For the second year in a row now, I am currently getting students across four classes enrolled in Year 11 & 12 Career & Enterprise (a digital literacy focused course I coordinate at our school) to design their own mid-year test, complete with answers. This is what happens:

Students are asked to come up with three types of questions for the test – true/false, multiple choice, and short answer. They can write as many questions as they like, using the material from the Moodle course we share across the four classes. In the Moodle forum, they state the question, write possible answers, highlight the correct answer (T/F, Multiple Choice) or provide the briefest of hints in the case of short answer questions.

Student have to not only know the content but consider the type, the level and appropriateness of the questions, then shape them as best as they can so they can be included in the test. After a period or two of creating question, discussing, modelling and ‘over the shoulder’ help, I pick the best range of 10 – 15 T/F, 15 -20 M/C and 5 – 8 S/A student-designed questions.

At all times, all questions and answers from which the test is drawn are public so everyone can see, share and work alone or together. Students sit a test using a quiz in Moodle (see 2 Minute Moodles for how-to) and get instant feedback at the end with some follow up later.

The idea is that the more you contribute and share, the greater the number of questions you will know in a test, thus increasing the chance of getting a better grade. But the ‘better grades’ incentive is just the surface and on the surface – it may even sound dangerously close to ‘grade inflation’.

Deep inside this exercise is the idea of a small community deciding ‘what is important? (and therefore should be checked for understanding)’ As noted, grades are the surface and one not to be dismissed either. When you dig deeper, students want their question to be in the test, and not only because they know the answer to it but because they want to contribute.

On the surface of it and in edu-speak, it is about metacognition and learning. Students certainly do all that. Deeper though, it is a about participation and confidence and opportunity to participate and shape something that has traditionally been the domain of ‘those who know’ (teachers) as opposed to ‘those who don’t know and need to be taught’ (students). Yes, I still pick the questions but that’s another story…

On the surface of it, a kid could loaf, wait for everyone else to do their questions, read them, learn the answers and then blitz the test with 100%. “Not educationally valid and sound’ some may argue. In a ‘traditional’ understanding of assessment and ‘testing’ they may even be right.

But then I ask students ‘if everyone thought that way, what would happen?’ The follow up is ‘how would other members of the community who have contributed feel about you simply sucking off them? Once or twice may be OK but how about regularly? Who is the real sucker here anyway? What do you think about it?

I have had only a handful of ‘loafers’ over the last couple of years (all normal and expected anyway) but no one has ever flatly refused to participate. If anything, some students don’t quite know what to do since they have never been asked to do such a thing in the past.

If we had gone the ‘traditional’ way I know for sure that just about all of them would loaf, switch-off, expect to do the minimum then pass the test with minimum (or even fail).

A few days ago, I sent out a tweet: Don’t bother changing the [official] curriculum – change the hidden one, it’s more powerful anyway (if new to the concept of hidden curriculum, a link to Wikipedia will get you started then meander from there).

Our test-with-a-twist lies within the official curriculum but it starts to chip away at the hidden curriculum. And it is the hidden one that so often, so insidiously and so powerfully stratifies these students into what they are expected to be and do by virtue of being a member of this particular school community and the community it is situated within. Hence my line about diverting the effort into something that matters (more)…

Or as a dear friend of mine would say: “I don’t teach a subject. I teach them how to live a life. I use a subject to do that.”

There are some pretty staggering stats in this presentation about social media. It is aimed at marketing people but since education and marketing share so many cultural spaces, its impact on education is not be discounted.

It is simply how, more and more, people live their lives.

I like social media and ‘push (for) it’ with my students and colleagues for one reason (well, at least by far the biggest!) – it is a chance for more kids to be heard & considered ‘educated’, not asked ‘which school do you go to’, only to be ranked at 20 paces.

The potential is there, the beginnings are there. “Full duplex” as the slideshow states. Nobody knows or cares online what school you go to or how rich your daddy is if you produce useful content, solve problems, create a network by being helpful to and with others. Still think this is all a passing fad?

The power of schools to assign credentials of ‘educated’ and ‘not educated’ may not be eternal…

This morning, I summarised the gist of Ira Socol’s excellent (as always) post titled “Social change and American school” with the following tweet: “We naively charge schools to ‘change the world’ but fail to change basic idea about schools. Right?” Ira agreed.

