AADES LEADERS' FORUM 2010

AUSTRALASIAN ASSOCIATION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION SCHOOLS
29 September - 1 October

Venues: Te Kura (Day 1) and Te Papa Museum of New Zealand (Days 2 and 3)
Wellington, New Zealand

SUMMARY:

I was priviledged to attend the AADES Leaders' Forum 2010.

This was a well attended three day event, with speakers from New Zealand and afar. While I attended all three days of the Forum, I did not attend every session and there were some that were held concurrently. However, I report on all the keynote speeches.

This was essentially a listeners’ event, though there was a little opportunity for participation from the floor.

Day One consisted of a late afternoon powhiri held at Te Kura.

Marcus Akuhata-Brown was the facilitator for Days Two and Three of the Forum, at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. His humility, balanced approach and sense of humour were evident in the elegant way he conducted the programme.

A feature of the Forum was the Māori music and harmony. Each guest speaker was thanked in a traditional way by music and song, a true mark of respect. It is a credit to Mike Hollings that he joined in with every one of those musical occasions (I’m sure he engineered them all) most times accompanying on his guitar. This part was altogether a most memorable, entertaining and cultural contribution to the atmosphere of the Forum.

DAY ONE

The Forum began mid-afternoon with the gathering of staff, contributors and visitors and a powhiri in Kauri room, Te Kura, followed by congenial time for refreshment.

Then followed brief welcoming addresses from Mike Hollings, Trish McKelvey and the Chair of ADDES, Bronwyn Stubbs, as well as short speeches from Karen Sewell and Janelle Cameron.

Karen Sewell

Karen spoke of the future that lay in the education of children. She spoke of the trauma that children suffered during and after the recent Christchurch earthquake, and how Te Kura had stepped in extremely quickly to provide support with this.

She talked of the complex and uncertain future that children will follow. Education must transform, not reform ‘the system’ in order to permit children to navigate intricate pathways. Teachers have a part to play in changing our children’s future.

Janelle Cameron

Janelle spoke of the digital divide – how she was still grappling with the technologies – how the digital age seems to overwhelm many people of her age.

Her metaphor for the happenings in learning today was like “a train going through (a station) and not stopping”.

She referred to the Internet and its use as a teaching tool and to what she called “Bloom’s Pedagogy”, the new “Digital Taxonomy” and their part in teaching today.

Day One closed with drinks and nibbles and a chance to network with all who attended.

DAY TWO

Hekia Parata

Hekia gave us a National Party view of where teachers are at in 2010. She spoke of them focussing “on teaching rather than learning” (I think she was referring to their learning rather than the learning of their students). Hekia explained that teachers do not seem to learn from learning, and referenced this to education research.

She referred to the mind/brain as the most important part of the being. Yet kids, all over the world, are still sitting in classrooms being taught by a single teacher using traditional teaching methods.

Hekia specially referred to the 1 in 5 students that were clearly being failed by the system – that schools focussed on crowd control rather than on learning.

Hekia’s description of Ruatoria formed a large part of the manifesto-like speech she delivered. She spoke of her family/ brothers, sisters/ community and what they did when she was a child.

Hekia spoke of the demography of New Zealand and of how many children were uninspired at school.

She spoke of the money New Zealand borrows every year to spend on education and the community. Hekia referred to the 1 in 5 ratio and that for many, the model is not working. Her concern was mainly about what she called “brown students”, and referred to their place in the diverse population that is evolving in New Zealand.

She spoke of professionalism that customises skills to give a service, and that such a service was needed by the 1 in 5 children in New Zealand: those that needed to find a job, for instance – a sector that “deserved all the attention teachers can give”.

Hekia summarised her speech by referring to the triangle of Identity, Community and Education: three important areas that provide the basis for learning in an individual.


Liz McKinley

Liz examined some of the statistics on Māori success in education from the Starpath project, University of Auckland. Her quote from Niels Bohr, “Nothing exists until it is measured”, summarised her approach.

She also examined some recent government statistics of Level 2 NCEA results, from 2003 to 2008, comparing Māori with non-Māori. Only 40% of Māori learners get to year 13. Less than half of these go on to study at tertiary level. She showed graphs indicating that in percentage achievement and in success rate, Māori learners were substantially behind learners from other ethnic groups.

Liz analysed these results in a number of ways: that 32% of Māori learners in a year 13 group will eventually go on to further study – that 18% of those will have achieved university entrance qualification – that 6% will actually enter university – that 2% will finish the courses with a degree – that 0.4% will go on to doctorate study.

She explained that Starpath, led by The University of Auckland in partnership with the New Zealand Government, is a research project (now in its 6th year) that focuses on the educational outcomes of New Zealand learners who under-achieve at secondary school. Starpath utilises:

• research teams,
  
  
• 5 high schools,
  
  
• 1 university and 1 technical institute.

Liz spoke of the need for evidential material that schools require in order to make informed decisions – that schools were not getting help with bringing all available useful data/ideas/strategies together and with aligning these so that they could be used to improve learner outcomes.

She explained that schools do collect data on student learning and achievement, but the data is not centrally stored. She asserted that schools do not feel that ownership of this data is important. She stressed that there was a real need for concerted strategies so schools could usefully collate data related to student achievement and use this to accomplish an improvement in learner achievement.

