hens-feature

What do you use your Moodle for?

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free-roaming hens

Technology doesn’t always get used in the way that the creators originally intended. By the turn of the millennium, for example, my 486-66 tower computer was being used to prop open the office door; it was Lifehacker air conditioning. Today, it is well established in our minds that there are technologies that disrupt, and technologies that sustain. Then there are technologies that can be used to either disrupt or sustain; Moodle is one of these technologies.

Martin Dougiamus, the creator of Moodle, in an article in Moodle Docs titled Philosophy, stated his case for constructivism, constructionism, social constructivism, separate, connected, and constructed behaviour. He said, “Moodle doesn’t FORCE this style of behaviour, but this is what the designers believe that it is best at supporting”. So, from the start, he had conceived Moodle as a disruptive technology that would give students an online environment of their own, a voice, and agency. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers grabbed the platform and used it not to disrupt, but to sustain their teacher-centric practice.

Here are some teacher-centric ways you can use Moodle: Create content for the students to read; publish a list of useful links to get more reading; post a video of yourself talking in an authoritative way about your subject; create a quiz so the students can self-assess their progress; post homework exercises for students to do over the weekend. If you’re a geek teacher you can create badges and award them to those students who choose to play your game. That’s using Moodle to sustain teacher-centric practice.

Here are some learner-centric ways you can use Moodle: Set up a forum where students can ask questions, let the other students answer first, let them upvote good answers,  only intervene if you need to; set up an empty glossary and invite the students to explain concepts in their own words, solicit feedback through the comments; encourage the uploading of short video clips made by students as they reflect on their learning journey; spend some time showing the students how a wiki works and familiarising them with markup language, then encourage them to create their own revision resource; invite them to co-construct a revision quiz. That’s using Moodle to disrupt.

Here are some truly radical ways to use Moodle: Flip the online space – make all the students teachers and all the teachers students, switch roles, take teach-back to a whole new level; encourage your students to open free accounts on H5P and embed their interactives into the Moodle space; suggest each small study group creates a whole Moodle course around their project for the other students to access, don’t tell them how to do it just watch and learn from what they do. Now as a modern teacher all you have to do is follow Sugata Mitra’s Self Organised Learning Environments and make like a granny. Login to the Moodle and use the comments and forums they will have set up to appraise and support.

It was popular once to say everything becomes television. Today you could say everything becomes a network. This freer more distributed knowledge base is moving like tree roots to dislodge the pillars of the monolithic Learning Management Systems like Moodle and Blackboard. In an attempt to regain control, the universities started offering MOOCs like tweed jacketed, pipe-smoking professors making lame attempts to be hip. They entirely ignored the original intention of the MOOC as it was conceived by connectivists Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier, and once again the old school hijacked a learning environment to sustain their old institution-centric practices. I never used to understand the famous Marshall McLuhan quote, “The medium is the message”, but I totally get it now.

One technology that has emerged to support the trend towards distributed and democratised knowledge is rather charmingly called, Tin Can. I recall as a child turning two empty baked bean cans and 10 metres of string into a field telephone. For people who want a more important sounding name, it is also called xAPI or the eXperience API. xAPI is SCORM turned on its head. SCORM was the aviation industry’s solution to delivering consistent pre-approved learning packages across a world campus to a guaranteed consistency and standard. Faced with compliance training of a hundred thousand baggage handlers, it was a reasonable solution. xAPI allows the learner much greater freedom and ensures them recognition for their efforts. Now, free-range learners can roam the networks, and their interactions with learning objects embedded almost anywhere in the wider online environment can trigger a log entry to a Learning Record Store (LRS). Over time, the aggregate of these interactions builds up into a useful and insightful history of the learner’s journey. It’s early days for xAPI yet, but I think we will see it linked with micro-learning, micro-accreditation, and personalised learning environments.

If we are preparing our students through project-based learning for the increasingly likely gig economy, then the employer of the future turns out to be someone remarkably disinterested in what you have done and interested only in what you can do for them now. If you’re a geeky data-informed learning designer, then you’ll be best-fitting regression lines to learner trajectory scatter plots to predict their future performance. The employer of the future is more likely to turn to a recommender system that produces a list of suitable candidates available to start now than they are to browse portfolios. Anyway, the employment agents of the future won’t be people, they’ll be an algorithm.

