ULearn16: Keynote Speaker Two - John Couch

John Couch was the second Keynote Speaker at ULearn16.

This is the bio for John Couch from the ULearn Keynote Speaker information page:

John leads the Education business at Apple - his more than 40 years as a computer scientist and his advocacy for the use of technology in education has revolutionised learning in the classroom. At Apple, our dedication to learning has always been a part of our DNA.
Since joining Apple in 1978 as the Director of New Products, John went on to become Apple’s first Vice President of Software and Vice President and General Manager for the Lisa division, Apple’s first Graphics User Interface computer.
John has been heavily involved in the education market since 1985 and was Chairman of the Board at Santa Fe Christian School for 10 years. Under his leadership, the school’s annual losses were annulled and the student body grew from 150 to 1000.
John holds a Bachelor degree in computer science and a Masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science, both from the University of California at Berkeley where he was honoured in 2000 as a Distinguished Alumnus. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters and a “Leadership in Innovation Award” from Philadelphia University.

I am going to use photos from John's presentation to illustrate most of my reflection as I was distracted by connection issues and thinking about my previous breakout during this Keynote.

 Why does your school exist?  What is the purpose of your school?  What is the vision.

"Nana I can not spend the night with you until you have wifi."  That's how I feel about going to someone else's house!

"When I went to school collaboration was called cheating.  Every project I was asked to do was as an individual."

Any institution that is based on average is doomed to fail.

There is not enough time in the week for a teacher to find the right educational learning activity for every child.  We are expected to meet the child with learning that is in their flow - but that's impossible.


This is the Storify of tweets for John Couch's Keynote below.  I didn't tweet very much as I was having connection issues.

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

ULearn16: Breakout Two - I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine (Creative Commons)

This breakout was about Creative Commons.  I did not really know much about this, so I thought it was the right time to find out more.

This is the blurb that promoted the session:

Creative Commons (CC) and Open Education Resources (OER) have shifted from sitting on the edge of education to now being a mainstream way of sharing and building on our collective knowledge. But, still many of us just don't have the time to get our head around what's involved and how to bring CC to life in our schools. So we've bought CC NZ Education expert Elizabeth Hertitage and CORE Education's Knowledge Curator, Paula Eskett. Together we'll take you through the who, what, how and why so you leave with a CC plan for your school, and new ideas for gathering legally reusable resources.

Sadly Elizabeth was struck down with a severe throat infection and was unable to attend ULearn16.  Consequently Paula was presenting solo.  These are my notes from the session with a little reworking.  I hope they make sense and prompt you to investigate further if this is something you feel you and/or your school needs to look into.

Paula spoke about going to a breakout lead by Cable Green from Creative Commons during ULearn15 and having her eyes opened to Open Education Resources. 

Green impressed upon Paula that content which is made with public money has a responsibility to be open to the public.

Paula went to a Creative Commons conference in South Africa in March 2016 and came back to NZ fired up over CC and OER.

The WHY of this is all about the children we teach.  CC licences are clear, simple, free, legally robust and you keep your copyright  -  this is your pitch to the BOT to become a CC school, the legal stuff is all done for you.

Creative Commons is non-profit, has open copyright licenses and operates worldwide.  It's about the GIVING and the TAKING.

We tend to think of permissions when we think of CC - but we need to think about it as "universal access to research and education, full participation in culture".

Under a Creative Commons licence, when you share a Google Doc, a piece of music, data, photo.... you still own the copyright.  You will be setting the boundaries for how it can be used however.

This is a video to explain how Creative Commons can work in New Zealand:

Paula explained how Creative Commons is working in New Zealand through a project called Koha and getting children involved in creating as well.

An overview of the icons for copyright, sharing and use:

The Licences combine as follows below:

You can learn more about the licence elements and how you can combine them and get to the links in the above pictures, click here.



This is an overview of the icons for projects:  https://thenounproject.com/about/  It is essentially about having a visual language that can be understood all over the world regardless of the language an individual speaks.  This has been a global project, including students participating from New Zealand, and brought about under the CC umbrella.