Liz spoke of the Academic Counselling and the Target Setting (ACTS) programme and how they improved final year NCEA completions. The biggest gains were made by Māori and Pasifika students, with 16% more Māori students and 20% more Pasifica students achieving important learning in NCEA Level 1 Numeracy and Literacy.

Liz concluded by warning that gains for Māori learners were lessening - that many schools had a plethora of programmes, 84 in some, based on teacher interest rather than what could benefit the learner. She appealed that this was actually a moral issue that needed attention, by all parties including teachers in order that it be addressed effectively.

Bentham Ohia

Bentham, CEO of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, gave an overview of the Open Wānanga – a “Māori Higher Learning Tertiary Institution” of 37,000 learners – 40% of those do not have a secondary education.

He put a number of questions:

1. What counts as knowledge? What knowledge counts? Who decides?
2. What counts as success? What success counts? Who decides?
   
3. What counts as assessment? What assessment counts? Who decides?”

Te Wānanga o Aotearoa is unique:

• kaupapa wānanga
  
• unique programme-offering delivery
  
• home based kaitiaki (guardian) supported
  
• monthly cohort enrolments
  
• centralised support
  
• minimised restrictions.

Viv White

Viv spoke briefly of Big Picture Education Australia (BPEA). She then looked at some learner statistics and other related learner information:

• 14% learners not learning or earning – 50% in some places
  
• 20% fail to complete year 12 – 50% in some places
  
• complex social background
  
• distance education is not immune to the same problems that exist in F2F systems.

She stressed how serious these facts were and that a new model was called for. Viv then put the question that I had asked her at TCS Forum in May this year(!) – basically:

“Can we create a Big Picture Distance Education model?”

Viv then returned to the Big Picture model:

• 1 learner at a time (which is how Te Kura works)
  
• small by design
  
• advisory 1 – 15 | 1- 17 |
  
• Learning Training Internship.

Learners could achieve improved outcomes: engagement – graduation – tertiary learning. She spoke of beginning with network connections – developing a community of practice and commitment to collaborate – building a system of influence: not with critical mass but with critical connections (BPEA and Te Kura).

Jen McCutcheon

Jen defined authentic learning in the context of Te Kura, explained the process and outlined some of the approach used – one that focussed on the learner in context. She spoke of how it relies on rich conversation between the Learning Advisor, the learner and whanau.

Jen explained how finding the centre of what interests and impassions a learner was an all important part of that process. It’s then that a start can be made on building relevant programmes around the learner and nurture these with frequent ongoing discussions.

Jen went on to define what constituted a ‘rich conversation’: goal setting – identifying ‘aspirational’ goals – career exploration – interviews and talking with people – job-shadowing – resetting goals. She mentioned the part that Gateway, Star and other programmes can play in the development of this process.

She described the ‘tail of underachievement’ and mentioned the consequential 25% of people aged 15 to 19 years who are unemployed.

Westley Field

Westley is Director of Online Learning, Skoolaborate. He began his delivery by demonstrating an online delivery/facilitation by an avatar in Second Life (SL). Westley then Skyped his friend, Chris, who was the person behind the SL avatar.

Westley spoke briefly of the developments in online learning at MLC School. He spoke of how technology makes the routes to achievement more facile, and not just in learning but also in creating commercially useful objects, such as the Doritos commercial he showed us and that was made for $150 by a teenager using readily available equipment.

He encouraged that we should “try things new” – to “move forward with real action”. He spoke about personalised (online) learning. He spoke of how to get the attention of learners if they have computers in their hands. He spoke of how “knowledge”, and how to use it, takes on a new meaning with the developments in technology, Google and the Internet.

Westley talked about giving people experience in the use of technology – in particular giving young learners safe, ‘unblocked’ experience in technology use. He spoke of the technologies that can change learning, including the development of the e-book such as the Amazon Kindle.

He referred to the improved success by learners using online learning productively with other learning methods compared to those learners who are in the classroom without such technology.

Sandy Dougherty & Nathaniel Louwrens

Sandy and Nathaniel gave a presentation on their experiences in trialling Active Worlds. The study was to evaluate Active Worlds as a learning technology and also its suitability in a distance education setting.

They demonstrated a treasure hunt that had been built in the 3D environment of Active Worlds. Some of what they reported was about their own initial experiences in the 3D environment – some of the seeming ‘chaos’ perceived by people who are new to this technology – which later developed to a successful resolution.

Their intended focus was to be on working with learners collaboratively and how to get learners to work together. The reality was slightly different.

Sandy and Nathaniel found that young learners (years 7 to 10) learnt the technology skills for themselves very quickly, skills that the teachers had taken 2 terms to learn. They also reported that the learners preferred online (txt) chat rather than using the voice chat, though they were comfortable with the teacher using voice chat in instruction.

Sandy was careful to get useful (and fascinating) feedback from her learning group, to which she put a number of questions. Asked how they learnt, Sandy’s students gave a number of interesting answers, among which were ‘playing’ and ‘practicing’.

Asked if they needed a teacher there was met with a resounding, “YES”. The children preferred the teacher speaking to them rather than using the chat box. The common feeling expressed by learners was that the whole learning experience was “awesome!”

About the technology . . . learners felt that though it was a bit clunky, it was like playing a game that was really school. Navigation in commercial games technologies tend to be far more facile in comparison and the 3D renditions are often superior to what they experienced in Active Worlds.

