Research 1 Assignment

I have decided to concentrate on Blended Learning. I have been thinking about confining it to a New Zealand context but a lot of the literature comes from overseas so I might include a subsection which includes New Zealand. Also I need to think about whether I should confine this to a certain school level such as secondary school. However, I imagine that the issues around blended learning a often the same for all teachers and learners.

Start of Research and Community Informed Practice.

Getting myself organised for online learning with second part of the Mindlab course.
Senior students have just left school and a number coming back to complete tasks or partake in tutorials. This does not leave a lot of time for Mindlab work at the moment. Hopefully more time next week.
I am halfway through Alex Barnes Kaupapa Maori research. His two questions: 1. How have Pakeha become involved in Kaupapa Maori educational research  and 2. What issues do Pakeha believe inhibit and facilitate their working with Maori communities makes for interesting and useful reading. A link from the research to Martin Tolich's research abstract proved to be quite provocative:

Abstract

The emergence and dominance of the Māori-centred research paradigm is leaving Pakeha researchers out in the cold. “Pakeha paralysis” draws on my experiences as author, teacher and university ethics committee member to account for the reasons why so many Pakeha postgraduate students are caught in a state of paralysis, deliberately excluding Māori from their general population research samples. 

(Tolich, M. 2002)

Agile.
I used Google Docs for this. Seemed to make more sense than the app we were encouraged to use.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZuifvUr41Q14JogVVVPAC9o4GgEco6ljNKTUMPgYdvQ/edit

The Blended Learning and Flipped Classroom resources made interesting viewing and reading.
I like the idea of "homework" moving into the classroom and preparation from resources put up online in virtual classrooms being done outside class time. This kind of teaching and learning sounds exciting but before this can be successfully applied in real contexts I believe two important considerations need to be taken into account.
The first one is that students need access to devices and the second is that work must be done at home so that the homework can be done in class.
There is also the issue of unreliable internet connections.

Week 6
Preparation for Week 6
An interesting number of readings and videos on Connected Learning.
The contention that learners' aspirations and educators' outcomes need to be connected in some way did not come as a surprise. This idea makes sense. I imagine that too many times educators have chosen what to teach because of their passion and knowledge of the subject matter. It is little wonder that often students lose interest and consequently a number of them exhibit off task behaviour.
The video of connected learning suggests that what is really broken is our economy. It is the system which needs to change and the 21st Century needs connected learners.

I found this video link was really thought provoking. I have classes who are sitting NCEA  standards and as teachers we are very focussed on the outcomes.

https://vimeo.com/37639766

Reflections before 4th Week Class

I have been reading 21CLD Student Work Rubrics a Microsoft Partners in Learning paper.
I have just started reading the paper but it calls to mind some of the "Solo Taxonomy" rubrics for students which concentrate on encouraging students on learning how to learn.

The interesting thing about the Student Work Rubrics is the emphasis on collaboration and cooperation when it comes to learning.

Upside down video

It lasts about 3 and half minutes and took maybe an hour in preparation.
The finished result looked fine on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 mobile. I downloaded from my phone to my computer and .................it was upside down.
No problems I thought. I can handle this. Just open a programme like VLC or Movie Maker and flip it. Easy? Well, no. Not easy. Flipping a video in VLC means jumping through numerous hoops and if you have not done this before then a painstaking run and pause through a YouTube clip. Anyway I abandoned this because the video was pixelating and going green.
Right let's use Movie Maker. Locate the video and look for the rotate icon. There it is but it's greyed out. Many tries later. Much looking around on the net. Finally 3 hours later I download Windows Essentials 2012 - forget to do custom download- and finally get a fresh Movie Maker. Still no joy - rotation still greyed out. What about Save as Movie Maker file? Slow, slow, slow but finally and the rotate icon is now "live". Choose the file and an hour later the video is flipped!
Much later it is uploaded.
Moral: Just refilm turning phone around!

Second Week's Reflections

I missed the second week course because I was away from Christchurch. I am catching up by going over the Moodle content.
I have now got my head around the difference between the personal Unitec login, the Student Portal and the Moodle site.
I am viewing the KCs in Leadership and note that we, as teachers, need to display the KCs in our work with our colleagues just as much as expecting the students to display the same when they are working with each other.

The reading about "The Affordances of Blogging As a Practice" has a very interesting passage:

Historically, the main pathway for teachers to become leaders has been entering school administration, which involves a significant shift in their professional roles and responsibilities (Task Force on Teacher Leadership, 2001). In contrast, the notion of teacher leadershipencompasses teachers remaining in their classroom positions, while serving as advocates, innovators, and stewards of their profession (Lieberman & Miller, 2004). Yet, the pathways through which teachers may become leaders are not clearly defined:

It has often struck me that good classroom teachers if they wish to become leaders need to go down the school administration path and as a result find themselves outside the classroom. The above passage is a rethink of this position and a another aspect of what exactly is teacher leadership.

First Week's reflections

I was not sure what to expect on the first night but we launched straight into the course.
My initial impressions are positive. I like the flexibility of the session times. Also the ability to attend at any of twelve locations is innovative. I will be in Auckland for Week 2 so I am finding out where I can attend a class while there.
The 32 week programme is going to be a challenge but I am especially excited about the leadership aspect of the programme.

Response to What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills: Grant Lichtman at TEDxDenverTeachers
A really useful and interesting Ted talk. The main idea that I got after one viewing was the discussion around the movement from an industrial age model of learning to one which was more collaborative, self-managing and incorporates life-long learning. I liked the idea that learning can take place outside the four walls of a classroom and move into an 'anywhere-anytime' concept.
I want to view the talk again to consolidate some of the ideas.