Learning Lore

The “age of engage”

Digital skills are essential for success in the classroom, the boardroom and the community

Today’s learner demand teh right resources on the right devices, when and where they are needed (Happy that she mentioned that they demand the right guidance as well)

Today’s learners want to engage in the global world.   It’s not like talking to you neighbour next door.(cultural, time zones etc..)

`Engagement is momentaryy and driven by emotion.  Engagement happens inside the consumer not inside the medium.  Engagement is about establishing a realtionship, not a transaction.  (Excellent!  this speaks to the idea that the teacher is key in the success of students)

Effective instruction is more than good pedagogy and good instrcutional design.  (can we make it more relevant)

Lessons Elearned#1

Learning is a personal act. We cannot “do learning” for anyone else.

#2: different kinds of learning deamnd appropriate stratedies and resources

#3:  technology may not guarantee better leanring….it can focus attention, engage, create connections and collaborations, and allows us to have relationships with information in our own uniwue ways.  (Once again this is the idea that technology is just a tool

#4 the better the experience the greater the likelihood that learning will occur.

Eight simple Rules for engaging learners:

• capture the attention
• convince them to care.  Why should they stay?
• motivate them to change
• give them choices
• connect them with community (remember this for Athletics 12a.  Need to design the course to enhance the sense of community) (personally…I need to expand my personal network)
• Induce them to participate.
• Enable opportunities to contribute (this is the single most important variable in ensuring that employees are happy)
• make it an experience to remember.

Try to incorporate these rules with what we already know about brain reearch and learning.  I need to sit down and consolodate these ideas as I put together the Athletics 12a course.  Key for the athletics course will be the community, and participation is key.  Should I make a facebookgroup for athletics 12a?

Deconstructing IDS and Gaming design the comparison is very similar. Are instructional designers funsuckers??  The notion as play as a strategy (this ties into my idea for Math11essentials and engaging students through story.)

ellen@sageroadsolutions.com

http://www.sageroadsolutions.com

http://twitter.com/edwsonoma

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BAA courses offer a wide range of opportunities for teachers, students, and schools.

They have the iniatives for developing 2 courses for 2008/09

They use TOC’s to free up their design expert.

Website and magazine advertising.  Great idea for our athletics 12a course.

Challenges and solutions

• identification of student profiles, instructional approaches and design suggestions
• file structure and organization (naming conventions..lowercase no spaces)
• creation of the templates (good idea style sheet)
• enrollment keys….can be useful to maintain student control
• application of varied assessment tools
• incorporate teacher feedback before students access material
• groups…can this be a good way to move cohorts
• diagnostic and formative assessments (simple use of students sending in a formative assignment and receiving the answers)
• For choice activities simply put under the same category and select highest grade.
• inclusion of student exemplars.
• video requirements: simply used a point and shoot camera.
• discussion forums assessment:  students can’t see what others post until they put there’s up. Not automatically subscribed, but once they have posted they get subscribed. Assessment rubric
• inclusion of webquests:
• Remember Nanaogong

Summary:

• moodle platoform
• clear consitent documentation with embedded reading and assignments
• video presentations
• creation of interactive community
• regular teacher communication with students using forums and Moodle chat.
• find out what student are bringing to the course.  Phone conversation.
• diagnostic and formative assessment
• opportunity for students to redo assignemnts and improve grade
• variety of summative assessment tools.

orkflow:

• TOC coverage and contracts through the summer
• file organziaion and templates
• work on muktiple units/courses maximizes wait times
• Hiding new lessons until all feedback ash beem incorporated.

• some great tips in this for athletic training 12a.  Consistancy, templates, contact with students, workflow

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Simulations designed for one student to move through.

What is different about simulations than other activities?  bring another level of experience for the students.  Guiding questions…

Simulations can provide a narrative thread.  (so the idea that math 11 essentials moves to a story format may be possible?)

Simulations need to have a logic and rules and follow it.  Students need to be able to suspend disbelief.

Effective simulations should promote critical thinking through multiple perspecticves.

Objective and measurable results.

Students have a choice to act, that changes the result.  This leads to the type II idea of simulations.

Looking at the first simulation and it looks like it is expensive option that they don’t even have it nailed yet.  THey should allow students to control the player so they can pause it or rewind it if they missed something the first time.

If students can link to pages they can create their own simulation.

assessing simulations:

• self assessment
• peer assessment
• set up exectations ahead of time

well…this is not what I was expecting, and so unfortunatley I’m not pulling much out of this one.  I’m going to say that this is an intro into the idea, and I’m looking for something much more complex and expansive.

NASA, NOAA, universities

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critical thinking is seens as competing or distracting from the teaching  of content.  Instructors are not clrear about teachign methods and strategies

Need to find a way to embed critical thinking into the curriculum.