These are the platforms we could be using as educators and learners:


When we put up any content, the metadata we put in behind it loads it up into multiple platforms.
The question was asked: How does this work in with The Pond?  www.pond.co.nz is like Pinterest for teachers.  Paula showed us examples within the Pond that have CC attributions. 
A participant brought up the website www.teachitprimary.co.uk as a sharing place for lesson plans and resources, asking why we don't have a website like this?  But isn't this what The Pond does?

Creative Commons has a blog and a sparkling new website to access content.

What many teachers do not realise is they don't own copyright to resources they produce in the course of their employment.  Any resource you make while in the employment of a school is owned by the BOT and if you leave the school, the BOT of that school retains the ownership.  Unfair considering that teachers make many of these resources at home out of school?  So how does this work for teachers who are fulltime teaching and making and selling resources or writing for a publishing company?  Most schools don't have clear IP policies on sharing and reuse. 


Teachers need to get their BOTs to create a Creative Commons policy to keep their teachers safe to share their creations with other teachers (a real strength in the New Zealand education system) and avoid unnecessary conflict.  Start the conversation with your senior management and the BOT by watching this video explaining how a school can develop a CC policy and the benefits:

You can go to the Creative Commons in Schools page to find out more about how your school can develop their CC policy and what it means for the school, teachers and students.



Paula talked about how the answers are in the room when it comes to creating new content.  Grant (another participant) talked about how we need to work together to create content of high quality on Creative Commons.

President Obama has committed to having all publicly funded research as open access for the public before the end of his term as president.  Joe Biden, the Vice President, spoke to the American Association for Cancer Research about how important that this research is not behind a paywall or kept hidden - that others can build onto it.

Cognitive Mapping
We had to do an activity:  What are the opportunities for your school/learners if Creative Commons licenses and OER thinking were embedded school wide?  This was my cognitive map:

 

 



ULearn16: Breakout Three - Research and inquiry Symposium: Play and creativity

My theme for choosing my breakouts for ULearn16 was something I am interested in but do not necessarily know enough about.

I am not known as a junior teacher.  I dabble as a reliever in New Entrant and junior classes and the like, but I consider it is a specialist learning and teaching area, an area where you need special and talented teachers.  I, so far, have neither been that special or that talented at this level.  My personal philosophy has always been I preferred teaching kids who can tie their own shoe laces, pack their bag and cover their mouth before coughing and sneezing.

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.

I was a bit of a free-range pre-schooler, as my brother and I never went to kindy, and my mother didn't like the way the other children behaved at playgroup, so we were socialised with coffee groups, tennis afternoons, potluck dinners, a truckload of cousins and country freedom.  Our mother read us lots of books and sang songs and did nursery rhymes with us when we were not digging in our sandpit (which was huge as it extended into the carpark for our house), tunnelling through the long grass on our tennis court/calf paddock, charging around on our tricycles, or going for rides in a truck or on a combine or tractor with either Dad or one of the workers.  I was also investigating worms and bees in my spare time.  We had a variety of animals, went to the beach and went on day trips and holidays to visit relatives in far away towns.  We had lots of experiences and talked about them around the table at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Today children often spend much of their pre-school years in an early childhood learning centre.  Most of these are teacher led, supported by untrained "teachers" who should not be referred to as such without training or registration.  Kindergartens have had to adapt from their original purpose of a play-based learning philosophy to a semi-daycare purpose to stay alive.  Parent led services like Playcentre and play groups struggle to stay afloat with the push and necessity of mothers going back into the workforce.  Kohanga Reo nests have faced their own challenges.

The government has a goal to get 95% of children into early childhood education settings, but I am concerned that quantity is overtaking the quality.  There are a number of indicators that not all children are getting the best start in life when they are turning up at school with poor oral language skills, questionable gross and fine motor skills and other questions over their readiness for school.

Several weeks ago the New Zealand Herald published an article exposing the high numbers of five year olds starting school unable to form a coherent sentence.

