#edchatNZ Conference 2016 Reflection of Day Two

Day Two brought new learning opportunities again at the #edchatNZ 2016 Conference at Rototuna Junior High School.  I was a bit late due to attending to a cat emergency, so when I arrived, I went straight into the first workshop.  I chose to attend the workshop about Elections 2017.

I chose this workshop as I have done a unit with students during elections in 2005 (Year 4/5 class), 2011 (Y5-8 class) and 2014 (Y3/4 class) and I believe the earlier we get students paying attention to politics and understanding how the right to vote works, the more likely they will be voters.  I will always remember our local MP, Jack Luxton, visiting my class when I was in Standard 4 in 1984 to talk to us about elections - it did help that four of his grandchildren were at my school!

And I am pleased I went to this workshop as I was the only primary school voice in this small group of people, so I was able to add a new dimension to the conversation and learn some new things myself from the secondary teachers in the room.  Hopefully what we came up with will make it into The Pond for many teachers to use.

My next workshop was with Jane Gilbert from AUT on Education's complex future - what does this mean for teachers?  The room just kept on filling up for this one and spilled out into the next.... which was ok because RJHS is made up of flexible learning spaces, so the big ranchsliders were left fully open.

I chose this workshop because I felt it was quite relevant to what I am currently doing with my Master of Education focusing on Global Education Policy.  I felt this question opens up a huge chasm of questions and quandaries that we as professional educators need to consider for not only ourselves, but also for our current and future students.

Below is a Storify of tweets just from this session.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

Below are photos that I took of Jane Gilbert's slides during her rapid lecture.

Jane argued that education needs to make a rapid change as it was no longer appropriate to do a mass production line form of education (reminiscent of Yong Zhao's opinion of the sausage factory mode of education).

"We don't need another brick in the wall" industrialise education was how we were taught - but this is not appropriate for students of today or tomorrow.  What is the core role of a teacher?  How does that role relate to other teachers?

Mega trends in education:

* digital revolution
* globalisation

Mega trends in education:
* massive growth in new networked forms of knowledge
* Anthropocene

World events such as terrorist attacks,Brexit,Trump... these are upsetting world order... leads to chaos.  Chaos and disruption may provide potential alternatives.

Sardar says we're in a transitional age. A change phase:

* Complexity
* Chaos
* Contradiction

How does education policy fit here?

* "we need to get the system to perform better"
* digitisation

There is a focus on outcomes (measured in the 'old ways') & students - but the focus on teachers is yet to come.

Lots of investment in hardware (infrastructure, tools, vocab) but not on software (teachers).

The mega trends undermine the 20th Century education system. Need to look at these questions in photo.  There are all these things we are asked to do for students but haven't experienced them their selves.  The good news is no one knows the answers.

Why are they talking about things in picture?  If we don't understand human systems these'll be subverted.  Personally I believe the model in place for Communities of Learners currently is wrong with too much dictatorial influence by MOE.  This will subvert true collaboration. That's why I consider COLs as IES pig with lipstick.

System features to consider.

Also: closed & open systems.

The murmuration of starlings - modification in response to small change - interaction produces change.  Murmuration of starlings: no one is in charge. System has its own "collective intelligence" as a whole.

Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework. See http://cognitive-edge.com 

Education is a complex system.  Things are difficult in education and therefore requires a different sort of methodology.

Great examples for simple, complicated & complex problems using the model.

What does this mean for teachers and schools and students? What is the future? Is collaboration enough?

Three things (in picture) matter to build collective intelligence.   Building collective intelligence depends on quality of elements, quality of interactions and degree of diversity

Hargreaves & Fullan - 2012, Professional Capital - Transforming Teaching in every School: what is "strong" collaboration?  Collaboration or innovation is not collecting others ideas.  Don't necessarily apply to your situation.  Strong collaboration needs collegial not congenial, critique and extension of existing ideas, push each other, thinking differently.  To achieve change we HAVE to challenge ideas, argue; conflict produces new deep thinking.   Avoid echo chambers.

Collegial collaboration - NOT congenila collaboration needed. R Evans 2012 - Building True collegiality in schools.  How do we get strong collaboration? See R. Evans (2012) bottom of picture.

Questions for us to consider in light of this workshop with Jane Gilbert - and for all teachers too.  Will reconfiguration of the role of teachers be enough? Do we need a complete rebuild?  Jane argues that some of the professional learning offered to teachers is quite basic! Need to rethink how teachers are educated.  Absolutely agree that teacher PLD must start with focus on individual cognitive growth.  And group cognitive capacity of teachers.  How might we think about "next practice" not just "best practice"?  For teachers to interact in new world order & support kids; need new PLD model that focuses on cognitive growth to create next practice.  But we have to achieve this change while keeping some aspects of the old system going.

