Your tasks for this week
1.
Complete Stage 3 of your ARP and beginning Stage 4.
2.
With your course partner(s), think about what the focus of your School ICT
Change Plan will be and get feedback from your Mentor and other critical
friends.
3.
Watch the two professional viewings.
4.
Participate in the Group Online Discussion facilitated by your Mentor.
5.
Write your weekly E-journal entry.
Action Research Project
This week
you should complete Stage 3: Data gathering – observe and collect data and
Begin
Stage 4 – Reflect and Analyse: analysis, assessment, reflection.
Consider how your ARP insights, and your E-journal
reflections might feed into your School ICT Change Plan.
E-Journal
In this
seventh E-journal entry, we would like you to reflect on:
·
What you
now know about yourself, your teachers, your students and your school that you
didn’t know before you started this course?
·
Identify
the things you’d like to change – about yourself, your school, your teachers,
your students
·
Describe
your current feelings and reactions to your experiences so far in this course
·
What are
you learning and what have been the most powerful learning experiences for you?
·
A
significant event for you this week and how you felt and reacted
School ICT Change Planning
You will
have met with your school partner(s) last week to begin thinking about your
School ICT Change Plan. Spend some time this week trying to refine what the
vision and focus of the plan might be.
This is
some important early thinking that will help you be prepared for the activities
in Workshop 2.
On-line Discussion
We will
focus our attention of the Sir Ken Robinson Ted talk this week as well as any
ideas teams have been discussing in relation to their ICT change plan.
A few
prompts to consider...
- Sir Ken Robinson says,
“Teachers are the lifeblood of success in schools.” How might your ICT
change plans address the need to support your teachers, helping them to
thrive and build their capacity?
- What sort of “climate” will
your leadership foster
- How will you shift the “immovable”, the “movable” and help others to continue “moving”?
Two challenges: If "Teachers are the lifeblood of success in school," as Ken Robinson discusses, there is also the difficulty when there is no learning happening in the classroom. Secondly, accepting the purposes of education are economic, social and cultural then these add complexity at the institutional, governance and political levels, because in my experience this level of education thwarts much of curiosity, diversity and creativity that Sir Ken Robinson espouses are essential for modern learners. Overwhelmingly, school leadership needs to be the 'cheese' in sandwich - build trust and positive mindset, provide the opportunity and develop the movement towards positive classroom environments that nurture the curiosity, diversity and creativity Ken Robinson celebrates.
ReplyDeleteHow would you set about starting to nudge your staff toward these kinds of classroom environments? Have you had any success pushing your staff this way Cheryl?
DeleteI think that the “Teacher are the lifeblood of success in schools” quote reinforces the importance of having motivated, talented and creative teachers in schools. As Cheryl says it can be difficult when this is not happening and it can cause real problems. At the end of the day it is the role of leadership to create an environment of trust and positive mindset.
ReplyDeleteI think that our ICT change plans will be based around building staff capacity and providing staff with the opportunity to lead and develop their own area of ICT as this will hopefully create more ownership. Ideally from there I would be hoping that the process would be like the dancing man from last week where one person will get on board followed by everybody else, shifting the moving, then the moveable and finally the immoveable!
I agree with your statement Marty about staff ownership and leading PL. Would it be worth looking at a model more like Eric spoke about where you have a few 'favourites' who have the same ideas and then build from there. Like the dancing man, start the ball rolling and get the followers, then branch into own PL in ICT.
DeleteWhy is it important for staff to "lead and develop their own area" Marty?
ReplyDeleteI think that we all have slightly differing views on how technology will benefit the students that we teach. Staff leading and developing creates ownership and also allows them to potentially follow areas of personal interest.
ReplyDeleteHey guys - I'm back! Sorry I went missing last week - I just blinked and it was over. Hope your all coping ok with the pressure cooker at the moment!
ReplyDeleteIn our school we are going to start small, not overwhelm and share our vision at the beginning. We will start with Twitter and get staff connected with each other, great minds and organisations.
Then we will start to distribute information on Twitter about our next stage in the plan that the staff will already be aware of and helped create.
We will encourage staff to take risks.
I believe that by using Twitter to begin our movement, providing effective role models and celebrating real success, we will be able to "shift the “immovable”, the “movable” and help others to continue “moving”.
How are you going to encourage your staff to take risks Peter? What motivates someone to take a risk in their profession? Do we need to consider why they are not taking risks in the first place. I found that my everyday teaching practice is extremely confronting and thought of as "risky" by others but I was just doing my thing and enjoying my teaching. How do you go about managing that in a big staff? Does anyone have any ideas around this question?
