The day commences …

… It’s a mystery to me … (for those of you who weren’t around in the 1980s that’s a Dire Straits song). As you guys are looking for an example of a journal entry, I’ll break this down into Gibbs’ (1988) reflective framework stages

I lose my way sometimes. We all have good days and bad days, but sometimes you seem to get a run of things not going so well. It can be topics, materials, locations or groups. There’s no such thing as a bad group … but … well … when you get one, you spend hours trying to work out the dynamic to resolve the issues and conflicts that take place. What goes well for one group fails for another.
Occasionally something brings joy back into my life, and it happened today.
Stage 1: Description
I’ve spent a week creating the Moodle package for the LC courses, and decided yesterday (Monday) to completely rewrite the reflective practice lesson. I didn’t finish the rewrite and the new resources until 8.00pm when I was evicted by the caretakers, so I was still sorting stuff at home well past midnight. It was the first teaching session with a new group, and reflective practice can be a difficult concept to get across. I expected to struggle.
I planned the session into 15 minute chunks, and added a video clip to show an example of how group reflection can improve practice in teams. There were some frameworks for people to insert their own examples so that we could develop these. I always over-plan new lessons, and as I had not worked with this group before I had strategies to grow or shrink the lesson accordingly. I was careful to have practical tasks to explore the topic, so I could see examples of reflection from each learner. This will be an assessed task for them so early examples to base their own journals are important.
Stage 2: Feelings and Thoughts
During the session I constantly had the feel that I was losing the group, but was overjoyed when people said ‘I don’t understand … ‘ or ‘you need to break this down more’ and we’d go back and develop an example. Careless words (on the midnight document) caused some confusion but I think we mostly got there.
The post lunch Moodle session was the eye-opener. I did the basics of logging-in and managing personal settings and said “go play …” and they really went for it – into everything I’d built last week. I had doubts about what I’d done. I don’t like Moodle, I don’t like content based learning, but the response was positive. Really positive.
Stage 3: Evaluation
I used a Choices activity in Moodle to get some feedback as I need to know how this group responds to taught parts of the course – they are only with us for nine weeks and there is a lot of online content. In their responses, one learner ticked “I’m very confident I can create a journal and know what to put in it” and eleven ticked “I’m mostly sure that I can create a journal and I have a good idea of what to put in it”. No negatives.
Some of the materials were too wordy and academic, and due to an unexpected activity at the start of the session, I had to rush a little. I should have explained some handouts more clearly. I could have made the stages of the lesson more explicit and checked understanding a little more often. With hindsight, I could have concentrated on some activities and dropped or reduced others.
The unstructured Moodle activity was just the right thing to do as learners chose to explore things that were relevant to them, and I was able to add a little by showing points about certain resources or activities when the opportunity arose. Some learners were more capable than others and there was some sharing and guidance from some learners to others.
Stage 4: Analysis
In expecting to struggle there are two statements:

I wouldn’t deliver it well, and

I would pitch the lesson at the wrong level

There are some powerful pre-suppositions in there. Firstly that “I’ll get it wrong again” (anticipation of failure) and that the students won’t be able to cope with the contents and will disengage.
What happened was different. Firstly in the reflective practice session I had to go through some of the points and make several links to different ideas and I modified some of the language I normally use. I had forgotten that I wasn’t teaching a second year teacher training group. What was powerful for me was when people had the courage to say ‘I don’t understand … ‘ or ‘you need to break this down more’. That is such a helpful thing to say as it meant I could modify subsequent teaching points (reflection in action). Although I’d mentioned that I wanted an example from each of them during induction, I didn’t send out the reminder email until Monday morning. Some people had written up really good notes, but some were struggling as they didn’t have an example from their own settings they could use.
Stage 5: Conclusion
Overall, I’m now positive about the whole day. My initial disappointment with the first session is more positive due to the use of the Choice activity. The reflective practice stuff still needs some development, but the Moodle courseware seems to be about right. The design framework with the icons for ‘must read, should read’ resources seems to have helped learners navigate around a lot of material.

