My Teaching Journey: 2017

What is Dynamic Collaboration?

What is Dynamic Collaboration? I have no idea. The thought just popped into my head and I want to see where this goes...

Often we are organised into static groups to work together, in school small group work happens a lot and this is accepted as a good thing.

I think dynamic collaboration can be a way of describing the messy and multifaceted reality of working with a lot of different people, that all have different focuses and goals. It is about an individual driving their own connections with others to help them achieve their own goals, also while contributing to the others goals.

What could this look like in the classroom?

Small group work where the group has goals to achieve but so do the individuals at the same time. The potential work to sort this out by the students would mean organizing when to work together with their static group and when to engage with others to help them out or ask for assistance.

There will be some students that thrive working on their own and some that do not know how to ask for help, what a good opportunity it would be to challenge these students to work with others in a student driven way.

uLearn17 Conference - Future of Education

A great 3 days in Hamilton hosted by Core Education. 1600 attendees, 290 workshops, many litres of coffee, lots of connections, and heaps of fun.

The key note speakers

Eric Mazur - The Balkinski Professor of Physics and applied physics at Harvard University
Click here for the official blog of his speech. (You need to login but it is worth it)

Brad Waid - he’s described as “an influencer, a change agent a thought leader and a futurist”
Click here for the official blog of his speech. (You need to login but it is worth it)

Abdhul Chohan - Known as a pioneer for his work in learning through mobile devices, Abdul enabled student learning and empowered students at Essa Academy, Bolton.
Click here for the official blog of his speech. (You need to login but it is worth it)

Ann Milne PhD - Kia Aroha School, Colouring in the whitespaces.
Click here for the official blog of her speech. (You need to login but it is worth it)

My Key Take Aways

Social media is powerful and is the world of our youth, Brad Waid
Entrepreneurial business thinking should taught from Year 1
The world is changing, the students are changing, is your practice and your classroom changing? Brad Waid
Are the stats about jobs being lost and new jobs going to be created reliable?
SAMR is important, are we using tech to substitute or redefine the pedagogy
90% of people trust peer recommendations 14% trust advertising
Make your classroom and your teaching as dynamic as the world around you!
Growth Mindset is essential to be entrepreneurial
The education revolution will not be authorized!
Who decides when students should or need to talk and discuss, I say it is the students know when they need it.
You have no excuse not to be engaging online, it is the world
Professional Development - Specific to a profession VS Professional Growth - Applicable across professions
SAMR is the measure we should use for why we are using tech
Your digital footprint will be your resume and probably is becoming it now! eg, Profiles, search results, comments on you and your work, youtube, google maps contributor, reviews on trip advisor, ratings on you, recommendations on you.
Being anonymous online has consequences just like being everywhere.
Interactive learning activites are essential for online learning spaces
Live out loud. Share your everyday. Will be someone that will want to listen and can benefit
22% of gaming students play lol, 2.5% play minecraft do the math (which costs more???)
Collaborative teaching is about how you work with your colleagues, you need good intentions and an open heart, the systems will reflect this.
Mainstream is a white stream
Sustainable is the new relevant and responsive in relation to Culture.
What is school as Maori, Tongan, Samoan etc, not just as white western, european, pakeha?
Can culturally sustaining practices be inclusive of all cultures or do they need to be seperate alongside each other with links made?
We dont teach maori about being Maori or Tongan or Samoan or etc, how far should we go, I get maori and euro centric teaching but how many cultures should we teach explicitly about and too?

Also presented two great workshops.

Citizenship through Minecraft - Check the slides here.

And

Using Teacher Agency to Break out of the Status Quo

This was a great session that finished with some really awesome work by the attendees adding to the google slides about their learning and plans for the future, processing the conference and relating it to their contexts.

Check out the slides for this one here.

And Finally some slides from a great workshop I attended by some teachers from Stone Fields High school from Auckland.

Collaborative Teaching the Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Great slides with heaps of great models, systems, and extra links and videos.

Games For Learning 2017 - Summarised

I made a game with two other awesome educators. It is designed to use to share you key learnings with a group of others ideally your colleagues back at work. It gives them a chance engage with a small snapshot of what you took away from a conference.

This is Sparks

Aim of the game is to share learning from a conference or something

Step One

Pick a number between 1 & 4 - remember or write it down

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Step Two

Choose one of these thought provoking ideas from the conference

INSERT YOUR OWN IDEAS (mine are at the bottom from the GFL conference)

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Step Three

Your action is the number you chose first

1. Apply the idea to a situation
2. Connect the idea to something you already know
3. Develop or add to the idea
4. Critique the idea, what is wrong with it

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Step Four

Put your action and idea together to create a spark, a one or two sentence statement that is your thinking in a nutshell.

