CORE Ten Trends 2013: Virtual Learning

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Ten Trends 2013: Virtual learning from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Drivers for this trend

Social:

  • An increasingly collaborative, team-based world.

Technology:

  • Affordability of and accessibility to technologies an broadband technologies

Educational:

  • Growing number of courses available online
  • Desire for access to wider range of curriculum options
  • Specialist teacher shortages
  • Constraints on time and budget for PD

When we think of virtual learning, many things come to mind. Most frequently we think of online courses. But virtual learning really embraces a much broader dimension for educators than simply online learning.

A true definition of virtual learning

At its heart virtual learning is about the learning that takes place outside of the school, or bringing what is outside of the school into the school. So, we are thinking about the online environment as a way of connecting students who may be located physically in a school with their learning that is somewhere else.

The benefits and impact of virtual learning

There are many ways we can think about the benefits, or the impact, of virtual learning technologies and their use in schools. The first is obviously the area of online learning that I just referred to—where we see happening around the world, as well as in New Zealand, opportunities created to access learning from outside of the school that a student is participating in.

A good example of this in New Zealand is in the Virtual Learning Network (VLN), where, throughout the country, we have teachers who are teaching students in schools other than the school the teachers are physically located in, and students accessing the learning from teachers who are not located in the schools that they are attending. So, we are seeing opportunities created to address the drivers that are occurring, where we don’t have specialist teachers in many of our rural, or smaller, secondary schools. This is also occuring in some of the urban areas. Through virtual learning, therefore, we are creating opportunities for students to connect to the learning that is important for them.

Virtual learning is not bound by a venue or time

Another area that virtual learning is impacting on is the connection between school and home. This may not seem to meet the virtual learning definition on first impression, but, if you think about it, we have historically talked about home-work and school-work. In the online world that distinction disappears. And so, the connection between home and school becomes something that is quite seamless—whether it is home, as in the physical home that the student lives in, or outside-of-school places such as the local library, local café, a friend’s house, grandma’s house that they might visit after school. The fact that they can continue with their learning in a seamless way and connect with the work that they are doing in online worlds makes the use of a virtual learning environment very high impact.

Virtual learning has greater global reach

Another factor about virtual learning is the global reach that’s now possible for students. Once they had to rely on resources from the local library. Or, from time-to-time, a visitor to the school could provide them with a feel or an insight into what it might be like in other lands or countries that they might be studying. Now, global reach means that they can reach directly into the lives of those who live in some of those countries and lands. They can talk to experts who have visited there, and are familiar with the geography, the terrain, and some of the social issues that might occur there. And they can connect with learners in those areas to collaborate on projects, to look at topics that are germane to them. So, the global reach is becoming increasingly important as students become prepared to be citizens in a much more globalised society than they have previously.

The benefits of virtual learning for teachers

And lastly, when we are thinking about virtual learning we can’t forget about the impact on the teachers themselves—the impact that virtual learning opportunities are having for teachers in their own professional learning and development. Many schools are starting to see that engaging in virtual professional learning and development is of benefit to both the school and teacher—not only in the cost-saving from days off, teacher-release days, and travel, but also the benefit of continuity. Where the investment may have been made simply to get to a one-day course, seminar, or workshop, now, teachers can have access to their professional development over many weeks or months, for a similar size investment. What’s more, it connects them with other educators doing similar things that they are, and who are looking for ways to improve their own professional activity and professional futures in that way.

So, virtual learning has a very broad application. It’s not only about online courses, but also about the way that we extend what is happening in the premise of school—way beyond the school gates.

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Check out all the Ten Trends on the CORE website

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Enhancing workflow on an iPad

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Allanah King, a Blended eLearning facilitator with CORE, shares a method of sharing the learning, as well as providing a useful reference list for developing iPad skills.

At the end of last term I was asked to lead a couple of presentations for the Learning@School Conference Roadshow, run by CORE Education, here in Nelson. It was the first time such an event had been held in the provinces, and was very well-supported by locals and from those further afield.

The presentation, which I had not done before, was Enhancing Workflow with an iPad — combining apps to share the learning. Here it is below:

 

I didn't want to spend the time just talking to the teachers at the workshop. I wanted them to talk to each other—to share the learning that they already knew, becoming teachers themselves, thus knowing how to work their iPad to do the basics before we went on to more advanced learning.

I went down to the local supermarket beforehand, and bought a package of the now famous iPad cleaners as prizes, and made up a bingo board for each person.

The deal was that people had to walk around the room and find someone who could show them how to do the tasks on the bingo board. Once found, that person showed them; then they had to do the task themselves. Task completed, they could initial the bingo board. When they had five squares initialled in a row they yelled 'Allanah' and got a prize!

I was surprised by the number of people who carried on just as eagerly after they had got a prize—because they wanted to learn more. Eventually I felt I had to stop so we could move on to the more advanced learning, but the whole session went really well because it was an energiser as well as a great learning opportunity.

Here's the Bingo chart. See how you go! To make it easy for you to personalise and make the resource your own, I have made the bingo form into a Google Doc that you can copy and make your own with your own email address and the like.


iPad Bingo Chart — click on it to go to the Google Doc

The activity with all the links to the pdf tutorials and activities can be viewed and downloaded from the presentation above. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike which means you are welcome to mash-up and repurpose the presentation but please acknowledge the source.

