Teaching Students How to Learn

While its been a long time since I last posted, I wanted to share my latest thoughts. I plan to try very hard to blog at least once every week.

It has been an extremely busy year so far and doesn't look like slowing down. I have been to two conferences this month and they are what I wanted to share my thoughts on.

The first conference was the 2015 ADE Institute in Singapore. This was an amazing meeting of passionate and determined educators who are currently doing fantastic things in schools in the Asia Pacific area. I gathered so many great ideas and resources but, mostly, I learned that, with persistence and technology, anything can be achieved. It was refreshing to see educators from Kindy right through to Higher Ed with the same goal in mind - using technology to improve learning. Particularly impressive, was the way some teachers and/or schools use technology to improve learning for students with additional needs. The consistent theme was the use of Apple tools to create, to collaborate and to make learning accessible to all in order to improve learning and teaching. It was remarkable to see what teachers are doing in schools in countries with far more traditional education systems than Australia.

The second conference was the Leading a Digital School Conference in Melbourne. The conference was based around three distinct themes - BYOT, Flipped Learning and Change Now. The keynote speakers were brilliant - Jill Hobson, Mal Lee with Martin Levins, Jon Bergman, Phil Stubbs, Lee Watanabe Crockett and Will Richardson. My takeaways from this conference were:

• The need to let go of standardisation with BYOT programs. We need to let students bring what they are using at home because the ultimate goal should be learning. If we are putting the pedagogy before technology, it shouldn't matter what technology is being used. 
• The need to continually go back to our ultimate goal (learning) and ask ourselves what the objectives of our BYOT program are.
• The need to move from appropriate use to responsible use - focus on the 95% of students who will do the right thing and focus on what to do - not what NOT to do.
• Teaching Digital Citizenship is vital.
• Flipped learning is not just about videos - you need to be more innovative than that and one size does not fit all. It could be a combination of teacher made videos, discussions, students made videos, etc. Is having students simply watch a video really any different than having them read a chapter of a book - there needs to be a way of interacting. To me solutions like EdPuzzle and Verso or simple blogging seem like obvious answers.
• Schools were created to disseminate information to students. This is no longer necessary as information is at everyone's fingertips. There are people anywhere who know more about what we are trying to teach and students can connect with these people with one tap. Our job is to teach students how to find the right information.
• As we know, technology is advancing at a ridiculous rate - schools have not changed all that much. We need to be more innovative, keep our eyes on the future and be willing to continue to evolve.
• With information at their fingertips, we need to look at what we can do for students apart from disseminate information or more students will become disengaged. Schools should be about relationships and developing passion for learning.
• Students are more engaged if they are interested and can see real life applications.
• We need to show students what is possible and allow them to play, to discover, to experiment, to make mistakes and to problem solve somewhere they are safe and supported.

Nothing new I know but I love revisiting it. I know we are ticking a lot of boxes at KPS and I know we can tick more. I really think Discovery Time in K-2 fits in well to this idea because, while it is so important to establish the foundations of literacy and numeracy in these early years, Discovery Time also allows young students to begin to think for themselves, problem solve and follow their interests. 

Things like Genius Hour in year 3 or 4 and up certainly allow students to follow their interests but should it be Genius Day? Thinking back to ideas I had before I became a specialist IT teacher. I had no desire to teach above year three because of behaviour. Maybe this is because this is when some students begin to show the very first signs of disengagement. If we could help those students follow their own passions and use our expertise as teachers to provide cross curricular links and support them in their journey - could we maintain that engagement level we see in younger students? I am certainly going to look at what I am doing in my own lessons.