 

If you would like to connect with CORE’s LX Team, come, see what we can do.

 

Image Credit:
Free range hens, Mullaghmore:
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Kenneth Allen – geograph.org.uk/p/5280001

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design thinking

iCubed: How design thinking develops lifelong learners

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In an interview with Jesse Mulligan on RNZ in June, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, said that we have to accept being “perpetual newbies” in this digital era. He argued that, “We’re going to have to become lifelong learners. I think this is the major meta-skill that needs to be taught in schools.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agrees: “The capacity to continuously learn and apply / integrate new knowledge and skills has never been more essential.” (OECD, 2012, p. 8)

Handily, for us here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (TMOA) mirror these sentiments. No doubt we are familiar with the call to develop young people who are confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.

why, how, what

Doubly handily, the NZC doesn’t just leave us floundering with the abstract notion of the ‘lifelong learner’, but gives us the key competencies by which lifelong learners are developed. If you like, the key competencies are the ‘how’ to the ‘why’ of the NZC’s vision; they directly support it.

The ‘what’ is the ‘stuff’ teachers decide to do, guided by the essence statements of each learning area. And while there is a lot of ‘stuff’ competing to be on the list of things teachers could do, I’d like to suggest design thinking as a way to develop the key competencies, and thus nurture lifelong learners.

It’s difficult to capture in a succinct sentence what design thinking is. It’s a methodology, it’s a mindset, it’s a kind of inquiry process on steroids. David Kwek does reasonably well when he defines it as, “An approach to learning that focuses on developing children’s creative confidence through hands-on projects that focus on empathy, promoting a bias toward action, encouraging ideation and fostering active problem-solving” (Kwek, 2011, p. 4).

i-cubed

I like to think of design thinking as being a way to bring people together to explore, learn, and co-develop solutions to real-world problems. I see it as having three broad phases:

  1. Immersion: researching, scoping, thinking, exploring, and, most importantly of all, empathising.
  2. Ideation: synthesising, defining, brainstorming, creating.
  3. Implementation: prototyping, pitching, gathering feedback, refining, problem-solving.

I call it iCubed.

And, I believe that as learners grapple with each phase of the design-thinking process, they actively encounter the five key competencies: thinking, relating to others, using language, symbols and texts, managing self, and participating and contributing.

By way of a brief example, a few years ago my Year 8 English class was exploring how we might welcome new students into our school. We began by putting ourselves in the shoes of a new student. We close-read some passages, we role-played, we conducted interviews. We were using language, symbols, and texts, relating to others and thinking. After generating loads of creative ideas, we formed groups around those we thought might have the greatest impact. We made prototypes, pitched to each other and to key members of staff. We sought feedback, refined our ideas, and worked together to find solutions. We were thinking, managing self, participating, and contributing.

While this is a high surface overview of both the learning and the key competencies that were being fostered, it was clear to me that design thinking is a powerful way to develop creative, empathetic thinkers. And my students thought that too. As one said, “Design thinking helps you to learn how to process ideas into something to help people”.

In other words, my students were being “critical and creative thinkers, active seekers, users and creators of knowledge, informed decision-makers” (NZC, p. 8). They are lifelong learners.

Philippa is also presenting on this topic as part of CORE’s Breakfast programme. She’ll be in Dunedin on 8 November.

Bibliography

Other resources:

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scones

Manaakitanga — The story of two schools

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scones

My family is made up of many legendary scone bakers and good old pikelet makers — sadly I am not one of them. Our whānau scones are so legendary, that we’ve been known to have scone bake-offs when we’re together on special occasions to see if there is actually one baker better than the other. Competition is fierce and luckily there are always plenty of taste testers around; ensuring there are compliments for all, so as not to offend anyone (or put them off baking scones). The younger kids are usually not so kind and will often back their Mums as the best baker.

