Wednesday 11 December 2013

Self regulated learners is what I want!

I ran into a reference to POSBGIL at Lance King's TaoLearning web site.

 It got me wondering about how to teach next year. In order to use Guided Inquiry Learning (that's the GIL bit of POSBGIL) I would have to promote self regulated learners.  Three things from this article interested me.

Firstly that self regulated skills need teaching and the way to do that was to teach the key competencies of the NZ Curriculum. But how do you do that?

Secondly, students vary in their ability to self-regulate their leaning so you need to scaffold learning more for some.  This leads on the the last point.

Thirdly, readiness for self regulated learning was testable. I found a LASSI index to test a student's relaxation. It cost $US3.50 a copy. Thought I'd make my own and this brought me back to HoM (Habits of Mind).

Art Costa who invented Habits of Mind said they were what people did when they didn't know what to do. That seemd to me they were self regulating using HoM.  I looked in our students' planners and there's a self assessment of HoM there, but it's a little complicated.  Interesting idea though; I will pursue this.

Also looked for the scholarly articles referred to in TaoLearning link; they have also whetted my appetite for further investigation.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day

Listened to an interview with Tony Benn on TV today. It was a very entertaining and kind of uplifting interview.  n it referred to a book called "How to Live on Twenty Four Hours a Day" by Arnold Bennett.  It has a Wikipedia entry and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.

I liked the way it talks about reclaiming 90 minutes a day to improve oneself. Whilst he meant his message for salaried workers working a 40h week it still makes me long for time to do things like wrote this blog or read a book.  Worth a go? Certainly worth a think.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Systems Thinking

Space as a context for systems thinking.


Habits of Mind

Would Art  Costa's ideas be a good way of teacing thinking next year.  There's more to them than our MALL (meta-cognition, analyses, lateral and logical thinking) and they would intersect at times.  There are 16 HoMs we could focus on one per week and that way we'd get through them all twice in a year,

  • Persisting
  • Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
  • Managing impulsivity
  • Gathering data through all senses
  • Listening with understanding and empathy
  • Creating, imagining, innovating
  • Thinking flexibly
  • Responding with wonderment and awe
  • Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
  • Taking responsible risks
  • Striving for accuracy
  • Finding humour
  • Questioning and posing problems
  • Thinking interdependently
  • Applying past knowledge to new situations
  • Remaining open to continuous learning
They actually don't look like ways of thinking.  Habits is a good word.

Maybe not.  They will arise so opportunistically that it's possibly better to have them as 16 posters to refer to and remind of.  Sometimes you could engineer them in. 

Sunday 20 October 2013

Thinking the Titanic

So the other day I was doing a "CASE"  lesson with one of my Y7/8 Science classes.  It was about sinking and floating.  The first activity was a true/false/partly true set of questions about sinking and floating. The questions were pretty ambiguous and the "right" answer was often "partly true". They collaborated and quarreled over the answers.  The second activity asked them why the Titanic sank and gave them four reasons, all of which were nearly right. More argument!  The third activity was a series of 7 or 9 sentences that could be assembled into an accurate statement about the principle of flotation.

It was a very good lesson and the part that enabled that was the questions were well constructed to get argument going.  So what sort of thinking was it?  I think it was 'critical thinking'.  Here is a definition from "The Critical Thinking Community":

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

 I guess it fits into our pin-up thinking styles because it is part analytical and part logical.

CASE is an acronym for Curriculum Acceleration through Science Education and claims to lift student achievement in all subjects by getting them to think in Science.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

I've Been Thinking

"I've Been Thinking" was the title of those a poorly titled book by a politician. I went to a meeting today organised by a couple of colleagues about thinking and more importantly the teaching of it to my Y9 class. I am pretty enthusiastic about this focus and I thought I would blog about it so as to clarify my thinking. (is reflective thinking a style?)

Lateral v creative
Lateral thinking needs the thinker to look outside the square.  Sometimes called 'helicopter thinking' it needs a wee bit of suspension of rules so your brain can nonjudgmentally create options.  But is it creative thinking?

Lateral thinking is a problem-solving thinking style.  In fact I think three of the thinking styles our school "posterizes" are problem solving (analytical, logical and lateral), the fourth, meta-cognition, is not problem solving but seems a fundamental skill if you're going to be aware of what thinking style you're employing.

