the many TeachMeets around the world, and explained on Wikipedia
teacher led Twitter community example: #UKEDCHAT
shared practice through shared social media using Pinterest: Good tested idea to transform learning, interesting learning places and spaces
learner voice short Teacher TV video "Making Learning Better" using student observation of lessons
school students talking about their expectation for higher education after completely remodelling their own classroom to make learning better
students at Loughborough College making a multimedia presentation of great learning for their teachers to discuss
OECD paradox graph showing disconnect between between high science scores and interest in science
classroom of tomorrow Ingenium project (2004) with a co-created classroom by students, architects and others. Project pdf flyer, two girls talking about learning in the space, project postcard. Design brief was to get in the way of learning as little as possible!
Finally three learning and teaching innovations widely in use, cirulated virally between schools, proving to be highly effective, but barely seen or referenced in traditional literature or policy: shoeless learning | superclasses | write on surfaces
This is the briefing note for the session:
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Ministerial Conference"Opening up education through technologies: Towards a more systemic use for a smart, social and sustainable growth in Europe" Parallel Session 3: "Opening up learning and teaching"Leading Expert: Prof Stephen Heppell, University of Bournemouth, Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid Introduction At the same time emergent economies and regions have the opportunity to leap over the expense and long history of our European legacy systems and to redesign learning and teaching from the ground up. They are making remarkable progress. Just as, globally, relatively few nations or regions now specialise in car production, or moviemaking so we will find, as Learning goes global, that a just few regions will lead, whilst most of the world follows. At this point, you wouldn't bet on Europe to be a leader of learning. The question for Europe is whether we can open up learning and teaching enough, and with enough speed, to lead the world in Learning, or whether we will be happy to become mass consumers of others' curricula, of others' educational provision and of others learning. In every sense, this is a race for the hearts & minds, and culture, of Europe. Discussion If change isn't going to be led from policy, at the pace required, then in this rapidly evolving world of learning we are effectively left with two assets in making judgements about the direction, implication and desirability of change: trust and community. That has effectively, and excitingly, been an already proven model of change and has opened up teaching and learning, demonstrably. In schools around the world passionately committed young teachers are assembling in trusted communities to swap and validate each others tested ideas about what effective learning can be like. For example the TeachMeets (just Google the term), which are loosely structured informal meetings in the style of an unconference, find teachers sharing good practice, practical innovations and evidence in a way that is agile, playful, and hugely effective. One evening a week on Twitter in Australia, the UK and elsewhere groups of teachers, managed and mediated by a rotating chairperson, debate the topic of the week which is itself set by an online discussion and vote. debates are then archived from back reference with the curatorial role being taken by classroom practitioners rather than university researchers. #ukedchat is but one example to explore. A common misconception seems to be that teachers' professional development is a substantial cost, yet these many evidenced examples of teachers leading and validating their own innovation, occur effectively for no star or central cost at all. The UK's New Opportunities Fund's (NOF) 2004-6 spent £230 million programme on the professional development of teachers ICT competencies and was significantly less effective making change happen than the host of free TeachMeets running almost weekly somewhere in the country today. Increasingly those events include Skyped contributions from around the world too. It turns out perhaps unsurprisingly that seducing teachers is more effective than inducing them. And finally, it is not possible to talk of opening up learning and teaching through technologies, without a focus on the learners' voice. This does not mean setting up Schools' Councils, or focus groups, it means the wholesale engagement of every learner in the quest to make learning better.: schools are utilising pupil observation of lessons, with direct feedback to teachers about what was, and wasn't effective; children are filming scrapbooks of their best learning moments using mobile phones during lesson time, students are breaking out of the traditional timetable into day, and even week long immersion learning; children are even in a few cases organising a full inspection of the school, using state inspection criteria. Why are students suddenly so central to opening up learning and teaching? There are three reasons: firstly they see things that we doesn't see, fresh eyes, a fresh perspective helps when pace matters. Secondly, the act of asking them leads directly to their own meta-reflection, which produces reflective learners who are themselves more effective and finally because they too are in networks of learners elsewhere they bring entirely fresh ideas from other schools, other nations, other learning contexts. The mantra is simply that in this millennium we can't build better learning for children, but we certainly can build better learning with them. Questions for discussion 1. As teaching and learning have opened up to the co-construction by students and the peer to peer exchange of innovative teachers, how does policy keep up, and how might policy take best advantage of this remarkable but uneven progress?2. What are the substantial policy barriers to opening up learning and teaching? 3. How can we close the now vast disconnect between our university faculties of education and the vibrant new learning that has already emerged in our leading third millennium classrooms and elsewhere? 4. If the recession economy has produced a generation characterised by disengagement and in many cases unemployment, then how might we revisit teaching and learning to make them seductive and engaging enough to save a lost generation? References |
this page created Friday, December 1, 2012 by Prof Stephen Heppell