Creativity

Creative - you've gotta be it to thrive in the 21st century. You've got to be flexible, think on your feet, embrace change, think critically, consider issues from a range of perspectives and draw on a variety of strategies for solving problems. As a teacher, one of my responsibilities is to inspire students to think outside the box. I need to provide opportunities for kids to take risks and try things out in a supportive environment.

Ken Robinson's hugely popular speech on this topic (worth a look if you've not seen it already):

This is clearly really important. But it's nothing new - unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard it already.

What is interesting is that while we are all talking about blended learning, inquiry learning, problem based learning, student-centred classrooms etc etc, we forget about revitalising all the other parts that make up school. Learning's not just about pedagogy - it's about the culture and the institution. To create an environment that nurtures students' creativity, we need also to rethink the the work and relationships that are not with students. Grownups' creativity needs some nurturing, too.

A bit of background to catch you up with where I'm coming from:
A non-educator friend invited me into his workplace to see and talk about a recent office refit, and generally about the company he works for. It was pretty cool - lots of open plan spaces, light, plants and space for light-heartedness. It's really clear that this company wants its staff to be motivated, comfortable, inspired, happy, part of a community. There's a cafe area (with good coffee!) on the first floor, complete with patio and garden. Conference rooms are themed - from a Mad Men-esque kind of executive suite to country and western to black booths with disco-light wallpaper (still a bit disappointed about the lack of lava lamps in that one..). Areas for desk work are open plan - no designated seating! One of the conference rooms is set up as a friendly place for mothers on maternity leave to meet up. And there's a slide. For grownups. And yes, I'm really peeved that I didn't go on it - stupid floaty skirt fabric. The space itself is really cool.

Also cool was the underlying culture. There's no dress code - wear jeans, suits, shorts, pyjamas, whatever. Work from wherever you want. There's no expectation that you'll be in the office every day. You do your best work on the beach with a cocktail? Go hard. There's no clocking in or out - you work as many hours as you need to, to meet your goals. And of course there's all the tech that you need for real time collaboration - video conferencing, screen sharing, an in-house network for online chats, emails, voice and video messaging etc etc. All kinds of fun and games.

The community-building stuff I really liked. I've already mentioned the meeting space for mothers, the cafe area and the slide. As well, there are projects for staff to work collaboratively to raise money for charities, space in the mail room to store bikes, a 'Bring your Daughter to Work Day' and, of course, opportunities for members of the public to come in and see how it works. I'm sure, like any workplace, it has its ups and downs, but you could see that a lot of thought and planning goes into making the staff's experience a good one.

In and outside of schools, there is a lot of thinking going into how we can facilitate students' creativity. What puzzles me is why we so rarely put time and effort into creating the conditions for adults to work creatively in the school community. It just seems to make more sense - if we want to inspire children to learn through play, be creative, engage with the community, shouldn't the adults in their lives also be inspired?

Some cool teaching moments. Thanks, iPad trial :).

I have already posted about it, but I just want to celebrate the awesomeness that is teaching with tablets. I know everyone's preaching it and I'm sure there is a bunch of you out there rolling your eyes at this 'latest trend', but having 1:1 iPads has transformed teaching and learning in our classroom.

My students are Minecraft crazy. I wouldn't have know that if we hadn't taken a gamble and put it on the kids' iPads. We haven't even gotten around to using Minecraft in class yet, but it has already provided the fodder for our best discussion in class this year. Yesterday morning in class, one of my students asked if he could present his passion project. 'It'll take like, 10 minutes, Miss Kemp', he said. 45 minutes later, the children were still going strong, discussing the ins and outs - the best materials for building various kinds of buildings, the best strategies for vanquishing baddies, etc, etc. How's that about learning?
Well.
Most of my students are not native English speakers, so this discussion gave them the opportunity to use subject specific technical vocabulary in an authentic context. The child who presented managed questions and guided the discussion without adult interference. Nobody needed prompting. The children practised appropriate etiquette for participating in a large discussion.
Thank you, iPads, and thank you, home learning.