Type II design of Critical thinking.  Need to find out more about this.

• level of engagement, (II) a (accomplishing generative tasks)ctive intellectual involvment
• learners capacity to act(the user is in charge)
• nature of inputexremsive repetoire of acceptable user input
• cognitive activity (generative tasks)
• time required (extensive time required.)

Image generator:  9 critical thinking strategies, developed as lessons.  Students and teachers can upload images as well.  Teaches the TC2 approach as well providing the venu for students to learn.

www.coolschool.ca\rtf..To teach critical visual literacy.

u shaped discussion:the idea that students start at one position and then may chnage based on their research and discussion.  Great idea.

This idea will be great with athletic training 12a as we tackle some of teh myths of lactic acid.

random idea from the crowd.  10 ushaped discussion at the top of each module, so that whenever ou come into the course that you have an opportunity to take part despite not having any exposure to other content.

thought: move from assignment driven courses to discussion based courses.

philipbalcaen@ubc.ca  contact them to pilto the tools in a class.

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DL is the fastest growing segment of education in BC.(Barry Anderson)
Keynote: Michael B. Horn

Disrupting class:Best hUman Capital book of 2008

THeories of disruptive innovation:

• Diruptive technologies come along and fill a niche that was going unfilled.  it may not be as good as the existing technology at first, but it will improve and most often trips up the incumbents (traditional) technolgies.
• Very similar to Dl in BC.  DL is teh disruptive model to traditional education, and could very well change how education occurs in the province.  Same pattern exits throughout a range of sectors.
• Good summary of the autoindustry.  Side note:  will alterntaive cars prove disruptive (electric)
• Transistor trying to swap into exisitng vacuum tubes.  very high technology leap.  would this apply to DL?  Instead of trying to replicate or swap DL into the existing education regime, if it hsould create something new. Think portable, think cell phones apps, would you have learning apps/  Already Mind games with Nintendo)
• Need to set up a new organizational model to get a new disruptive technology into market.
• Are we at the interdependent stage?  It maximizes performance, but requires standardization.  Sounds like BCEISIS.

HOw does this apply to education?

Insights from examing education through research

We all learn differently

• multiple intelligences “Giftedness is fluid”
• Motivation/Interests
• Aptitudes
• learning styles
• Different paces
• Depends on subject/domain
• ongoing cognitive science research (early days…like watching a baseball game from 2 blocks out)

COnflicting mandates n the way we must teach vs the way students must learn.

• temporal: can’t take this until you take that
• lateral
• physical
• hierarchical:ministry, admin, teachers
• Can we migrate the structure to a modular one?
• Schools have done the same thing as business.  used computers to enhance what they are already doing.
• Computers can be the disruptive innovation.  where would the non-consumers be?small rural and urban schools, Advanced Placement courses)255 of schoools in the us don’t offer any advanced course.  Could dl fill the niche here (athletics 12 is on its way)
• see looming budget cuts not as threat but as an opportunity to push the disruption forward.
• % new market share /%old market share to linearize the s curve

how to move to a student centered model?

• need to maintain autonomous
• self-sustaining funding model
• not beholden to the old metrics. move from seat time to mastery, student teacher ratio, teacher certification
• Human resources pipeline and professional development (talking about being a learning coach, and mastering material.  My gut is twinging around minimizing education.  Missing out on the massive amount of learning that happens in a community.  His auto industry idea is discussing more training, than education.  He’s using the time as vaiable and content as constant (masteryodays )  todays model keeps time as constant.
• 9my thoughts:  the idea of bringing all we know, teacher interaction, paretn intervnetion, brain research, and this mastery business model is pretty damn difficult
• treatment and use of data

Transforming the content model

• predicting that online learning disrupts face to face, while the online becomes disrupted by tutoring tools.
• from tutoring moduels, to custom classes.  Ouch dislike this piece as he is minimizing the role of teachers.

This idea of mastery, that education can simply be pieces of learning objects seems to miss out on a distinct role of teaching.

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popular spot!  Standing room only for this presentation from SIDES.

Assessment as a place to begin indeveloping courses.

Assessment as a process…Evaluation as the final piece (the final grade).  Assessment of guide teh learning(formative assesment.  it’s about the learning.

Diagnostic assessment:  what do they already know?  what are the misconceptions they hold etc..

Scaffolding assignments, blogs, wikis, not fo rmarks but completion assignments.

Setting up the course in such a manner that the student can decide how best to approach the course and their learning.. self-reflective/metcognition.  students are reflecting on how they need to improve.

Requirements to submit:

• What am I doing?
• Why am I doing it
• how will it be marked
• provide rubrics
• student exemplars-(make sure you gain permission)

(Good idea with the requirements to submit.  seems to me that this is just the back end of the beginnning lesson piece, in which you are engaging students, and letting them know what they are working on)

Again…if you spend time on building a quality course, then you can focus on the teaching piece and engaging and interacting with students.

