Learning @ School

Feedback to Change

Cheryl Doig workshop at 1@s 2009

What I thought after workshop.

• Student feedback is important for improving practice
• Co-constructed classrooms will be more co-operative
• Norms establishment is critical to class establishment
• This high level of student voice requires community support and awareness
• Difficult students require management strategies beyond student voice eg community and school voice
• If we ask for student voice we must acknowledge it and act react so that students are sure this has been heard
• We are entitled not to agree with student voice.
  

Notes from Workshop

Looking at engagement and examples of it. Cheryl has as many ?s as answers. Students can feel different and isolated at school because they are away from technology.

Students working together create a living breathing work. Combining Skype and Google docs for example. My belief is that literacy and communications skills will thrive in this environment

We discussed "Is full student engagement needed for learning." Four of us thought no we can multi-task. There are assume potions on beliefs we have about oar students experience. These do not always play out look at Sally Boyd's research at NZCER. United Kingdom group has placed student involvement into sitting, crawling, walking and Running. National College of School Leadership http://www.thinkbeyond.co.nz/assets/documents/Doig_SelfMan.pdf

Kelly Hines has asked students to keep feeding back to her. showing the students you will follow up on things is important.

Strategy One

Use student feedback to find out positives and areas for change.

Strategy two

Build driving forces reduce inhibiting forces.

Cheryl's wet-paint wiki on

community engagement.

Why Blog? What Blog? How Blog?

Classblogs From Hamilton, NZ and Australia

Two classes from Southwell are going to look some class blogs

Learning intentions:
To be able to talk about blogging and posting on the internet with increased understanding of Layout, Use of Language, Formatting of text and connecting.

Make a comment on one of the blogs.
Make a post on either

• Layout Design
• Use of Language
• Formatting

or

• Connecting

Blogs we will visit

http://ffis.blogspot.com/ - Room 19 Fairfield Intermediate
http://melvilleroom8.blogspot.com/ -Mellville intermediate
http://room9nelsoncentral2008.blogspot.com/ - Room 9 Nelson
http://kpetv.blogspot.com/ - Pt England
http://la20.learnerblogs.org/ - Austrailian blog

Having looked at the blogs we will make one comment on a posting of interest.

The ????? we will address.










Formatting of Text
What do we think the most important elements of formatting text are while blogging?
Connecting
How do people connect to and from blogs?
What are our ideas for promoting a blog?
Language
What sort of language features are used in constructing a good post?
Design/layout
Looking at the whole layout of pages in the blogs we visited what would we say are features to use, avoid or develop?

Our posts are found here.

Introducing the tablets

The video above shows Tim Bullock with a clear path to looking at the tablet with his students. The short reflections from students from another class helps us realise that the students have little real understanding of the potential of their devices and refer to uses they make of similar technology.

Jedd Bartlett in his blog
Points to a Jisc report that indicates there is more to ICT than natural use. “New report reveals the information needs of the researchers and learners of the future: The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web…”

While addressing analytical skills I feel this reinforces my belief that outside of the teachable moment we need to still scaffold student learning with some clear learning design and intentions for the technology we are adapting more and more. The term "digital native" has been somewhat used as an abdication of reponsibilty for student learning. My feeling is we cannot merely hand over technology in the hope the students will work this out for themselves.

What can we do to improve this with students.(my initial thoughts)

• Ask students to explore capabilities in some depth and work with others on them
• Have students explore some technical communications on the web
• have students post some technical communications to the web
• Look at what others have achieved
• Use co-constructed rubrics
• Lay down explicit challenges
• Be prepared to build base knowledge outside of inquiry
• (authentic learning can take place here)
• Discussion and role based group work
• Always have a learning design

Please help add to or rephrase this list

The new decisions

The purpose of this post is to look at the reasons I see for the new and increasing importance for schools to have robust, open and protected wireless networks. It is also to compare two products (Ruckus and Bluesocket) looking to provide solutions in this area as a cognitive reflection on our own decision making in this area.

Why wireless development.
With most schools having robust network backbone in place we want to escape wires to create a more natural connection allowing us to be more flexible in where we are able to support the diverging devices that are able to connect wirelessly.
Wireless access is of course not new but as we scale the clients in a network the throughput of our wireless system has to develop to provide acceptable service to each client device. Netbooks and mobile devices are bringing the feasibility of 1 to 1 for more and more schools, and indeed home environments. The use of wireless gateway devices allow us to control wireless traffic and present easy access to the internet for guests and a wide variety of devices eg psp, phones etc.
What we are doing at our school
In our school we are introducing 200 new wireless device to one building within the school and will extend this to include another 125-150 in 2010.

Making a choice
This is not an insurmountable problem as there are some clever options available vendors using the 5Ghz spectrum can have more radio channels overlapping and therefore greater Access point density. Most of the solutions also provide for self managing access points. By this I mean once a controller is established additional access points are able to find it and set themselves up. We have looked at four solutions to this wireless problem. The vendors being Bluesocket, Ruckus, Xirrus and Trapeze.

Ruckus

Advantages Ruckus Equipment.

• The controller will not become a bottleneck for traffic as it is responsible for authentication, management rather than a router of traffic.
• This requirement makes Bluesocket more expensive long term as client density will outgrow controller throughput.
• The wireless access points work well in a noisy environment directing traffic to the clients that need it
• The 802.11n APs are priced at a point that means we can move to this standard now rather than redeploy within two years.
• We have also experienced the Ruckus Solution working at learning conferences here in New Zealand where many clients were able to connect and hold reasonable wireless service.
• The Ruckus APS can work as mesh in other words find each other and extend their range without wires.

Disadvantages

• Offers only 2.4 ghz radios which have only 3 channels available and may suffer if placed to close to each other.
• Even though they operate in the 802.11n the n clients will not benefit until they are the only ones present as the access point will drop to meet the needs of the weakest client eg operate in 802.11b if a b client is present.
• While the ruckus traffic is not directed through a router this means it will all take place on layer 2 of the network meaning that having a high density of clients is likely to degrade network performance for everyone.

We are still considering the verdict and at the moment we see ruckus as a terrific solution to medium density sites where meshing may be of benefit. In a higher density 1 to 1 environment we are starting to think it may struggle.

Will discuss other options in next post.

Cognitive Rehearsal -

Hey; is this web tool Flowgram the death of powerpoint? I think so.
Well with a half decent internet connection this program is very flexible and powerful.
Of course best practise always needs to be established and finally I have a tip for recording voice.

• Use a script!!

I am now sitting at the dining table eating fruit and crumble and able to add to this.

• Use a script and provide time for cognitive rehearsal.

I feel we should do this when asking students for opinions, thoughts and solutions. Without the preparation of thinking and pre-planning even a hot jam session will struggle to impress.
Finally am I learning to learn?
Here is a flowgram created for the unconference the Journey Cluster held last week.
It is easy peasy.

Change change change

This Literacy time line I made for a recent workshop pointed out that a couple of things have changed recently. What does this mean for teaching and learning.
Have added some new literacies below to add to this list

• Do we need to rethink every thing?
• Maybe not but we certainly need to question it?

New literacies? or literacies on the rise?

• oral literacy
• media literacy
• visual literacy
• cultural literacy
• informational literacy
• environmental literacy
• operacy (see edward de bono)

add a quick comment if there is any thing feel would add to the timeline.