Tag: 21st Century Skills

esports anyone?

Yesterday I had a meeting with a representative from the British esports Association in relation to esports competitions within schools.    As with a lot of technology views are rather polarized, and none more polarized than the views on esports.       Either esports is a window into the future and future big business or it is addictive computer gaming and bad for users ability to focus and communicate.

We are already seeing massive investment in esports.    Prize money in relation to esports is seeing continued increase.    It is also worth considering the industries which are linked with esports including the IT industry, news and media, computer games design and development as well as the advertising and marketing industries.    esports is therefore a growing sector, an industry in which an increasing number of jobs are being created which the students we currently teach will need to fill.    But only if we appropriately prepare them.

On the negative side, my view is simply one of balance.    Students who continuously study and worry about their academic ability can take this to an extreme where it results in health issues including stress.   Students wishing to be the top of a given sport may also take this to extremes, training to the point of physically breaking.    esport training equally can be taken to extremes however like sport and academic studying, esports can be part of a balanced lifestyle.     Only by talking with our students and engaging them in relation to esports can we seek to help them achieve an appropriate balance.     One look around a school or a quick listen to playground chatter will tell you that gaming and involvement in basic esports activities is already happening.    In schools we can either choose to ignore this or we can seek to get involved and in doing so can help to provide students guidance and a steer in the right direction.

I am looking forward to exploring how esports might become part of a schools offering, how students might be encouraged to take ownership of it and be provided opportunities to develop leadership skills.   I look forward to seeing how students work together as a team, how they communicate, problem solve, develop critical thinking skills and develop as esports players.   I look forward to developing a community around esports.

Let the games begin……

 

EdTech

I have always been very active in encouraging the use of Educational Technology in classrooms and used to cite the below as 3 reasons why we should:

  1. We live in a technological world
  2. Technology can engage students
  3. Learning is multisensory and technology is also multisensory

In addition to the above I need to note that I do not believe all lessons should use EdTech as EdTech is only a tool for learning.    It is therefore the Learning that matters most, so if technology is not aiding, enhancing or redefining learning, or if technology is being used just because it can then I think it should be left out.

Reflecting on the above I still believe strongly in point 1.   Technology now has a place in almost every aspect of our life and with the Internet of things technology is ever expanding into areas of life within which it previously didn’t exist.   As such we need to use technology in learning.   We also need to teach students about using technology in learning including when it is appropriate not to use technology and when it is appropriate to disconnect, as I believe we all need to.

With regards point 2, I am no longer convinced this point is true anymore as technology has become the norm for students.    The difference which technology brings is the ability to engage with content in different ways as opposed to engaging with technology.    Teachers can allow students to interact with science, mathematics and every other subject in new and interesting ways.   Teachers can engage students in conversations with famous and interesting people from across the world through technology.  One example of this being students having conversations with an astronaut in space as at least one school is doing currently.

I still believe in Point 3 however would expand on it now.   It isn’t just the multisensory aspect of technology which is beneficial but the social aspect as well.   Through technology students can collaborate and work with others.   Technology also helps in developing other skills and attributes in students thought engaging them in critical thinking and problem solving tasks.

The challenges as I see them however are that teachers need to model best practice for students and in order to do so need to themselves be comfortable in using the technology.     Students also have to be educated about the safe use of the internet.  Again teachers have to be aware of the dangers, etc in order to do this and I don’t always believe we are.     I also think we need to build up the digital resilience and work life balance aspects of using technology as well as the ability to critically evaluate information for validity and reliability.

I don’t think we will ever have proof that use of tech directly and positively impacts on student results however this is the wrong question.    Tech is part of life and we are preparing students for this life after school, so surely tech has its part to play.

Seeking creativity

Posting number 10 of #29daysofwriting and todays post is a musing on creativity in schools.

Today I attended an IT event at my school where colleagues explained the EdTech journey the school has been on.   I am not long in the school hence have largely came in late in the day.   Within part of the presentation a colleague identified the pedagogical reasons behind the selection of the core apps to be used across the school, citing a number of areas which largely corresponded to the 4 Cs (Collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking) plus a few other points.

This got me thinking about creativity and how we might go about developing creativity in our students.

