Chris Clay

Whilst sorting through recycling may not be at the top of most people’s bucket-list, an entry into a competition organised by The Fun Theory (www.thefuntheory.com) has certainly found a way of making it more engaging. By modifying a bottle bank to incorporate a few flashing lights and developing a scoring system that rewards users who deposit coloured bottles in a particular order, more than 50 times more glass was collected. This remarkable achievement is down to an increasingly common form of engagement through what is known as ‘gamification’ – a process where game design principles are applied to non-game situations.

The rise of what could be described as ‘serious games’ are not only providing our kids with entertaining ways to master skills such as calculations, spelling or typing, but they’re now able to immerse a learner into the heart of a context.

Games such as eLECTIONS (www.fizurl. com/elections) allow players to learn through managing a virtual presidential campaign, while the home-grown

Electrocity (www.electrocity.co.nz) challenges learners to build their own energy conscious city.

Sore thumbs and bleary eyes

Despite this, video-games haven’t always been a teacher’s best friend. Students arriving to school with sore thumbs and bleary eyes are just a few of the symptoms of this highly engaging and perhaps addictive form of entertainment. Maybe this explains why

The New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Association publicly rejected the gaming industry’s recent claim that video-games have educational benefits (The New Zealand Herald, ‘Teachers reject’educational’ video-games’, 2 May, 2012).

Whilst it seems that such claims are obviously self-serving, surely it would also be misguided to suggest that playing video-games will not lead to educational benefits? Surely a video game is merely a form of media just like a film or a book. It would seem absurd to say that films lack the potential to support learning, even though many of them may have a negative effect.

Surely it’s time for the discussion around video gaming to move towards a critical evaluation of which types of games are most likely to have a positive effect on learning. Without judging each game on its own merit, don’t we risk throwing out the baby with the bath water? Perhaps this one-sided approach is preventing these highly engaging resources from becoming more ubiquitous in our schools.

Similar to principles of lesson planning

When investigating the principles of game design, it’s remarkable how similar they are to the principles of lesson planning. In addition to an engaging context, the game needs a clear objective and must allow different players to progress at their own pace.

During the game, the player needs to receive regular feedback to help them improve and encourage them to persevere. An opportunity to fail is also built into games by giving the player a number of chances (or lives) to make a mistake and an infinite number of chances to reset the game and have another go. Aren’t these the same features that would be present in any good lesson?

Perhaps game designers just use what we recognise as effective pedagogies as their design brief?

It might be naive to suggest that video games are going to revolutionise the way we engage learners, but surely this form of resource could be another string to our bow. So, let’s not say ‘game over’ before we’ve even pressed start. Why not pick up the controller and search for the bonus that these resources could offer? Maybe we’ll soon find ourselves progressing to the next level.

In 1504 Christopher Columbus and his crew found themselves stranded on the north coast of Jamaica. To make matters worse, the locals refused to give them food or supplies because they had been treated so poorly by the crew in the past.

However, being a bright fella, Columbus sat and thought of a solution. He realised that a lunar eclipse was expected within days and decided to use this to his advantage. He summoned the local chiefs and told them the moon would be taken the very next night if they refused to provide the supplies he so desperately needed. They laughed in his face!

The next night arrived and as Columbus predicted, the moon began to disappear. The chiefs rushed the Columbus and begged for forgiveness and promised a plentiful supply of food and supplies. This allowed time for Columbus and his crew to wait for the next Spanish ship to rescue them.

This story serves as a great example of how a small group of isolated people lack the same collective knowledge of a bigger group. The Europeans formed huge communities and generated phenomenal collective strength, which led to the development of a plethora of technologies.  On the other hand, the indigenous locals had remained in small tight-knit groups with far less collective knowledge or experience of the world.

However, let’s say everyone in this story had a smartphone, and that Columbus tweeted his threat. If this had been the case, things would have been very different. Thousands of other people would have spotted the fact that Columbus was pulling a fast one. These people would have shared their knowledge with the locals and prevented them from being scammed by Columbus and his cheeky posse!The main point I’m making here is that large groups have a greater diversity of skills, experience and knowledge than small groups. This is one reason why large groups of people can achieve more than small groups.

Wikipedia is a fantastic example of this where over 100,000 people with different strengths, abilities and experiences have worked together to create a resource used by over 365 million people worldwide.

Another great example of a diversity of skills, abilities, and experiences being an asset to a group, is the team of mutants that form the X-Men. Unfortunately, unlike this example where different abilities are viewed as valuable, schools often find this problematic. But maybe we need to see this range of abilities as a resource that will support learning as opposed make learning more challenging.

Today’s most modern schools are being designed around the principal that people learn best when they collaborate. When they share ideas and discuss their learning rather than sit in silence whilst listening to someone standing at the front of a room. These designers realise that real learning happens when a group of people sit scratching their heads as they try to solve a problem or overcome a challenge.

