Day 1: Workshop 2: Teaching Students to Think with Scratch 2.0

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This workshop was something I really wanted to catch due to our students having the XO Laptops with Scratch installed.  I also wanted to meet Chris Betcher whom I had met once before in Quest Atlantis during a PL session run by Bron Stuckey! Chris Betcher ran this workshop and entertained us all with his anecdotes about his students and the things that can be achieved in the new version of Scratch 2.0. The workshop itself is here including all of the activities and there are some which have open-ended ideas which kids can explore. Chris mentioned to us that we should really register on the Scratch site as there is a community of sharing and mentoring which has already emerged and in which people are more than happy to help each other if there is a question needing to be answered. Again – the emergence of just in time and situated learning in evidence!

I really enjoyed getting hands on in Scratch and even more surprised to find that there are the same tools available in Scratch as there were in Logo – I just hadn’t explored it enough to know what all of the tool sets were and how to access them – there’s even a wallpaper which gives the XY coordinate map to make it easier to set the pen coordinates if you wish to draw geometrical shapes etc. There are also sprites which you can code and use to create games and movies. Interestingly also – when you are registered on the Scratch site you can borrow and modify the code of other people in your own project space! What a great example of just in time and situated learning!

Chris also mentioned that Scratch can be used to program a Picoboard. He demonstrates this here. He also told us that there is a way to use Scratch 2.0 offline. I found the instructions here.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed being able to sit down and complete the activities in this workshop. It, and the webinar I listened to this morning as part of Connected Educator Month,  has given me the desire to try and introduce The Hour of Code at my school this year, to develop a Day of Code on a Saturday early in 2015 and perhaps also to register to become a CoderDojo site in 2015. Coding is being discussed more and more as a way of furthering the development of a community of learners. I can see why! This workshop also tied in well with my workshop on the Digital Technologies Curriculum in Day 2.

Connected Educator Month 2014

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I read a post by Bron Stuckey on Facebook advertising Connected Educator month 2014. I feel like I have been thrown another challenge because I am not sure how “Connected” an educator I really have become. Not being a Twitter fanatic I am going to look at the ways in which “a connected educator” works. I just downloaded the Starter Kit for Connected Educator month – I will follow the guide! One page for each day! And I will participate and look for badges. Looking through the Connected Educator’s Guide for Day 1 I have realized that I have a few more purchases to make but was reassured that I am already on the right track with some of the titles I have recently acquired which are recommendations from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach – Mindset has been one of the main drivers of my recent wish for change for students. I will definitely be looking back at these. The really great thing about this Connected Educator month is that it all starts at the same time as the ACEC 2014 Conference!

Alec Couros kicked off the conference on October 1 with a keynote entitled “Beyond Selfies, Likes and Pokes.” Alec made several really important points in his well-structured narrative which centred around three key concepts: Identity, Intimacy and Imagination. Identity online is an issue for students, in fact it is an issue for all of us. As educators we become part of global networks – Alec mentioned the way in which the open source movement has expanded through community connections which all related to the concept of making something useful to everyone. The issue for educators is the blurring of the lines between personal and public networks. The maintenance of identity across all networks becomes a significant factor once an educator has an online presence. Generally those networks we develop, our PLN’s (Personal Learning Networks) are built through connections with individuals and groups who have specialised interests. We tend to gravitate towards those who have similar ideas about how things can and should work and extend our personal narratives through conversations with our PLN members so that we eventually become cognizant of what it is we are trying to verbalise and how it can be brought into being in Real Life terms. Basically, Alec tells us that kids don’t need to wait to learn anymore – in fact nobody needs to wait to learn any more if they know who to ask or how to search and how to look for answers! An interesting needs hierarchy diagram he showed us had the whole hierarchy with WIFI underpinning it! His main point here was that the presence of tools changes the environment in which we learn. Another point I picked up from Alec was that it is more evident in this day and age that the tools we now have at our disposal are allowing us to match the constructivist style pedagogy promoted via the work of Vygotsky. I went back to have another look at the Vygotsky theory and how it has been compared with Piaget’s work and there are four main differences as can be read from the link. The social factors and the existence of the “more knowledgeable other” are significant aspects which I can relate back to the games in education journey I have recently travelled. Again it is the existence of the ability to connect and learn within situated contexts which is more available to students and learners of all ages today.