"Historic change is like an avalanche."

As you can see there are a lot of things we need to consider about the future of our profession as educators for ourselves and our students.

After lunch (where I caught up with some  #kotuku tribe members), it was the Provocation session, where the keynote speakers provoked us.

The first speaker was Stanley Frielick and below is the blurb about Stanley from the #edchatNZ Conference website.

Dr Stanley Frielick is Director of Learning and Teaching at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) – a central role in a network of staff, students and enabling technologies that increases the capability of the university for educational development and innovation.

His diverse research interests include the ways in which ecological / biological understandings of thinking interrelate with social and digital media to create new modes of learning, and the implications of these for strategic planning and leadership. He has led several initiatives in academic development, digital media and mobile learning at AUT.

The second speaker was Kaila Colbin and her blurb from the #edchatNZ Conference website is below:

Kaila is an ambassador for SingularityU and involved in organising the first New Zealand summit. Kaila is also a curator for TEDxChristchurch, Ministry of Awesome co-founder.

​Kaila is an entrepreneur, a connector, and a person who loves to see ideas turned into action. She is a co-founder and trustee of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome, an organisation dedicated to watering the seeds of awesome in communities; and the founder and director of New Zealand social media consultancy Missing Link.

These two speakers were rapid and thought provoking.

Kaila's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Riding the exponential wave of change
• Exponential technology is not just about the computing
• In ED, are we just hanging out in the trough of disappointment? Waiting for the steep curve to amazement!
• Self-drive cars are already twice as safe per mile as humans.
• A single crash for a self-drive car immediately improves the whole fleet. Not the case with humans.
• sci-fi is really sci-non-fi!
• 35yrs of 3D printing and what do we get? Shitty models of Yoda's head
• x times as fast, at x less cost. soooo awesome!!! Jet fusion printing from HP - electronics within the printed object
• Highest prediction is 81% of jobs gone in 20 YEARS!!!
• AI always starts with base knowledge of all other AIs, people do not
• Loving "the dick factor" that @kcolbin talks about e.g. wearing technology such as Google cardboard.
• Segways failed because of "dick factor" VR Goggles mean you can't see other's eye rolling at you
• We used to teach kids to ski as the future was paved, now we have to teach kids to surf as the future is unknown
• See @richardsusskind's 'The Future of the Professions:  http://goo.gl/faLAve
• Find your Billion - book your students places to learn about exponential tech with @kcolbin  http://www.findyourbillion.co.nz/ 

Stanley's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua
• Watching the Mother of all Demos from 1968 - the original YouTube How To video.
• The Dynabook looks like the forerunner to a laptop & tablet - Alan Kay DynaBook 1968
• Inspired by the history of these incredible people who gave us so many possibilities. Papert -my favourite. 
• All day I have been reminded over and over that the technology I thought was recent... well... wasn't
• Richard Brautigan poem - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
• We have so much tech but what are we actually doing with it?
• What wicked problems can we authentically engage our students with?
• key word there... authentic. surely students need to have a say? how can WE dictate that?
• The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
• highlighting disconnection. oooh, nice. are you "Whole in a connected world"? human touch - AGAIN, whanaungatanga.
• "We also need a space where we are wholly ourselves, contingent upon no one else"

After the Provocations of the keynotes, we met back up with our tribes.  #kotuku tribe had come up with the idea of #minutechange to present to the Conference later that afternoon.  So we debated this.  The first thing we needed to do was define minute so that people knew what we were talking about.

Naturally I have a wee Storify of our thinking over #minutechange:

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

WIDD = What I did differently - which links into the whole idea of #minutechange.

After nutting it out, and making a new Twitter account called @minutechange to go with our hashtag #minutechange it was time to present our proposal to the Conference and hear what other tribes had come up with.

All in all, I enjoyed the two days at the #edchatNZ Conference.  It was almost a cross between a traditional conference and an Educamp, in that it was timetabled like a traditional conference but had the flexibility of choice that comes with an Educamp, with the bonus of time to network and build a tribe to collaborate on a new idea with.

The bonus for me was that this year it was in Hamilton... and I hope the next one will be at a school that I can get to easily.

Below is a Storify of the whole of Day Two of the Conference - there are a lot of tweets... like maybe 885 tweets.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

It's Term Four and I'm freaking out!!!

Tomorrow I am doing something I have never ever done before and I am freaking out!!!

I am opening a New Entrant class tomorrow.

