Ten Tips for e-Learning and m-Learning


It’s not about the technology - it’s about learning. Lots of schools are buying interactive whiteboards, iPads, netbooks and EeePCs because other schools are, not because they have an identified need or a plan in place. If you don’t know how this tool is going to make an identifiable “value for money” difference for your children’s learning then what are you thinking?

Just because it seems like a huge challenge for you doesn’t mean it will be a huge challenge for your children. I have fallen into this trap where I have looked at what a school or children in a school are doing and thought “that’s so far beyond me, we could never do that.” My limitations don’t need to be their limitations.

It isn’t rocket science. Using ICT, employing e-Learning strategies and allowing children to use mobile devices to assist them with their learning is not frightening and not rocket science. For them it’s normal and natural so let go and let kids.


You don’t have to start brilliantly - you just have to start. It doesn’t matter if you are finding your way a bit with e-Learning, ICTools and m-Learning, having  go and making mistakes is how kids learn and it should be how we learn too at least some of the time.

Give teachers the tools, give them time to play with the tools and give them training. It’s not going to happen for the children if the teachers are not on board and have not had the “fear factor” removed.

Shutting mobile devices out of places of learning is like King Canute trying to command the tide to come in. There can only be one outcome - Epic Fail!

Google does not have all the answers. Someone needs to tell children just because it’s on the net doesn’t mean it’s true. Someone needs to tell adults the same thing about the News.

Google has a truck-load of answers and can provide them in a host of ways that most of us don’t realise. Have you used Timeline, Reading Ages, or Wonder Wheel to improve your searches? These are tools that appear to the side of your search-results window when searching via google.

Two of our basic desires as humans are to create and to communicate. e-Learning Tools and m-Learning tools offer fantastically effective and powerful ways to do just that - and to a real audience.

We need to move past the concept of discreet items of work, learning tasks etc that are recorded in exercise books, annotated at home by a teacher and never again referred to. e-Learning and m-Learning tools allow children to revise, re-use, re-purpose, re-visit learning again and again. We are trying to grow life-long learners, but often their learning is done and then buried. The learning needs to be life-long too.

Strategic Planning for e-Learning and m-Learning


Moemoetia te moemoe, engari whakatinana hia.”
Dream dreams but achieve them as well.


“A vision without a plan is just a dream. 
A plan without a vision is just drudgery. 
But a vision with a plan can change the world.” 


You don’t know what you don’t know until you know what you don’t know - Yogi Berra.



Step One:   To look at what e-Learning and m-Learning can involve in a teaching and learning      
                        context. Learning Safaris for staff and management to see e-Learning and m-Learning in
                        action.

                        If we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got.

Step Two: To look at trends and near-future developments in ICT and e-Learning and m-Learning.
                       
                        Good planning happens when we ask the right questions.

Step Three: What do we want for our children?
What do we want for our Teachers?
What do we want for our community?
How can we find out?
Where are we now?
How will we bring our teachers on board?
How will we bring our community on board?
How will we bring our children on board?

We need to understand and then communicate WHY e-Learning and m-Learning are important for our school and our community of learners to focus on.

We need to consider - pedagogy; engagement; access; 21st Century skills; student context; management; training; support etc

We need to consider future trends; issues; risks; costs.

We need to plan for success and plan to prevent the “frustration” factor putting a roadblock in the place of learning.

We need to provide teachers with the tools, techniques and technologies, and prove to them these tools can make their everyday lives, tasks and focuses easier to manage and complete.

It all starts with the teachers - get teachers to become enthusiastic adopters and the battle is as good as won.

The Importance of Being Empathetic

I have been reading a bit of Maslow and also Colin Wilson's "A Criminal History of Mankind", which references Maslow's work.
One of Wilson's theories postulates that there is no such thing as Evil but rather a (perhaps total) lack of empathy in these so-called Evil individuals.
I have also taken a little time out recently to peruse some of the comments posted for the Trade Me auction for the "MAORI" number plate. There have been some quite appallingly racist comments posted and other responses that show that some readers find those comments to be sad and despicable.
I used to feel incredible anger at what I perceived as 'redneck' racism and ignorance.
To be honest, I possibly leaned too much the other way at times - tending to see everything from the indigenous or non-white point of view.
What should be obvious - but clearly often isn't - is that people are people and skin-colour is not a defining characteristic. There are what most would refer to as 'good and bad' in every race and no one race or people has the market cornered on rightness, goodness, badness or the proclivity for laziness or criminality.
To be successful on society's terms requires that we have options, opportunities, hope and a positive self-image. A lack of most of these is what leads to crime, laziness, violence or substance abuse.