Alec gave some ideas for Capturing participatory networks through Twitter such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. He also recommended the power of teachers modelling the use of the technology, for example a Twitter account for a class is one way of teaching kids about how Twitter works and what are appropriate tweets. If kids are responsible for weekly school tweets or reports they are making the critical selection of information to pass on. The early work of Marshall McLuhan was also cited by Alec, particularly in terms of the power of media. As presented to us in Wikipedia, McLuhan is known for coining the expressions the medium is the message and the global village, and for predicting the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented. Due to the explosion of content on the internet these days, Alec recommended some curation tools such as Feedly for news. He also mention The Slow Web Movement. I have seen tools like Scoopit used as curation tools, and have tried LiveBinder as well. Pearltrees is a social curation tool which creates a taxonomy for how we structure knowledge and allows the user to share collections with others.

On the subject of Imagination, Alec told us that there are ideas out there such as 50+ ways to tell a story but in reality, because we digest so much information and consider this through our PLN’s, everything is a remix of things we have heard or read. What we are creating are digital essays about things that matter.

In wrapping up his keynote, Alec reminded us that we are trying to cultivate and develop positive digital identities, remembering that cultural contexts are very different, but we can debate and discuss the issues. We can have a situation for students whereby portfolios can be developed about their learning experiences through their own individual domain over which they have control. In this way they are being allowed to develop their own identity which they want to present to the world. Another thing he reminded us about is that actions speak louder than like buttons. An example of this was the videos he showed of second language learners being connected with older community members who had volunteered to be mentors who would allow these students to practise their learning through making a connection. Alec mentioned the work of Shirky and how the simple act of connection permits us to humanise the technology. He closed his keynote reminding us : I am part of all I have met.

On October 1 I also connected Face to Face with a few people I have “met” previously through online spaces. Joyce Seitzinger and Chris Betcher ran the two workshops I attended at ACEC that day (posts to come soon). I have made connections by messaging on Facebook and following on Twitter and had further conversations with both of these people during the remainder of the conference. I reconnected with two members of my professional association ECAWA and discussed future staff development opportunities through ECAWA in our education district. I also connected with Bhavneet Singh and will have further conversations with her regarding TeachMeets in 2014.

Another conversation I had today was with a teacher from another primary school in my region who bewailed the loss of use of technology in her classroom and the school’s following of a particular philosophy which, although developing capable academic students, did not espouse the idea of independent problem finders and solvers. This is a phenomenon of which I have previously stated I am very wary. I am firmly decided on the opinion that in primary school we need to have Literacy Block, Numeracy Block and Inquiry Block as major blocks within each teaching day. This would give students the opportunity to become independent thinkers and enable them to begin to make choices and find innovative ways of working – something we will need to remember and develop because:

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t yet know exist! — Richard Riley

October 1: Workshop 1: Open Badge Design

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Having completed so many badges in 3DGameLab I have warmed to the idea of development of competency based badges for recognition of learning both formal and informal. I attended this workshop run by Joyce Seitzinger: Open Badge Design – Every Which Way. Joyce is an active participant in the Open Badge Movement and, along with Bron Stuckey and others, participates in OBANZ – a group which runs community hang outs about Open Badge Development, highlighting case studies of projects in development. These Google hangouts are available for further digestion as they are recorded.

The workshop itself was demonstrating the process of how to design open badges and the principles behind badge design.
Joyce told us that she is part of Academic tribe network which is a group of people who are developing further the concept of badges in learning.