My early memories include Sunday lunches with extended whānau and friends always welcome with many impromptu visitors calling throughout the weekend. Nana, my Mum, or my Aunty were always quick to whip up scones or pikelets to go with the cups of tea for our visitors. Be it a happy occasion or a sad occasion, scones and pikelets always seemed fitting and were devoured while the conversation flowed, with either raucous laughter or tears flowed.

It wasn’t until I was at Intermediate school and learning tikanga and te reo Māori that I first came across the word ‘manaakitanga’. There, it was a way to express the hospitality, kindness, and caring attitudes of my whānau. I could see that we were a whānau that always welcomed others into our home, sharing our time, and our scones, as we cared and supported others. There were many good conversations and world problems solved around our kitchen table.

Fast forward a fair few years to the story of now. Aa facilitator, I get the opportunity to visit many schools, and, recently, have had two occasions that have got me thinking and reflecting on manaakitanga in our schools. Let me give you my perspective through the story of two schools — schools I will simply call Tahi and Rua.

Tahi — A group of facilitators and I had travelled a few hours to deliver after-school workshops for the whole teaching team at Tahi School. We all met at the school office having travelled from various directions and signed in. We were met by the Deputy Principal and shown to the various spaces throughout the school, where we would be presenting our workshops. As we dropped each person off, the rest of us followed behind to then be shown our rooms, wondering if we’d be able to find each other again at the end of the day. We were left to set up, and once I was organised, I went next door to find a colleague, and we went off in search of the wharepaku. Roll on bell time. The participants arrived, introductions were made and conversations were held as our workshops began. The happy ending is, at the end of the day, we all managed to find each other in the staff room and headed off to our accommodation for the evening. As a team we shared our experience about being hosted by Tahi School and realised what was lacking was manaakitanga. None of us went in expecting scones with jam and cream, but we would have each appreciated a warm welcome to make us feel valued.

Rua — Again, another facilitator and I traveled to Rua School to meet with the Principal and discuss professional learning services. We were greeted at the school office with a warm welcome — a smile from the office admin person, who came around from the other side of her desk to hug us and thank us for traveling to their school. We were told the Principal was currently engaged with students, and were shown the bathroom before being offered a cup of tea in the staffroom while we waited. As teachers came into the staffroom they greeted us, introduced themselves, and, again, welcomed us to their school and offered us another cup of tea and/or fruit and biscuits. When the Principal arrived, we were welcomed yet again, and we assured her we were well watered and fed before we headed to her office for our hui. During the hui, the Principal asked what time we were planning on leaving as they had brought in lunch for us. No it wasn’t scones, but a home-made chicken and salad sandwich. True manaakitanga in action.

Both Tahi and Rua Schools were schools I had never been to before and teams I hadn’t met. The difference in how I felt leaving each school was immense, and promoted rich discussion within my team and plenty of reflection on my part. Of course, this reflection doesn’t just apply to how I or my colleagues are greeted, but is about how anyone who visits the school may be welcomed. To me, manaakitanga is essential in welcoming people anywhere, be it in our homes, our office space, or our schools. That first ‘taste’ of hospitality leaves a lasting impression. As a facilitator, I truly value the manaakitanga shown to me in many New Zealand schools and would like to think this is something that is openly discussed and reflected on by staff.

So, I’d like to invite you to think. Think about manaakitanga. What does manaakitanga look like, feel like, sound like in your school? If a visitor was to arrive at the office, what would the process be? If a visitor was in the staffroom, what would happen? If a visitor was in your classroom, how would they be greeted? But, it works the other way, too! Facilitators can also think about this. As a visitor to a school, it is important that we manaaki also, as it is a reciprocal thing. So, as a new facilitator in a school we could take kai on our first visit. Let’s make sure all of our New Zealand Schools are not dusty marae.

Whakataukī:
He tangata takahi manuhiri, he marae puehu
A person who mistreats his guest has a dusty Marae (Meeting house)
Someone who disregards his visitors will soon find he has no visitors at all. This accentuates the importance of manaakitanga, or hospitality within Maori society and culture.