The activity was very well received with participants coming to me later saying how much they enjoyed the opportunity to move and talk and share rather than being talked to for the entire presentation.

You may like to try the same sort of thing when you next share your learning with others.

I later repeated the presentation at the BYOD Conference run by Learning NetworkNZ at Albany Senior High School in the holidays.


iPad Bingo at BYOD Conference at Albany Senior High School

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Trains or planes: Building a successful schooling system

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Photo of progress from trains to planes

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on CORE’s mission: to ‘push the boundaries of educational possibility’. Most of the work we do at CORE involves working with educators, schools, and government agencies to introduce innovative approaches to what they do. Of course, the innovation itself isn’t the end we’re looking for, but is the means by which we are attempting to make a contribution to an education system that is relevant, future-focused, and ‘world class’.

So, we are looking for a 'world-class' education system

The concept of how we develop a ‘world-class’ education system is high on the agenda of governments and education leaders  around the world. An obvious and appropriate measure for this is based on measuring student performance and success—as illustrated by the approach taken by the OECD with its PISA studies.

I blogged earlier this year about Andreas Schleicher who spoke on the background and findings of the PISA studies. Schleicher challenges us to think about how this data might be used to bring about change at a whole-of-system level, rather than at an individual school level, and points out that the bottom line for where we put our energy and resourcing must be related to understanding what we value most about education.

What we value is closely aligned with the beliefs we hold about education, and the mental models we have developed as a result of these beliefs—which exist for all of us whether we are conscious of it or not. Often, these values and beliefs lie below the surface, the product of the modeling and ‘conditioning’ of our own school experiences.

Agendas for change

When working with education leaders—at school or national level—one thing I find is that the language used to describe what they’re doing in their efforts to bring about change reveals two quite different perspectives—what I call agendas for change.

The first is what I refer to as the ‘improvement agenda’, where the assumption is that what we are doing is fundamentally OK, but needs to be refined, adapted, modified in some way to improve it in areas of poor performance—a little like tuning a motor car to get better ‘miles per gallon’ in performance. The motor and the car it propels are essentially the same—but performance has been improved through adaptations to the way the fuel feeds through the carburetor, or with ‘spoilers’ added to the bodywork to improve airflow around the vehicle for instance.

The second is what I call the ‘transformation agenda’, where there is a conscious effort to question the existing paradigm and propose alternative models or approaches. The differences between these two agendas are illustrated in the summary table below—which I’ve blogged about earlier this year also.

 

Improvement

Transformation

Basic premise

Making what we already have and do more effective. Improving the status quo.

Questioning the current paradigm, proposing alternative models/approaches .

Education

Broken, but can be fixed with strategic interventions.

Long term investment in the future for society as a whole.

Schools

Location for physically delivering education, competitive, insular.

A context for education, collaborative, networked.

Technology

Drives change.

Enables, supports and accelerates change.

Teachers

Focus on becoming effective.

Supported professionals—co-creating the future

Learners

The future workforce, need for basic skills and knowledge.

Future (global) citizens.

Innovation

Happening on lots of fronts at once.

Must be scalable and sustainable.

Success

Meeting standards, passing tests, measuring performance.

Wider, long-term benefits, developing dispositions.

Curriculum

Standardised, defined, ‘packaged’.

A framework to guide and support schools and teachers.

The reason for trains and planes…

To go back to my transportation metaphor—consider the difference between trains and planes. The fundamental problem they are seeking to address is the same—how to efficiently and cost-effectively transport goods and people over long distances.

 Over many years improvements were made to the rail systems in countries around the world—from steam, to diesel to electric, from narrow gauge to wider gauge rails etc. All of which provided faster, more efficient service in the transportation of goods and people—provided they were on a rail network and bound by the geographical boundaries of the continent on which they were located.

Then came planes. Not only could they do everything that trains could do, but they were able to cross the boundaries of continents separated by vast oceans, and could also change route to land in different places without the need for a rail system to get them there. Planes were transformational. In the world of air transportation we now enjoy holidays in Australia or Paris, and have food in our supermarkets from dozens of countries all over the world.

…education faces the same challenge

This is the challenge in our education system. In seeking to establish a world class approach, where learners are equipped to live and work as citizens in a globally connected, increasingly digital world, we need to consider how appropriate our current structures and systems are — whether they are ‘fit for purpose’ in the 21st century. Consider things like the hours in the school day, the division of tasks among teachers, the grouping of learners according to age, and the building of schools as blocks of ‘egg-crate’ classrooms etc.

This is not an easy thing to do, as there is a lot of emotional attachment associated with what we’ve done in the past, and a lot of our sense of identity and worth can be tied up with that. But that’s about us — our focus needs to be on our learners and their future.

We can focus purely on improvement—in which case we’ll end up with shinier, faster, more effective versions of our current schools. Or, we can be transformational, and think more ‘out of the box’, imagining what the experience of education might be like if we simply removed all of the existing structures and systems we have.

The challenge is ours for building a 21st Century School System—will we be building trains or planes?

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