Some children are starting school without the ability to speak in sentences, sparking a government investigation.
Education Minister Hekia Parata has asked officials to look into what is behind the apparent trend and what can be done to address it.
One school principal has told the Herald that New Zealand-born children at his school spoke with American accents because they'd learned to speak watching the Disney Channel.  (NZ Herald, 15/9/16)

I recall having a student at the school I was at in 2011 starting school with an American accent despite having Kiwi parents and never having gone overseas.  And I have come across an ever increasing amount of children who struggle to speak a proper sentence, lack vocabulary or do not enounce words correctly.  And we all know, as teachers, that without solid oral language skills that children will struggle to learn to read, write and spell, and then there is a flow on to all other learning areas.

These are all reasons why I believe the early years of primary school should be play-based to get the best start in their primary school journey and onwards.  This is why I choose to attend this breakout led by three ULearn16 eFellows.

This is the abstract of the breakout on the ULearn16 website:

PART A: Promoting storytelling through the arts in an early childhood setting - Christine Alford
PART B: Play as learning in junior classrooms - Keryn Davis
PART C: Play is the way - Caroline Bush

PART A: Promoting storytelling through the arts in an early childhood setting - Christine Alford
In this presentation I will share the findings of my CORE Education eFellowship research investigating the use of storytelling for oral language development. My interest in this began when I studied the literature of Ann Pelo and attended the Opal School in Oregon, where their curriculum is firmly founded on the practice of storytelling.
The overall aim of this action research project was to increase oral language skills for children in my early childhood setting. More specifically I wanted to explore using the arts as a medium for storytelling. I began by looking at what children’s perceptions of storytelling were, asking them: Where do stories live? This began my journey of surprises, leading me to rethink the many assumptions I held about how children viewed and perceived stories. Using a qualitative approach I collected data by recording the stories of children and their whānau, through observations, conversations and written reflections.
The findings of this project - which are in progress - will show that children’s understanding of storytelling is very different to what the adults within our setting predicted; how unpacking these understandings took time, yet were the necessary first steps in the process of supporting children to freely share their stories through the arts.
Those attending this session will be challenged to rethink and unpack their own understandings of what stories are. They will gain strategies for developing a storytelling culture which supports all children to share their stories in a manner which fosters and enhances oral language skills.

PART B: Play as learning in junior classrooms - Keryn Davis
This presentation shares the findings of a research project undertaken by a team of new entrant teachers and a researcher as they re-designed the experience of school for new-entrant and Y1 children at Mairehau Primary School in Christchurch. The teachers were interested in how they might provide greater continuity for children transitioning from ECE to school by making changes to the physical environment, the pedagogy, and what learning is valued (and how this learning happens) for children in their first years of school.
The project builds on research undertaken in ECE and school settings in New Zealand on children’s working theories, learning dispositions and key competencies, and transitions from ECE to school. The project also draws on connections to research and literature from similar projects in other parts of the world such as Northern Ireland and Scotland.
The research was framed around the following questions:

• How might teachers design curriculum (and environments) that support learning outcomes described in the New Zealand Curriculum that also: Supports children’s transitions from ECE to school?
• Responds to young children’s interests and motivations?
• What teaching pedagogies encourage children’s thinking, creativity and inquiry in new-entrant classrooms?

By building on from the children’s previous ECE experiences the teachers transformed their pedagogy and in re-making the curriculum found ways to embrace play as learning. The discussion around the findings includes how this new approach fostered agency, engagement and belonging, and creative child-led inquiry and projects, in surprising ways.

PART C: Play is the way - Caroline Bush
My ongoing eFellowship project is exploring ways to better understand the oral language of migrant New Entrant learners. I am investigating play based learning ideas which are inclusive and supportive to our learners whose first language is Chinese. This is to see if making some changes in practice would help the learners to improve their spoken English.
For this research I am interviewing and carrying out conversations and observations with: Parents, Teachers, the Senior Leadership Team and the learners. I am exploring teacher beliefs and their effects on practice and student achievement.
The emerging findings are showing a 2 year + improvement in acquisition of Oral Language, an increased level of concentration and engagement from the learners and a deeper understanding on the part of the teachers as to what constitutes learning.