DAY THREE

Mike Hollings – Walking in Two Worlds

Mike spoke of the money poured into education and the efforts that are not actually achieving learning. He cited Cisco’s The Learning Society and stressed that the cost of education should be tax-efficient.

A successful education system has to be based on the principle that it is for everyone and must embrace ones personal culture while at the same time supporting innovation. He stressed that there was a need for a huge change in present systems. He cited Phillippe de Woot’s need for societal educational metamorphosis and referred, once again, to Allen Curnow’s Landfall into Unknown Seas:

“Simply by sailing in a new direction
You could enlarge the world.”

Mike spoke of leadership today and the huge diversity of theories that are based largely on western ideas. He asked of leadership, “what could we learn from other wisdom?”

He drew attention to how Māori people spend a lot of time ‘going back’ to their cultural places, communities and the related pursuits. The educational system in New Zealand does not acknowledge this cultural aspect as much as it does that of western cultures in activities such as music, opera, and dance.

Mike gave an overview of some of the wisdom from Māori leadership, and how it focussed on the needs of people and the resources they needed – the understanding of communities and their tribal/cultural boundaries. Māori leadership qualities are not necessarily accepted or respected in the wider community in New Zealand. Mike listed some of the elements of that leadership:

Manākitanga – hospitality
Rangitiratanga – weaving people together
Whanaungatanga – interdependence
Wairuatanga – spirituality
Kaitiakitanga – guardianship
Whakapapa – genealogical connections
Te Reo Rangatira – Māori language

Mike observed that community intellect is at risk when languages are lost. He also spoke of the worth of trust and the value of openness – that for trust to exist, intentions must be clearly understood and patently visible.

Mike summarised the thrust of his speech by saying “we cannot (always) rely on western systems”. He referred to the importance of locality in determining who we are and where we are at in New Zealand. He used lines from the poem Lost, by David Wagoner, to illustrate this:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Jen McCutcheon and Viv White

This was a panel session introduced by Marcus Brown where Jen and Viv spoke freely of their vision of the Big Picture.

Jen gave a brief summary of the Big Picture process including some of the best practice used. There then followed a brief session of questions from Marcus and from the floor. Jen and Viv both spoke to the questions that were asked.

Brenda Frisk

Brenda summarised her vision of what she called “visual knowledge” and its place in 2010. She spoke of the need to reduce the barriers that may exist between people and their use of available technology, and also of the need that industry has to learn to manage technology. She posited that teenagers lose trust and respect for people in industry when they see that they do not have skills to use the technology effectively.

Brenda spoke of tacit knowledge, implicit knowledge and cultural knowledge and their use to the people employed in a company. She emphasised the need to have online portals for children to access at any time of the day.

She spoke of the frustrations that an organisation has in finding and in accessing data with technology and that there was a need to have technology built for people, not just for the technologists to use. Its property and function need to be relevant, evidential, contextual, credible and collaborative.

Brenda spoke of two important reports, the Horizon Report and Learning Powered by Technology, and summarised some of the key elements brought out in these. She then spoke further on visual knowledge and explained and demonstrated how 3D (stereoscopic) visualisation could give a better perspective in viewing machines and other structures in context.

Hine Waitere

Hine introduced herself from her tribal background, then spoke of ako, a pedagogical concept that encompasses both teaching and learning as parts of the same process. She illustrated how ako had been brought out in the Forum with reference to those presenters who had told of their experiences in learning (and teaching) during their presentations, and the stories they told.

She spoke of Māori carvings and tukutuku and how these also have stories to tell. They are different forms of literacies. Hine spoke of her appreciation of landscape but also recognised that there was much there she did not understand.

Hine read the story, Butterflies, by Patricia Grace, depicting ‘difference’ without a need for that difference to be fixed. She went to the heart of this idea by referring to how the grandfather did not correct the teacher, but simply explained where she was at.

She also illustrated how teachers have power and authority to direct ‘values’. She asked,

“What are the values that lie at the core of our (teaching) practice?”

She then talked about the tail of young learners who struggle with their ‘education’, listing the 5 Ds:

Deficit
Deprivation
Disadvantage
Difference
Diversity.

Learning, Literacy and Learner Skill

This year, the New Zealand Ministry of Education displayed a list of terms in a draft instruction sheet for learners of Chemistry.

The proposal is that page 3, labelled for student use, may assist learners to reach the standard and achieve a rudimentary qualification in secondary education (NCEA Level 1).

Learners at this level must have a “comprehensive understanding” of aspects of basic Science. Here’s a sentence from the draft sheet:

A comprehensive understanding means you are able to link ideas to integrate the relevant chemistry through elaborating, justifying, relating, evaluating, comparing and contrasting, or analysing.

The new Bloom’s Taxonomy, a tool for teachers, lists the same and similar terms as are in the sentence shown above. It is understood, however, that teachers using Bloom’s taxonomy are either familiar with the meanings of the terms or have the initiative and required education to find out about these for themselves.

Terms like justifying and evaluating are not easy to define clearly, even for some teachers. Most teachers do not draw a clear distinction between the processing skills of contrasting and comparing, say.

Yet these are just a few of the difficult terms that are found in a draft instruction to NCEA Level 1 learners.

As teachers, of course, we must teach/coach/train our learners to be able to recognise the difference between such terms as contrasting and comparing. The learner needs to be introduced to what each of these analysis processes has to offer.