Links:

CORE Professional Learning Services to support Culturally Responsive Practice

TKI:

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netsafe digital safety

Harmful Digital Communications and Schools – what does it all mean?

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netsafe-digitech

I loved those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books we read as kids – the best thing about those books was that once you made a choice, if it didn’t go as you intended, you could backtrack and pick another path.

Life is a lot like those books, and we are often faced with moments where we must choose, “What next?”. In real life, however, we rarely get the chance to go back and try again — and given the nature of the online world, the speed and reach of our communications, going back and taking another path is almost impossible.

Don’t get me wrong — the online world is an amazing place — the opportunities it offers to us as educators, and to our students are phenomenal. The rate with which we are engaging with others online and the speed with which the environment is changing is exciting. However, with these exciting new opportunities, come new challenges and risks to navigate.

The online space is a largely lawless state. There is no president of the Internet, and no world-wide set of behavioural expectations — and it can be unforgiving if we want to go back and try again. The New Zealand Government has recognised the unique landscape of the digital world, and in 2015 introduced innovative legislation that walks the line between freedom of expression and enabling people to safely participate in the online world.

The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (the Act) aims to lessen the harm caused to people by online content, and to deter people from posting or sending content that may harm others. In short, the Act gives people in New Zealand an avenue for dealing with harmful content posted or sent digitally — it offers help for serious cases of online bullying, abuse, and harassment.

What are harmful digital communications?

Harmful digital communications can take many different forms. They can be private messages or content that others can see. They include when someone uses the internet, email, apps, social media or mobile phones to send or publish threatening or offensive material and messages, spread damaging or degrading rumours and publish online invasive or distressing photographs or videos.

A digital communication is harmful if it:

  • is directed at an individual; and
  • makes or could make that person seriously emotionally distressed; and
  • it has or could seriously breach of one or more of the 10 communication principles in the Act.

At the core of the Act, are the ten communication principles that give guidance around what a digital communication should not do.

A digital communication should not:

  1. disclose sensitive personal facts about a person
  2. be threatening, intimidating, or menacing
  3. be grossly offensive
  4. be indecent or obscene
  5. be used to harass a person
  6. make a false allegation
  7. breach confidences
  8. incite or encourage anyone to send a deliberately harmful message
  9. incite or encourage a person to commit suicide
  10. denigrate a person’s colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

So…what does this mean for us as educators, the schools we work in, and the young people we work with?

The blurring of boundaries between online and offline, home and school, means that what happens out of school time, usually ends up spilling into the school environment and having a negative impact on student learning.

Key things to know:

  • Schools have a statutory role. The legislation specifically names schools in the Act, therefore schools have a statutory role. A school representative can file a complaint (with consent) with Netsafe on behalf of a young person and, where Netsafe is unable to resolve the complaint, the Act provides for the school representative to apply for enforceable court orders against the content author or host.
  • Ages and stages. The law has both a civil and a criminal pathway (charges under the new offence of deliberately posting harmful content can be brought against offenders 14 years and over, while the civil remedies in the Act are available to New Zealanders of all ages).
  • Safe Harbour. Under the Act, a school can be considered an online content host if it controls an online space where content can be posted (including school Facebook pages, class blog sites and content sharing sites such as Seesaw). As an online content hosts, schools can be held legally responsible for content, however they can be protected from criminal and civil liability if they follow the ‘safe harbour’ process outlined on the Ministry of Justice website.

Opportunities arising from the implementation of the Act

The Act is not all doom and gloom for us as educators or for the young people we work with. The ten communication principles lend themselves perfectly to having conversations with our students around what it means to be a digital citizen and what they can do as individuals to make sure their peers, friends and family members are able to participate online meaningfully, respectfully and safely.

Does the Act change how we deal with online incidents?

The Act doesn’t change how we respond to incidents around student wellbeing. Schools should continue to follow the procedures they have in place for dealing with any behavioural issues involving students. The behaviour is the same whether it is offline or online — the behaviours behind online bullying are the same as those behind face-to-face bullying — the only thing that is different is the environment within which the bullying is happening.