Blended learning. It's really happening. At the beginning of the school day, we talk through the various projects/tasks that the children can work on. At the moment, there's an extended Maths PBL task, and a narrative writing task, as well as preparation for their Student Led Conferences next week. Incorporated into the mix are also shared and independent reading times, small group instruction (Maths and Language mini-lessons) with me and any other smaller tasks that come up. Keeping in mind the necessity of balancing screen time with other activities, the children manage these tasks on their own. The quality of the work the children are producing is high - they're engaged, they're interested and they have the control (most of the time). I feel like I am teaching much more effectively, because I'm not stuck out the front with my whiteboard markers - I'm sitting down with the kids, working with them side-by-side. For specific skills and content that have to be 'covered', I pull out small groups throughout the day and we talk through it in mini-lessons. So much more time-effective, so much more enjoyable and so much easier to do with iPads on hand.

Roguishness

Spring here in Europe is awesome. A return to colour, smiles on people's faces and an end to the collective Winter grumps. The days get longer and there's time to do things in daylight before and after school. Things become a bit more lighthearted, the way they're supposed to be.

Spring is also a great time at work. By this time of the school year, my kids and I know each other well and we have built a strong rapport. We know each others' limits and expectations and generally, the classroom is a pretty comfortable place to be. The cool part of this is that by this time of year I also know the things that make individuals in the class really excited; I have a much better idea of how to tap in to what it is that the children are passionate about, or more likely to be passionate about.

For whatever reason, Spring is when I'm at my most creative. I'm feeling good and wherever I look, there's inspiration for something to write, make, think or talk about. Spring is when I want to try fun new things, play, make big messes and go where our questions take us.

The killer is that this is also the time of year that we teachers are hurriedly reviewing the curriculum to make sure that we have 'covered' all the stuff, and are on track to 'cover' all the rest of the stuff before the Summer. A small part of me dies every time I think 'outcomes'. And 'data'! Conversations about
data make me want to stick a fork in my eye.

Yes, data is valuable. It's useful. It helps to inform my teaching. I gather it every day, in various forms. But I did not become a teacher because I had a passion for data. Nor do I think that a data-obsessed culture is going to produce critical, creative, passionate lifelong learners. And it ain't a recipe for inquiry learning.

All these are perfect ingredients for my 'Argh! I'm doing something awesome' soup. I'm going rogue. And I'm taking the iPads with me.

(...and yes, I'll get the report writing done as well...) Sigh.

Bits and Pieces

Just a few quick thoughts that I want to get down before they are lost forever in the abyss..

Today we started to document our screen time - I realised that I was completely carried away with doing exciting stuff on the iPads and forgot about balance. And then, I realised that if I was going home with very tired eyes, then the children probably are as well. And when I asked them, what do you know? Lots of tired eyes in 4LK.. I'm a rocket scientist. Hopefully, we will be able to use the data we collect to inform the students' development of their own schedules for using the iPads - when to leave them at school, when to take them home.. The most exciting upside is that now I 'realise' that I definitely have time to try out some of the cool ideas for Art lessons I've been seeing on this excellent blog, which links to a bunch of others that also look excellent. Hooray!

Choice: this is something I am working to incorporate more into our schedule. This week, we have begun working on two big pieces of learning. The first is the Trip Planner/Maths PBL that I've mentioned in previous posts, the second is the creation of a narrative. One cool thing that has happened is that while most students are working their way through these 'projects', I am able to pull out small groups for focused instruction. The choice comes in because I can make myself 'free' during this time, so that children can elect to come to me when they feel in need of some extra help with a skill or concept, and leave the group when they feel ready. Also, they can choose which project they will do, when. The children have responded well to this and our classroom has been really busy with motivated children doing work that I think feels more purposeful to them.

And lastly, just something that I'm pondering. I got involved in an online discussion with a bunch of people who aren't teachers and their understanding of how teachers and school work was so different to my reality. I know that some of this is to do with perspective and also of course to do with the fact that education varies so much according to time, place, and of course, individual teachers, students, schools and cultures. I wonder how we can be more effective in sharing our work with the wider community?

iPad Trial Phase 1: over?

I think we are now getting past the 'Christmas Present' phase of iPad integration in 4LK. iPads are still exciting, but I am hearing less of 'Miss Kemp, can we play with the iPads now?'.

It has been hard slog - but I am really lucky to work with an excellent Digital Integrator who has been there through all those 'stick-a-fork-in-your-eye' moments, which warrant a post all of their own. If anything, this makes me really aware of the importance of structures to support class teachers in implementing tech in their classrooms. Because this is an action research project, we meet regularly to plan and also have co-teaching time. It is great to have someone to bounce ideas off, talk things through and share the work. Thanks, Ben :).