In discussing badges the truth is that not all badges are open. Some badges for learning are developed by organisations and kept within the organisation. What begs the question for me is this – if we are going to further develop the use of Open Badges for anywhere, anytime learning, WHO will be the authority awarding the OPEN badge for any particular skills? Mozilla as a community resource wants to try to do things to help everyone. The system they have developed is Open and can be used by anyone. Each badge should take into account who will be the Earner, issuer, displayer and audience for the criteria the badges fulfil. As well as the badges, there is the backpack to consider. Open backpack is not held by Mozilla. Creating the backpack is really important to individuals. One good thing to remember is that Connected Educator badges can be added to current backpacks. (Something I tested!)

Universities are stepping into using the digital badges system of recognition. I also discussed what was happening at schools of participants seated at my workshop group. An ICT staff member from an AISWA school in W.A. discussed the logistics of tapping into current information systems at his school in order to further develop the badges concept. Another person was discussing teacher development attributes and how a particular institution had launched into the badges movement in his district and now everyone was expected to use that particular system which really had no meaning beyond its local context. A lady with whom I worked wanted to create a particular badge for her in-school Tech Angels group as recognition for “expert skills” in solving computer problems. As I facilitated her thinking about the competencies which lay behind the requirements for the achievement of this badge, she began to understand that in a formal badge structure there are many layers and pathways relating to minor achievements which can all be part of a major achievement. The question remains – how many badges do you give the learner on the path to having them achieve a major outcome? 3DGameLab quest constructions have given me a very good foundation in this pathway of learning idea. My main concern as a teacher leader is this – if we are going to award badges for learning which is formal and/or informal through our institutions, who will be the badging authority? Most educators work in a system and identify learning achieved within a specified curriculum. Would we be setting the criteria for badges or would our state Standards Branch be doing that for us? How would we know which competency is seen as being achieved across the whole state or country unless we have moderated understanding across that jurisdiction? Same thing happens with school reporting!

One further resource which I wanted to download while I was in Adelaide but didn’t have time – this is the page from which you can download the guide from which the workshop design activity was taken. I really enjoyed taking the time out to further develop my understanding of the current state of development for badging competencies.

So many ideas and so little time!

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I promised myself I would read John Fleming’s section of the book “Towards a Moving School” during the holidays. I spent a few hours this morning doing just that and digesting the content of his way of improving a school. What I can say is that what he is proposing is actually nothing new to me. Every school has recently been through the development of School Review processes wherein staff members are required to become more assessment literate so that progress of students is made more accountable. Any school wanting to put these improvements into place requires the establishment of a collegial working community in which teams operate to collaboratively develop programs across and between year levels. Fleming mentions the movement of students between P-3 so that programs can be pitched at their level. The lock step approach for skills development is very important so that basics can be developmentally scaffolded.

For the Years F-2 (Australian Curriculum based classroom structures) I agree wholeheartedly with the establishment of Literacy and Numeracy blocks in order that students are monitored through progressive levels in their reading and mathematics understandings. What concerns me, however, is that where students already have the basics, how are they being given the support and time to become creative problem finders and solvers. For me this is where the Thinking Block or Inquiry Process Block would have to come into play. This is also where project based and play based learning processes can be implemented, as well as the development of student choice of tools and also, most importantly, the development of particular talents such as creative outlets in the arts and even science, cooking, ICT and other practical skill sets. The development of friendship and passion groups and targeted groups for supportive interventions could also happen during these sessions. In short – following the fundamentals of the EYLF and allowing students to learn through play, experimentation and practice at point of need.

Further up the school (3-6) focused instruction still needs to occur so that students are further developing their skills base across the disciplines. Targeted interventions within Literacy and Numeracy Blocks can continue here alongside the use of theme based texts and content so that a deeper understanding of the specific subject matter can be utilised in project based learning which will, in the first instance, be necessarily structured and scaffolded by the teacher – with student choice being taken into account and supported – but also with the expectation that students begin to expand their repertoire of choices made when presenting their findings to a variety of audiences – local and global, familiar and unfamiliar.