Makerspaces might be one opportunity to develop creativity in that this puts students in a position where they have various resources available to them to solve a problem or to create something.    Taken as a single event a makerspace session largely taps into a students inherent creativity rather than further developing what they have.   If they are not very creative then they will struggle.   That said, students generally have the potential for creativity especially in their younger years.    The opportunity to work in teams, collaboratively, may impact on creativity possibly as they gain access to new ideas through working together.   Also the repeated use of makerspaces may help in developing a students tendency towards being creative however I am not sure how it might help in making students “more” creative.

I wonder about the act of teaching creativity, or more accurately of teaching about how we think and therefore how ideas which may be considered to be “creative” might be hidden from us due to the way we think.      I have read De Bonos book on divergent thinking and I wonder about how some of the example activities contained within might be used with students.   I believe building an awareness of how we think and how we learn might help students in developing their ability to think creatively, and outside of the box.

We talk about developing creative students however can we put our finger on where we are doing this, how we are teaching or facilitating learning which develops creativity?

 

 

Body and mind

We think with both our body and our mind.   Daniel Kahneman outlines the experiment where individuals are made to smile or frown through putting a pencil in their mouth.   They are asked to either put a pencil length ways in their mouth or pointing forward from their mouth, however not explanation is given for this.  They are then asked about how they feel.   Those with the pencil length ways indicate a greater tendency towards happiness whereas those with the pencil pointing outwards tend towards unhappiness.   No explanation is given to participants as to the reasoning for pencil.  The actual reasoning for the pencil is to cause participants to either smile, as a pencil lengthwise in your mouth will cause, or frown as a pencil pointing outwards and therefore held in place by pursed lips will cause.    This suggests that physical attributes or events can result in mental changes, in this case changes in emotional state.    If we take this idea and consider how we might make use of it in education it seems to suggest that the physical position, etc of students could have an impact on their learning.    This could have implications for students being seated for periods of time. or for classroom movement.   It seems to link to the use of brain gym in class which although evidence suggests it doesn’t have a direct impact on learning, it does energize students and in my experience puts them in a better frame of mind ahead of or during learning.   Basically the physical activity changes the mental conditions which impact on learning including emotional state.

Linked to this is cognitive loading and its impact on simple activities such as movement.   We might make students move round a classroom doing group activities however where cognitive load is high, such as where students are having to engage in critical thinking on a topic, they will find the simple activity such as movement difficult.    Kahneman discussed how, if you ask someone a complex maths question while walking, there is a high likelihood the person will stop at least momentarily in order to think through the problem prior to answering.    This raises some questions with regards higher order thinking activities combined with movement.

Cognitive loading very much relies on what Kahneman described as Agent 2 or the analytical part of the mind as opposed to Agent 1 which is the intuitive part of the mind.    This again could have interesting implications within education especially with regards to examinations as the mind will often present what appear to be intuitively correct answers in an effort to avoid the effort of having to analyse the problem in hand.   In some cases these intuitive answers will be correct however they can also be misleading.    As teachers we therefore have a duty to prepare students to deal with these intuitive answers such that the avoid being mislead.

As teachers we also need to look at how we can use mental priming to best effect.   Priming is where a visual, auditory or other cue has a direct mental of physical effect.   As I mentioned earlier a smile can result in feelings of happiness.    We could use images in our classroom to try to encourage students to smile.  Maybe a picture of a smile or a picture of a class of students working together will all participants smiling.   This second example might also serve to set the tone and have an impact on the ability to get students to work collaboratively within class.

Students are human beings and as human beings they think as other human beings do.   As we strive to make better education systems I think a key step is to encourage teachers to dive into the rich texts that exist with regards how humans think and behave.   The more I read from different authors on the brain, thinking, creativity, etc the more I realize how much I don’t know about learning and the more I want to know.   Through such reading we can generate ideas, test them in class and draw conclusions as to the potential for such ideas to impact on the quality of learning;  We can become better teachers of the small thinking human beings which join us every day in our classrooms.

Pass or Fail….But be resilient.

The educational world is full of contradictions.   A perfect example is the recent discussions on the importance of developing resilience in students and even digital resilience as discussed at a recent conference in Australia.    I strongly agree with the need to develop resilience in students as throughout their life students are likely to encounter difficulties and even failure.   Teachers need to support and develop students such that they are able to get past such difficulties and learn from then, picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and marching onward.

