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.

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.

www.youtube.com

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.

pixabay.com

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?

Using technology to increase engagement?

Don't.

Simply put, it's a mistake. If you use technology purely to increase your students' engagement with their learning, then you are wasting your time, and more importantly, your learners' time.

Yes, it may happen that you can perceive an increase in students engagement when using technology, but that is not a reason to use it. This is because as the technology becomes embedded, it loses its initial excitement, the novelty factor, and becomes another facilitator of learning. Like a pencil. An incredibly powerful and effective pencil. But still like a tool to be used for learning. How many teachers claim to introduce the use of a pencil to increase student engagement? None, you'd be mad to. Unless pencils are used so infrequently that they then become a novelty, then they may work, briefly. 

Guess what? Technology such as iPads are not a novelty to students. So many have them, or have used them already that although they may be new to the teacher, they are not actually that special to the students. Being allowed to use them in school is a novelty. But that soon wears off if you are using them to achieve the same things that you have always achieved. If one of your main foci is to increase engagement, then there is the temptation to miss the opportunity to take learning to different levels. In fact, if engagement is a substantial issue for your class, then you probably need to take a hard look at how you are organising learning in your class anyway, never mind throwing technology into the mix.

The novelty of technology increases engagement for almost all students.  But as soon as the tasks on technology becomes schoolwork, then play becomes work.  If the students are not motivated by their schoolwork, it doesn't matter how it is completed, they'll still not be motivated.

The antidote to 'meaningless' school

amazon.co.uk

I have already written about managing time constraints by focusing on in-depth learning experiences. But over the break I have read a couple of books that have clarified my thinking on this and helped me to form a plan of how to achieve this more consistently with my own students. The hugely popular 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' has been on my 'must read' list for a while now. Of the three tenants of the text, it was Robert M. Pirsig’s focus on the idea of 'quality' that resonated with me in particular. The notion that truly worthwhile actions and achievements can only be deemed worthy or significant if they could be accepted as being a true representation of 'quality'. The depth and discussion on what this means is obviously best addressed by reading the book for yourself. But it prompted me to think about how meaningless are some of the activities teachers ask students to do. Particularly if there is no outcome of quality and no clear pathway from what they are practising to achieving quality. The obvious next step was to relate this to my everyday experience; what part does 'quality' play in my students’ activities? What do they need to be able to produce real quality and how can I support them in reaching it?

Let's agree that some tasks do need to be short and some need to have a degree of repetition to aid learning. How can I ensure that these are still worthwhile and meet the 'quality' criterion? I think this is where sharing the big picture with your students is essential.

If they know the overall aims of all the small steps, what they are building towards, then they see the value and know they can achieve the 'quality' output eventually.

For the longer 'project' based tasks, the quality is easier to recognise for the students. The end product represents their research, their organisation of information and the tools they have used to communicate their learning. This is where the quality should shine. As I say to my students, if they make a film, I don't want the audience to see a film that looks like it has been made by a ten year old. If they write a story, I don't want a story that looks like it was written by a ten year old. Having these high expectations and drilling down with students what these end products need to have to be considered quality, takes time. This is where 'Creativity, Inc' comes in, which was recommended to me by a colleague.

amazon.co.uk

It's a book by Ed Catmul who describes the culture that he has developed in Pixar to make the incredibly successful animated films that are a shining example of 'quality' in their field. The process of story development, fine tuning and reworking is ongoing and collaborative in the true sense of the word. The company has a 'braintrust' where directors bring their work so far, they receive feedback on what they have done in a truly supportive environment, successes are celebrated and problems and inconsistencies are observed. But the directors are not told what to do about it. The braintrust actually trusts the directors to solve the issues in the most creative ways possible. This is just a brief outline that doesn't do the process justice. He describes how nobody can claim to have all the answers at the outset, but instead there is a team that is confident that they will get to an end point of quality through their methods, processes and critically, by giving each project proper time to grow. Usually four years.

This notion of 'time' is a reoccurring theme. And yet how many examples of quality work in human history can we honestly say have been achieved quickly? And yet we put time limits on writing pieces, on projects, on completing Maths work. Now being able to work to a deadline is something that humans are always going to need to be able to do. But also, we need our students to produce quality. 

And that takes time.

Creating a class of leaders

It is an often repeated aim or aspiration of schools, to 'develop the leaders of tomorrow' or some similar refrain. This seems to me to be usually met by creating 'posts' that students can hold where they weld some sort of responsibility to a house, or class or team. But by their very nature, these posts are exclusive and not each child has an opportunity to lead in this formal respect. Often, they are leading a competitive group, which I believe misses out on developing some of the most important leadership skills, truly collaborative ones.

si.wikipedia.org

For many years in my class teaching I have placed particular emphasis on students becoming 'independent'. What I wanted from that was for them to take their learning into their own hands, to make decisions based on their experience on what the most useful route would be for them to take. To have confidence in their own abilities, to know what works best for them and to make good choices and decisions. Now as a classroom is a learning environment, I expected them to make mistakes, and this was developed as a natural part of learning.

