Category Archives: Education

21st century learning, art, creativity, Education, networking, teaching, Web 2.0

Art students collaborate – Indoor Laneway Project

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Sometimes things happen in schools. Days and lessons go by and pile up but occasionally an exciting kind of learning takes place. Marie Salinger, art teacher and Director of Learning Enhancement at Whitefriars College (my school), has been a catalyst for this kind of learning. Marie has taken the plunge with her Year 11 Studio Arts class – diving into unchartered waters and taking on the challenge of long-distance, shared learning with Mooroopna Secondary College many kilometres away. Did I mention they had less than a term to produce a show for the public? I’m talking about the Indoor Laneway Project.

Marie talks about how she feels about the project

I am feeling so energised and excited about the Indoor Laneway Project and am especially enjoying the chance to tap into some wonderful, rich resources so easily. Working with Dan West (the Arts Centre) and Eugenia Lim (ACMI) and having access to their wealth of experience, knowledge, technical expertise and creative talents has been a huge incentive and is adding a whole new level of excitement to my work in the classroom. I have also noticed a big shift in how the students are approaching the set tasks. They feel that there is a real purpose to their work and are very aware that they will be addressing a much larger audience than would usually be the case. Normally we might have the opportunity to display their artwork around the school as well as at our VCE exhibition in October. Displaying student work in this way for the school communitiy is great but now we have the chance to show our artwork to anyone, anywhere in the world, who is interested . A daunting but also very exciting possibility.

In the About section of the Indoor Laneway Project’s website, you’ll read this:

Education at the Arts Centre Presents Indoor Laneway – an online collaborative arts project. Its intention is to allow regional and metropolitan secondary school students to develop digital sound and art work.

 Under the mentorship of an established media artist and school based digital media educators, participants remix and re-contextualise each others work and collectively assemble sound and images to explore artistic practice that focuses on key concepts of: 

  • Self
  • Home
  • Global and Local Positioning
  • Connection
  • Exchange 

Over two weeks in September, the Indoor Laneway will establish a virtual space in the Arts Centre’s BlackBox where work generated will be displayed, results disseminated in a public forum and location based performances will take place.

Of all the outcomes listed in the About page, this is one which resonated with me:

  • encourage within participants a community of collaborative creation and a sense of unity working towards a common artistic outcome;

Talking to Marie during the very short span of several weeks before the opening, she spoke of a sense of excitment and engagement amongst the students, and a noticeable increase in productivity and bouncing off others’ ideas. On the day that the two classes met at the Black Box in the Arts Centre to build the sets, I would have loved to be there to witness the shared activity which prepared for a real exhibition in a well known Melbourne Arts space and open to a real audience. I have a feeling this will be something the students will always remember.

Reading Marie’s blog posts, you can sense her involvement in the students’ engagement with the project:

It is so wonderful to see these young students bouncing ideas around. They are so creative and innovative and I am loving the vitality that surrounds the project. There is a lot of dialogue going on about the actual exhibition space and how we might use it to display the very large, diverse and amazing art mountain that has developed from the Indoor Laneway Project.

I’m looking forward to seeing the exhibition this Saturday. Congratulations to Marie, to students and art teachers of Whitefriars College and Mooroopna Secondary College, for your amazing, inspiring work! A real example of authentic learning beyond the walls of the classroom and out of the textbook. Learning from each other, creating together and exhibiting to the world.

21st century learning, creativity, Education, flickr, networking, technology, Web 2.0

Great quotes about learning and change – Flickr group

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collconnections

Yes, another post about Flickr. This time, I’ve discovered the Group Great quotes about learning and change. The image/quote above has been added by canesinthecup. If you look at the rest of canesinthecup’s photostream, you’ll find more quotable quotes, such as this one:

teachersfailing

 This Schopenhauer quote is a favourite of mine and was added by colemama:

extraordinary

Darren Kuropatwa, an educator I’ve known since my involvement with Powerful Learning Practice Program, and who is a mentor to me, used a powerful Seth Godin quote for this slide:

educationgodin

I like his choice of Jared Klett’s image – very apt. Darren took the quote from a blog post by Seth Godin which has resonated with him.

It was actually Darren who initiated a collaborative slideshow within the PLP cohort. Darren selected the theme Teaching well for the slideshow. PLP cohort members were invited to sign up on a Google Document for a slide. 

We will collaboratively create a 20 slide presentation (not counting the title slide) called “Teaching Well”. 20 slides in 10 pairs of contrasts: “Teaching well is more like < slide 1 > than it is like < slide 2 >.” or however else you want to create contrast.

