Skip to main content

Habits of Learning

Habits of Learning: 
Responsible, Reliable Management of 
Online Activity

For Module 3: Citizenship, of the Flat Classroom Teacher Course, we have been assigned 'Quadblog' groups; this gives us a taste of what it is like to try to work asynchronously towards a common goal with people we don't know and who are in different time zones. My group has been assigned the topic of Individual Awareness, which is one of the areas of awareness that permeate every area of digital citizenship.

Within each of the five areas of awareness - technical, individual, social, cultural and global - there are four "rays of understanding": Safety, Privacy, Copyright, Fair Use, and Legal Compliance; Etiquette and Respect; Habits of Learning: Responsible, Reliable Management of Online Activity, and Literacy and Fluency. For the Quadblog group, I am tackling the understanding of Habits of Learning: Responsible, Reliable Management of Online Activity within the concept of individual awareness.
----------------------

"Our future as a planet relies on our ability to use incredible technological advances for good and that begins with being able to relate to one another and prevent cultural disconnects from happening (98)"

Digital citizenship needs to concern itself much more with social responsibility and social learning (95); building a responsible habit of mind when it comes to being a digital citizen means "having a professional approach to all things digital" (107). The main questions individuals must ask themselves are:

  1. do I have personal habits that facilitate lifelong learning?
  2. do I share with others and understand their own value of education? (107)
These are questions we must ask ourselves as educators as well as of our learners - we must model individual awareness and let them see it in action; we must make it a habit of mind in order that it becomes entrenched in our teaching and learning and is automatically instilled into our approaches.

I recently took part in a virtual book club about taking control of your own learning, very much concerned with creating sound habits of learning that support our professional learning in a digital age. Kristen Swanson, author of Professional Learning in the Digital Age, advocates three main steps to creating a habit of user-generated learning - curation, reflection and contribution.

In the Flat Classroom book, Vicki Davies and Julie Lindsay suggest that "reliability is shown by having an online presence, often called "digital footprint", that is proliferated through sensible actions and responses while using digital tools" (107). In addressing question 1) do I have personal habits that facilitate lifelong learning?,  Swanson's chapters on Curation and Reflection will help to build solid foundations that allow you to get out there, manage what you find and reflect on it's use. My blog post 'Pearls of Wisdom', discusses the awesome Pearltrees as a great curation tool, and the post 'Bare your Soul' advocates how "the act of finding resources and thinking about them changes your practice. The more exploring [you] do, the more [you] try, and the more [you] learn", Richard Byrne, quoted in 'Reflection', 'Professional Learning in a Digital Age' by Kristen Swanson.  

One way I have approached this with my learners is through a project called 'Snapshots' that I wrote to ask learners to think about the question, 'How do I want to present myself to the world?'. This project ran from G6-10 and began with an exploration, through poetry, of who they think they are - and more importantly, who do they want to be seen as to people who don't know them. To establish the habit of learning about responsibility, we moved on to a 'Paper Blogging Project' that had learners post blog post simulations, on paper, on the outside of my classroom walls. The school community was informed and invited to contribute and learners used sticky notes to 'post' comments on each others' writing. We took time to review these posts and then discussed what was appropriate, kind, critical commenting as well as how to take responsibility and remove inappropriate or unhelpful comments. We signed up to Quadblogs, with the agreement that we would go last, and spent three weeks looking at our assigned school blogs to to see their organisation and discussed how to organise our own. We drew up and signed an agreement with parents before launching them online. 

In addressing question 2) do I share with others and understand their own value of education?, my blog post about contribution, quotes Vicki Davis in 'Global Education by Design' stating that we "must leave digital footprints so people know you’re treading among them and part of the community."  It is our responsibility to do that safely, responsibly and build this in our learners. Having the chance to practise blogging safely and see others doing it before going 'live' I believe built in some great habits of responsible and reliable behaviours; it made learners very aware of the language being used and they started pointing out non-standard English immediately - I hope that my reinforcement of the need to have a "professional approach to all things digital" particularly in terms of language is affecting their communication in all areas.

