e-learning

Gaming in Maths Education

2011-06-30T11:12:00.000+10:00

Firstly, apologies for my lack of postings recently. It's been for a variety of reasons related to the job I accepted at the beginning of the year as a high school teacher in a remote Australian Indigenous community--new job workloads ect.

One of our challenges in this part of the world is to engage our students successfully and in a way in to which they can readily relate. Most of the high school students have not been exposed to the rest of Australia let alone the world and this poses challenges when it comes to providing authentic learning tasks and assessment.

What does engage the vast majority of the kids here are computer games and as a maths teacher, I recently discovered Manga High and its array of games and learning pathways. Manga High offer games and learning opportunities that can be specifically targeted as each student's level without them being aware that they are playing at a higher or lower level than the rest of their class. This is particularly important for indigenous students as "shame" is an important part of their culture. In playing Manga High all students are able to achieve and there is no shame from being at a higher or lower level.
Manga High also offers some very challenging games that will also allow students to develop strong skills and automaticity which should better prepare students for more sophisticated mathematical concepts later in their schooling. The maths is aligned to the new Australian curriculum for K to 10.
Manga High provides strong analytics for teachers so that you are able to see how each of your students are progressing at any time throughout the gaming process as all of the assessment is formative and continual.

So far I have used the games in class with an interactive whiteboard (IWB) and the kids are intrigued and engaged when they play them as a class.
Next term I will be trialling individual student use, and making this available during lunch time for students who volunteer to undertake gaming at this time. Half of the students will be able to play any maths games they wish while the other randomly chosen half will be provided with Manga High accounts and their games set at their beginning level. All students will be pre and post tested and the relative gains in their maths knowledge and application will be measured. I plan to run this trail for a full school term.

My thanks to Mohit Midha from Manga High for allowing us to trail his product in this manner. Mohit also tells me that they are working on an online multi-player game at the moment and this may well be released later this year--I'll be keen to see how that works and what it does for student engagement and achievement.

It will be interesting to see just how well the student engagement lasts and just what gains are made during the trial.

More soon.

A New Era in Learning?

2010-11-30T11:58:00.000+10:00

I've just returned from a trip to Melbourne where I had the opportunity to visit a couple of Victoria's outstanding schools, Manor Lakes (P--12) and Silverton Primary.
While I've already Blogged about Silverton, Manor Lakes offers a slightly different approach and context. The School is a P--12 (only P-7 at the moment) with a special education (specialist) unit that assists students with learning and physical disabilities.
Jason Smallwood, the Principal, organised for Corrie Barclay, a teacher and ICT mentor, to show me around for the morning.
The school is new and has been open less than a year. There is still a significant amount of construction still underway on the campus. The school has 76% of its students in the bottom quartile of the SES index and none in the top quartile. The school has also become popular choice for parents of students who have had difficulties at other schools.
The classroom design is less open plan than Silverton, but the building design allows classrooms to be opened up with each other and there are breakout areas as well. Each student is supplied with a Mac iBook laptop and there are significant amounts of additional wireless connected devices available to students as well. The school is currently taking part in an iPad trial and the students seem to have taken to these devices with eagerness from what I observed.

One of the classrooms I visited had its wall opened up so that two classrooms were joined, although the classes were operating separately. One teacher was involved in some explicit teaching regarding the writing of persuasive text while the other class were working autonomously with their peers. iPads were being used by both classes and the students were all on task and engaged. When I spoke to some of then students, they were easily able to explain what they were doing and why. Again, as with the Silverton classrooms, there was a quiet hum from students who were working together and on task.

As with Silverton, the students had easy access to a wide range of Web 2.0 tools that are not available to students in public schools in some other states of Australia. Cyber safety is taken very seriously with students provided with intensive explicit instruction and training right from the beginning of their school experience. All students and parents sign contracts that explain the required code of conduct. Breaches of Web safety are treated as a behaviour management issue with a number of levels that allow for an escalation of consequences.

While the Manor Lakes NAPLAN performance is not good, it is early days for this school with the likes of Silverton having some 18 odd years to innovate and adapt their approach.

The Victorian approach to P-12 education is interesting in that there is a great deal of flexibility for regions to operate and innovate. The Corio/Norrlane region in Geelong, for example, are in the process of undergoing a Regeneration Project that will result in P--8 as the new primary with years 9--12 as the new secondary. The Victorian Labour government have made significant amounts of funding available for innovation projects and it is with some trepidation that I see that the State election held last weekend has resulted in the Liberal coalition party wining a majority of the seats and are now set to form government. Let's hope that the devastation in education caused by the previous Victorian coalition government does not occur again!!

So, back to the title of this posting, what are the characteristics for a new era of learning?

Engaged students (adequately supported with ubiquitous technology) with improved behaviour enjoying and being challenged at school.
Peer mentored/coached teachers who enjoy their work because they are planning and supporting learning rather than managing poor behaviour.
Learning that is transdisciplinary with authentic contexts.
Learning that is meaningful and with outcomes that are valued in the "real world".

Having had the opportunity to meet and speak with some outstanding Principals and a regional coordinator, I asked them where they saw the most pressing need for improvement in the Public education system. There were strong suggestions regarding the need for teacher education to catch up with the innovations currently occurring in some schools and to restructure their Programs to better meet the needs of modern schooling and 21st Century students. While schools can and do develop teachers after they graduate, it would be easier for them if there was less unlearning required.
This is a challenge to all Australian universities and pre-service teacher programs, including my own institution.

Many thanks to my Victorian colleagues who took time out of their busy days to chat and show me around.

Innovative Schools that Engage

2010-11-24T12:58:00.000+10:00

I'm currently in Melbourne to deliver the final report of a study focusing on a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) initiative that began about five years ago in three Geelong Schools. While the findings are interesting, I've also had the opportunity to visit Silverton Primary School in Nobel Park, Melbourne and chat with the Principal Tony Bryant.
Silverton is not your ordinary primary school, its classrooms are large open plan spaces with a wide range of technology spread across the room for students to choose from. ipads, itouchs, notebooks, laptops, desktop machines, electronic microscopes and much more. The whole campus is wireless accessible with fast router/switches enabling rapid communication between devices and the schools computing backbone.
Most classrooms have over 100 students working and learning in the same space with teachers dispersed amongst the students for support and explicit teaching where it is required. Despite the number of students, there is little more than an audible hum as students work individually, in pairs, in small groups and in teacher-centred activities. These kids are ENGAGED and it shows. They all undertake authentic project work of their own choice and negotiated with the teachers.
From Prep, students are taught how to inquire and discover--their curiosity is encouraged and fostered. They are also taught how to work together in teams and this sets the stage for the latter part of their primary school years.
Remarkably, this school is not a private school set in the leafy affluent suburbs of Melbourne with students from well to do parents. This school draws 68% of its students from the bottom quartile based on Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) and is a public school funded by the Victorian government. Only 2% of its students are from the top quartile of parents.

The Principal Tony Bryant explains that the students are pre-tested in areas of literacy, numeracy and key learning areas to determine their needs and have individual learning plans negotiated for each student. The students are partners in the process and see the testing as a way of identifying their own needs. Regular post-testing is also used to measure and determine if the agreed outcomes have been met.

Key to the success of this school is the students ability to negotiate their own authentic projects such as radio and TV programs. Each project is completed by a presentation to the target audience who have the ability to provide formative feedback. Often the audience is other student groups, parents and outside organisations. While I was at the school two grade 6 students described how they were planning an open day for the school to showcase to other students across the State just how their school works. They had convinced Peters Ice Cream and a local grocer to donate substantial amounts of food that would be consumed on the open day. While a teacher was on hand to help with any problem-solving, she was only at the periphery of the project--the students were making the big decisions. This approach typifies the schools approach to learning where the students are full partners in the decision-making that occurs with their learning.
And it works, true student-centred learning environments with authentic projects and highly engaged learners who have strong NAPLAN results.

Tony indicated that there were few incidences of poor behaviour in any of their classrooms. I'm sure that this would mystify many teachers who have taught in low SES schools!

New teachers to the school are allocated mentors who induct them with regard to the school's methodology and ensure that the teachers are properly supported throughout the process.

Additionally, the school regularly surveys its students, parents and teachers across a wide range of issues and variables. The survey data show strong student, teacher and parent satisfaction all well into the top quartile possible.

So what are the implications here?

These students were engaged and required very little intervention from teachers to remain on task--I was there for most of the morning and saw no instances of students straying from task.
This model would work well in high school as teachers from a range of disciplines could be present at the same time in such a large learning space. This would mean that integrated curricula could work with flexibility for staff and students.
Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) were being created with students storing their work in eportfolios and demonstrating how the students have accomplished their own personal learning goals.
One of my main reservations to the notion of PLEs in a school environment was the maturity of the students to make informed decisions about their own learning--I may need to re-think these reservations because if this works with early childhood students, the chances are that it will work with high school students!!

If you are in Melbourne and can make it out to this school I would strongly suggest that you contact the Principal and organise a tour--very impressive indeed.

The Future of Education??

2010-09-24T12:39:00.000+10:00

This month marks the beginning of Doctoral studies and as you would expect the reading and research has led me into some interesting areas. One such article is titled "The Future of Education" and written by self declared futurist Thomas Frey. Tom works for the DaVinci Institute, "... a non-profit futurist think tank in the fertile proving grounds of Colorado".
The article is interesting in a number of ways as it offers a view of institutional educational blockers in much the same way (metaphorically) that Roman Numerals limited mathematical and scientific discoveries when the Romans colonised much of the world (see the article for a deeper discussion). The article also offers a prediction that a centralised courseware development and storage tool would revolutionalise education and take over from what we now see as traditional schooling and higher education.
Frey notes, as do so many other education writers, that traditional notions of education are not coping with the content explosion generated by the rise of the knowledge economy. Specifically, the idea of the teacher struggling to be a "sage on the stage" expert in all areas. While Frey offers the popular view of a more student-centred focus with teachers as coaches, he goes on to suggest that 60 minute curriculum modules will be developed in a single, centrally located design environment by anyone and that these can then be tagged in areas such as their education field and quality.

In his discussion, Frey makes mention of the open courseware initiatives such as WikiUniversity currently being pursued around the world, but makes some interesting, and in my view, contestable assumptions that are worth discussing. The first is that of a standard courseware development template based on one or a limited number of pedagogical approaches. The second is that knowledge provision equates to learning. The final issue relates to the first two (indeed all three are inter-related) and is his apparent oversight of the current Personal Learning Environment (PLE) discussions and literature.

The standardised development template suggests that all learners learn the same way. There is a great deal of literature that suggests just the opposite. Writers such as Felder et al demonstrate a significant quantitative difference in learning efficiency based on learning preferences. Jung (1971), Briggs, and Myers similarly suggest that personality also has an effect on learning and that careful learning design can result in improved learning. Clearly, a standardised approach to learning design (based on which assumptions?) would not present the most effective approach to a learning environment. Cronje offers a four quadrant approach to learning that suggests that the nature of the content to be learned should dictate the learning philosophy used. His model suggests a mix of constructivist and objectivist approaches that depend on the type of learning required.

The second issue is closely related to the first, in that Frey appears to make an assumption that the presentation of knowledge (using a standardised approach) is the same as learning. Constructivist theorists offer a view that learning occurs best in a particular context to which the learner can relate and use their pre-existing knowledge. This contextualising of knowledge would mean that learning design should be directly related to its relevant application. For example, learning how to calculate monetary discounts and additional fees would involve learning how to calculate percentages as well as addition and subtraction. In another learning context percentages, addition and subtraction could/should be taught in a different context.

The final oversight, in my view, is the lack of acknowledgment of the growing literature on PLEs (see Siemans, or Downes). Personal Learning Environments offer the flexibility to contextualise and individualise content in ways that appeal to and engage learners. When a learner learns to construct their own PLE, they themselves construct the learning modules to suit their own requirements. If they need to learn how to video edit using Premiere then they search and construct their own learning environment that includes exactly what they need. In the process they can tag information/tutorials they have found useful and share that information with any who wish to learn. The most popular information will rate highly in Google searches and this makes it easier for others to find. A quick reference to Wikipedia will in the vast majority of cases provide an authoritative cross reference in terms of accuracy.

Overall, I found Frey's article intriguing and there is no doubt that he has identified some of the major blockers to the transformational change that needs to happen in education. His ideas on "Learning Camps" and 24 hour access to school learning centres are excellent as is what he calls 'Confidence-Based Learning" where testing is an integral part of student learning diagnostics and formative feedback.

References:
Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types (Collected works of C. G. Jung, volume 6). (3rd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. First appeared in German in 1921. ISBN 0-691-09770-4

Myers, Isabel Briggs (1980). Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. Davies-Black Publishing; Reprint edition (May 1, 1995). ISBN 0-89106-074-X

Pricing Point Challenges in University Education

2010-03-26T07:52:00.001+10:00

I note with interest that Clark Aldrich in his latest Blog posting is suggesting that it may well be possible in the foreseeable future to obtain the most popular university qualification (MBA) for under $1000US.
Aldrich's argues that the proliferation on reliable online content, social networking technologies and critically, sophisticated business gaming simulations will combine to make the $1K MBA a reality, particularly for business managers in emerging economies. He argues that the depth and efficiencies (4X) of learning possible using simulations and serious games makes low-cost certification a possibility.
Could this also be the case in other disciplines?

There are serious implications here for Government Universities across the world who have targeted international students from emerging economies and now rely on this income to top up their funding.

Since 2001 Marc Prensky has been suggesting than gaming and simulation would eventually become an integral part of schooling, so are there parallels her with the $1K MBA?
School systems, like universities are expensive to run in their current format and government school funding always seems to struggle to keep up with the demand. If as Aldrich is suggesting, online content, social networking technology together with simulation and gaming will transform university education, what might what we now call schooling, actually look like?

What would the buildings look like? What would the hours of learning be? What would be the role of teachers? Would this lead to less teachers? Would subject design, development and delivery be centralised (Nationally or Internationally?). Would children in remote communities finally have a level playing field in terms of learning opportunities?

Definitely food for thought, although not palatable to all!

All images courtesy of Flickr.

Authentic Learning Revisited

2010-03-24T15:11:00.000+10:00

A conversation I had with Clay Burell over the last few days has encouraged him to write is latest Blog posting. My question to Clay related to school assessment in authentic learning projects and how this could be done effectively and efficiently. While Clay suggested that summative assessment should only occur when the students are ready for this to occur, the formative process should be ongoing. While I was thinking perhaps self and peer assessment as an important part of the mix. Clay then digressed into a description of presentations by gifted and talented students and how their talents could be better appreciated and shared in a public way by having them develop their own Blogs--no arguments here.