The children work confidently with their devices now, and we have worked with quite a number of the apps installed. I feel like we are now through 'Stage 1: familiarisation' and are entering 'Stage 2: transformation'. But before I leap ahead, I just want to take a quick look at what we have done so far.

Like I said, Stage 1 (for want of a cooler name, sorry) has been all about familiarisation, getting the students using the iPads regularly, and making the iPads a regular part of teaching and learning in our class. If I look back at the SAMR model of technology integration, most of this stage has (necessarily, I think) been spent on tasks at the Substitution and Augmentation levels, and dipping into Modification. It made sense to me to start integration with these 'lower order' tasks, to give the students (and me) time to work through management issues, sort out initial bugs and work our way through some of the apps. Some examples of things we've been doing so far:

Spelling/Vocabulary development
Quizlet is a flash card app - you can save and share your flash cards with others, as well as access other people's flash cards in a gallery. It's been a nice addition to the options we already have for spelling and vocab practice in class and I can see it being useful as a homework tool, as well. Students can write the vocabulary word on one side of the flashcard and the translation in their mother tongue on the other. The app includes options for games and little tests using your words. Like I said, it's useful as another option and it's a means of making vocabulary words available to students (and their parents) at home.

Edublogs
We have been blogging with laptops since the beginning of the school year, so there's not much new ground being covered here. It is interesting to see how the children's blogs are changing now that most of their blog posts are generated from the iPads. I expected there to be a natural shift to greater use of photographs/illustration and less writing, but that's not what is happening at this stage. Still, though, it's early days - many children are still adjusting to the iPad version of this platform. After a little bit of time, it will be interesting to see what kinds of choices the children make when given the option of using iPads or laptops to update their blogs.

Skitch
Skitch is a cool tool for photo annotation. I liked it a lot on laptops but it is really great on the iPads. The touch screen makes the annotation process a lot less fiddly, as well as the ability to link the app directly to the iPad's camera and camera roll. Thus far, the students have used Skitch to create little informational posters for some of the presentation apps we have. I am hoping that the children will make good use of it for their digital portfolios.

Book Creator
Book Creator is a means for (relatively quickly) creating digital texts that can be shared in a couple of different ways. You can insert photos, video and audio recordings into your books, as well as draw directly onto the page. Sharing via social media is slightly trickier than I would like, but you can upload your books to Google Drive, which is a plus. For their first go with this app, my students published an original poem and easily incorporated the features listed above. This app would be a really great way to create multi-lingual identity texts with ELLs - on my list of things that I am very keen to do.

Screencasting
Screen casting has really been the highlight for me so far. It is a really effective way of having students demonstrate their knowledge for Number. So far, the children have been using Educreations and Show Me to demonstrate their ability to perform calculations - like the chunking strategy for division, or using the grid to solve 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication sums. It is really a really useful assessment tool for me. Again, I have started simple with this - I'm really pleased with what we have done with this so far, but pedagogically speaking, what I have just described is really just a moving, talking worksheet. I have some plans in the works to put screen casting to more inspired use. Stay tuned..

I'm pleased with what we have done in this initial stage. iPads have become a regular tool that we use in our class, but I don't feel like usage has been forced. That said, we are still moving towards SAMR's R - redefinition. I think that part of our journey is to be creative, test things out and realise what the possibilities are. It really is about re-educating, redefining how learning happens in our class. I've spent the last little while working on something to get us a little closer to this goal, which we will begin working on very soon in class.

I have just finished putting together a problem-based learning task for Maths (based on Todd Nesloney's work shared here) that should definitely send us in the right direction. Whilst I say that this is a 'Maths' task, children will have to use a variety of tools (including their iPads!) in order to complete the different elements of the task, drawing on skills from across different areas of skill and knowledge. Hey presto - just like in real life! It should really open up our (mine and my students') eyes to begin to see the potential of us + iPads.

It's a fairly comprehensive task that will take at least a couple of weeks to complete. I'm looking forward to sharing how it pans out.. Wish us luck!

Watch out, blended learning, we're coming!

I don't know how to start this post, so I'm just gonna blurt it out: my class has 1:1 iPads!
Clearly, I am still completely in the 'Whoa, this is so cool!' phase. Which is lucky, because so are my students. Seriously, every day is like Christmas morning.

