While I was blogging and asking questions at ULearn07 there was still not enough time to get all the answers to all the questions I had in my head. There are a few areas in which my new New Zealand friends might be able to help:
- Music and technology:
I saw some amazing traditional Maori music being performed in Auckland, but what is the role of technology in teaching music in New Zealand schools? - Health and Well-being
Are there specific initiatives in this area in kiwi schools? Are there websites or blogs helping teachers and children learn in this area? - Gaming for learning
At one or two of the workshops I was running it was clear that for years many NZ teachers had used games for learning, perhaps not in the same way, but for learning nevertheless. How exactly have NZ teachers got to grips with game-playing and game-making? Has it been embraced or is it still an 'underground' sport waiting for a renaissance? - Curriculum-building
I saw the official spiel on all this: what does the new 'flexible curriculum' mean for working teachers in NZ?
Feel free to reply on your own blog with a link back to this post, or in the comments on this post itself. And, of course, a huge thank you in advance to those who can help flesh out some of the areas I'm looking to delve into.
Update 1: Thanks to all the commentators, below, and to the Dragon for blogging his ideas on curriculum development. Any other ideas?
Ewan, several things come to mind. At my last school our Music teacher used Musition an Australian program for music theory, it has a series of graded tests that runs a database (that is where I came in, configuring this) of student test results. The teacher could set courses and levels, and pass grades needed in order to get to the next level. As a program the students loved it and the teacher thought it was great too, although a little passive perhaps. He also used Sibelius for composition work, the students loved this, they could put their theory to work and produced scores that could then be converted to MIDI files for use on keyboards or converted to WAV files using Goldwave.
As for gaming... It is still an underground sport for me. I use Gamemaker with my lunchtime clubs and with my G+T students. I would love to utilise the 3D gaming aspect of Blender, but getting 10 year olds to master Blender is challenging enough. Interestingly, Scratch has, since Ulearn07, been adopted by one of my teachers and she is using it as part of her planning, so maybe the revolution is about to start?
Posted by: David | October 23, 2007 at 08:25 AM
Thanks so much, David. Any other colleagues' insights would be most useful. I must get in touch with the guys at Christ's College, too. Now that you mention Sibelius, I'm sure they were exploiting that, too, along with other technologies.
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | October 23, 2007 at 09:16 AM
Ewan I was at your workshop on 'using gaming for descriptive writing'. (I'm the one coming to Scotland at Christmas) I bought Myst III and have been playing it with my Year Six students. The learning opportunities are endless. We started writing this week and the results have been quite facinating. I intend to video the children reciting their work and publish it as a digital book. Using the game as a motivator significantly increased the level of engagement in writing, especially with the boys! One parent commented that her son had started writng every spare minute he had at home! The qualiy of the writing too is beyond what I have seen with some students all year. I am the only teacher using gaming in the classroom at our school and it has met with some sceptisism. I think this might change when we publish our work. I have started a classroom blog - early stages yet.
As for the new curriculum - Over the last two years we have developed a 'powerful learning model' at school which operates around a thematic approach term by term. The new curriculum supports our approach to learning in authentic contexts where we investigate 'big ideas' and ask questions to gain understadnings rather than just knowledge. The focus too is on understaning how we learn as individuals and on fostering independent lifelong learners. I think the new curriculum is written for the new paradigm and gives us the flexibility and freedom to be creative innovative facilitators of learning. I am looking forward to the next update in 2009 -'the conceptual curriculum'.
Bye the way - I emailed you about the dates we will be in Scotland, but it bounced back. I will try again.
Regards Lesley Harrison
Posted by: Lesley harrison | October 23, 2007 at 10:39 AM
Will get round to answering some of your questions at a later time but still mulling over answers to earlier questions about the substance of your presentation and the "entertainment value only" of new technologies.
Had a number of epiphanies recently (nothing to do with rangers beating celtic 3-0)triggered by material from the conference.
Firstly blogging is a valuable tool in secondary science as a means of communicating with students and celebrating their work. It provides a useful portal for bringing a huge variety of resources together.
It was amazing to see how quickly staff in my department bought into the whole concept of web 2, initially through old fashioned discussion over cups of coffee and bouncing ideas off each other. We have a real buzz going and I haven't used half the ideas from the conference. We still have lots of exciting times ahead.
However I have noticed a number of things that we need to follow up and research.