Anyway, I've been contemplating this Blog posting for a while and it came to me this morning on my way to work. In second term /semester this year my wife and I are taking a 3 month break and traveling up into the Australian Wilderness of Cape York Peninsular. We plan to work and holiday during this time, Sue as a nurse and me as a relief/contract teacher.

Image Courtesy of Flickr
Cape York is wild wilderness country with most of its residents indigenous Australians. Many of the communities are remote and isolated and have some of the worst school student performance statistics in Australia.
A recent conversation I had a human resource person in our education department suggested that I might like to consider designing and developing a 3 or 4 week project for some of the older school students who are disengaged and disinterested in their learning. I teach my pre-service teachers authentic project based learning so I thought that it would be a good idea to operationalise what I teach and develop a project, so here's what I've thought of so far today:

The community is called Aurukun and is located a 100km or so south of Weipa which is a mining town and the only place in "the Cape" {a Queenslander way of referring to towns--Mt Isa (the Isa)--Cloncurry (the Curry)} that has significant numbers of "whitefellas". In Aurukun English is often a third language for school aged students with "Wik Mungkan" the first language and an aboriginal "Creole" the second. While school attendance has improved recently with the introduction of a strict alcohol and income management programs, many of the older kids have missed a great deal of schooling through absenteeism. Many of the Aurukun kids also suffer from Otitis Media, often referred to as "Glue Ear".
Disengaged kids call for an engaging project with real and authentic outcomes.
First I thought about making short community stories using digital storytelling, because it's been done before and these students like using the technology and seeing themselves on tape, but I'm not one to necessarily do what has been done before. So I thought of taking a more holistic approach and have each activity follow on from the last.
In Aurukun everyone fishes.

Image courtesy of Flickr

The estuary where the community are located has some of the best fishing in Australia with many of the prized eating species can be easily caught. So the project will be begin with fishing and end with a meal. The authentic trigger will go something like this:

"In a world where fish stocks are dramatically declining, the Wik people are world leaders in the management of their marine resources in ways that demonstrate sustainability of fish stocks in numbers that existed when Aurukun was formed by the missionaries in 1904. The Australian government in recognising this exceptional example of "Responsible Custodianship" have asked if the community could prepare a learning package that could be used across all of Australia's schools and be a part of the implementation of the new Australian National School Curriculum.
Your job is to work together in small teams to design and develop learning packages that will teach Australian children :
how to fish
the biology of healthy fish
how indigenous people manage their fishing resources
how to clean fish
how to cook fish
what it means to have a tribal and personal totem
how fishing fits into the land, language and culture of indigenous Australians.
Your learning packages will need to be delivered electronically so that all Australian schools can easily access.

Your packages will be reviewed by a team of pre-service teachers from CQ University students undertaking eLearning studies and they will provide valuable feedback to you before the learning package submission to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the honorable Jenny Macklin MP and the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, the honorable Julia Gillard."

Project Duration: 4 weeks

Learning Areas: English, Media, Technology, Science, SOSE

Thanks to Clay for stirring me into a posting.

Addressing Disadvantage in Australian Indigenous Education

2010-01-27T09:37:00.002+10:00

Those who know me realise that I have a strong passion for fairness and equity in Australian Indigenous education, particularly in remote communities. Recently, Noel Pearson the Director of the Cape York Institute wrote an article he titled "Radical Hope" which was published in the "Quarterly Essay" Journal. In his article Pearson describes the inherent disadvantage faced by Aboriginal school aged children as a result of their location and the quality of education available to them.

Today, I came across an eSchool News article that reports on the education focus of Bill Gates (co-founder of Microsoft) new Website. The article reports on Gates's observations of what works in education for disadvantaged kids, and in particular, he discusses what is occurring in some of the US charter schools. Gates discusses the high "academic" success rates for disadvantage students in charter schools subscribing to the “Knowledge is Power Program” (KIPP) approach to learning and teaching.
Gates writes:
“One example of KIPP’s success: While only 20 percent of low-income students in the U.S. attend college, the rate for former KIPP students is 80 percent.” (the gates notes, 2009)

It is worthwhile looking at some of the key features of KIPP schools to understand what may contribute to this level of success.

KIPP schools:

have very long school days, typically from 7.30 AM to 5.00PM. The rationale given is that many of their students are well behind (2--3 grade/year levels) by the time they get to a KIPP middle school and require additional time to catch up to where they should be in their academic studies.
only employ outstanding teachers who have a proven track record in guiding students to high levels of success. Highly effective teachers have a strong range of skills and strategies that allow all students to achieve at the required levels.
have the philosophy that all students can learn what is required, and WILL learn to, or above the required level.
have a strict set of rules based on hard work and respect that are not negotiable.

The following YouTube videos provide a small glimpse of KIPP featured in a PBS special by Hedrick Smith that aired on 10/5/05.

You will notice that the videos avoid some critical questions like:

How much more do they pay the teachers for the long hours and after hours consultation?
What are the key pedagogical strategies that underpin the learning success? Surely it is not just more of the same?
What happens to the students who refuse to adhere to the rules and schedule of the school? Is part of the 80% college success rate partly due to removal of students who will not accept the rules?

One thing that does seem relatively clear is the diminished amount of student behavioural problems due, it would seem, to students seeing their own success in learning.

So what can we learn from this and how might we apply this to schools with high proportions of indigenous students, particularly in remote communities?
This brings me back to Pearson's article and what he has proposed and is now implementing in remote Cape York schools. Noel has suggested that school should indeed have substantially longer hours that allows the students to catch up to where they need to be in terms of year levels. Further, he suggests that "Direct Instruction" is an approach that should be used as there are clear standardised test data that show the success of this approach for disadvantaged students. A key part of Direct Instruction is pre-prepared externally produced teacher lessons with a script from which the teachers are required to read. Pearson suggests that this will ameliorate the low levels of experience and expertise some teachers in these schools currently posses. Teaching in remote communities is not attractive for many teachers and often it is single, first year out graduates who are willing to spend a year or two in a remote community to secure a more desirable position, often in a capital city. This of course is a generalisation and not applicable to all teachers, some of whom are pasionate about indigenous education and increasing opportunities for indigenous people.

When comparing Direct Instruction with KIPP there are a few similarities, but some critical differences. Fundamentally, KIPP is highly dependent on recruiting and retaining high quality teachers who adopt very effective pedagogical approaches. The direct instruction is based on the notion that externally developed, highly structured and scripted curriculum is more important than quality teachers.
I believe indigenous kids deserve high quality teachers with the recognition and reward that will attract and retain these teachers in remote communities. As a teacher educator I get to work with many undergraduate and post-graduate pre-service teachers and can say that most of our graduates would not be interested in spending some years in a remote community teaching. Many of our graduates have children in school and do not want to disrupt their child's learning by moving away from the lifestyle they currently enjoy. Others have partners who work locally and are not able, or willing to move to a remote community. We do have a few (mostly male) graduates who would be prepared to spend some time in a remote community, but they mostly fit the description Pearson outlined in his article.
In my view the kinds of teachers that should be targeted should be older teachers with children who are now independent and have proven quality teaching track records. Often this cohort are at a stage of their life where they are seeking new challenges that their new found mobility allows, and have a sense of wanting to give back to the community. Equally, the rewards for teaching in remote communities should be significantly more than is currently paid. To attract and retain these teachers the pay should be very attractive with substantial bonuses for each year completed in a remote community. In the Business Council of Australia's paper (2008) "Teaching Talent: The Best Teachers For Australia’s Classrooms" outlines a five point plan for improving the quality of Australian school teaching. A key recommendation of this paper is that high quality teachers should be paid up to $130,000 per year to attract and retain the best. I suggest that this could be a good starting point for high quality teachers in remote communities.
As I write this I can hear the immediate retort from government "where is the money going to come from?" and "we can afford that!"
My answer to this is very clear, we cannot afford to squander the education and lives of another generation of indigenous kids and perpetuate what Pearson describes as the continued pauperisation of people in remote indigenous communities. Find the dollars and start recruiting the best teachers for our indigenous students.

Indigenous Education for all Australians

2010-01-21T07:33:00.005+10:00

Next week Australians will be celebrating Australia Day on the 25th January. Australia Day represents a national holiday where all Australians can come together to celebrate what it is and means to be an Australian. Unfortunately, Australia Day also represents the aniversary the English settlement/invasion of Indigenous Australia, a continent and islands that contains a deep cultural significance for the oldest continuous race of peoples that have ever existed on Earth.

Successive Australian governments and the media give the appearance of acknowledging indigenous culture, but what impact has this had on existing indigenous Australians? The poorest performance in education (NAPLAN, 2008) and the lowest life expectancy (ABS 2007 cat. no. 3302.0) of any group of Australians.

Yesterday, I went looking for a large Aboriginal flag to fly on Australia Day. My wife had bought an Australian flag earlier for the same purpose. I was unsuccessful and every shop (and cultural centre) told me that they did not stock them as there was no demand. During my search I was struck by the absence of indigenous publications in the bookshops and indigenous symbology in all but our local cultural centre.

Recently I attended an international conference in Auckland, New Zealand and there was a great deal of Maori symbology evident across the city. The Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland (a white fella) gave much of his opening address in the Māori language (te reo Māori) in which he was obviously fluent.

I know that successive Australian Federal and State governments have allocated a great deal of funding in areas designed to improve outcomes for indigenous Australians, but what has actually been achieved?

Black (2007) and Vinson (1999) assert that Education is the key to overcoming social disadvantage which is characterised in Australia by poor educational, health outcomes and high levels of incarceration. Pearson (2009) in his Quarterly Essay 35, Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia makes the same assertion. Pearson suggests that without a comparable level of education indigenous people are subjected to a life of pauperisation.

There are of course some big challenges in indigenous education, particularly in remote indigenous communities. Teachers need to understand the cultural influences and indigenous perspectives and be able to adapt their teaching to suit these large differences. Ironically, when they do this, no students are disadvantaged. Indeed many non-indigenous students who see school as an alien and unfriendly environment respond very well to teachers who make their learning meaningful and respect indigenous culture and perspectives.

Other challenges include attracting and retaining good quality teachers. Some remote communities are alien to many white fellas and most often it is young male teaching graduates who elect to travel to remote communities, mostly for the extra remuneration and to secure a teaching position at a "good" school in a capital city. Many of these teachers are inexperienced and have little interest in developing strong and respectful relationships with the community. This is of course a generalisation and there are exceptions. One of my pre-service teacher students has elected to do all of his teaching practical in remote Northern Territory communities.

While there are challenges they are not insurmountable. Attracting older more experienced teachers can occur with by offering appropriate remuneration (much more than is currently offered) and targeting teachers who are closer to retiring age who have no dependent children. Older people often have a desire to experience new places and to begin to give back to the community. This is evidenced by the number of "Grey Nomads" that adorn our roads in Northern Australia during the winter.

But back to the issue of ignorance and indifference of many non-indigenous Australians and how we might bring about change in this area. This kind of change will clearly need to be generational as it's difficult to change the perceptions gained through a long lifetime. These perceptions can be innocent in the case of those who view issues only through their own cultural lens, or they can be openly destructive in terms of overt racism. For me, school education is again the key to changing perceptions. It is only when all Australians learn about indigenous culture, land, language and indigenous perspectives will we begin to show indigenous Australians the respect they deserve. The showing of respect and the honoring of indigenous culture, language and land brings with it a pride for indigenous Australians and it that pride and wider acknowledgment that will lift indigenous people out of the poverty and the socially destructive mire where many of them now find themselves.

There are challenges here also as each tribe and clan of indigenous people have their culture, land and language. Australia is not like New Zealand where the Māori language and culture is fairly homogeneous. Indigenous Australians have some common cultural practices and beliefs like: responsible custodianship of the land; extended sense of family connection; hierarchy of eye contact and connectedness to the land, but there are many differences that include language and life cycles related to the land.

While this is a challenge, it is not too difficult to overcome if all school curricula have integrated indigenous perspectives and the appropriate training for teachers on how to teach these perspectives. Uncle Ernie Grant is an Dijirabal/Djirrabal Elder and statewide cultural Research
Officer for Education Queensland is the developer of "My Land My Tracks: A framework for the holistic approach to indigenous studies". I have had the great honour of meeting with Uncle Ernie and with the support of the Indigenous Schooling Support Units in Rockhampton and Cairns, Uncle conducted a workshop last year for our pre-service teaching students and local school teachers.

The issue of variance between indigenous peoples land language and culture is not insurmountable and can be achieved relatively easily by having students develop Web-based resources for their area, and having all of these publicly available for teachers and students to use in their learning and teaching. Just imagine the difference it would make if all Australians understood and respected indigenous land language and culture. A publicly available Website, organised by regions and populated by school students from all over Australia would allow all Australians to develop their understanding and best of all, it provides students with authentic learning opportunities that engage them and make their learning worthwhile.

On Australia Day I will say a small prayer for my indigenous brothers and sisters and ask that the Federal Government see the wisdom of these relatively inexpensive ideas.

I'm also in the process of making my own Aboriginal flag (from material I bought yesterday) so that I can proudly fly it to honour the Darumbal people of my region and the Woppaburra clan who are the traditional custodians of the land on which our house is built.

What will you do for Australia Day?

More on Mobile Phone Learning in Schools

2009-07-09T08:45:00.002+10:00

In previous posting I've suggested that mobile phone technology offers a quantum leap in student connectivity and engagement in schools.
Today eSchool News have published an article by Julie Evans the chief executive officer of Project Tomorrow, which administers the national Speak Up survey on education and technology.
Ms Evans provides an analysis of what technologies students want to use for their learning and how they would like that to occur. Project tomorrow also survey teachers and parents as well and the results may astound you.

The article begins with a discussion of cheating using mobile technology, but then moves to a broader discussion of digital pedagogies that support the use of mobile phone devices. The article is well worth the read.

Mobile Phone Tipping Point in Education?

2009-06-11T08:53:00.002+10:00

This week Apple announced the release of their new iphone 3G s which has a substantially reduced cost, twice as fast with some applications and a raft of extra functionality.
This will undoubtedly drive Apple's competitors in the mobile phone market to design devices that are competitive in their functionality and cost.
This is great news for educators as finally there is a hand held device that has powerful computer capabilities that can run over a phone network or private wireless networks.
In many ways these recent developments challenge the notion of one laptop per school student and creates affordable learning opportunities in technology genre that has been embraced by school students across the world.

Just imagine combining the functionality of Google Wave with iphone technology. Students could easily communicate with their peers around the world using Google Wave's translation technology, at the same time, developing an understanding of the language used by their peers in other countries--all on an iphone.
Classrooms can now be a connected learning space that extends seamlessly outside of school hours and grounds. It provides opportunities for a whole new approach to homework, collaboration and media/Web literacies. Teachers can now be considered "cool", "totally sick", deadly, or whatever the terminology of the day is/will be, as they will/should be using the technology of today's digital native.