Supporting teachers in their understanding of these processes is an important factor to consider. The use of Pirozzo’s planning matrices allows teachers to focus on the full repertoire of required Blooms thinking skills and allows for the further development of multiple ways of working with content (thus supporting the expansion of student repertoires for presentation and learning). Add technology into the mix and this supports the inclusion of an aspect of collaboration and audience. It also adds to the choices students can make in the way they develop their workflow processes and the ways in which they organise information so it makes sense to them and to the teacher.

Blooms Digital Taxonomy and the Blooms Quick Sheets are useful tools to help teachers move towards implementing technology in the classroom through the SAMR model. In my opinion it doesn’t matter which devices are incorporated into the model – the apps which do what is required to have students achieve the General Capabilities in ICT are the key facets of this model. There are infographics based on the hierarchy of skills in Blooms for iPads and for Android devices as well as web based tools. One school has published several infographics here and another has produced this document with several iterations. There are similar apps across a variety of devices but the key ones would include :
1. capability for recording text
2. Paint program
3. presentation sequence program
4. mind or concept mapping
5. chat
6. collaborate document use between peers
7. digital photography
8. sound recording
9. video recording
10. document readers (pdf, .txt, word .doc)
11. browser capability
12. LMS and email through browser for forums and bulletin boards, submission of work, etc.

I believe that if students can learn to use these tools in their project work, alongside the development of specific student skills at point of need, then the range of outcomes they can achieve is magnified significantly and the students will be more engaged in what they are doing because it matters to them!

The new leadership buzz word “FOCUS”

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I just received a copy of Douglas Reeves’ book Finding Your Leadership Focus: What Matters Most for Student Results and started flicking and scanning through the pages to get an idea of what this book is about. One or two sections caught my eye straight away. All the research pointing to immediate feedback and what follows from the giving of feedback and the scaffolding of student learning experiences was one of the most obvious aspects of helping teachers to improve the education of students. Pastoral care – leaders in the school knowing students and how they are traveling – actually teaching some of the students and following their progress also helps leaders keep their fingers on the pulse of improvments and progress within the school.  Another aspect discussed was the idea of Power Standards. These are the non-negotiables – the skills and standards required of students which have endured all changes in curriculum – and believe me I’ve been through many of those since the 1980s! Reeves argues that the best way to focus energies for student learning and progress is to ask the teacher in the year level above “What will these students really need to be able to do to have a hope of experiencing success in the next year level?” The way to test whether these power standards will save teachers time is to compare what is the content of an end of year test and how much of that test is covered by what the teachers in the year above have stated are their basic requrements. Reeves sums up by saying that “…power standards represent the essence of focus at the classroom level.”  Further to this focus on skills in the curriculum,  moderation in the marking of student work is key to collegial understanding of the standards required.  This also provides a way to leverage teacher professional learning through discourse regarding assessment with colleagues and those who are more specialised in their focus on particular curriculum areas.

Suffice it to say, the main message I have taken from this book is “Only by having leadership focus will we be able to work through the mire of documents in order to discern what is appropriate for our school context at any given time.”

Making Your Own Games

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I’ve been working through further quests in 3DGameLab and the tools available online are interesting. Sploder is one such tool which allows creation of a variety of different games with stages and levels – depending on the type. Themes are provided and the back end of the games created seems qute extensive. Basically you drag and drop to create the games as you go. The game I started creating is a Retro Arcade game which I called Creepy Cavern.

I was asked to embed it on my blog so this is my attempt at doing that! I hope you can see the potential!

Game Design Camp – What makes a good game?

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Over the last few days I have played lots of games and adventures in Minecraft and Sploder and have been asked to reflect on what makes a good game. Some of the points I have listed regarding Minecraft adventure and puzzle maps included:

  1. Know your audience – age, skills and capabilities.
  2. Allow the normal resource collection process to occur in part of each area of the map so that players can take resources and further develop the tools they might need – here it becomes more open ended and allows for more problem solving to flourish instead of only one right answer.
  3. Give a few more hints via pictures of objects or through the books given to players.
  4. Have a handy hints link somewhere so that if players really get stuck they have some quick access to online information that might be helpful and deduct emeralds or whatever from inventory if they choose to use that link.
  5. Allow players to die and go back to the beginning and start again – make this an option on the respawn screen if possible.

