Chennai India, KiwiLearners, and technologies

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India Early Years technology

Pre-schoolers in Chennai, India will now be able to experience a taste of the NZ approach to Early Childhood education thanks to a collaborative venture involving New Zealand’s CORE Education and Sunglobal Services in India.

Establishing KiwiLearners

KiwiLearners Early Learning Centre opened its doors in the area of Neelankarai, Chennai, India in January this year, serving a diverse community of expats and local Indian families.

As the Centre Director, I have had the privilege (and enormous task) of moulding and guiding the establishment of this centre with a New Zealand based early childhood curriculum (Te Whāriki). After 3 months of operation we now have a lively centre with 5 Indian teachers and 17 children (aged 15 months – 41/2 years) with more children about to start in May. About 70% of the children have English as a second language, including children of French, German, Irish, English, Australian, Indian, Portuguese, Greek, and Taiwanese descent.

The first month of our operations involved a great deal of teacher professional learning for the first three teachers. Our goal was for Te Whāriki to form the base for our programme. Those first weeks were very trying with my husband Keith and I ‘on the floor’ continuously to provide support and role modelling for teaching. By the end of 6 weeks we had established routines that shaped the day for teachers and children.

One of our original teachers is Indian, and had completed her qualification in New Zealand, although had never practiced. As our teaching team grew to 5 in the second month, this teacher proved a valuable asset during our PD sessions, as she could easily translate what I was discussing into language that the rest could understand. Two of the other trained teachers have early childhood experience and a Montessori qualification, one teacher is qualified and experienced in the area of special education, and one has her own parenting experience to draw from.

Bringing technologies into the curriculum

During the second month of operation teachers began to introduce digital technologies into the daily programme through the use of iPads, a camera, and iTV. While teachers themselves were digi-savvy, they had never before used technologies with children. We established our rationale together:

Technologies can complement teaching and learning in the educational programme. Digital technologies themselves are already a part of young children’s lives and children in early childhood can be supported to learn about how to use these to enrich learning.

We discussed what our learning goals for children would be through using technologies:

  1. Learning how to learn using technologies (metacognition)
  2. Enhancing communication and collaborative abilities
  3. Developing creative thinking and problem solving skills
  4. Developing a strong interest in literacies — verbal, written, symbolic, visual,
  5. Developing an awareness about online safety

Children and technologies

KiwiLearners ECE Centre

Two iPads were made available at various times of the day. With the support of Justine Mason (CORE facilitator), apps had been carefully selected and included interactive stories and puzzle type activities. The iPads attracted small groups of children who worked together assisting each other to problem solve and try things out. Teachers worked alongside the children to encourage discussion, support safe use and turn taking, and to support investigations. The children proved very confident about trying things, taking risks, and ‘giving it a go’.

We noted an increase in children’s verbal interactions as they worked with and alongside each other, particularly those children with English as a second language.

Teachers began to use YouTube clips in ways that responded immediately to young children’s interests. For example, video clips of traditional Indian dance added to a conversation some of the older girls were having about ‘dance classes.’

Another example was when children lined up a number of drums to play; we found a video clip of a group of Scottish drummers. The children were mesmerized as they watched the amazing drumming moves and listened to the sound of the drums.

To add to an exploration of dinosaurs that a few children had initiated, we read a book of information about dinosaurs, and then investigated further by looking at their physical characteristics and watching how they moved on a short YouTube video clip. We then downloaded an app, which allowed children to ‘build’ different dinosaurs and listen to their roars.

Other technologies that the children have been using include a digital camera and Skype. Skype enabled children and teachers to connect with Justine when she had returned to New Zealand, and for a child to connect with grandparents overseas.

Technologies and adults

We use an LCD screen mounted in the reception area of the centre to play the day’s slide show of children in action in the programme. This area is a regular meeting and chatting place for our parents and children, and we hear children squealing with delight when they see themselves, and answering queries about what the photos show them doing.

