Exploring Learning

  Why collaborative planning and responsive teaching need each other There is a tension in teaching that I keep returning to. We need to plan well. We need coherent curriculum, shared learning intentions, thoughtful assessment, and collaborative decisions about how we will design learning. Yet once students enter the room, the plan cannot become the thing we are trying to protect. The plan is not the learning. Perhaps a better way to think about it is that the plan is our best shared hypothesis about how learning might happen . Then teaching begins, and we find out. Planning matters This distinction matters because responsive teaching should not be an argument for everyone doing their own thing. Collaborative planning is fundamental to creating a coherent experience for students. Teams need shared clarity about what students are learning, the conceptual understandings that matter, what successful learning might look like and the experiences likely to help students get there. Marsch...

Belonging is not granted after learners prove they can access the curriculum. Belonging is created through the way curriculum, instruction, assessment, relationships, and evidence-informed responses are designed. That idea has been sitting with me deeply. In schools, we often talk about belonging as something relational, cultural, or pastoral. Whilst it is, of course, all of those things, I also think belonging is a curriculum and learning design issue. Learners experience belonging, or exclusion, through the tasks they are given, the examples they see, the feedback they receive, the ways they are invited to participate, and the assumptions adults make about what they can do. Inclusion, then, cannot sit only in intervention structures or individual support plans. These matter, of course; some learners need targeted and specialist support, and schools need strong systems to provide it. But if inclusion begins only after a learner struggles, we have already accepted a design problem as a...

Here is a reflection on a hypothetical district and how the ISTE and NETP standards can be applied. It analyses the current state of educational technology and the implications these standards have on thinking about professional learning.

This week, we have been exploring andragogy and how we can use learning theory to motivate and design learning for adults. We had to create a Padlet to share our ideas. Access mine HERE or click below.

"You must leave digital footprints so people know you’re treading among them and part of the community" Vicki Davis, ' Global Education by Design '. I joined Twitter in July 2012 and I honestly can’t tell you what prompted me to join. I had been in a school in Malaysia for a year and that had been my first exposure to teaching with technology. We were a 1:1 Mac school just starting to implement GSuite for Education (or Google Apps for Education as it was then). At that time, the apps were limited, tables for example, in Google Docs, didn’t work properly and the formatting options were limited. There was no Google Classroom either. However, it revolutionised my teaching and I began to write websites as schemes of work that had my learners as the audience and focused on what they were doing, rather than an list of instructions that I, as the teacher, should do to them. I also began to use Edmodo to share all my resources and lessons with my learners online for 2...

For part of this week's assignment, I had to read up on different management theories - which gave me flash backs to my PGDip in Management that I did last century, and thank goodness I got out of that dull quagmire - as well as models of innovation. This is all as research into how we can implement a successful training plan for teachers, which is the major focus and assignment for this semester. As my Masters is in the use of technology, we are encouraged to try different tools - this week, I used Popplet , an interactive collaborative mind-mapping application. Go to  Organisational Change  to see the Popplet.

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 a thorough investigation take place in order to determine the true learning needs of the community. Below is an example of a hypothetical report; it demonstrates both the layout and the level of detail required to ascertain the needs of a particular classroom. The structure of the needs analysis includes a classroom description and a statement of academic need, which is crucial in being able to hone a helpful vision statement that supports tightly focused goals, objectives, and professional development requirements. Budgets for both training and equipment are outlined, along with a r...