Relecting on my experience of teaching during Covid-19

I've had a bit of time to reflect on the impact of teaching during the age of Covid-19

Positives:
Some students have found this time to be really empowering. They have had the flexibility to organise their learning in a way that suits them and the support that they need to support this - through weekly video meets and also through one to one.

Some have struggled with the whole thing, but I feel with those who are struggling it is an amplification of issues/struggles they might have had face to face. It's important to point out that these students have still had support via one to one video calls which has helped them to move forwards a bit. I guess a positive is that it is easier to organise a quick video call after school as I have far fewer meetings and it is really easy and natural at the moment to set up a quick call.

And then there were some students who really surprised me in the way that they flourished during this time. Some of these students had struggled in the traditional face to face environment, but have been on top of their learning every step of the way during covid-19. Every class, every drop in tutorial, every check point - they were there.

The learning is super visible. I thought that I was doing a good job of making the learning accessible to student previously, but really there was a lot that happened face to face that wasn't recorded in any form. I have been super deliberate with the way that I organise the learning sequences and tried to make examples for each thing I am asking students to to do. I have been making far more rewindable clips. If I am asking students to do something I want something that they can go back to again and again for guidance.

It has also been easier for students to ask questions and share with me what they are working on outside of our scheduled times. This has come in a variety of means: google forms to take the temperature of students' mood and needs, padlets to ask questions, padlets to share work. This has also been quite spontaneous - it is very easy for students to ask a quick question about their work using google chat, get a quick reply, and carry on with their work with confidence.

Learning and surprises:
In my online class, everything we do is centered around community and connections. I  have been working on this with my WHS classes online. Juniors and Middle School responded really well to this. Many of them are really missing their friends and missing school in general. They lapped up the chance to share how they were going at home, to show off their work and just connect with other humans.

Senior students were a different kettle of fish. Not all, but a number of them were anxious about interacting in class, which I had not been expecting given that they all know each other and have been to school together for several years. Some wouldn't turn their cameras or microphones on. Sigh. Part of this was just the personalities in the class and part of it was that this was a cohort that started at WHS before we were fully immersed in the learn-create-share pedagogy of Toki Pounamu. It is a little bit telling that they were so apprehensive about sharing.

However, this led me to think about how I could best use the time with them. They are for the most part really diligent, hard working kids. What was successful was to organise my calls with them in a different way. I have started doing the following in our weekly calls: Checking in on how we are doing as humans (maybe a good thing and a tricky/challenging thing), sharing a quick presentation of anything I want the whole class to know about or be focusing on, then in a google doc students book 5-10 minutes to converse with me about their work. Students have really bought into this and taken it really seriously. It is keeping them accountable and giving them timely support. I'm thinking about how I can transfer the learning from this back into the face to face context. Perhaps I could do a google form at the start of the week to see how students are with their work. Then triage who needs to talk to me first and have a couple of periods set up purely for consulting with students about their art.

I'm also thinking that I also need to look at my learning design and devise some subtle, gentle ways to get students to share their work more often, in a way that doesn't make them feel too whakamā. I am trying to develop a visual arts community, not visual arts student silos.


And of course there are things that I am looking forward to when I get back to the classroom .My printmakers have been having a tough time of it for instance without their press. Juniors and middle school classes have been hard work with students having variable and often limited supplies at home.

DLO vs. DLA

As a follow up to my post last week, I just want to add a note about some pieces that fell into place for me at last week's toolkit.

Before the 'Quality sharing on Blogs' toolkit, I was idly reading through some of the resources the presenter had linked into their slides. I noticed Woolf Fisher had mentioned DLO's vs. DLA's. I am a naturally curious person so I asked what the difference was. 

The presenter outlined it like so: A DLA is a digital learning artefact, something from a student's learning that they are proud of and want to show the world, but are not inviting further comment on. Whereas a DLO is a digital learning object, something that captures current learning and invites a conversation; or if I were to put it in knowledge building terms 'build on' the students work.

Wow. 

This is just a small titbit that may not have been of any interest to other people in the toolkit, but it has just triggered a connection for me. 

