Knowing what you don't know...

Often the first step to learning, is to know what it is you don’t know. This oft recited phrase is an interesting starting point for someone in my role. As a Learning Technology Coach, I am keenly aware of the amount of learning that is beyond my current sphere of experience. And that amount is constantly growing.

And learning is a resource heavy undertaking. Learning new things takes a lot, particularly for time pressured teachers. Many teachers can be forgiven for deciding either purposefully, or by default, that the mass of technology led learning available is just too big to start delving into. Where to start?

This kind of choice paralysis is a direct result of the overwhelming myriad of options that using technology offers.

Here is where I come in. I can open a window into what you haven’t had time to know, so you can see what the possibilities are. You don’t have to know what you want to do with technology before you ask me. You just have to be willing to look at new opportunities.

I probably don’t know the subject you teach very well and I might not have years of experience teaching the age group you are teaching. But I can ask you what you want to achieve, how you want the students to demonstrate their learning and then narrow those choices facing you. I can suggest or work out workflows that can support your students’ learning and offer suggestions to use technology that may not have occurred you.

Then, when you are keen to give something new a go, I can be there with you so I can learn how this works for your students. While they are learning what you need them to.

That’s how you help me to learn.

So you think you know what is happening in your classroom....

The Hidden Lives of Learners

Graham Nuthall

This is an incredible insight into the workings of the classroom. Recommended to me by @MrDMJWalsh, Nuthall set up microphones and cameras to track each and every interaction and utterance of random students in classes. His team then painstakingly transcribed and analysed each one. Following this Nuthall and his team were able to predict with incredible accuracy exactly what each student would have learnt, and did learn during the observed periods. He explains the huge influence peers have on learning, and the necessary repetition required before real learning happens. Again this pushes back against the current scourge of curricula which are over-crammed with content.

Pros: Incredibly insightful for those who believe they have a handle on what happens in their classroom.

Cons: Unfortunately, Nuthall is no longer with us to explore his findings further.

A book to change your teaching life.....

Learn Like A Pirate

I’d picked up a bit of fuss around this book from folk I follow on Twitter. Initially put off by the title I eventually decided I had to find out what the commotion was about. Paul Solarz (still a class teacher, Grade 5 in the U.S.A.) takes us through his philosophy of handing over the reins of the class to the students. Strewn with practical methods for managing student led classrooms Paul details how you can give the students in your class voice, and leadership, while ensuring that it doesn’t turn into anarchy. The ideas in this book transformed my classroom. Previously my classroom was a teacher led environment where I controlled the organisation of the classroom and had responsibility for all the day to day running. This was transformed as I handed over the organisation of timings, atmosphere, support and target setting to my class. After initial guidance all these things were done with skill and aplomb by my class, allowing me to focus on the timely feedback and support needed to move individuals’ learning forward.

It was exhilarating, rewarding and effective. Students were highly engaged in lessons where they decided how to organise themselves and how to support each other.

Pros: Well organised and written by somebody who walks his talk in the classroom daily. Full of practical real life strategies that reward your bravery with empowered, independent and motivated students.

Cons: I wish I had this book ten years ago. I’m not a big fan of the letters of recommendation from parents, although I realise the job they do, a bit brash for my British sensibilities! Not sure it translates to high school classes and would need to be adapted to younger children, but much would still work.

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Open by David Price

I had a brilliant break thanks for asking. A number of days of it was sat on a train trundling across Siberia. In that time I read nine books. I was reflecting on how I could use what I had learnt, and how this applied to my life and work. I realised that I’m likely to forget lots and have decided that by writing about them, I will remember the key points, and be able to tip off other folk to some great reads.

So check out my brief reflections, and feel free to get in touch if anything piques your interest.

Open - How we’ll work, live and learn in the future. David Price

This book is a thoroughly believable look at how things could go in the future. Price argues a case that many of the things that hold value in our current world, education, property, energy are going to lose their value due to the spread of ‘openness’ and self organisation. Although I found all interesting, the key one here is knowledge. He discusses how knowledge is becoming free. The premium of having a high academic qualification is diminishing and how learners are cutting out the middlemen of established learning institutes as a physical entity. The explosion of online courses and homeschooling being prime examples.

