases. A key feature of their role  is to drive the vision around personalising learning and design.

In New Zealand the role of driving the learning vision is usually done by  the principal, whose task it is ensure that  the architect understands the learning culture of the school and how that might look in the new build. We discussed at length;  personalising learning, school design and the impact of the political, social  and local context.

What a luxury to have such design consultants funded to actively engage with schools to support their transition from old ways to new ways of teaching. 

The school visits were a  fast series of walk throughs where the  worlds of pedagogy and design, intersected and  fused with vision and concerns. They all aspired to learner led personalised curriculum and design that would drive these concepts.

The challenge in all the schools was to  embed and sustain teacher practice related to learning vision and school design so that learners will be prepared for their future world.

   

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.

What do Student Led Conferences Look Like at Freemans Bay School?

Student Led Conferences Freemans Bay School


  

As you see we have several families in the room at the same time. The students talk to their parents about their learning goals which are posted on the learning management system - KnowledgeNET.   This year we had 95% turnout. Many parents are now accessing their student learning blogs through their own log-on at home. They are able to post to their students blogs strengthening the home and school partnership around learning.  

Student led conferences provide an opportunity for students to talk about their learning goals and have parents find out what these are and consider ways to support their students learning at home. Students are able to open up their goals on a classroom computer to access our on-line learning environment “Knowledge Net” and talk to parents about their goals and next learning steps. Parents interact with their students in the classroom and take part in some learning activites both online and in the classroom.

The focus of our student led conferences includes:

■Literacy goals

■Numeracy goals

■Habits of Mind (work habits)

What does a student led conference look like?

■A conversation between the students and their parent about learning

■Other families are present in the room at the same time

■The teacher is present but the student is doing the talking about their learning

Student Led Conferences at Freemans Bay School

Student Led Conferences Freemans Bay School 2011 on PhotoPeach

Goal setting conferences

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.

Study finds online learning more effective than classroom

You can access the 93 page report from the U.S. Department of Education
Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service through the New York times article by Steve Lohr, 19/08/2009.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/?em %20%20

So the doom sayers are at it again - just like the invention of the printing press, the computer is going to replace teachers - except I think the New York Times article is flawed because the writer has not actually understood the concept of effect sizes.

In 1999, before Internet use was as common as it is today, Professor John Hattie contended that computer learning influenced student learning outcomes positively with an effect size of 0.31. which is less that the mean of 0.4 for all interventions. (Hattie, 1999)

If you use the bookmark tool in this research document and scroll to key findings you will see that the results of this research is in line with Hattie's 1999 findings, which still seem to be relevant today.

The article fails to address the fact that e-learning is relevant for today's classrooms. How our students learn and what they need to learn, needs to be relevant to the world they live in. I think the following video clip reminds us that e-learning in our classrooms is not about computer instruction to reinforce old teaching methodology, its about teaching approaches that meet the needs of 21 century students.



I think the research in the US evaluation (2009) does highlight that e-learning will not improve traditional assessment results of student achievement, but what e-learning does do is improves learning, as it engages students and makes their classrooms relevant to the world they are growing up in.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D.C., 2009.
retrieved from: www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html. 27 September 2009

Hattie, J. (1999). Computers in Schools retrieved Sept 20, 2009, from
http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/u0a/fms/default/education/docs/pdf/arts/john%20hattie/Computers_in_Schools.pdf