The joy of creating

Well hello blog and I finally succumbed to the inspiration.

Tonight, an (ex)colleague, an esteemed mentor, Brad Merrick introduced me to Ben Folds (yeah, which rock have I been hiding under?). Anyway, it wasn’t just any music video (Ben Folds has lots!); it was this where Ben composes a song in 10 minutes using crowd-sourced inspiration (A minor !!! upbeat – in a minor key?!?, and ‘These new spaces – The Kennedy Center – are all designed to be flexible)!

There are lots of amazing things from this video which you’ve got to watch, if you haven’t yet. I do want to highlight the following in particular:

  • Ben and the musicians looked like they were enjoying this process – a palpable sense of  playfulness
  • The trust! Ben trusted – and respected the skills of – the musicians and vice versa – “You know what you must do”
  • Each one brought their own specialty/expertise and what a rich texture of sounds they created…harmoniously (and that’s part of the genius, right?)…”Let’s hear it all together and make sure it’s not crazy”
  • Communicating via the conductor. Communicating via the music jargon, e.g. keys, chords, and volume (mezzo forte, forte, …fortissimo…and the five-tissimo was just plain cute!)

What an awesome way to announce his role as the Artistic Advisor.

Anyway, this got me hooked and googled more to discover Ben Folds did something similar 3 years earlier, this time with a youth orchestra. The orchestra is less polished than the professional NSO but very good nonetheless. The video has considerably a lot less views but the highlights above are there as well; audience participation makes it all the more special, I think!

It is so much fun to watch the creative process unfold. I’m sure it would have been fun to be in  the orchestra and actively take part in the creative process.

Just a few more points, this time linking to teaching and learning:

  • Subject-specific knowledge with its own jargon, concepts, and skills is important because together, in harmony,  it makes it possible to create something special. While some put forward a false dichotomy of subject ‘silos’ vs integrated learning, I think it would be better to have both rather than either-or.
  • Trust is important between teachers and students. We co-create learning as we learn together and get good at what we’re supposed to do: teach and learn.
  • Make time to play and find joy in the creative process of learning and application thereof.

Share the joy!

G’nite!

Hope

Action-research done and dusted and I got my application approved for Experienced Teacher accreditation today! It’s been a looooong and arduous journey. My blog hasn’t kept up with it though I did have one at the start, then the middle-ish, and now the end.

Data analysis confirmed what I intuited and shared in the second post, i.e. systematic integration of self-regulation processes really does impact student well-being. It could be positive as well as negative. Interestingly, student self-report data was inclusive. Teacher observation data confirmed it but there’s the observer-expectancy effect niggling at the background. Triangulation using student performance tasks (there were 3) helped.

I was going to blog more about details but this late in the piece, I’m literally over it. Instead, I want to note down for future reference what I plan to integrate into my teaching practice from next year.

Self-regulation practices

Teach students about self-regulation. I will use Barry Zimmerman’s SR learning model just like I did in my action-research. This means giving them a framework, conceptual understanding (and eventually appreciation), as well as the language of self-regulation.

Goal-setting

Set distal goals at the start of the year and revisit each term. Since we have a strong effort  (with personal and social aspects) and achievement narrative at school, I’ll most likely get students to set goals for these two at least.

I want this noted electronically so maybe in our LMS.

Set proximal goals at the start of the term and then again weekly. This practice will help re-focus on distal goals and the little steps to get there.

I’m happy to give students flexibility on this. They may use their school diary, own journal (I love my bullet journal system), or electronically.

Performance Monitoring

Retrieval Practice will be a regular activity at the start of the lesson. This worked so well in my project that I kept it going. I actually had a schedule of topics to allow for interleaving and spaced practice. Prompts required elaboration, dual coding, concrete examples or pure recall. (Check out these learning strategies from learningscientists.org). I love Blake Harvard‘s method of colour-coding for retrieval practice and will definitely give it a go.

Track key measures at least once a week. I discovered trackers when I discovered bullet journals. Data collection could easily go crazy so I will have to think this through more carefully. It could be as simple as emojis for effort and achievement that lesson. I’m more interested in helping raise self-awareness as a premise for self-management and regulation, than the actual data.

Model proximal goal setting and monitoring using checklists for learning tasks and activities.

Self-evaluation

Reflect on (learning) process and product (learning outcome) at the end of each unit and/or task. I used Google Forms, OneDrive Forms, paper-based forms, and whole-class discussions for this. Our new LMS present new ways to do this, too.

Remind students regularly about the relationship between effort and achievement, and the notion of progress. Skilled self-regulators attribute achievement to personal effort; it’s getting naive self-regulators to do the same that’s really tricky. I found that it helped to point out their progress which means they’re on their way towards achievement.

 


Doing my action-research “forced” me to systematically integrate the self-regulation practices I wanted students to engage in.  Everyone got better at it and their achievement and well-being improved. Their last reflections were detailed and with appropriate attributions showing many have internalised the effort-achievement narrative. One particular student who was so anxious and owned up to being poor at reflection wrote 6 months later, “I no longer fear the future. …”

Hope is found in actions – belief that one’s effort will improve one’s future.

