Ulearn Roundup

The best thing about Ulearn for me this year was that feeling of a community working together.
Educators are a friendly bunch and there were great moments when the people around breakout tables 
added to and complimented what the Presenters had to say and do. 

Facilitators

Facilitators like Mark Osborne (http://theopensourceschool.blogspot.co.nz/ http://osborne.kiwi.nz/) and Amanda Signal (http://heymilly.blogspot.co.nz/) had alot of involvement from the teachers attending their workshops. 

In Mark's workshop he used  a collection of what research says improves learning. I like the simplicity of this idea with the effect size stripped away but how to be effective left. 

My "to do" from Mark's workshop is to make these visible somewhere in my learning environment and to try to make this a "theory in action" rather than an "espoused theory."


 


Amanda was working with a large group of teachers using the animation programme scratch. When I came into the room every one was hard at learning and when I consider the collection of  the effective above Amanda's workshop was a great example of many of these theories in action. 

• Working at their own pace
• Creating and using worked examples
• Learning co-operatively
• Teaching each other skills
• Guided and independent practice etc

Amanda had a great site she used with some starter tasks (or fun in other words.) https://sites.google.com/site/ulearnscratch/

I have had and seen alot of super learning using Scratch and Amanda's wasn't the only session looking at scratch unfortunately I missed Bob Bottomley's one but am pleased to see people getting in behind the kind of learning Scratch promotes, at Ulearn.

My "to do" from Amanda's workshop is to work with scratchers again at my school this term and to connect with the other educators scratching at learning.

Bob Botto

What we measure

http://twitter.com/madmacnz/status/359064338281160704/photo/1

Characteristics of Learning

Reflecting on the Term just been I have collected a few pictures that remind me of the learning that took place. To go with this are some ideas of mine and others that I see as important in getting to the learning.

“We need to shift from a focus on’Engagement’ to focusing on ‘Empowerment.’ David Jakes

“The person who does the work is the person who does the learning.”

Facilitating is making sure the things for the learning are there and then standing back as a prompter provoker.

When we work without a recipe we learn to cook. Sometimes when work with one we only learn how to follow instructions.

If creating is what leads to learning, then learners need tools that empower them to accomplish that creating.

The Reuseversity

Teachers are innovators and combiners of things. A colleauge Elliot Tiffany has combined university with Reusing to create the reusiversity in which his students are getting great qualifications. First let's have a look at some of the outcomes for his students. Below that Elliot has kindly offered to share his ideas with others. We have included a sample of the challenge and a post-it note that may help teachers ans student make the most of the making.

A few projects 

Jared's Pallet bike rack

Here is a sample off the Certificate level Challenge

To make it a success we learnt a few things that might help.

Reuseversity by davein2it

The 100 Mile Food challenge

Students in 6LH at Southwell School are looking to meet a 100 mile food challenge. We are doing this as part of an inquiry into sustainability. The first step for us was to look at the idea of what the 100 mile challenge was and what was important about it. We watched the two videos below and recorded what we thought were the main ideas that they were discussing. 



Our Thinking is the main ideas in a 100 mile food challenge are:

• We need to Growing food and ingredients
• Encourage people to only use local
• Changing what people eat
• Eat Certain foods at certain times when the season is right
• Take your food seriously
• Try to reduce your carbon footprint
• We need to know where our food comes from !

So where is 100 miles from Hamilton?

We used this tool to make radius of 160 km out from Hamilton.

http://obeattie.github.io/gmaps-radius/

Next we started to put locations on the map where food is produced.

Reflection Scratch

Milan was able to explain reflection in 180 degrees pretty well after
programming a version of the pong game you can try it at this link start.

Below is Milan's reflection tutorial.


Learn more about this project

Cyber smart