Each day one slide is added to the deck that builds on those that came before. The final 4-6 slides must bring the presentation to some sort of close.

The final product demonstrated, in its collaborative opportunity, that we are much more than the sum of our parts. It was fun to browse Flickr  in search of an image which would best illustrate the idea expressed. I still hope to do this with a class.

Darren included a few instructional slideshows. One of them is Brain Rules for Presenters. Another is Dodging Bullets in Presentations. And also Taking Your Slidedeck to the Next Level. All excellent guides to visual accompaniment to a conceptual presentation.

In a PLP discussion, Darren recommended his friend lynetter‘s  Digital changes everything on Flickr. She has 3 sets. One of them is Interesting Snippets which she explains is

my personal dumping ground for various cool quotes, the odd stat, as slides to talk around when describing how things are changing online and in media & communications generally.

It’s a great collection of visually supported quotations.

lynetter

So much to be discovered on Flickr. It really is more than just a bunch of pictures.

Education, learning, reading, Teacher librarians, teachers, teaching

What do you say to a student who says your reading blog updates are spam?

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What do you say to a student who says your reading blog updates are spam? And what do you say when more than one student sends you an email like this one

Could you please stop spamming me. You are cluttering my inbox and inhibiting me from working.

Now, there are several things bugging me about this email and those like it.

I know that students receive many emails aimed at a general audience and that my weekly email is only a drop in that ocean. Emails about sport they’re not involved in, activities, general information, etc. I get the feeling that these emails are just deleted on a regular basis (or left to gather dust, so to speak). I might be paranoid but I think the emails I’ve been receiving are symptomatic of the way students see staff who work in the school library. Now, I may not be about to describe the situation in your school, but I’ve seen a few school libraries where teacher librarians, librarians and library technicians are considered similarly. To some extent, students don’t consider library staff in the same way they consider teachers. Hence, the email without any greeting or mention of my name – something I’ll bet they would never do to any subject teacher.

Some teacher librarians claim that they teach a class (at least) so that they’re seen as ‘real teachers’. That makes sense. It’s a good idea if you can. Currently I teach a year 7 English class collaboratively on a regular basis, and I enjoy the ongoing relationship with the students, getting to know them in a way I wouldn’t when I come into classes here and there to support information literacy or reading promotion.

But if I taught more classes regularly, I wouldn’t have the time to spread myself around the school, offering my expertise across the curriculum to different year levels at point of need. A teacher librarian’s skills are diverse, and as we keep up with changes in education (which respond to changes in the workplace and the world in general), we have the potential opportunity to become involved in rich ways.  As an example, I’ve been teaching within a ning for the first time, experimenting with enriching learning possibilities for the year 7 class I’ve mentioned. I’ve been constantly developing resources within wikis for English and Art, and I’m about to begin the same type of support for Maths and LOTE faculties. This is a time-consuming, out-of-hours, but ultimately satisfying job. I can do it because I’m not having a full load of face-to-face teaching. I love this work, and I believe teacher librarians have a lot more to offer now than they ever used to. I know many colleagues will agree with me on this.

The other thing that I find problematic when I think about the student’s email to me is the view that reading is not relevant to him. Information about books and related films, animation and the such, belong to the library, and are not relevant to this student’s subject-based focus. I think this reflects the problematic nature of developing a reading culture in the school. I started the fiction blog in order to begin to address this very important aspect of school life. I absolutely believe that developing a strong reading culture within the school community, including everyone in that community, is essential to and will have direct bearing on every other aspect of education. For a start, research demonstrates that reading is directly associated with academic results. And why wouldn’t it be? The more you read, the more you understand, the more ideas and perspectives you glean, the broader your outlook and access to diverse information will be, the more you will engage in discussion to further develop your ideas, practise delivery of what you want to say, etc. You get the point.

And yet, reading is still associated with libraries and librarians. That’s what we do. Other people do other things but we just read books. At least that’s the common perception.

This is what I want to change. I take responsibility for perceptions of reading and librarians such as those expressed by the above-mentioned email. I intend to work through this problem until I’ve made some progress. Not single-handedly, of course. My colleagues and I are united on this one. I admit it’s hard not to take emails like this one personally. But I also think that disciplining the student, as important as it is, will not solve the problem. The problem of reading’s relevancy to learning must be analysed, and the approach of the teacher librarian to this problem, as well as to the role of libraries in schools, must be worked through. Otherwise, if we are seen as not being essential, or even worse, irrelevant, to learning and teaching in schools, we’re in trouble.

art, creativity, Education, flickr, Interesting, photos, Remarkable, technology, Web 2.0

Eric Gjerde – Origami tessellations

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twist

Still continuously amazed at what I find on Flickr. I used to think it was where people shared photos of their family, sunsets and the such, but I realise that its potential is far greater. It’s such a rich store of images, ideas, creativity.