Course Block View

The organisation and timing of the reflective practice lesson needs attention, and the reminders about the personal task need to have been sent earlier.
Stage 6: Action Plan

Reminders for pre-lesson tasks need to go out (generally) +5 days and +1 day before the session to make sure students have prepared for the topic. As usual, a back-up plan needs to be in place.

The reflective practice lesson needs looking at again, and the video clip needs careful consideration.

The Choice activity is a good tool to get a feel as to how things went, and I’ll make more use of this in future.

… a last thought
What was obvious throughout the day was the level of enthusiasm, and the good relationships between members of the group. I’d forgotten what it was like to get that enthusiasm. I got reminded about what happens when you light fires. And you know what? I want to take risks again, to cross the line between same ol’ same ol’ and doing new stuff, because I got good feedback and the enthusiasm from the group.
I’ve just started a new journey with the learning coaches; I bet I learn more than you do!
Diolch Pawb / thanks

Anarchy and Chaos? No, actually …

We’ve been trying to get a wireless network across the campus so that we can trial the use of wireless devices (laptops / netbooks / smartphones … ) in the classroom. The main intention was to be able to deliver content, use web 2.0 tools and create more engagement through the use of a range of different strategies and resources. Getting a wireless network is one thing. I’ve stopped pleading, whining and badgering; some people are still resident in the 19th Century and are incredibly difficult to shift.
Overcoming the resistance of teaching colleagues is something else. “So you want students to be able to access the web while you’re trying to teach? Well they’ll all be on Facebook or email”.
Now the strange thing is that you get more email from the managers during their meetings yet the job gets done. And yes, they have a dedicated wifi for managing, but we can’t have one for teaching.
The risk of students having the ability to go somewhere else whilst I’m trying to deliver a session on learning outcomes or funding is an important consideration, but I’m not sure whether it’s a threat or a wake-up call. From my own viewpoint, I have the attention span of a small gnat. I rarely last more than ten minutes before I’m sliding the iPhone out and checking emails or scanning the Twitter feed ( not when I’m teaching of course).
The concept of multitasking during a class / lesson is something I hadn’t really understood until I joined one of Alec Couros’ sessions for his module ECI831
It hadn’t been a good day at work; I didn’t get home until after 8:00pm and due to the time difference, the Elluminate session was running at 2:00am. The laptop had been setup to run Eluminate, the alarm was set and I went to bed and slept to the start of the session. Thinking that everything was set to go, it inevitably didn’t and I spent twenty minutes getting the laptop to connect and run the javascript applets. I was drooping as Alec worked through a range of ideas and approaches for the use of technology. An idea was introduced, I’d go off and play or explore the bit of software, and listen to Alec’s commentary as I did so. Then back to the Elluminate screen to watch a screen capture, or add something to the back channel. Then a look at what was coming from ECI831 particpants on Twitter, back to Elluminate, and so on. This went on until 4:00am and I realised that I was (a) very awake, and (b) not in the slightest bit bored. The problem was that I was hoping for a sleep before I got up for work at 6:30am.
It was an excellent example of how to multitask in connected activities and how the use of listening, watching and moving around resources can be engaging and valuable.
So back to the original idea; where’s my wireless network then? I want to try this multitasking learning stuff …

The new ESTYN Common Inspection Framework in Wales

The new ESTYN Common Inspection Framework was launched in September 2010. In order to achieve ‘Excellent’ on the new framework, there has to be evidence of ‘sector leading practice’, but as we went through the in-house peer observer training a question kept being asked. What exactly is ‘sector leading practice’?
The following guidance has been provided to @CollegesWales by ESTYN (ESTYN Sector Leading Practice 2010)
When you read through the guidance, point 6 is interesting: “An important element of sector leading practice is the dissemination and sharing of this practice, such as where the provider has actively used the excellent / sector-leading work within networks of professional practice both internally and externally”. I wonder if inspectors will be accessing staff twitter feeds to check what is going on?
The Common Inspection Frameworks are available on ESTYN’s website by following this link
The current advice on sector leading practice is available from ESTYN here

Reflection Rubrics and HLM

The last 12 months have been lucky (in terms of teaching and learning, not management) in that I’ve discovered a couple of gems to help resolve problems that seem to be re-appearing year after year.