Schools should:

  • follow existing obligations under the Education Act (i.e. NAG 5)
  • follow procedures and systems already in place for dealing with behavioural issues
  • respond promptly to online incidents
  • contact Netsafe for advice
  • identify a professional leader who will make contact with Netsafe on the young person’s behalf (with consent following the school’s usual consent process).

Netsafe has recently released a quick reference guide to help schools support students affected by online incidents. The “Responding to Online Digital Incidents Involving Students” Guide is available here.

For more information about Netsafe, the Harmful Digital Communications Act, or online safety, please email Netsafe’s Education Team at education@netsafe.org.nz.

 

Hear Pauline Spence’s Keynote
at the Digitech Roadshow

Pauline Spence and Anjela Webster from Netsafe will present a supporting keynote on:

“Digital citizenship and safety online”

How do schools design tech-enabled learning, support wellbeing online, and understand how to respond to harmful digital communications? Delegates will:

  • Gain an overview of current ideas about digital citizenship
  • Explore vital approaches that effective schools use to help their learners thrive online

Find out more!

 

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help!

Help! I need somebody

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Help signIn 1965, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote a track which Lennon deemed to be one of his most honest works of all time — Help! Much has been written about the song since, however one element remains true throughout – simply that it’s okay to need help.

The concepts of setting goals, coaching and mentoring have been around for many years. Whether you’re a fan of the SMART Goals, GROWTH Coaching or simply someone who has enjoyed high-quality mentoring and guidance, you will be aware of the value of seeking support.

Over the last decade I’ve been fortunate to be part of all of the above, as well as in-school coaching and some great critical friendships. Some experiences have been life changing, shaping my thinking and practice, while others have been dictatorial and the only outcome has been to push me further away from the intended target. You see, there is a fundamental difference between coaching and mentoring. Likewise, there is often a tremendous difference in outcome when allowed to select your own coach or mentor as opposed to being handed the connection to a colleague. My aim in this post is not to criticise practices, it is simply to bring clarity to the differences you may experience and perhaps guide you into making an informed choice in the future.

Coaching

coachingA good coach is worth their weight in gold. You go to them with needs and specific skills and their role is to focus on getting you to the place you’ve identified you need to be. Coaching is often described as being ‘future focused’ in its nature. It’s a role that aims to move you forwards through a journey of discovery and supports you in taking risks. In the sports world, the coach is there to get results, drive the team forward and keep momentum going. A good coach listens and reacts to situations; however, their focus is forwards, fixed on progress and achievement.

Choosing a coach may or may not be the responsibility of the person coached. Often, when new to a staff or establishment, there hasn’t been time to identify the skill set of colleagues and so asking someone to choose their coach specific to a goal is like putting a pin in a map to choose your holiday destination- it could be amazing, or you could end up in the middle of a conflict. In this situation, seek the advice of peers and leaders. Express your goal and simply listen to their recommendations. However, what if you’re not new to an environment? You’ve identified a goal area and the person you feel could help you. Now what? Personally, I’d stop and check before diving in. Why have you identified this person? Often, we slip into the notion that we need the person who is best at something to show us how to do it. But is that what makes a great coach? Was Sir Alex Ferguson (English football’s most successful manager of the last 30 years) the greatest football player of all time? Regardless of what you think of him, he is one of the most successful coaches in footballing history. Not because he was a gifted player on the field, but because he knew how to get the best out of his players. So, you see, the best on the field may not be the best at showing others.

Lastly, and arguably firstly, there is a need to identify what sort of coach you feel you are looking for. Are you looking for an instructional coach, someone who helps you focus on practical strategies for engaging students and improving learning? Or perhaps a peer coach to help you collaborate and reflect, guiding you through solving specific problems? For some you may even be seeking a life coach, helping facilitate you towards a better whole person space to feed into your teaching career.

Whatever your decision, you need to start with your why. At the centre of any form of coaching is change. Before you choose your coach, you need ask yourself why you’re choosing to change. From there, what you want to achieve will flow and a coach will simply help you find how you’re going to get there.

