Exploring Learning

View from the top of Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore We are back to school next week. We kicked off with a few days of PD, and ended for a long Independence Day holiday weekend, by being treated to a wonderful sun-soaked afternoon on the top of the iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel. I have had a great summer - lots of sunshine, swimming and reading. I found a great balance between relaxing and learning, and thought I would list the great books I had the pleasure to read over the six week break. Fiction Coraline (graphic novel) by Neil Gaiman and P Craig Russell Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin Strip Jack by Ian Rankin The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald Black Swan Green by David Mitchell Mockingbird by Katherine Erskine When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli While I Live  by John Marsden Shakespeare's Star Wars  by Ian Doescher The Miseducation of Cameron Post  by Emily M Danforth Out of My Mind  by Sharon Draper ...

A Quadblog assignment for Flat Classroom Teacher Certification. Composed collaboratively by Holly, Dottie, Kerry, and Penny. --------------- Five areas of awareness - use these five areas of awareness as a lens for viewing digital citizenship choices: Technical Awareness Individual Awareness Social Awareness Cultural Awareness Global Awareness  The focus of this Quad-Blog will be on Individual Awareness Individual awareness is a person’s understanding of online behavior and how he/she chooses to behave online. Some factors that play into individual awareness are healthy lifestyle choices, balance, and a person’s individual goals. Major Topics: Safety, Privacy, Copyright, Fair Use, and Legal Compliance Etiquette and Respect Habits of Learning: Reliable, Responsible, Management of Online Activity Understanding Literacy and Fluency ------------------------ Safety, Privacy, Copyright, Fair Use, and Legal Compliance What is it? In basic terms Safety, Privacy, Copyri...

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 individu...

The adage ' to assume makes an ass out of you and me ' is one that I have been thinking about a lot lately, and is even more pertinent as we discuss communication in my Flat Classroom Certification course. The readings, discussion and research focus around the need for open channels, boundaries and accepted standards of effective communication at all levels, with everyone. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/ shaireproductions/4169742922/ In today's world, there are many channels and tools available for communication - at every conceivable level. Technology means that we communicate constantly, easily, excessively. All these channels mean that wires can easily get crossed. My desire to share and communicate my findings about learning and teaching has been misinterpreted as my being a 'know-all' or as 'aloof' and 'superior', which is so far from the truth it's not even the same language. If I knew everything, why would I be doing all these cour...

"Educational institutions are established around a privilege of writing as the ultimate means of demonstrating understanding"; the question is, can digital technology and the creation of images "demonstrate competence, knowledge and understanding in a rigorous way?" As a life-long learner, I have recently been taking part in an  E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC  via Coursera (see posts Graveyards of Technology and The Machine is Us ) and the sources they offer for thought include a lot of visual sources. In conjunction with the fact that I have been trialling Flipped Classroom methods and just completed certification through Sophia.org , I have been thinking about the use of visual sources for teaching and their impact on engagement and learning. https://class.coursera.org/edc-001/wiki/view?page=Howtointerpretimages Part of the outcomes of the  E-learning and Digital Cultures  course is a consideration of "the extent to which visual representation...

Flipping the classroom is something I have been thinking about since I read Flip Your Classroom last summer. However, despite the book being really informative in both clearly explaining how Bergman and Sams' journey evolved as well as in consolidating my belief that flipping is a great method to differentiate, personalise and manage the diverse learners we find in our classrooms today, there were a distinct lack of good English class examples out there. I can clearly see the advantages for science and maths, but English has often already been flipped to some degree, in that we often ask for reading to be done preparation for a lesson, where discussions and writing are then supported. My explorations led me to Sophia.org , who offer a great free course on planning and thinking through rigorous and authentic flipped lessons. However I became stumped after the theory part and at the point where I had to actually start planning a flipped lesson that went beyond the 'norma...

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...

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  Benjamin Franklin. Week 2's exploration for the Coursera MOOC, E-learning & Digital Cultures  asks us to look forward to the future of educational learning within a digital realm. Retaining our thinking about Utopian and Dystopian representations, this time we were to focus on the "sorts of metaphors that are used to draw comparisons between the unfamiliar and the familiar, or the abstract and the concrete" as a way to try and understand the assumptions made about e-learning - the digital ‘native’ and the digital ‘immigrant’ being one of the most widely used at present, for example. Sunrise, Singapore, Morning Run, 09 February 2013 A Utopian perspective presents technology as our salvation - transformative and revolutionary; a Dystopian perspective sees technology as destruction - as attacking and supplanting. Separation of the two...

"You must leave digital footprints so people know you’re treading among them and part of the community." Vicki Davis, ' Global Education by Design ' The final part of Professional Learning in the Digital Age concerns contribution and how it is our duty to give as much as we take from our Personal Learning Networks (PLN), if not more. We all have something to give, we all have something to share - whether it is anecdote or expertise - and we can all learn from each other. Kristen Swanson advocates multi-layered contribution ranging from Tweeting (or even more basically, Re-Tweeting) to speaking at conferences. I think I can narrow my contributions to:- Tweeting  Blogging Collaborative planning at work Leading or presenting PL sessions at school Speaking at a conference TWEETING Tweeting is easiest - stuff just comes to me and I Tweet and ReTweet what I think might be useful to others. I also Tweet quotes from books I read via my Kindle and links I st...

I am lucky enough to live in a country that never suffers from the snow that seems to be blighting many of my friends, followers and PLN. With the knowledge that my February is going to be completely bonkers (I start my Flat Classroom Teacher Training Course, we have mock exams, I have to get all the Extended Essay documentation completed, all IBDP internal assessments need to be finished and paperwork submitted, a friend and her toddler is coming to stay, we have parents' evening and reports to write, plus I need to train for my next half-marathon), along with it being my hubby's birthday weekend, I decided to take Saturday to chill by the pool in the blazing sunshine and complete the reading for the virtual book club I have been taking part in. For the background on this see the following posts: Take charge of your own learning Pearls of Wisdom Baring your soul: Reflecting & Sharing Professional Learning in the Digital Age gave me great insight and the confiden...

"The act of finding resources and thinking about them changes your practice. The more exploring I do, the more I try, and the more I learn."  Richard Byrne, author of Free Technology for Teachers quoted in a chapter about 'Reflection' in ' Professional Learning in a Digital Age ' by Kristen Swanson. MODELLING Teaching is all about modelling."Reflection in a public space creates a transparency for learning that benefits education" in more ways than one - it creates a forum for educators and it also creates positive models for learners. TRANSPARENCY "Being transparent about our successes and struggles is an important behaviour to model for our students"; being honest and open - particularly laying bare our mistakes and inadequacies - can be something that educators find challenging but the advent of Google in the classroom means we cannot and are not the sage on the stage; tech-savvy learners (and even those who aren't particul...