Reflection Rubrics
The first issue was the quality of reflection that appears in student journals. In particular the engagement and application of learning after experience. I found a rubric by Ward & McCotter that showed how the stages of reflection can be moved from routine (‘descriptive’) to transformative (‘analytical’). Using the matrix, teacher training students can see how to move to the next stage of development by understanding where they are going next:

This isn’t the best image, so there is a PDF you can download here: WardMcCotterReflectionRubric

HLM
The second was the continued problem of finding better ways to visualise the planning of lessons, so that lesson episodes were better designed and organised. Thanks to Twitter I found HLM – the ‘Hybrid Learning Model’ which grew from the 8 Learning Events Model developed by LabSET, University of Liège, Belgium, and combined with Sue Bennett’s teaching and learning verbs (University of Wollongong). Bennett’s verbs are nice because they bring out the best of Bloom without the patronising hierarchy. CETL (NI) at the University of Ulster have created some nice resources, downloadable and available to use to help lesson planning. We are slowly rolling this model out to trainee teachers and are getting an enthusiastic response. It’s quick and visual and enables a variety of approaches. It might just be the answer we needed to developing better lessons.

More details at the links below:
Main webpages at CETL Ulster
Flashcards – demonstration
Flashcards
Modelled Activities – HLM Outputs (doc and swf formats)

If they work – please feedback as to the age of students, and the qualification level

Enjoy

Still using learning styles to guide your journey?

I keep finding evidence of learning styles being used in my place, and the associated college down the road. Maybe people are just outdated or don’t read enough. The latest work from Pashler et.al is as persuasive as Coffield’s work. The difference is that Pashler is based in the USA where most of the left-right brain stuff has ‘credibility’. Perhaps we can bury this set of fantasies for ever now?

“We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into general educational practice.” (p105 in the summary – in the italics which took some time for me to read)

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf

and not forgetting Coffield’s work: (Download without registering)

https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/login.aspx?code=041543&P=041543PD&action=pdfdl&src=WEBGEN

Teacher Training Conference 2010

It’s been a long week, and an even longer year. So far this week we’ve done a preliminary Exam Board, a Validation Panel, are getting ready for an Exhibition and there’s an open day this weekend. I’m so glad there are long evenings so I can have daylight at either end of the day.
We’ve survived the year (I’ve said that for the last two years), and in some sense, a lot better than I thought possible. Perhaps we will get adequate staffing this year. Maybe. This year we graduate our biggest ever cohort of trainee teachers – 50 professionals who are already teaching in the wider world, from the college to the Police Service to Health Care and … and …
Today it’s their day on stage – my bit is done, and I can settle down to getting back to the mountains and razzing out on the bike.
Friday 18th June 2010 is formally the Coleg Llandrillo Cymru Teacher Training Exhibition. There are a few side shows going on (I think someone is opening a building somewhere). The focus should not be on the building but on what happens inside. Nobody does it better than our teachers, and like all teacher trainers educators it gives me more than a little pride to watch our trainees graduating, knowing that they can do it better than I can.
It’s also our end of year teacher training dinner. Great turnout BTW – and thanks.

Download the Exhibition Papers here

Croeso cynnes y pawb heddiw : A warm welcome to you all today

TGIF

The music in the word ‘education’

Looking at all the fuss going on about budgets, cutbacks, targets, attainments etc, in education (not just at FE and HE) I make no apologies for reproducing one of Frank Coffield’s quotes here. Those who manage education need to remember that for many of us, education has provided the route to enable personal achievement and satisfaction.

“I want to end on a personal, familial and social note. I come from an Irish Catholic family which emigrated to Scotland some time before the First World War in the search for work and in the hope of improving their lot and, more especially, that of their children. My father, James, was the first and only member of the family to go to university, Glasgow, in 1930, at a time when there were only places for around 14,000 new entrants or 2% of his generation. He always said he would never have got through school and university if it had not been for the peace, space and books provided by the local public library. I went up (that’s how I thought of it intellectually and morally) to the same university in 1960, when 93,000 or 5% of my age group entered higher education. In 2000, our daughter Emma, after an excellent foundation course in a local FE college, joined our alma mater and in that year no less than 950,000 or 36.8% of her age cohort became university students. The increase from 2%, to 5%, to 36.8% represents nothing less than a transformation of British society.