Learning to code

Software programming hasn’t been taught at my school for years. It was a bit of a gamble for me to include it in my programs for 3 subjects I teach: 9IST, 10IST and 11IPT. I was intending to do programming with the year 9s but decided to extend this to the year 10s in the hope of drumming some interest for the Software Design  HSC course and to the year 11s because the students expressed interest in learning.

Intro to programming

I used different ways to introduce the topic. First up were the year 10s who I got to play with Context Free Art (visual programming) which I barely learned at the CS4HS at Sydney Uni a few days before. Next up were the year 11s and I took them straight to Python for Beginners course with groklearning; the first couple of modules are free and sufficient to get beginning programmers going. Finally, with the year 9s, I went completely analogue. In groups of 3, they had to design a dance move for 8 beats and write it in pseudo-code. Another group gets to execute the move using the pseudo-code.

The year 9s had the best fun and, in my opinion, really learned what it means to design and code software programs. They experienced the challenge of breaking down the problem (dance move) into smaller components and think of sequencing, concurrent processing and even looping. Then there was the challenge of coding the move. Also, they realised that code – if unclear – could be interpreted in different ways or worse, wrongly (not as designed). They got the big picture: developing algorithmic-thinking and coding skills.  As quoted from @gilfer in a previous post, Software is poetry

… programming is not really the practice of writing lines of code. It is the art of taking big, intractable problems and breaking them down into ever smaller ones which can be understood, explained and then carefully assembled into a living, breathing work of art.

Software is poetry. It’s the expression of ideas in the most elegant form a programmer can devise.

Learning Python

I really enjoyed my road-test of NCSS challenge last year and so changed my new school’s IST course so I can include it in (he he).  As mentioned, both my years 9 and 10 are doing the NCSS challenge 2013 in its spiffy new groklearning platform. It fits right in with the IST syllabus (core topics + software design option) as well as my experiential approach to teaching. I even decided to make this one of the assessment tasks for year 9s; I’d have done the same with year 10s except their doing exams instead.

Both classes started the challenge today – Beginners. Starting with a quick campfire, I told them about pair programming (one of the strategies I learned yesterday as good for success in introductory programming – go on read it; I will try the other strategies later) and of course, remind them to have fun. It’s too early to tell but hey, I’m excited because the students were totally engaged in the challenge and were having fun….hard fun….as in, easy is boring kind of fun.  In both cases, I had to boot them out at the end of the period as they wanted to keep going – and we’re talking they’re supposed to go to recess or lunch….not another subject that perhaps they don’t like!

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me but the year 9s did better than the year 10s. Was it the dance move intro? 🙂

There are a few year 9s who I will have upgraded to the Intermediate challenge as Beginners seem too easy for them. #proudmoment

I thought I’d share my here as well; feel free to reuse, upcycle, remix – if you do, all I ask for is feedback to how it can be better….atrribution would be nice, too. 2013 – 9IST – Assessment 3 – NCSS (PDF)

Using ClassDojo

I used ClassDojo before when I first ran my Digital Media Jedi Academy (also for 9IST). As before, I’m using it to communicate my expectations and award points. The points this time is for a request for an in-school competition outside of the national challenge. I do listen to my students and besides, using ClassDojo really forces me to look at each kid and see if they are showing expected behaviours…and my favourite is “exceeding expectations“. In this way, ClassDojo is my tool to remind me to check in with every kid as I have a visual reminder of eveyrone in my class and the ones who are not racking up points (are they not showing the expected behaviour or am I just not seeing it – go look, Mrs Mawby!). The points system is handy also for the teacher observation component of the 9IST task.

In case you’re wondering, I’m not using the Negative Behaviours (removing points) because in my 6 months with these classes, I’ve never had reason to control negative behaviour….yes, I’m lucky.

expected behaviour

expected behaviour

 

Okay, have shared heaps now and will stop – just wanted to leverage the excitement of the day to churn out a blog post 🙂

UPDATE 12 August 2013: I just added the task in PDF (I forgot to attach it last time….oops!)

It’s all about learning

 

“A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem” – Albert Einstein

Justin Lanier (@j_lanier) recently blogged a story that succinctly captured my current thoughts on pedagogy. Justin’s post was a welcome relief with what seems to me a growing pre-occupation with trends, styles or approaches to teaching – (guilty here, see related post). For instance, a Twitter conversation highlighted to me that my way of Project-Based Learning (PBL) could confuse some as  it did not follow the 8 Essential Elements of PBL published by BIE. That conversation shook me enough to hide the link to my PBL page; however, I stand by my way because it’s been gleaned from my personal and professional experience which is really relevant to the computing subjects I teach…. I just don’t say I do PBL anymore.

But let me move on to what I really want to write about here….