Games made in Sploder were of different varieties. I found some of these quite challenging as my reflexes and understanding of the requirements of the games were severely tested. What I did see as good aspects of the games were as follows:

  1. Being able to see the next part of your goal. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  2. Using simple instructions and introducing new capabilities as the game progresses. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  3. Maintaining rewards as the player progresses not just at the end. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  4. Having the player cover old ground as necessary to complete a puzzle. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  5. Allowing players to progress at their own pace, when ready to act. (Arcade and 3D Game)

Things which struck me about the games I liked –

  1. An avatar and an environment with which you can identify.
  2. Thinking outside the box – which sometimes made me come unstuck.
  3. Rewards as you complete various activities and advance your skills in capabilities.
  4. Being able to start again after dying.

3DGameLab – Digging into Minecraft – More to Contemplate

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Bron Stuckey and I had a great discussion today about the development of digital citizens and digital identity. The point being that currently many students are allowed to go into virtual spaces (games, social networks) which have not developed a sense of community responsibility for the well being of all participants and this often leads to cyberbullying and an atmosphere in which enjoyment is not sustainable.

When I ran the ThinkQuest space at school  we had a “society” in which students shared ideas and worked cooperatively, though they also had the ability to message each other at all times when online. There was a code of conduct introduced for the benefit of all – including what was appropriate and not appropriate to post in this school forum accessed by students aged 7-12. Students were reminded often about the code we had established and counselling occurred when this code was broken. Indeed spaces like Quest Atlantis with its BURST rules and its focus on the development of social commitments interlaced throughout each and every questline, and its monitored chat system, ensured some degree of appropriate behaviour and a spirit of collaboration, though unfortunately I was unable to complete a full trial of this wonderful opportunity within my school.  Read more on QA, and why teacher should care about games, from Sasha Barab here.

These days the stopgap measure is to put in place codes of conduct but do we, as educators or parents and carers, really take responsibility for demonstrating acceptable social networking and digital collaboration to our students? Do we take them into spaces and act as responsible role models so they can see exemplars at work? I think this is something we are all going to have to come to terms with because we owe it to our students to help them become responsible digital citizens. It’s not enough to TELL them how to behave, We have to LIVE the experiences WITH them. This means IMMERSING ourselves alongside our students. SCARY? No, because they often know these spaces better than we do!

Bron pointed me to Anne Collier’s work in the development of digital citizens during one of the quests in 3DGameLab. Her article, Net safety: How social networks can be protective, hits the nail on the head when she discusses findings from recent studies from USATODAY. These studies describe ways in which the protective factors of online groups can happen in those spaces which James Paul Gee refers to as affinity groups. Indeed guilds and forums within MMOGs (Massively Multiplyaer Online Games) have a positive effect on the individuals involved as they in turn respond by helping maintain the codes of practice required to be a responsible member of the online community. I see the tremendous possibilities for developing this atmosphere of responsibility and cooperation between individuals within a Minecraft multiplayer world. As Gee stated “…young people quite naturally function in “teams,” where everybody is an expert in something but they know how to integrate their expertise with everybody else’s; they know how to understand the other person’s expertise so they can pull off an action together in a complicated world.” I see these things starting to happen in our Minecraft group already and it is only early days.

As Bron says in her 3DGameLab Quest “Learners need to be in spaces to exercise and experience citizenship and practice positive norms and they need to do that in spaces with trusted adults like us!” This is a LIVED curriculum.

