ULearn16: Keynote Speaker Two - John Couch

John Couch was the second Keynote Speaker at ULearn16.

This is the bio for John Couch from the ULearn Keynote Speaker information page:

John leads the Education business at Apple - his more than 40 years as a computer scientist and his advocacy for the use of technology in education has revolutionised learning in the classroom. At Apple, our dedication to learning has always been a part of our DNA.
Since joining Apple in 1978 as the Director of New Products, John went on to become Apple’s first Vice President of Software and Vice President and General Manager for the Lisa division, Apple’s first Graphics User Interface computer.
John has been heavily involved in the education market since 1985 and was Chairman of the Board at Santa Fe Christian School for 10 years. Under his leadership, the school’s annual losses were annulled and the student body grew from 150 to 1000.
John holds a Bachelor degree in computer science and a Masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science, both from the University of California at Berkeley where he was honoured in 2000 as a Distinguished Alumnus. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters and a “Leadership in Innovation Award” from Philadelphia University.

I am going to use photos from John's presentation to illustrate most of my reflection as I was distracted by connection issues and thinking about my previous breakout during this Keynote.

 Why does your school exist?  What is the purpose of your school?  What is the vision.

"Nana I can not spend the night with you until you have wifi."  That's how I feel about going to someone else's house!

"When I went to school collaboration was called cheating.  Every project I was asked to do was as an individual."

Any institution that is based on average is doomed to fail.

There is not enough time in the week for a teacher to find the right educational learning activity for every child.  We are expected to meet the child with learning that is in their flow - but that's impossible.


This is the Storify of tweets for John Couch's Keynote below.  I didn't tweet very much as I was having connection issues.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

#edchatNZ Conference 2016 Reflection of Day Two

Day Two brought new learning opportunities again at the #edchatNZ 2016 Conference at Rototuna Junior High School.  I was a bit late due to attending to a cat emergency, so when I arrived, I went straight into the first workshop.  I chose to attend the workshop about Elections 2017.

I chose this workshop as I have done a unit with students during elections in 2005 (Year 4/5 class), 2011 (Y5-8 class) and 2014 (Y3/4 class) and I believe the earlier we get students paying attention to politics and understanding how the right to vote works, the more likely they will be voters.  I will always remember our local MP, Jack Luxton, visiting my class when I was in Standard 4 in 1984 to talk to us about elections - it did help that four of his grandchildren were at my school!

And I am pleased I went to this workshop as I was the only primary school voice in this small group of people, so I was able to add a new dimension to the conversation and learn some new things myself from the secondary teachers in the room.  Hopefully what we came up with will make it into The Pond for many teachers to use.

My next workshop was with Jane Gilbert from AUT on Education's complex future - what does this mean for teachers?  The room just kept on filling up for this one and spilled out into the next.... which was ok because RJHS is made up of flexible learning spaces, so the big ranchsliders were left fully open.

I chose this workshop because I felt it was quite relevant to what I am currently doing with my Master of Education focusing on Global Education Policy.  I felt this question opens up a huge chasm of questions and quandaries that we as professional educators need to consider for not only ourselves, but also for our current and future students.

Below is a Storify of tweets just from this session.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

Below are photos that I took of Jane Gilbert's slides during her rapid lecture.

Jane argued that education needs to make a rapid change as it was no longer appropriate to do a mass production line form of education (reminiscent of Yong Zhao's opinion of the sausage factory mode of education).

"We don't need another brick in the wall" industrialise education was how we were taught - but this is not appropriate for students of today or tomorrow.  What is the core role of a teacher?  How does that role relate to other teachers?

Mega trends in education:

* digital revolution
* globalisation

Mega trends in education:
* massive growth in new networked forms of knowledge
* Anthropocene

World events such as terrorist attacks,Brexit,Trump... these are upsetting world order... leads to chaos.  Chaos and disruption may provide potential alternatives.

Sardar says we're in a transitional age. A change phase:

* Complexity
* Chaos
* Contradiction

How does education policy fit here?

* "we need to get the system to perform better"
* digitisation

There is a focus on outcomes (measured in the 'old ways') & students - but the focus on teachers is yet to come.

Lots of investment in hardware (infrastructure, tools, vocab) but not on software (teachers).

The mega trends undermine the 20th Century education system. Need to look at these questions in photo.  There are all these things we are asked to do for students but haven't experienced them their selves.  The good news is no one knows the answers.

Why are they talking about things in picture?  If we don't understand human systems these'll be subverted.  Personally I believe the model in place for Communities of Learners currently is wrong with too much dictatorial influence by MOE.  This will subvert true collaboration. That's why I consider COLs as IES pig with lipstick.

System features to consider.

Also: closed & open systems.

The murmuration of starlings - modification in response to small change - interaction produces change.  Murmuration of starlings: no one is in charge. System has its own "collective intelligence" as a whole.