The issue is that all of this is against a background of student examinations and standardised testing where students are either considered as pass or fail or in the case of standardised testing, above or below average.    I would question how possible it is for a teacher to develop resilience in a student who often hears and sees reference to how they are below average.   I would equally wonder how possible it is for the above average student.    Students invariably look at scores and grades and no matter how much we try to avoid categorising ability based on such quantifiable measure they will focus on these and make comparisons between themselves and their peers.    Students after all are often told by their parents about the importance of qualifications and of grades, and they see the focus put on these measures by their older family members including brothers and sisters.   Failure to meet expectations therefore has a significant impact and even more so where a student perceives it to happen regularly or even often.  No number of positive comments and reinforcement from teachers is likely to address this.

If resilience is as important as is claimed, and I believe, then we need to re-evaluate what we currently do particularly with regards constant testing, grading and examinations.   If resilience is just another fad then we need to drop it now and concentrate on what really matters, whatever that is.

Photo courtesy of Sira Anamwong at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

1.5Mb! Why would I need more?

Technology continues to have a significant impact on our everyday lives but not only that, as technology advances at an ever quickening pace, so it changes our everyday lives.  During the last week two specific events have caused be to reflect on this.

The first event happened earlier this week when I came across the below tweet:

This got me reflecting on my own journey with computer systems and in particular the storage space and data which I interacted with.    My early life with computer systems involved 5 ¼ inch floppy disks and later the higher capacity 3.5 inch not so floppy variety.   The sum of all the data I could create and consume could be stored on 1.5Mb discs without any problem.    As time went on however it became apparent as my disc collection expanded into the hundreds that I needed a new storage solution to cope with the ever increasing amount of data I was both producing and consuming.   Enter my first proper IBM compatible PC complete with a whopping 500Mb hard drive.   This was the solution to all my problems or so I thought for a while anyway.   It wasn’t long before the 500Mb drive inside my nice new PC had to be provided with a friend to play with, in the shape of a 2nd 500Mb hard drive taking my total storage to the impossible to fill level of 1Gb of storage space.

I won’t bore you with the intervening years so let’s fast forward to the here and now.   My storage requirements these days run into terabytes and let me just say I have a few terabytes worth of data.    Part of this might be that I am a bit of a hoarder including keeping the data, files and other creations which I have developed over the last 10 years of so.   I may even be able to lay my hands on specific emails from 3 jobs and almost 10years ago.    Part of this may be the ever higher quality and complexity of creations and part may also be the increasing speed with which I can generate new digital data or content.     The tools I have at my disposal now allow me to create new content at a far faster rate than I could all those years ago working with 5 ¼ inch floppy discs.

This is the point I want to make here, that our ability to create and consume content is increasing at what must almost be an exponential rate as technology provides us new methods for both producing and creating content, plus to share this content for others to adapt and share again.     This brings us to the second of the events I mentioned at the start of this post.   While reading “The New Digital Network” I came across the below statement:

“Every future generation will be able to produce and consume more information [or content] than the previous one”

Given this it is important that we as teachers are adequately preparing our students to deal with this ever increasing amount of content for consumption plus to manage the increasing levels of content which they find themselves producing.       Students need to understand how search engines work and why certain items float to the top, they need to be able to evaluate information for validity using alternative sources to triangulate and confirm the truth.    They need to understand differing standpoints, religious differences, cultural differences, philosophical differences and ethical and moral differences.      Students then need to be able to present their own beliefs and viewpoints while understanding that others may disagree.   They need to understand how the content they produce will be stored and presented on the internet and how any shared content or information could have a profound impact on their life as it is now or in the future many years from now.

The above represent only a small number of the issues which we should be seeking to help students understand.   I would suggest that the current programmes of digital literacy and e-safety lessons barely begin to scratch the surface of the discussions we really need to be having with our students.

Connected Educator Month

It was 2012 when I first created my twitter account however at the time I wasn’t sure why I had created an account or how I might use the account.    Some months later it was a colleague who planted the idea of using twitter for professional development.   This resulted in my logging back in to my, at that stage, dormant account and beginning to search for people discussing education and edtech in particular.   It wasn’t long before I was hooked on the access to a multitude of new ideas, opinions and resources.     Twitter proved to be a quick an easy way for me to dip in and out of professional development as and when I had the time and felt like it.    I found myself stealing 5 or 10, or if very lucky 30, minutes of time during which I could quickly scan through twitter on my phone for interesting posts regarding educational research, edtech apps and software and other educational resources.