Have we got a problem solving bent to our thinking focus because of the way we set up the styles (a group of GnT students working with a Science teacher)? Or is thinking defined by the way it solves problems?  If that's the case what is the creativity of the poet, the artists or the sculptor?  Can artistic creativity be taught?  If you wanted to take a arty photo you would need to know what parameters you had at your disposal to manipulate but perhaps that's analytical thinking?  Lots of questions!

Types of thinking
So the "unknown" (the GnT students who first come up with Mackenzie's MALL (metacognition, analytical, logical, lateral)) came up with four styles.  What did they sift out?  I have  become aware that I do teach thinking but implicitly not explicitly; are there other types of thinking I am implicitly teaching?  I'll try and be aware of what the students are being asked to do to see as well as do some literature search.

Teaching thinking
How do you teach thinking?  We got talking about graphic organisers and http://www.nctt.net looks like a site to explore.

More later as the focus develops.  Comment is free and welcome!




Friday 11 October 2013

Learning Reflection

This is an exercise prompted by my involvement in an Opel Content Licensing for Educators course.

I began this course more for the experience of learning online than its content per se.  My institution (a small rural high school in New Zealand ) requires me to maintain an on-line presence with my classes (we close for snow etc from time time plus learning should be happening when the students want it to) and what better way to learn than be an "e-student" myself?

Well I did achieve that goal.  I did learn a lot about structure and the type of activities that can make learning happen.  But the content surprised me.  I enjoyed it (that's not too surprising) but it made a big difference to me, and that's going to be hard to put into words- so I'll use a mind map!

I guess given that I wasn't very motivated by the 'what' in this course, my prior thoughts were not very helpful!  I have been a principal and as such had a vague worry that one day we would get "done" for breaking copyright and it would be expensive and messy.  I had heard of Creative Commons as the schools I have been involved with were members of virtual learning networks (VLNs), and for about a year I was chair of the council for the VLN Community here in NZ.  But what I wasn't aware of, until I did this course, was that Creative Commons is connected to the moral purpose of education (I would define that as making a difference in others' lives); I had merely thought that Creative Commons was a form of copyright that would help protect our school from messy and expensive copyright infringements.  How wrong I was!

Where I am now then is in a somewhat morally uplifted place! I can see that the moral purpose of education is better served by CC licenses; the freedom to reuse, remix etc is a fundamentally useful and liberating thing. As a relatively rich white guy (with a liberal streak) I can see that students and their educators around the world would be better off if these licenses were commonly used. Creative Commons is a better way in so many ways. I have made a decision to use a BY SA license in anything I do (like Chris Bletcher though I doubt that what I do will ever be useful!) and part way through the course I would have said and I'll have an NC in there too please.  I didn't want any multi-national ripping my ideas off!  That change really surprised me.  And that brings me on to how I learnt.

How I learnt was my prior focus for this course. I was not disappointed here. One of the surprising things here may not be a surprise to educators in other countries.  It's the multi-choice question (MCQ).  In New Zealand we have moved to a system of assessment that does not value MCQs. To a large extent we rely more on extended writing as we try to judge a student's ability to evaluate, justify etc etc. The resources we read on MCQs has made me reconsider that and I'll be trialing that in my classes this term.

The video signposts were very well chosen.  From Tutu to the more prosaic Bletcher, they were the equivalent of a high class conference.  The readings were very good too; Moller's article was the turning point in dropping the NC tag for me.  I was surprised by that (I need to rehearse his arguments though as I find I'm unable to explain concisely why the NC tag should be not preferred.).  The definition of free and libre was a subtle point for me too and was partly responsible for some of the shifts I've made in my thinking.

I see great value now in micro and macro blogging and the use of reflective thinking and writing in learning.  I'll need to find a "safe" way of doing that with adolescent students, our school blocks Twitter among other things, but the concept will work well with pen and paper too. As for me; I think I'll carrying on blogging.

Thanks OERU for this course. I would recommend it.



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Thursday 10 October 2013

The last mission

The shuttle gets a piggy back home to retirement in California. Photo from Flickr.
The photographer was Michael Dorausch


In July 2011 the Atlantis took off for its final mission, the 135th of the Space Shuttle program

After a journey of over 8 million kms it touched down almost 13 days later.