I've never ever taught a New Entrant class before (except as a reliever) let alone started one!  So I am on a big as learning curve - and hence I am freaking out.

I am doing this because I needed to get outside my comfort zone and try something else and grow as a teacher.  I've taught mostly Year 3-8 students because they fitted my personal philosophy of being able to tie their own shoe laces and pack their own school bags.  So teaching five year olds, brand new ones, will be a challenge.  The first big challenge is giving them enough time to tidy up, pack their bags and get their shoes on at the end of the day to get on the bus and cover their mouth when they cough and sneeze; something I need a "must improve" on.

Term Four is also ideal because many schools find that they need to open a new room and so it seemed like the right thing to do.  The school I am going to knows me as a reliever and I really like the students and staff at the school, so I was very comfortable in applying because I knew the atmosphere I would be in for this very busy term.  I'm also in the class right next to the other NE class with a very experienced teacher.

I know some of the students already which I will be teaching, having relieved in the existing class for a few days recently.  But at least half the class are new enrollments early in Term Four, including a very special needs child - another challenge for me and the support staff.

Looking at the children I will be receiving from the existing class and the data already assessed, oral language is a challenge for them.  So apart from building relationships, growing their oral language will be my focus before reading and writing will be.  To grow their oral language and develop the relationships, I am running the class with a play-based philosophy.

I wrote this in the blog post ULearn16: Breakout Three - Research and Inquiry Symposium: Play and Creativity last year:

Play-based learning is defined by Wikipedia as:

Learning through play is a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the world around them. Through play children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.

I strongly believe in the benefits of play-based learning in the early years of school, especially for oral language and the soft skills of problem solving, working with others, creativity and so on.  My thoughts have their roots in how I learnt as a child, starting school in late 1978, with the influences of Beeby, Tovey and Richardson still ringing in the ears of my teachers in my primary school years.

Lucky for me, the principal and deputy principal who interviewed me for the the position were happy for me to run a play-based philosophy and want me to treat this class like it is the first day of the year to develop the relationships.  I'm really grateful for that, because you can not start learning programmes and expect them to run effectively if you do not have the relationships established.  And part of that is routine as well.

So the exciting thing about starting a new class is setting it up.  And I have been able to go and buy some resources to do this play-based learning thing.  So I did a reccy around K-Mart, took photos of everything I thought might be appropriate, went back and listed it all out with prices to check I was within budget and then took one of my best mates shopping.  She just happens to be an amazing New Entrant teacher with the most amazing play-based classroom set up you have ever seen.  Now mine will be no where near the standard Louise has set for a play-based class, but her insights into the mind and behaviour of a five year old were invaluable.  She even took me to her favourite $2 shop which does "teacher hours" (it's open until 6:00pm each day) which was packed to the gunnels with stuff.  Below is what I bought:

I had to stack it all up on the freezer so I could go over to my lock up, go through my resources for what could be used in a New Entrant class, and pile it all into the car. 

Most of the things I brought are wooden.  I choose wooden toys for several reasons.  Firstly, durability.  Students have a tendency of breaking things.  I'm hoping wooden toys will withstand the use better - and Louise assures me they will.  Secondly, we just have too much plastic in our lives, and I was introduced, by Louise, to the concept of Reggio Emilia which emphasises are more natural approach.  This is the definition found on Wikipedia:

The Reggio Emilia approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It is a pedagogy described as student-centered and constructivist that utilizes self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery through a self-guided curriculum. At its core is an assumption that children form their own personality during early years of development and are endowed with "a hundred languages", through which they can express their ideas. The aim of the Reggio approach is to teach how to use these symbolic languages (e.g., painting, sculpting, drama) in everyday life. It was developed after World War II by psychologist Loris Malaguzzi and parents in the villages around Reggio Emilia, Italy, and derives its name from the city.

As you can see, Reggio Emilia fits in well with the concept of play-based learning.  And so I will be exploring both of these teaching/learning styles over the coming term and learning about how this impacts on my practice as well as the development of relationships between myself and the students and between the students, and how the relationships improve oral language and subsequent learning.  So lots of learning all round for me and the children!!

This is the classroom before I started setting everything up:

Yep, it's one of those panoramic 360o photos where I pivot around to give you the full effect.

My set up was all about finding homes for my things and putting some bits and pieces up on the walls and sorting out the things I splurged on at K-Mart.  I then rearranged some furniture.

The top shelf shows a few of the things I purchased that were not wood.  The cooking set on the left is made of tin.  The cash register is plastic and so is the fruit and veg in the container on the right.

The bottom shelf has several different toys: a floor puzzle with the alphabet; a magnetic fishing game for motor skill development; a magnetic dress-up doll; and magnetic shapes that build things.

