2014

I just watched the video below and thought it was a great clip to start my year off with. This 13-year-old was taken out of the traditional school system to be home schooled. He encourages schools to 'hack' education, take short cuts, opportunities and risks so that students are prepared to make a life not a living. He talks about the importance of being happy and how we can incorporate eight practices of happiness at school. His final analogy of education being like a mountain really resonated with me - he says that if a powder covered mountain was a school, everyone would take a single line to ski down it, all covering the same path. Whereas, in fact, there are millions of possibilities and people will want to go different ways depending on their skills, interests, creativity and abilities. On the back of this, I am going to try to allow my students more freedom and opportunity for expression in class, opportunities for creativity and higher order thinking which allows them to be actively engaged in more insightful ways.

Bring on 2014!

Have we got it right with the Australian Curriculum?

I found this quote in a journal article while researching the Australian Curriculum. I found it quite powerful and something I want to keep in my mind as a teacher...


"The surest sign of whether our nation has a soul is whether it cherishes all of its children… . Unless there is serious commitment to upholding very child's birthright to acquire the educational and personal foundations for a full and satisfying life, we fail the first test of any civilized community. That involves doing justice by the most vulnerable among us, our children, and especially socially disadvantaged children."


Found in Vinson, T. 2010. “The social context of literacy acquisition”. In Literacy and social responsibility, Edited by: Christie, F. and Simpson, A. New York: Equinox.

LAMS

Lams

I really like that LAMs take on a lot of the principles of constructivist theory by not being solely teacher directed but providing opportunities for student choice in learning as well as collaboration, this is achieved as it is an open-source platform for designing online learning sequences (LAMS International, 2009). LAMS provide a great tool for teachers to design learning activities which follow pedagogically sound sequences which are easy for students to navigate as they are visually structured and organised. I think Dalziel (2003) puts it well when he says that LAMS have the potential to ‘revolutionise e-learning by capturing the process of education, rather than simply content.’ (p.1). We want learners to interact with each other and with us as teachers rather than just with content alone. This supports what Gilbert and Moore (1998) state in that online learning should provide opportunities for interaction between learners and teachers, learners and content and learners and their peers – LAMS achieve all of these interactions in an accessible, structured learning environment. One way that LAMS is able to provide this is that it offers a platform for both single learner content (e.g. learning objects) and more collaborative tools such as discussion forums and chat.

Planning a learning sequence through LAMS does seem a little bit overwhelming which is why I think the UBD template could be quite a helpful way of working out the organisation of the lesson. Taking into account the ‘big idea’ and keeping this in mind throughout the creation of a LAMS would be very helpful in ensuring that the prescribed learning activities align with the focus of the lesson and the lesson’s aims.  The ability to link to websites also provides students with an effective structure to navigate their lessons where they do not have to waste time looking for links or content but are able to directly access the resources they need. This also promotes web safety as students do not accidentally stumble across inappropriate content in their search.

I think the LAMS tools for chat, Q and A would be really helpful for students in persuasive writing as they can gather ideas from others for their particular point of view and use this to enhance their arguments. I think students in Stage 2 or younger would have some difficulties with the practical side of LAMS as many of them would not have the typing skills to make the technology as beneficial as it would be with older grades. However, I think this is where tools such as voting and multiple choice tests could be helpful for students as they could still work through learning activities and gauge the opinions of their peers. The additional resource of the LAMS community is a great benefit as it provides teachers with opportunities to collaborate and ask questions regarding the LAMS as well as share their resources and ideas.

References:

·         Dalziel, J. (2003). Implementing Learning Design: The Learning Activitiy Management System (LAMS). Retrieved from http://www.lamsinternational.com/documents/ASCILITE2003.Dalziel.Final.pdf

·         Gilbert, L., & Moore, D.R. (1998). Building interactivity into Web courses: Tools for social and instructional interaction. Educational Technology, 38(3), 29-35.

Master of Education

I haven't posted on here for a while as I have been swept up in my new study. This year I am taking a year off full-time teaching to study full-time and I am very excited about it!

Although I feel a bit out of my depth (tutorials with principals!) I am already loving what I am learning and can't wait to see how it affects my teaching practice when I'm back in the classroom. There is so much to reflect on and weigh that it is really nice to have the space and time to think critically about how I teach and how I can improve.

I will be posting some of my reflections along the way as well as any new teaching lessons/ideas I am introduced to.

Australia's Education System

I recently read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald - "Australia's disaster in education" which discusses a recent study undertaken to monitor the success of countries in reading, mathematics and science in Year 4 and Year 8 students.

Australia did not perform well. We did not rank highly in any category and were outperformed by countries who do not have nearly as much disposable capital as we have. This is disappointing but in some ways I cannot say that I am surprised. Australia makes it easy for people to become teachers and makes it easy for people to stay in the field regardless of ability, passion, work ethic, time or professional development (as long as they have a permanent job). I have seen many schools who 'do what they've always done' and are not interested in new technologies or methods of education. I have also seen schools who never do what they've done before, leaving children (and teachers!) confused and overwhelmed by the amount of change and unsettled learning without reflection. I think we need to establish our education system without swinging to either side of this pendulum. We have to be willing to try new, thought out ideas which have been effective elsewhere in order to enable our education system to perform on the world stage. However, I think we also need to be reflective and constructive in the way we assess these ideas, working out whether they have achieved the outcomes we desired and thinking about how we can further improve our practices.

In many ways, walking into a primary school today will not look significantly different to walking into your own primary classroom. What other profession can claim only slight significant change over decades of advancement?

The attitude that Australia has towards education as a profession is showing.

Interactive whiteboards

I was thinking today about the amount of time I spend using my Smartboard (interactive whiteboard) and what a useful tool it is! The projector for my Smartboard needs to stop itself from overheating and will turn itself off if it is getting too hot. I've found that this is a helpful indicator for how much I use the board as the projector will turn itself off multiple times a day!

I use my interactive board for displays to guide and organise students at different times as well as as an interactive tool during lessons. Here is a photo of what the board looks like in reading groups while students are reading. Each book character is a different reading group and the image next to the character is the activity that the group is to complete once they have finished reading (today was based on phonics). This provides a great visual display for students so that you don't have 20 little people coming to you asking what to do!

I also love using the Smartboard as an introduction or consolidation to a new topic. I really like to use hands on activities however I find that the Smartboard is great for gaining an understanding of student's knowledge of the topic. If anyone uses the Maths Plus resources I've found that they have a great set of interactive white board activities which go with the text book and are excellent for getting students up to the board. Here's a photo of a Notebook file I used in introducing capacity.

Wet and Dry Environment Biscuits!

I could rattle off a whole heap of ways that this was educational (which it was!) but it was mostly just fun, and a treat for great behaviour all week!

This week we made wet and dry environment biscuits. Quite simple, I bought a couple of packets of simple round Arnotts biscuits as well as: spearmint leaves, musk sticks, jelly tots, jelly crystals, and some chocolate bullets.

Students decided on the kind of environment they wanted to create and thought about how they would do it using the materials available. They then iced their biscuits and added the lollies they wanted! The only challenge was persuading them that 'less is more' as I had to send a few back with unrecognisable environments!

Here is an example of two forest environments...