Dave Snowden's Cynefin Framework. See http://cognitive-edge.com 

Education is a complex system.  Things are difficult in education and therefore requires a different sort of methodology.

Great examples for simple, complicated & complex problems using the model.

What does this mean for teachers and schools and students? What is the future? Is collaboration enough?

Three things (in picture) matter to build collective intelligence.   Building collective intelligence depends on quality of elements, quality of interactions and degree of diversity

Hargreaves & Fullan - 2012, Professional Capital - Transforming Teaching in every School: what is "strong" collaboration?  Collaboration or innovation is not collecting others ideas.  Don't necessarily apply to your situation.  Strong collaboration needs collegial not congenial, critique and extension of existing ideas, push each other, thinking differently.  To achieve change we HAVE to challenge ideas, argue; conflict produces new deep thinking.   Avoid echo chambers.

Collegial collaboration - NOT congenila collaboration needed. R Evans 2012 - Building True collegiality in schools.  How do we get strong collaboration? See R. Evans (2012) bottom of picture.

Questions for us to consider in light of this workshop with Jane Gilbert - and for all teachers too.  Will reconfiguration of the role of teachers be enough? Do we need a complete rebuild?  Jane argues that some of the professional learning offered to teachers is quite basic! Need to rethink how teachers are educated.  Absolutely agree that teacher PLD must start with focus on individual cognitive growth.  And group cognitive capacity of teachers.  How might we think about "next practice" not just "best practice"?  For teachers to interact in new world order & support kids; need new PLD model that focuses on cognitive growth to create next practice.  But we have to achieve this change while keeping some aspects of the old system going.

"Historic change is like an avalanche."

As you can see there are a lot of things we need to consider about the future of our profession as educators for ourselves and our students.

After lunch (where I caught up with some  #kotuku tribe members), it was the Provocation session, where the keynote speakers provoked us.

The first speaker was Stanley Frielick and below is the blurb about Stanley from the #edchatNZ Conference website.

Dr Stanley Frielick is Director of Learning and Teaching at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) – a central role in a network of staff, students and enabling technologies that increases the capability of the university for educational development and innovation.

His diverse research interests include the ways in which ecological / biological understandings of thinking interrelate with social and digital media to create new modes of learning, and the implications of these for strategic planning and leadership. He has led several initiatives in academic development, digital media and mobile learning at AUT.

The second speaker was Kaila Colbin and her blurb from the #edchatNZ Conference website is below:

Kaila is an ambassador for SingularityU and involved in organising the first New Zealand summit. Kaila is also a curator for TEDxChristchurch, Ministry of Awesome co-founder.

​Kaila is an entrepreneur, a connector, and a person who loves to see ideas turned into action. She is a co-founder and trustee of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome, an organisation dedicated to watering the seeds of awesome in communities; and the founder and director of New Zealand social media consultancy Missing Link.

These two speakers were rapid and thought provoking.

Kaila's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Riding the exponential wave of change
• Exponential technology is not just about the computing
• In ED, are we just hanging out in the trough of disappointment? Waiting for the steep curve to amazement!
• Self-drive cars are already twice as safe per mile as humans.
• A single crash for a self-drive car immediately improves the whole fleet. Not the case with humans.
• sci-fi is really sci-non-fi!
• 35yrs of 3D printing and what do we get? Shitty models of Yoda's head
• x times as fast, at x less cost. soooo awesome!!! Jet fusion printing from HP - electronics within the printed object
• Highest prediction is 81% of jobs gone in 20 YEARS!!!
• AI always starts with base knowledge of all other AIs, people do not
• Loving "the dick factor" that @kcolbin talks about e.g. wearing technology such as Google cardboard.
• Segways failed because of "dick factor" VR Goggles mean you can't see other's eye rolling at you
• We used to teach kids to ski as the future was paved, now we have to teach kids to surf as the future is unknown
• See @richardsusskind's 'The Future of the Professions:  http://goo.gl/faLAve
• Find your Billion - book your students places to learn about exponential tech with @kcolbin  http://www.findyourbillion.co.nz/ 

Stanley's keynote inspired these tweets:

• Kia whakatomuri te haere whakamua
• Watching the Mother of all Demos from 1968 - the original YouTube How To video.
• The Dynabook looks like the forerunner to a laptop & tablet - Alan Kay DynaBook 1968
• Inspired by the history of these incredible people who gave us so many possibilities. Papert -my favourite. 
• All day I have been reminded over and over that the technology I thought was recent... well... wasn't
• Richard Brautigan poem - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
• We have so much tech but what are we actually doing with it?
• What wicked problems can we authentically engage our students with?
• key word there... authentic. surely students need to have a say? how can WE dictate that?
• The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
• highlighting disconnection. oooh, nice. are you "Whole in a connected world"? human touch - AGAIN, whanaungatanga.
• "We also need a space where we are wholly ourselves, contingent upon no one else"

After the Provocations of the keynotes, we met back up with our tribes.  #kotuku tribe had come up with the idea of #minutechange to present to the Conference later that afternoon.  So we debated this.  The first thing we needed to do was define minute so that people knew what we were talking about.

