Measuring Hope

Earlier in the year, I blogged about my action research on hope. Since then, I’ve refined my research question (and Lit Review) to ‘Does systematic integration of self-regulating processes into a year 12 Software Design & Dev class impact on student wellbeing?”

After many iterations of defining my construct, I settled on what I started off with…HOPE. It is one of ACARA’s dimensions for wellbeing and aligns strongly with my school’s aspiration to inspire global hope.

I also kept the notion of ‘active hope’ where hope is found in actions and belief that such actions would lead to improvements. It’s true that a huge element of this aligns with Bandura’s self-efficacy which helped with finding literature for the review and fleshing out my project. However, I also wanted to maintain the social aspect of hope that extended beyond self-efficacy.

This ‘extension’ was partially driven by the need to find something more easily observable and measure. It was also because the classroom is ultimately a social context and each student is a contributor, not merely a recipient of social influences. I think James Arvanitakis said it well in  From Despair to Hope – The Curiosity Lecture Series (available here),

…if openly shared and freely distributed, hope can spread throughout the community.

I did not set out to measure inspiring societal (or global) hope as such but one of my action research ‘interventions’ (if you will) was to have students act as peer models. That was a bit of a stretch for ‘freely’ but there was definite sharing and distribution of active hope.

I haven’t fully analysed my research data but it is likely that it will empirically support my observation that YES, integrating self-regulation processes does impact student wellbeing (hope) positively and negatively (the 2-tailed question was intentional). I imagine many teachers suspect as much but now I’ve got data to (hopefully) prove it, notwithstanding the risk of observer-expectancy effect and other risks to the validity of my meager social research attempt.

It would be premature to state a conclusion prior to data analysis but were I to generalise my learning so far, I daresay my teaching practice even when targeting academic achievement does impact student wellbeing. While it often seemed futile to measure hope, I am glad I’ve made this attempt.

 

Dare to be wise

I fell in love with this phrase after reading Ellie Rennie’s post: The Amanda Palmer effect. The post is worth a read and the link to Amanda Palmer’s talk is worth (re)visiting.

As I start a new school year, I’ve been reflecting on some ‘rules’ or ‘wishes’ I have for my classes. One of these was ‘choose to learn‘ – something I’ve been using for a few years now. It’s served me well, I must add.

Yet Rennie’s post and the phrase itself – ‘Dare to be wise’ – have compelled me to re-think and quite likely re-phrase my rule.

I find the phrase more exciting and engaging and I daresay, challenging.While choice can sometimes (often?) necessitate a sense of daring, I think the verb ‘dare’ is more direct and implies risks to be overcome to gain something worthwhile. Wisdom as the goal is also more specific and positive than ‘learn’ (aside: is all learning good? I’).

Implicit in the phrase is the possibility of making mistakes which I struggle to communicate across. I find “It’s okay to make mistakes” a tad trite. Besides, it’s rare for people to set out to fail. Surely, those who expect failure persevere in the hope of eventual success. The act of dare-ing is rendered more significant!

I also love that Rennie highlighted the power or social networking along with the daring of asking (the Amanda Palmer effect). Rennie did not go into vulnerability, what I think is the flipside of daring which, in my experience, opens up possibilities for learning and wisdom.

Perhaps it’s ultimately mere semantics but I do marvel at the effect of words. I don’t know if the phrase will be more effective but I’ll give it a go this year. Marvel and then Dare to be wise.

Marvel

Marvel is my one word this year.

I don’t usually do this thing. However, as the new year ticked over and the Aussie summer school hols was coming to a close, I thought it would be good to have one to help me re-focus back into teaching. So, I picked one!

Marvel as a noun and verb seemed apt as I start not just a new school year but at a new school.

To be filled with wonder or astonishment.

To discover a wonderful or astonishing person, place, thing, etc.

Marvel, I think, is what brings joy in learning… and, truth be told, in teaching as well. 

May the year ahead be full of marvels!

Happy 2016!

Disclaimer: The link above shows an official site for ‘my one word’. I didn’t use the process documented there as I’ve derived my word before I saw the site. Still, I’m sharing for those of you who may find this process helpful.

We write our own reports?

Ever had an idea you just had to act on?

Today with my year 10s, we had 15 minutes to ‘spare’ after we de-briefed their yearly exam paper. Just then, I had a thought to get them to write their own report comment. I figured ‘why not?’

So, I asked my students to spend the next 15 minutes drafting a 500-character report comment for IST. I mentioned that I have already drafted their reports – which was true – and that I wanted to make sure I did not miss anything – which was also true – and that I would use their input – which was more or less true.

One of the more astute ones asked, “Does that mean we write our own reports?”

Boom!

I replied yes, of course. I write the words but in fact, what they do (or not) throughout the year is what is written in the report comment. So technically,  students do write their own reports. Right?