Why do we end up asking kids to get their head round the lingo that teachers may well have difficulty grappling with? I wonder if this intellectuality is really beyond the stage that most NCEA Level 1 learners are at, given that many already have difficulty with literacy at this level.

It seems that responsibility for learning continues to devolve.

It is as if learners are now expected to know the meaning of terms (or at least acknowledge their existence) often before they have the chance to get any real practice in the skills they are the labels for. These are skills that learners may not yet have the developmental ability to permit them to understand.

Elearning? Pedagogy?

Southern Georgia teaching an intermediate session to ISTE members in Second Life

Isn’t it strange that we read, hear, and see a lot about elearning, but we so rarely read, hear and see as much about eteaching?

Pedagogy?

I keep coming back to this topic. It is so vital to everything to do with teaching. The term, and all that it implies, also embraces elearning.

Elearning?

By implication, the focus is on the learner, and this is fine up to a point. But it is as if what goes on in the teaching is silently implied in the word elearning. The teacher has become the silent participant.

Well I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that there is a need for a change in emphasis so that elearning also implies an appropriate involvement by a teacher.

I’m not campaigning for teacher centred learning – not at all.

I’m agitating for pedagogy to return to its rightful place where a teacher is involved in the learning, which includes elearning.

Digital indicator

A simple examination of my blog’s statistics shows that the posts on pedagogy are considerably less popular than posts on learning. Yet they were written with the same passion, care and attention I give to posts on other topics.

My hunch is that for some reason not yet too clear to me, there is less interest in the part played by the teacher than the technology when it comes to elearning.

Interesting, isn’t it?

First posted on Blogger in Middle-earth 11 Feb 2010

What's In A Name?

Courtesy PD Photo.org


A rose by any other name would smell as sweet – William Shakespeare

Evening Standard columnist, Frank Furedi, believes that the educational crisis facing Britain today is in part due to the way objective academic standards are being defined and asserted in the classroom.

His claim is that society seems “to have given up on adult authority and the idea that the person who knows best in the classroom is the teacher.” He believes that “education requires the conscious and regular imposition of adult authority.”

I was reminded of Furedi’s opinion when learning recently of the debate over the move by principals and teachers in some New Zealand primary schools to have pupils call them by first name. Some teachers believe that learners bond better with their teacher when they call them by their first name.

Anthropologist James Urry claims that removing the age-based hierarchy empowers children before they have the social skill to cope with it.

Canterbury College of Education associate dean, Barry Brooker, was reported as saying that using formal titles develops a demarcation between teachers and students that gives teachers the authority to do their jobs properly.

Do teachers need authority to do their jobs properly?

At The Correspondence School of New Zealand (TCS), learners always refer to teachers by first name. When I first took up a teaching post at TCS, this idea was new to me. I’d taught in different secondary schools for many years before then.

In all the schools in Scotland and In New Zealand that I taught in, students called their teachers by their surname: Mr Roberts, Mrs Gill, Miss James, etc.

When I graduated PhD, the principal of the Edinburgh High School
I was teaching in announced to the school that I was to be called
Dr Allan, from now on. I've been addressed as Dr Allan, or Sir, by students in every face-to-face school I’ve taught in since.

But I had no problem when my students called me Ken at TCS.
The policy of the school was that students always referred to teachers by first name.

Other distance education centres do the same. And you know, it seems to work. I find that learners relate to me with at least as much respect as I had earned while teaching in face-to-face schools.

Are face-to-face schools so different that students calling their teachers by first name can damage the potential for effective
student–teacher relationships? What do you think?

Resource Success? It Bears Thinking About!

How do you tell if a learning resource is successful?

You have to use it of course! Or at least, it has to be observed being used by learners who may benefit from it in some way.

But there’s more to it than that . . .

A game-based resource can be seen to be popular and for this it gets a big tick in a check-box.

But does a learning resource need to be popular to be successful?
Does the popular resource assist the learner to meet the target learning objective?

Extensive research on a whole series of resources might throw some light on these questions. But let’s just limit the discussion here to one resource.

How do you know if a learning resource is effective in helping learners reach the objective or objectives the resource was designed to meet?

This needs more than just observation.

Learner focus

Attention must be focused on what the learner has gained by using the resource. This acquisition has to be very specific if the resource is to be regarded as a useful ‘learning object’.

Oops, I’ve used that term!

I know! ’Learning Object’ is not a popular term among some educators. At least the term implies that the resource actually has an objective associated with it. Whether the resource assists learners to meet the objective is quite another matter.

In fact, some very good learning resources are often found to meet objectives that are not necessarily directly related to the objective or objectives that the learners were supposed to be reaching. That’s life! Sometimes it just happens that way.

So how do we know when a resource is meeting its objective?

It’s taken me a few hundred words to get to this nitty-gritty stage.
How do we know the resource is really achieving the learning that was intended to happen?

As obvious though the answer may seem to be, it is often something that’s completely overlooked when a resource has been planned, crafted and produced for learner use.

Follow up

One of the important stages in the development of any course module, or even one of its components, is the time consuming and difficult process of assessing its real worth. It’s one of these stages that teachers and developers would rather not get too far into, for it is both complicated and complex. And it takes a lot of time.

But it is obviously very important.It means that a series of analyses has to be performed involving the learners.

As well, it has to involve a thing called ‘learner assessment’. Oops! Another not too popular term.




That’s right! The learner has to be tested. And this is difficult, for how do we know that the assessment item designed to test learner achievement assesses effectively the objective that it’s meant to?
This brings us more or less back to where we started.