We've only had the trolley in the classroom for a few days - at this very early stage, we are still sorting out management and logistics, learning our way around this particular piece of hardware, and exploring the apps.

A quick description of the project: each child in my class (and me!) has been issued their 'own' iPad. Initially we'll just use them in class, but we're hoping that the children will be able to take them home after a few weeks.

Over the next months, I will be working closely with the school's Digital Learning Integrator and the Primary School Principal to investigate the effects of iPad use on teaching and learning. Which, on rereading, sounds very dry. What I'm hoping for is a transformation in how learning happens in our classroom. Yep, I'm talking about blended learning. There is heaps of information to be found on the internet about blended learning - I like this video.

Cool! But, how?

There are so many possibilities for the shape this transformation might take: here are a few of my thoughts, dreams and questions.

• iPads become like pencil cases in our classroom: a place where we store a bunch of different tools to help us to solve problems, create, practise skills...
• This is what I'm most excited about right now:
• Transformation of the organisation and differentiation of tasks. We have 1:1 iPads and (most of the time) very good opportunities for access to laptops, as well as two class desktop computers. We have an ample class library and reasonable opportunities for access to the school library. We have good resources for arts and crafts. 
• If we organise our tasks and learning, differently, it follows that iPad integration is going to change how my classroom looks. This is one that I want to play around with a lot more. 

I'm guessing there's an app for that :).

Our blogs are going so well!

My students have achieved well with their blogs this year. We began in the last week of August '13 and quickly attracted comments from around the world. I've also received a number of encouraging emails and comments on the children's work from colleagues at our own school and abroad. It's worth reflecting on what we have done in class this  year to help us along the way.

• First and foremost: Our blogs are open for anyone in the world to read or comment on. Last year, my students' blogs were kept private and commenting privileges were extended only to those within our school community who had a password. Thus our readership started small and dwindled throughout the year. It didn't matter how cool our work was, or even how cool other people (who managed to find our work) thought our work was, because at the end of the day, nobody could remember their password to leave a comment to tell us so! Part of the power of blogging is in its interactivity - the more comments they get, the more children want to write. Important note: All comments are sent to me for moderation before they are visible on the blog.

• Investing time. Blogging was completely new to my students at the beginning of the school year. We spent a lot of time reading blogs, comparing blogs to different kinds of texts we knew about and experimenting with the different features of blogs, as well as developing technical proficiency. This initial unit took about 6 weeks. Now we have one designated lesson per week for writing posts, commenting and responding to comments. Many children also blog from home. Check out Silvia Tolisano's excellent Langwitches Blog for planning and teaching ideas.

• Conceptualising blogging as a 'conversation'. It's really important that the children understand that a blog is an interactive space - not a static one. In our investigations of blogging, we talked a lot about the 'social media' aspect of blogging. A blog is not so much a place we publish as it is a place we have conversations. This understanding feeds into the development of further understandings about digital safety and etiquette, as well as literacy learning in terms of genre and text types. 

• Freedom and flexibility. Giving students control over blog content and layout. It's been really important that it's the children who own their blogs, not me. Whilst the primary purpose of blogging in our class is for reflection and digital portfolios, students also post jokes, stories, informational pieces, opinions etc. Blogs are so versatile - it's a mistake to limit their use to reflection.

• Quadblogging. I signed us up for this at the beginning of the school year and it certainly got our name out into the student blogging community. Even if you don't sign up, it's a great way to see a range of blogs and how different teachers and schools are choosing to blog with or for their students.

Some things to work on/think about:

• One thing that I did expect (that hasn't magically come to fruition) was that my students would edit their work more carefully when they knew that they were writing for an audience (and not just me!). This is something that the literature assured me would happen, and it ain't. 
• Encouraging students to go beyond their own blogs in furthering their 'conversations'. Next time, maybe I will start my blogging unit by having students comment on blogs outside of our school community. Students in my class love to comment on their friends' blogs, but need a quite a bit more prodding to visit and comment on a stranger's blog.
• Blogging with iPads. This is definitely a small part of a much larger conversation. We are incredibly lucky, and have just been issued 1:1 iPads in our class as part of an action research project at our school. As regards blogging, we are still familiarising ourselves with the Edublogs app. It will be really interesting to see what happens next.