The unique New Zealand approach to assessment of young children’s learning via Learning Stories has been adopted at KiwiLearners. We use the online portfolio platform Storypark to share these stories with families. Every child has its own private portal. We do not use hard versions of individual learning journals/portfolios as do centres in New Zealand, as paper is both a scarce commodity and books tend to deteriorate in the high humidity of the climate. Instead, we upload individual and group stories to Storypark, only printing some group stories to display as the interest unfolds in the programme. These stories are later collated in clearfiles so we can revisit them with children and families at a later date.

The online platform is well received by parents, who, in turn, invite other family members to view. Comments now come from around the globe as many grandparents enjoy this opportunity to have contact with family. We have used the community space on Storypark to share our newsletters and important messages. Our explanation about the use of digi-technologies with children drew discussion from ‘both camps;’ those for and opposing technologies in education. The fact that we could present both arguments gave our parents opportunity to get a more balanced understanding so they could make up their own minds.

ECE Online, the PD platform established by the CORE Early Years team in New Zealnd, is used to enhance KiwiLearners teachers’ in-centre professional learning programme. They have their own group where discussion about resources and teacher practice can include our New Zealand based Early Years facilitators.  Professionally, we can never be isolated, which is a tremendous advantage to this teaching team.

We have a web site, www.kiwilearners.com, and also have our own FaceBook page, where we keep connected with our wider community of KiwiLearners fans. Why don't you take a look and give us a ‘like’!

Conclusion

Kiwilearners is an exciting new development in which the use of digital technologies is seen as an important part of developing the attitudes and dispositions of young learners who will require these things as they grow to live and learn in an increasingly digital world.

That said, the focus of the initiative is not the technology, but the learners, their learning, and their families’ role in this. The embedded use of a range of digital technologies by the staff, the learners and their families is creating opportunities to establish a more integrated and seamless partnership among all involved in helping these young people grow to reach their potential as 21st century citizens.

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Powerful play: Continuity and inquiry for children starting school

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Children at play

A number of new entrant teachers I’ve spoken to lately have been exploring how they can best support inquiry learning with children new to school. Some have found the more traditional inquiry methods don’t seem to work so well with this younger group of children. So, they are interested in finding alternatives to supporting children’s thinking and creativity, while encouraging them to delve more deeply into ideas, concepts, and topics. At the same time, they are interested in supporting children’s transitions to school by making more connections to their prior-to-school experiences from early childhood education and home.

The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) gives some guidance here. It states:

The transition from early childhood education to school is supported when the school:

  • Fosters a child’s relationships with teachers and other children and affirms their identity;
  • Builds on the learning experiences that the child brings with them;
  • Considers the child’s whole experience of school;
  • Is welcoming of family and whānau.

This new stage in children’s learning builds upon and makes connections with early childhood learning and experiences. (MOE, 2007, p 41)

Building on and making connections

Let’s break down these ideas from The NZC a little, particularly the ideas about learning building on, from, and connecting with, prior learning and experiences. What are the experiences and learning children bring with them?

For many children, part of this prior-to-school experience and learning has occurred through their participation in early childhood education. But, what does this mean?

If we assume a child has participated regularly over an extended period of time in a quality early childhood education setting, we might expect they have experienced an environment where play is the valued mode of learning. It’s highly likely that their interests, goals, and strengths, developing learning dispositions and working theories will be central influences for programme design on a day-to-day basis.

They will have experienced a modern learning environment — most early childhood settings have never known any other way. Every day they will have had significant periods of uninterrupted time with other children and with teachers. This time will have allowed opportunities to develop short and long-term, personal and group projects and inquiries that will have emerged in response to both spontaneous and planned experiences.

Inquiries and projects in ECE

Examples of inquiries and projects I’ve seen in early childhood education settings include:

These investigations aren’t topics selected by the teachers in advance, but rather, responses to the everyday wonderings of children that emerge through rich play tasks. Teachers have the critical role of both fostering and encouraging these inquiries — by way of their minute-by-minute interactions with the children, as they listen carefully to children’s emerging ideas, questions, ‘soft-spots’, and fascinations — as well as planning possible opportunities and possibilities to stretch the ideas and grow the learning.