So what are the challenges? In Australia there are very few external incentives/rewards for school teachers to enter into what has become a self initiated continuous professional development (PD) cycle. They already have heavy work commitments and finding time to undertake a self directed, or minimally supported PD activities is difficult, and at times, impossible.
There is no doubt that teachers need to be provided with time to research and explore a wide variety of digital pedagogies and high on this list should be Project-Based Learning (PBL) as this is the most effective way to engage students and to develop their 21st Century skills and attributes. There are now sufficient examples of how this can work and evidence of its effectiveness. Alexander's Kitchen Garden Foundation and the Edible School Yard trialled at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkley California are just two examples of how the PBL approach can work. There are many others across the world, particularly those that concentrate on Maths and Science.
The new connected technology provides the "glue" that makes this type of collaborative learning possible, seamless and transparent to the learning.

Perhaps the major challenge is that of Web filtering approaches guided by a risk aversion response to government Public Policy. I've discussed this complex issue previously in this Blog and choose not to cover old ground. However, when the school students walk away from the school grounds the possibilities (and dangers) open up and students have considerably more flexibility at low cost with the large numbers of free wireless hotspots springing up around Australian cities.
Increasing the number and regionality of these hotspots should be part of the Australia's Federal Government approach to the much anticipated roll out of high-speed broadband across the nation.

As new connected technology breaks down the idea of a physical school environment and classrooms as the only places students learn, the possibilities of Personal Learning Environments becomes a possibility for school aged children. If we believe that children need to have a compulsory school like structure to learn what they need to be successful then we might think that the idea of a self-directed approach to learning for children is an impossibility. This is indeed true if school is a place where students are forced to attend and then presented with learning materials and pedagogical approaches more akin to the 19th rather than the 21st Century. If on the other hand we believe that by engaging learners with real world learning and the team production of artifacts that are valued in the real world, PLEs may be a distinct possibility, particularly if teachers become partners and mentors in the learning process.
It is a difficult gulf for many educators (and Governments) to see across, but there are distinct possibilities and new generation technologies like the Apple iphone make the possibilities a reality.

GoAnimate: a double edged sword

2009-06-05T07:49:00.003+10:00

In May 2008 GoAnimate, a browser-based automated animation tool, was launched. This product brings digital story telling to anyone who is connected to the Web. Here's a product promotion that tells some of the story:

Okay, it is easy to use and incredibly powerful, and would take most kids virtually no time to master. And kids are the problem here. The look and feel is cartoon like and very definitely going to be very attractive to young people below the age of 18. This product has tremendous potential for motivating school students and developing their creativity.

The problem with using this technology is the amount and accessibility of inappropriate content for minors. In Australia it is highly unlikely that we would be able to allow to use this fantastic technology in our schools because of the unsuitable content it makes available to our students.

Gaming in Education: are we reaching a "tipping point"?

2009-06-04T05:31:00.002+10:00

Prensky, Kearsley and others have been suggesting for some time that Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) will be the future of education.
There have been a couple of problems with this suggestion becoming a reality.
The high cost of game development and the need to have massive audiences to be able to recoup costs has posed some problems in terms of convincing gaming companies to risk their venture capital.
Along with the cost has been student reluctance to engage with something that sounds like it has an educational context.

It seems as this is all about to change with 360Ed entering the educational market and targeting high volume core learning outcomes in the US.
This eSchool News article explains how 360De have used popular MMORPG technology and methodology to develop a game that concentrates on developing content knowledge and 21st Century skills side by side.

As technological developments shorten and simplify game development, opportunities will appear for what promises to be a massive market.

A glimpse of the Future in Web Communication/Collaboration

2009-06-03T11:13:00.002+10:00

Ever thought about what Web communication/collaboration might look like in the future? Are you tired of switching between MSN, email, Wikis, Blogs and Twitter?
The following video gives you a glimpse of the near future--and it is something else.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did--Thanks To Stephen Downes and Michael Feldstein for sharing this amazing story/product.

Internationalisation in Higher Education

2009-05-27T09:00:00.003+10:00

Yesterday Professor Glynis Cousin from the University of Wolverhampton, in the UK, led discussions around the internationalisation of higher education with staff from our university.
According to Professor Cousins, internationalisation is more about providing opportunities for overseas students to interact with Australian students, so that both groups develop cross cultural understanding and gain knowledge/experience that will advantage them after they graduate from the institution. Professor Cousins suggested that internationalisation is often thought of in terms of making the curriculum more internationally relevant, but this is not what her research suggest that international students actually want.
"International students want to learn and socialise with local students" Professor Cousins insisted. She indicated that including teamwork that included a diverse mix of international and domestic students was perhaps the most effective way of ensuring a sharing of skills, expertise and cultural understanding.

So where would you begin to achieve a high level of internationalisation in higher education in Australia? If Professor Cousins is correct, two immediate changes are required:

Stop quarantining international students in learning situations where there are few, if any Australian students.
Begin with your course/unit assessment and design problem-based assessment that requires at least some teamwork and where the context is global and student teams are allocated to include high levels of cultural diversity.

Internationalisation in education is desirable, both from a commercial marketing perspective and in producing students who are more globally and culturally aware. Graduating students who have had direct experience working and learning in a global community offers much, and has the potential to enhance the reputation and standing of the university.

True 21st Century Schools

2009-05-16T06:20:00.006+10:00

In this Blog I've shared many ideas and expressed opinions about P/K to 12 schooling today and how the vast majority of our education leaders just don't get it. This leadership begins with government and filters down to school level. Old Taylorist paradigms no longer suitable for 21st century learners who need a vastly different skill set and who have a dramatically different cultural perspective from 40 years ago. The literature has been around for sometime now but the inertia of educational leadership to respond is staggering, and we are adversely impacting the futures of large numbers of young people for whom school is an un-engaging prison of despair.
The following video is an example of the alternative; and it is achievable in Australia, the UK and in the US:

eSchool News has published an article that talks about this school in more detail.It is well worth the read.

Using ipods in school

2009-05-12T07:37:00.002+10:00

Pod/Vodcasts have been around now for some years and despite this attraction and hype, the time it takes educators to design and develop acceptable quality media has been an obstacle to full exploitation of the technology.

Grace Poli is a media specialist at Jose Marti Middle School in Union City, N.J. and in the latest edition of the eschool news online magazine her approach to using ipods in her school is discussed.

You will notice that Grace exploits existing media rather than creating many pod/vodcasts herself. Her students, however are.
The article demonstrates how being aware of popular youth culture and being technologically proficient transform school students' learning experiences.

Well worth the read.

More on Opening up Public School Access to Web 2.0

2009-04-25T10:39:00.003+10:00

The following SlideShare offers a constructive approach to bring Web 2.0 and Social Networking into schools.

Just think what this approach would need in terms of education for our public school leadership, government and above all the teachers.
It would not happen in Australia without strong leadership from State and Federal government and that does not seem likely as the vast majority of them do not understand how children learn and can be engaged. Even worse, few show any indications of understanding the immense learning potential of Web 2.0 and social networking technology.
The shame is that the private schools, who in many cases have more appropriate responses to child protection, will continue to innovate in the effective use of new technologies and the gap between private and public school students' achievement will continue to broaden, and at an ever increasing rate.
From a social justice position (mine) this appalling as it is denying the most socially disadvantaged the tools that could actually bridge the gap and change their lives positively and dramatically.

Learner-Centred ICTs in Schools

2009-04-24T14:36:00.002+10:00

Arguably the very best use of ICTs in schools is where students create new content using ICTs and new media. The following article provides a compelling case study of this happening in a US school with the mentoring and guidance of their teacher.

Student film documents Holocaust memories

What Should/Will Successful Universities look like in 2020?

2009-04-23T08:08:00.006+10:00

Image Courtesy of Flickr

Today in Australia universities are under significant pressure from a range of challenges and market raiders. For years universities have enjoyed a monopoly on certifying undergraduate and post-graduate qualifications, but that has quickly changed with significant increases in government accredited non-university providers.

Currently in Australia the non-university providers are providing learning opportunities predominantly for full fee-paying international students, but this may change in the future because of government policy. Issues like free trade agreements are likely to impact on Australian higher education providers as there has been pressure in the past for the Federal government to introduce a voucher system for Australian students that would allow them to buy education products from any accredited provider. This would allow foreign companies to operate in Australia on a level playing field with Australian universities. The US is a big player in this field.

So how could Australian universities halt the slide in international market share, mitigate the possible impact of a voucher system and infact grow market share?

This article discusses an interesting approach of one private US university that follows on from, and extends the open content approach adopted in recent years by MIT.

Image Courtesy of Flickr

What about extending this notion even further and offering concept of Personal Learning Environments where learners can interact with a range of learning materials, some offered by the university and some sourced externally through open content, in ways that allows participants to follow issues and concepts that take them where they want/need to go.

For its part the university offers expert facilitators with current professional knowledge and experience along with an assessment regime that is accredited to a level that is acceptable to industry, community and government.
While learners can follow their own interests and learning pathway, they would still need to undertake learning activities that lead to certification if that was one of their goals.
But will certification be the main game in 2020? Is it even now? Some would argue that gaining the employment you seek has more to do with what you can do, design and produce than certification. Portfolios, particularly e.portfolios are now an extremely important part of gaining paid employment and the future trend is more towards these kinds of approaches.

So, perhaps a 2020 university will be one that operates in a truly global market place; one that to works with its students to prepare significant portfolios that contain authentic real-world products. A portfolio that they can use to provide a range of purpose-built views to meet the students' employment, promotion and professional requirements.

For Australian universities this will pose some significant challenges. The institutions will need to be highly connected to industry requirements with its key academic staff actively working in and with a wide range of organisations. Academic staff would need to be highly flexible in terms of the support they provide the students and be prepared to hand them over to a colleague more knowledgeable/skilled in the area the students wish to pursue.
Access to learning materials, assessment and academic staff would need to be predominantly online with exceptions only where the online option would not work.
Students would have opportunities to work alongside university staff on industry research projects.
The physical "bricks and mortar" facilities will most likely look very different to what currently exists. Increased emphasis in dedicated research facilities, few offices, general support staff working closely with academics to ensure they have what they need when they need it. Physical learning spaces targeted specifically for learning and assessment that can't be done online effectively. Virtually no lecture theaters, or general purpose classrooms. Libraries that only contain what is not available online and staffed by a mixture of academic, library and IT staff.

Regradless of where the futurevtakes us, the outcomes will be interesting, to say the least.

The Future of 21st Century learning

2009-04-22T05:46:00.002+10:00

Watch the following YouTube video and then read the short discussion below it.

If schools as an institution are to survive, their leadership and government that develop restrictive public policy, need to pay attention to these scholars.
The model and skill sets this video suggests are required to be effective learners are hamstrung by school students' heavily restricted access to the Web, particularly in Australian public schools. Besides developing an ever increasing gulf between public and private school student learning experiences, the behaviour of Australian education departments in States and Territories is, in my view, unconscionable as we and some other developed nations fall well behind in a globalised society.
In a globalised society and economy, higher order thinking, complex problem-solving collaboration and respect for culture are key determinants for a successful career and life.

When will government and schools give up on a model that just does not work for modern learners or produce the kinds of grtaduates we need in the future?

Authentic Assessment using WIKI Technology

2009-04-15T07:46:00.002+10:00

For some time now I've been looking at the possibility of using a public WIKI as a way of having P-12 students construct authentic content in a real-world context. My rationale is simple, students crave real-world learning tasks where what they produce is valued not just by teachers and their school, but by communities across the world.

This article from "The Education Bazaar" Blog provides an interesting analysis of how this could/does occur and what the underlying assumptions are around the use of WIKIs to meet student needs.

Using a public WIKI, like Wikipedia in schools offers a range of opportunities and challenges, but certainly meets the requirements of authentic learning and assessment which is championed by many educators as a way to engage disaffected learners and to develop higher order thinking skills.

Specifically, I'm interested in developing a WIKI section devoted to indigenous Australians; their diverse culture, history, language and their land. While there is some publicly available information in hard copy publications, it is not substantial and does not detail all of Australian indigenous nations and their people. Online the situation is much worse with very little accurate information available.
Just imagine if all of Australia's school students had an opportunity to contribute to a public WIKI with information about the indigenous people native to their geographical area. Much of Australia's indigenous history is passed down by an oral tradition of story telling. The old people, the elders and some historians have information that could be shared with all Australians and the world.
Currently, Australians know very little about indigenous culture, history, language and the land as this knowledge has not been given a significant level of respect and importance since colonisation/invasion back in the 1700s.
For some years now successive Australian governments have committed to reconciliation with Australia's indigenous people, with a view to acknowledging the wrongs of the past and working towards improving opportunities for indigenous Australians to the same level of non-indigenous people.
In my view, true reconciliation cannot occur until all Australians understand, respect and value the indigenous cultural heritage, history, language and their land. This can only occur when all schools have a curriculum with embedded indigenous perspectives and requires its students to learn and understand the culture, history, language and land of indigenous Australia.

Challenges
The major challenge to the above idea is Australian education departments' implementation of what is often called "Public Policy". The idea of public schools requiring a "Walled Garden" in terms of Internet policy offers substantial challenges to transformational educational ideas such as that offered above.
In nearly all cases, the response to "Public Policy" is to block public school students from accessing collaborative publicly available Websites. Even if we could get all of Australia's state and territory governments to support a school only Web space for an indigenous WIKI, the results of the student work would still be unavailable to the outside world.
The key concern is student safety and relates predominantly to un-moderated contact with persons outside the school, as well as exposure to inappropriate Web content like pornography or racism.

Solution ?
What about having a shared Webspace available to all of Australia's schools (public and private) where schools would submit a list of eligible persons who could create content and collaborate. Additional roles/permissions for moderators who would again be nominated by the schools.
Make the WIKI in this Webspace accessible in a read only version to the general public as this will remove concerns about contact with unauthorised persons.

Clearly, this would need to be a Federal iniatitive and have the full support of state and territory education ministers.

So how about it Prime Minister Rudd and Ms Gillard? Would this not fit neatly into your "Education Revolution".

School Smart vs Intelligence??

2009-04-09T08:55:00.004+10:00

For many years now many educators have being talking about the narrow band of intelligence that is valued in traditional school systems across the world. Gardner suggests that there are eight specific types of intelligences and that embedding an acknowledgment and valuing of these across the curriculum benefits all learners.
The following video, from Edutopia, provides an example of just how this can occur:

Notice how the learners' MI's are made explicit to them and that this stops the learners from feeling as if they are "dumb".

Making learning strengths and preferences explicit to students can also work with their learning/cognitive styles and their personality types. For older learners, educators will find the following validated instruments useful:

Felder's Inventory of Learning styles

Jung Typology Test

The following image is the output of the Felder instrument for a particular student.