I love the car transporter!  I'm also fairly in love with the fire truck, tractor, truck, castle set up and the farm set!

I am really excited about the train set in this container.  I purchased the city version, but I am tempted to go buy the farm version too.  Maybe after a pay day.

I've always wanted a marble run set.  So this is the other bit of plastic I splurged on. 

The containers in the above picture were all purchased at The Warehouse over the last ten years and I have found them to be really good for various activities and storage requirements.

But I do not think this room is truly set up yet.  I need the children in it to try it out for size and it will be rearranged again to suit them and I and the learning we will do.  Also, a significant portion of the class has been set aside for the special needs student.  His needs are very much different from the average five year old.

I'll be reaching out to my PLN (personal learning network) over the next few weeks to check in and ask questions and I will be blogging about the challenges and the learning and successes I may be experiencing.  It's kind of like being a beginning teacher all over again.

Anyhow, it's getting very late and I want to be up super early to get there and start the day tomorrow!!  I'm freaking out and no one ever sleeps well the night before the start of term, especially when it is a new class!!

#edchatNZ Conference 2016 Reflection of Day One

One of the amazing things that has come out of the National led government killing off our former Advisory Service is how teachers started doing professional development for themselves - for teachers, by teachers.  Instead of having advisers who would run courses or possibly even visit you in your school to support a school wide PLD opportunity, we now have the online Science Hub and your school has to be in a contract to get any support for literacy or numeracy.

Into the vacuum came EduIgnites, Educamps and Twitter chats.  #edchatnz was started in 2012 by Danielle Myburgh aka @MissDtheTeacher as she felt isolated as a beginning teacher.  Danielle calls herself an introvert, and you can see her nerves as she stands in front of a large group of educators on a winter's morning in the brand new auditorium of the brand new Rototuna Junior High School, but she is also a passionate teacher who wanted to do the best for her students and so reached out to teachers across New Zealand and beyond.  She established #edchatnz, a fortnightly chat at 8:30pm on a Thursday for Kiwi teachers (and beyond). 

From that many other chats emerged for subject areas like English, Science and Maths... and a leaders' chat too.  At ULearn (a conference held in the first week of October by Core Education) there has been a Twitter dinner and this is a place where the #edchatnz participants often meet properly for the first time face to face, if they haven't already at an Educamp.  #edchatnz has also had two conferences, by teachers for teachers, in 2014 and this most recent one at Rototuna Junior High School in northern Hamilton on Friday 12th and Saturday 13th of August.  At $30 it will be the cheapest but possibly the most inspiring PLD you could do!!

There were so many people there from near and far.  Some of the participants came in large groups from their school, some in small groups and some were, as Danielle called us, Lone Nuts.  There were principals, teachers, support staff (two I knew already were a librarian and an IT technician), professional learning advisors, tertiary lecturers and some education industry personnel.

The conference was held at a school, starting on a Friday for a purpose.  Firstly, at the registration desk, after registering and being delegated a tribe (explained later), we were referred to some students from Rototuna Junior High School (aka RJHS) to be our tour guides and take photos on our phones of us in groups with an #edchatnz frame.  As I was registering I hear another person say her name, and I recognised it.  So I turned around and said hello.  What was even better was Melanie (yes, same name!) was also in my tribe.  Anyway, her is our selfie taken by one of the students.  (Is that still a selfie?)


So we gathered in the hall where Danielle did a welcome along with the principal of RJHS, Fraser Hill.  We heard some background from Danielle about how she established #edchatnz, her journey and the purpose of the conference: #possibilities.  We heard from Fraser about the ethos of his school and a bit of the journey in his welcome.

Afterwards we went to meet our tribe.  My tribe was #kotuku - they were all named after native New Zealand birds, which was cool.  Our tribe leader was Alex (@ariaporo22) who I have known for a couple of years though #edchatnz, Educamps, EduIgnites and ULearns, so it was lovely to have a friendly face.  Melanie, who I met at reception, @michaelteacher and @MSimmsNZ were people I had conversed with through #edchatnz on Twitter or through NZ Teachers on Facebook and were also in #kotuku.  There was also a high school English teacher who we didn't see much because she also had her school production in full swing and two teachers from a school north of Hamilton who were still getting to grips with Twitter, but soon recognised me from the NZ Teachers Facebook page (I'm on it far too much).

Soon it was time to head off to our first workshop.  There were also tours of RJHS, which would have been great to go on, because the place looked amazing, but I decided to get out of my comfort zone and go and learn more about Google Sites.  I have tried them once before a couple of years ago, but I found them rather frustrating.  And then I heard that Google was dumping the whole thing.

