Key Note: Scott McLeod
Information oriented segments of society are being destroyed by our disruptive innovations. They need to make enormous shifts in the way they operate in order to survive this revolution. Schools are information centres - they will also need to change.
Average blue collar jobs are often routine - mundane and repetitive. Anything requiring data entry, finances etc. Some jobs though require the worker to be right there (location specific) - eg: hairdresser, bus driver.
Low, no or semi skilled jobs are disappearing. Manual labour that is not location dependent is disappearing. Routine cognitive work is disappearing. Critical thinking, adaptive cognitive work is increasing.
Are we preparing our students for the next half century and not the last half century?
We need to 'live above the red line' more often in schools. This means living in the upper end of Blooms more often everyday to engage and motivate our kids and teach them relevant skills.
What does this mean for me?
When planning activities I need to have the higher end of Blooms at the forefront of my mind. I often do this in maths but I need to bring those higher level skills to bear in all areas, particularly literacy and inquiry.
I need to strive to set up a problem solving ethos in my class. Perhaps I can do this by 'withdrawing' myself. I know Nikki does this well. She often organises her class and routines so that her interventions in learning and behaviour are reduced and children are forced to problem solve and be independent.
What do kids still need to memorise? Basic facts, sight words (children cannot use many of these new technologies if they can't read or write well. Search engines are not intelligent sources of information and accuracy in meaning and spelling is becoming MORE important not less important.
What does this mean for me?
I need to explicitly explain to my children, using 21st Century contexts or examples, why I believe accuracy is important. I need to show them that if they don't learn how to spell or be accurate in what they mean, then the information is NOT easy to find in amongst the millions of sources out there.
I need to show them how to do 'phrasal searching' on the internet so that they can hone their search to find EXACTLY what they need and mean.
What happens to our credentialing system when a person can blog and SHOW exactly what they can do for themselves?
When will we focus less on safe and controlled use and more on 'empowered' use?
What does this mean for me?
I don't teach my students about internet safety. I have left it up to parents and home but, in fact, I NEED to have safe internet use embedded into my programme. I could use my blog time for this. Some home learning blog activities could also be centred around this - to encourage parents and children to discuss how they use internet together. I really want to get a good student/parent/teacher triangle going this year through my class blog.
Am I intentionally and explicitly teaching and modelling these new literacies?
What percentage of my job requires me, the human being? How much could be replaced by software?
How long a day do my students live in a technology rich, 21st century environment? My students probably spend about half an hour a day (if they are lucky) using technology such as cameras, computers, radios, etc.
What does this mean for me?
I could introduce more opportunities for use of ITC in my literacy blocks.
- A camera based activity in reading / writing / maths that chn can choose to do during rotations.
- A 'Become a teacher' station using microphones or recorders of some sort (eg voicethread) where children can explain what they are learning and how to do a maths strategy or reading strategy. I would need to give children my email address as they are unable at this point to change items on our blog or add items to our blog.
- It would be neat to allow children to become authors of our blog. Perhaps it would allow me more opportunities to give real time examples of why accuracy and thought are required when publishing for an audience.
Workshop: Questioning (Learner questioning NOT teacher questioning)
When teachers question they are probing to find out where someone stands or to assess them.
2 types of questions
- Expressed questions – asked, used as a tool to gain information. To gain information that will assist our thinking
- Unexpressed questions – not as conscious of these, process for thinking, to guide thinking – the very essence of thinking. The act of cognition has questions as its core.
Thinking is when you talk to yourself and your mouth stays shut. De Bono
Thinking is a process of asking and answering questions we ask in our head.
We don’t have direct access to the unexpressed questions but we have access to the communicated questions. If we can alter and improve quality of those questions then perhaps the impact will be positive on the unexpressed questions.
IS questioning really our most important intellectual tool?
What are our intellectual tools?
· Comprehending, summarising
· Deducting
· Reasoning
· Assessing
· Inferring
· Clarifying, etc…
Asking the RIGHT questions is important.
Are we spending enough time on questioning?
Do I create an environment in my classroom that does not foster question asking?
Who asks the most questions in a classroom? Me!
What does this mean for me?
I need to be aware of the way I respond to ALL questions. Not just learning questions but any questions at all. I need to be aware of my body language, the words I use to answer questions. Perhaps I need to 'stop and think' before responding to even simple questions, until I have better control and my reaction is not to squash.
Strategies to foster Questioning:
- Positive response / signal to questions. Watch for negative body language for negative responses!
- Encourage and foster question asking. Give them time to ask questions and give them time to do the thinking. Wonder walls for ‘non-relevant’ questions. COME BACK TO THEM!
- Use a wonder wall or chart
- Understand the importance of questions.
- Be prepared to give questions time.
- Don’t play ‘the game of school’. Use real needs, assist students to identify their information needs.