Below is my Storify of the tweets and photos I, and others, did during this presentation.

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

Some big take-aways for me from this breakout were:

• how play-based learning strengthened relationships between the teachers and the students.  It enabled the students to develop trust in their teachers.
• the teachers became better listeners.
• how play-based learning enabled students to lead the learning and the direction the learning went in, making it truly meaningful and authentic for the children themselves.  It keeps the spark of learning alive in them, when school often extinguishes it due to rigidity.
• issues from the local environment, such as ants in the class, became a focus for meaningful inquiry and gave authenticity too.
• because of strengthened relationships and trust between the students and teachers, students were able to express themselves, often disclosing some very private stories (such as the little girl talking about her baby brother dying).  Children used their storytelling to make sense of the world around them and their experiences.
• children had permission to leave if the learning did not interest them, they were not engaged in the activity.  Caro found that they often came back when they were ready to do that learning and it stuck better.  Children learn when they are engaged.
• oral language skills increased 18 months on average.  Despite the school age children being below the standard for reading, writing and maths, they progressed faster in later year groups due to improved oral language mastery.
• children had a lot of stories to tell and were very imaginative in their play and curious about the world around them.
• they ditched topic and inquiry learning for play... the inquiry reinvented itself organically from the play.
• the day started with play, and more formal activities for literacy and numeracy (still play-based) did not happen until after morning tea.  Stories were still written, just not in the traditional sense.
• they cherry picked the best from the traditional class that would fit in with play-based learning.
• Caro found she had to shut up and let the children lead, not force the literacy and numeracy into the play and learning.
• Caro changed her mindset and starting asking the children what they were learning and how they were learning it.
• Caro learned they were more interested in getting the blocks out at reading time than reading... but they soon drifted over to read a book that interested them, even if it was above their reading ability.
• Caro said they did report on the National Standards, their children were all below, but the parents were more engaged with the learning narratives that gave more information about their children's learning.  This was part of the development of the culture of their school.  They were not worried that the Ministry may take action in their school as a result as they had data from their students showing the effectiveness in student outcomes of their approach and a majority of their students were ESOL.  They had the data to show improved oral language outcomes.
• Keryn said the school she worked in expected a drop in outcomes for the National Standards, but were surprised to find, for the first time, everyone was at or above the Standard.
• students learn a lot of soft skills such as team work, communication, problem solving and taking the initiative that they may not learn doing bookwork or solo projects.

Let's just say that at the end of this breakout, I had my thoughts on play-based learning validated.

Some further reading that you may want to consider includes:

• Soft Skills Give Workers a Big Edge: It's Time to Start Focusing on Them in School, Report says.
• Play-based Learning: Producing Critical, Creative and Innovative Learners.
• Play: the work of Lev Vygotsky.
• Powerful Play: Continuity and inquiry for children starting school.  From Keryn Davis at Core Education and 2016 eFellow.
• Why I Don't Like Play Based Learning.  This one is well worth the read to keep things in perspective.
• Learning through Play.  From Keryn Davis at Core Education and 2016 eFellow.
• And visit this UK site http://www.toomuchtoosoon.org/the-evidence.html for a plethora of evidence.
• This is 2016 eFellow Caro Bush's blog (I clicked on her play-based tag to get this link): http://buildingoresome.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/Play-based%20learning
• Christine Alford works at Mairtown Kindergarten in Whangarei and this is their blog: http://mairtownkindy.blogspot.co.nz/

ULearn16: Breakout Five - Hands on science workshop with NanoGirl and OMGTech!

When I went through the breakouts menu and this option came up I was pretty excited.  NanoGirl, aka Michelle Dickinson, is the science poster girl for New Zealand.  She has given science a prominence few others have in the media and she is raising the profile and coolness of science among the student population.

I personally have a mixed relationship to science.  At primary school it wasn't something I actually thought about specifically.  At my primary school I remember us doing bush studies, stream studies, rocky shore studies and going over to the principal's house to look at flowers.  At high school it was a mixed bag.  I really liked chemistry (I love reactions), but biology was a bit so-so (especially trying to understand eye colour and familiar relations!) and physics may as well have been Greek to me.