What was that journey like and why was there so few crew?. 
"Only four astronauts were assigned to this mission, versus the normal six or seven, because there were no other shuttles available for a rescue following the retirement of Discovery and Endeavour. If the shuttle was seriously damaged in orbit, the crew would have moved into the International Space Station and returned in Russian Soyuz capsules, one at a time, over the course of a year. All STS-135 crew members were custom-fitted for a Russian Sokol space suit and molded Soyuz seat liner for this possibility." [Wikipedia]










In the upper video from the Ames Research Center (retrieved from the Internet Archive) a fusion of several visible light cameras and infra-red camera create a beautiful image of STS 135 taking off. The lower video is an amzing shot of the Earth receeding as STS 135 takes off.  It's in the Public Domain as was also retrieved from the Internet Archive



File:STS-135 Official Crew Photo.jpg
Attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits, these four astronauts take a break from training to pose for the STS-135 crew portrait. Pictured are NASA astronauts Chris Ferguson (center right), commander; Doug Hurley (center left), pilot; Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus, both mission specialists. [Wikipedia]


In this longer (34min) interview Sandy Magnus talks about her experiences growing up. It's a Youtube video on their standard license.

This post is in partial fulfillment of my participation in #OCL4Ed

It was easy enough to search for Creative Commons licensing. What was harder was finding stuff on Space.com where all rights had been reserved. There was a good quote there from Chris Ferguson the mission commander that would have been good to use as I didn't want to rely on Wikipedia.   I can't help thinking that Space.com would have got that from somewhere else!

I also ran into problems with NASA as they have been affected by the US Govt close down!

Due to the lapse in federal government funding, this website is not available. 
We sincerely regret this inconvenience.

The Archive site is interesting with over a million videos.  It's well known as a "way-back" machine but it's much more than that and worth a look.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

A scenario on copyright

This post is in fulfillment of a course I am doing (#OCL4Ed).

Scenario:

A teacher of Science in New Zealand, Michael Faraday wants an "accelerated" group within his mixed ability
Year 9 Science class to justify the continued spend of humankind on space exploration. The whole class is involved in the topic of Space Exploration.

He downloads and makes available the following on the school's intranet::

1. The Global Exploration Map a downloadable PDF from the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG)

2. A downloadable PDF "Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration" also by the ISECG but obtained from the NASA website.

Neither of these two items has any indication of asserted copyright.

Whilst in his classroom he makes available his personal copy, on DVD,  of

3. "Apollo 13" a movie starring Tom Hanks. The students are not allowed to take it home but may watch on a laptop during class time.

The student's brief is to produce a seminar/presentation to the rest of the class about the dangers of space exploration and why they are worth it [or not].

Q1 With regard to the two downloadable resources Michael may assume:
  1. That freedom to store on the school's server is implied by the PDF's free availability on the internet.
    1. Distractor.  Probably Michael will get away with this, especially since he wants it for science education,  but...
  1. That copyright is not permitted
    1. Correct. Strictly speaking Michael should get approval from the publishers.

Q2. With regard to the video Michael may assume:
  1. That since tis is a "private viewing" of a DVD he has purchased that there in no copyright infringement.
    1. Correct

  1. That he is showing the video as part of his job and therefore it is subject to the provisions for a public broadcast.
    1. Distractor. The video showing is not generating income.


Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Friday 27 September 2013

OER

I have been moving on with my Open Content for Education course despite the date for the course finishing having past.  It's very hard fitting everything into a school week.  I think next time I might look for MOOCs that occur in the holidays.  It's not so much the time required to participate it's the head-space.  It's quite hard to be reflective and considered in "te ao hurihuri" (the churning world) of teaching.. (Ironical that hurihuri also means reflection).

Anyway the course has been leading me to consider the use of OERs or Open Education Resources.  It's taken me too long today to get through this module because it has been so interesting.  I've been diving off to the sites called "MERLOT" and Connexions which are depositories for open texts.  I've searched wikieducator for a Level One Science text for NZ that I'm sure I've seen there and I've wondered if I should write a text myself for Y10 or 11 Science (what does the Moodle "book" resource do though?).  As if I don't have enough to do.  I also ended up at WebQuests, something I had forgotten about and Zooniverse as they both fit so well with what I am doing with Y9 Science at the moment (Space Exploration). (By the way in my meanderings I found a good site called "Waiology", a blog about the science of freshwater in Aotearoa/NZ that will help with the Wai Mackenzie topic later next term.) So you can see I've been around!

Where I should have been was considering the value of OERs in an open education system. A global system. These OERs make a lot of sense.  Economically students can buy food instead of texts, ecologically an electron is easier to recycle and educationally educators can rewrite and re-author to improve and to suit their own needs.  What the course is doing for me though is somewhat unexpected.  The ethical consideration of who education is for and what it should be. The reason I joined the course is I hoped to learn about digital education by being digitally educated.

