Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Hooked on Learning by Pam Hook

These are my notes from Pam Hook’s Learning@School 09 day 2 keynote, “teaching & learning: What is happening in the ampersand.” MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

Pam’s website is:
www.hooked-on-thinking.com

In preparation for this presentation, we asked for and collected a diverse and rather dodgy collection
– now showing a video
– going to start

When you put an ampersand between two words you actually change the words
– hards to think about learning and places of learning without teaching
– learning comes to be something you get
– teachers are people who help you get it
– schools are the places you go to get
– this is an unfortunate view, because it privileges that form of learning
– in reality learning is everywhere, it is not just our domain
– in privileging it, we contain it

I’ve been extremely fortunate to spend time the last few years visiting and learning at the Bob Reed Dementia Unit at Ranfurly Veterans Home in Auckland

We (as educators) are working with kids who are developing

Learning with my 92 year old grandpa, an incorrigible flirt
– he was having to learn to walk again
– resistant to the use of technology
– can get frightened and angry
– desire to do things independently

So with grandpa sitting in the chair what could I do?
– medicate him
– force him to move
– or do what the caregivers do: hold hands and say follow my breasts, and follow my ….
– this is not a strategy I suggest to use with your students, it did work however with my grandpa

So how do we work with students who are frightened

Often we get fretful when things go wrong and we’re not sure how to attack disengagement
– high levels of students leaving who are not literate

Survey question: When teaching and learning is not going well in the institution, should we?
– get rid of school
– get rid of teachers
– find a ‘new way’ of doing school
– introduce a re-vamped curriculum
– change the teaching and learning interactions within existing schools
– go for something we have yet to imagine
– deny … deny … deny

I know…
– Teachers are people given authority by the institution, they decide what is valid and legitimate knowledge and sanction how it might be obtained
– ICTs or eLearning allow young people to bypass teachers altogether

REfer to whitepaper that has just come out: “Living and Learning with New Media:. Summary of Findings from the. Digital Youth Project” (PDF)

Should we tilt at:
1- schools without teachers?
2- Responsibility and obsolescence?
3- Increasing the reliance on peer feedback?

Many of you have students doing peer assessment with good results
– should we do this with teachers

Hattie, J. Visible Learning 2009
– problem is 80% of student-provided feedback is incorrect

I know school is a technology and IST is a technology
– we are trying to crunch two technologies together

Postman argues that technology is never neutral
– so perhaps we should not ask “how is this enhancing things” or how is it harming

Keynote yesterday said

Problem of the media and media narratives
– quote from Sherry Turkle

Report on critical thinking skills dropping, visual

John Hattie’s research on effect size really fascinates me
– says just “fronting up with kids” is enough to get a 1.5 effect size (any intervention can cause a change)
Visible Learning 2009 p. 220 – 236

When I hear people complain they do not have an interactive whiteboard, sometimes I say aren’t you lucky

my desire for ICT is that it would connect people

we still have sexism, racism, homophobia and bullying behaviors
– they continue to thrive

technology allows us to distance ourselves from others as much as it allows us to connect
– also allows us to go into an echo chamber, and can corrupt our sense of what is right and happening

reference to article “I Pay Them to Leave” about Charlie Sheen

I know I don’t know…
– how kids can leave with so little learning with so much compulsory teaching going on

NZC Essence Statement for Science: “In science, students explore how both the natural physical world and science itself work so that….”

Look at research results “Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data on the science achievement of 4th – 8th grade students”
– media makes it look like our students are actually doing worse

How the ministry describes how we are doing: worse than half
– Author Robyn Caygill, NZ Ministry of Education, Dec 2008

What did interest me was how many of the kids who could not even reach the baseline

Now doing a demonstration with teachers standing up, first two rows, then the first four rows
– asking are we happy with that many people “not getting it”

so now with about 8 rows on one half of our room standing: are we happy with this many people as a percentage not getting it

We have an education system where 13% of our kids can’t get basic sciences after 5 years with us, and we have 15% of kids not getting basic maths

Key Competencies: Capabilities for living and lifelong learning
– The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies…

The fact remains the data is there and we are skeptical about it

“There is nothing right in my left brain, and nothing left in my right brain.”

I really don’t think you can reduce learning to so many decimal points like John’s effect size studies

When we look to things we so deeply believe in our practice, there is no reliable data and evidence for it

We should be thinking critially about everything

It is very comfortable to talk with teachers about class sizes
– when you start to talk about what I should change about teaching and learning, that is much less comfortable
– when we start to talk about how we can use evidence to lift kids reading 40 – 70% increases
– making what we are doing thoughtful and not based on anecdotal

Just suggesting we should have success criteria for teachers is a dangerous thing to propose
– that is a shame

Effect size: teacher as an activator vs teacher as a facilitator

From “Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analysis relating to achievement” by J. Hattie 2009

We need a practice based on evidence not on antidote

I AGREE WE NEED MUCH BETTER ASSESSMENT. AN IMPORTANT KEY IS WE NEED TO NOT SIMPLY FOCUS ON THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE EASY TO ASSESS AND MEASURE

We need to ask if the school is the best place to earn

“A sixth of a GCSE in 60 minutes”
– an intense powerpoint repeated 3 times, interrupted by juggling, using that method kids are having better test results

YET WHAT IS THE LONG TERM LEARNING IMPACT FOLLOWING THAT TEACHING METHOD?

ICT changes the way students assess themselves outside of the school

Like edubloggers which rise to the top, give them identify
– how could we use that in school
– how could their identities be shaped by external comments

Now we will look at the “revamp curriculum” approach
– the new NZ curriculum is a way to look at our practice
– I love the way it starts with a vision, and starts with non-negotiable principles
– says all instruction should be consistent with these non-negotiables

Collaborative wiki: Ideas for developing a school-based curriculum aligned to the NZC Principles

hooked-on-thinking.com/wiki/doku.php

So how do we help students learn to learn?
– better know themselves as learners?

