Response to a comment on my edtalk

Hi Justin,

Thank you so much for watching this clip and taking the time to comment.  I would love to share a deeper glimpse of how things looked in my daily class programme. 

A great place to start would be looking at our class blog.  A range of our learning was accessed and shared through our blog. 

A day in class was generally broken into three chunks: literacy, numeracy and inquiry learning, but learning happened across the day and week when leaners chose. The timetable for the day was set the previous day by us all, and learners would add in how that learning would look on their devices.  We had a full BYOB – bring your own browser programme, where learners could bring any internet capable device to school.  We operated a ‘high-trust’ model, where learners used Andrew Churchs’ model ‘respect and protect’. 

Although my literacy and numeracy workshops ran at set times, learners had choice over what they were working on during the day with their own record of must dos and can dos.  They opted into workshops that were on according to their needs, and some were opting in according to my request.  I used a Daily Five approach to my literacy programme and learners were given choice over their reading materials.  We buddied with a number of classes and used peer tutoring approaches to support our learners.

Learners were also a huge part of planning the sessions for learning.  They were empowered to look at what they already knew, and challenged and supported to move into the unknown.  A lot of our learning was passion based with learners having great choice.  Our sessions on identifying our own Personal Learning Environments and Networks were a great opportunity for personalisation.

I have recently found this photo from a presentation which shows some of the recording of the learning wall, so all learners were a part of setting and meeting expectations. (Both teacher and self imposed expectations.) Slide five shares some of the links that informed my thinking at the time. 

As you have seen in the video we used spaces to meet needs.  In the blog there are interesting clips of the learners sharing why certain learning spaces work better for certain tasks.  2012 was an incredible learning journey with a wonderfully reflective, engaged learning group.  I think the power of the journey was the ownership by the learners of their journey.  This extended to their families, as they were hugely involved in the journey throughout.  Families were involved in setting goals and working to achieve these.

Flexible learning spaces suit any learning style and are particularly well suited to learning on portable devices. 

It was an incredible privilege for me, to celebrate a year of learning, really exploring the potential of digital devices, with personalised learning for students.  I think it was essential for us to have the students lead the journey and be such an incredible part of the way things evolved. 

Since the beginning of 2013 I have been working as a facilitator with CORE Education, with the Learning with Digital Technologies team.  We work in schools to maximize opportunities for learning with digital technologies, especially for priority learners.  It is an incredible privilege to a part of the transformative journey of education in New Zealand.  We are increasingly moving to Modern Learning Practice with Ubiquity, Agency and Connectedness.  I do miss the class, but thoroughly enjoy the role of supporting others on their journey.

Resources that support and shape our Modern Learning Practice journey that might be useful to you are:

MLE Matrix

Derek Wenmoth’s Blog

Mark Osborne’s Modern Learning Environments

Chris Bradbeer’s Open Learning Spaces

I would love to hear more about your journey.

You are very welcome to contact me on anne.kenneally@core-ed.org, or a skype session or Google hangout would be great to discuss this further.