Day 1 ACEL 2013 Thoughts

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As I sat and listened to Tony Cook presenting his keynote today, I was reliving where we are currently moving along the educational spectrum as regards my school being an independent government school. The key messages we hear are about improving teacher quality and the quality of leaders in the system. The emphasis is on results of the inputs and not on the actual inputs themselves. Kirsti Lonka hit the nail on the head with her revelation that in Finland, the focus is on the inputs – each child is considered on their educational journey and teachers often stay with the students for several years, which means that they know the students well and can cater for their development as a whole person. Tony Cook realises that what we are trying to do is produce global citizens but I believe in order to do that we need to do a few things a bit differently. Kirsti Lonka’s group’s research focus is currently on how to engage students so they are working within the FLOW as much as possible. What this means is finding out what students are interested in, engaging their hearts and minds so that they are ready to learn and scaffolding their learning experiences so that the level of anxiety is lessened and the experience becomes more positive.

What I have learned from listening to Kirsti Lonka’s presentation is that our educational system is trying to travel along the same path as Finland’s but I have concluded that there are some major differences.

Firstly, not all of our teachers have Masters Degrees, and many do not – for one reason or another – continue their academic education during their careers. Instead they are supported in a number of ways with in-service courses on specific things in which they are interested or which schools dictate their staff need to complete. While this can be costly, it can serve to inject a level of enthusiasm for some people for a short while. I believe that what actually helps teachers more is to have a collegial atmosphere within the individual school or cluster of schools in which everyone firstly tries to “get on the same page” and secondly, where ideas are shared and discussed, even debated, so that they can be improved and refined through action research. This action and reflection process is what ultimately helps people to improve their pedagogy and also the engagement of students – a step in the right direction for further developing the standards we expect of our students.

Secondly, the amount of funding for the youngest students in Finland is higher than that for the older students. This allows every child to have a decent start to their education which is tailored to suit the developmental pathway the child is taking. It was interesting to note that parental leave was 10 months. From the age of 5-6 children attend pre-school programs provided free. The focus in these programs is play. I had a burning question as to whether it was all free play – I should have asked that question. I suspect that there would have been a mix of structured play and free play as there was also a heavy arts and handcrafts component mentioned. What was really important was that parents and teachers meet to make personalised plans for the students. Read more about a Finnish pre-school here. I found this article really interesting too!

Thirdly, and what is rather interesting to note, the focus on accountability is not foremost in the mind of anyone within the school system in Finland. Yes, they have ways of checking how things are going but, they don’t have the heavy testing focus such as that which exists in the USA, United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, Australia. I would have to agree that cutting down the testing regime might upset those who develop our policies and who use the test results to keep track of what outcomes are being produced via the public injection of funding for schools, however, I also think that if all we are testing is multiple choice questioning of specific ranges of question types and text types or maths problems, we are seriously limiting those students who are more than capable of hitting the test ceiling. (Though it was hinted by Tony Cook that NAPLAN online testing will be here by 2016 and it will be adaptive to the answers students give to the questions – therefore giving students who need harder questions the ability to complete them at a higher and higher level.) We are also not allowing students to express their deep knowledge and understanding which can be gained through the use of inquiry approaches – something which we desperately need if we are going to fulfil every child’s potential and allow them to become the connected 21st Century global citizens we want them to become.

I look forward to hearing more in Day 2!

More on Quest Based Learning

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Further thoughts about developing quests for learning in 3DGameLab. I’ll let the Voki explain these ideas.

 

Further thoughts:

When I started to develop my first quest my main challenge was to think of ways of sharing the students’ work which was not open to others on the internet. I decided to try Google Docs because I have some control over who can see the outcome due to sharing with the link only. The embedding of video wasn’t really that difficult. In fact many of the tools in 3DGameLab are similar to tools I have used in ThinkQuest and also Connect. However 3DGameLab has taught me ways to leverage new technologies – it has also given me more tools to help with assessment and provides me with an accumulation of evidence in each group created. This is probably the best system I have seen. If you put in the hard yards to develop the quests and marking and assessment processes right at the beginning – something which should really be happening at the developmental stages of planning and working to assess via criteria – then the whole thing should work to allow the teacher to concentrate on working with those students who need extra help or those students who will undoubtedly need more challenges after they reach the conclusion of their quests. Isn’t that what every teacher should be striving for?