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Step Five

Using 3 gold stickers place these on the underside of the 'sparks' that you like the best. Then the results will be added up and we will have a winner!

The winning person or people could then explain their 'spark' even further, or through mime, interpretive dance, a rap, or some other creative outlet. Enjoy.

My Key Learnings and Takeaways From Games For Learning 2017

Innovators always stay ahead of the curve, this is a hard place to constantly be
Games provide a space to take risks, be someone else, have fun, consider other perspectives, tell a story
F.A.I.L = First Attempt In Learning
Every participant can have a different role or experience in learning, games often supports this and it is ok.
Games can change the culture of a group over time
1:1 device environments only produce independent learners in their own world
Limiting access to screens eg 1:3 ratio improves collaborative learning
Games and play are an ancient way of learning
Games are a reflection of life and who we are, Harko Brown
Culturally responsive practice needs full community involvement
Overly educational can kill the fun and engagement of a game!
Being truly inclusive, does slow process down but is super necessary to be culturally responsive
It's not about a community but making it with a community- Never Alone Inupiat Game
21st century skills - curiosity being the most important
Playing and making games for learning are 2 sides of the same coin
Developing someone else's work is not cheating it is part of a cultural practice, why always start at iteration one?
Developing another's work is not cheating it is collaboration, it is scratch.com
Game design is about iteration and audience feedback and engagement
VR and AR are significantly different, both are still in baby/novelty stage
Silicon valley culture is a bubble, great problem solvers but disconnected from the world's problems
Cultural inclusivity takes time and effort to engage communities effectively
Anything can be a game it depends on how you use it, even cracks in the footpath
What is the transformative use of AR and VR?
Computational participation goes beyond computational thinking

Citizenship Gold Reflections Mid 2017

Some of the Gold Reflections as of Mid 2017

2017 Orion Prime Term 2
Question: How Is Morality Important When The Law Doesn't Cover A Situation?

Answer: Morality is important when the law doesn't cover a situation because you don't need rules or someone telling you what the right or wrong things are, you just need to do what you think is right for you and/or community. Today I received an 80 game ban on Minecraft for attempting to kill someone and killing someone. I thought that because there was no law about attempted murder, it was right to attempt to kill someone. We had a talk about wether it was right or wrong, even if there was no law about it. I learnt about morality and looking back, it was the wrong thing to do. I think that this is good for the future because it will make me think about morality when I see litter on ground, wether I should pick it up or keep walking etc.

2016 Term 1 World Without Order
In the game me and a few friends decided to make a group. Our name was YOZA group. We made the group so we could recognise us all as one community. I was outlaw_yoza. We created a group headquarters where we could meet and do stuff like that. We were so dominant that other people started stealing names or naming themselves EC_yoza or psyosa and tried to join or tried to kill us so we changed our name to power and called the house power house. We are the most dominant group in the game and we wrecked people. We made our own community to smartly outdo the opponents and create peace in a small section in our world. I learned the work of team work and working together so much that we became the best group in school. We could build more bases and expand our land until we have so much that everyone will listen to powers commands and we could create a community. Teaming up is not challenging at all the only challenging thing is that some people might not pull their weight and might betray the team. A message to anybody in 9B or the school. If you think your group or yourself can take us on come to power house and we can arrange something to happen (?v8) because we are the best in the whole school and you don't sand a chance so try us. Im making this statement to prove we are the best POWER HOUSE!!

2016 Term 3 Clan Wars
What happened?
In the farming world the Swarm made a few basses around the world and I made a house which had nothing in it but it was a fishing dock so I could gather fish for food for the others.
What did I learn?
I learnt how to solve conflicts because someone came and killed me and I ask politely for my items to be returned and after a little discussion he did, and that's how people should face problems with other people in life because it works without violence.
How can I apply my learning?
In life I can just ask for things that have been taken from me instead of retaliating badly as it might get me into trouble in the future.

2017 Term 1
What did I do?
I hunted and killed some cows. I gained wood by axing down trees. I also collected a few seeds.
What did I learn?
I learnt that you have to take your time and not everything comes to you straight away, it takes time.
How do I apply that to my life?
If I want something in my life I can't just expect it to come to me,I've got to go get it if I really want it.