I quickly found that I was finding more articles than I had time to read in the limited time I had managed to put aside to access twitter.   At this point I came across a number of twitter posts and through them blogs discussing how Evernote could be used.   So I started filing the tweets and blogs I found in the few minutes I managed to steal using Evernote so that I could then access them at a later stage when I had more time.

I have grown to be an avid fan of twitter and its potential to help teachers grow as professionals.    Personally twitter has allowed me to communicate with people I wouldn’t normally have been able to communicate with.   It has allowed me to access new creative ideas, which in turn has helped and encouraged me to be creative in my work.    Twitter has led me to work with others in sharing ideas, in discussing topics and in solving problems;  I have worked collaboratively.    It has also allowed me to see and discuss other viewpoints and ideas, often requiring a critical response.     Basically twitter has helped and encouraged me to use the 21st century skills we often talk about in terms of students.

Twitter has supported me to develop my 21st century skills and in doing so model for students the traits we wish them to develop.   It has also allowed me to access resources and ideas.

Tomorrow begins Connected Educator Month 2015 so I hope you will join me in sharing and in developing the teaching profession as a whole.     I also hope you will share and promote Connected Educator Month with those colleagues who have yet to experience the potential of twitter so that we can increase the number of educators sharing and collaborating to ensure  our students receive the best learning opportunities possible.

I look forward to connecting!

 

Moving on….

I am currently in the process of starting a new job which in itself is stressful however to compound matters I am also moving house and also country of residence.    The process has so far involved just over a month living in hotels, which to most may sound like fun however you can only eat the hotel food a limited number of times before boredom sets in plus the inability to put together a light snack at random hours of the day or night is also a limitation.   There is also the issue of the overall cost of living in hotels given both the cost per night and then the additional cost for food and drink.    A significant amount of time has also been spent trying to find a more permanent place to live therefore requiring visits to countless estate agents and rental agents plus visits to various properties.   Thankfully this phase has now passed and I have found a house and now moved in.

The current phase of the transition can be likened to living like a student.    Basically the various items of furniture, etc have been ordered however as yet have not arrived and as such I am currently sleeping on the floor until the bed arrives.   The only furniture currently within the house is a TV, a TV stand on which the TV sits and also a coffee table which currently doubles as the extent of our dining furniture.

So all in all things have been very busy and stressful as of late however I haven’t as yet mentioned the major cause of stress.     I am without internet!!!!      I am currently awaiting the installation of broadband which is due to occur in almost two weeks from now so until then I have no access to internet at home.    To make matters worse mobile signal strength around my new property is very poor so I don’t even have the use of mobile internet via my phone.    It is only sat here being without internet that I find myself realising how integral internet access has became to my life (Note: Writing this I am sat without internet however clearly I must have had internet to upload this blog…..the wonders of Costa Coffee!!).    It provides me flexibility in accessing work materials to allow me to work beyond the normal hours of work and on weekends.   I find myself writing this even although there are work related issues I want to be addressing however I am unable to without internet access.   Internet provides me with a communication channel both professionally and also personally, allowing me to speak to my parents ahead of finally visiting them in person after many years away.    It provides me access to services such as water and electricity services, online banking and many more services which are all important in everyday living but possibly even more important when setting up a new home.    Basically the internet is no longer a luxury for me but in fact is now a necessity.

All of this leaves me wondering about the argument often stated with regards limiting student use and reliance on technology.    Basically these calls all come too late as we are already reliant.   Just think what would happen in your local supermarket if the computer systems went down and stopped working.   I very much doubt it would be business as usual.

Now just to be clear I believe that the critical issue in current education is teaching students the skills which will set them up for life such as the 4 C’s of critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and collaboration.    It is also important to teach them about community, globalisation, character and resilience among other skills or characteristics.    The key issue for me is that we should be engaging and using technology to help develop these skills, plus we should be encouraging students to identify new ways that technology can help them in meeting their needs and wants plus in developing these skills.

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Collating ideas

I am a hoarder; I love to collect things however once I have them I have difficulty throwing them away as I am convinced they might come in useful at some later stage.     In terms of physical items this tends to be technology items such as old Atom processor based netbooks, every type of cabling you can think of plus some old 10Mbit network switches and routers.  I also suspect I have some old floppy discs and floppy drives lying around.