Today I’m not feeling well, and so I’ve been living on the couch. No concentration for reading so I thought I’d browse flickr images.

Every discovery is like Christmas. Eric Gjarde is my discovery for today. On his Flickr profile, Eric describes himself as a geek.

I’m a massive geek. As with most geeks, I’m fascinated by all things technological; it’s what I do for a living, as well as a hobby (and obsession?)

What I really respect Eric for (apart from his awesome folding skills) is his willingness to share his knowledge and creativity about his specialty.

So while I enjoy folding all kinds of things, I’ve just been posting items which I have created myself. all of the items I post to flickr are independently created/invented/dreamed up by me, unless otherwise stated.

It’s a big deal for me, as I really dislike the lack of information sharing in the origami world- I want to bring some of the open-source style sharing to them, preferably via the Creative Commons licensing ideals. I’ve made some headway on that front by releasing diagrams and crease patterns under a CC license, available on my website – it’s located at www.origamitessellations.com.

Looking through Eric’s Flickr profile, I found the Flickr groups he has joined. Always good to see what else people are following.

Take a look at what Eric does when he’s not folding paper – it’s a mosaic film.

His origami sets are extensive and brilliant.

origamisets

Browsing through Eric’s other, non-origami, sets, I came across his mosaic set. If you have a look, you’ll be impressed with his mosaic tile photos. One of the best things about flickr is the possibility for conversation. And so, following this mosaic set, Eric answers questions about how he was able to make the mosaics, and offers links to further information. Fantastic.

mosaicphotoclose

Still discovering, and this time Eric’s comments led me to The digital library for the decorative arts and material culture. Anyone interested in the history of design and ornament for different cultures will love this.

Who said Flickr was just a bunch of pictures? I’m going to try and showcase Flickr and its educational uses at school.

21st century learning, Education, teaching, technology, Web 2.0

Why brainstorming is ineffective and how to fix it

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ideas

Photo credit: khoraxis

Psychblog has posted a controversial article entitled  Brainstorming reloaded which claims that brainstorming doesn’t work after all. Brainstorming, as a method of pooling the group’s ideas, has been around for a long time. I know that Australian teacher librarians, at least, still promote it as a starting point for research, and subject teachers are also using it as a springboard to discussion within a topic.

Brainstorming certainly looks like a great way of dealing with some of the problems associated with decision-making and creativity in groups, such as groupthink and people’s failure to share information effectively. By suspending evaluation, encouraging a relaxed atmosphere and quantity over quality, the brainstorming session is supposed to foster creativity.

But the article goes on to undermine the effectiveness of brainstorming:

But now we know that brainstorming doesn’t actually work that well. Experiment after experiment has shown that people in brainstorming sessions produce fewer and lower quality ideas than those working alone (Furnham, 2000). Here’s why:

  1. Social loafing: people slack off to a frightening degree in certain types of group situations like brainstorming.
  2. Evaluation apprehension: although evaluation isn’t allowed in a traditional brainstorming session, everyone knows others are scrutinising their input.
  3. Production blocking: while one person is talking the others have to wait. They then forget or dismiss their ideas, which consequently never see the light of day.

The article suggests that brainstorming be conducted online in order to achieve higher quality results:

In this research brainstormers typed in their ideas to a computer which also displayed other people’s ideas at the same time. This rather neatly gets around the social loafing and production blocking problems.

The conclusion of the psychological literature, therefore, is that people should be encouraged to generate ideas on their own and meetings should be used to evaluate these ideas.

I’m not sure what you might think about this, but something doesn’t sit right with me. It sounds like a good idea to simultaneously generate ideas online – I like the idea of all the contributions being visible real-time – but I think the classroom has its own group dynamics. Perhaps this research is more relevant to business. I think that there is a group dynamics and sense of trust which has hopefully been created by the classroom teacher. I’m not sure if secondary students are too critical of their peers’ suggestions in the brainstorming process.

Even if you set up the individual and simultaneous online brainstorming, wouldn’t students be threatened by the competitiveness of generating as many ideas as their peers? This may not be obvious online, but they could easily tell if others are typing in suggestions or just sitting there. You would also have the problem of those who think quickly getting in first with ideas that others may have come to later. Altogether, I think you’d have the same problems. At least with the teacher mediating an oral brainstorming session, he/she would be aware of those needing encouragement to contribute.

