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

1. Social media is powerful and is the world of our youth, Brad Waid
2. Entrepreneurial business thinking should taught from Year 1
3. The world is changing, the students are changing, is your practice and your classroom changing? Brad Waid
4. Are the stats about jobs being lost and new jobs going to be created reliable?
5. SAMR is important, are we using tech to substitute or redefine the pedagogy 
6. 90% of people trust peer recommendations 14% trust advertising
7. Make your classroom and your teaching as dynamic as the world around you!
8. Growth Mindset is essential to be entrepreneurial
9. The education revolution will not be authorized!
10. Who decides when students should or need to talk and discuss, I say it is the students know when they need it.
11. You have no excuse not to be engaging online, it is the world
12. Professional Development - Specific to a profession VS Professional Growth - Applicable across professions
13. SAMR is the measure we should use for why we are using tech
14. 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. 
15. Being anonymous online has consequences just like being everywhere. 
16. Interactive learning activites are essential for online learning spaces 
17. Live out loud. Share your everyday. Will be someone that will want to listen and can benefit
18. 22% of gaming students play lol, 2.5% play minecraft do the math (which costs more???)
19. Collaborative teaching is about how you work with your colleagues, you need good intentions and an open heart, the systems will reflect this. 
20. Mainstream is a white stream
21. Sustainable is the new relevant and responsive in relation to Culture. 
22. What is school as Maori, Tongan, Samoan etc, not just as white western, european, pakeha?
23. Can culturally sustaining practices be inclusive of all cultures or do they need to be seperate alongside each other with links made? 
24. 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