You call this 21st Century?

"Let's not just adopt technology into our schools. Let's adapt it, push it, pull it, iterate with it, experiment with it, test it, and redo it".

Marc Prensky's call to arms demonstrates how he foresaw (in 2005) that we would struggle to change our teaching to do justice to the astonishing promise of new technology. In the school where I work, we have overcome Prensky's "Big Tech Barrier" - we have gone one-to-one. But this is not the time to pat ourselves on the back: "machines are the easy part" said Doug Johnson in 2004 in the most practical book I have read about technology in schools (free download at the link).

After several years, I have returned to teaching Theory of Knowledge (ToK) because I love to do it and, as Ed Tech Coach, I want to have current experience of the challenges of the classroom. ToK is a central component of the IB Diploma and according to its aims, "encourages students to formulate answers to the question “how do you know?” in a variety of contexts". (Subject Guide). These contexts include the points of view of different cultures. The course is expressed largely in the form of open-ended questions rather than definitive statements about what students should know. For example:

"To what extent are our familiar areas of knowledge embedded in a particular tradition or to what extent might they be bound to a particular culture?"

Very few courses in Western education have ever been formulated entirely in questions. The others which have done so provided a description of the expected pedagogy. ToK teachers are free from even this constraint. What an opportunity to experiment!

So in my introductory unit, having looked at the variety of perspectives we each have, I want the students to consider how cultures affect the ways people see the world. Moving beyond ethnic cultures, I also want to consider those which arise within a society. That's the first element of my lesson.

What I do not want is a lesson in which I provide most of the information, nor do I want an unbounded discussion which would probably engage a few and silence the many (particularly since it is not the default setting for we Physics teachers).

“Engagement and motivation are products of learning about things that matter to kids, things that they see value in" (Will Richardson quoted in Wywrot)

[caption id="attachment_47" align="alignright" width="359"] The deadline looms[/caption]

"Relevance and agency over learning" are the solutions, says Richardson, and "creative assignments". So that's the second and third elements. Next was the timely publication in the Guardian of the documentary Gun Nation. The phrase 'gun culture' came to my mind and I thought I had found the stimulus for my lesson. I realised simultaneously that I could build some activities around the video using TED Ed which is a powerful tool I have been wanting to use with students for some time. Furthermore, in Week 1 of CoETaIL I had looked at the Rubrics for Bloom's Digital Taxonomy on Andrew Churches' Educational Origami wiki. For the creative assignment I have in mind, Andrew's Digital Publishing rubric fits my bill, but it needed a degree of adaptation to become my own Digital Document rubric (with grateful attribution).

If you've been keeping count, that's six elements, to which I'll add one more:

1. Cultural perspectives in the ToK course;


2. Relevance and student agency;


3. Creative assignments;


4. Gun Nation documentary as a stimulus;


5. TED Ed as a medium;


6. Digital rubric;


7. Our One to World learning environment.

Take seven elements and react to form the Is it a culture? activity

We are in the middle of the activity right now, so evaluation would be premature. But to return to the wisdom of Doug Johnson, Never Assume.



 

 

The day I learned...

[caption id="attachment_33" align="alignright" width="321"] An example of an analogue medium[/caption]

One of my most memorable learning experiences happened during the year I worked as a journalist on a radical newspaper. I had reported in a few boring and literal sentences a city council meeting at which subsidies for kids’ clothing were cut. The kindly editor added a preliminary sentence: “Conservative Councillors would rather see children in rags than help striking miners”. Since that day, I have approached writing differently and purposefully wielded a blue pencil when students have submitted lacklustre opening sentences.

"What are the moments in your PK-12 education that were transformative, or had the most lasting impact on you?"

This question, posed by Alex Hernandez, was what took me back to my reporting days. He calls them 'signature learning experiences' and wonders: "what might a school look like if it were comprised largely of signature experiences?". My understanding of the exceptional nature of SLEs suggests that it is not an attainable goal.

But it resonates with a belief about education I have which sets the bar a little lower. My idea seems too simple to call a philosophy or theory. It is this: We learn when the experience is memorable. I can picture the time the construction of the Arabic word for 'library' was explained to me; Salvador Dali's obsession with ants; how James Clerk Maxwell derived the speed of light; an elusive chord in an Iggy Pop song. Each time, there was a sense of joy at making connections which has been transmitted to the present day.