For english 11: Telephone interview…some of  the oral component for the IRP.  My question would be is a conversation with ateacher limiting in the sense of the whole IRp.  Woud have the benefit of providing a more personal approach to the online realm though.

Formative assessment with an interactive corssword piece.  So…where is teh balance between learning objects formative assessment and more personal feedback.  THey say personal teaching style.  Intersting reasech idea: How much do the learning objects help a student understand the material vs simply  a teacher formative assessments.

Summative assessment should not contradict all the other assessments for learning.

Summative: what ourcomes do we want ot see, how will we measure them?

Beyond simply matching exercises:  Make them more complete, that challenge the learners.  Case studies etc…..

What big wave of DL Students???  Apprently there is supposed to be a big wave of LD students coming through….Where from?

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second session:-)  I’m hoping to find out/remind myself  of how to build communities and engage students within a course.

It’s all about persona! making sure that students know whi you are and connecting with you!

Found that embedding video into your course using flashcauses the least probelm for students.

TRying to embed personailty into the course.  You have to pick up the phone.  Wants to talk to somebody (write phone number, email)  Know the student as a person and not as an email address.

• online office hours for elluminate, whole class twice a month
• 24 hours turnaround on assignments (wow!) (lots of self-evaluation, self-marking)
• rush for deadlines(can’t open the next assignment until you are done this one)
• Meet your teachers/ pizza, hot dogs
• create a twitter account
• turnitin.com
• when teachers are not in the classroom…allows teachers the freedom to create the environment.

Feedback to the students. Students need to feel supported.  Also tough love(if they haven’t done it right send it back). Don’t baby the students.

First couple assignments detailed feedback, but after that it becomes more generalized.(otherwise it becomes too onerous)

Content that is new and updated is valuable.  if it is old and stale, then people don’t have the belief that theere is something worthwhile to be online.  If there is something to reward them for signing in at least it is worht it.  Something new all the time.  (Can I get moodle to grab my info from my  blog?)

Try to make them discussion based assignments. At the end of each assignment get the student reflection, and their feedback. (How do you feel about your project?  are the instructions easy to follow?  Do you have any questions? Etc…

Peer review…writing 12 is all a peer workshop….post everything onto the discussion board..final project…create a website about the art and craft of writing.

Give them alternatives for assignments…allows them more creativity.

E-library..online databases..totally free…Ebsco passord…worldbook password…..focussing ono the service side of the library…public libraries are really expanding in this area.

Elluminate: Students also present (these are pretty high end kids:physics)

Does teh course hit the …:

• visual learners
• auditory learner
• students who love text
• hands on learner.  (Take a picture of what you made..a cell made of jello:-)

Movie storm..free program:-)

ww.solrobots.com   crosswords outputted as a flash file.

www.jingproject.com  good for students doing a demo.

Somthing to remember..use captivate and

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So I’m at the VSS preconference and thought I’d try may hand at live blogging as a way tokeep my notes and keep everyone who couldn’t make it with me aware of what I’m listening to

So this is the first session of the preconference, and something I think we need to do a much better job of:-)

Andrew Henry uses a flash calendar to help track kids and contact parents.  He’s a Surrey COnnect teacher.

After a feelling of being unsuccessful he contacted students and parents.  Students felt unsure abotu what to do and where to go. PArents “I don’t know much about computers”

WHat the Literature said:  when parents are involved success rate sincreased by twice as much.

• Parents need specific information on how to help and what to do
• parents may not effectively help a student unless they know how to help them.

Who should intiate the communiction? And what form shoudl it take?

• Teacher should establish contact.
• Many parents prefer informal contact.
• Andrew found that parents would prefer not to come into a formal parent teacher interview.

Students have access to a customized calendar, and submitted one.  those that didn’t submit one were given one by the teacher. ( Forced a 2 month calendar on the student)

The only intervention, or change in the test group were given an email.

If parent responded to the email asking for help:

• study skills
• goal setting
• Come into the building for help.
• If students need daily help you can recommend a tutor

students had 11% more complettion rate and 30% higher success rate.  Multiteacher emails more successful than lone teacher email.

Conclusion:

• Parent involvement can be increased through direct teacher contact.  Contact should be teacher-intitated, non-formal and regular.  It should also provide parents to timely access to accurate information.
• direct parent contact increases student completion and success rates

Recommendations:

• shuodl be parent centered as much as student centered
• schools should institue some sore of program where teachers can intiate parent contact.
• Especially good with multicourse approaches.(Looking at full DL students).
• Remember the learnnowbc study guide.

Some of my thoughts…

• should this be more personal

• how would this work with singleton courses?  Chased out teh grade 9’s
• how would we effectively implement this?

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