Although not all students have access to the internet at home and not all access is through broadband I started a class blog. I took a junior class down to the computer room and with no planning whatsoever, let them set up their own blogs and linked them back to a class blog.
I set up part of the junior programme (rather clumsily)so that they could do some work on their own blogs. I wasn't helped by the fact that we had a break in after a number of hoons heaved a huge igneous rock (well we are doing geology)through a window and made off with my projector....pulling down half the ceiling in the progress!
I couldn't help noticing that my usual high achieving students who have completed absolutely every piece of work I set in their books were less than enthusiastic about this new approach.
I was just about to accept that we were not quite ready for this approach and that blogs were best suited for information and general communication. I had no success in getting students to complete any work on their blogs.
Until today that is when I asked the class to have one last go at completing work I set. I threatened to slit my wrists in bitter disappointment if they did not rise to the challenge. "oh no we'll have a reliever next week , we'd better get it done" Anyway I did get one response from a student who had handed in virtually no work all year. He is a bright lad who has underachieved all year and who is now remarkably asking for for more work. I suspect that if I did more work online I would end up with a different set of successful students.
I think it goes beyond the students. I have struggled all my teaching career with a structured model of teaching and learning that stresses the importance of planning and assessment and the final killer outcomes....what happened to chaotic enquiry and just doing stuff because it is interesting. Make connections later. As a research and development chemist in Montrose when I was a young lad that was how learning took place. There was a broad goal but you were largely free to follow up related investigations.
I take malicious satisfaction from the realisation the shoe is probably on the other foot. Colleagues who made me feel inferior with their paper handling and organising skills, who carried around large tuppereware containers full of paper resources and instant lessons now have to adopt to a different paradigm. I think this is a real problem for many teachers.
Admitedly this a lot to extrapolate from one piece of work from one student!!
I am keen to look at gaming in science so if there are any exemplars available would be interested to hear about them. Absolutely convinced it would be a hugely successful strategy. Have also done some research on what students understand by learning based on Professor Jeremy Kedian's sessions. I'll send you a copy of transcripts once I have finished transcribing.They give some fascinating insights.
Early start at school tomorrow....Well, need to be there sharp to track rangers progress against Barcelona!
My friend lesley has also had some outstanding success with primary students using gaming to stimulate writing.
Posted by: john west | October 23, 2007 at 11:12 AM
Wow! This is going to need a moment or two for me to think about, but I think the message for me is that we need to appeal to a wider set of writing methods for a wider set of students than we perhaps have realised we have. I wonder what would happen if you allowed kids to go with the medium they wanted. Some would have neglected blogging quickly (because it's hard) even though, after a few attempts, it was THE medium for them. Others would do well do leave the blogging and try pen and paper, podcasting... something else.
The big question: at what point does the teacher ease off the pressure to do something in a particular way and realise it's a 'lost cause'?
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | October 23, 2007 at 11:31 AM
I whole heartedly agree with your outcomes statement Ewan. I have long championed that a student should be free to choose how they present their completed work. The response from teachers has always been a mix of mild bewilderment at best. However, I do beleive that if the students have the relevant skills, they should have free choice in presentation. And if they do not have the skills, they should still have free choice in how they present their work. For me the reticence from teachers emanates from assessment criterion. How do you assess fairly a blog versus a hand written report versus a podcast and so on?
Posted by: David | October 24, 2007 at 01:21 AM
The new 'flexible curriculum' is great so far in my opinion (early days yet, I know). When I began teaching 5 years ago I had a vision of integrated units based around interesting topics and teaching children to be responsible for 'finding out' and processing information.
Well, what a shock I got! I found there was so much to cover in the old curriculums and at my school whole schemes had been created so that every box could be ticked for coverage. It was actually dictated to us what topics we would teach each year which meant you could not infuse any of your own passion about a topic (let alone the children's passion!). I felt like I never actually covered anything properly as I didn't have time. The focus was on covering it and moving on... no time to think.
Now maybe that was only my school but this year with the new curriculum it is as if my dreams have come true. So far at my school we have had some freedom to experiment rinquiry. We have radically changed our planning (for topic we just plan our immersion activities in detail) and although there are some who are very concerned about ticking all those content boxes, we have had alot less constraints from structure.
I think the important part of this new curriculum is the school working as a team to define what teaching will look like in their school.
Posted by: Marnie Thomas | October 25, 2007 at 06:55 AM