[caption id="attachment_38" align="aligncenter" width="420"] Four things I'll never forget.Sources: ants, wave, iggy[/caption]

 

As I say, this seems a very simple thing, almost tautological: you learn when you remember the experience. In this view, it is not the 'knowledge' which is memorable, but the process of acquiring it. Crucially, we are talking about an interaction between people. So the experience is subjective and occurs within the mind of the learner inspired by the teacher (a teacher in the broadest sense: in one of my examples it was a good friend; in another, a YouTuber). And we cannot define what types of lesson will spark the tinder; any experience: an inquiry-based project; a skilfully scaffolded explanation; a telling mnemonic might do the job.

So my job as a teacher is to organise my students' learning experiences so that they are most likely to remember them. This is more than 'making learning fun' or 'easy', rather it is about interest, engagement, relevance, challenge. It can even be "painful" (Thomas and Brown). Making it memorable is what I think we should do. How is the next question, but this post would become too long.

[caption id="attachment_40" align="alignright" width="201"] Can't wait to read this[/caption]

In A New Culture of Learning, Thomas and Brown suggest that traditional schools "are ill equipped to deal with a world of constant change" and "treat education like a machine". The 'New Culture' can be seen as "a one room school house that scales to a global world with an almost unlimited set of resources". They recognise, however, that "the roots of modern education in the West have their start in the Socratic method, which was all about questions and seldom about answers". So it's not that we must do new things we've never done before. We already know what good learning looks like, because everyone recognises the feeling of revelation when it happens to them. But we seem to lose sight of that knowledge very easily when the grading tail wags the learning dog.

In addition to the traditional utensils of the classroom such as discussion, explanation and demonstration, I now also have technology in my arsenal. The question I frequently address these days is: How can technology, along with everything else, assist me in making the learning experience memorable? I am not short of opportunities, since:

“there are many ideas and topics that have always been important but were left out of traditional school curricula because they were too difficult to teach and learn with only paper, pencil, books, and blackboard. Some of these ideas are now accessible through creative use of new digital technologies.” (Resnick in Krueger).

[caption id="attachment_39" align="alignleft" width="200"] That moment when it sticks[/caption]

Using the old media of typewriters and notepads, I learned an important lesson about engaging an audience. Now, composing on a blogging platform, I have many more means at my disposal to make the message more compelling.

Surely it should be the same in the classroom.

 

Taxonomy Domine

When I went for breakfast at the ISTE conference one day last June, I picked up more than just muffins and coffee. ISTE's best-kept secret was finally out: the 2016 Standards for Students in handy poster format. I tweeted them out.

— Steve Weatherell (@steveweatherell) June 27, 2016

So was it worth the wait? After 9 years, ISTE has given the Standards a big shake-up. Firstly, the bar has been set higher, and no longer do we merely "use technology to learn". No, we are promoting "Transformative learning with technology".



And it's true! The new Standards are very far-reaching, including whole new skills and abilities which we expect good teaching to bring to our students. For example, there is a new category: Computational Thinking. Of course, it could all just be wishful thinking. Just saying something is transformative, does not make it so. But as I plot my path through CoETaIL Course 1, I feel that the new Standards (a taxonomy, if you will) are very timely.

[caption id="attachment_26" align="alignleft" width="213"] Bloom's Taxonomy updated 1990[/caption]

 

This week I became re-acquainted, once again, with the work of Dr Benjamin Bloom who pops up whenever I am studying education.

The most interesting aspect of the 1990 revision of Bloom's taxonomy is how Synthesis is promoted and re-branded. It becomes Creating. Whereas 'synthesis' suggests a use of raw materials to make a new product, 'creation' implies an extra ingredient - something which wasn't there before. Perhaps the difference is only semantic, but the decision to put Creating at the top of the ladder is significant.

Few people in 1990 could have foreseen how, within a couple of decades, it would be commonplace to be able to create artifacts: films; sound recordings; multimedia objects using one and the same portable machine. But Bloom's revised taxonomy anticipated the changes in education which ubiquitous digital technology makes possible.

 

[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignright" width="160"] 3 steps to heaven[/caption]

I read about another hierarchical taxonomy in Living and Learning with New Media. According to this analysis, kids, on their own and without the help of adults, hang out with technology, then mess around and finally geek out. It's a hopeful vision, but the reality about the geek stage which is "intense, autonomous, and interest-driven" (p. 28), is that:

"these kinds of youths are a small minority among those we encountered" (p. 28)

That is not a startling revelation to many of us who work with 21st century youth. Although some of my students are much more skillful and dexterous than me in their daily use of their devices, in other ways they are limited in what they do. They have acquired certain habits such as efficiently consuming and generating social media, but they do not necessarily learn new skills unless they offer immediate rewards (why would they?). This innate conservatism is invisible to many of my colleagues who regard their students as masters of the new devices, but it is important for the teachers to realise that it is so.