As things stand, we have a considerable section of our society who do not have options, opportunities, hope and a positive self-image. A large proportion of this section of our society have not been successful at school - or to put it another way, school did not work for them. They are what is called our "Education Tail". National - somewhat disingenuously I believe - have introduced National Standards to address this Education Tail. Many would argue this is because it is easier to blame so-called "slack" teachers for society's problems than it is to address the much deeper and more difficult reasons that give rise to an underclass in our society and a poverty line that has 16% of our population living below it.
National Standards are not the panacea for our Education Tail. The 16% below the poverty line is our Education Tail right there. In fact, bearing poverty line levels in mind, we are arguably the most successful education system in the world. Ranked at three or four in most areas of education performance, we are only beaten by countries with a poverty level of 3 or 4%.

To return to the racism issue and the issue of apparent evil, I believe empathy is the key ingredient that is missing. If we take one of our own recent cases, that of Clayton Weatherston, we now learn that he is fighting to have his case reheard in the Supreme Court as he felt the sentence he received for stabbing his girlfriend 216 times was unfair. He argued provocation - she did not respect him - and that this was not given due consideration. Any reasonable person considering this would find such thinking appallingly egotistical and utterly self-centered and remorseless. I think it shows a complete lack of empathy. Clayton sees everything from his - and only his - perspective. During the original trial, his time on the stand was spent providing a totally egotistical review of his superior intelligence, his personal needs and feelings and the apparent slight on his intelligence and feelings by the victim, whose punishment was therefore somehow at least partly justifiable in his eyes.

Clayton is an extreme example of such self-self-centredness and lack of empathy, however the continuum that leads to Clayton is peopled with those who steal, hurt, racially abuse, bully and see things only from their own point of view.

We are all of us designed to look out for number one - failure to do so could well mean we don't survive very long. Most of us also learn that it is right and good (and often rewarding and mutually beneficial) to have a shared commitment to our fellow humans.

As educators, one of the most important things we can teach our children is Empathy. Most of the negative behaviours and responses that general society finds unacceptable are an indication of a lack of empathy. So how?

Empathy arises out of Education and Experience. This is why it concerns me that we are being forced into a very narrow Education focus - teach the basics of reading and writing and maths to the exclusion of almost all else in order to be perceived as a successful school. In doing so we will be producing a batch of graduates with an empathy deficit. The repercussions for society will be huge. We will end up spending even more to protect the haves and their possessions from the have-nots, to incarcerate the angry and resentful who have no hope, no opportunity and no self-belief because they were differently smart.

We know beyond all dispute that there are many differently-smart people for whom school was torture, frustration and irrelevant, who nevertheless found a way to succeed in spite of school. Richard Branson and Barry Crump for example. But what of this list - Rabindranath Tagore, George Bernard Shaw, Sigrid Undset, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Richard Feynman, Andrei Sakharov, Arno Penzias, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - these people all hated school and yet also all won Nobel Prizes for everything from Literature to Physics.

We need a system that provides for the differently-smart child as well as those with a proclivity for traditional subjects delivered in a traditional manner. We need a system that teaches children - and expects children - to be citizens, to grow and to demonstrate empathy. Imagine if instead of National Standards, we had National Expectations for Empathy and all of the other crucial life-tools we need to be providing our children with.

All of society would win and our incarceration tax-dollars could instead be used to support an education system that is potentially a world-beater and a world-changer.

Next post - ways we can encourage and teach empathy.

[]

iPod Band

Over the last few weeks we have taken our fledgling iPod Band on the road to three events - the CPPA Conference at the Addington Events Centre, Windsor School and Richmond School.

In addition, our band has also performed at our own full school assembly which we call Whanau Time. That's a combined audience of over a thousand people already.

Think of the impact that would have had on you as a child. My son is in the band and is only nine years old. He had to introduce himself, and play a solo riff before performing with his seven peers in front of around 250 Principals and Deputy Principals etc. All eight children took it in their stride.

One of the issues we face as "generalist" primary school educators is that we are not specialists in many of the areas which we are required to teach. Nor do we have specialist (or sufficient specialist) equipment with which to teach in those areas.

If I want to teach my class of 28 children the drums, I'll be lucky to be able to afford 28 sets of drumsticks let alone 28 drum kits. Ditto with guitars, bass, electric guitars and keyboards.