But recently I have decided that I want to rebrand my emphasis. Independent is good, but it focuses students' attention on the individual. I am now beginning to realise the power of leadership within groups to collaborate and work together, independently of outside guidance, to achieve greater things than any individual could on their own. Now, as always, I realise this is nothing new. But it is a change I want to instigate in my work this year.

www.flickr.com

All of my students will be expected to lead either 'loudly' (active) or 'quietly' (passive). They will all make decisions which affect the classes' progress as a whole. We will be a team together. I will expect them to notice when something needs doing in class, and I will expect them to act upon it. If a student recognises they need help, as a leader they need to seek it from the most appropriate source, which will often not be me. If a student recognises someone else needs help (even me!), as a leader, they will offer it.

My job is to facilitate this environment where every student is responsible for the progress of the class, themselves and of each other. When they learn something, discover a new way to achieve something, make a mistake and adapt or find a solution to a problem, I expect them to share it. They will need to decide the best way to share it, and the best time. Most often it could be instantaneously by interrupting the class to share so everybody can benefit immediately, or it could be at the end of the session, or the start of another. This caring about the needs of the collective, making decisions to benefit all, and taking responsibility for the progress of all, this will be the beginning of developing true collaborative leaders in my class.

Key points for my class to know this year;

• Leaders notice things, think carefully and act.
• Leaders recognise their mistakes, and reflect and improve.
• Leaders share their expertise.
• Leaders know when to follow.
• Leaders ask questions and take every opportunity to learn.
• Leaders support each other with recognition and praise.
• Leaders support each other through observations and suggestions to improve.
• Leaders empower themselves, and others, to improve.
• Leaders care about each other.

The enemy of learning

I don’t think I could have designed a better childhood for myself, than the one I had. I had glorious amounts of freedom growing up in the countryside, building dams, climbing trees and making dens. My brother and I, with our friends, used to explore our surroundings. We used to try stuff out, like balancing on a fallen tree to cross a stream, seeing how far we could run down a hill before our legs couldn’t keep up with our body. When the ground was frozen, I even remember taking all the wheels off a skateboard and boarding down a big hill on the solid earth, with no way of controlling direction or speed. They were great times. And I think we learnt a lot about ourselves. We learnt how to run, how to take risks, and how to fall.

imgarcade.com

I realise I tend to start many of my posts with a quick reminisce. I think that happens because these memories spark off a thought that gets me thinking about how things are right now. And I don’t see many children having the same kind of childhood that I had. Kids at my school are sometimes so mollycoddled that they are not learning these things. Their whole day is already planned for them. They have no time to explore. They are not learning how to fall.

My students can now probably repeat the mantra, ‘use failure to learn, you just haven’t got it yet’. Even now I am rethinking my phraseology here, Maybe ‘failure’ isn’t the right word, it sounds too permanent. But, equate experiencing failure to falling, and an analogy starts to form.

Falling happens when you take a risk and it doesn’t pay off, or something unexpected happens that causes you to fall. If you trip over a step, you learn there is a step there. If you fall off the tree crossing the river, you learn where the slippy bit is, and try again. Or you learn that slippy logs are not the best way to cross and find another way. When you fall running down a hill, you learn where the limit is, if you want, you can adjust how you run to see if you can make it all the way. But you also learn how to fall without destroying your confidence, you learn how to get up, dust yourself off, and move on.

When you don’t get it right when you are learning, you realise you need to find another way. Or you need to practise more. Or you need to adjust. You definitely learn to dust yourself off and get on with things without collapsing into a jabbering wreck.

My concern is, just like children these days are less able to learn their limits and less able to practise dealing with falling. They are also less able to deal with being wrong, with failing, with making mistakes. They are so often required (by parents, themselves, ill informed teachers) to get things right, that they are inhibited by a fear of being wrong.

And the fear of being wrong, is the enemy of learning.

The experience of learning

What is the experience of learning?

I went to a small country school until I was nine years old. There were three teachers including Mr. Ella, who took the oldest class. He was also the head of the school. My time at this school was a happy one, and I have many memories of things that happened. However, almost none of them are about the learning. Amongst recollections of Mr. Ella with his blue tracksuit during Friday afternoon football, being made to sit in the cloakroom as a punishment, snow days when the boiler broke and the look on Mr. Ella's face when he contemplated my back to front left handed handwriting, there is only one specific learning event that marks a prominent place in my memory; standing on a chair, that was on top of a table, wearing a hat made out of sugar paper, holding a kitchen roll tube to my eye and shouting 'land ahoy' as we recreated Captain Cook's arrival at the southern islands. I distinctly remember the taste of sauerkraut, the path the Endeavour took, naming the bay he landed in as Botany Bay and plenty more. Ask me what else I learnt at that school, and I can assume I learnt to write, although I don't remember it, I must have learnt some Maths too, but I don't remember it actually happening either. 

http://www.2gb.com/article/captain-james-cooks-endeavour-mystery

I presume there are all sort of reasons for this, mostly that writing and Maths are ongoing skills developments that I am still consolidating and improving now. Whereas the Captain Cook topic was a one off event, learning was not usually conducted like this in Mr. Ella's class, he must have just been on a course.