The “L” word
– we’ve been all around the country now asking teachers how do you know if your students are learning
– common cute answers, we all have different shifts on this
– how helpful to students is this?
– “learning is doing something new” etc

If you ask kids what learning is sometimes they are better at this than adults
– everyone is different
– if you want to bring clarity to this..

Some say we just need to focus on the NZC curriculum
– others suggest a toolbox approach

Now I think the most powerful argument is: help students look at their strengths and weaknesses as they are learning

Effective teaching and learning occur when BOTH my students and I can exmaplin
– what we are doin
– how it is going
– what we can and should do next

Each one of these parts are sufficient but not

We want a brutal way of looking at learning: use the solo taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982)
– a structured overview of learning outcomes

THIS IS A REALLY INTERESTING KEYNOTE. THIS DOES NOT HAVE MUCH TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION. PERHAPS THIS IS GOOD TO HAVE THE FOCUS ON LEARNING RATHER THAN SIMPLY THE USES OF TECHNOLOGY. THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING FOR A KEYNOTE, HOWEVER. INTERESTING. LOTS OF TEXT AND DIAGRAMS ON THESE SLIDES. SOME USE OF LARGE IMAGES TO HIGHLIGHT IDEAS. LOTS OF TEXT SLIDES… I AM WONDERING WHAT PAM’S RELATIONSHIP IS TO THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL AUTHORITIES?

Now sharing the solo taxonomy
– this is not Pam’s link to this, but summarizes this approach I think: www.learningandteaching.info/learning/solo.htm

Now showing videos of students and teachers talking about the ways they are using the SOLO Taxonomy to identify learning outcomes
– a method for students to identify their own learning outcomes, themselves

Need to develop a common language across our schools to help students co-create rubrics, be involved with assessment
– look at all the thinking strategies
– use self and peer assessment using HOT Maps and SOLO coded rubrics and success criteria
– these can all provide ways to help students to learn

THEN we can pick up ICTs, as we understand our learning outcomes
– then we can use Xtimeline or VoiceThread
– then ICT can really leverage our ability to reach these learning outcomes

Then we can get effect sizes even bigger than those you see in John’s research

Then make sure you teaching planning includes activities coded in these ways
– relational learning experiences
– extended abstract learning experiences
– more

Then our kids in NZ can learn how to learn, and can be free from the ampersand thing we talked about at the start

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4 responses to “Hooked on Learning by Pam Hook”

  1. Jane Nicholls Avatar

    I had to reply to your statement, “THIS DOES NOT HAVE MUCH TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION. PERHAPS THIS IS GOOD TO HAVE THE FOCUS ON LEARNING RATHER THAN SIMPLY THE USES OF TECHNOLOGY”

    In New Zealand effective learning and teaching has everything to do with technology integration. Trevor Bond states that an ineffective teacher plus technology equals an expensive ineffective teacher. For technology to be successfully integrated there must first be a solid pedagogical platform. Teachers must be reflective and have a good knowledge of their own teaching philosophy. They need to assess why and how the technology will enhance their classroom practice and they need to know about their students and how different technologies will extend their reach.

    Our New Zealand Curriculum outlines a number of key competencies that must be in place, I believe, for technology use to be effective. Students must know how to think and how to articulate their thinking, they must know how to be persistent problem solvers and how to collaborate and work with others. This collaboration is the basis for the best moments I have seen students working with technology.

    “Perhaps it is good to have the focus on learning…” That is where the focus should be. Why focus on the technology? We wouldn’t focus on a pen?

    In the words of Antoine De Saint-Exupe´ry, “If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the people to saw wood, stitch sails, prepare tools, and organise the work… but rather, make them long for setting sail and travelling to distant lands”

    Thanks for sparking these thoughts and reflections for me. It was nice to meet you in Rotorua.

  2. Wesley Fryer Avatar

    Jane: I certainly got a better sense of these issues being at the conference this week– I think the NZ approach to ICT to situate it within good pedagogical practices rather than viewing ICT discussions in isolation is exactly on target. Many conversations I had with other educators at the conference affirmed this. I wish we had a similar, widespread approach in the US and in my home state. I think there is a great deal we (in the states) can learn from the approach NZ educators and CORE are taking to ICT.

  3. Greg Carroll Avatar

    I agree with Jane Wes and would go even further. Far to often we hear the old “I’ll be able to integrate tech when I have a …… (IWB, tablet, 1:1 laptops, etc). Rubbish!! The effective teacher will do wonderful and creative things with on overhead projector, a single computer in their room, or no technologies at all. Having all the whistles and bells will make no difference.
    I have personal experience of a classroom where children were placed in national film making competitions but the literacy and numeracy programme was, to not put to fine a point on it, crap. Technology can very easily GET IN THE WAY of effective learning and teaching – and it is the order of those two things that makes all the difference.
    Learning is about what the learner NEEDS and NOT what the teacher does. Children will learn in spite of their teacher and not necessarily because of them …. and this is also one of the big points Pam was making! (Being alive and present in a classroom has a 0.4 effect size according to Hattie). And I am no great fan of Hatties Meta-analysis as a prescription for teachers as you will see from my blog posts – lol
    The pedagogy – relationships with children, professional and content knowledge, and THEN what the teacher DOES – that makes all the difference.
    cheers
    Greg

  4. […] is compared to an Antipodean perspective. It was very interesting to read his reactions from Pam Hook’s keynote (does he read Artichoke?) especially this one [Wes’ notes were in caps, so he wasn’t shouting!]: […]