This need to collect extends beyond just physical items to teaching ideas and resources.   I feel the need to collect the good ones which I find.   For some time now I have been using twitter and reading a variety of educational blogs and websites, and as a result have found lots and lots of new ideas and resources.   As I have found more and more new ideas and resources there has been an increasing need to find an efficient way to store plus to collate these ideas and resources.   This has weighed on my mind.

Having just purchased a new tablet in the form of a Galaxy Tab S I appear to have found my solution in using both Pinterest and also EverNote.   I am not new to either of these two apps however up until recently my used has been rather limited.   Ever since getting the Tab I have found myself throwing the ideas I find straight into Pinterest and EverNote.    I have found myself using both Apps much more than I used to and have also started to learn more about effectively using the Apps to collate the materials which I have found.   This has made me consider the importance of collation in this world of ever increasing amounts of information.    We often want to quickly and easily find specific ideas or resources which we have previously encountered.   The internet will allow us to find similar items easily however as the amount of material on the internet increases it also becomes a little more difficult to find the specific items which we wish to find among the masses of other similar info.    Using something like Pinterest or EverNote allows me to collate together all the resources and ideas I find, and to tag them such that they are easy for me to find whenever I need them.

This got me thinking about another issue; lets consider that I do use Pinterest or EverNote to gather all the ideas and resources I like over a period of time.   This would be an excellent resource for me as an educator as the ideas would all be ideas I identify with and often would be things that I tried shortly after finding them.    My ability to recall ideas is limited in a way that computers are not, hence  you could consider the use of the internet and Pinterest or EverNote as an attempt to augment my mental capacities.   I would be able to recall ideas and resources I had found years ago without difficulty.    I may come to rely on this enhanced recollection ability.   The issue is that this excellent stored resource of my ideas and resources would exist only in the cloud.    As such the service provider such as Pinterest or EverNote could at any time change the service they offer or could even close the service altogether.   At this point this repository of my individual ideas may be lost.

So the question is how much should we rely on cloud based services in our lives and in our work?    I also wonder about young students who have been avid users of social media solutions; Have they considered that the total story of their life as presented in FaceBook or other sites, which they are proud of, may suddenly and without much warning cease to exist?     Or do students just not hoard the way I do as they can find anything they need via the internet, and could the increasing using of SnapChat be an indication as to this being the case?

I think there could be some good discussion points in the above, particularly where the issues are discussed with students.

Divergent Thinking: What is the purpose of education?

The development of 21st century skills has been stated for quite a while now ( a good thing given we are now 14 years into the 21st century, however it does make me wonder how long we are going to continue looking at skills for the now and when we actually start looking at 22nd century skills.   Remember that students are with us for 12 years so that means students starting school now will be coming out in 2026 with over a quarter of the century gone!).    These skills include communication, collaboration, critical thinking (or problem solving depending on where in the world you are) and creativity.   So how do we encourage students to problem solve, where due to the pace of technology we cannot predict the problems they are likely to face?    Also how do we encourage creativity?

De Bono suggests that lateral thinking was an important factor in addressing this issue while Ken Robinson agreed referring to the factor as divergent thinking.    So how do we encourage these approaches?

One method would be to introduce students to the concepts of lateral thinking or divergent thinking and to actively encourage students to make use of these approaches.   In terms of what this might look like in a classroom I saw an excellent video which was shared via twitter by  @thought_weavers which seemed very much in line with my thinking.   You can watch the video here.    Now this approach if successful would lead to students who are open to lateral thinking or thinking outside of the box.   As such this should help creativity and problem solving.    It would also result in students who may question the what and the why of their learning, which may initial be uncomfortable for some teachers due to the unpredictability of questioning however if teachers are facilitating learning as opposed to delivering learning, then this could open up new pathways in terms of learning.    As such any initial discomfort is well worth it.

Now a key issue in all of this is teachers;   If we want students to develop 21st century skills and to be divergent thinkers then teachers need to model this, showing students what divergent thinking looks like.    So to that end I would like to ask a question: What is the purpose of education?    And if you are a teacher or school leader, when was the last time you sat and thought about what the purpose of your role was, or do league tables, inspection results and standardised test results take up a significant part of your thinking?