Common Sense Media is a great place for digital citizenship sources; I want to develop the 'Snapshots' unit into a more detailed exploration of digital citizenship that all Grade 6s must complete at the start of secondary school. Their Digital Passport site looks like a really interesting place to start. I also want to build in more consideration of Digital Culture from my current learning through a Coursera MOOC I am just completing on E-Learning & Digital Cultures with the older grades. I also want to approach the administration at school about building in some of the projects offered by Vicky and Julie: the Digiteen Project, the Flat Classroom Project and the NetGenEd Project to allow all learners at all levels develop strong habits and exposure to online, global citizenship.

If, as is suggested in Flat Classroom's Chapter 3: Connection, "ninety-five percent of [we] accomplish is due to our habits" (Tracy, 35) then I recommend Kirsten Swanson's book; it ties in really well with the Flat Classroom book and will guide you into building solid habits of learning, especially those new to online networking and managing a digital footprint -  it could really help you develop strong habits to ensure your footsteps are smooth, safe and steady so you are ready to help learners. Our own individual awareness needs to be established; individual awareness about habits of mind will allow us to act with responsibility and reliability; it will ensure our footprints are positive and sure, it will help prevent us slipping off the path into danger, it will help stop us tripping ourselves up!
-------
Lindsay, Julie, and Vicki A. . Davis. "Chapter 3: Connection, Chapter 5: Citizenship. Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time. Boston: Pearson, 2013. N. pag. Print.
Swanson, Kristen. Professional Learning in the Digital Age: The Educator's Guide to User-generated Learning. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education, 2013. Print.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous9 March 2013 at 08:19

    Made me look at Common Sense - thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

All comments gratefully received - thanks for taking the time to read :)
Anonymous comments and spam will be removed.

Past Thoughts

CONNECTION

We had our kick-off meeting last week on Tuesday 5 February 2013. I was able to connect using Blackboard Collaborate , something I had not used before, but unfortunately had to leave as I was at school. However, with it being Chinese New Year I have had an extended weekend, so was able to catch up and watch the full recorded version. I have also had a cold so have not felt up to tackling the mountain of marking, but have caught up on my reading for the next meeting, namely Chapters 1-3 of the book, ' Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds '; my Tweets about the most interesting salient points for me personally, can be found under @MrsHollyEnglish under #flatclass. Having reached the end of Chapter 3, I have come across my first 3 of the 15 Flat Classroom Challenges. Having taken part in the survey assessing my current connectivity, I feel confident that I am currently in a good position - I already have established a sound PLN that I build on when I can and have added s...
57 comments
Read more

Creativity Runs Wild

“There’s probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom.” (Levine) Wherever in the world I have been teaching, one of the most common observations of my classroom by other teachers is that it is "like a primary classroom". This is, more often that not, said in a derogatory and dismissive way, as if the colourful and expressive landscape of learning created through explorations of language and literature is a negative thing. That I cannot possibly be teaching a secondary curriculum if they seem to be creating so much..."mess" (as it has also been called). I have never paid much attention to this; I believe that my IB Diploma English Literature class learnt a great deal about the symbols, motifs, characters, language, themes and setting through the mural we painted all over the classroom. They learnt to problem solve and collaborate...
4 comments
Read more

What Are We Learning?

Reflections on the First Week of Classroom Observations This year, classroom visits are framed by a Looking for Learning approach. The premise is simple: rather than focusing on what the teacher is doing, a small set of questions is used to gain a deeper understanding of the students' learning experience. Over the course of the year, the lens is through these four guiding questions: What are you learning today? Why do you think you are learning this, and how does it connect to what you have done before? How is your thinking shifting? How will you know you have been successful in your learning? These questions are deceptively simple, but they open windows into clarity, purpose, metacognition , and self-assessment. For this first phase, however, I deliberately chose to begin with just one: What are you learning today? At the start of a new academic year, it did not feel appropriate to press students yet about how their thinking was shifting or how they would evalua...
Post a Comment
Read more