Looking back over 100 years and three generations of my family, I can see three great social movements. First, every time the universities and FE colleges have prised open their doors a little, able students have come forward in sufficient numbers to fill with success the places made available. Second, the Scottish education system in 1918 passed enlightened and inclusive legislation, which financed most of the building costs of separate schools for immigrants of an alien (and to many an unwelcome) faith. Third, education has been for my family, and for hundreds of thousands like it, the route into the professions, and to an honoured, secure and well-paid place in society. Our generation must not forget, however, that we are the beneficiaries of the long and often painful journey made by our parents and grandparents, who needed structural and financial help, as well as education, in order for us to move up in society.

All this is cause for celebration, gratitude and reflection; and so I warmly welcome the most recent advances, brought about by the substantially increased investment in education since 1997, as a result of which millions more have achieved qualifications or received training, some for the very first time. These desirable improvements are, however, accompanied by gross, rising, new and unjustifiable inequalities; in each generation whole swathes of the community have been left behind and continue to be left behind in scabby estates which should outrage our collective conscience.

Moreover, something vital to the whole enterprise is being forgotten. I learned from my father, as he learned from his, to hear the music, the excitement and the hope in the word ‘education’. I also learned that it is the job of teachers to help other people’s children to hear and respond to that music. We do it because teaching is a noble profession, which dedicates itself to the lot of those who have not had our advantages. We do it because we believe in social justice and, like our parents and grandparents, we want a better world for ourselves, our children and all children. That is the meaning of our lives as teachers.”

Coffield, F., (2008; 61) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority…, LSN London downloaded from https://crm.lsnlearning.org.uk/user/login.aspx?code=080052&P=080052PD&action=pdfdl&src=XOWEB 20 January 2009

Innovation and Ingenious Schools

Having made the decision to join the connected world by investing in an iPhone, I’m surprised at how much more productive I’m being. Instead of my online updating being feast or famine, I’m using the odd five minutes here and there to catch up. Good to be able to connect via the mobile network, as my factory is still not enlightened enough to allow staff access to the wifi network.
So instead of having to sort out laptops and cables, I was able to browse through the twitter feeds and found @josiefraser ‘s interview with Stephen Heppell about innovation and ingenious schools.
Since I lead a module called ‘Innovation in Teaching and Learning’ I’m constantly aware of the fact that I’m trapped into a culture of perpetuating Grade 1 performance for Inspections. I’m not really sure of how up to date ESTYN inspectors are (many of them have left education or are seconded managers) and I’m aware of the need not to be too radical because there is a risk that they may not understand content or process. The old thorn of learning styles still keeps appearing despite Coffield’s 2004 report.
In Heppell’s conditions for innovation was the following statement:

Proper reflective practice as learning professionals including research (“Let’s try…”), scholarship (“What have others done…?”), and iteration (“Let’s learn from that and do even better the second time…”);
Being hypercritical of all and any existing practices – for example, “Why have these these timetable blocks?” “What happens if we have a two-block teaching day?” “Why 25 children not 60, or 10?” “Why not mix ages?” “Why age not stage?” “Why did we waste so much money building corridors when the children don’t need to move any more?”
And remembering which century you are in…

In order to attempt ‘let’s try …’ there needs to be support for those who are trying, and in this there needs to be trust and also the ability to learn from practice without criticising.

Daloz Model of Support and Challenge

Daloz’s model is useful for visualising where we all might be. It seems that in many cases, the level of challenge is too high, whilst the level support is too low. There is plenty of support for getting the VLE wheelbarrow loaded with information, but little for learner engagement, or understanding how learning technology might better be applied. Maybe technology is moving forward so fast, or the Web 2.0 cloud so big, that people are happier denying what is happening outside. Speaking of clouds, a blizzard is just spreading across the hills outside my window.