Awesome as they are, they humoured me and actually did the activity.

It was an authentic context to reflect on the year that was, how they were as learners in my classroom and even how they could improve. No scaffold. No prompts. No advice from me….just the time and space to do it…and a bit of ‘rah rah’.

I was so pleased by their honesty and accuracy of self-assessment. I was also pleased that my report comments got validated by theirs which, for my part, means I do know my students and that my data collection (via formative and summative assessments) and feedback systems work.

Writing reports can be onerous, often due to sheer volume and tight deadlines. This has been a ray of sunshine.

I would do this again as a win-win activity. That is, students reflect meaningfully on their learning – content and process and I, their teacher, gets validation and more importantly, personalised insights about them.

 

NCSS Summer School

The idea of going to NCSS Summer School posed a mini-dilemma for lots of reasons but in the end, I decided to go and what a good move that turned out to be. The ‘intensive’ in their blurb is for real. It was intense.

This year, there were over 100 participants including 15 teachers (like me) who were meant to be just like the students – relieved of ‘duties’, so-to-speak. That’s interesting, in and of itself. I pride myself of being a good learner but being a student is different. Being a student (learning the content) as a teacher (learning the process/meta stuff, e.g. can I use how they teach to teach my students?) was full-on. I struggle to articulate all that just now so I’ll focus on my main NCSS reflections as a teacher….and hopefully, this would encourage other teachers (my main blog viewers) to give the camp a go.

The camp is project-based learning, a high-quality PBL.  I’m actually struggling to write this but if I don’t do this now, it may never get done so I’ll use my Process, Tools, People (and Products) post as a framework. Here goes…

Process

PBL as a term was never mentioned but that’s what it was. 4 groups had to develop social networking web applications and 2 groups developed embedded systems. Lectures were streamed as per student ability, interest and/or systems. Throughout most of the 10 days, there were Lectures followed by lab so students had opportunities to apply what they’d learned with the help of amazing tutors (more on this later).  Tutors also helped with task and time management throughout the project which started officially on day 6. Groups had to brainstorm and decide on what they wanted to develop. There was even an all-nighter as happens sometimes in the industry. The camp culminated with a ‘graduation’ and presentation of group videos. Except, I’m finding out now that the project has not really ended as students continue to work on the projects and are now available online – for an even wider audience.

There were also plenty of fun activities with plenty of opportunities to develop collaborative skills and team-building: Newspaper tower challenge, Trivia Night + Chinese (Whispers) Charade, Scavenger hunt, cryptogram, simulation/theatre sport, programming challenge and excursions to some sponsors’ sites (WiseTech Global, Atlassian and Google). All these activities were cleverly designed and well-executed.

Tools

We used the University of Sydney’s School of IT facilities. We were told not to bring computers because, indeed, there were enough. We also used GitHub for version control and Sqlite3 for the database. They’ve configured Tornado for ease of use supposedly but I honestly wouldn’t know the difference – it still looked complicated for me.

Analog-wise, whiteboards were used for planning and tracking.

Tools used are all ‘free’ so in theory, anyone can do this.

People

This I think, is the strongest point of NCSS. At the helm is Dr James Curran (a very clever man and an endearing lecturer – I can only name 2 others in my experience), very ably supported by Nicky Ringland and Tim Dawborne plus an army of very clever and enthusiastic volunteers and industry mentors (they have to apply to be volunteers year-on-year – whoa!). There’s a fine mix of academia and industry perspectives to make the experience of app development realistic. I watched with interest how they interacted and managed students…including me (I was always there for roll call – haha – and definitely needed 1:1 help). It was good to see tutors get excited by a tricky problem/question

And then there were the students (and teachers as students). Such an amazing bunch of cleverness! I do believe every state was represented, and NZ, too. High levels of enthusiasm (boosted by cordial,  perhaps?) and engagement (good program, see?). Very few seemed homesick – alas, I was one of them! (who knew?)

Products

Videos are yet to go up but there are links to the web apps. Our group developed Word by word (my only visible contribution there is the tagline: write a word. read a story.). Other groups developed Tableau and Pose challenge. Amazing stuff!

I honestly cannot replicate these projects in my classroom.

tldr version

It was a fun, intense, immersive and challenging experience. I met some amazing people, young and not-so-young, and had many fascinating conversations – people are truly interesting! I learned more about computing technology and computational linguistics(just a teensy bit). I learned more about teaching technology. I learned more about kids and how stereotypes persist even amongst the like-minded (still wrestling with why it’s so hard to get girls into computing). I learned more about effective pedagogy including planning and delivery. Surprisingly, I learned more about me.

Not sure if I could make it to NCSS2015 or if I’ll ever get accepted again but I sure would like to go back.

This snippet from a WiseTech Global t-shirt just about sums it up for me:

ncss2014

 

My next challenge is to incorporate some of what I’ve learned into what I teach.