Mentoring

Finding the right mentor can be extremely difficult. Rarely does the relationship instantly click into place. A mentoring relationship is built on trust, something that needs to grow and be nurtured. To me, the relationship between mentor and mentee is closer than that of coach and coachee. The sharing is deeper, the past is reflected upon more and used to inform the way forward. Like coaching, mentoring can focus on goals to move forward, but from my own experience, those goals were fluid and open to change. They often had open terms and were not constrained by time pressures. My mentor guided me through refining them, prompting me to return to them if I strayed too far away (as I very often did) and simply helped me find perspective.

Unlike coaching, mentoring is often described as a two-way street. Whereas a coach helps you navigate a path in the same direction, a mentor not only helps you move back and forth along the same road, they also facilitate the exploration of different avenues. Whether through their experience or reflection upon your own, a strong mentor will not only guide you towards your goals, but also show you the journey you’ve undertaken to get there. They help find you clarity and strength through a deep, trust-based relationship. And lastly, a good mentor will not simply spoon feed you the answers you’re looking for. They will challenge you, take alternate perspectives and lenses, pushing your thinking around a situation beyond the impact on you and help you shift your mind-frame. E.M. Forster once said, ‘Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.’

Which one do you need?

 The only person that can truly answer the question of which one you need is you. The challenge is identifying the difficulty you are facing and working out what it is you need to do to overcome any barriers. If you can see how you could potentially move forward, then perhaps a coach is what you need. If the fog has well and truly set in, then perhaps a mentor could be the way forward. One thing is for sure, they are NOT one and the same thing. In asking an experienced principal for her thoughts this morning, she replied ‘I see a mentor as someone who works more closely, a coach is more a facilitator. They both help you solve problems.’ She continued ‘A coach is potentially working from more of a model, whereas a mentor will work within the context a person finds themselves in. Regardless of the situation, it is easy to fall into spoon-feeding a coachee or mentee. It is the level of emotional investment and the understanding of the width of the picture that makes the true difference.’ What my principal colleague expressed is echoed clearly in a University of Waikato booklet from 2011:

“The word ‘mentor’ has become widely used in organisations and in a range of professional contexts. The term is often used synonymously with the related concepts of coaching and supervision, but while the mentoring relationship may involve elements of both of these activities, the role of mentor is generally broader and less specific than either of these terms suggest.’ (Spiller 2011)

Although value must be placed on both professional coaching and mentoring, the latter must take place in a safe and secure environment. The conversation should form as a direct response to the needs identified by the mentee. Unlike coaching within a goal-focused model, it means the direction is not a foregone conclusion. The journey will ebb and flow, grow as the learner grows and evolve as the depth of both trust and knowledge deepens.

For those who are unsure, there are a wealth of resources available to you online to help you make your decision. A short read for clarity is available here, via recruiter.com and is well worth 10 minutes of your time.

As someone who has experienced both sides of both roles, each has their place. They remain strong avenues to explore and help guide your practice, no matter where you are in your career. As a mentor, I relished the opportunities to drill down into people’s practice and bring out their ‘why’- creating strong lifelong bonds with other professionals that fed my knowledge and perspective as much as I hope they fed theirs. When coaching, the security of having a model and steps to work through were a genuine positive. Knowing the order and being able to check in with a colleague, using the same language and the same level of understanding made tracking progress towards a learning area very easy. From there it was often just a case of making it visible and embedding within an appraisal process.

The education sector continues to be an evolving field of exploration. Having access to services like UChoose, CORE Education’s mentoring service, helped my own professional growth in ways I never thought possible. My mentor, Rebbecca Sweeney, guided me through the minefields, helped me find perspective and sometimes just gave me the straight answers I needed. From a purely personal perspective, in my mentor I have found not only someone I trust to guide me and help me grow, but someone I now call a friend.

 

References

Spiller, D (2011) Mentoring Teaching Development | Wāhanga Whakapakari Ako University of Waikato, New Zealand

Image Acknowledgements:
Help image by Nick Youngsen under CC BY-SA 3.0
Coaching Baseball image by KeithJJ under CC0 Public Domain

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