Evolutionary post #1!

It’s been interesting to see the digital native versus digital immigrant debate evolve over the last ten years. By virtue of my age, I’m a member of the generation who technically have a foot in each camp – depending on who you ask – and I am particularly interested in seeing where the majority of researchers will place me in five years’ time.

In the meantime, it is equally fascinating to observe the debate around how to best educate those who don’t have this ambiguity surrounding them. Those who are unequivocally digital natives have an understanding of ‘tech’ – not just the internet – that far surpasses that of my contemporaries and me – so how do you teach them? Is it even possible?

In 2012, Wan Ng of UNSW produced a fascinating article entitled ‘Can We Teach Digital Natives Digital Literacy?’ He poses a Venn diagram to consider: the space where socio-emotional literacy, informational literacy and technical literacy overlap is where the nirvana of digital literacy can be found. Theoretically, that means that yes, to an extent - I should be able to teach some form of digital literacy. We teach students how to research, filter and extract information. We teach students how to block code, how to use Raspberry Pi and Arduino, how to code using Java. We teach students how to communicate clearly to different audiences in collaborative documents. We teach them what ‘just playing’ on a device at home does not – how to use technology in an educational setting, which then develops into vocational training. Yes, we teach students to be digitally literate.

But what about us as educators, we who are theoretically native? We aren’t through with our learning journeys yet – how easy is it to teach us? We generally have a pretty good opinion of our own capacity for tech, let’s be honest, but our students are moving quickly to catch up – and there is constant pressure to keep up with the latest trends and apps and programs.

Fortunately, Wan’s research concludes that we are capable of picking up the various forms of digital literacy and embrace it eagerly, which is reassuring. When we see how it all fits together with the wider global context, and how embedded in our daily lives various forms of technology have become, especially for the younger generation with whom we spend so much of our time, it is difficult not to. If we can transfer this attitude to our students we have made a flying leap towards teaching them the core concept of digital literacy – to remain literate requires constant learning.

Or else, I suppose, we risk getting stuck on our tiny part of the world wide web, doomed to wither into irrelevance.

Ng, Wan (2012) Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? in Computers & Education 59 (2012) 1065-1078.

GANAG - The Digital Way!

Way back in my graduate days, I worked at a school that subscribed to the GANAG lesson planning and delivery model created, tested and refined by Jane Pollock. The model worked well for me, both when working in a Montessori classroom and when delivering content in a mainstream classroom, and still stands me in good stead when planning and facilitating workshops for gifted and talented children, and is backed by their Hattie-style data detailing effect sizes for high-yield strategies (Marzano, Pollock and Pickering, 2004) and the value of feedback by and of students (both on their learning and the effect of the educator) (Pollock, 2011) - but up until recently, it was still very much rooted in the person-to-person, offline-learning, traditional-classroom realm.

I5 has brought it up to speed.

Last year, Jane Pollock and Susan Hensley released a book that synthesized Pollock's earlier research into classroom practice with 21st century learning and the virtual education/digital literacy revolution. The i5 Approach: Lesson Planning That Teaches Thinking and Fosters Innovation asserts that following a path of information, images, interaction, inquiry, and innovation students will be encouraged to develop fluency in selecting, analysing, collating and creating authentic (read: meaningful and relevant) digital artefacts that not only demonstrate rigour in their thinking but also flexibility in their interpretation of others' thinking.

Pollock continues to substantiate their recommendations with research into neuroscience and take the time to demonstrate how to link them pedagogically with existing practices in many schools (most overtly, inquiry-based learning - but also flipped or blended learning classrooms and other mastery learning models). Examples from teachers trialling and refining their recommendations of how to implement I5 across a number of different schooling levels and subject areas render it a practical handbook as well as a good crash course on how to take GANAG to the next level.

A must have for any teacher at a school in the GANAG network - this will be the logical step for schools to take in 2018.

Marzano, Robert; Pickering, Debra and Pollock, Jane (2001). Classroom Instruction That Works: Research Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Pearson. New Jersey: USA.

Pollock, Jane (2011). Feedback: The Hinge That Joins Teaching And Learning. Corwin Publishing. California: USA.

Pollock, Jane and Hensley, Susan (2017). The i5 Approach: Lesson Planning That Teaches Thinking and Fosters Innovation. ASCD. Virginia: USA.