Here is a my response in little more than 140 characters…

For many years, we have continued to bamboozle students, ourselves, parents and the rest of the society with edu-trivia (class sizes, scheduling, constant assessment and curriculum changes …). We have increasingly separated education from the society it operates within by way of growing specialisation, technicality and digression into what are seen as strictly ‘educational’ issues. I am continuously amazed by the sheer amount and voracity of intellectual effort and energy (translate – opportunity cost) spent on it. It is truly baffling.

Because we don’t really know what schooling stands for, we tend to charge schools with awesome and often conflicting responsibilities. We are asked to babysit and discipline, encourage independence while constantly telling students what to do, develop deep thinkers but get them to change classes and focus on something else when the bell sounds, rote learn ‘tradition’ but develop critical thinking, develop a sense of community but at all times know where they rank and more. All of this of course comes on top of adding, cooking, sewing, dancing, using computers responsibly, painting, woodworking, working out relationships etc…

Welcome to edu-panacea, the magic cure-all. “This should be a part of school curriculum” I often hear various interest groups sprouting on the radio. Sounds familiar?

Then, as Ira points out, “when this absurd plan inevitably fails, we blame our teachers, our administrators, our parents, our students, and often, we begin to argue that only privatization can solve this.”

If education is considered a ‘powerful shaper of our society’ (throw in everything from solving poverty to solving digital divide as Ira points out) why don’t we ask more often: “What sort of society do we want? How does schooling fit into this?”

A society where only a few can truly be educated and the rest socialized and distracted to keep in peace? Yes/No? Checked your school/classroom behaviour management strategies lately? I don’t want to presume too much here but if you are feeling ‘bad’ right now – don’t, you probably had a lot to ‘get through’ that day… I know I do that, often.

Or do you want a society where everyone is capable of being educated and living a free and responsible life, where they are free to take risks and decide their life chances not just tinker with trivial life choices set out for them as ‘destiny’. Are you teaching for such a society? Can’t but would like to? Fancy dreams? I know that too …

Which of these two oppositional views are you closer to. What are doing about enacting them? Why (not)?

Education has the enormous power of achieving amazing success and at the same time induce fear. Did you know it was once illegal to teach slaves how to read and write? Ever wonder why? What is illegal today? Not to teach to the exam?

I dare you bring this up at the next staff meeting. Even if you do, I think the intended dialogue would quickly digress into discussion of technical problems and bureaucratic accountability.

I fear that we as educators have been reduced to technical experts armed with strategies to ‘deliver education’ dictated to us by the ebb and flow of cultural, political and economic forces.

Let’s pull back a little from negotiating edu-trivia and negotiate something that will really matter 30 years after the senior school ball.

Oh, and please read Ira’s post, he tells things better than me. Gotta go to class, the bell has just rung … (*salivating, salivating*)

Elise is a dear colleague. She has been teaching (only) for two years (English and ESL courses) and is one of those teachers that make me want to push for some kind of merit system of pay and/or recognition. I could go on about Elise here but suffice to say – she is an absolutely brilliant teacher in many, many ways. Most of all, she respects and believes in kids she teaches.

During a conversation this afternoon, she told me a story how a student (often labelled by others as a ‘troublemaker’, ‘tough to teach’ … you know those, right?) challenged a poorly prepared and rude practicum teacher she had recently supervised. Here is the scene and the lines (abbreviated but the gist is there):

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I have been thinking about and scouring the net for ‘best’ models of trying to get teachers to use Moodle for some time. I have tried a few things myself with mixed success until the most obvious thing hit me.

There are gigabytes of info on ‘growing gap between the teachers and students in using technology’. And what do we mostly do? We get ‘experts’ (adults) and fellow teachers teaching the newbies, reluctant or otherwise. Yet the biggest resource and pool of experts sits right in front of our nose – our students!

Talk about focusing on solutions not the problem…

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And that’s BC!

Recently, I have replied to a few posts by fellow bloggers with what may have seemed a bit negative attitude towards the marriage of digital technology and education (I use the word digital because chalk was once called a ‘technology’, now it’s … just chalk).

