The future looks nothing like democracy because democracy which sort to empower the individual is being obsolest by a social order that hyper empowers them.

Mark Pesce

Just listening to Steven, through Wes Fryer.

I have to begin by saying that listening to Roger Schank inspired me too, I even posted about it at the time. It was one of the first podcasts of Wesley’s I heard and he really challenged my thinking, in fact I wonder if I can track back to hearing that podcast and that being the catalyst for the challenges I have faced in the last 18 months as I began to push back?

School improvement, are we really doing what our society requires?

Our schools are so NOT “fine they need tweaking”, there needs to be a fundamental shift in what the curriculum is addressing and what schools are supporting. We in New Zealand are quite blessed with the new curriculum, it is very new and shiny and very 21^st Century perspective, however I wonder how these are being implemented in schools. It makes me wonder what the key pressures are on schools that truly define how the curriculum looks, it is not simply the National Curriculum.

Steven Wyckoff spends quite a bit of time talking about the analogue of learning to drive and someone made the comment that while you’re growing up you spend a long time watching people drive. I heard it said once that while you are learning to drive, driving instructors spend quite a while telling people where they need to look. “Focus on what is immediately in front, look out around parked cars”, etc. People’s closest sensory experience to driving? It’s sitting in the passenger seat. So a new driver has unlearn the passive ‘watching’, for example looking at someone walking over a footbridge for the whole time it takes for the car to pass under it. Drivers then need to learn to be active observers of the environment around them. There are so many things that students are learning that are wasting time… We DO need to spend more time on learning the skills that they are going to need in life.

So what DOES a curriculum look like?

What are the other pressures and issues we need address in school?

What are the school teacher:student ratio look like in New Zealand. Are there the same issues as in Kansas where the system needs to be adjusted to lower the ratio or is there a genuine issue around ratios?

“In order to do what?” Brings the curriculum into sharp focus. Steven links the need to focus education on ‘economic productivity’ for the future. But I want to consider, is there any value in learning for learnings- sake? Does it not do something for the brain development, regardless of purpose?

My next question: Are there quality apprenticeships or study-to-work programmes available in New Zealand that realistically address the issue applying students for the workforce?

As I was listening I was thinking this idea about applied learning and the links made to Ted McCain and the discussion/ presentations made by Ian Jukes in Napier last year.

I was discussing with a high-school principal the other day around the issues of NCEA level1 not meeting the expectations required for courses in NCEA level 2, let alone NCEA level1 OR 2 meeting expectations for the workforce.

So how are we going to measure success for the 21^st Century, what are the skills required and EQUALLY, what is the core knowledge required for the future?

]]> http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/2008/06/23/natural-learning-what-schools-don%e2%80%99t-do-by-steve-wycoff/feed/ 1 http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/2008/04/14/the-week-is-on-the-up/ http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/2008/04/14/the-week-is-on-the-up/#comments Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:19:56 +0000 Dragon09 http://educatingthedragon.edublogs.org/2008/04/14/the-week-is-on-the-up/

This session ran really well today. What amazed me, yet again, is the sense of wonder and anticipation even Itermediates have for a shared big book. Obviously you have to choose carefully…. “Each Peach Pear Plum” though it is my son’s favourite book is inappropriate for 12 and 13year olds.

My choice was In the Woods by Chris Wormall… Though it sound a quaint story to begin with a relies on prior knowledge of rhymes and other fairy stories there is a twist to the tail that brings the students up short if they have never heard it before. In fact many of Chris’ books are like this. But the reason I chose this one was the fact it followed a journey- in the woods- as the name states. We used the IWB to plan out a retelling of the story then the pictures show the students making embedding their own sound files for different portions of the story. A great whole class/ breaking into groups kinda lesson. They responded well to the challenge.

I was flicking through the Education Gazette at lunch today and came across the advert.

Christchurch Convention Centre

8-10 October 2008

www.Ulearn.org.nz

I’m always up for doing a presentation or two, you know me. And it’s always great to meet at the blogger café and get some F2F time with folk. But there are 3 main reasons for attending.

Will Richardson- The Don of the Edublogosphere himself.

Steven Carden – He whose book inspired me to action with my “Did you Know?… NZ” presentation at Learning@Schools08 (I’m kinda hoping it’ll be ready of ULearn!)

And Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com/)who I missed at TUANZ that time and am desperate to see.

Any and all ideas about getting there gratefully received.

Podcast :  On the Road

One where the children play together, the teachers do other kinds of things together. I wish that there was a spa in the classroom for the teachers to relax in. The playground is open to our classroom:- very classroom gets their own playground. The whole school has lunch before morning tea. We have a skate bowl at school. Middle syndicate has fun playing sports. You have to go to a different class to do different stuff. Have our own disco. We can ride our bikes. Lunch orders for lunch AND play. A big pool for everyone to swim in. Getting free lunch. Heaps of computers in our classrooms- to find stuff out. Every class to have an IWB to play games on. I think we should have a basketball stadium and our own Xbox at your place. We should have fizzes and lollies at school.

-It appears to me that my students are wanting ’school’ to prepare them for a job at Googleplex! And why not?

What can the school do to help you get ready for the future?

Help us with our learning: maths, spelling and reading. Help us to get to University. Insist on no junk food. To help us choose what we want to do in the future. Help me save money for the future.

 -Wish the school would help me save too! Isn’t it interesting that ‘insisting on no junk food’ is up there with ‘get to University.

-Perhaps the answers to these questions reveal a lot more about my school and my teaching style than it does about the students par se.