Not every child’s experience

While I know many early childhood teachers would concur with this view of how teaching and learning happens in their place, this is only a snap-shot of what a child might experience in a quality early childhood education setting. However, it’s important to acknowledge that this won’t be the experience of all young children starting school. Nevertheless, building on children’s known modes of learning, and on what children find interesting, will go some of the way to supporting continuity for children and engagement.

Some suggestions

So, with all that in mind, I have a couple of suggestions as to what entrant teachers might like to try out in their classrooms:

Suggestion 1 – Embrace play as a legitimate and powerful mode of learning

Sometimes play is described as informal learning, but be assured play is learning, and there’s a plethora of evidence to say this is so. Of course this isn’t a new idea but many countries around the world value this form of learning for young children (over other more formal forms of learning) for much later in a child’s life than we in New Zealand do.

A recent article featured in the New Zealand Herald, “All work and no play”, illustrated the interest by some schools and parents in this country to introduce formal learning to three and four-year-olds. This position contrasts sharply with that of the Too much, too soon campaign in the UK that includes calls from leading academics to wait until children are seven years old to start formal learning. Interestingly, this campaign draws on the research of Dr Sebastian Suggate whose Otago University study found children who learnt to read at five years old were no more successful at reading than children who started reading at age seven.

Play is real learning, too

Play isn’t some sort of soft approach before the ‘real’ learning begins. That idea is a hangover from education’s industrial era. Play has been consistently described across time as central to cognitive, language, cultural, and social development. Lev Vygotsky said that ‘In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development.’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p 102). He believed it was incorrect to conceive play as being without purpose. He considered that play as supporting the development of a child’s cultural knowledge that helped frame future learning of the child (Drewery & Claiborne, 2013).

I’m really confident that play is also the preferred mode of learning for young children. They get it. Play is what young children do. It’s what they know, and they are good at it.

More space, more time

There is some significant work happening in schools where teachers are creating greater space and time for play in their classrooms. However, my challenge to new entrant teachers, in particular, is to take it further.  What I mean by this is, teachers should dedicate more regular times to it and use these opportunities for rich and complex learning.

Often, times for free-choice play (outside of morning tea and lunch time) are activity-based and provided in a small window of time, and are limited to the likes of one morning a week. This play is much more contained and constrained than what young children coming to school are used to. I acknowledge it’s not easy to find more space and time, especially with so many expectations on both children and teachers. But, I’ve seen plenty of teachers push back on these pressures, and they report having happier, more engaged children. They’ve also had less behaviour issues to deal with. Interestingly, these teachers are more energised and happier too.

While ideally there would be more regular and longer periods of time for children to become involved in complex, creative play, I believe it’s almost more important to be aware of who is designing what goes on during this time. More often than not this play is set up around adult-determined activities. While many of these activities are familiar to children, they don’t necessarily encourage the more complex inquiries that children are used to. Which is where my next suggestion comes in.

Suggestions 2 – Let children’s ideas and interests do more of the driving.

While many children enjoy learning through tabletop activities or choosing from a range of choices on offer, there are richer possibilities for how this time and play might be used. When adults listen to children’s working theories, interests, and passions, and use these to design complex and connected-learning opportunities, they effectively put children in the driver’s seat: the authentic ideas of children become the important questions to be explored.

By allowing children space and time to play they will show you what they know, what they are capable of, and what they want to learn about. Through play, they explore and express their ideas, interests, and passions — but you need to listen to these carefully to know what to pick up on. Here you will find a bottomless pit of material for designing richer, more authentic, interest-centred inquiries and projects where children are engaged in complex thinking, expression, and exploration. Trust me. You’ll be overwhelmed with a choice of what to delve into with children, and believe me when I say that the ideas they are interested in exploring are more interesting and compelling than any topic or activity we could dream up.

To get to this space, some teachers will need to become more attuned to children’s interests and passions. It will mean allowing children to hold a bit more of the power.