Here is the gist of my thoughts as posted on Jez Cope’s blog post titled Why use technology in teaching? (see some interesting links from comments!). Time to come clean, you be the judge:

[Why use technology in teaching?] For my 2c – it is because with technology (by that I mean digital technology you and I are using right now) we can develop not just “21st century skills” (whatever that means because we don’t exactly know how the century is going to turn out do we…) but “4th century BC” skills [corrected ☺] that some of the old Greek wise heads were talking about – democracy, participation, freedom of expression & thought, active citizenship … you know those pesky old things that never seemed to have gone out of fashion with thoughtful people [and for which millions have thought about, enacted, fought and died for over centuries].

As long as technology is used to those goals it is a professional travesty not to consider it in education. Sadly, we are often more focused on the science of technology (the ‘best version’ or ‘latest tool’ or ‘most efficient system’) to kinda forget the massive opportunity to change not what and how we know, teach & learn but what we are and become. That’s the ball game for me!

Epistemology to ontology. Knowing to being. If it sounds a bit abstract, “high & mighty” – well, it is. But it is a direction, a purpose, a possible place to ‘come home’ to. I don’t think about it all the time, just like I don’t think about my children every single moment. But I do and like to care about it.

What effects is this ever-changing chatter of class sizes, rostering, assessment accuracy, not to mention instructional technology, going to have for what we and those we interact with want to be(come) – no, I don’t mean a career.

Put another way: “What is this going to make out of us and the kids we teach?” Simply collecting and amassing the arsenal of ‘technologies and strategies’ without really answering this question is like dressing all up with nowhere to go.

We should take technology for granted but we definitely should not take technology as ‘good’ for granted. Never forget that not long ago, some of the world’s most creative, intelligent and passionate people collaborated and used the cutting edge technology to create a …. nuclear bomb.

While hugely important, the question “can we teach and learn better with technology” must always be preceded, or at least tempered with, “can we be better human beings with and because of technology”?

I reckon we can, time will tell.

PS Just as I posted this I read a story about China blocking social networking sites – ’nuff said!

This is an attempt to organise many thoughts after spending an amazing weekend with a number of passionate and wise ‘ed-tech’ people at and after the SICTAS symposium in Sydney last weekend.

It may have been an ‘echo chamber’ a little at times but…it felt wonderful. The gathering was passionate, informed, engaging, motivating and hopefully fruitful when our recommendations come to the top echelons of public service in Canberra. A big public thank you goes to people at Education.au for pulling it all together.

But there were some curious moments and statements that made me think. Read the rest of this entry »

Survived the two days of ‘teacher development’ before the students fill the classroom on Monday!

The standard PowerPoint overkill on compliance, procedures, initiatives, scores etc breached just about every rule of good communication, so I decided to cut my presentation from 30-45 minute mix of ‘tech stuff’ and animation (see the intended icebreaker monkeys below, text here) to a very brief 10 minute stand-up address. Even though a bride-to-be upstaged my presentation (no kidding, she walked in about 2 minutes into it and had everyone admiring her dress…she did look stunning, best wishes!), I think I managed to sow a few seeds without those glazed looks on people’s faces.

I flagged the running and the format of regular workshops on the use of technology in class but I didn’t tell staff what the workshops will be on. Moodle is probably a gimmie, but the rest….?
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This morning I found out that ‘Human’ came second in the “Best New Blog” category at the 2008 Edublogs Awards. The quick, competitive part of me went “oh bugger, a handful of votes and I’d have won it” but then the wiser part of me thanked again, firstly the thousands (!) of people who have taken their time to read and engage with my blog since May this year, secondly a number of people around the world who nominated ‘Human’ for 2008 Eddie and thirdly, the people who clicked next to my blog’s name on the voting card. It really is an honour.

Is this starting to sound like “show-me-a-good-loser-and-I’ll-show-you-a-loser” script right now? Someone bitter to have come second going all phoney philosophical? Not quite I’d say…

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Gazump. A situation in which the price for real estate or land is raised to a higher price than what was previously verbally agreed upon.* (1)

This week I lost half of my job. The half I formally started this year and was promised to go for another year, the half that gave me a chance to begin to wisen up on ICT, how to ‘infect’ people with enthusiasm for the impact and potential of ICT, the half that gave birth to Moodle and so many other valuable things at our school that have made an impact on the entire school community. Like many of my colleagues working for the same employer (largest in our State…have a guess), I was asked at the start of this job to come up with ways to better engage teachers and students with ICT in ways that are relevant and specific to the context of our school. A number of wonderful colleagues and myself worked hard to do just that this year, only to be…

gazumped!

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