So, what about now?

As educators, what kind of importance do we place on the experience of learning, in relation to the process of learning?  It must be impractical that we attempt to make all learning memorable events like my Captain Cook episode, and are memorable events even the best way to learn? How many times have I needed to draw on the knowledge I gained from that learning experience? I think I may have got my team a point in a pub quiz once, and of course it was useful for this piece too. But that’s about it. Perhaps the functions of my brain were improved by the process of gaining and sorting that knowledge, otherwise, what was the point?

So I look to my own class now and how our curriculum is organised with special events marking the beginning and ends of topic units. Are we trying to do a ‘Captain Cook’ for every topic? Should we? Is the only reason I remember it, the fact that it was so different to the rest of my school experience? If so, doing ‘Captain Cooks’ all the time will lose impact surely?

The recent introduction of iPads on a 1 to 1 basis has enabled a huge sea change in the way my class operates. Independence, autonomy and responsibility have grown within my students, and it’s pretty incredible to experience. I would love to know how they will view this experience in 10 years time. Will it be something that stands out in their schooling memory, or will these current activities just merge into day by day drudgery of ‘Death by Explain Everything’? I guess ensuring that doesn't happen, is my job now. 

I suppose what I am really skirting around here is how we harness the process of learning. What kind of emphasis do we put on big events and how often do we have them, without them becoming mundane? What role does consolidation, through repeated practice, play in our classes? How is what I call ‘On the Edge’ learning (brand new learning) balanced with the consolidation work, and how do we ensure mastery of this learning?

For our topic work, I try to ensure an authentic reason for the work and opportunity for the students to decide for themselves what they need to do. Then I aim to facilitate and guide them to the best possible outcomes. This is my ‘Captain Cook’ time.

Trying to shoehorn something like multiplication practice into topic work doesn't work easily and this is where a different approach has to be used. Practice to consolidate, can be livened up using games and various other novel ways of practising. But the authentic motivation for this must be intrinsic to the student. They have to understand the relevance of this knowledge and skills to their own lives. This is the key to the 'mundane' learning.

The Commercialisation of School

Commercialisation

With my 'modern teacher' hat on, I was partaking of a Twitter chat the other day. During the chat I was struck by the terminology the moderator of the chat used. He was discussing how you promote the 'branding' of your school. To me, branding is a word with a whole world of commercial and capitalist connotations and it felt unnatural to be using the term in an educational sense.

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2009/07/25/the-significance
-of-establishing-a-prominence-brand-identity-for-your-website/

So with this in mind, I began to think; is education becoming more commercialised? Should it? Is this inevitable progress? And should schools really be adopting marketing and business approaches to their 'core business'? Think of the terminology: 'performance related pay', 'target setting', 'data tracking', 'intervention strategy' in fact, I don't know for sure where these terms originated from but they sound like terms that could have come from industry, and there are many other examples. I was sat in a meeting just this week where the students were referred to as ‘customers’. Students or parents as customers is a worrying thought to a progressive educator when that old adage ‘the customer is always right’ comes to mind.

I enjoy sport, football in particular (the version where the ball is kicked more than any other action), and the podcasts I follow deride the word 'brand' in football. To them it represents the money-grabbing marketeer approach to club ownership. They believe this approach often means the club can afford to pretty much ignore the needs of the match going fans.

So on the one hand, we are bowing to the demands of the customer by giving them what they think they want, while at the same time ignoring what they actually need. This is because we are scrambling to maintain our own thin veneer of success as dictated by the narrow gauge of data.

What happened to the 'industrial' school?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory

In his oft aired talk on the state of schooling (RSA version), Sir Ken Robinson uses the industrial features of schools to question how appropriate the current school design is for the task of learning (recognise that staff meeting anyone?). It's interesting to see that we are being guided away from the industrial model of schooling, the old fashioned world where things were actually made; I loved making stuff at school. To a creeping commercialisation of schooling where things are measured, tracked, compared, publicly evaluated and ultimately judged on how well they sell. Where schools are in competition with each other to develop their unique selling point. Where the actual ‘product’ seems to be lost in the wake of the more important job of reporting the numerical values that reflect the right image for protecting the reputation of the schools, areas/local authorities/districts, political policies or even countries (thanks P.I.S.A.). And we all know how well that model worked for the banking world.

What now?

Naturally, I am not necessarily recommending we go back to the old industrial model. In fact I'm not entirely sure what I am recommending. But as far back as 2008 (and probably earlier too) reports of school’s using tactics which ‘game’ the system, not dissimilar to what the banks got up to, were calling for the end of the targets and results obsession. We are not churning out products. We are not manufacturing, assembling or marketing. We are learning. How can the impact of school life ever be effectively measured when the outcomes last over a lifetime and people's judgements on success are as varied as there are people?

What I really need is some way of measuring how empowered my students are to achieve what makes them happy over their lifetime. That they are wise enough to choose their own success criteria, and that the very same success criteria has a basis in consideration for the world around them.

Find a way to measure me that, and I'll sell it for you.