Thursday, April 22, 2010

Mobile phones and learning

Sharing some material developed for ICTPD

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Geocaching across the curriculum


Presenters: Morgan Stirling, Amanda Papp-Goodhue / Strand: Teaching & Learning / Theme: Teaching & Learning / Target Level: All

It was great to be outside in the sunshine checking out some of the slights around Rotorua after many hours of sitting. This geocaching session was part orieninteering, part high-tech treasure hunt. We were divided into team and given a GPS device and a set of instructions. To find out where the geocaches where hidden we had to solve maths problems. When we solved the problem and navigated using the GPS device to the location. At the location we then had to search for the hidden cache. Inside the cache we found the next problem to be sovlved. This is an example of one of the maths problems.
South
  • D: 58-20
    M: 16-8
  • S: 257-90 S
East
  • D: 200 - 24
  • M: 25-10
  • S: 682-223
I have examples of geocaches for maths and literacy so come and have a look if you are interested.


Sunday, February 28, 2010

Action Research AS professional development - some tales from the field

Presenter: Vince Ham / Strand: Professional Learning Communities / Theme: Professional Learning Communities / Target Level: All

In this workshop participants worked in groups to share experience of action research practice. I am a complete novice when it comes to research so it was a listening exercise for me.

Action research involves circular process of:
Act

Observe

Reflect
  • Action research is generally done to improve a teachers own practice rather than to increase the knowledge base.
  • Action research is about your own practice - you cannot action research others.

Steps involved in action research
  1. Puzzle - raising reading levels, improving class discussion etc
  2. Process - running records, journals, questionaries etc
  3. Conclusions
  4. Presentations - cluster share, publish paper etc
ICTPD clusters are encouraged to adopt action enquiries and action research as the model of professional learning .

Ten Trends for 2010

Breakout 4 / Presenters: Derek Wenmoth / Strand: vision & leadership / Theme: Vision & Leadership / Target Level: All
What are the key trends in education that are likely to impact on the work of NZ teachers and schools in 2010?
CORE's ten trends are compiled annually by staff at CORE, taking into account the impact of ICTs on teaching and learning, as well as other key social and curriculum influences. The presentation provided a little background on each of the ten trends and explored possible implications for classroom teachers and school leaders.
You can view a slideshow of the presentation and take part in a discussion of the predicted ten trends for 2010 here!

The E Factor - Engagement

Presenters: Jill Lunn, Noline Skeet / Strand: Vision & Leadership / Theme: Vision & Leadership / Target Level: All

The focus on the session was on the "big" questions:

  • How can we use 'student voice' to get students really engaged in their learning so academic results go up, and inappropriate behaviour and absenteeism go down?
  • How does the New Zealand Curriculum support school leaders to make the changes necessary?
We got a taste of research in the area of engagement. The work of four researchers was briefly reference and discussed.
In reference to the work of the researchers we were asked to consider questions like:
  • What does power look like in your school?
  • How is this demonstrated in your school?
  • How are families involved in nurturing learning?
  • What do these concepts look like in your school?


The researchers consider where:

William Glasser 1998 - Engagement was linked to four factors.

  1. Love and belonging
  2. Power
  3. Freedom
  4. Fun
Russell Bishop 2003
  • Manaakitanga - caring for students as culturally located human beings above all else.
  • Whakawhanaungatanga - the nurturing of respectiful and collaborative relationships between all parties around student learning.
  • Ako - the promotion of effective and reciprocal teaching and learning relationships where everyone is a learner and teacher.
  • Mana motuhake - caring by teachers for the academic success and performance of their students.
David Hargreaves 2005
Personalised learning and deep learning
Involving student voice, assessment for learning and learning to learn

John Hattie 2009
12 top (ranked) aspects that have the greatest impact on student achievement
  1. Self-report grades (student)
  2. Piagetian programmes (student)
  3. Providing formative evaluation (teaching)
  4. Micro teaching (teacher)
  5. Acceleration (school)
  6. Classroom behaviour (school)
  7. Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students (teaching)
  8. Teacher clarity (teacher)
  9. Reciprocal teaching (teaching)
  10. Feedback (teaching)
  11. Teacher-student relationships (teacher)
  12. Spaced v mass practice (teaching) spacing the practice of skills over a long period of time as opposed to teaching the topic only in an isolated unit of study.

Developing 21st Century Learners & Thinkers

Presenter: Karen Boyes / Strand: Teaching & Learning / Theme: Teaching & Learning / Target Level: All

Most of the ideas in this session were taken from the work of Ted McCain

The workshop covered 6 important considerations for teaching in the 21st Century and related them to developing students as thinkers.
  1. Resist the temptation to 'tell
  2. Stop teaching decontextualised content
  3. Stop giving students the final product of our thinking
  4. Make a shift in our thinking - problems first, teaching second
  5. Progressively withdraw from helping students
  6. Re-evaluate evaluation