Educators who make student preferences explicit to their learners, and value these preferences, give all students to opportunity to understand just how they learn best and to develop strong learning strategies that will assist in learning where these preferences are not so well developed. To achieve this outcome, many educators and school systems will need to make some dramatic changes to the ways in which institutional-based learning occurs. At the heart of these changes will be the recognition of a truly student-centred approach and not just tokenistic attempts that hang on to existing traditional approaches.

Emerging Technologies Shaping K-12 Education

2009-03-27T12:45:00.002+10:00

I gather from the correspondence and phone calls I've received since my initial posting on school Internet policies, that this is a complex problem area shared by public schools across Australia and around the world.

The major sticking point seems to be what has been broadly termed as "Public Policy" and relates to politicians concern about the consequences of being blamed for students accessing offensive/inappropriate material or having inappropriate communication outside the school system. In particular the media find these kinds of incidents very news worthy and this encourages the public policy to one of risk aversion by pro-actively blocking access to Web 2.0 technologies served outside the school system and to blocking a large proportion of websites regardless of their content.

While I understand the complex issues, public school leadership needs to address these as a priority, otherwise we will continue to see the gap widen between what is possible in the non-government schools and the paralysis of fear in the public school sector.

If you have any doubts about the future of schooling, you need to look at what is occurring around the world and seriously consider the predictions currently being made. The following article is just one of many that makes substantial predictions:
eschool news-- Six technologies soon to affect education.

A Followup to School Internet Policies and 21st Century Learning

2009-03-19T07:58:00.007+10:00

My last posting dealt with closed IT systems in Australian public schools and as the comments reflect, this is a problem not just in Queensland.
I've also received emails and and phone calls regarding this issue that suggest that it is a major barrier to teachers adopting ICTs for use inside and out of their classrooms.
Thanks to Stephen Downes and James Farmer for providing a much wider readership and as a result, creating interest (and maybe some angst) within Australian education.

Many of my Blog postings have sought to expose colleagues to engaging learning design that caters for difference. This has also been Edutopia's goal (with regard to K-12 schooling) in the past and they have highlighted some excellent examples that are happening in the US and Canada. The following video is no exception and showcases what my pre-service teacher students are learning at the moment. The need to adopt learning design that caters and values a raft of learning styles and intelligences. This is absolutely essential for learning engagement in 21st century schools. It also provides many more opportunities for students to acquire and integrate and then extend and refine their 21st century skills and knowledge .

School Internet Policies: Protecting Students or the Organisation??

2009-03-13T07:06:00.004+10:00

Since the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies the gap between what school students can do at home, Internet cafes or public libraries has grown dramatically.
This is exasperated by most Australian State Education authorities being painfully slow to even acknowledge the need for an integrated approach to the inclusion of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)into school learning environments.
While States like Queensland are rolling out a new Managed Operating Environment across its state schools, the draconian policies of blocking almost all Websites and virtually all the available Web 2.0 tools, means that student learning experiences are much poorer than those they can experience outside of school.
Not only are they poorer, but the gap between what is possible and what the schools can offer is growing very rapidly.

When you add these issues to the ridiculously complex security regime that requires students to log on twice with different usernames and passwords and again if the computer is dormant for a relatively short period of time. The task for teachers becomes enormous, particularly for younger students.

Unfortunately, the issues with school Internet access does not stop there. Many schools in Queensland are starved of bandwidth. The author has worked in one large school in Central Queensland that was expected to manage with 1.5MB of bandwidth for around 800 students plus staff. Showing a streaming video clip, even in low usage time was not even possible. In this school, staff were told that they had to use the Internet as much as possible so that they could demonstrate to the State governing body that they needed more bandwidth. Of course, in these circumstances teachers give up on the technology as their working lives are already busy enough without having a disgruntled bunch of students complaining and becoming bored at the slow access.

Restricting access to all externally hosted Web 2.0 technologies and most external Websites, appears to be motivated by the organisations fear of being accused of allowing student access to inappropriate material and uncontrolled contact with persons outside of the school and the student's immediate family. This fear is not without foundation as the Australian media is quick to judge and make inaccurate assertions. Pedophilia (or grooming), and child access to explicit material sell newspapers and fuel television ratings. Because the State education authorities are responsible to the State governments of the day, the issue becomes political with ultimate responsibility resting with the Minister and the government.
But what about the Internet access at home, friends, Internet cafes and public libraries? Just because this is not "on school grounds" does not mean that the State authorities do not have responsibility for educating school students in cyber safety and issues around inappropriate material.
As yet none of the Australian State education authorities have integrated cyber safety and issues around inappropriate material into their curricula. "Stranger danger" of the physical type is there but not the former?
The video below offers a student perspective on blocking technology and access:

In Queensland, all of the mentors charged with implementing the "

Smart Classrooms

" initiatives that the author has spoken with, want better access to external Web 2.0 tools and are frustrated by the intransigence shown by the State authority in this area. They are also frustrated by the over the top security that make access difficult for students. These professionals are tasked with professional development that will result in the integrated use of ICTs in Queensland State school classrooms, but the teachers find it all too hard with the issues mentioned above.

As a teacher educator, the author regularly has students and graduates who complain that they are unable to implement the innovative digital pedagogies they are taught at University because of the security policies and procedures present in State schools.
As the video shows, this is not just an issue in Queensland schools. Other Australian States and other countries have similar problems around these issues.

Why is Web 2.0 so important?

As you would see from much of this Blog, learning engagement is the key to successful and deep learning experiences. In Australian schools the Literacy and Numeracy crisis is not due to the curriculum taught in school, but to a lack of learning engagement that leads to absenteeism and behavioural management issues that block learning in the students' early years. Once the student is behind the schools system marches them through into areas they are unskilled and under-prepared for and the die is cast for the majority of those students. They feel "dumb", develop low self-esteem and finish school completely unprepared for work or further study.
Low socio-economic status (SES) and indigenous students are over represented in this area and this leads to generational poverty and disadvantage (Vinson, 1999; Black 2007).
Keirsley and Shneiderman (1999) and Herrington & Oliver (2002) assert that authentic learning experiences with outcomes valued in the real world lead to learning engagement. In both cases, the integrated of ICTs plays a pivotal role in this authentic learning, as a quick search of this Blog will reinforce.
By way of example look at the video below to see just one example of how this can work with Web 2.0 technologies:

What's the Answer?

So here is the the tough question and one with no easy answer.
First and foremost, there needs to be a national curriculum that has cyber safety and recognition of inappropriate and dangerous material integrated within it.
Secondly, there needs to be a scaled approach to School Internet security with the most security applied to the youngest and most vulnerable students and a gradual relaxing as the students reach later years. In all cases, where a teacher deems it necessary/desirable for their students to have access to a particular technology, it should be provided and the teacher supported throughout its use.
Lastly, we need to ensure that the Australian media are aware of the reasons for this approach and an undertaking from them that they will not sensationalize incidents that may occur.

Regardless of what happens, there should be wide consultation with all the stakeholders an a genuine attempt to educate children, their parents the general public and the media on the need for 21st century learning approaches.
It is not impossible and many private schools are already managing this issue very well.

Is there still a place for Lectures??

2009-02-12T11:23:00.007+10:00

As we begin to acknowledge the research around learning retention and effectiveness, it is difficult to continue to make a case for lectures. Notice how much is retained from a lecture format (learning Pyramid), and also note the effectiveness of a learning experience that relies heavily on verbal symbols (Dale's Cone).

I acknowledge that while this research that was conducted in the 1960's looked at large numbers of students and classes, it does not identify specific pedagogical approaches, the quality of the lectures or the technologies now available.

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague of mine who teaches professional communication and media. We were discussing the role of lectures and she has decided to go back to lectures, but with a difference. In this course she explains the curriculum with current public relation examples. Those that are currently making media coverage.

As a result of this approach her preparation must happen on the "fly" and cannot easily be re-used the next time she teaches the subject.
In her lectures she proposes to discuss the current media events and make direct connections to these by referring to the curriculum available to the students online. Now, she has both face to face online and international students who are taught by tutors at other campuses. The interactive lectures she is to conduct will be video recorded and placed up on the subject Website so that all students can view these as streaming media files.
This means that she prepares once, but all students have a chance to have an equivalent learning experience.

Overall, this approach is not seeking to replicate the learning material already available online, but to "Value Add" to her students learning experience in an interactive lecture format. She intends to discontinue the previous two hour tutorials, and in doing so, will gain additional preparation time.

So is the lecture "dead", not with clever pedagogy.

Technology Mediated Student Feedback

2009-02-07T07:47:00.002+10:00

This week I had the good fortune to attend a morning session facilitated by a colleague of mine, David Jones. David introduced a group of academics new to our institution is some of the more contemporary views on education and literature that supports this.
I'd come to the induction course to catch up with a colleague of mine who I'm collaborating with to re-write an elearning course for undergraduate students at our university--sorry I've digressed somewhat form the purpose of this post.

At this session I met another colleague, Dave, who teachers OHS online and who is in fact located in another state. All of Dave's students are online and he shared his approach to voice feedback for his students assessment submissions--he says it's much faster and his students prefer it.

Coincidentally, I've been relatively active in the Mahara community lately as I'm incorporating e.portfolios into the assessment of all the courses I coordinate. Currently we are discussing the types of social networking software we would like to be able to be imported in to Mahara as educational artifacts that can be then placed in a particular "View" and made available to a specific audience. One of the suggestions was "VoiceThread.
Upon further investigation, I've found this software to be extremely flexible and useful for providing feedback to students who are involved in the submission of visual products.
Not only for educators to provide feedback, but also for their peers to do so as well. See and example below:

Gaining Traction in Schools

2009-02-03T06:37:00.006+10:00

One of the problems with introducing radically new approaches to learning in conservative institutions like schools is that teachers need concrete examples of how these approaches have been used in similar organisations elsewhere.
The most recent edition of eschool news offers two excellent articles that report excellent practice with the use of elearning technologies and Project-Based Learning.
To be able to read the full articles you will need to register (for free) with eschool news.

Article 1: Technology empowers differentiated instruction

This article demonstrated how technology can be used to make a variety of learning activities available for students to choose so that their learning preferences are valued.

Article 2: Project-based learning engages students, garners results

This article demonstrated how authentic projects can be used to develop 21st century skills and, more importantly, engage students who would otherwise lose interest in school and drop out.

Both of these excellent articles give concrete examples of how learning can engage students and develop higher order thinking.

Group/Teamwork Resources

2009-01-22T05:01:00.002+10:00

Perhaps the most commonly ignored aspect of student groupwork is the assumption by teachers that students already possess the skills required to function effectively in teams.

Effective teamwork requires considerable scaffolding and specific skills training for it to work well.

The following resources are a good start to getting this part of collaborative learning right:

Doing Group Assessment--University of Canberra & the Carrick Institute
Collaborative Learning: Group Work and Study Teams--University of California, Berkeley
Fundamental Team and Meeting Skills--New York State Governor's Office of Employee Relations

Educational Silver Bullet??

2009-01-08T17:53:00.003+10:00

I'm currently in the process of re-writing one of my Graduate Diploma courses for a pre-service teaching program we teach at my university and came across a video of George Lucas discussing effective learning and how it engages school students. The video is on edutopia so I expect that many of you may have already seen it, but I embed it here in my Blog for those who have not yet had the privilege of hearing Lucas talk about a not so new paradigm in education.

I use this approach in my classes, on-campus and online and it just works brilliantly.
Is it a silver bullet? It's very likely.

Childrens' Age--the worst grouping indicator!!

2009-01-05T06:48:00.005+10:00

Image courtesy of Flickr--http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3213/3121817819_bced0e0fe5_m.jpg
In Australia, as in many other developed countries, we group our school students by their age despite knowing that all of them come to school with a varied readiness to learn (at least the way we currently teach) and progress at rates that vary greatly.

The child that begins school and cannot cope will quickly fall behind. The upper primary teachers will believe that the early childhood teachers should have spent more time with the children, but do not have the time in their classrooms to bring these children back up to the required level. The children themselves believe that they are "dumb" and the school system reinforces this perception. When the children are unable to understand and learn at the required rate they often become disruptive or withdraw. Teachers then perceive these students as a behavioural management challenge and the pattern of poor behaviour is perpetuated throughout the rest of their schooling.

Keeping a child back a grade is often discussed, but the negative effects on the child's self esteem most often results in graduation to the next grade, even though this is most likely to make learning even more difficult.

By the time these children reach high school the pattern is well entrenched and these children are condemned to a miserable learning experience that offers nothing at the end of formal schooling.

But what about those children who find schooling easy? They quickly acquire and integrate the required knowledge and skills , but then become bored and disinterested because the learning pace is not sufficient for them to maintain engagement. Often this boredom results in similar behaviours to those children who are unable to keep up with the learning journey presented to them.

So what's the answer to a formal school schooling system in crisis that does not meet the needs of many of its students? If the answer was simple then we would have found the solution already!! There are, however, some strong indicators in schools across the world--strategies that work and ensure that "no child is left behind".

Image courtesy of Horse Magazine

In Warrego, a small aboriginal settlement at the edge of the Tanami Desert, an elder approached a retired school teacher (who lived in the area) and asked if he could teach the aboriginal children to ride so that the community could once again run the cattle station they owned. Read the story to understand how this school turned around its attendance to become one the highest in the Northern Territory.
Unfortunately, this model relies on the absolute dedication of the teacher and his wife and in 2007 this school was closed because of the dwindling population. The notion of reward and authentic learning is also used with indigenous students in Djarragun College, a school near Cairns in Queensland.
In both of these schools indigenous students are encouraged to engage in their studies to be able to participate in authentic activities associated with their learning.

Some schools in the US have been experimenting with ability-based cohorts rather than age-based classes. Read the story to gain a better idea as to how this works. This model has much to offer, but as the article warns, it should replace the traditional system and not be imposed on top of the existing system. This article also suggests that it is the student-centered goal setting that encourages participation and improved attendance. These schools do not offer a radical change in pedagogy, merely a mastery approach to the curriculum.

Of equal promise are more student-centered pedagogical approaches that have authentic tasks and assessment integrated to the entire learning experience. The removal of age-based cohorts would work well with these approaches.

Bridging the Expanding Educational Gap

2008-12-28T07:57:00.002+10:00

In the Stephen Downes's newsletter I received today, Downes points to an article written yesterday by Graham Attwell that discusses the growing gap between the educational requirements for 21st Century students and what educational institutions offer today.
In this article Attwell argues that the whole focus of schooling & higher education needs to change dramatically if this gap is not to widen further, let alone be closed in the near future.

Attwell's suggestions revolve around providing opportunities for students to be involved and embedded in authentic learning experiences, and that assessment be formative, integrated and authentic leading to the development of eportfolios that the students own and take with them throughout their lives.

I strongly urge you to follow the link above and read what Attwell suggests.

Are we asking too much of University IT Departments?