Examples from ECE

If you’d like to get a sense of some projects and inquiries of children in early childhood education settings, go to these links:

References
Drewery, W. & Claiborne, L. (2013). Human Development: Family, place, culture. Sydney: McCaw-Hill Education (Australia).
Ministry of Education (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum: The English-medium teaching and learning in years 1-13. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind and Society. USA: Harvard University Press.

Would you like help in developing and implementing
a Powerful Play programme in your school?

CONTACT KERYN NOW!

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and teaching

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Have you heard of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? In this post, I’ll start with a quick definition, then describe why we need UDL for improving learning outcomes in 21st century classrooms. I’ll outline where LEARNZ is on its UDL journey. Then I’ll suggest teachers do three things; firstly, adopt a more inclusiveness UDL mindset, secondly, train their students to help themselves, and thirdly, use e-learning sites like LEARNZ to save time and improve learning outcomes. Lastly, I’m going to give my opinion on why teachers have never been more important.

LEARNZ website and UDL

What is Universal Design for Learning?

In a nutshell, UDL is a framework for inclusiveness whereby a teacher:

  1. taps into their students’ interests to challenge and motivate them
  2. provides various ways for students to learn
  3. provides options for students to demonstrate their learning.

Message 1: Yesterday’s classroom practice is not enough

I can still remember classroom lessons from the 20th century, some where I was a student and some where I was the teacher! A few went like this: everybody copy the written notes, then turn to page 66 and do exercises 1 to a million, then swot it all up and do the written test – no pictures allowed!

Without going into why teaching was sometimes like that in the past, this type of classroom practice hasn’t been acceptable for some time, and things have improved significantly. For instance, there has been a lot of work done over the last two decades on:

  • making learning resources more visually appealing
  • teamwork and problem-solving
  • using real-world examples to make learning more relevant
  • individualising assessment.

All the same, despite parts of our education system being world class and our high fliers experiencing international success, we still have a persistently “long tail” with too many New Zealand kids not engaged and “left behind”.

Message 2: Inclusive learning is a valid goal – UDL is a valid framework for achieving it.

If learners are excluded from learning because of language or cultural differences, because they are vision or hearing impaired, because they have limited reading or writing or numeracy skills, or because of dyslexia or dyspraxia issues, then learning outcomes are not going to be good for them. Inclusiveness has to lead to better engagement and better learning outcomes.

There is a wealth of research evidence to support UDL as an inclusiveness framework. The 3 Principles and 9 Guidelines and 31 Checkpoints of UDL have come from world-wide reviews of 10 years of research and over 1,000 articles. This evidence has driven a huge number of articles about how to implement UDL, numerous learning tools for UDL, and repositories like a British Columbia website for schools, dedicated to UDL that New Zealand schools may find useful. Some may say that the effectiveness of UDL is self-evident and, indeed, that UDL is something best-practice teachers have always inherently followed, albeit under less wide-ranging frameworks, under other names, or in a more fragmented way.

Although it would be ideal if everyone in the state or private system had one-to-one tutoring from a trained teacher, it just isn’t practical. However, a one-size-fits-all, teach-to-the-middle, factory-like system doesn’t cut it either. Is there some sort of middle ground where teachers don’t have to do all the heavy lifting?

Message 3: LEARNZ uses UDL to help learners and save teachers’ time.

Starting in 2013, the LEARNZ Team at CORE have been looking to UDL, as part of our continual improvement programme, as another way to enhance the learning and teaching experience on LEARNZ field trips. We have taken many small steps, some of which include:

  1. Tapping into students’ interests to challenge and motivate them. Children are naturally curious about the world around them. LEARNZ uses the online medium to provide an experience that is real, that frames and contextualises global and local issues. The LEARNZ teachers and the field trip experts regularly challenge students to question their thinking; whether it’s in an audioconference or on our Ask an Expert web board, or when they “look students in the eye” down the lens in a video clip.
  2. Providing various ways for students to learn. One new initiative for all our virtual field trips, is that all the background pages have a headphones icon at the top so that students can click on it to have the page read to them by the LEARNZ teacher, not by some robot voice. Teachers and students love having this option! See page reading in action for Memorial Park.
  3. Providing options for students to demonstrate their learning. Throughout each field trip, in context, are different suggestions for students to build on their learning, or reconstitute it. Indeed, the Creative Commons Share licence on LEARNZ encourages students and teachers to repurpose our content with their own.