 Just as The World is Flat and Growing up Digital rocked the US so this book should be a ’sit up and listen’ kinda thing for New Zealand. Whether we will or not is another matter, but we should.

 New Zealand is in a locality and has a population situation that makes innovation and change possible, with relative ease as societies go. Let’s make our educational system relevent for our students who are entering a global economy from a very unique direction.

Let’s stop apologising, play to our strengths and make a real difference.

Karen Boyes

21^st Century Learners

We so often expect for ‘me to win someone has to loose’ For so long Karen argues that has been the case in Education. Its about time we took a serious look at that. With the new possiblities through the new curriculum in New Zealand we have a opportunity to address this imbalance and make education a ‘win-win’ situation.

Technology is changing, REALLY fast now. Karen challenges us and asks: Are we keeping up? Are you? Am I?

Interactive Whiteboard are good and a step in the right direction but the kids very quickly ask, ‘yep…now what?” “What’s next?”

So what skills are they going to need for the 21^st century? We need to turn them into thinkers and Learners for the 21^st century.

Think of it: Wikipedia is the first port of call for information, youtube, iTunes two billion tunes available off the web. Gone are the days of “ooooo, I just bought my first stereo,/walkman.”

, access to the world…. TradeMe is fast becoming the first not the last port of call for purchases.

Everything is happening too fast.

There are six pionts that Ted McCain points to, to help us in developing the 21^st century citizen:

Resist the temptation to tell

Kids are different to in our day.. Opening the door through education is no longer required because now they have access. We need to teach them to inter-relate and use the information effectively. Why are we labelling kids so early when the brain matures at such a vastly different time from student to student. Educational milestones; reading this well aged 6,7,8 NUMP level 3,4,5 by such and such. They should be a guide and we rather than saying “They are not developing” we should rather scaffold their learning with the view to them ‘maturing’ in their learnnig later. (Karen said that bit better than I typed it but I hope you get the idea)

Back on track….. With Apollo 11 being only 3% ‘on target’ for its mission to the moon so our kids need to be, we as teacher spending 97% of our time on ‘course correction’.

Let them experience life and learning they have to do it for themselves; how does a child learn about ‘hot’ you can tell them off all you like be until they touch hot they won’t full understand the concept- My boy was like this, at 18 months he touched the bulb of the beside light when it had been on a couple of minutes, Now when I say ‘That’ll be hot’ he understands more fully- there is pain and discomfort involoved that he does not want to experience again.

Stop teaching decontextualised information

We need to give them a real world context. Dr David Sousa states that we needs to learning to:

1 make sense

2 have meaning

How do we get them to buy into learning?

Stop giving the final product of our thinking.

- Enpower them to do it.

 Why are they still dependant at Y13?

75% of tasks we do in the classroom kids should be doing. Sure we need to scaffold you can’t just expect them to that on Monday morning– Who decides what is important to learn in your classroom? You, the government or the kids! Who should decide?

 

Problems first teaching second-

Getting the children empowered through ‘role play’ Please see Edcast one or my example of Ian Jukes’ talk

 

Progressively withdraw from helping.

ICT stands for the progression towards independence : Independent , Collaborative, Teacher. Progress through the year. They become dependent and less reliant on teacher input

Re-evaluate evaluation.

Have we missed something. Is the written test enough??

Looking below the surface- what is it we are about- what is the best for their futures?

Teacher make every other profession possible- 21^st Century.

Ian Jukes “We are doing a great job in educating our kids for the 1970’s”

Recommended reading:

“The tipping point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

“The World is Flat”  by Thomas Friedman.

“A whole new Mind” by Daniel Pink

“The singularity is near” Ray Kurzweil

‘Teaching for Tomorrow’ by Ted McCain

“The necessity of experience” by Edward Reed

Contact details:

karen@spectrummeducation.com

www.spectrumeducation.com

I have  been reviewing Rubert Wegerif’s Litureature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning (yes, all the capitals are correct).

A few thoughts occurred to me as I read, they are kinda random so excuse me.

The ability to have ‘higher order thinking skills’ should be seperated out from having the ability to express your thinking. But then how is that possible. Thinking is considered to have a collective, social aspect to it and therefore knowing the language of thinking is just as important to thinking itself- some perhaps go as far as to say that without the ability to communicate ideas where is the value in thinking at all. My point is that, yes we should be teaching thinking skills but let’s teach communication skills too. Syncronous and asyncronous alike….

Perhaps this is where WEB2.0 comes in. There is great potential through the internet to develop communication skills. I really not that good synchronously, I need time to contemplate, and consider before replying… that’s what I like about my blog, its asynchrous. Perhaps there are others, students, who for similar reasons would prefer to develop dialalogue in this way.

Another point discussed in the paper is the development of classroom environments, making them more condusive to the development of thinking skills, turning the classroom into into a community that supports discussion and thinking. So how is this done? And what is the advantage of engaging the read/write web in this task? There are possiblilties through Skype, Elluminate and others to have experts ‘visit’ your classroom, or you ‘visit’ other classes around the country, around the world. Let’s broaden the horizons.

“One educational implication is that teaching thinking skills involves changing the social context to create conditions that at least approximate to what an ‘ideal speech situation’”(Wegerif, 2002, p.14) Does this not have Classroom 2.0 written all over it?

So, back here in the real world, with twenty-six Year3’s in my room tomorrow. What does Classroom 2.0 look like at ground level?

That’s what I’m enjoying exploring through the K12 online conference this year!