And yet, with a class set of iPod Touches I can provide all those class sets of musical instruments and more. Harpsichord, organ, harmonica (yes harmonica - though for hygiene reasons I wouldn't recommend it), marimba, ukelele, tambourine, shakers, rattlers (but not rollers) and so many more, are all available to our children.

In many cases it requires a step back from what is ideal, but in all cases, it offers a step up from what would otherwise be the norm (where most children have little or no access to most of these instruments).

I have been privileged to witness two awesome lessons recently involving iPod Touches and music. Mr George set up a drum kit and an electric guitar in class. He provided 30 iPod Touches with headphones and taught the children how to drum using Digidrummer as his application of choice. Children listened to Dan, then replicated the particular part of the drum kit, the rhythm and pattern, and with one ear piece in, and one out - could compare what they were playing with what they were hearing.

Children then used GuitarStudio to learn chords - major and minor - and used a Capo (virtual clamp) to set the tone. They modeled the strumming and plucking patterns they could hear from the live guitar, while they listened to themselves through their earpiece again.

The major difference here is that they select a chord by its letter rather than by holding a series of strings down. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful introduction to music theory, song construction, and strumming and plucking (as these actions are basically the same on an actual guitar).

Before long children were drumming an accompaniment to a song playing from iTunes on the teacher's iPod and connected to an amp. Soon after that they were playing the four chord song "Price Tag", again as an accompaniment to the song playing live through iTunes.

The engagement levels for these children were through the roof. One of these lessons was a model demonstration lesson for 30 visiting principals - all crowded into the studio (our name for classroom - and quite relevant in this context) along with the drum kit, the guitar kit etc. The children were year 5/6 and had never worked with Mr George before. Two have serious ADHD issues, not that you would ever have guessed, so involved were they.

As a classroom teacher, I found music an all but insurmountable challenge to teach. Sure I could do a few one off lessons on beat, rhythm, appreciation etc, but my children largely missed out. With a set of iPod Touches, even I could have provided my children with meaningful, challenging and rewarding music learning.

Back to the iPod Band. Our band comprises a male and a female lead vocalist, a bass guitarist, a drummer, three electric guitarists and a keyboardist. The applications we use are Bassist; Digidrummer; Guitar Studio and Virtuoso.

I purchased a five slot Belkin Hub from Harvey Norman for $25 - it has five 3.25 ml sockets. I also purchased five expandable 3.25 ml stereo cables for $10 each from Dick Smith. Plug the stereo cable (with a 3.25 to 6 ml adaptor on it) into an amp and you can have five i-Devices (iPods and/or iPads) playing at the same time with no distortion, interference or loss of power. Adjust the drum and bass up on the applicable iPods, and the guitars down a bit on the applicable iPods, as the two former have to carry the beat for the others and therefore need to be a little louder. Our amp has slots for two microphone inputs as well as the 6 ml input so it allows for seven performers to be connected to one amp. Space, transport and cost effective.

My son has been teaching himself on a number of guitar applications and just this week, picked up his mum's guitar and began transferring the new iPod based guitar skills he has been learning to the real thing.

I am tremendously excited by the power, possibilities and potential this iPod Band offers. I believe one of the most valuable by-products will be that a number of children will take their initial fascination with and fun found in playing iPod based instruments, and transfer that to an interest in trying out the real thing. If (and when) this happens, we will have made (yet another) life-changing impact on children's lives through these magnificent mobile devices.

I'll keep you posted.

Schrödinger's Cat

At any given time, we carry around with us thousands of views, opinions, and beliefs, and often regard them as facts. Today I was reminded of the story of Schrödinger's Cat by an Apple Distinguished Educator who wore a T Shirt declaring Schrödinger' Cat is Not Dead.

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

Part of the premise, as I (barely) understand it, is that reality is influenced by us observing it. If we were not observing, what would be happening would be different.

I guess what this says to me, is it is very hard to be very certain about anything. In fact, it's quite likely that the more certain I am, the less likely it is that I am fully informed.

This sounds somewhat esoteric and confused, but the point I am taking from it is that I find it increasingly important to be open-minded.

I used to think I knew so much. I am a passionate person and tend to be strongly opinionated. I still am when it comes to many things such as the importance of equality of opportunity, the importance of valuing the whole child in the learning process, and the aesthetic beauty and operational beauty (simplicity, effectiveness and efficiency of use) of all things Apple, the importance of family, the importance of preserving our beautiful world and so on.