Message 4: Three easy ways for overloaded teachers to use UDL

Implementing UDL with classes might look like a lot of extra work, and it would be if teachers took it on themselves to develop all material for students in text, picture, sound, and kinaesthetic formats. I suggest, though, that teachers primarily took on UDL more as a shift in thinking, or as an attitude or aspiration, and tried the following:

  1. Think like a learner. Whenever you are planning for your class, through your new UDL lens, think what it might be like for students with hearing or vision limitations, or students who read or write poorly. How about you ask them for suggestions? For example, many students struggle to present live to an audience. You may suggest they make a video, which enables multiple takes and reviews, and the facility to replay and re-publish.
  2. Train your learners. Learners can help themselves. Students with smartphones can use free apps to help with reading and writing, or consult an online dictionary or thesaurus. It’s not tricky or difficult. Your Internet Use Policy should provide some certainty that students stay on task and use such devices appropriately.
  3. Use an e-learning site like LEARNZ. Try one of our field virtual trips to see how much heavy lifting you can save yourself, and how well you can help students to engage.

Message 5. Teachers have never been more important

This is another story, but for now, all I’m going to say is that we live in an increasingly complex world with increasingly complex jobs, using more and more specialised tools and language to solve increasingly complex problems. Teaching is no exception. I’ll expand on these ideas in my next post.

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10 things you need to know about Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa (dispelling some common myths about the Pacific)

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Pasifika parent afternoon

Prompted by my colleague Manu Faaea-Semeatu, I put together the following list that should help educators to better understand Pasifika.

1. What “Pasifika” actually means

Pasifika is a term that is unique to Aotearoa and is a term coined by government agencies to describe migrants from the Pacific region and their descendants, who now call Aotearoa home.

2. Pasifika peoples are not a homogenous nation

Pasifika in Aotearoa refers to people who are descendants of the Polynesian nations of the  Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Tuvalu, Tokelau. This means we don’t all speak the same language.

3. Fiji is not considered part of Pasifika (Polynesia)

Fiji belongs to a group of nations referred to as Melanesians. Other nations in this group include Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia (part of France), West Papua, Indonesia and Papua.  However we can still include them in the definition of Pasifika within the context of Aotearoa.

4. Not all people from Pasifika cultures can speak their heritage languages

Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa, especially if they are born here, may not necessarily have learned to speak their heritage languages. Usually this is because they have not had access to opportunities to learn their heritage language either in the home or at school.  However, some Pasifika peoples may speak their heritage languages in church communities or in their homes if they have strong speakers to help teach them.

5. Not all Pasifika peoples come from one Pasifika nation

Intermarriage is, or interracial relationships are, quite common amongst Pasifika peoples or with Pasifika peoples and other cultures. So, it is not unusual to have students in classrooms who, for example, may be both Samoan and Tongan, or Māori and Cook Island. This means that students in schools will benefit from teachers getting to know the subtle differences and nuances of the cultures of their learners.

6. Pasifika peoples like to congregate in group settings

Pasifika peoples like to work in groups to collaborate better with one another, which is traditionally part of their village life before migrating to Aotearoa. Pasifika learners dislike being singled out as this shatters their confidence and potentially harms their self-esteem.

7. Pronunciation of names

If you learn how to correctly pronounce names of Pasifika peoples, this will earn you much respect. Even using phonetics to get the right sounds will take you a long way when working with Pasifika peoples. By making the effort to ensure you use correct pronunciation, it shows that you respect Pasifika peoples and their cultures.