I can now see clear links between knowledge-building communities, which has been of huge interest to me in my teaching practice for the past four years, and learn-create-share which has formed the other string to my teaching inquiry.

I can see how I could leverage the affordances of blogging for knowledge building conversations with my students.

Oh, the possibilities.

DLO effects and Knowledge Building

I am participating in an online toolkit workshop tonight about 'quality sharing' in student blogs. I was reading through some of the supporting resources in my non-contact and was really intrigued to see knowledge building and the writing of Scardamalia and Bereiter referenced.

I am quite excited to hear about something that I am really passionate about and am curious to find out how this will be woven in.

Social media - education as social

(CC -https://pixabay.com/p-1405601/?no_redirect)

Social media can be seen as contentious, however, if we’re coming at it from the angle  of should or shouldn’t we use this technology, we’re looking at the issue upside down.  Paper or screens, the question is always how should we teach and learn, not what should we learn with. Internationally the pedagogical focus is creative, innovative and resilient learners “‘creating learning environments that challenge students to become actively engaged, independent, lifelong learners inside and outside of formal learning spaces should be the critical aim of change in teaching strategies’.” (Salavuo, 2008) . In NZ we have ‘learning to learn’ and ‘life long learners’ (NZC, 2007, p8). 

My question is how can social media enhance things for my learners and how can the *community* aspects of learning be enhanced. 

I teach art history online. Challenges include : limited time with the class, and student inexperience with online learning. For my online class, social media is transformational. We use Google+ and Knowledge Forum to connected as a community. These platforms take us beyond an individual linear process. My students are able to stay connected as a class, ask questions, share content and connect with other learners. A challenge that we face is students acting as agents of their own learning. While some are quick to share ‘what do you think about xxx’,  many are still shy of sharing  in this way. They don’t see themselves as the expert or that they have the authority to do this. Clearly there is work for me to do in orientating students towards knowledge creation.

Previously students have celebrated it as making the biggest difference in their learning. A highlight in 2015 was excellence students freely building onto each others study notes, sharing insights with each other. This year we just haven’t reached the same depth. Students have been reluctant to share with each other in class and certainly haven’t been a organic community sharing. I’ve been reflecting on how to foster a knowledge building culture a and a sense of community within a class as I strongly believe in the educational value of collaboration. “although students may be reluctant to take part in group activities, they can benefit from the experience of  pooling  knowledge  and  sharing  diverse  views.” (Sharples, et al. 2016) I have discovered this year, that it is essential for learning design to centre around developing connections. If connections are weak and trust is low it is difficult to generate meaningful group communication. Further to the wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973) of engagement, is the reframing of how learners view the act of learning. The community needs to become familiar with the principles of knowledge building in order to implicitly understand learning as a dynamic entity and knowledge as continually improvable. (Lai, 2015)

While students have had instances of sharing and advancing knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003) together in my class, I would love to enhance their epistemic agency and metacognition through the use of a reflective journal such as a student blog. This has the potential to be incredibly profound as students revisit and build open their learning. “visualizing community knowledge advances … may well lead to more effective assessment as well as more powerful supports for knowledge creation.” (Hong and Scardamalia, 2014, p. 287). 

The most powerful impact thus far though has been blogging. I began blogging with a sense of professional responsibility, to model ’learn, create, share’ as the lead teacher in my school for Toki Pounamu, this has become transformational. Blogging connected me with educators I would not have otherwise crossed paths with, the common factor simply being passionate about pedagogy. “The digital age we live in has made it so much easier to share with our colleagues as we enjoy the same affordances our children experience - anywhere, anytime, any pace and with/from anyone.” (Burt, 2015)  It is so easy to pour all of our energy into our classroom empires and forget about the broader learning community, or even our own learning as teachers. It can be challenging to share professional learning, yes there are barriers (standing out, fearing that we don’t have the expertise, being eloquent enough), however I feel now that I have a professional responsibility to share my learning. We expect our students to take risks, create and share, but how much of this do we model in our practice?  “Seek and respond to feedback from learners, colleagues and other education professionals, and engage in collaborative problem solving and learning focused collegial discussions” (Education Council ,2017) 

Burt, D. (2015, February 07). It Starts with US: LCS Pedagogy [Web blog post]. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/it-starts-with-us-lcs-pedagogy.html

Lai, Kwok-Wing. (2015, November). What is knowledge building? Presented at the NetNZ workshop 2015, Christchurch.