Sorry folks! It’s the dogged chicken and egg story all over again.

Before we can be sure that the assessment item is any use, first it must be tested! And of course, this always means learner involvement.

Compounding problems

We now have learner assessment as well as learning resource design to deal with. It’s a bit like the collective effect of errors, if you’re familiar with how that works.

Small errors that occur at stages of a process tend to be cumulative. They add up to one significant error in the end. Often this error can be big enough to discount the whole process.

Catch my drift?

“What does it all mean then?” you say.

Frankly, it means that teaching and learning is a difficult process to assess. The learning that could possibly take place through the planning, building and subsequent use of a learning resource by learners is actually very difficult to assess.

Can you imagine the tasks involved in checking properly a whole course made up of multiple series of resources?

Time consuming? Yes! This alone is a factor that puts teachers and developers off the whole idea of attempting that all-important final stage of checking to see if it all works.

If you think that building a successful learning resource is a quick and easy thing to do, then maybe you should think again.

Change - A Possible Barrier to Progress

Change has come up a lot in the blogosphere recently.

Andrea Hernandez prompted me to write one of my post-type comments against her recent post on agents of change:

Seeds, Serendipity, Sustainability.

I thank her for the opportunity for that reflection. Part of my comment to her ran something like this:

Always, when I learn about change being brought about, I ask questions. I ask why we are changing and I listen. The reply I get allows me to decide whether the change that's proposed is something I'd support.

If I am confronted with the question, "Don't you support change?" my knee-jerk reaction is always to ask again, "What change or changes am I being asked to support?"

If I get back nothing but an argument on change, I become suspicious that the goal of the agent for change is simply to change, without recourse to why, how, or if a proposed change is for a real benefit.

There is always the possibility that change could mean a retrograde shift - moving back to what was - or moving to situations that are of no real benefit or worse. Yet it is always assumed that 'change' is good and that it means moving forward.

Why do I think like this?

Much of the change that I have been coerced into accepting in education over many years has not been thought through beforehand. It is only years, months or even weeks later, when in hindsight, it's seen that the enacted change was not needed, or was falsely initiated, or that there was a political agenda.

So it was for me with the introduction of unit standards to New Zealand secondary education in the mid-90s and with the introduction of NCEA this century.

When I heard of the proposed introduction of national standards to primary education in New Zealand, I experienced powerful déjà vu.
I had a dizzy sinking feeling, and something inside my head shouted, “Here we go again!”

When I hear John Hattie speak about the introduction of national standards, I think, “John! You’ve got it right mate!”



Video - John Hattie, Education Leaders Forum, Rotorua, October 2009

The Ubiquitous Question - a reflection on learning

“. . . unless you speak up... you will not be learning . . .”
Judy Jacob’s comment on Working With Online Learning Communities

I often wonder if our current education systems drive us to make invalid assumptions about how learning happens. I’m talking about educators here, not necessarily members of their learning communities.

Curious though it may seem, I learnt lots as I bumbled my way through high school. Not because I was especially able or bright.

I had an annoying knack of being outspoken when I couldn’t understand things. I hated not knowing what was going on. I asked questions.

The teaching moment

Fortunately, I had good teachers. They recognised the teaching moments that I presented to them – on a plate. I gained the respect of my teachers, probably solely because of this attribute of asking questions, for I certainly wasn’t a model student.

Good teachers admire learners who ask pertinent questions. It makes them feel wanted. Hence their intolerance of impertinence, I guess.

Asking a question offers a teacher the opportunity to fulfil that so-often-difficult-to-attain goal of the pedagogue. The goal is to teach relevantly. While it’s true that learners tend to engage more in learning when they interact during a ‘lesson’, I’m not so sure that speaking up or even asking a question is necessarily exclusive for learning to occur.

Questions and answers

One dated definition of education is ‘the ability to learn from a book’
(this implies the educated is still learning). You can’t ask a book a question. Today, we like our educated learners to learn from the Internet, using searches, networking and the like.

It’s presumed that these media permit the learner to ask questions. And the belief persists that asking a question – or even just speaking up – is so very necessary for learning to occur.

I’ve always thought of thinking as a stream of thought statements and questions, asked and possibly answered in the mind. My assumption is that a thinker asks questions of herself or himself and that’s what initiates further thinking.

Lying in bed, just awake, on a Saturday morning, having no plan pending for the unfolding day, my thoughts might go something like this:

“Shall I get up now? Or will I just lie here blissfully embalmed in the cosy bedding for half an hour?

I wonder what the weather’s like? Perhaps I could get the garden dug? Or maybe give the shed that coat of paint?

Ah, but isn’t it nice to lie in on a Saturday morning?”

This sort of discourse assists me to learn about how I feel. It can figure how the day that’s just beginning can become a part of my life. So yes, my assumption about asking questions still works. Even if I learn nothing of what’s happening outside my head, I can learn something about myself.

Assumptions on learning

So why do teachers assume that no learning happens without questions being asked? I think they are referring to what I call active questions, spoken or typed in a txt or email, or other such method of communication between two or more people. There is an assumption that the question has to be aired. But I am puzzled at how the idea fits with learning from a book.

It’s a point of view I’ve come across before, that of the lurker who never engages, never interacts and never asks questions. The inference is that the lurker never learns.