8. Establishing positive relationships with Pasifika peoples

Communication is the key and will result in a better partnership and outcomes between school and the home. To establish positive relationships, you must work with families to improve parents’ participation and contribution, even if you encounter some reluctance on the part of families to engage.

9. Pasifika voice

It is important to respect Pasifika peoples’ voice regardless of their language barriers. For example, even though their tone of voice when speaking their heritage language, or in English, may sound argumentative, they should be empowered to be heard and valued.

10.  Improve communication with Pasifika communities

Use accessible language in communications to homes and the workplace, and avoid professional jargon that might work to isolate or disempower Pasifika peoples.

Helpful links:

Polyfest

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Ten Trends 2014: Learning analytics

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CORE's Ten Trends for 2014 have been published. This post considers the third of these trends: Learning analytics. We shall be publishing posts on one of the trends approximately each month. You are encouraged to comment or provide supporting links.

Explanation

The easiest way to start thinking about learning analytics is to draw a comparison with what happens in retail. Big chain stores around the world are getting really good at recommending products to consumers. One in particular done some incredible stuff around this — they know that if a woman of a certain age starts buying unscented lotion, a bigger handbag and multivitamins, there’s an extremely high likelihood that she’s pregnant, and would like more reviews and recommendations related to maternity products and babies. Now you might think that this is about moving baby products onto consumers, but, if you think about the fact that one of our goals is to get the perfect, most engaging learning opportunity in front of a student at just the right moment, this kind of big data analysis, or learning analytics, becomes very powerful.

Let me give you another example: Amazon’s ‘people who bought this also bought…’, or their ‘recommendations for you…’ section is basically learning analytics. This kind of thinking has been brought into education to help raise literacy levels. The New Zealand library management and cataloguing software Koha has analytics built into it: if a student rates a book 5 stars, the software is able to look across all borrowers and say ‘other people who rated these books 5 stars also rated this book 5 stars — would you like to read it? We’ll reserve it and text you when it’s available.’ You can choose to limit your analytics to you or your school only, or vastly increase the accuracy of your predictions by looking across all other users who have rated items.

Impact

Undoubtedly, the crucial impact from learning analytics is our ability to offer Increasingly personalised, meaningful, engaging learning experiences for students. To track their progress, get early intervention information as soon as possible, and to make informed decisions about strategies that are most likely to make a difference for that student.

The other crucial impact of learning analytics is the opportunity it gives us to strengthen partnerships between school, the student, and parents and whanau. Becuase if we’ve got this wonderful data about a student’s progress through learning, why would we keep it to ourselves — what a great way to align the support offered to students at school and at home than to be completely transparent and invitational in the way we arrange learning?

So what? — The implications

We need to ask what data we’re gathering about our students and their progress through learning. If we’re completing tasks in a range of different online spaces, how do we bring all of that disparate data about a learner and make it whole again — make a complete picture of this child.

Another implication for us is the challenge to use that data once it’s gathered. There’s a great saying about data: it needs to be useful and used. It must be relevant, reliable and meaningful, but it’s pointless to gather data if we’re going to use it. What are your teaching as inquiry processes like in your school? How well is data used when making decisions about what needs to be learnt next and how students might best learn it? Are you drawing on the rich data you have about your students?

Some of the ethical implications for us centre around data sovereignty and privacy, the real power of learning analytics is unlocked when you’re able to work with large data sets — which means sharing data across schools. How are you going to ensure you deal fairly with students and other schools when sharing data? If you’re contributing to national-level data collection, have you thought through the implication around who has access to it, how student rights are managed?

If we can start to make use of learning analytics to get the right learning activity into those student’s hands, and maximise the engagement and motivation they have for that learning activity, we’ve got a really powerful model for personalising learning for every student.

Challenges

  • What data are we gathering in our schools?
  • How is it being stored and managed?
  • Who has access to it?
  • How is it being used to inform what is happening at school level?
  • How is it contributing to national-level data collection to inform strategic decisions around resourcing etc.?

Examples and links:

For more about the Ten Trends:

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