However, I do like the idea of an online brainstorming tool which allows every student’s contribution to be seen. Online brainstorming tools like bubbl.us are good, but are not a collaborative tool. Collaborative online brainstorming sounds like a solution to the isolation of a regular online tool. The article points out the importance of the group in the activity:

Why not just send people off individually to generate ideas if this is more efficient? The answer is because of its ability to build consensus by giving participants the feeling of involvement in the process. People who have participated in the creative stage are likely to be more motivated to carry out the group’s decision.

What do you think? What are your experiences with brainstorming? Your thoughts about the effectiveness of brainstorming, either as part of classroom discussion with the teacher writing down the group’s ideas on the board, or students using applications like Inspiration or bubbl.us

Am I missing something or is there a collaborative online brainstorming tool which I should be using?

 And what is your reaction to the last line of the article?

Groups aren’t where ideas are born, but where they come to sink or swim.

 

21st century learning, Education, flickr, internet, networking, photos, Web 2.0

Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary

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Just found a quotation supported by an image in the group Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary through a tweet by Darren Kuropatwa (@dkuropatwa). Love the group. A rich store of inspirational images and graphics, which can be used either for a presentation or to spark conversation and ideas, or even as a poster.

seeingthings

The photo was uploaded by flickr member colemama

global

No wallmaps or globes was uploaded by Scott McLeod and genemac110. I’ve been finding Flickr to be much more than a collection of images. This group is an example of the rich resources which can be collaboratively shared. The more I browse Flickr, the more surprising groups and sets I come across. Images are sometimes supplemented by information, links and, as in this case, heated discussion through a link to Scott’s blog.

flickrpool

I’m going to add some recent Flickr finds:

Art:21 connected to Art:21 PBS.

Smarthistory flickr group –

Please help us make art more accessible.
The Smarthistory flickr group gathers pictures of artworks on location to enrich the information on smarthistory.org. Smarthistory is a multi-media website that serves as an enhancement or replacement for the traditional art history textbook.

Look at www.smarthistory.org/Red-Studio.html for an example.

Vintage dictionary and encyclopedia pages

Vintage science illustrations

I’m finding the extraordinary in the ordinary online on a daily basis, and the reason for this possibility is the sharing of images and information which I wouldn’t otherwise come across. It’s just a matter of finding the time to browse this incredible, growing resource, and also the time to put into practice the ideas for education that spring from this.

art, creativity, Education, learning, photos, teaching, technology, Web 2.0, writing

The art of storytelling

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejndNExso9M&feature=player_embedded]

Another serendipitous adventure. Here’s how a day off turns a morning into a virtual rabbit hole.  A notification of a new Twitter follower @lazicdusan led me to a tantalising feed focussing on the Arts. I wanted to share one of the resources I found while putting them onto my art wiki. Above is a video called Six Word Memoirs by Teens  on the SMITH blog which celebrates storytelling. Here’s the background:

A year ago we launched SMITHTeens, as Rachel blogged about last August. We launched the site as a simple way to collect six-word memoirs for a book of six-worders by teens. Then we got out of the way. What happened next? The teens blew us away. From the heart (”I am in a love pentagon”) to the body (”Bulimia was only cramping my style”) to the home (”We’re the family you gossip about’) to the unexpected paths life can take (”Seventeen, Pregnant. He’s off to Iraq”), teens have told us so much about themselves in so few words.

Here’s an idea for the English or Art classrooms. I might even take on the challenge for the second year of my photo challenge.

I also found Sites we love: Significant objects.

Every item you’ve ever come across has a story. These objects clutter our shelves, closets, garages and lives…

The premise of their project, Significant Objects, is to take thrifted items and pair them with a writer to give it a new value in the form of a short story.

I’m tempted to bring the odd objects that we’ve collected over the years into the English or Art classroom and see what storytelling these could spark. What about if students were asked to bring in an object or two, so these could be put into a communal box?

You might like to check out the Flickr pool for significant objects – a ready-made list of objects for story starters.

21st century learning, Education, network literacy, networking, teaching, technology, Web 2.0

Live stream from ELH09 Lorne – Jenny Luca’s talk

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Steve Collis was kind enough to livestream (not sure if that’s a verb) Jenny Luca’s presentation at elh09 technology and learning conference at Lorne today. Brilliant for me for two reasons: firstly I couldn’t afford to go, and secondly it’s my day off so I could watch it. Well done, Jenny! As always, Jenny has presented an engaging, informative and inspiring talk about nings, social networking and participatory learning.