From Binary to Both/And: Deepening Clarity and Feedback in Classrooms

This week marked my second cycle of Looking for Learning visits. One of the greatest joys of this process has been the conversations that follow. Teachers have welcomed me into their classrooms with openness and trust, and our discussions afterwards have been equally generous and insightful. This culture of dialogue, where wonderings are met with reflection and opportunity, is a bright spot in itself. It reflects our shared belief that we are already strong educators and  that we can continue to grow together.  Across classrooms, several patterns of strength emerged: Clarity of learning: Many students were able to explain what they were learning and how it built on what had come before. They were not only describing the task but also connecting it to prior knowledge, showing they were constructing new understanding. Intentional design for collaboration and concept formation: I saw varied and purposeful groupings, where students were supporting one another’s learning....
Post a Comment
Read more

Collaboration: The Legacy

Dipping my toes... For the first three months of 2013, I took part in my first MOOC, 'Designing a New Learning Environment' offered by Stanford University via an initiative called Venture Lab . I signed up because it ties in with my Octopus's Garden Project and also because I wanted to experience this Flat Classroom-global-type of learning for myself. The course required us to watch weekly lectures and complete readings; for assessment we had to submit five individual assignments, one final team assignment and five peer assessments of other final projects. We signed up for teams of our choice and developed an area within new learning environments; developing our final project design based on our findings, readings and experience. Leading & Contributing I became team leader late on in the project as the original one, the one who set up the actual topic, went quiet and dropped off the radar. Having 40000 people taking part in a course makes it hard to communicate wi...
2 comments
Read more

It's all about Choice and Voice

Collaborative Planning in PBL In Phase 3 of The Octopus's Garden Project, Grade 7 and Grade 8 have been working on the importance of visuals in getting their message across clearly and effectively to their audience. They recently collaborated to decide how to proceed with their final design presentations. Using the feedback and reflections from their Phase 2 presentations, along with some lesson on slide design and visual story-telling, they created a list of  guidelines  to guide their final designs.    Introduction to Slide Design: 7 Rules for Creating Effective Slides from Alex Rister Lots of critical thinking happened as learners made important decisions about how teams would be formed, how the presentation would work, what would be included and the order each section would occur in. Learners took part in a poll to decide on team formation for this Phase and then, using the guidelines and learning from the slides above, worked on planning out...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building Feedback Literacy: Quantitative Insights into Feedback, Rubrics, and Formative Assessment

Feedback has long been recognised as one of the most significant factors influencing student achievement. Quantitative evidence, particularly from large-scale meta-analyses, consistently demonstrates that feedback interventions produce some of the highest effect sizes of any educational practice (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Wisniewski, Zierer, & Hattie, 2020). Yet, these same studies reveal a wide variation in outcomes, with some forms of feedback accelerating learning substantially, while others appear ineffective, or even detrimental. This paradox highlights a crucial challenge for educators: the mere presence of feedback is insufficient. Its impact depends on how clearly it communicates goals, how effectively it guides students’ next steps, and whether learners possess the capacity to interpret and apply it. This capacity is increasingly described as feedback literacy; the skills and dispositions students require to make sense of, use, and seek feedback to improve their learni...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Octopus's Garden - Inspired Creativity

I was amazed today at how much a simple rearrangement of the learning has rearranged the thinking space. Immediately today, my Grade 8s utilised all the different possibilites - the make-shift Chrome Books (though we have some issues there regarding speed and applications), the Macs, the floor, the paper and paint and crayons - they were painting, sculpting with paper, making collages, Prezis and Pixton cartoons; they shared work and gave feedback and collaborated more than they ever had - it was awesome and made me even more exciting to roll out the project. Look what has happened with a shift of furniture. Imagine the possibilities when we rethink and customise the whole space... :)
Post a Comment
Read more

Teacher Geeks: Technology Professionals

In the latest module of my Masters in Education and Instructional Technology, we studied "Administration of Technology Initiatives: Planning, Budgeting, and Evaluation". This involved us exploring how to research and write for grants, as well as design and plan at both classroom and school initiative level. As many schools are implementing technology into their curriculum, it is important that we think about the role that educators and technology integrators can play in successful technology use in the classroom. This following is my research into technology professionals conducted during the summer of 2016. I have since gained employment elsewhere and am no longer working at the school mentioned in this paper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> Technology Professionals: The ‘Interview’ With the advent of technology becoming more prevalent in schools, many establishments...
Post a Comment
Read more