For otherwise, what would we need teachers for? Thankfully, search engines have taken over some of the bottom-rung Bloom skills. And there are web-services which allow anyone to cobble together a basic explanatory video. This leaves us with our hands a little freer to give the students new challenges.

[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignleft" width="174"] Image credit: ladder[/caption]

Sure, student, you can bash out a quick presentation, but:

• Do you know how to find and evaluate the most reliable sources?


• Can you use visual information to engage your audience rather than riddle them with bullets?


• Will you present it in a way that your audience understands the ethical or social implications?

Google won't do that for you, but your teacher can.

Last week, in my Theory of Knowledge class, I had a clear idea of what I wanted the students to understand at the end of the lesson and I designed an activity to achieve it. I don't think I did a good job. In attempting to dictate the students' learning, I did not trust in their ability to construct it. We used the devices but as consumers when we could have been creating.

So next time we will climb the ladder.

Me, technology and delayed gratification

[caption id="attachment_23" align="alignleft" width="149"] Image: flippedclassroom.com[/caption]

This week, I considered the idea of Perspectives with my Grade 11 Theory of Knowledge students.

How do our identity and our experiences affect what and how we know things?

The students and I each prepared an online slideshow illustrating the different perspectives we believe we have. I enjoyed the process of thinking about the aspects of me which affect how I see the world. Here are the slides I shared with the students:


I have never been happier in a job than I am now as an educational technology coach. I see myself as an educator, primarily, but one who has learned a lot about the ways in which new developments in technology can enhance the learning experiences of school students. But it was not always that way...

[caption id="attachment_20" align="alignright" width="332"] Matt and Steve. Halos optional[/caption]

My closest colleague last year was a Millennial. We were doing the same work, but in at least one way our backgrounds could not be more different. Matt has spent his first three decades surrounded by computer technology and used the Internet from an early age. By the time I turned thirty, I was yet to own my first computer. In fact I was heard to observe in 1990 that "there is nothing computers can do that people haven't been doing for centuries".

But opportunity, apparently, makes the geek. In 1995 in Thailand, when the international school I joined gave each teacher a Windows desktop, I gradually discovered that every aspect of my work could be enhanced by judicious use of computers (I also learned that Duke Nukem is an endless sink of time). That's not to say computers solve every problem, rather they add a new dimension of possibilities. A year later, a colleague showed me the Internet (of which we had by then heard, even in rural Thailand) and I surfed to the brand new site I'd just read about in the newspaper: davidbowie.com (and for just one example of the surreal power of the technology, step in this time machine).

[caption id="attachment_21" align="alignleft" width="299"] We all have our own perspectives. Image MC Escher[/caption]

My journey in international education has continued, accompanied every step of the way by the amazing power of arguably humankind's greatest invention. I feel fortunate to have seen this happen in my lifetime and to have been able to use it to create and communicate with students and teachers around the world. Like many relationships, mine with technology is coloured by its history; my perspective as a user of technology is mediated by my past interactions with it.

I was prompted to think about my travels with technology when reading Jeff Utecht's reflections in Reach. Jeff describes how following blogs led him to start his own:

"With one simple click of the button, I had created my little piece of the web that would allow me to communicate and collaborate with others who were all passionate about the same thing: learning." (p. II)

In my own way, exposure to educational technology has shown me ways in which traditional education can be enhanced and then transformed by technology. This has made me passionate to share with my colleagues what I have learned. It is never easy, because we are all to some extent trapped in the ingrained perspectives of our own schooling and a lack of insight into what the future holds. I am not one of those people who will tell you 'a revolution is taking place' because I believe we have yet to shed our shackles. The fight is worth it, however.

The IB's Theory of Knowledge is almost unique as a course expressed entirely in questions rather than declarative statements of what students 'should' do. ToK encourages critical thinking and "an appreciation of the diversity and richness of cultural perspectives" according to the IBO website. As a course with an innovative approach, I feel it is the ideal place for me to employ new media to enhance and enrich the experience of learning. And the way I do that will be unavoidably influenced by the way I have grown up with technology.

I look forward greatly to sharing the experience with the CoETaIL community.