What I am also learning though is that education is a basic human right and the digital age is giving us the tools to provide a universal free education.  It's a powerful message and a moving one.

What I need to learn next, or find really, is my place in this age as an educator.  I am very shy about what material I write.  They never seem perfect.  I hope that I will move to a position, through doing this course, that sees that fear as being unexceptional and surmountable.

Sunday 15 September 2013

Who owns our ideas?

This post is about the ideas expounded by Moglen and Lessig in this video

It is posted in partial fulfillment of my participation in a MOOC called Open Content Licensing for Educators #OCL4Ed



  • Is it right for educators to apply the word "theft" to reusing ideas to further learning?
    • No.  In his talk Moglen establishes eloquently and persuasively, in my opinion, that theft of ideas "was previously known as learning".  If we accept his rhetoric we would not be educators if prohibited the reuse of ideas.
  • Who should own ideas? The producers of knowledge? The distributors of knowledge?
    • Moglen argues that the distributors have stolen the works of the producers in the intellectual property right system.  He does so persuasively and in doing so puts a new slant on the battle for the idea of Creative Commons Licensing.  I had not previously thought of the intellectual property ideas as alienating the author from his/her creation. I had thought that the intellectual property system protected them.  I think Moglen is right though,  I am reminded of the phrase (which I have stolen from Proudhon) "All property is theft"
  • What values should underpin our thinking regarding the ownership of ideas in education?
    • The values that could underpin our thinking are those exemplified by the GB Shaw quote about and an apple and an idea. "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." This means that reusing, revising, remixing and redistribution (David Wiley's 4R's) of ideas should be the fate of all ideas created by educators.
  • Should educators and learners be required to ask permission before building on the ideas of others?
    • I am not sure as I do not know what Creative Commons requires as compared with the Copyright system.  However I would like to think that I would have to acknowledge the work of others by name.
  • How best can we foster an ecology of creativity in education?
    • Perhaps by using Creative Commons?  I need to learn more though.

Monday 9 September 2013

Freedom should be free!

Video of Stephen Downes

Video of Desmond Tutu

A reflection on learning from these videos.

As part of my OCL4Ed course I am required, and happy, to reflect on what I have learnt from these videos.

I found the Tutu video the most challenging.  I enjoyed it and, in writing this reflection, I had to go and re-view Downes video, getting much more out of it the second time through.

What was challenging about Tutu was I had thought that intellectual property rights were only fair and proper and that the creators of knowledge had a right to make money out of that.  I am not so sure now, but I'm also not ready to through the baby out with the bath water.

'Locking up the fruits' was a crucial phrase that Tutu used for me. He says that the poor can't afford the metered out knowledge and this is where Downes comes in , for me, when he talks about cost. I am reminded of the poetry of Yeats "I being poor have only my dreams/tread carefully because you tread on my dreams". Although Yeats' poem was a love poem the words help me empathise with Tutu's "our people".

Of course there's more to it than that and Downes' video was, on the second viewing, enlightening and inspiring as he lyrically talks about the talking back, the laughter, the way we WANT to learn, the "Learning out loud" as he calls it.

 Sharing is the core of learning and that sharing defines Open Content Licensing and also defines true education, Downes would have us believe

I now need to review what I think of intellectual property and find out more about how Open Learning Content Licensing deals with it.  I am inspired to share learning but I doubt that I personally have anything worth sharing. Perhaps that is a big challenge for me personally.

All in all a surprising start to a course that I wanted to do because I thought that I needed to do some e-learning to be a better e-teacher.  While that is undeniably sill true it also is true that I am surprised and empowered by what I have learnt today.

Monday 2 September 2013

Open Content Licensing for Educators-An Introduction

Hi

This is part of my e-activity for this course.  One of the side benefits is that it may revitalise my blogging besides the main focus that of open content licensing.

I very much struggle with the time budget in my job and the more I can make these e-activities save me time the more likely I am to keep using them.  For instance I ma playing around with dong my lesson planning in my google calendar (opening the event and typing in the description box).  This is also shared with the class via my google site.  Even so it is still a struggle to make it all make time-sense.

To fulfill the requirements of this course I need to insert a photo I've taken myself. This is one of me in gym with some volleyballers.
 Also to include a link to an external website.  This one is a Google site of mine that I am trying to develop to cover all my work at school.

Wednesday 29 May 2013

Reflections

School closed early today leaving me with a little bit of time to write an entry.

So, turning my back on lots of pressing work, I reflect.

With a mind map!