But now Google is revamping them.  Currently only certain schools have access to Google Sites, kind of as guinea pigs as they work out the bugs.  @steve_trotter was having a few technical difficulties with his laptop and the network, as I did too, but I brought a back up with me, so it was a slow start getting going.  We had a tu-tu with Google Sites under a username for a school he works at and that was interesting.  I thought it was an improvement over the previous Google Sites, but it still has a long way to go before I will be excited about using it.  There are still a few things that I did not find aesthetically pleasing, did not have enough choice or were fiddly to achieve.... but the bugs are still being worked out.

After lunch with the #kotuku tribe, there was a mix and mingle in the auditorium with a game of meet people Bingo.  This was how far I got in the time set.

We were also made aware of a set of challenges for us.  But to be honest, I was so busy meeting people, figuring out where I was and making sense of it all I forgot about these challenges... but some people did really well at them:

Challenges

Are you ready to be an educational explorer? Complete these missions to open up the possibilities for yourself, your tribe and the others you interact with during the conference. Share your mission progress on #edchatNZ and check out what others have achieved so far as well.

New to Twitter Challenges

• Help someone sign up to twitter and send their first tweet
• Share a link that supports a presenter’s idea
• Share something you were challenged by

Asking Questions

• Tweet a question that made you think
• Ask a question of a presenter
• Write a question on a post it and place it on someone else’s property so they will find it later

Connections

• Meet people from at least 10 different towns/cities
• Chat to someone from Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and an Outside Provider
• Get a Tribe Grelfie that shows something you all have in common
• Get a Tribe Grelfie with the Rototuna eel
• Make something with your tribe to represent yourselves to the rest of the conference (totem pole, secret handshake, sculpture, human pyramid…)

Have Fun

• Make a sculpture with your food
• Play a song loudly from your device that shows how you are feeling as you finish a workshop
• Share one of your favourite edu quotes
• Bust out your favourite dance move
• Quote Star Wars in an educational discussion

Get Critical

• Be the Devil’s Advocate: ask a question from a different perspective to make people think deeper and differently
• Recommend a book that someone could read to learn more about a topic
• Connect someone with a person who could help move their ideas forward
• Give someone deep feedback about their idea/plans

Then it was off to the second session of workshops.  I went to a session run by the students of RJHS.  During this session the students explained the vision and expectations of the school.  They explained how the structure of their timetable worked, how they achieve credits and modules, and how they design their learning with a mentor teacher.  The students are expected to be aware of and track their own learning.  They also set us some tasks to do that they had done.  These tasks required us to use team work, think out of the box and communicate - and many more key competencies, which their programme revolves around.

The first task involved a set of nails.  We had to balance on one nail all the rest of the nails.  The first three photos below are our failed attempts in our group.

Below left is my attempt to sneak off another group what the finished product would look like.  Even then we couldn't do it and one of the students had to show us before we could do it ourselves, bottom right.  The student who showed us admitted their teacher had to give them lots of help.

There was also an activity with Lego.  Every group was given a box with Lego in it.  Every box had the same pieces, the same colour as each other.  Again we had to work in a group.  One person had to go to a table and look hard at the example made up and then come back to the group.  They had to tell the group what to do to make it, but they were not allowed to touch it.  After a couple of minutes, the students allowed a second group member to go up and look hard at the example and come back to tell us what to do.  This happened probably six more times, but even then a student felt the need to correct our group.  This was another great example on how to use the key competencies as a learning task.

So here we were getting all the pieces out and starting with the most memorable bits.  @ariaporo22 was telling us what to do first.

As you can see, we had to put on and take off a few times, as each new communicator picked up something the previous one had missed.  Also the students came and set us straight too when we were off tangent.

On the left is our final product, and on the right is the original model.  I think we did pretty well.  It was a fabulous oral language activity, not to dissimilar to barrier games for oral language.

Below are some photos of the things the students talked about in relation to their learning journey.

Next it was time for the students to go home and we headed for the auditorium where we were asked to put the chairs into groups of four and sit down for a face to face Twitter #edchatnz.  My group failed to hear some of the instructions, so stuffed it all up, but it was fun to move around and talk to different people on the questions set.

We had afternoon tea and then gathered in our tribes again with the goal to create something as a group to share with the conference the next day and to hopefully contribute to The Pond.

The day ended very late, and it was after 5pm when I really just had to go off to attempt to rescue a cat (that's another story elsewhere!)... and that is really all this blog post could possibly handle apart from me adding the Storify of pretty much every tweet about Day One of the #edchatnz 2016 Conference to the end of this post.  Day Two is another post in the writing....

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