#NZLA2014
I had the privilege of attending this conference. I am still processing and sharing my thinkings, wonderings, learnings...
"In the last decade, the notion of literacy has gone from simple savoir-faire in reading and writing, to the technology-based opportunities afforded in connected reading, writing and multimedia production."
Literacy is undergoing exponential change in opportunities and we MUST keep up!
Know the WHY! Always know the why of our learning.
Good teaching is incredibly
complex, good learning even more so…
1. Clarifying,
sharing and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success.
Learning Intentions and known
unknowns!
Knowledge is knowing that we
cannot know. Waldo-Emmerson challenges teachers to come
up with curricula we cannot know, do not know and begin a process of discovery.
Moving from something we know
we know, to something we know we don’t know all the way out to don’t know we
don’t know, is an incredible spectrum. Our challenge is to work in the unknown, with opportunities for discovery and new ways of knowing.
We are living in timezones, twitter stats, where the half life of a tweet is
about 20 seconds. Yes 20 seconds, until that tweet drops off the feed and disappears if it is not retweeted. What does this mean for us?
Provocation to learn has to
be designed. It cannot be left til
chance. How do we plan and prepare
students for provocation and contradictions.
How do we make them happen regularly, more regularly that the start of a
topic learning. A real challenge is to ensure we have agency, choice of learning and personalisation, with learners supported and challenge to pursue new learning.
Pam Hook's Solo Taxonomy Framework is one way of working out where our learning is. Defining success in terms of how we are going to do this.
Actually taking time to dig
into the success criteria. Learning most
by a scrape of a pass, with loads of feedback.
How do we share the success criteria – provide safe haven; allow our learners to fail with support.
2. Providing
feedback that moves learning forward
Active listening – every characteristic of meaningful
feedback.
Talking about feedback:
Every time I watch this clip I am in awe of the power of feedback and feed forward. Aspects of feedback to consider:
- discussion… good start, now we can critique;
- students can produce high quality work taking into account critique and revision;
- teacher needs to actively teach and model the critiquing – allow for a revision;
- work through layers of drafts – continue to give feedback and continue to allow for revision;
- more specific with feedback;
- make lots of drafts;
- be kind with feedback;
- slow it down… forward thinking… not done yet…
- being uncomfortable with things just being okay!
- developing a culture of “that is great… but it’s not quite there yet!”
- feedback that is kind, specific and useful. Kind, specific, useful feedback must be come our way of being… our catch cry;
- what is the minimal input? How can we give feedback early enough to allow for growth and discovery. Feedback must be given early in the process so that the learner is not too heavily invested in the final product. Feedback too late can be hurtful, and be unable to be acted on.
- feedback walls – anonymous feedback can be left for acting on. Can we have feedback walls in our classes? Feedback walls on our blogs?
- literacy targets – put photos on the area you are concentrating on. Allows for kind, specific, useful feedback on the area the learner has chosen;
- peer feedback time – specifically allow time for this, schedule it in;
- taking a vocal feedback point and making it visible with scheduling it in to your timetabling;
- sharing your learning journey;
- making ‘worthy problems’;
- provocative, immersive learning;
- immersion – spend time in the success criteria, spend time looking at the team aspects,
Synthesise, immerse, immerse,
synthesise, ideate, prototype/feedback, ideate...
Get deep into the what…
Allow students to take
ownership over exploring wide and deep and pull their own conclusions out of
it.
Technology is allowing an
immersive experience.
Plan the immersion, but plan
no further. Allow learners to collaborate, allocate tasks, surface existing
knowledge and discords, curating the original experiences is crucial. Provide new information to allow for
discovery. Post up ‘I haven’t founds yet’.
Get beyond searching for
‘known knowns', let students chose their learning pathway and record learning
on immersion brainstorming.
Preparation and planning is
far greater than ‘direct teaching', take one next small step, and commit.
Notosh Design thinking for
learning - so much to explore here
I have so much to explore and learn as I journey this year. As I work with cluster of schools, I can plan the immersion, but no further. As we synthesise our scoping, we can immerse ourselves in the journey, to ideate, prototype, allow for feedback, ideate, and journey together to create best possible outcomes for all our learners in all our schools.