- Use identified to craft questions. Look at the scenario, context etc. Get chn to identify what they need to know and write those out as a whole sentence. Then take those statements and convert them as needed to questions to drive the inquiry.
- Support student to re construct questions that don’t work.
- Model and support persistence in question asking (99% of what we learn comes from modelling)
- Answer questions as they are asked. Support students to self evaluate and rephrase poor qs
- Support students to identify
- Underline key words, circle key phrases.
Core questioning Skills
- · Identify the need or problem.
- · Identify the relevant contextual vocabulary.
- · Ask a range of relevant questions.
- · Take the questions to a variety of appropriate sources.
- · Persist, editing questions as necessary until I get the needed information
What is a good question?
- It is relevant
- Gets you the information that is needed ( regardless of whether it is open/closed)
- Can be taken to both intelligent and non-intelligent sources (eg: Search engines)
Poor Question Examples
Where can I find it? ‘It’ shows that there is context missing
What skills do I need? context missing
How can I get there? Missing context, location and mode of transport. All 3 of which could change the answer.
We often ask poor questions and get away with it because those involved know what the context is, thus we often model poor questions.
By answering poor questions instead of teaching students to ask better ones we also promote poor questions.
“Did that answer give you what you needed?” is a powerful tool for modelling to children what a ‘good’ or bad question is.
Example Task
What does this mean for me?
I don't like the way my inquiry planning takes place right now. I feel it is direction-less and often this causes my inquiries to stutter and stumble along.
I know the idea is that the 'Hook' at the start of the inquiry should be treated as an 'immersion phase' to expose children to the breadth of the topic and encourage them to find an area of interest and discover what they don't know yet, but I have failed to carry this Hook phase out effectively in any inquiry.
The next time our team plans I need to focus my initial energy on creating a FANTASTICLY rich, varied and exciting Hook phase. I need to get past the idea that a Hook is 'one exciting event' to kick start our learning. I no longer believe that that works. It doesn't allow every child to climb aboard.
I could ask my students what sort of activities they would like to do in their Hook. This also would begin to indicate to me what misconceptions or understandings my students have about the context before the unit even begins.
My next unit needs to have a rich task that we are aiming to achieve right from the start. This needs to be created AFTER the Hook stage, once my students have begun to show an interest in a particular area.
Having a task will help me 'funnel' the inquiry and direct it by narrowing down and narrowing down the really important information. We will discover a lot of information and thus learn the the important life skills of information finding, sorting and processing. Some of the information we find will be untrue and not relevant to the problem thus teaching the skills of triangulation, validating information and decision making about what is actually relevant and usable. Slowly we will pass through our inquiry process getting ever nearer to being ready to carry out our Rich Task. The important part of an inquiry is NOT the Celebration of the Found Out but the Celebration of the Understood. The only way for children to show how they UNDERSTAND what they have learnt is to APPLY the relevant information and skills to solve the problem.
I am excited about this! I hope it helps me plan and carry out much more effective inquiries.
Watch this space.
Don’t teach chn to type the whole question into the search bar.
Breakout 2: Trevor Bond - Forget Inquiry. It's About Good Learning
There are 2 types of inquiry:
- The Celebration of the Found Out - where children go out, find out a whole lot of information about a topic and then make a poster or PowerPoint to present to an audience. There is a place for these types of inquiry - they teach information finding but they don't necessarily encourage application or learning. These projects can be teacher driven, negotiated or child chosen but they are still low level inquiries.
- The Celebration of the Understood - where the inquiry culminates in an activity or task that demonstrates the application of the skills and information learnt and practised during the 'finding out and exploring stage of the inquiry.
What does this mean for me?
This workshop has given me some ideas about the way I structure my own class inquiries (and teacher inquiries). For my own sake, the idea that I'm aiming for a rich task to be completed at the end helps enormously to direct my inquiry set up. It gives me AND MY STUDENTS a purpose. I think this Rich task should be carefully crafted by an adult with knowledge and experience and wisdom after the Hook phase of our inquiry, after children have indicated some interest through questions. Questions indicate when we realise that we have a deficit of information. The activity or task needs to be carefully crafted so that it draws out the skills and learning I want my students to have achieved.
Questions asked during the Hook phase SHOULD DRIVE THE INQUIRY FOCUS. More questions will come up later but those first questions are very important.
I worry that we don't have a clear idea about what skills we are wanting children to achieve during an inquiry. Sometimes our inquiry feels like a 'tick the box' coverage exercise. "Have we covered all the key competencies? Have we covered all the strands?" This workshop has given me a different perspective.
Key Competencies
These ARE NOT STAND ALONE!!! The key competencies SHOULD BE TAUGHT DUALLY at the very least. A better way to plan is to choose some CROSS-COMPETENCY skills and attitudes that will fit into the inquiry. Thus you are covering all the key competencies as they are needed, in authentic contexts.
No other key competency can be done without 'Thinking'.
Managing Self and Relating to Others are impossible to separate.