I’ve been lucky to get to know Jenny well since my involvement with Powerful Learning Practice, and anyone else who knows her will appreciate that Jenny speaks from experience, not hiding behind jargon or titles, but saying it how it is. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the way to reach a wider audience in the conversation about 21st century learning and teaching.

One of the most powerful messages Jenny transfers, both verbally and in terms of modelling, is that she is a learner first and foremost, and that this has given her the wings she needs to fly as an educator (I’m paraphrasing). Listen to Jenny. Read her blog.

21st century learning, Education, network literacy, networking, teaching, Web 2.0

Jenny Luca’s talk about ning

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[vodpod id=Groupvideo.3221019&w=425&h=350&fv=id%3D21FC3FE2-3DEF-371F-3217-11EF739CE05F]

 

more about “Jenny Luca – Ning“, posted with vodpod

 

 

 

I’ve just listened to Jenny Luca’s presentation from the elh09 conference in Lorne. This is the slideshow that accompanied her talk. You’ll find it here on her personal wiki. I’ve had to put the live stream (well, it was at the time) of Jenny’s presentation into the next post; I couldn’t seem to send both at once from Vodpod. More about Jenny’s talk in the next post.

21st century learning, blogging, creativity, Education, learning, Literature, reading, teachers, teaching

What would happen if maths and language arts teachers swapped jobs?

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bobrobertasmith

Art21 blog has given me an interesting idea in their latest post:

Last year the Guardian asked its sports and art writers to swap pieces for a day. Tennis correspondent Steve Bierley reviewed a Louise Bourgeois (Season 1) exhibition, which Bob and Roberta Smith fell in love with and subsequently made into a text-based painting.

Hmmm…

But how can we translate that into the school environment? I mean, the idea is something I’ve been playing with for a while – wouldn’t it be good if school didn’t separate learning into subjects?

Life isn’t like that, so why….?

In my job as teacher librarian I write a blog to encourage reading – I’ve mentioned it before – well, it’s not only about reading but all that goes with it. Thinking, discussing, idea-broadening, understanding – you know what I mean. Ideally, I’d love for the blog to create a reading (thinking, etc.) community, one that links people within the school through interests and discussion, but also links the school community with the wider community. I’ve also spoken about this before. Yes, I have so far included a couple of book recommendations/reviews by teachers who aren’t librarians. This is good, this gives the students the idea that people outside of the library read and enjoy reading. But …. they’re English teachers.

What I would really love is if sports teachers wrote about their reading. Yes, sports teachers. Maths teachers. Legal studies teachers.

So what kind of swap could I do? Do you think it would be easier for the maths/science teachers to talk books than the other way around? At first I thought yes. What’s left of my own maths/science knowledge, the little I gained in secondary school? I wouldn’t really like to go there. But then I remembered Sean Nash. He blends Science with the Arts. I was overwhelmed by his approach when I first discovered Sean’s blog, and I continue to be overwhelmed because it’s so inspiring, and I don’t see many educators do it.

Sean’s wife, Erin, shares his way of looking at a blended curriculum. Have a read of Erin’s profile on Sean’s biology ning where she says:

The best thing about the study of biology is:
The opportunity it provides for invoking curiosity and questioning in students and instructors alike. There are so many interesting topics in Biology that, ultimately, bring about questions that just aren’t currently answerable, and this provides so many awesome possibilities for critical thought and analysis. I could have taught English or Biology, and I was drawn to science because of that one big question, “WHY?”

 Isn’t this also the point of literature? The WHY and WHAT IF?  What if a character lived in a particular time/situation? How would that character live out his/her life? And WHAT IF this complication arose? WHY would he/she act in that way/make those choices? Personal choices, ethical choices, any choices.

I frequently reflect on what I’m trying to achieve in writing the fiction blog. Why is it important to stretch students’ – and for that matter, teachers’ – concept of what a reader is like, why we read, why books grab our attention, how books and films get our reactions and lead us into discussion or debate. It’s not a library thing, it’s not an English thing – and yet, it is literacy. The kind of literacy that is important for all of us across disciplines and beyond school. Sean Nash sums it up excellently when he talks about the connection between science and literacy in his comment to my post:

Science and literacy had certainly better go together. We are in a heap of trouble as a species as it is. We can’t afford to continue to create a scientifically-illiterate populace. Where science and literacy are separate, science is but mystery and mythology to even our brightest.