Developing life-long learner skills

How do you become a life-long learner?  I was qualified and worked for some time as a microbiologist.  I then married someone who lived in the middle of nowhere and there were no jobs for microbiologists within a 100 mile radius.  But the local secondary school needed chemistry and science teachers, and so, I entered the teaching profession, without any training and I learned how to teach on the job.
This set me up for a lifetime of learning on the job.  My skills developed through need and, of course, I was putting in effort along the way.  As a chemistry and maths teacher, I kept thinking about better ways to teach the students, and attended professional development opportunities to help me improve.

I had previously thought that getting a degree in microbiology (and a post graduate diploma) would set me up for my working life, and that was all that I would need to be the most invaluable microbiologist in New Zealand.  I look back shamefacedly at that notion! Little did I know that knowledge was expanding at an exponential rate and whatever I knew back then, would be well out of date in five years.
As I moved into a senior management role at my school, the job description changed even more and now also included presenting and working with the staff.  As a classroom teacher, I had seen the development of the internet and digital technologies in education as opening up a whole new world for me and my students.  I started reading, watching and listening to as much as I could, and more importantly, started searching the internet for strategies using digital technology skills so that I could engage my students and deepen their learning.
 I looked for the "just in time" professional knowledge rather than the "just in case"  because there was so much to learn, it would have been overwhelming otherwise.  And so began the next stage in my learning journey. The age of the confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learner had arrived.  I am confident because I know that the knowledge that I need is out there in the ethernet.  I am connected because I have expertise at my fingertips, and have professional learning networks I can tap into 24/7.  I am actively involved because I seek out new learning myself as I need it and give that learning back, whenever and wherever I see the opportunity. I am a lifelong learner because the journey never stops.

 I don't tell you this story to celebrate my success as a learner.  I tell you this story so that you can think about your own journey and how you become a lifelong learner so that your professional expertise is based on your own wants and needs in a changing world.  And I also tell you this story because your students need to know and understand it, as they enter a rapidly changing world.

The internet has changed the playing field for everyone.  So much knowledge and learning available for all.  If I want to learn how to copy and paste, I just google "how to copy and paste".  If I want to make a podcast, I just google "how to make a podcast".  There are instructional videos about everything and anything on youtube.  You can find out anything "just in time".  And that knowledge may be redundant in a years time, so be prepared for change.  Never have Heraclitus's words been more true - “Change is the only constant in life.”

Do you have a class blog?

When you have a class blog, it is often about a "showcase" - showing your parents what their children are doing in class and celebrating their achievements.
If you are ready to take the next step, it can be very empowering for your students and will help them raise their literacy levels through more careful attention to correct grammar and presentation, with your guidance.
When you use student blogs in this way, it moves the blog from a "showcase" to a "process" portfolio.  Students make progress and are able to show their learning in an explicit way.  If you can encourage your parents to make positive comments and to extend the authentic audience for the students by letting their friends and relatives have the link as well, you will see great progess in student literacy achievement.
Not only will you be able to show learning, you will also be able to show evidence of students reaching the National Standards.  This will make the blog an "accountability portfolio."
You will need to make a decision about whether you want to check every post on the student blogs or whether you will do spot checks and address digital citizenship issues as they arise.  I prefer the latter because the students do need to learn to "live" in a digital world.
Teach the students how to comment positively on their peers blogs and you can also let your parents know what kinds of comments will help their child's progress.
If you have a class blog on Google Blogger and you want to add links to your students' blogs to the class blog, this short video will tell you how you can do this.

I would love to hear your stories of how student blogging has empowered you and your students in these ways.

Recording my professional learning in one place

This year I have resolved to try to record my PLD (professional learning and development) a little more conscientiously, as I have ended up storing it all over the place in other years and it has been messy to retrieve. I have made a page on my 2015 Appraisal Site in order to do this. It looks like this.

I have a form on one side where I can enter the details of the PLD and the response spreadsheet on the otherside which includes links to the resources.  So far it has worked well as it is easy for me to open the site page and enter the information during the PLD session into the form but also view the previous PLD in the embedded spreadsheet.

If you are interested in this method, here is a video on how to do this.  I hope it is useful for you.

Googling: Embedding a blog into your site

A couple of people have asked recently how to embed their blog into their site, so I have made this youtube tutorial of two different ways to do this.


If you want to see other tutorials, have a look in my youtube channel.  My videos are made in the traditional Flipping way - warts and all, so I hope they are of use to you.

A great infographic from e-learning infographics which explains why flipping your class really works.

This great infographic reminds us of the importance of reviewing what we learn to be able to commit it to memory. This totally explains to me why videos are so good at helping us learn. We can stop, pause rewind, review a video, at our own pace. No teacher interruptions. If we have a video stored in a central place like on a site, this adds to the benefit as we are able to review regularly. Enjoy!
Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Principals and their Very Necessary Involvment in the Professional Learning and Development of their Staff

In 2014, I decided to conduct an inquiry into the involvement of principals in the professional learning and development project that I was facilitating in their schools.  I had found that in 2013, some principals were not active in the professional learning and development (PLD) that they wanted their staff to particpate in.  When this happens, some staff see the project as being of lower priority in the school.