2008-12-22T06:59:00.002+10:00

Recently, I've been part of a university team involved with the evaluation of a couple of open source Learning Management Systems (LMS) to replace our old version of BlackBoard (Bb) and a home grown LMS.
In the course of our investigations we found in favour of Moodle, a very popular LMS that has a wide variety of implementations that range from the world's largest open and distance education university (Open University) to small organisations and single teacher use in schools.
While the academic staff in the evaluation overwhelmingly supported the selection of Moodle, the Information Technology department did not. Their main objections were structured around the language the LMS was written in (PHP) and the need to integrate this language into the oracle database architecture the department has decided on for its long term strategic direction. PHP is a language that while many of the ITD programmers are familiar with, the their strategic direction and training is all aimed at Java applications and development. The reasons for the strategic direction are sound from a business perspective, given the management systems the university currently has in place.
Supporting Moodle will cause a deviation away from the strategic direction the IT department has chosen, and this will have an impact on training and integration with existing systems.

In the course of our investigations we also found an excellent eportfolio tool (Mahara) that will, for the first time, allow our students to store examples of their work and authentic assessment that they have designed and developed during their time at university. Mahara is also written in PHP, but offers additional challenges to the university in terms of long-term storage and support of student accounts. For example, if the eportfolios are for the storage of artifacts that can be used by the students to share examples of their work, (this is desirable to build learning engagement and ownership) then how long will the university support the hosting of student work? Issues of storage and time then become difficult issues which universities are not well placed to deal with and fund.

While this is just one example, there are many other possibilities for inclusion in high quality university courses and programs. SPARK (Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit) is a product that I currently use to support group work in student teams. The current version is written in ASP (I think), but the new version that will be available early in 2009 has a user interface written in Adobe Flash with a back end written in PHP. Incorporating this into the current university IT infrastructure would cause additional issues for the ITD.

Yet another excellent product is ReView, a software product developed by Darrall Thompson from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). ReView offers an online assessment, feedback and graduate attribute alignment approach. I'm not sure what language this product uses, but I suspect that it would also have a Flash component in its design and operation.

The above examples are just a few, and as we continue further down the open source pathway, the divergence in software and IT architecture is also likely to add additional impositions on an IT department that is not receiving additional funding for this support.
University IT departments across the world are attempting to deal with these issues, not just my institution. While universities that are generously funded will cope better in the short term, eventually this divergence will also impact on their capability, flexibility and financial bottom line.

So what's the Solution?
While there is a natural tendency for IT Departments to want to restrict the software, platforms and systems that can be used for all university operations to contain costs, a better approach for the entire organisation would be to have them determine just what systems are cost effective for them to support. There are some systems that the institution needs to administer as it would be difficult and costly to outsource.
Outsourcing the hosting of some systems needs to be seriously considered if the university is to become a flexible and innovative organisation.
In the course of our LMS investigations, we engaged an external hosting company (NetSpot) to provide an instance of both LMSs for us to use and evaluate. Specialist hosting companies offer substantial savings and flexibility when it comes to using software platforms that are outside the strategic direction of IT departments. Not only do these companies offer specialist expertise and a high degree of reliability, they can also be engaged with specific contracts that ensure that they meet the specified operational requirements, or risk penalties. It is virtually impossible to replicate this with Service Level Agreements between ID departments and Faculties.
Outsourcing the hosting of some teaching and learning systems offers Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings, flexibility and added reliability which has a direct impact on a university's reputation.

In our organisation, and many others, there are a number of steps that need to be followed to before outsourcing can occur, but these should not be a barrier to considering outsourcing with specialist Web hosts, just part of the process.

Are Traditional Schools and Universities becoming Irrelevant??

2008-12-15T07:20:00.003+10:00

Recently a colleague sent me this Blog posting that discusses the insular nature of schools. The author engages in dialogue that demonstrates the divergence between the networked informal learning world and the traditional approach adopted by schools and their governing bodies.
To a large extent, the author suggests that it is the institutional rules and policies around Web access that stop and discourage networked learning.

I agree with this perspective to a point, but why then do the vast majority of universities who offer students open access, pursue predominantly the same approach with the majority of their courseware?
The answer, I believe, lies in what education managers believe about what works best and how you can control the paradigm. School teachers, particularly those who go to university direct from school and then enter the profession, are successful in the traditional approach to learning. They have one or more degrees and their learning style suites the type of instruction offered in school and university. For them, the traditional approach works, and it is their whole experience. It is no surprise that they will resist disruptive and dramatically different approaches--even engage in sabotage (consciously/sub-consciously) if they are forced to adopt them.

In essence, there is a divide between formal and informal learning where the commodification of education is facing serious challenge. Schools are required to show evidence of controlled and specific learning outcomes, many of which do not meet the 21st century skill sets required. Universities are trying to sell courses and programs (qualifications) to augment the funding from government that has been systematically erroded over the past 15 years. In Australia, university enrollments are falling as prospective students come to realise that there is a growing emphasis with employment on demonstrating your capabilities using a portfolio approach, with the requisite evidence, rather than relying on self-accrediting universities to bestow a qualification.

If schools, particularly public schools, are to halt the decline in student enrolments they need to offer learning experiences that are engaging, challenging and reflect the values and skills of the 21st century, not the ninteenth!
Universities are even more threatened because there is no compulsory nature to enrollment and the costs to students are considerable. The solution for universities is the same as schools. Make the learning flexible, engaging, real-world, challenging and develop knowledge and skills appropriate for 21st century work and life.

ePortfolios for Learning

2008-12-01T13:00:00.002+10:00

As part of my university's LMS investigations, we are also looking at eportfolio software.
I recently had a look at Mahara and was very impressed with its functionality.
You can develop your own eportfolio on their Demo site.

Mahara is open source code and offers users the ability to progressively add artifacts and evidence with the opportunity to provide customised views to those you wish to see your work.

Very cool and well developed--get yourself an account and try it out.

Choosing a new LMS

2008-12-01T09:59:00.003+10:00

Currently, my university is in the process of choosing a new Learning Management System (LMS). While a few were short listed, the decision has come down to just two open/community source alternatives, Moodle & Sakai.

In the past there has been a great deal of debate around LMSs. This ranges from academics who believe that any single product is unlikely to be flexible enough to meet all of the teaching and learning needs for staff & students (and there are some valid arguments that support this position), to an approach that wishes to lock the look & feel, navigation and content down as tightly as possible.

Some have suggested that an approach using personal learning environments (PLEs) is worth considering, however, PLEs seek to de-institutionalise and de-commodify education and this does not fit well with the current commercial models of education pursued by Australia's tertiary education providers.

Anyway, to read about my investigations to date see our LMS WIKI.

These traits make online teachers successful

2008-11-11T13:12:00.002+10:00

This article offers strong insights on how to maximise the effectiveness of online education.
Note the additional skills required over and above those of an effective classroom teacher.

Please note that to read all of the article you will need to subscribe (free) to eSN.

An integrated and authentic approach to middle school education

2008-11-11T13:08:00.004+10:00

The following video story offers an excellent insight into making learning meaningful and authentic for all students:

Best,

Scot.

Social & Emotional Learning

2008-08-28T08:32:00.001+10:00

The notion of social and emotional learning (SEL) has particular implications for 21st Century skills and for team/group work we undertake in our courses.

Goleman bases his theoretical framework around recent advances in brain science and how we can teach emotional intelligence. You can read more about SEL on Goleman's Blog.

Watch the video below and consider the possibilities.

If we advocate a collaborative approach to learning, and the research suggests this improves retention and efficacy, how important is SEL?

So how do you think that you rate in Emotional Intelligence (EI)? Try this test and see how you fair.

Do you think that SEL or EI are important in your classroom? Is this indeed a 21st Century skill? How would you incorporate it in your students' learning.

Best,

Scot.

Using Blogs as a Professional Discussion

2008-08-20T18:50:00.004+10:00

Before Web 2.0 technology became so pervasive, subject matter experts and discipline leaders would be most likely be identified by the books they publish which would lead to invitations to appear, or write in the popular press. Invitations to speak at conferences would also stem from book and academic journal publications.

Before Web 2.0, the intellectual property (IP) of subject matter experts (SMEs) was controlled by publishers and the organisation for whom they worked. Unfortunately, this arrangement mostly suits the publishers and employers, and not the person who developed the IP.

The Internet and Web 2.0 technologies have changed all of that, and SMEs now have the ability to share their IP and to have rapid access to other IP using predominantly Blog technology. RSS feeds and aggregators now mean that you can monitor each others postings and use what you learn to make up your own "Mashups".

Soon there will come a time when this free exchange of ideas and knowledge will circumvent and supersede publishers and employers. The advent of Creative Commons now means that we can maintain the ownership of our IP, but also share it with others who have similar interests and research areas.

The potential this type of exchange creates is significant as it now shortens the time for new innovations to be disseminated and adapted by others. The implications are no less dramatic in education. The often closed nature of compulsory and tertiary learning means that there is often very little interaction between teachers who are innovators and their colleagues. We, unfortunately often make the same mistakes as those our colleagues have made and learned from. We also are not good at being able to share our successes with a global audience.
Web 2.0 Blogs and WIKIs now make all of this possible instantly and publicly. We can learn on a daily basis from what others have done and adapt the effective approaches to our own pedagogical approach.

So the story is:

Seek out the Blogs of other teachers/academics within your profession and do this with a Google search.
Subscribe to their RSS feeds with an aggregator like Bloglines.
Share your Blog URL with your colleagues and encourage them to start their own Blog.
Publish your experiences, new knowledge and thoughts regularly.

Building a community of practice is an essential part of 21st Century professionalism and ensures that you are not left behind. Lifelong learning is a necessity and a reality and the sooner you join the Tsunami the easier it will be to come up to speed in your professional life.

Best,

Scot.

Stop Motion Animation--a creative approach to education

2008-08-14T09:20:00.006+10:00

A couple of years ago I had the great pleasure to work with a very gifted teacher who was doing a two year secondment to the Faculty of Education in my university. She is a primary school teacher who uses elearning/ICTs to engage her student in ways that contextualises their learning using real world tasks.
In one particular case this teacher had a number of indigenous students who were very active, visual and kinesthetic learners. These particular learners did not respond well to traditional teaching and their behaviour was generally considered a problem.
My colleague introduced her class to stop motion animation and asked the students to represent some of their learning using this approach. This resulted in a strong level of learning engagement for all students, but in particular her indigenous students who went from being a behavioural management problem to requesting to start school early, work through their lunch breaks and stay back after class to work on their stop motion animation projects.

Stop motion animation is relatively easy to accomplish these days with free or low cost software products that allow you to take control of the animation frame by frame.

Click on the image to view a video that describes quickly how your students can design and develop stop motion animation courtesy of Toasted TV.

Recently I've been looking at new software for Macs called iStopMotion (about $100AUS) which allows a myriad of options and flexibility. I'm working with some year two students next week helping out one of my graduate diploma students so it will be interesting to see what they come up with using this software.

Creativity in Education

2008-08-14T09:09:00.002+10:00

What will our world look like in five, ten and twenty years? Can we predict the future with any degree of accuracy? What are the skills our children will need after they graduate from school and university? Are they the same as was required 40 years ago?
Previously on this Blog I've discussed the notion of 21st Century Skills and what they may be. The following video features Sir Ken Robinson presenting at the 2006 Technology, Entertainment, Design and discusses creativity and how well schools support the development of creativity.

I hope that this rather humorous provides some scope for discussion.

Physical Learning Spaces in Schools Mk 2

2008-08-14T08:10:00.003+10:00

Further to my posting yesterday, I received a Facebook message from a previous student of mine who is now teaching at The Lakes School in South Morang Victoria, Australia. The design of this new school encapsulates much of what I proposed in my previous posting and is well worth a look.
For information about the design see this .pdf file from the Victorian Government.
Of particular interest is the "Bubble" model of interaction shown below.

Physical Learning Spaces in Schools

2008-08-13T15:58:00.003+10:00

My last post discussed the challenges Australian schools face as we educate and professionally develop our teachers in the effective use of ICTs. Today I want to discuss what a contemporary 21st Century school learning should look like.
As a university lecturer I still have students who come to the classroom believing that the short period of time we share together in class is the sum total of their learning opportunities. They often come in and sit down and look at me as if to say "well teach me!!" When they walk out the door it is as if the y are ready to concentrate their attentions somewhere else. This is most common in school leavers in their first year of university. Mature age students rarely view their learning in this way and will ask good questions during, at the beginning and end of class as well as using the discussion forums and phone to gain additional clarification. The more mature students have long been out of school and understand learning from a personal perspective.

So in many cases school is about performing for the teacher within the limited time they share together in the classroom. ICTs or elearning technologies offer the opportunity to take the learning beyond the classroom by engaging students to achieve and perform with real world tasks. This may not necessarily mean time online at home, but could involve before and after school engagement in the school grounds. It could also occur in Internet cafes and public libraries, or it could involve a different model of schooling, one where there was more project time for students to engage in individual or group learning. More importantly the structure of the schools needs to support a seamless transition in the use of elearning technologies--a structure that makes the technologies easily available when it is required. Computer labs are a fantastic way to control access to and the maintenance of computers, but they score poorly when it comes to flexibility with teachers reporting difficulties in gaining access when they need it for their students.
There are a couple of options and these involve making a substantial number of Internet ready and connected computers available for use in every classroom, or ensuring that every student has their own computer. Some schools are trialling interest free loans through school fees to fund a basic level of student computing that they can take to and from school, while others are considering purchasing laptops that remain in the school. Both ideas have advantages and disadvantages with regard to 24/7 access and the possibilities of damage, abuse and theft.

The design of classrooms also has an impact on learning. Traditional classrooms where desks are lined up and the majority of learning activities are individual pose difficulties for seamless and integrated learning using ICTs. More flexible learning spaces where teams of students can work together with instant access to the Web that is not highly filtered are more likely to support the kinds of 21st Century learning to which the contemporary education literature refers. A number of schools in the northern suburbs of Geelong have experimented with larger and more open classrooms where the technology is readily available. In terms of learning engagement they have been a success; with regard to academic performance the evidence is not conclusive at this stage.

Overall, learner-centred environments require greater flexibility and seamless access to a large variety of learning resources and technologies. The learning space has a direct impact on the way students engage.