Naturally I have a wee Storify of our thinking over #minutechange:

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

WIDD = What I did differently - which links into the whole idea of #minutechange.

After nutting it out, and making a new Twitter account called @minutechange to go with our hashtag #minutechange it was time to present our proposal to the Conference and hear what other tribes had come up with.

All in all, I enjoyed the two days at the #edchatNZ Conference.  It was almost a cross between a traditional conference and an Educamp, in that it was timetabled like a traditional conference but had the flexibility of choice that comes with an Educamp, with the bonus of time to network and build a tribe to collaborate on a new idea with.

The bonus for me was that this year it was in Hamilton... and I hope the next one will be at a school that I can get to easily.

Below is a Storify of the whole of Day Two of the Conference - there are a lot of tweets... like maybe 885 tweets.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭

ULearn18: Breakout Seven - Capturing learning with Seesaw

This year my school started using Seesaw schoolwide and the fully paid up version too. Seesaw is pretty much a daily reality in my classroom. 

The children have used it to record themselves reading and performing poetry and posting pictures of their Invitation to Create creations during Reading Tumble.  I've used it to post pictures and videos of the students working and learning in the class.  It is a great way to send private messages to all or individual parents.  Parents are responding to the photos, videos and recordings.

But I still think I can learn some other ways to use it. So I signed up to the Breakout
Capturing learning with Seesaw with Stephanie Kitto at ULearn18.

Here is the abstract:
In this hands-on workshop teachers will learn how to use Seesaw, a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students to independently capture and share their learning. Teachers will explore Seesaw’s built-in tools, which give students the flexibility to document and reflect on their learning, in a way that suits them. We will look at the parent communication tool that allows for the seamless sharing of work and helps to build strong home-school partnerships. This session is for teachers who are new to Seesaw and not yet participating in Seesaw for Schools.

Please install the Seesaw class app on your smartphone / tablet / iPad device and bring your device to the session. You do not need to create a Seesaw account before the session.

Stephanie began by showing some examples of how her class uses Seesaw to work independently:

• learning sight words
• practicing reading
• explaining how they solved a maths problem

She then showed us about how to use "Activities", where you can set tasks for students to respond to.  I tried this last term and failed miserably, and now I know why.  I never taught my students to use the green button on each activity that says "Add" to add their response to the Activity.  Doh!

Our first Activity was to do the "Get to Know You" activity.

When we had arrived we did this drawing activity, so I took a photo with my laptop camera of the work and uploaded it to Seesaw and then recorded the response.  This is when I really understood about using the Add function in Activities rather than just adding it to my folder.

Stephanie then came around with Smarties.  I was hungry and ate mine prettly much straight away until I realised we had to use them for an Activity.  By then, this was the only maths problem I could really make.

But I couldn't take this photo with my laptop, I had to use my phone and that caused all sorts of issues getting it onto my computer so I could upload it on to Seesaw.  But I figured it out.

And so I eventually added it as my response to the Activity.

Here are some examples of what others did in the workshop:

We also took photos of ourselves, uploaded them to Seesaw, and then used the Copy & Edit feature to "modernise" the photo with the drawing tools.  Sadly, I forgot to screen shot that.

So how have I used this learning?

When I got back to school I did this Activity:

Some children forgot to go to the Activities label and click on the Add button.  So this was a valuable time to teach this to them.

Eventually we got there though.  One child has been absent since the start of term so has not responded and another has been ill and catching up on other work, so I need to chase her up this week because her picture is going to be epic.

But this is another epic pic and you can see from the graphic underneath that she has recorded her story.

We've been catching up on a lot of artwork started or planned for last term.  So I then put this Activity up for them to talk about it and explain to their parents.

As you can see, one child still has not returned to school and another has been away for all the second week sick.  You can also see there is one child's response still waiting for "teacher approval".  Teacher approval means that you can vett all the content the children put up.  It allows you to ensure it is appropriate, reflects the learning, and it creates teaching points.

We have also been using it more for maths to explain what we are learning.  It's meant I've been able to dive into the thinking by the children as well and pick up who understands and who is lost in the mathematical sea.

So where to from here?

Stephanie talked to us about the copy and edit function, and this last week I talked to the Seesaw Ambassador at my school about this.  So that will probably be my next teaching point with the students.  

I'm also going to dive into the Activities shared by other teachers and try them out.

And then I will find a new thing I have to learn to do with this.