As a teacher I have tended to favour topics such as kitchen science (chemistry), space, animals, water, testing material, eggs.... the most memorable foray into physics was a push and pull topic.

So I choose this breakout partly to fangirl a bit, but also to see what Michelle had to offer us teachers in inspiration for teaching science.  This is the blurb that was put up on the ULearn breakout page:

This workshop is designed to give hands on experience with different science experiments for primary school level education. Science is traditionally perceived as a difficult subject requiring expensive equipment and specialist knowledge.
In this fast paced 60 minute workshop, different experiments will be carried out while following a teacher’s guide pack to show how simple science experiments can be and how curiosity led learning can tie in to curriculum based topics. With over a decade of academic teaching experience and a passion for getting students more interested in science and technology, Dr Michelle Dickinson will be able to answer any of your science questions while you try each of the experiments yourself.

Below is my Storify of my tweets and pictures.

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

When I walked into the room I grabbed one of these brochures off the table.  OMGTech has been set up to give every primary & intermediate school in NZ the opportunity to take part in its award winning workshops over the next three years.  It appears they use volunteers to provide these experiences.  They are also providing teachers with inspiration and ready to go plans to take back to the classroom.

When I sad down at the table, these items were on the table... and every other table.  This was my first clue that we would be having an interactive session.

 At the beginning of the session, we got some sad news... no NanoGirl today.  Sadly she had a clashing engagement.  However, they had sorted out an able replacement, Paula Hay (aka @heymrshay) from Network for Learning and a science teacher, to step in.  Paula did a fabulous job.

We were asked to get a balloon and a skewer first.  The challenge was to make a balloon kebab, with the skewer going from one end to the other.  This was scary for me as I really hate it when balloons pop in my hands or near me.

Balloons started pop, pop, popping all over the room.

I figured that going in the blowing up end of the balloon was probably the best thing to do.  And apparently it is the way to go because the polymers at that part of the balloon are not so stretched and degraded.  So I got the skewer in, paused for the photo and then proceeded to piece the other side.  As you can see, I was successful and did not pop my balloon.

However, you can see that over the rest of the session it continued to deflate slowly.

Our next activity was an old favourite, vinegar and baking soda.  So I poured the vinegar into our small as lemonade bottle, while the teachers on the other side of the table tipped baking soda into the balloon.  Tip: use the funnel to help you get the baking soda into the balloon before using it to get the vinegar into the funnel.

Then she twisted the balloon so that the baking soda was contained and secured the end of the balloon over the bottle opening.  She then untwisted the balloon and let the reaction begin.

 The reaction happened and this is how much our balloon inflated.  So we decided to do it again.

So we used more vinegar, more baking soda, and being responsible teachers, we used the bucket in case of disaster.

 I'd say we got a bigger inflation this time.

We did find that some of the liquid ended up inside the balloon and then the balloon flopped down.  So you could get kids to experiment with what the optimum amounts of vinegar and baking soda may be for optimum inflation and erection.

 Next we were asked to grab a bowl and tip enough milk into it to cover the bottom.  There were four food dye colours available for us to use.

We also put some dishwashing liquid into another bowl and we needed to have a cotton bud each.

We put food colouring around the edge of the milk, then dipped our cotton bud into the dishwashing liquid.

Then you dip your cotton bud into the milk and watch the magic happen.

 I decided to try this again from scratch.

Cool as aye!

Now I asked on Twitter what I would be doing with this lot in the photo.  One cheeky tweeter tweeted back that I was making fondue.  Sadly, no.

I was actually making a catapult.  Here is my step by steps:

And here are my videos of failure... well my first attempt at using my catapult was the best... if only I had longer to problem solve it out more....

This was one of the best breakouts I have ever attended.  It was reminiscent of what the old Advisory Service used to be like, practical and hands on, before former Education Minister Anne Tolley killed them off in 2009.

If you get the opportunity to work with OMGTech at any point, do so.  I am now wondering what their coding and robotics breakouts are like.....

By the way, OMGTech is in The Pond.