Managing Student Centred eLearning

2008-08-13T15:37:00.005+10:00

Currently I'm in the process of developing a new Graduate Diploma of Learning Management (elearning specialisation). This program has been designed the key learning criteria and outcomes for Education Queensland's Advanced ICT Pedagogical Licence. The table below gives an idea of what needs to be achieved:

Focus area	Indicators
Professional Knowledge	I understand how ICT can be used to transform what students learn, how they learn, and when and where their learning takes place
Professional Practice	I experiment and innovate with new ICT and teaching and learning methodologies to meet individual learning needs and to develop students' higher order skills and creativity I actively construct meaning with and between students by creating experiences for students to work in groups and independently on projects, requiring selection and use of ICT tools I involve students in developing and solving problems that involve the use of ICT I create challenging tasks that integrate learning areas and involve student ICT use throughout all stages of the learning process and for a range of purposes I promote student negotiation of assessment and facilitate student designing and collating digital assessment portfolios to demonstrate depth and level of achievement of learning outcomes I seek innovative ways to improve access to and management of ICT resources in meeting learner needs I create meaningful ways for students to use a range of communication tools in their learning; and to collaborate with others in ICT projects in local, national and global communities
Professional Values	I set my own short and long term ICT learning goals based on regular reflection of my own professional practice and determined needs. I devise a plan and timeline to achieve these I am a lifelong learner who continually develops and expands my operational skills, conceptual knowledge and appropriate attitudes and behaviour towards the uses of ICT in educational settings I collaborate with staff and students to critically reflect on and evaluate resources used in learning activities to make informed decisions regarding ICT use I operate safely, legally and ethically when using ICT and teach and model this practice for students and colleagues
Professional Relationships	I initiate professional learning conversations and seek learning opportunities to improve my pedagogy when using ICT I take responsibility to contribute to school planning and decision making processes influencing the standard of pedagogy and ICT use in my school

Applicants are required to have previously obtained their ICT Pedagogical Licence and the table below describes how this is measured:

Focus area	Indicators Elaborations (new window) 221k on the indicators are available.
Professional Knowledge	I understand how ICT can be used to support and enhance what students learn, how they learn, and when and where their learning takes place
Professional Practice	I plan learning experiences within units of work that use ICT to achieve curriculum goals and are based on student developmental needs, interests, prior knowledge and experiences I provide opportunities for students to use ICT to enhance the learning of concepts and processes, working independently and as part of a group I provide challenging tasks that integrate learning areas and involve student ICT use throughout all stages of the learning process and for a range of purposes I create opportunities for students to use ICT to develop and apply new knowledge, skills and understanding I effectively manage the access to and use of ICT resources in meeting learner needs I provide opportunities for students to purposefully use a range of communication tools in their learning; and to participate with others in ICT projects in local, national or global communities I plan assessment tasks that incorporate the use of ICT to meet learning goals
Professional Values	I set my own ICT learning goals based on regular reflection of my own professional practice and determined needs I am committed to developing my skills, knowledge and abilities required to exploit the potential of ICT in education I critically review and select from ICT resources and teaching and learning approaches and adapt where necessary I operate safely, legally and ethically when using ICT and teach and model this practice for students
Professional Relationships	I seek opportunities to contribute to professional teams to share what I know and do regarding ICT and pedagogy

Essentially the Advanced licence requires additional evidence of student use of ICTs and an advanced championing role within the teachers learning environment.

The advanced and standard level frameworks are excellent and apply to any learning organisation, school, university or industry. The portfolio that these students develop as a result of their graduate studies will make them among the best in the State.

The challenge is of course that the schools will need to upgrade their technology infrastructure to meet the needs of this emerging group of learning professionals. More bandwidth into schools, more computers in the classrooms and ancillary learning spaces and a way of acknowledging and rewarding teachers who make their learning activities engaging, effective and real.

Finally, a chance to reflect on 21st century learners.

More soon.

Three Years On!!

2008-08-07T12:13:00.005+10:00

Yes it has been three years (there abouts) since my last posting to this Blog and a great deal has happened in the elearning world.
Web 2.0 is now common parlance; Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) are now being promoted by some as an alternative to traditional education; YouTube has exploded and spawned a plethora of look alike sites offering similar services; podcasting is now incredibly popular and used by virtually every radio and television provider; image repository like Flickr and image manipulation products like Picink have revolutionised the way we store and share images; video had morphed into a variety of formats and even easier to edit, store and distribute; SecondLife has captured a massive audience of players and pretenders; free WIKIs and social networking software; MySpace and FaceBook engaging a whole generation of children and young adults; Google earth now offers animated and current views of the planet; we now have alternatives to video like SlideShare that provide small bandwidth footprint media with audio and images and Mashups and re-packaging are common with the application of some media re-purposed for another audience.

The pace of Web 2.0 innovation and development is staggering and shows no sign of slowing--if anything, the rate of change is faster than ever.

So what about the uptake of these technologies by schools and Universities in Australia? Australian Universities are by enlarge conservative institutions that are slow to adopt new ways of learning.

Despite the strong body of evidence of what constitutes effective learning, many universities persist with lectures and reading as their dominant approach. In choosing the two least effective methodologies (lectures 5%; reading 10%).
There are of course some notable exceptions to the norm with some universities experimenting with SecondLife Islands, RSS feeds, media rich and authentic learning environments. However, change is slow and patchy and the uptake and exploitation of these new and exciting learning technologies is poor at best.

Australian University Learning
Ironically, even though Australian Universities are relatively (or completely) free of Web censorship there is little interest in leveraging the strengths of the technology to engage learners and enrich their educational experience. Much of the reason rests with how academic staff are rewarded and employed. The easiest performance indicator to measure is that of research quanta. The number of conference papers, journal articles and book chapters is easy to quantify and reward. Teaching and learning effectiveness is much more difficult with uncontrollable variables such as personal circumstances, entry scores, competing assessment from other courses, family crises and student over commitment.
Exactly what effective teaching and learning is is also a challenging term to define and measure and so universities most often defer to the quanta of research publications as a guide for promotion and progression.
Often what attracts academics to academe is not the teaching, but the ability to engage in research and this is encouraged by the need to achieve a research higher degree such as a PhD.

Traditionally, universities have been a place where students come to study face to face. While distance education was available from some institutions, it was considered a poor substitute for the "real" university learning experience. As a student who has done the vast majority of my tertiary study by distance I can but agree with this analysis. Studying using poorly designed print-based study guides, sometimes illegible photocopied readings, and without the ability to make effective contact with a lecturer is a lonely and unpleasant experience.
The ability to study online with well designed courseware and flexible and authentic assessment, combined with the ability to make regular contact with your tutor/lecturer is a quantum leap from the old distance education materials of the past.
The challenge is for universities to encourage, support and reward academics engaged in the design and delivery of high quality interactive learning environments. Once Australian Universities understand this imperative the education world is there for the taking.

Australian Schools & ICTs (elearning)
The basic design of schooling has changed little in the past 40 years, but society and the students have changed a great deal. What use to work 40 years ago no longer meets students' needs. In Australia, the numbers of students lagging their year level in literacy and numeracy have ballooned over the last ten years and the trend is upwards

The results in the 2005 National Report on Schooling reports the performance of Australian students in Years 3, 5, and 7 against nationally agreed benchmarks in reading, writing and numeracy. The results of testing across Australia in 2005 show that around 20% of children in Year 7 do not meet the benchmarks for numeracy, and around 10% do not meet the reading and writing benchmarks. Indigenous children were worse, with more than a 33% of Indigenous children in Year 7 failing to meet reading benchmarks, and more
than 50% failing to meet numeracy benchmarks.
In 2002, the first year where Year 7 testing was initiated 10% of students did not achieve the benchmark level in reading and writing. In numeracy, more than 12% of students failed to reach the benchmark level. Again, the proportion of Indigenous year 7 students achieving at or above the benchmark level is significantly below the proportions for non-Indigenous students.
These data suggest that despite the continued emphasis on literacy and numeracy in Australian Schools, and the extraordinary practice in schools of suspending normal classes to practice the tests for two weeks or so, year 7 literacy and numeracy performance is either showing no improvement or going backwards, particularly in numeracy with a 100% increase in students failing to reach the benchmarks.
In low socio-economic areas the results are dramatically worse than the national data and this trend offers little hope for the generational poverty suffered in these areas.

If we look at the reasons for these results a strong component relates to a lack of engagement in all years of schooling, but particularly in the early years where the basics of language and numeracy are taught. School no longer meets the needs of students who are use to a digital world and who expect teachers to earn their respect. Often teachers will draw on the research that suggests a close correlation between low-socioeconomic background and academic performance. This they might suggest is grounds for poor performance and something that they will having difficulty addressing in their classrooms. However, there is also strong data that suggests that the teacher makes the most significant difference in a child's educational performance. Much more than the school itself.

So how do we engage modern students, these digital natives, and earn their respect? The answer to these questions is complex and interactional. Let's start with looking at what Keirsley and Shneiderman say about learning engagement and what engages a digital native. Learning engagement theory asserts that students need to work together in small teams to RELATE to complex real-world problem tasks, CREATE workable solutions/products and then DONATE these back into the real world. Keirsley and Shneiderman suggest that this authentic learning and the product are the key to engaging learners in what the students believe are worthwhile tasks--not one developed for the edification of teachers. So how does this relate to earning respect? Perhaps the fact that the students' perceive their learning to be meaningful and applicable in the real world that they develop a respect and admiration for their teacher. Could this also be influenced by a student-centred learning environment where student views and values are respected? Could it also be connected to the students' sense of achievement and understanding, no longer believing that they are "dumb" just because the schooling system does not suit them? Interesting questions to ponder?

So let's get back to elearning or ICTs in the learning environment, and actually how you describe just what a student's learning environment actually is. We know that the vast majority of today's students are digitally literate and that their world is one where digital technologies are integral to them. Imagine how they feel when they are denied the technologies they can already use to apply to a learning situation? Let's also consider what a student's learning environment is? From a traditional teaching perspective we may suggest that the classroom is the learning environment and that the majority of learning takes place there. What then of the other times of the day? Is this a learning free part of life? I don't think so!
Okay, so what might effectively the classroom to the rest of the students' lives in ways that are accessible and real?

If indeed technology is a critical part of the key towards meaningful and authentic learning that happens inside and outside of a formal learning environment, imagine the students' consternation when they find that access to their most popular tools are blocked by the school/education institution? Unfortunately, this is the case in most Australian schools because there is an underlying belief that students will attempt to access inappropriate material and/or be exposed to cyber danger. Now these fears are not unfounded and indeed even with all of the many security measures some students do obtain access to inappropriate and sometimes explicit material by exploiting weaknesses in the school's information technology (IT) security. Likewise, there are significant dangers posed to children by adults and other children who may wish to do them harm.
The possibility of having the press reporting any of these instances is enough to frighten even the bravest of school principals. So what is the answer? Do these same students have in filtered access to the same material outside of the school environment and IT infrastructure? Is there a need to educate students on the dangers and exploitation offered buy some of the content and communication tools available online. Who should bear this responsibility and who is best placed to organise this learning? If children are properly and effectively informed will they make better online decisions? Do the downside risks of better access to online tools override the learning opportunities offered by this technology? How might schools manage the risks posed by the provision of more Web 2.0 technologies?

Interesting questions indeed and perhaps the topic for some interesting problem solving.

More soon.

Intrinsic Motivation Learning Design

2005-05-24T13:16:00.000+10:00

When one explores the notion of learning we invariably look for what motivates our learners to achieve. Traditionally, higher education learning institutions have operated as gatekeepers of knowledge and qualifications without which students were unlikely to receive the rewards they sought (specialist employment, access to higher degrees and eligibility to professional organisations). Compulsory schooling has also adopted a similar approach with most of its students captive to the system until age 16, or older if they do not have employment. In the final years of school the need to either find acceptable employment, or gain university entrance is a strong external motivator.

However, the knowledge economy has begun to alter this monopoly with the rapidly growing, readily available authoritative knowledge “online”. Information that was once only available in textbooks, conferences and journals is now making its way onto the World Wide Web. Students are now commonly regarded as consumers and come to learning institutions with expectations of a quality learning experience. If they (or in the case of schools, their parents) experience anything less than what they want, there are other institutions that are willing and able to accept them.

Up until recently, the concept of external motivators has worked well enough for schools and universities who use the lure of certification to ensure that most of their students apply themselves and attain the institutions’ requirements for a qualification. But what about the intrinsic motivational factors that can be found in some students? Is it possible that these could be more powerful drivers for student performance?

We know from much of the educational research that meaningful real-world learning provides high levels of intrinsic motivation (McCombs & Marzano, 1990; McCombs & Whisler, 1989; Deci and Ryan, 1991; Mills, 1991; Mills, Pransky & Sedgeman, 1994; Paris, Newman, & Jacobs 1985). We also know that intrinsic motivation enhances inquiry and can lead to high levels of learning engagement (Salmon, 2002). So how do we develop the kinds of intrinsic motivation that will result in high levels of performance, given the decreasing effect the more traditional incentives are having on our learners?

In 1969 McMaster University in Canada introduced Problem-Based Learning (PBL) into its medical school in an effort to provide a multi-discipline approach to medical education and to promote problem solving in its graduates (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). The PBL approach sought to embed small groups of students in the role of a professional and present them with a messy, ill-structured, real-world problem, based within the context of the profession, to solve. Students are then guided by cognitive coaches through the problem solving process and develop high levels of generic skills and attributes, along with the content specific knowledge and skills they require. PBL practitioners often claim that their learners are more motivated and independent in their learning. Most often the problem scenarios in PBL classes, while based on real cases, are contrived and somewhat hypothetical.

It would appear from some of the literature that intrinsic motivation and learning engagement are linked. Kearsley, and Shneiderman (1998) propose that by asking students to interact with a complex real-world problem, create a solution and then donate that solution back into the real world, learners in Information Communication Technology learning environments become more engaged. This proposition is similar to the PBL model except that the problem solution is actually donated to the real world for feedback and review. Could this approach provide high levels of learning engagement in learning environments other than ICTs?

In most cases assessment is used to measure students’ learning (summative) and/or to provide useful feedback to the student on their progress throughout the course of study (formative). Assessment design is most often developed as an external measure and can be seen as an add-on to the course materials supplied. We know that with many courses assessment is a powerful extrinsic motivator—most students want to perform well and not fail. Kearsley, and Shneiderman (1998) demonstrated that donating solutions to the real world increases students’ intrinsic motivation, so what would happen if that became part of the assessment? The assessment would be both authentic and integrated with the learning tasks.

Currently, there has been little in the way or research published that seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of combining PBL, engagement theory and integrated and authentic assessment. Given that individually they all appear to contribute to the level of intrinsic student motivation, what would be the result of measuring the effect of having all of these approaches combined into a single learning design?

References
Barrows, H. & Tamblyn, R., 1980. Problem-based learning: an approach to medical education. Medical Education. Volume 1. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M.(1991). A motivational approach to self: Integration in personality. In R. Dienstbier (Ed.). Nebraska symposium on motivation: Vol. 38. Perspectives on motivation (pp. 237-288). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (1998). Engagement theory: a framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Educational Technology, 38(5), 20-23.