This is not the opinion of Nonnecke and Preece, who actually coined the phrase, Silent Participants for learners who lurk. They claim that learning can take place despite no participation from the learner. My own experience aligns with their research findings.

Etienne Wenger refers to community members who do not speak up as Legitimate Peripheral Participants. He recognises that learning happens even if the participation is only peripheral, that is to say the learners don't speak up.

Teaching, learning and assessment

Teachers are geared to assessment. Often they feel compelled to possess written evidence that a learner has reached an objective before they are convinced the objective has actually been learnt.

Assessment is forced participation on the part of the learner. Without engagement at the time of assessment, it could be construed that nothing can be achieved in an assessment test. Yet not achieving is hardy unequivocal evidence that learning hasn’t happened.

A principle upheld by designers of resources for distance learning is that if the student hasn’t been asked a question about a learning objective, and responds with the correct answer, the objective hasn’t been learnt. Prompting the learner to respond in this way gives the teacher an opportunity to record that learning has occurred. It tends to subscribe to the tick-box mentality, but at least it is a recordable event.

Questioning a way to learn

I’m not entirely opposed to the suggestion that questioning is a way to learn. Nor am I questioning the idea that learners will learn nothing if they don’t ask questions. My hunch is that questions are asked in the mind all the time. The trick of learning relevantly lies in asking the right questions.

A student who always has a question, and puts it, will learn. They can ask it out loud or online, to a teacher or to another learner. Or they can ask it in their own mind. As long as the learner keeps asking questions, there will be answers given in return and they can learn from those. This is especially the case if a learner knows a thing or two about metacognition, even if they don't know the word.

Do learners have to ask their questions directly? To a teacher, for instance? Do you think learners will not learn unless they speak up?

Or can they learn without asking questions?

What’s your take on learning and participation?

Binge Thinking

This month, The Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog is to do with New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills.

Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem. Tony Karrer posits, “that there are things that presenters and learners should do to address this.”

Multitasking is binge thinking. It has the potential to distend the capacity of the brain so that normal thinking to do with any one task, including learning, becomes severely impaired. Tony says it all here.

Scott Flansburg is a supreme example of how a person can perform amazing calculative feats. He executes thinking skills that traditionally command extremely high concentration levels and all the thinking power that permits this. His unique ability to close down areas of the brain normally associated with other peripheral tasks makes him a matchless unitasker.

Thinking tires the brain

I am convinced that people often shut down areas of their brains automatically to make it easier to think. For instance, it is now known that when making decisions, the brain’s executive resources can be taxed to an extent that cognitive ability is considerably impaired. To prevent this happening in some situations, fast track routines are adopted.

Too much decision making over a short space of time literally tires the brain. Do people make decisions when attending a presentation? You bet they do, if they make a genuine attempt to learn from it.

PowerPoint and other potential vagaries

So why is it that when the audience is supposedly concentrating on the single task of learning, the presenter insists on giving them a series of tasks to perform synchronously? Cognitive overload associated with the misuse of PowerPoint has become a talking point. It is an issue because it’s real.

Learners well know that when the presenter reads the text from a PowerPoint slide, the best thing to do is to shut the eyes and listen.

So why is the text on the PowerPoint slide in the first place? For the presenter? No! It’s there because the presenter knows nothing about cognitive overload. A better way is for the presenter to shut up and let the learner do his or her own reading.

Take note

Tony refers to backchannel as a distraction for the presenter. I’m not surprised he finds it distracting. It is nevertheless an inevitable activity if learners are engaged in taking notes, by whatever means they use.

Through years at school, university and attending hundreds of seminars since then, I have learnt to take notes while giving nearly full attention to a presentation. It’s one multitasking practice that I’m good at. But not everyone has this skill.

What I’ve found often helps is if the presenter provides printed notes on the PowerPoint bullets – before the presentation. This frees up the brain when it comes to taking notes. I just write my additional notes on the PowerPoint printout.

Cognitive engagement

But there is another aspect to presentation – and that is of intent.

What does the presenter really want the learner to take away from the experience? If the seminar has a sales pitch, it may be better not to dwell too much on the facts and details that a learner may take away.

Research has shown that the verbal content of a presentation, whether in speech or text, is only a small part of the total message conveyed to the attendee. How often has a conference goer raved about a ‘keynote’, reporting that the best thing about the presentation was its entertainment value?

What if the presentation was entirely lacking in entertainment, yet the same factual information was presented? Herein may lie a pedagogical message.

Entertainment provides two important features to the learner. It provides the necessary breaks between learning tasks and prevents the possible onset of cognitive overload brought on through multitasking. It also adds interest and factual significance by association.

A School of the Future?

I believe that education in the future may not be best achieved in schools. However, this post summarises what I think should be the components of an ideal school of the future. It is not a summary of my idea of where education should be going, or how it should be obtained.

Tania Sheko is hosting the 'Green Pen Society' (GPS) writers' club over at Brave New World, for Paul Cornies at quoteflections.

Her topic for October is:

What would your ideal school look like?
Design the school of the future – but do it now!

How could I resist a topic like that?

Having taught in many different schools, and in different countries, I’ve gathered hunches, likes, dislikes and theories that can help me with ideas for the design of the ideal school of the future. It is a difficult task.

A secondary school

The ‘ideal school’ is forever a mythical artefact, for by definition a school has to meet the needs of many. No school can serve completely all learners all of the time.

As well, its situational constraints must necessarily govern the functions that it can deliver and needs to provide.