I am becoming increasingly aware that in reality I know so little. Schrödinger''s cat is a very small example of a whole world of understanding that is completely beyond me in terms of physics. And what of politics, religion, science, art, literature, politics? I have so many small and imperfectly formed kernels of information, and yet even with such a small reserve to draw on, I find it all too easy to make sweeping statements, hold untested opinions and claim understanding that simply has no foundation of merit.

I have changed my thinking about parochialism and realised the need to see not just our ANZAC neighbours as whanau but all nations. The selfless acts of the workers at the Fukoshima Nuclear Plant, and the Japanese USAR volunteers who came to Christchurch and showed such reverance for human life, are just two examples of why we should see our world as a whanauhood.

I have changed my mind about thinking, realising that what we refer to as what 'we think' is actually often based on too little thinking and too little information. A truer phrase might well be, "I assume".

I have spent too long assuming too much, and must become more open minded. My action goal needs to be to listen more, and assume less. As a colleague once taught me, "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me."

Discernment

The further we progress into the 21st century the more strongly I feel the need for us to teach discernment. In fact, if I had to settle on one skill as crucial for our children beyond the basics of literacy and numeracy, I think this would be it. It fits within the Key Competency of Thinking, and it is (should be) assuming ever greater importance. Before we had the sage on the stage teacher and the fireside chats from parents to help us know right from wrong, and more importantly, how to tell.

Now we have google in our pocket, we have constant access to, and are all but constantly immersed in, information. We live in a print saturated, image saturated, talk-back saturated, social connectivity saturated, sound saturated, video saturated, environment. The numbers for Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, You-Tube, and iTunes are mind boggling in the extreme.

On the face of it, google in our pocket seems to be such a boon. Access is not the purpose, understanding is. We need to look at how our children (parent community and teachers) are using google. The pattern tends to be that most searchers sample the first link or two, and very few go past the first page or two.

Our children tend to give credence to whatever they find on the internet - "if it's on the internet, it must be true."

Alan November has shared some thought provoking sessions on verifying what we find when we search on the web. whois.com is a useful tool recommended by Alan. He shares the search results from google on 'Doctor Martin Luther King'. On first look, the fourth entry on google's result page appears to be a considered, erudite review of the great man's life. However, the further into that site you go the more controversial and disparaging becomes the material until it eventually leads children to a set of flyers they can print out and distribute in their community. The source - the Ku Klux Klan. You can guess their motives.

Discernment:

When faced with challenges outside our knowledge, we need the right tools and dispositions.

It’s not knowing the answer anymore.

It’s not even being able to find the answer.

It’s knowing how to behave intelligently when I don’t know the answer.

Previously we sought answers - usually simple and factual, to finite questions. Now our students are beginning to realise there is a difference between Information and Knowledge.

One touches the surface - lands and sinks.

One involves understanding - lands and generates ripples.

Previously for information we had a handful of go-to-sources...

Britannica

Encarta

Atlas

Dictionary.

Now we still a handful of go-to-sources...

Google

Bing

Yahoo

Dictionary

The problem now is not access to information, nor is it the up-to-date-ness of information.

Instead the issue is

Veracity - Reliability ?

Usefulness ?

Source ?

Slant - Bias - Hidden Agenda ?

And it’s not just Google....

Fox News openly and deliberately and consistently presents a Right Wing, Conservative, Pro Republican, Pro Business, Pro Gun Lobby, Anti Gay, Anti Abortion, anti Minorities, WASP slant to almost all of its news.

Al Jazira, meanwhile is widely regarded as presenting a thoughtful, reasoned, considered and non partisan approach to presenting the News.

This of course could (and should) lead to discussions on...

What is News?

What is Newsworthy?

Who decides?

Is this right, fair, balanced, appropriate, useful, educational, promoting reasoned debate, edifying, elucidating etc.?

This could also lead to discussions on...

What is Infotainment?

Have we got the balance right?

What are the dangers of mass infotainment overwhelming mass debate and reasoned reflection and discussion?

So consider this.

If we don’t teach discernment to our children who will?

If we don’t teach discernment to our children what might the resultant outcomes be?

And finally - we need to ask questions that google doesn't know the answer to.

Morris Dancing Misunderestimated - part two.

George W had that famous line, "I think they misunderestimated me." He was also the one who promised "no childrens will be left behind."

Sarah Palin may well be a fine example of the kind of wonderful education product his policies could produce - Palin would have been a product of dad George's education policies though.