McCombs, B. L., & Marzano, R. J. (1990). Putting the self in self-regulated learning: The self as agent in integrating skill and will. Educational Psychologist, 25(6), 51-69.

McCombs, B. L., & Whisler, J. S. (1989). The role of affective variables in autonomous learning. Educational Psychologist, 24(3), 277-306.

Mills, R. C. (1991). A new understanding of self: The role of affect, state of mind, self-understanding, and intrinsic motivation. Journal of Experimental Education, 60(1), 67-81.

Mills, R. C., Pransky, G., & Sedgeman, J. A. (1994). POM: The basis of health realization: The founder monograph. LaConner, WA: Psychology of Mind Training Institute, Inc.

Paris, S. G., Newman, R. S., & Jacobs, J. E. (1985). Social contexts and the function of children's remembering. In M. Pressley & C. J. Brainerd (Eds.). Cognitive learning and memory in children (pp. 81-115). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Salmon, G. (2002). Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance!. Net*working 2002. [http://www.atimod.com/research/presentations2002.shtml, accessed 23 May 2005]

Deviance or Innovation: the language of devox

2004-11-17T15:50:00.000+10:00

Have you ever stopped to wonder just where innovators get their ideas? Often those of us operating within the norms and conventions of a discipline, fail to see the possibilities that others who are outside can clearly visualise.
Back when I was a teenager, I met a guy who was a world-class sailor, sailmaker and sailing dinghy designer. He had no formal training past year 10, but believed that he could design a 12-metre yacht (America's Cup) that was significantly faster than those built at that time. Bob was no marine architect and couldn't see why his ideas wouldn't work. The yacht designers of the day were unconvinced because they knew their disciplines of hydrodynamics and the aerodynamics intimately and realised the futility of Bob's aspirations.
Despite the respected wisdom of the time, Bob found an entrepreneur who was prepared to take a chance with his ideas and provided him with the opportunity to build and tank-test the scale models he had constructed.
One of his designs went on to break the longest winning streak in history in 1983 when Australia II beat the US's yacht Liberty skippered by possibly the best skipper 12 metre racing has ever seen, Dennis Connor. Most people know Bob by the name he chose to call himself after he sold his share of a sailmaking business, Ben Lexcen.
Ben was an unusual man and could never be accused of being mainstream--he was off to the side and a brilliant innovator who saw the possibility for improvement in everything he observed.

Recently a colleague of mine sent me an article written Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker that promoted a view suggesting a close link between deviants and innovation. They suggest that those who take a few steps off to the side of social convention operate on the fringe and this is where all innovation comes from (see fig 1).

figure 1 Deviant Innovation Model
(adapted from Mathews, R. & Wacker, W., 2004)

They also assert that the time taken for ideas to travel from the fringe to social convention is shrinking, with businesses needing to become better at supporting their deviants and more attuned at harvesting their ideas ready for integration into the next big thing.

This article has implications in terms of e-learning. New technologies are emerging every day and approaches to learning that were not previously possible, are now a reality. A learning organisation's ability to harvest and adopt ideas from the fringe may well be the key to its success, or even its survival.
I clearly remember a colleague of mine back in 1995-96 talking about the need to design learning environments that were flexible, organic and able to utilise free open source programming applications.
Back then we all knew that this approach would never work and that if these kinds of applications were free then they would be inferior to those developed by large corporations with high R&D budgets--this was a truth within the social convention.
Now we are finding out to our expense and horror that enterprise approaches to programming applications are fraught with risks and dangers. To give a couple of examples, if an enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS) has just one part of its infrastructure or programming fail, the whole learning environment can cease to work.
Another problem we face is the inflexibility of mainstream enterprise LMSs. Most of these have been designed using a publication metaphor and are little more than page turners with a few tools thrown in. Their design makes them very difficult to customise for the new pedagogical approaches coming in from the fringe.
On the other hand, learning environments that use an amalgam of open-source software can be constantly updated and designed with few problems and expense. They also continue to work when one part experiences a problem.
These ideas have now moved away from the fringe and are now finding a wider audience with researchers like Stephen Downes who is a strong advocate for the open source approach.

After reading the deviant framework article I can now see similarities between the fringe dwellers and my colleague and Bob. In educational institutions that consider themselves to be learning organisations, the recommendations contained within the article are very relevant and should be given a high level of attention if the institution wishes to stay current and successful. Market advantage is just as relevant in a global educational market as it is in business.

Best,

Scot.

Do we need Credentials?

2004-10-27T07:54:00.001+10:00

So far in this Blog we have discussed the need to create authentic learning environments to engage our learners and deepen their level of learning. We have looked a number of ways to synthesise this authenticity and to design learning space that will interest the learner.

But why do learners seek to join this learning environment? In my experience few do so for an outright love of learning. Most do so to gain a credentialed award that they can use to further their career, and often with the expectation of enduring some unpleasant learning experiences along the way.

In Australian Universities the average age of our students is rising with many of our local students seeing credentials as their way to improve their job prospects. In my university approximately 75% of our students are mature-aged learners, many of whom have full or part-time work commitments.
The vast majority of these mature-aged learners have had substantial experience in the workforce and bring extensive life experiences to their learning environment.
With these life experiences come expectations that the learning experiences will be fit for purpose and appropriate to the professional duties required within the workforce.

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests the workforce rates the possession of generic skills and attributes as highly as professional content knowledge. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) “insight” journal discusses the need for this kind of skill and attribute development in it’s Issue 10.

But, have you ever met a person who seems to have an extraordinary level of knowledge and experience, but no formal qualifications? I know quite a few. How did they achieve this with out the guidance and gate-keeping offered by an educational institution? What do you think might happen if industry began to value knowledge and experience as highly as qualifications?
So where is credentialism going? Is it an artefact of the times where institutions were custodians of knowledge and the only ones capable of judging learning and professional competence?

Today, anyone with a computer and access to the Internet has more information available to them that any single university can offer. While many of these institutions claim that it is the learning design inherent in their courses and programs that makes them an essential part of the learning, very few of these claims stand up to any level of scrutiny. Universities survive because professional bodies insist on employing graduates and universities have for some time held a monopoly in the area of conferring degrees. These days, however, Australia government universities are facing competition from private universities and private organisations who have sought and gained accreditation to confer undergraduate degrees in specific discipline areas. Qantm is one such organisation who pitch to a multimedia niche for full-fee paying students. The monopoly universities once had is already being eroded, the question is; how far will this erosion go and will it lead to a more performance/portfolio-based approach to employment?

To remain competitive universities will most likely need to concentrate on offering very high quality learning experiences and a great deal less on the gate-keeping of professional employment.

More soon,

Scot.

Who owns the Learning Space?

2004-10-18T09:31:00.000+10:00

One of the reasons we provide communication tools in learning environments is to encourage our students to play around with ideas and re-conceptualise the knowledge artefacts they encounter.

In a learner-centred environment we expect students to accept a great deal more ownership of their learning activities and to feel safe within the learning group. Indeed, in more contemporary e-learning environments like simulations, or WebQuests, we ask the students to assume a role and to argue a case from that role’s perspective.

As we move away from the idea of a teacher-centred model we shift the power and control towards the learner. Learners, encouraged by this power shift, begin to test their ideas and assert their view of the world in what they then perceive to be a safe environment—one where they can take risks without being exposed to all of the consequences. Online role-play simulation is one of the best examples of this kind of e-learning environment.

But what if that trust is compromised by those outside the learning space? How sacred are the students’ ideas and thoughts, and what of the learning facilitator?

Unfortunately, there is a growing trend across the world to view the virtual world as one that, because of ease of access, requires a lower level of ethical capital. Where most of us would feel violated if our personal mail was routinely opened and read by postal officers or colleagues at work, a different set of ethical values seem to apply to email. It is common practice now for supervisors and IT managers to have access to your email account—perhaps because it is easier and less detectable than physically opening one of your letters!

But what about the private learning spaces within online courses? You know, that sacred area where you students have come to trust you and their peers. Should that communication be open to the scrutiny by others? Would you as a teacher, be happy with full-time scrutiny of your face-to-face classes? Would you allow video cameras and microphones in your classroom to document yours and your student’s actions? I think not.

So what of others monitoring and perhaps assessing your course online interactions? What if this is covert? How would you be able to build the level of trust required for effective interaction if students and teachers suspected that their interactions would be logged and examined by a third party?

As is often the case, new communication technology raises critical ethical questions that take time and a willingness to address.

More soon,

Scot.

What's Wrong with Group Work?

2004-10-14T15:21:00.000+10:00

The contemporary e-learning research continually points to the importance of small group/team collaboration in order to ensure effective constructivist learning environments and higher order learning (see Dale’s Cone & Learning Pyramid), but group work doesn’t always work.
Often group or teamwork fails because either the participants haven’t gained the requisite skills and knowledge like netiquette, brainstorming or an understanding of group dynamics; or they become resentful of a perceived lack of effort from their fellow group members.
The latter is common where there are few mechanisms for peer review and reflection. However, peer review in a distributed, or online learning environment can be complex and time consuming for the teacher/facilitator.

Thankfully, some colleagues of mine from Sydney University of Technology put their heads together and came up with an innovative automated product that allows students to continually self and peer assess themselves throughout the course of a subject. The modifier factor produced is then applied differentially to the marks attributed to group assessment products/deliverables.
They call the product SPARK, Self And Peer-assessment Resource Kit.
Apart from providing a better level of fairness with mark distribution, the approach develops and enhances generic graduate attributes (see generic graduate attribute listed in my paper) such as inter-personal skills, communication and teamwork.
It also permits a more streamlined marking approach where a single group deliverable is marked with SPARK automatically attributing that mark according to the peer review score.

The news is even better now as UTS have just undertaken, in a joint venture with a number of other Australian universities, to move the SPARK to a BlackBoard (and perhaps a WebCT) Building Block. This will mean that universities using these mainstream learning management systems will be able to integrate the use of SPARK seamlessly into their LMS courses.

Congratulations to UTS for this initiative.

Stay tuned more to come soon.

Best,

Scot.

Learning Organisations: how do universities rate?

2004-10-14T15:13:00.000+10:00

Have you ever stopped to think about what a “learning organisation” should look like? While a learning organisation is not necessarily a place that offers a range of educational products, it is generally what comes to mind.

The post war reconstruction of Japan saw the US provision of management expertise to re-start the Japanese economy. Part of that assistance involved providing expertise in quality management and systems. Edward Demming was without doubt the best known of these consultants and the results of he and his colleagues and now doubt responsible for the outstanding success of this venture.
Ironically, it has taken many years for the Japanese solution to filter into most Western industries. Discounted as a cultural phenomena by some, the West trailed the success of the Japanese and then later the Koreans.

Nowadays Western businesses are embracing the quality management model with some outstanding successes.
Key to the success is the way in which staff view the organisation. Older and more traditional approaches assume a top down or hierarchical approach. This means that the most important person in the organisation is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) followed by their second level managers and all the way down to the workers with little or no management role.
More contemporary and successful approaches offer an alternative view that defines the most important staff as those who are directly involved with doing the core business of the organisations. Diagrammatically, this can be explained with the use of an Ishikawa diagram. Demming and Scholtes expand on this model by declaring that those not directly involved with the core business should view those who are as customers—a support role if you like. This approach is generally referred to as Total Quality Management (TQM).

So what has this got to do with learning organisations like Universities? Well quite a lot really! Western universities have a complex and hierarchical structure with the Chancellor or Vice Chancellor viewed as the organisation’s most important person. So in this sense they are an artefact of the past and somewhat unwieldy with their decision-making.
It is often very difficult for senior managers to have sufficient knowledge to make informed decisions. By the time the information has passed through the excessive layers of management the story is rarely as was told at the beginning.
Also, Universities are political organisations that allow for deliberate distortions of fact to be promulgated for personal gain with few safeguards in place to prevent this from occurring.

In his article on TQM, Amsden suggests that there is a need for a paradigm shift to be able to embrace this approach to management and this is indeed a difficult thing to achieve in organisations steeped in tradition and relatively low levels of financial accountability.
The hierarchical and political nature of these organisations discourages risk-taking and re-enforces mediocrity because of the culture of blame engendered.
So while universities are delivers of education, they are rarely learning organisations.

The ramifications for e-learning are enormous—low levels of risk-taking result in corresponding levels of innovation. Without innovation in e-learning, universities are likely to fall well behind the emerging commercial education organisations.
Already in Australia private companies like Qantm are delivering targeted undergraduate degree programs using state of the art technologies and pedagogical approaches. The same in happening in the US with companies like Thompson Education Direct offering similar educational products.

So how do our traditional universities make the required paradigm shift? I’m not sure, but it needs to happen soon.

More soon,

Scot.

WebQuests: learning design with purpose

2004-10-12T08:40:00.000+10:00

WebQuests are a Web-based learning activity that develops a number of “soft” skills as well as developing deep understanding and higher order thinking. The WebQuest model was originally developed in 1995 by Bernie Dodge from San Diego State University (SDSU). Tom March, who worked with Bernie at SDSU has also developed a variation on the original model that involves intra group role-play.

WebQuests are problem-based learning activities and are initiated by a messy ill-structured problem after some initial background information examination. They are a brilliant example of high quality e-learning that is very engaging.

You can learn more about WebQuests at the WebQuest Page, the WebQuest Portal, or at Ozline.

To date I’ve been involved with the design and development of two WebQuests that have been based on the approach adopted by Tom March for “Searching for China”.
My first WebQuest, “Antarctic Ice to Water Australia” was developed for years 9 to 12 and has been rated as one of the best WebQuests developed.
The second WebQuest I developed, “A Quest for a safer and healthier workplace” was designed by Yvonne Toft from Central Queensland University and posed a question that looked at the case for a convergence of workplace health and safety legislation to bring the mining industry under the same legislative framework as other Australian industry.

The WebQuest provides an interdisciplinary approach to learning and requires its participants to work together to develop possible solutions that are the best fit for the perspectives of the stakeholders involved.

As yet there are few engines that will assist an html novice to publish a sophisticated WebQuest—Tom March’s "Web and Flow" Website and engine are well worth the look however.

Try your hand at developing a WebQuest today—they’re fun and the students love them.

Best,

Scot.

e-learning Amateurs & Professionals: a community of practice?

2004-10-11T08:06:00.000+10:00

In education we always seem to be looking for the “killer” application or media.
Ron Oliver et. al. from Australia’s Edith Cowan University suggest that “..The speed with which education embraces new technologies is matched only by the speeds with which old technologies are dropped.”
Stephen Downs in his recent presentations in Australia has said that he believes that the concept of a killer application in education from an enterprise solution perspective is “broken technology”.
So are we as educators ‘barking up the wrong tree’?