DeleteAs the readings and viewings keep saying, failing is ok. I feel staff are not prepared to try things/ take risks due to that fear of failure. Fear of making a mistake and being seen as if you have wasted time. The risk will be taken if it is seen as worthwhile and support is there for when the going gets tough or there are forks in the road. Leadership supporting and encouraging staff to take the risks.
DeleteI think leadership need to be brave and model risk taking as well. Stand along side you staff and show their vulnerable side. Show pepole that, this might not be comfortable but I'm going to give it a go for the benefit of my students and this school.
DeleteI agree with you Marty in that staff need to take ownership of their journey with using technology. If it is mandated and done just 'becuase we were told to' that will have far less impact than if each staff member gets on board becuase they want to.
ReplyDeleteWe to are planning on getting our staff onto Twitter Peter. At this stage it will be purely to open their eyes to the professional readings, etc that they can view on there. To be honest, that's what I am blown away by at the moment (I'd never been on Twitter before this course). Looking forward to hearing their views and hoping the dancing man will be visiting my school too!
At the risk of sounding like a broken record here Brooke :-) Could we say "Getting our staff connected with global educators" or "Generating a professional discourse" or "collaborating with global educators" or "openly sharing our practice with the world" or "acknowledging and sharing the wonderful things our teachers are doing beyond the gates of the school" instead of "getting our staff on twitter". Getting people on twitter is putting the tools before the purpose. Joe has set up a school wide blog at his school and is talking about important issues to do with pedagogy on the blog. The conversation is really rich and meaningful, and this is the point. He's not getting his staff to use the blog, as his purpose, he's getting staff talking about pedagogy in an ongoing manner. Something he would have struggled to do as effectively without the blog.
Delete:)
DeleteI'm planning a Twitter scavenger hunt to help encourage staff to use Twitter. Each stage in the hunt will be a learning opportunity for staff around the different professional and learning benefits that Twitter enables. I will use QR codes for teachers to scan, that will direct them to a particular piece of learning objective around Twitter that they will need to do and share. This will take place over a term and their will be prizes for staff. This activity will compliment the greater pedagogical work that I will be conducting during PD times and "#Chaffey Chats" on Twitter. This will make up part of how we will encourage staff to use social media in their classrooms and for PD.
DeleteThis sounds like a great idea Pete! I think I might steal this one!
DeleteAt our professional learning meeting this week we also shared some of our understanding and use of social media. Both in the classroom and as a professional learning tool. We shared a few resources around the use of Twitter and PLN. We then set about getting staff connected with global educators. We shared a post top 50 educators to follow on Twitter and encouraged staff to choose a couple. Younger staff asked if hashtags were the same as what is used on Instagram.
DeleteWe see the benefit of connecting through this form of social media and the more this course goes on it opens my eyes to the possibilities that are out there.
Maybe if you see this comment Joe you could comment about how your school blog is travelling?
ReplyDeleteG'day everyone,
DeleteMy biggest learning has been about making the learning the focus, not the technology. For a long time I have been sharing a program, this is how we use Glogster etc. I found I had very little success.
As part of my ARP, I created a Blog. I sent out invites the week before with some basic instructions on how to join.. Most did. We watched a video on 21st century learning and invited verbal feedback...not much. I the explained that as part of the course we looked at Pedagogical models, I directed them to the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning and had the document we looked at in Mildura linked up. I discussed Blogging and asked them to have a read and invited them to comment on this page, as well as question and add to comments of others. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the discussion. I saw a new side to some of the staff members and it was a real aha moment for me.
It made it even clearer to me the change in thinking. The power of the session was the discussion and collaboration, not blogger! Blogger was a tool that allowed this to happen.
I chose a poor choice of words obviously. My point was that we are wanting them to connect with global educators - obviously not just tick a box to say they are on twitter. My eyes have been opened to a whole new world of collaboration beyond our school/community/country and I'm looking forward to sharing this with my colleagues.
ReplyDeleteDidn't mean to offend Brooke, :) I know you know what is going on... I just think it is an important distinction to make.
DeleteHaving spent last year trying to introduce twitter to my staff (the WRONG way) I finally started using incorporating twitter into our practice the right way and hey presto. Nearly everyone is using it. Last year I ran three specific twitter PD's and literally no-one used it. This year I've run none but embedded it in my PD sessions and the engagement with twitter has been huge across our staff. You'll see on Friday how powerful the learning opportunities have become from using Twitter effectively.
Should have clarified myself better originally. That's what happens when you comment at recess time! Looking forward to getting some great ideas when we meet up!
ReplyDelete