Hong, H.-Y., & Scardamalia, M. (2014). Community knowledge assessment in a knowledge building environment. Computers & Education, 7, 279–288.

New Zealand, Education Council. (2017, June). Our Code, our standards. Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

New Zealand, Ministry of Education. (2007). New Zealand Curriculum (p. 8). Wellington: Learning Media Limited.

Rittel, Horst, and Melvin Webber; "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,”, pp. 155–169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., Amsterdam, 1973. [Reprinted in N. Cross (ed.), Developments in Design Methodology, J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1984, pp. 135–144.]

Salavuo, M. (2008). Social media as an opportunity for pedagogical change in music education. Journal of Music, Technology and Education, 1(2 and 3), 121–136. 

Scardamalia, M. (2003). Knowledge building environments: Extending the limits of the possible in education and knowledge work. In A. DiStefano,   K. E. Rudestam, & R. Silverman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distributed learning (pp. 269- 272). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf

Thoughts about teachers as knowledge creators

" ... the teacher has to play a key role in modeling knowledge building through being creative and innovative in pedagogical practices. Professional learning and development will best be supported when teachers can share, create, and improve new knowledge on teaching, learning, and assessment as a KBC." (Lai, 2014, p18)

This is a thread of interest that has emerged following a huge amount of reading into constructivist pedagogy. This thought echoes a problem in day to day teaching. We're encouraging our students to follow Learn-Create-Share  in their learning, doing innovative things in our classrooms but we forget to share as teachers. Too often, we're too shy, too busy, too much in our classroom siloes.

As a teacher, I live in a bit of silo. I am the only visual art teacher at my school, the nearest colleague being 35 km up the road. It can be quite isolating.

I have been really lucky to have had the generous support of colleagues as I've explored what knowledge building looks like with my art history class.

I wonder though how we can make the innovations in our practice more visible and accessible to our community?

 

Lai, Kwok-Wing, & Pullar, Ken. (2014). Designing knowledge building communities in secondary schools.

Meeting - Pūtaki Toki

Once again the Pūtaki Toki meeting has left me with fuel in the tank and fresh inspiration for another term of learn-create-share. The nice thing about these meetings is that there is somewhere for everyone to jump in no matter their 'level' or experience with digital immersion. For some staff, they set up an inquiry blog which was a huge learning step for them. For others (who are a bit more experienced with 'share') it was a timely challenge to dive in a little bit deeper and investigate how they could enrich the blogging experience.

For me, it was a reminder about the rich communal resource we have with the Manaiakalani and Toki Pounamu sites and blogs. As educators we don't have to tough it out alone, there are others that have walked before us.

 Nā tō rourou nā taku rourou - ka ora ai te iwi.

SAMR

I've been reflecting a lot, since the staff meeting Madeline facilitated around the 'Create' part of learn-create-share and the SAMR model.

(http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/create-learn-create-share-pedagogy.html)  

(Reuben Puentedura)

Two things were highlighted for me.

• How much of what we do is a substitution, and how can we redesign learning tasks given the affordances we have with digital tools? This is something to work through with our awesome team of Junior homeroom teachers. It may be about identifying one or two things that would be achievable for our team. I'm also keen to get out and have a look at good practice in other schools that have been at this digital immersion thing for longer than we have.
• We can't operate at the top of the model all of the time. It would be exhausting and unsustainable (This was reinforced this week at the Mindlab when we were discussing change management. When introducing new ideas, leaders need to think about 'cyclical energising'. What this means is that there will be periods of intense focus and effort, then periods of easing back and just celebrating the wins.) We need to look at the Junior schemes and think about there we could design 'Create' moments and when it would be more appropriate to just augment the task, using the digital tools we have available.

I really value PD with Madeline, it always leaves me with an 'aha moment' or just some little gem to reflect on.