Pros: Lots of real examples on how these trends are beginning, easy to believe, wake up call for educators and many established investors in traditional markets.

Cons: Makes you feel that it is urgent that established education institutes get on the front foot with this, but I struggle to see how they will. Also, if he is right, then as students have less need to physically attend university, my recent investment in a student apartment doesn’t look too clever.

The Elevator Pitch

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I've heard this a couple of times, but I can't for the life of me remember exactly where I was at the time. I want to say the story has something to do with Richard Branson, but I could be just making that up.

The ‘elevator pitch’ is how you would explain your rèason d’etré to that critical person you just happen to be sharing an elevator with. And normally in an elevator, you have around thirty seconds or so to do it.

So I have attempted to write out my elevator pitch. How I would explain what I want to achieve in thirty seconds:

Schools don't work for so many people. Many of the most successful people are successful despite their schooling, not because of it. The current trend of standardisation and testing is making things worse. It's narrowing the opportunity for children to find out what they are good at. It's pointless and wasting our human potential.

Instead, I want to shift the focus to a creative, exploratory and innovative experience for students. Allowing them opportunities to find out where their strengths lie, and to follow their passions. Empower students to make a real difference to their world.

I am doing this by disrupting frenetic exam results chasing ‘schooling’ in a positive way. Giving teachers and students the support, opportunity and permission to try different things, to celebrate creative thinking, ingenuity and exploring passions. Join me.

Ok, so I timed myself, it was 33 seconds, and will have to do. This is my current thinking, in 6 months I will possibly have shifted focus, bt at the moment this sums up what I am aiming for.

What’s your 30 second elevator pitch?

Why results can't be used to measure teachers and students

Yes, it’s true, using the exam results that students achieve as a measure of the abilities or qualities of students and teachers, is impossible and a complete contradiction. It amazes me that anybody still thinks you can.

As Graham Nutthall points out in his intriguing summary of his life’s worth of studies called ‘The Hidden Lives of Learners’ (thanks to @MrDMJWalsh for the tip-off), you can’t do it.

Let me explain why:

Measuring teachers through results.

If good results mean the teachers are good, then universities, parents or anyone else can’t use exam results as a measure of the students’ abilities, as it wasn’t their abilities that led to the good results. It was the result of the good teachers they were lucky enough to have.

Measuring students through results.

If good exam results are as a result of the students being good, then they can’t be used to measure teachers by, as it is a reflection of the students they were lucky enough to be teaching. Not their own teaching ability that led to the favourable results.

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Of course, I can’t imagine that anybody would argue that results are solely down to just the teachers, or just the students. But the performance of one group affects the results the other is measured on. This performance is a factor that is largely, or completely, out of their control. As I said, it amazes me. It is madness.

Even so, every education system I’ve ever comes into contact with does it. Remember, most assessments are incredibly narrow. Most measure academic ability or intelligences without exploring the other skills and attributes students may have been developing.

But if the focus of assessments is narrow, and the results of the assessments are high stakes enough, for the teacher and student there are huge temptations.

Stories of students trying to cheat have rarely been in short supply. But as Levitt and Dubner illustrate in ‘Freakonomics’, the pressure can get to teachers too. They managed to prove beyond doubt that some teachers had been cheating by changing students’ answers on test papers. They could do this by applying economic data analysis tools to discover unusual answering patterns on test papers. But, there are far more subtle ways that high stakes testing changes learning in schools. And they may even be more damaging.

‘Teaching to the test’ becomes irresistible as more and more pressure is piled on to get results. This must surely be to the detriment of the wider learning of the students?

Weekend exam revision sessions and extra tutoring in the evenings crams students’ heads with stuff to be vomited up through their pen onto test papers, before being quickly forgotten. And what life experiences are the students missing out on while doing all this extra exam preparation? What is the measure of the impact of not doing their sports, socialising, sleeping enough or relaxing? Nobody seems to care.

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So it is time to accept that you can’t measure students and teachers on results. I think you can’t measure people’s abilities on something they don’t have control over, it’s nonesense. And placing huge pressure by making them high stakes is detrimental to students and teachers. Time to find something different.

Any ideas?