The tagline of this blog is – It’s all about learning – and I’ve come to appreciate that this is precisely why I blog…to share my learning journey, mostly through my teaching practice. Part of this journey is my search for what it is that optimises learning and my Tag cloud shows quite a variety of these. Truth be told, what really works for me in optimising learning is not a teaching approach or style. It’s no secret either. It’s building relationships….and relevant posts are under the tag: You Matter, a phrase largely credited to @AngelaMaiers, and one I’ve extended to You Matter, I Care.

Regarding content, my Tag cloud also includes metaphors and analogies, stories, focus on literacy, and lots more under a very generic tag of learning strategies. When asked, I often say that what learning needs is a context – real world or make-believe.

Here’s a book that explains why what works for me actually works….and it contains more tools/strategies….and how-tos….and encouragement …and it is called ….

image courtesy of thebookdepository.com

image courtesy of thebookdepository.com

an imaginative approach to teaching – by Kieran Egan

The premise of the book is to tap into the students’ emotions and imagination using cognitive tools they develop as they grow.

The book is narrative in style and you can almost hear the author speaking. Egan encourages teachers to make use of these tools, mix-and match and leverage growth in students (i.e. can still use stories and play even when they are ready for theoretic thinking or abstraction). Being practical-oriented, the book is perhaps better used as a reference, e.g. select tools, rather than read from start to finish.

The tools are so ‘obvious’ from one’s own learning experience that they seem ordinary and perhaps why they aren’t used more often. What tools are there?

Part 1: A Tool kit for Learning

  • story
  • metaphor
  • binary opposites
  • rhyme, rhythm and pattern
  • jokes and humor
  • mental imagery
  • gossip
  • play
  • mystery
  • embryonic tools of literacy

Part 2: A Tool Kit for Literacy

  • sense of reality
  • extremes of experience and limits of reality
  • associate with heroes
  • sense of wonder
  • collections and hobbies
  • knowledge and human meaning
  • narrative understanding
  • revolt and idealism
  • changing the context
  • literate eye
  • embryonic tools of theoretic thinking

Part 3: A Tool Kit of Theoretic Thinking

  • sense of abstract reality
  • sense of agency
  • grasp of general ideas and their anomalies
  • search for authority and truth
  • meta-narrative understanding

The list certainly affirms tools that worked for me such as stories, metaphors, changing the context (e.g. problems vs exercises, teaching equations big-picture style),  association with heroes (e.g. Polya, Jedis), sense of agency (Cloud, Dream),  as well as some I haven’t blogged about.  AND I’ve now got a host of other tools to explore including mystery, revolt and idealism as well as meta-narrative understanding.

and since I’ve fallen in love with Inquiry learning, it may just take that form. A mystery would make a nice inquiry, no?

p.s. If you don’t want to buy the book, resources are available online on ierg.net.

Imagine: multi-modal learning

Imagine

I love the word, the idea, the song (melody, lyrics, riffs).

We received a (much-wanted) piano – a gift from a stranger (quick digression: husband asked at a local garage sale if they had a piano. The answer was no but that their brother had one to give away but it was in Bega – a good 6-hour drive away! Husband goes off on a road trip with 2 mates and now it’s home…a piano with stories…gotta love that).   Not a day goes by without it being played by my daughters and recently, me. Yes, I’ve decided to re-learn.

If you’ve been following my blog before, you’d recall that I have tried to do this before and, in fact, used the experience as an inspiration to introduce Algebra. That was a few years ago and the interest waned. But now, we’ve got a REAL piano. with a story.  So re-learn, I must.

I chose to learn “Imagine”. I got the free music sheet from here. I had a go and then hit YouTube (as you do) and found this tutorial. This guy made it looked easy and talked about chords. So there I was, tinkering away and said aloud, “I wish I could play chords on the piano” et voila! my fairy godmother appeared! Actually, it was my 15 year old daughter.  She learned the skill from her Music elective and she showed me how. And guess what, there are patterns (again). So now, my ‘version’ is a hybrid of the sheet music, the video tutorial and the face-to-face tuition I got from my daughter. THIS is multi-modal learning!

There’s much here that can be adapted to classroom learning and I will list a few. Please feel free to contribute any more you can glean out of this.

  1. Motivation drives learning. Have purpose.
  2. Learning through (work)sheets is possible. It is a point-of-reference.
  3. Learning through videos is possible.
  4. Direct instruction can be a real boost.
  5. Immediate and specific feedback is invaluable.
  6. Articulating (identifying) difficulties can become learning opportunities.
  7. Learn from anyone; kids can teach.
  8. Identifying patterns can be a catalyst for learning.  Abstraction is necessary for transference (and I’m really excited about this transference bit – building my repertoire and dreaming of improvisations – haha)
  9. Practice. There is a difference between knowing and mastery: I now know how to play Imagine but mastery is still a dream.
  10. Learning is relationship-building.

Imagine a classroom where these are at play.