Back to Morris Dancing. I would hate to misunderestimate it's potential - after all, look what England achieved with this as their national dance. This got me thinking, maybe there should be a place for Morris Dancing in our National Curriculum. Maybe we could give some unemployed teachers in Canterbury a job designing the curriculum statement for Morris Dancing, and some National Standards for it while they are at it. Seeing as how most of our children are ensconced in new schools all around the country - ie pretty much anywhere but Christchurch - there are going to be plenty of teachers with time on their hands.

So we need a purpose for Morris Dancing, and here are a few that come immediately to mind..

... An energy efficient way to compact the ground after the recent earthquakes

... A way to bring rain to address the inevitable drought that will hit Canterbury some time in the near future

... A way of ensuring the tri-cultural needs of our influx of Morris dancing English immigrants are met

.. A way of ensuring children who are named Morris but don't like being named after a pretty boring model of car now have a reason to feel good about their name

It needs a good slogan to get it off the ground, perhaps something like, "Morris Dancing - it has the bells and you'll get the whistles."

OK, this particular slogan would probably have a "Yeah, right" to the right of it, but I'm sure some unemployed advertising executive from Christchurch could come up with something cool.

I would love to share more of my Morris Dancing motivations with you but I'm running late for my night class with Ken Ring. He's teaching us how we can determine National Standards achievement levels by reading tea leaves. Just in case you think it only applies to primary principals, Ken assures us this same methodology can be used to assure a 95% pass rate in all non accredited courses at NCEA Level Two too. Try misunderestimating that.

Morris Dancing - Misunderestimated?

One of the most aggressive colonising and prosletising nations in modern times has been the English. For me, the epitome of their ruthless determination to conquer the markets, harvest the natural resources, and market items manufactured from those natural resources back to the 'natives' would have to be their treatment of China.

Think of England and you think of cricket, of rules and royalty, public schools and good, honest chums. You think of Victorian England with its high moral code and its democracy.

But at that time England launched a bloody war (well some 'bloody' cannons anyway) that made a very 'bloody' mess. They bombarded mainland China because the Chinese government refused to buy Opium from the English because of the dreadful impact it was having on their people, their productivity and their society. England promptly bombed them until they changed their minds.

Imagine John Key saying to Maori in Northland, "hey fellahs, you stopped buying 'Government Green'. Don't worry if it's marijuananating your minds, we need you to buy this stuff so we can pay for the earthquake repairs those nice white folks in Christchurch need. If you don't change your minds and buy our good stuff, we'll send the SWAT team in and blow your homes up."

This is in effect what the English did - it's right up there with Gadaffi ordering the bombing of the Lockerbie plane surely.

Anyway. Apparently there has been commentary coming out of England that we are leading our children - particularly our Maori children - astray by having them perform the haka, and thus learning to become savages.

If this is true, then imagine how "savage" the English would have been if they had had the haka instead of the Morris dance to fire them up.

Sport has always played a big part in my life. Too often my state of mind, happiness even, has depended on whether 'my team' won or lost.

I have always been desperately competitive in sport, and while this quality (character flaw?) can have a beneficial carry-over into the real, professional world, it can also cause its share of problems.

I had thought as I got older I would mellow somewhat, but instead find myself too often lacking the discipline and control that should come with wisdom and experience. We all need to have goals, and for me I am hoping this year to replace some of the 'fierce competition' goals with some 'tolerance and role-model' goals.

Speaking of competitiveness, I have always been keen to see any New Zealand team beat Australia in any sporting event, and to see any Canterbury team beat Auckland in the same way. I don't own an eye patch, but do see much better out of one eye than the other.

The recent events of our Christchurch earthquake has caused me a major rethink. I have to say, the response from Australia and from our own New Zealand cities has been humbling and inspiring. The challenges New Zealand and Australia have faced this year, and the way we have worked as one family to help each other, has made me rethink my previous attitudes.

My sister has taken in two children who lost their mother to the earthquake. A senior Australian Police Officer volunteering here in Christchurch bumped into my sister on the street and somehow came to learn of the plight of these two young children. His response has beggared belief. Nothing has been too much trouble for this man. Gifts, event tickets, and free trips offered to the whole family have all been provided. And all out of his own pocket.

The dreadful events of the last twelve months have been an opportunity for our countries and our communities to show the best of us, and to be the people we were always meant to be.

There will always be those who take these times as opportunities to rob, hurt, and vandalise, but fortunately they are the minority.

I see this as an opportunity for us as a community, as a city and as a country, to respond with the resilience and determination and ingenuity that made our nation great. Thank you to everyone who is doing their bit to achieve the rebuilding we need.