Discussion

One of the excellent things about MS Teams is the Conversation section.     This allows comments to be shared along with documents, links, etc very much in a similar vain to you would share things via social media.    Users can comment on the posts of others plus can “like” what they see.   As a way for teachers to share lessons thoughts and ideas along with resources, this is easy to do plus for those who use social media the format and process will seem very familiar.   For those not so engaged in social media it may take a little getting used to however not much, and as their colleagues start sharing resources and ideas they will soon be drawn in.   I also see this as a key opportunity to engage such staff in social media such as twitter given the wealth of ideas and resources bouncing around out there.

Communication

A department might decide as I have done to have a weekly briefing which is shared.    For me this is now published in Teams with team members invited to comment or action things in teams.    This in turn has allowed us to start to reduce some of our email traffic, where email had almost become the default method of communication.    As such ideas and resources might be published in teams, where I can view them when I have appropriate time as opposed to having them emailed to me as would have happened previously, where they would become just another email in amongst many emails.    If I really want I can receive notifications via email, however this is at each individual users control.

Collaboration

Teams allows collaborative working in that files can be shared.    Department staff might be invited to contribute to a joint scheme of work, with multiple staff able to concurrently access and edit a shared document.  Gone are the days of heads of department having to receive individual emails and comments from their team and then collate their responses.

Cloud Hosted

Through using Teams files are hosted in the cloud.   This allows users to access the files from any device, anywhere.   This offers a flexibility that was often achieved through the use of VPNs, remote desk or third party apps like Foldr, without the complexity.    Staff can easily download the app to their devices and then access it on an iPad, on an android device or on a desktop computer.

 Final thoughts

MS Teams is an excellent tool which ticks a lot of admin boxes in terms of sharing resources and allowing easy communications.   This is not however where I see its biggest strength.    Its biggest strength for me is in being a space for teachers to openly share thoughts, ideas and resources; An almost IntraTwitter system, internal to the school.  All the benefits of sharing ideas as in twitter but without the scale, a minor disadvantage, and without the online posturing about the “correct” way to teach or policy or educational theory, a major advantage of teams.

I haven’t as yet ventured into class teams however I am sure that will be something we will be looking at in the future and I am sure it too will bring with it benefits.

It was very enjoyable to be able to bat around varied ideas and thoughts in a safe environment where the others involved were open and non-judgmental.   I had a good debate with one colleague in particular when I fielded the prompt question:

“Do we really need big display screens in class if every student has a tablet device on which they can view the same content”

My prompt question came from my own questioning of the need for a centralized classroom screen, and the resulting focus and perceived “front” to the classroom.   My colleagues perception was that the screen was an important focal point at times plus that it overcame the issue of where students turn up without devices.   We openly bounced arguments and counter-arguments back and forth, but in an open way in search of a new solution or eureka moment.

To me this was a very positive experience with colleagues all searching potential changes which could bring about improvement.   No ideas were excluded or considered too silly.   No contribution was disregarded or belittled.    The prospect of change was embraced as a potential for improvement.   The fear of something new or the love for “the way we do things around here” was pushed to the side.    It was all about creativity and sharing in the hope of finding something better.   Ideas were limited to just improving current practices, instead totally new practices unlike anything current done were considered.

We need to have more events like this!

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 21^st century skills we often talk about in terms of students.

Twitter has supported me to develop my 21^st 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!

But in order to encourage students to become such champions we must embrace them as individuals and seek to understand and encourage such individuality.

Another posting talked about how education was being reduced from an art to a science through increasing focus on achievement data and standardised testing.    (Apologies for not including the link/reference however I appear to have misplaced it for now: Will hope to resolve and include the reference asap).   This posting suggested to me a move towards processes and systems at the expensive of relationships and away from the fuzzy arts of emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills.

Day in day out we walk into classes to work with our students, to learn with our students and importantly to interact with our students.    I remember back to some female staff who worked with me who had particularly good results in terms of student achievement.   When asked how they achieved this they explained that they “mothered” the students.    Now what they meant by this as far as I was concerned is that they spent a significant amount of time focused on relationships; on understanding their students and allowing their students to understand them.

So when we look at improving outcomes we look at more differentiation, assessment for learning, target setting with D grade students and the like.   We focus on processes.  Maybe we should first examine the relationships as without proper relationships any process we implement are likely to fail.