I had about 30% active involvement of principals and decided I wanted 100%, so my inquiry was to see what I could do about it, as research had told me that the PLD would be more successful if principals were actively involved.  I decided to approach the principals and ask them to complete a checklist of indicators that they were actively involved.

This strategy had a twofold purpose:

1. To alert the principals to the fact that they should be involved (even though the Memorandum of Understanding clearly stated they would be)
2. To give principals some ideas of how they could be involved (because sometimes these things may be as clear as the big nose on your own face but not to others)

Principals were asked to help me with my inquiry by assessing their own degree of involvement and also adding any other factors that they could think of that would indicate that they were involved.  

There were unexpected outcomes.  As I watched some principals complete the checklist, I saw them waver as they filled out the sheet.  They WANTED to check the indicators positively but they knew they had not , in all honesty, done what they indicator had suggested. But they went ahead and checked it anyway!  And then they started doing it from that point on!  

So I suddenly became aware that some principals need a little help in meeting success criteria.  They need to know what is expected of them spelt out in black and white.  This year, I had over 80% active involvement by principals in the PLD.  A big improvement.

Principals also added some criteria to my original list and I am publishing this list of indicators so that it can be used by others working in schools in the same way that I do, and by principals if they wish to do a little self review on how well they are involved in PLDs in their school.

If you have a suggestion to add to the list, please do so by adding a comment below.  Here is the checklist: 

                                  

Disadvantages of using digital technologies in schools.

I read a blog today on Mindshift about what students think about using ipads in school. I skipped through the positive comments pretty quickly.  After all, I am a big fan on using digital technologies for learning and I pretty much have all the positive things in my heart.
But then the last comment (voice and text) on the page was from a student, Anthony Mainiero, who says there are disadvantages, like when there are glitches.  And there are times when the pen and paper would work just as well than the $US600 device that the school gave him.  This is so true!  For those of you who are familiar with the SAMR model, you will no doubt immediately realise that the learning in this instance is at the S or substitution level.  As one of my colleagues would say - "ipads are very expensive pen and papers".

But Anthony had more to say.  He talked about the fact that they did less field trips at school now.  This is another very valid point.  Are schools relying on the technology to connect them to experiences that would take hours of paperwork to prepare for? There are all the things that can go wrong on a field trip.  And you are responsible for getting all the little (or big) darlings back to their mamas and papas.  Far too easy just to do a virtual field trip and there are many good ones around.  Learnz in New Zealand provide a fabulous range of virtual field trips for students, backed up with awesome resources, prior learning and next steps and so on.  You can visit Art Galleries, World Wonders and Online Exhibitions using the Google Cultural Institute site or even explore space and our planets using Google Sky.

Still, I don't blame Anthony for wanting the school to make learning more fun by having more field trips.  I will always remember that class trip to W(h)anganui (the spelling changed to the correct Maori version from when I went to school), where we climbed the Durie Hill Tower, the Water Tower, visited the underwear factory, and I rode on a town bus to school for the first time from my billet host home.  All the sights and sounds of the city were pretty exciting to me and they became etched in my memory from first hand experience.

I also know that my own students will remember forever the 8 day trip a colleague and I took them on a trip to Fiji.  It was an awesome experience for them sit in open motorised canoes, travelling inland up the river to a remote school and to suddenly feel utterly privileged to be from Ohakune, Waiouru and Raetihi, where they had books, pens and beautiful classrooms.  But I digress. These field trips were once in a school lifetime experience.  They were not the normal classroom activities and will continue to be the special events that teachers selflessly craft for their students.  School camps will not fade into oblivion, nor will trips to the swimming pool, or on a bus to the marae, or local farm.

The technology, on the other hand should be seamlessly integrated tool for learning that students use as second nature, just as they once used the pen and paper.  The learning will need to be a bit more relevant for the students though.  If Anthony's teacher knows her/his stuff, she/he will be using it to enable the students to cross barriers that have never been crossed before.  Teaching and learning will be collaborative, connected and students will be confident learners.

I recently heard a teacher bemoaning the fact that kids just dont remember stuff any more.  Well guess what?   They don't need to any more. They can google almost any bit of knowledge they want to if they have the skills.  That is what they need to learn - skills and attitudes and dispositions that allow them to LEARN.

The students  will know themselves well, their strengths and weaknesses and what they have to work on. They will be creating their own personalised learning journeys, and learning to learn as they go.  They will have choice, decisions to make about which way to go and what goals to reach.  They will be making stuff and communicating with others about what they have made.  They will be taking photos and making slide shows and videos and voice recordings of the events in their lives and have permanent records of the awesome times they spent in their school years.
I hope Anthony does not give up hope.  I hope he can teach his teacher about what matters to him, what is going to hook him into his own learning journey and develop into the best human being he possibly can be.  And most of all, what digital technologies will help him on that journey.