I’m lucky that in my job as a teacher trainer educator I’m expected to be developing new resources and methods, but I rarely have time to make any properly structured changes. Gilding lilies springs to mind; trivial tinkering is the reality. Strategic planning of courses with a proper embedding of a delivery philosophy which embraces learning technology is not easy and is positively resisted in some areas. We still start from the old models in planning delivery (and I’m guilty as I realised I had got to slide 49 on a powerpoint presentation last week) rather than starting from what technology might offer.

This year, for the first time, trainee teachers are more positive about using learning technology to move things forward. Several are on Twitter, and the use of quality blogs in advising journals and assignments is increasing. There has been a good level of risk-taking in the microteaching, and there has been a positive outcome as a result. As a result of this cohort’s development, we have been able to look at what has made a difference, and in that exploration is the beginnings of a strategic plan to keep things moving forward.

Whilst the strategy of ‘poisoning minds with good ideas’ at teacher training seems sound (as sound as a hearts and minds campaign built on bombs and kalashnikovs), there is still the need to make proper, structural and embedded changes at an organisational level. Perhaps as well as insisting on Literacy and Numeracy qualifications, we should insist on ICT skills.
However, too much lip-service and top gloss will not get the results necessary. At the moment I keep seeing people organising deck chairs, rather than steering the boat.

Plus ca change …

Good morning from Zagreb.
It’s a nice place, the people are very friendly – we struggled at the bus station yesterday and a man came and sorted us out. In the market, people were quick to help with their English when someone else didn’t have the words.
After the beers and meeting with Ana and Martina last night, I got thinking about comparisons, and what is different.
Ana and Martina were fast with technology, iPhones and phones with internet access, Facebook users and so on, yet they don’t have a functioning learning technology system to support their courses.
In a way, they are where I was ten years ago, when we barely knew what a VLE was and those that were available were very expensive, and of course content was king.
But in a way they are not – in ten years we’ve moved from content to social networking, and to Web 2.0. For a moment I lost my way and it was very tempting (or too easy) to suggest a long pathway, and then I realised that I needed to leave ten years’ experience behind and suggest something different.
It’s back to the old question: what do they (their students) have to learn, and how could they best learn it. The tools are the things that make the difference. And there are so many web-based tools.
Off shopping with Ana today, and of course more talking and thinking. There will be an evening barbecue … I’m promised that the vegetables will be delicious!

Is the VLE dead?

Watching the Alt-C discussion on the #VLE yesterday was interesting apart from the sound going down partway into the session. The copy of the video was useful.
In a way it seemed like a load of bunting and frolics, but the serious points are about the nature of learning and where and how it is / can be delivered. I suspect that there is still a confusion between teaching and learning, at least in the institution’s mind. In many cases the ability of a VLE to deliver ‘attendance statistics’ helps to support funding requirements.
The whole question of whether we need institutions given the availability of the web, and the ability of systems to provide content to learners, is a long and complex discussion. This then links into credentialism, and why we need qualifications at all.
Graham Attwell’s points about the VLE delivering informal learning are valid and important, but I wonder if asking a VLE to span HE, workbased and ACL is the right choice; people are at different stages, and a VLE is a one-size-fits-all approach.
Certainly in Wales, the ability to get a decent signal over broadband in a remote location is an important issue. But I made that comment 10 years ago, and we are only a little further down the road to having fast broadband at present.
Given the range of social networking software available, and several sites to mimic Facebook (grou.ps, Ning, Wetpaint etc), there is no reason that we can’t create a safe, secure environment for learners … But wait a minute. The web isn’t safe and maybe people need to learn how to walk the streets and understand the pitfalls. It’s all a bit parent-child sometimes.
The serious aspect of things is the separation between work and home. The VLE is my teaching space; outside of work I see my friends somewhere else. As a student online, if I want to meet socially, then that crosses into my personal space. I also need to have my teaching materials organised a a coherent way. But that is how I learned how to learn. Given my Swiss ancestry, the structural cuckoo clock ticking inside me (alongside a piece of slate) imposes rules I have difficulty breaking.
However. Do we truly understand the pedagogy of learning and teaching, and have we created a tool to support learning, or are we trying to get learning to fit into a box called a VLE?