@mrbadura summed it up perfectly on twitter as below:

And just as an additional thought the relationships don’t stop with the teacher and student.   What are the relationships like between staff or between teacher and school leaders?    What is the organisational climate of the school like?   Also, what about the relationships between the staff and parents or other stakeholders?

Then a colleague introduced me to the use of Twitter as a tool for professional learning and sharing teaching or other ideas around education with practitioners from around the world.    That was around 6 month ago and I haven’t looked back since then.   I have found myself regularly, and at stages daily, visiting twitter looking to see what ideas and discussions were out there.    That said, most of my contributions to Twitter thus far have been in the form of retweets of tweets which I have considered useful, interesting, insightful or worth sharing.

So this blog entry marks my 1000^th tweet.   Not much when compared with veterans of twitter however for me it marks almost 1000 ideas, discussions or thoughts which, without twitter, I may not have had access to.

Thank you to all who have I have followed for the ideas you have provided and I look forward to further interactions with you.    I intend to do as my colleague did for me, and encourage others to engage in using twitter for professional learning purposes.    I also intend to contribute more of my own thoughts rather than just retweeting.    If you are reading this, do you know of educators not using twitter and if so have you introduced them to the possibilities?    How many professional development programmes can boast that they can provide as many, or as broad a range of, ideas as twitter can?

Keep tweeting, as I certainly will.

So where to begin:  Well I think the best place to start is to look at what the 21 century skills are.   The Partnership for 21^st Century skills identified 6 key areas:

1. Thinking critically and making judgements
2. Solving complex, multidisciplinary, open ended problems
3. Creativity and entrepreneurial thinking
4. Communicating and collaborating
5. Making innovative use knowledge, information and opportunities
6. Taking charge of financial, civic and health responsibilities

The question then becomes how can IT help in develop these skills required for the 21^st century, or is that the right question?    Consider the world we now live in and the 6 areas listed above; which of the areas could or maybe more accurately, would be, done without IT?

Points 2, 4 and 5, I would argue, would not normally be undertaken without IT.   To solve complex, multidisciplinary problems requires collaboration, communication, research and analysis.   Communication and collaboration in the current world involves the likes of skype, twitter, google drive, pinterest and a whole manner of other software and apps, to bring people together such that geography is no longer an issue, and sharing ideas, thoughts and questions is easy.    As to knowledge and information, and also research I do not think we can discuss these areas, in the current world we live in without the word “Google” popping to mind.   Now that covers 50% of the points, so 50% of the 21^st century skills would normally involve IT so why isn’t  IT more embedded in education?   Why are we still looking to use IT as an “aid” to develop skills which actually necessitate the use of IT?

Now I could also argue that IT has its part to play in critical thinking and in creativity however I am not going to do so, as I think another problem lies here.      In what way do we teach students to be critical and creative thinkers, to question to norms, to be innovative?      I don’t think we do quite enough of this, mainly because we are busy teaching students the “right” answers, so they can pass the tests, get good marks, improve league tables and help to make the country look better in the all important standardised tests.   As such students’ critical judgements are only valid as long as they are in the domain of the teaching they have received, but outside this domain who is to say they will fare as well?   As to their ability to be creative thinkers, I think almost no time is set aside in schools to help develop this area.   Please note I am talking creative thinking here, and not Art, Music or Drama, as I am sure I can hear some people reading this, in the far corners of the web, muttering regarding the fact students receive lessons in these subject areas to provide them an opportunity to be creative.

All in all education has a way to go in terms of helping students develop the skills required of the 21^st century.   Let’s just hope we get it right before the 22^nd century is upon us!

References

21^st Century Skills, Education and Competitiveness (2008),The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills.
Image from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net : “Technology In The Hands Of Businessmen” by KROMKRATHOG

Children are born with curiosity.   It is built in.   It is this curiosity that brings children to experience the world and to learn long before we start “teaching” them.

And then education kicks in with its “Right” and “Wrong” answers.   Are we not just presenting children with a 50/50 chance of being correct.   Now who would continue to be curious if it didn’t matter; you still would have a 50/50 chance.

We talk about encouraging creativity, problem solving, collaboration and other higher order skills however how often do we mention fostering curiosity.   And how can we go about fostering it?