My ideal school would be a secondary school with a roll of learners from say, ages 12 to 18 years. It will prepare all learners for further learning. It will provide pathways to employment for those learners who, for whatever reason, leave the school to seek employment before having completed all available education levels within the school.

School providers and authorities

Assuming that the school is capable of serving all situational needs of its learners, the first requisite must be that it is affordable.

Fine education costs. We should all know that by now. If it results in overspending, however, then ultimately the future availability of good education within the school will suffer.

For as much as the ideal resources, pedagogies and learning environments are important, and to whatever specification these may adhere to, if they cannot be sustained, or are not seen to be sustainable by the providing authority, they cannot form the components of my ideal school.

Governance

My school will have experienced governance, administered by a necessary board of trustees who genuinely have the future situational needs of the learners at heart. To do this, the governance must have a vision for the big picture of what education should bring to learners in the 21^st century.

Management

Counterpart to governance, the school’s management will likewise have an eagerness to use such teaching structures within the school. There will be commitment to use resources, pedagogies and learning environments that foster teaching and learning that best suit the future needs of learners.

The whole picture

As boring as all of the above may seem, without them no ideal school will succeed. They are integral parts of the whole picture.

The school will have classrooms, workshops, laboratories, a library, recreational areas and halls as fit the needs of its composition. If at all possible, it will have a roll of about 550 learners. From experience this size appears to find the optimum fit when it comes to timetabling and managing resources and courses, especially for the senior learners within the school.

Allocation of classes should aim at an optimum size of 24 learners and a ceiling of 28, with some flexibility within reason. This is an ideal school, so depending on the needs of individual learners there may be a call for smaller class sizes for some groups.

The best fit

I use the term ‘best fit’ on purpose here. Education is a complex thing.
I believe it is impossible to provide every factor that makes for good education, simply because of its complexity. Like other complex systems, however, it should be possible to make a best fit for ongoing situations, within and external to the school, that will be neither static nor exist in a state of equilibrium.

To this end, the learning resources provided in the school must also be capable of adapting rapidly to current changes. Methods used for delivering resources to teachers and learners must likewise be capable of evolving and adapting to suit emergent themes that will trace and follow the development of the immediate society.

A blended learning approach that best utilises the appropriate methods for teaching and learning to fit the learner and topic will be recognised by teachers and teacher management.

Elearning platforms

If an elearning platform must be established within the school, it should be open source. The expense of any commercial elearning platform can so easily preclude further development in platforms other than open source ones, so it is best to adopt open source from the beginning. This frees up finance, much needed within the school, for non-negotiable expenses and specific resources that may have no alternatives.

A stable, generic learner management system should embrace any learning content management system chosen to meet the needs of the school’s resource requirements. Too easily, the maintenance expenses on such systems can get out of hand, ending up like the tail wagging the dog. This is why good governance working closely with good management within the school is so important.

I’m talking in ideal big picture stuff here and purposely not mentioning commercial brands of hardware or software. A school that’s capable of adapting through emerging requirements should not be tied to any specific commercial provider or commodity brand.

And this brings me to a conclusion. The ideal school will need to be mobile, as the movement of a flock of birds. It will shift with the elements, yet remain intact as it moves bodily to meet the varying needs of the ever-changing learners within it.


A Green Pen Society contribution

Is The Whole World Dumbing Down?

A few months ago I read and reviewed Shelley Gare’s book, The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense. I was shaken by the déjà vu I met in every chapter. Her book is a treatise on the evolution and spread of postmodernism.

Recently, while doing my usual reading and follow-ups on matters educational, I stumbled on a brief clip of Branford Marsalis, renowned Jazz musician and educationalist. I admired Marsalis from afar and for many years I’ve appreciated his musicianship.

To hear this iconic, clear-minded musician and teacher talk of his students brought Gare’s almost prophetic words back to me with a vengeance:

Airheads, at their most extreme, can worry only about
themselves and the rest of the world can go to buggery.

Are our learners catching airheadism too?

A Session in Snapshots - Networking and Learning

I had intended that the post Connected World in Second Life would be my last in the series on Second Life (SL) this month. Well, I just have to squeeze in another.

Being a new ISTE member and an avid enthusiast for learning,
I happened to touch down on ISTE Island yesterday and met up with friend and fellow educator, Louise Borgnine.

She was assisting with the first of a series of intermediate sessions for educators in SL facilitated by Southern Georgia.

The objective was to learn how to do things that will enhance teaching presentations in SL. The venue was over at Brahma.

Being new to all of what is SL, and in much need of the associated skills, I accepted Louise’s advice to teleport to the workshop.


The number of attendees was impressive. I must say that I found the facilitators extremely helpful. When I got stuck (and I did!) there was no end of assistance ready at hand. That’s what good keen educators are like I guess. Always ready to help a willing learner.

Something else impressed me, and that was how wonderful it was to arrive at a distant venue, be attending a session with people from different countries, and be greeted with the customary formalities without having to shift out of my ergonomic chair.

Kallan, wearing his ISTE student badge

There were other features that made me feel welcome. It was a participatory session. I was recognised by the facilitator by name, and he acknowledged me being there more than once. That was something special for one who is so new to SL and feeling a bit anonymous.

Then there were the facilitators, among them docent Tuxedo, who was kind and helpful. She was especially helpful when I dropped my laptop and got left behind. Tuxedo helped me pick it all up, and got me started again and following Southern’s instructions.