Don’t Flip Out! – Part 2

Image courtesy of GoodReads

After devouring Berghmann and Sams’ epic regaling their journeys in flipped learning, I was keen to learn more about what had worked for teachers in different curriculum areas and at different levels of schooling. I’m P-12 trained, so I needed breadth of practical suggestions as well as plenty of pedagogically sound depth to back up my choice to flip my classroom. Once again, my Kindle came to the rescue! Amazon pointed me towards ‘Flipping 2.0’, edited by Jason Bretzmann, as the ‘next step’ in my reading.

In his foreword, Bretzmann refers to going beyond watching videos for homework and doing homework in class as the ‘2.0’ of classroom flipping. Interesting, I thought. Parallels between this and Web 2.0? As it turns out, yes! In Flipping 2.0 there is emphasis on the quality and increased accuracy/sophistication of output by students after a change in teacher input, much as the Web 2.0 movement emphasised creation and dissemination of information rather than simply the absorption of information curated by others.

Various education practitioners collaborate in this anthology of recommended practices. Some suggestions are more practically usable in different contexts than others, but there is a relatively even spread across all curriculum areas and from both highly experienced and dynamic graduate teachers – making it widely accessible, useful and sufficiently empirically based for many.

The book is more heavily weighted towards being of assistance to secondary teachers than those in the primary sector. However, this could be seen as a bonus in making it more viable for teachers to extend their brightest students at their own pace, with practical tips for how to further their subject-specific learning beyond the scope of the primary curriculum. Interestingly, the book also includes a section on flipping the classroom as a part-time teacher which may also be of interest to those working in tutoring, private education providers or governess positions.

This book was, to me, a really logical follow-on to my first foray into literature regarding flipped classrooms. Have you read it? Do you agree? I’d love to hear! Leave a comment below.

Bretzmann, Jason (2013). Flipping 2.0. Bretzmann Group LCC. Pennsylvania: USA.

Don't Flip Out! - Part 1

Photo courtesy of GoodReads

I’ve done a fair bit of reading about flipping one’s classroom over the last few years. While I was at MPS, I was encouraged to start developing asynchronous units of work for my students – which, after completing some study on virtual classrooms with Coursera, I realised was me unwittingly taking the first step towards flipping! How exciting! I turned to my trusty Kindle to find out a bit more.

The first book I ‘picked up’ was Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Berghmann and Aaron Sams, two gentlemen credited by some as being the grandfathers of flipping classrooms. It discussed their respective journeys in developing a flipped model that worked for them, in their contexts, and offered pedagogically sound advice about how to develop your own.

I finished the book with mixed feelings. Having worked in remote, rural and regional schools, it was wonderful to hear that provisions were starting to crop up to maximise the time some secondary students spent commuting to and from school and their extra-curricular activities. The Montessorian in me was rejoicing over the possibilities for students to learn at their own pace, with as much repetition as they needed through an engaging medium. And the graduate in me – struggling to fit everything into the day for her students - was overjoyed that there was a possibility to combine the concept of meaningful home learning with more efficient use of face-to-face instruction time. Streaming or downloading instructional videos seemed like an excellent option.

On the flip side (see what I did there?!), I was aware of my urban-dwelling students’ diverse home backgrounds. Some had no access to internet. Some had no guaranteed access to a laptop or tablet. Some didn’t even have ready access to a library as a back-up (too far to walk by their primary school selves). Remote, rural and regional students in Australia, I realised, have patchy reception on their phones (sometimes in their homes). The bandwidth they have comes at a significant cost – and not all families can prioritise that above other day-to-day living costs, even if it is for their child’s education.

So what have I taken away from the book? That the model most commonly purported as the grail of flipped learning is not necessarily the best or most practical the world over. Berghmann and Sams seemed to know I was going to come to this conclusion, though, and provide a plethora of practical suggestions to trial in developing a model that worked for me and my students. Additionally, they discuss how their ‘flipped mastery’ model (regardless of how it is ‘technified’) dovetails with other best practices in education in terms of learning theory. Good for those who can implement it in justifying their choices.

If you’re after a great overview of flipped learning and how to get started in developing your own workable scheme, this is the book for you! Have you had a read? How are you going with your flipped journey? Leave a comment below!

Bergmann, Jonathon and Sams, Aaron (2012). Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student Every Day. International Society for Technology in Education. Virginia: USA.