My experience with enterprise systems tends to support Stephen Downes contention.
In my organisation we have gone through two implementations of enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS) with two of the major players in this market.
Both systems were expensive and problematic to implement and maintain.
They both adopt a metaphor for learning that is not much more than content delivery page-turners.
Yes I know that with clever learning designs you can make the learning environment into something more than this, but the majority academic staff use the enterprise LMS is to deliver content with a couple of tools included for good measure.

Our experience with enterprise systems shows a poor level of reliability and our reputation has suffered because of this. It only takes one of our four Web-servers to fail and the LMS is no longer available to students.
Also, some of the synchronous communication tools download java applications to the users computer. This creates issues if ISP bandwidth, browser setup, platform differences and firewall problems. While the LMS is operating correctly, the users are not able to use the designed functionality of the learning environment.

For some years now educators and librarians have been attempting to define, categorise and re-use what they have been calling learning objects. The rationale behind this movement is to somehow re-package and make available existing learning resources for new learning experiences in an attempt to save money and development time.
There have, however, been some major problems with this initiative; in particular with the time taken to record the metadata required, and to de-contextualise or re-contextualise the learning objects. To some extent the later issue has been addressed by adopting Ron Oliver’s approach to ICT learning design, where the emphasis is on the undertaking of meaningful and authentic learning tasks that are supported by learning resources (re-useable learning objects) and supports.
The advantage of this approach lies in the requirement for learners to adapt the learning object to the new context of their learning task/s. In terms of Blooms Taxonomy, the learning is pitched into the top levels of evaluation and synthesis.
But who owns the learning objects? And do you need to pay for their use?

For many years publishers and universities have had a monopoly on intellectual property. Recent legislation in the US and Australia have sought to strengthen and broaden the strangle hold publishers have on all kinds of content by enacting and expanding copyright legislation.
Universities have since medieval times been custodians of knowledge and conferrers of qualifications. They have sought to certify students to particular levels of proficiency and educate the world intelligentsia.
This occurred in times where knowledge was finite and manageable, but now with the information age well and truly upon us, the quanta knowledge is growing at an unprecedented rate and its distribution is growing in a similar fashion.
We now have the situation where it is impossible to know all that there is to know about a specific discipline and many students will have more knowledge than their educators in some areas.
At the same time some, like Lave and Wenger are suggesting that true knowledge resides in “communities of practice” where learning and knowledge are developed through social discourse of like minded people.
This assertion offers a significant challenge to both publishers and universities as it seeks to undermine status quo in education.

OK, so if we suggest that universities and publishers are losing their monopoly on knowledge, who will create and distribute it?
Could we suggest that amateurs and their colleagues might give freely of their own time to generate and distribute information and ideas?
This suggestion seems unlikely, but it is happening already. Many communities of practice make information available publicly and do not ask for money.
Wikipedia now has in excess of a million articles publicly available and free of charge. The information in this online encyclopedia is written and maintained by anyone who wishes to contribute—amateurs if you like.
But is it reliable? It would appear that it is with a number of studies conducted that suggest reliablility equivalence with other publisher owned encyclopedias.
Another confounding issue with Wikipedia is that no person can claim authorship of the information, but people continue to donate and maintain the information without charge and for the common good.

So what does this mean for e-learning? If publishers and educational institutions are losing their monopoly, what will e-learning look like and how will we be able to determine the effectiveness of the options?
Who will make money from education?
Will there be more of a portfolio requirement when applying for employment?
These are tough questions with few obvious answers.

More soon,

Scot.

Simulating Authentic Learning

2004-10-07T08:19:00.000+10:00

In my last posting I advocated the design of learning tasks that were real and authentic in order to engage learners in their learning environment. Kearsley also indicated this as an important factor in their “Engagement Theory”.
But what if it is too difficult or costly to design the learning tasks this way?
One way around this is to create a simulated learning environment where students can “pretend” that they are actually encountering and undertaking real authentic tasks.
Ron Oliver from Edith Cowan University of Technology and his colleagues have done a great deal of work on creating these kinds of learning environments and have found that not only are they more engaging than a content driven model, but the depth of learning can be significantly increased.
Ron delivered a paper (.pdf) last year at the ASCILITE conference held in Adelaide Australia where he presented an analysis of learning designs using these environments and demonstrated the increased level of learning in these designs.

You can find examples of this approach to learning design in the Australian National Training Authority Toolbox.

Online role-play simulations are another example of how we can simulate the level of reality in the learning environment. This kind of approach to learning design is not widespread, but those who have used it quickly become true believers.
This approach is based on presenting a scenario that requires students to assume a particular role that they are required to play faithfully to the character assumed.
The role-play has contextual information supplied to the learner so that they fully understand the situation and act/react accordingly.
The information, and the communication channels available to the roles is differential as it would be in real life. However, participants have the ability to share information outside of normal channels and can use this to progress their roles agenda.

There are a couple of high profile examples of this approach to learning design: Mekong e-sim and the Fablusi suite of simulations
There a number of excellent examples of Fablusi simulations including one known as “Needle Stick”.

So where’s the catch? Why aren’t we all designing using the above approaches?
Well there is a couple of reasons. Firstly, some learners have difficulty is “suspending belief”. Jan Herrington, Ron Oliver and Thomas Reeves discuss this phenomena in a journal article published in the Australian Journal of Education Technology.

My own observations suggest that some learners have initial difficulties getting past this hurdle. You can think of it as analogous to going to the movies—we know that the film Titanic is not real, but we suspend our disbelief for the performance.
Some people, however, find this very difficult for particular genres of film—my wife cannot “ get into” Science Fiction.

The same can be true of your learners and this can pose difficulties if the learning design doesn’t provide for enculturation time and activities.
Role-play simulation seems to overcome this problem and I’ve not heard of any learners that, once engaged with the learning environment, have not been able to overcome the suspension of disbelief.

The second reason for a reluctance to create these kinds of learning environments is the ability to move from a traditional educational paradigm to a more contemporary approach. When you need to think differently and plan an alternate approach to what you are use to, it takes time and effort.
It is my belief that once you have designed an authentic learning experience, the next time is easier and quicker and ultimately, once familiar with the new approach, there is no discernable difference between the traditional and the new.

Best,

Scot.

But what about Learning Engagement??

2004-10-06T07:38:00.000+10:00

Yes it’s time to get back to what this Blog is about, learning engagement and just how we achieve it.

The vast majority of the literature on learning engagement comes from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education. I guess that this comes from the need to engage students at a distance with their courseware.
It is much easier for a good face-to-face teacher to engage and influence their students with their physical presence and ability to read body language.
When students are remote and have a multitude of other competing time pressures in their lives, we need to find ways that engage them and make them want to give a high priority to their studies.
The techniques for engaging students are, however, equally applicable to the classroom with often stunning results. Think about the way in which your students’ eyes light up when they are working together on real and meaningful learning tasks, or when they become involved in a role-play. But this is jumping the gun a bit here—let’s go back to just how we can engage our students.

In 1999 Greg Kearsley and Ben Shneiderman developed a framework for engaging students in technology-based teaching and learning—they called it engagement theory.
They suggested that to be truly engaging learning tasks should be project based, occur in collaborative teams and have an outside authentic focus. They also suggested that the learning should be structured the following way: Relate—Create—Donate.
Initially, students in small groups relate to the problem/project, create a solution and donate this to the outside world.
They believe that students become engaged when they see meaning and purpose in what they are doing.
Authenticity provides that meaning and purpose.
While elements of this approach have been used before it offers a unique approach to learning that has tremendous possibilities. It is kind of like an authentic problem-based learning.

Recently, a colleague and I designed an authentic WebQuest based around Occupational Health and Safety for the Australian mining industry.
While the scenario is presented by an actor (as the Minister), the problem/question presented is authentic and the groups actually submitted their reports and presentations to the Minister for his comment.

A previous WebQuest of mine, modelled on the same approach, has achieved the maximum rating in “Best WebQuests University"

Tomorrow I’ll discuss more contrived learning environments where learning engagement can still flourish. I’ll also discuss why some student’s have difficulties in these.

Best,

Scot.

Constructivism, Objectivism or Chaos

2004-10-04T08:53:00.000+10:00

As we move to a more learner-centred paradigm in education we seek to design & develop learning opportunities that are consistent with a constructivist view of learning with the idea that learners will make their own sense of the material presented. While there is strong evidence to show that this approach develops a deeper level of higher order learning, much of the literature paints constructivism and objectivism (behavioralism) as being at opposite ends of a single continuum.
Cronje (2000) suggests that educators consider objectivism and constructivism not as a continuum, but as being axies placed at 90 degrees to each other. Within these axies there are then four quadrants Cronje notes as:

"construction" (high in constructivism, low in objectivism)
"instruction" (high in objectivism, low in constructivism)
"integration" (high in constructivism, high in objectivism)
"chaos" (low in constructivism, low in objectivism)

Cronje claims that "integration" is the realm of the instructional designer where objectives/learning outcomes can be demonstrably met and true constructivist learning takes place.
Ironically, Cronje claims that in learning environments that are low in objectivism and constructivism ("chaos") more learning takes place than in any of the other quadrants.

So what does this mean for educators? Should we forget about designing learning tasks and just provide a bunch of resources that our students can explore for their own edification?
While I don't believe that this is a workable approach, some of what Cronje is suggesting matches with our own experience in learning engagement. Students are more likely to become interested (engaged) in what they are learning if the performance goals (assessment) matches their own personal learning goals.

So how do we achieve this crossover? We know that in a learner-centred environment that students who are able to negotiate aspects of their assessment have higher levels of commitment and buy-in with these tasks. We also observe that assessment, which is integrated into the learning tasks, is seen as more relevant to the learning environment.

It is my view that when you integrate assessment and design learning tasks that are authentic and flexible, the likely hood of students buying in to, and becoming engaged in, their learning is high.

For those who are interested in a challenge Ron Lubensky from Click Craft is hosting an e-learning challenge Blog that provides an opportunity to share ideas on e-learning design--you can even submit your own design challenge and have the e-learning community of practice provide some ideas and feedback. This Blog is a seriously good idea and one that I can recommend as an excellent way of developing a strong e-learning community.

More tomorrow,

Scot.

Cultural change in e-learning

2004-10-01T07:32:00.000+10:00

It is normal for us to find change challenging. Most of us are prepared to accept incremental, or first order change as a normal part of our lives--we don't always like it, but we accept it.
However, every now and then we are asked to make major or second order change and many of us actively object to this. This objection can constitute anything from ignoring the issues, all the way through to active sabotage and undermining.

Successful e-learning presents us with second order change and although many learning institutions espouse the paradigm shift required, they often fail to convince their teachers to come along for the ride.
Last year I presented a paper at AUSWEB03 that looked at these issues in my organisation. My paper presented a blueprint for facilitating change through effective change management.

We are now a year down the track and many of our academic staff still see teaching and learning as an administrative task. As with all busy staff, they prioritise their commitments and unfortunately still see staff development in teaching and learning as a low priority when compared with their other duties.

So how do we change this perception? Well I believe that the change required is linked to rewards--promotion, $$, prestige, release time, acknowledgement. Our current rewards system provides these for research and consultancy, but not for T&L. A staff member told me last week that being innovative in his teaching took substantial time and that there were no rewards--there was nothing in it for him! Some of our teachers are very innovative and their rewards are intrinsic rather than the extrinsic ones mentioned above.

Producing the required cultural change is surprisingly simple. Introduce additional rewards for T&L; publicise and support them. While this is the first step there is another one that is equally important--change from a culture of blame to one of support for risk-taking.
Without the confidence to take risks, few of your teachers will be prepared to innovate and think outside of the traditional box.

Stay tuned--more next Monday

Scot.

Quality Assurance in Learning & Teaching?

2004-09-30T13:13:00.000+10:00

For the last few days I've been looking at the Australian University Quality Agency's (AUQA) audit reports on Australian universities. I've undertaken this research with a view to just how my university will fair in our audit planned for early next year.

While it is clear that AUQA is looking for systematic approaches to learning & teaching the auditors come with a traditional educational background and interpret what they observe through this type lens.
It is clear from the data gathered by these auditors that a demonstrable quality assurance (QA) approach doesn't necessarily result in development of a learning product that meets the learners' needs.
One example of this lies in the perceived need to collect consistent student evaluation data by limiting the choice of questions and imposing a rigid system onto academic staff.
AUQA reports show that many institutions who allow a freedom of choice in how academic staff are able to obtain student feedback, have superior rates of change implementation in their courses that result from the student feedback.
Others that impose more systematic and rigid requirements often fail to have their teachers close the loop by reflecting on the data obtained centrally.

I guess one possible explanation could be that when systems are imposed centrally, the level of academic ownership is reduced and hence engagement with the data is often not done sufficiently well.
We also find this with students and assessment. If we offer students the ability to find an assessment project that meets the stated learning outcomes and assessment criteria, they very often become so engaged in that task that their learning substantially exceeds that required by the assessment standard. Students who have rigid assessment imposed on them often see these activities as just another hoop to jump through to pass the subject.

Some I've heard suggest that the assessment is the defacto curriculum--if this is the case then the better we design and integrate these items with the learning tasks, the better the learning outcomes should be.

Enough for today--tomorrow I'd like to chat about bringing about cultural change in academe.

Best,

Scot.

Welcome to e-learning engagement

2004-09-30T01:35:00.000+10:00

Education practitioners have for some time now been looking for the "killer approach" to conduction successful e-learning and there has been some excellent research carried out of a number of approaches that seem to work well. Unfortunately, these findings are only rarely applied to courses offered online.
So why is this? It would seem to me that there are a number of factors at work here:

Fear of change: when we are use to doing things in a particular way many have an innate fear of failure that limits how far they are prepared to risk different approaches to learning.
Basic misconceptions about learning: many practitioners still believe that learning is about filling an empty vessel--a content delivery model. The truth, of course, is very different with the enormous growth in publicly accessible knowledge over the past 20 years it is no longer possible to be the Sage on the Stage. No one person can know everything in their own discipline and learners need to know how to find and evaluate information and develop skills.
A belief that e-learning will go away like many of the educational technologies before it: back in the 1970's videotape became the new technology that took over from film, but videotape is now declining in its use. The use of print study guides and resources are also in decline with audiotapes almost non-existent now. So you can see that there is a trend to discard older educational technology for the new stuff. What some educators are failing to recognise, however, that we have undergone a fundamental cultural shift with the proliferation of the Internet and that while media will wane and wax, the delivery technology will become evermore sophisticated. Flexible learning is here to stay and those who do it well will prosper— the rest will need to play catch up.

So what is the answer? Well, while there is no single answer, there are some strong indications as to how to design successful e-learning courseware. The contemporary research seems to indicate that e-learning courses need to engender high levels of learning engagement and there are a number of ways that this can be achieved.
The purpose of this Blog is to articulate and discuss these methodologies and where their implementation is appropriate. Think of this Blog as a learning journey that we share together.

I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all and listening to yours.

Kind regards,

Scot.