This was no ordinary workshop, yet it had the presence and feel of a real life workshop.

I learnt a lot. I even got some session notes to take away, as well as a free digital TV presentation screen, which I managed to get working.

“What’s with SL?” I hear my readers say. What’s possessed Blogger in Middle-earth to let himself be led astray by all this virtual reality stuff?
I read some comments to that effect on a post only a day or so ago.

No. I don’t think I’m being led astray here. It is the reality of virtual conferencing – no less contrived than video conferencing, with a lot more freedom to move about and participate.

We had a participatory session at the end when Southern rallied us to flex our new-learnt skills in a game of look and see – an active finish to a rigourous session in using the camera facility in SL.

A transparent dice box, suspended in mid virtual space, rolled the dice for us to observe and call. It wasn’t easy, for we had to navigate our cameras in which ever direction was called, to declare the numbers on the dice. It was fun – as much fun as I have had at many well run training sessions in real life.


Next day, I dropped into the ISTE Conference Centre to be greeted yet again with a welcoming smile, this time from docent Mo Hax. He was kind enough to chat and pass on to me his useful site on SL.

These people are volunteers. They are trained educators and they are teaching their hearts out in SL. I might just drop in on another session some time soon. What do you reckon?

related posts - > ( 6 ) ( 5 ) ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )

Elearner Motivation and Support

Learner motivation differs in each learner according to circumstance. Yet a common factor shared by many elearners, of all ages, is their isolation.

This year, I feel privileged to have a daughter who is studying in her first year of a BA course in Fine Art at AUT. I’m equally as fortunate to also watch her younger sister pilot her way through her first examinable year at High School.

The role of the parent

My daughters are capable learners, but I’m always aware of the roles my wife and I play in providing necessary support with their study.

As parents and supervisors, we are appreciative spectators, sounding boards, mentors, fund managers and sometimes even punch-pillows, for we love our daughters dearly.

Hannah is hostelling in Auckland; her family lives in Wellington. The presence of the Internet and reliable mobile phone reception permit a free flow of communication which we take advantage of every day. Despite the 500 kilometres between us, these digital links can close the distance, effectively at times to within a few centimetres.

Motivation and support

While adult learners often have a maturity that permits a greater focus on engagement, some can find it just as difficult to knuckle down to study as do teenagers. Elearners need support, and not only from their learning resources or their teachers.

A solo mother can find her motivation for learning academic skills dulled through the importance of her necessary child-care responsibilities.

A mother, who has a partner who may be less committed to her study, can meet similar snags to her motivation.

In much the same way as the younger learner needs support from parents or caregivers, a learner who is in a relationship needs support from his or her partner.

The eteacher may well be aware of circumstances where an elearner’s home lacks necessary study support. But what can a teacher do about such a situation so that there is benefit to the learner?

Teacher-caregiver support

Relationships between the teacher and the learner's caregiver can play an important part in assisting home support. Caregivers are not always aware of the needs of the learner. For instance, aspects such as the need for access to a computer and other study requisites may not be understood.

Communication between teacher and caregiver can often help solve learner difficulties. But sometimes it is as demanding for the teacher to engage the supervisor as it is to engage the learner.

How on earth do eteachers go about tackling this challenging task?

Connected World in Second Life

Maka, Huntress and Kallan enjoying a night out dancing

This is the last of a series of September posts summarising some of what I’ve learnt while looking around Second Life (SL).

Exploring SL from the elearning perspective, there is a range of features that facilitate communication, making it an accessible networking tool.

Here are the features I’ve found most useful during the 3 weeks I have been exploring in SL:

Local chat and voice

This feature provides synchronous text or voice communication. In local text chat, selecting the range of communication provides a means of control over the ‘loudness’ of the chat.

Normal chat can be ‘heard’ within a virtual range of 20 m from the participant’s avatar. A whisper cuts the range to 10 m, whereas a shout extends it to 100 m (SL).

Instant Message (IM)

Instant Messaging provides a direct means to communicate across SL between two avatars. This is useful if there's a need for close communication between two avatars when in company. It has global range in SL and permits avatars to chat asychronously if need be.

Avatar profile


There are often delays in chat when avatars meet for the first time. This is mainly due to the customary practice of mutual avatar profile checking during an initial conversation.

There are sections or tabs in the avatar profile where useful information can be put by the avatar’s owner.

Since most of this added content is viewable by others, it pays to give careful thought to what’s entered that is viewable by the 'public'. It can be helpful to those you meet and save a lot of misunderstanding.

Drop-box transfer between inventories


Each avatar has its own Inventory – an accumulated ordered series of virtual commodities. These can be images (Textures), text files (Notecards) and sound files (Sounds) or more particularly .wav files and other items such as scripted objects that have specific functions in SL.


A simple click-and-drag from the inventory of the giver to the drop-box of the recipient permits a copy of the item to be transferred across SL.

Media Browser


A built in browser provides ready access to the Internet direct from SL. As well, the Media Browser can be set so that the browser on the user's PC opens by default. I found this a useful function as it permitted a separate browser window to be opened on the screen giving greater flexibility of use.

Ratings in SL

On 15 September 2009, Linden Lab successfully separated the "adult content" from the general grid. This is a welcome move, for business people and educators using SL, towards a safer and pleasanter environment. It is also a good move for the reputation of Second Life.