2016 Term 1 World Without Order
“I learnt that my feelings are just the same as everybody else's and that no singular person on earth is any more important. For example Barack Obama is just the same as a hungry kid in poverty, we are all humans we are all part of one society and we're all living life. Things that you say or do can affect people in good or bad ways, especially if we continue to say these things. I learnt this from Minecraft when everybody was fighting and trying to make a one high power.”

2016 Term 2
The treaty does work however, but there are times when the police are fighting a losing war, they need more power so that they can defend the normal people. This is a useful thing to know because as a community, we have to be able to ensure that we can keep the peace. We can't always rely on cops, we have to rely on each other as well.

Devices are like Superpowers

Should we teach students about morality so they can apply this to their use of devices when they are allowed?

Should we teach students how to use their devices responsible and how to use them by allowing them open access?

Should we be teaching both at the same time?

At what age can people really engage their mental faculties to manage the the power and responsibility of full access to devices and the internet?

Having access to devices (smart phones, tablets, laptops and desktops) that are connected to the internet is like being spiderman or super man.

With great power comes great responsibility. What happens to high school graduates that go on to work or university without being able to manage the responsibility that comes with full access to devices?
People will have full access to devices and the internet at some stage in their life. Usually by the time they are 18 and often much younger, sometimes under 10.

If people do not learn the significance of the power they hole to do good and do bad they will not appreciate the weight of responsibility that has been placed upon their shoulders to make decisions.

Student Reflection on Citizenship after a few classes in term one

Deep yet simple! Lol

What did I learn today?

Today I learnt about team work. Obviously I know about team work but today no one killed anyone and everyone worked together to finish the house.

Citizenship reflection:

What have I learnt so far? I have learnt that to be a good citizen you have to act mature. We also did a lot about having a growth mindset. We made a video explaining what a growth mindset is. Anyway, to be a good citizen you don't have to be perfect in everything you do, you just have to be nice to people.

What have I learnt about citizenship?

Citizenship is very important to everyday life. We do it without knowing it. I have learnt that being a citizen you have to be able to communicate clearly and think of others. In class we use a app to learn about citizenship. We elected ministers for different areas such as Gathering resources, building houses, law and many others. When we have chosen our ministers we split into teams and work. While we are working, we learn what makes a good citizen. I think what makes a good citizen is that you need to be considerate, contributes, and are willing to help. The difference between being a bad citizen is that you disobey the rules and abuse property. I could use the knowledge in the cabins if we are doing jobs in the morning or I could use it in class when someone needs help with something. I have learnt a lot about citizenship over the term and I can't wait to use it

What did I do?

I hunted and killed some cows. I gained wood by axing down trees. I also collected a few seeds.

What did I learn?
I learnt that you have to take your time and not everything comes to you straight away, it takes time.

How do I apply that to my life?

If I want something in my life I can't just expect it to come to me,I've got to go get it if I really want it.

Putting My Teaching and Innovation Together

Why Innovate?

The education system we have inherited was not designed to produce people that would thrive in the 21st century. It was designed to produce workers for the industrial revolution.

Read This - The Critical 21st Century Skills Every Student Needs and Why

How to Innovate?

My Current Thoughts as of March 2017

What a thumbnail (wish these could be changed!)

My Story

I have been developing an Innovation in Social Studies of Citizenship through Minecraft starting in 2016. Read the posts below for the story.

The Summary of Citizenship Through MineCraft 2016

AND

What I am doing in 2017 with Citizenship Through MineCraft

This is my ideas and plans for 2016 that sums up my plans and innovations from then.
What Would Students Do If They Could Learn Anything? My Plan for 2016

Minecraft for Citizenship - Evolution

Here is a quick run down of the key parts to my Citizenship through Minecraft aspect of my Social Studies curriculum at the moment.

It is based on a kind of role playing, imaginary scenario, metaphor idea. Everyone is part of a colonisation programme. They have just travelled to a new planet with the goal of developing a thriving community (classic scenario - check).

First building they have made.

They have two roles to play. The first is as a member of the 'elected' government of the new community. I established several ministerial portfolios that needs people to manage.

Working with Teachers and Innovating Our Curriculum

I am going to try and summarise one of the bigger projects I am involved in this year, what we are trying to achieve, what the journey has been like so far, and where we are at currently.

Some of our Planning

I am working with two other teachers in something that resembles the Innovative Learning Spaces that are popping up around the country. We have a unique campus with the main features being all year 9 boys, boarding, three stranded curriculum (academic, personal and social growth, outdoors).

My Teaching Journey