However, even those of us without the flash buildings and open learning spaces are managing to harness the power of collaboration. Wikis, blogs and the like are allowing kids once isolated in their bedrooms to connect with each other after hours. But why are these online learning communities groups usually limited to the students in one class or one school? It makes sense that logistics make it more difficult for kids from different schools to learn collaboratively whilst in school, however, the same barriers do not exist online.

Why don’t we connect all the people together who are teaching and learning the same things? The online classroom is an open learning space in the truest sense of the word, except this space is wide open! Surely if we increase the size of a learning community we will also increase it’s collective strength.

We have thousands of teachers all teaching the same stuff and the same goes for learners. So why aren’t they all helping each other out? Why is a kid from one school not able to post a question to a national or even international community of teachers and learners who are all trying to meet the same outcome? Why are we limiting their audience to their small group of classmates? Surely if there are more people listening to our questions and offering their ideas, all our teachers and our learners will benefit? Maybe we just need to step out of our shell?

Of course, the obvious problems to this idea will surface.  School must compete for a finite number of students. Teachers are too busy with their own classes, never mind other peoples?  But surely these concerns make us part of society’s problem rather than a solution?

I’m not saying for a second that starting this off would be easy. We would need to consider a wide range of challenges that would make this difficult such as ensuring the reliability of information and making the role of collaborating teacher one that educators aspire to. However – once again our ability to overcome these challenges will be determined by our ability to collaborate and take advantage of our collective strength.

We have the power to ensure that every kid  has equal access to highest quality learning opportunities regardless of their location, socio-economic background or ethnicity. We’ll also find it easier working together than competing against each other.

We must start to remove this competitive culture between our schools that is preventing our best minds coming together. Maybe we should compare schools and judge quality by looking at the contribution they make to a wider learning community as well as the outcomes of the students within their walls? Surely it would be likely that more effective collaboration between teachers and learners would lead to improved student outcomes?

Us Kiwi’s (even the ones with pommie accents) pride ourselves on our ability to break the mould and do things better… Let’s take the sheep by the wool and herd our teachers and learners together… Let’s lead the world once again by making New Zealand the first place on Earth that takes a truly collaborative approach to education.

So drop your board markers and plan-book and let’s come together for reasons other than a strike! Imagine thousands of teachers benefiting from the collective strength of a united group and thousands of learners doing the same. We have the technology, we have the ideas. Now is the time.

Let’s JUST DO IT!

Educators are increasingly aware of the need to provide learning opportunities that are more active in their nature. As educators have accepted this shift, we have identified ways to change their practice such as engaging students in collaborative tasks or those which involve students creating knowledge rather than merely memorising information.

As I have strived to promote active learning in my own classroom I have found myself putting an end to practices such as those where students copy notes from a board. It wasn’t that I didn’t see the point of students having notes to study from, but more to do with the fact that I believe students should create their own notes (a far more active process). In my own classes, students work together to create collaborative notes online via a class wiki (in a similar way people add content to Wikipedia).

I had based this particular shift in practice on sound educational research (e.g. Odom et al, 2007) which suggests that providing student’s with notes can actually be detrimental to learning. However, research supports the idea that the creation of notes is a very effective way for students to re-construct information, make connections and identify areas where they lack understanding.

However, while I set about making improvements to the learning process in my classroom, other teachers focus on changing different aspects of their practice. From a students perspective this creates a confusing picture of what good teaching and learning looks like. While one teacher tells students that notes will not be given since it is detrimental to learning, the next teacher will tell the same students to copy notes from the board. This can understandably cause a significant amount of stress to students.

It occurred to me that while educators spend a great deal of time developing ways to enhance their practice, we don’t always explain the reasoning behind these changes to the students themselves. It’s almost as though we’re trying to manage significant change without consulting the main stakeholders.

Over the 10 years  since I became a teacher, I have witnessed changes in curricula, an increase on our focus on developing competencies, a movement to standards based assessment and the emergence of pretty much the entire web 2.0 movement. However, I wonder how often we justify our changes in practice to the students by explaining how this will help them? Do they really know why it’s good for them to work collaboratively, or critique another students work?

Faced with the my stressed out 17 year olds, I dared to let the students get into my head. This involved offering them insights into the perspective of their teacher and some reasons to support my actions. I placed specific focus on explaining why I had decided to move away from asking students to copy notes from the board, whilst asking students to construct collaborative notes online. One main focus of our discussion revolved around developing an awareness of the difference between information and knowledge. To illustrate this distinction I used SOLO taxonomy as a means to explain the way that learning progresses. We all agreed that learning begins with memorising some basic pieces of information. However, this memorising of information is different from building knowledge since this only happens when these basic pieces of information are linked together to create explanations.

 http://www.johnbiggs.com.au/solo_taxonomy.html

While relating this vision of building knowledge to the practice of copying and memorising notes, it was evident that students realised how this strategy is restricted to the lower levels of learning. A knock on effect to this was a plethora of “eureka moments” around the room whereby students stated an increased understanding of the entire national assessment system (NCEA in New Zealand – used for all subjects). This also led to a great deal of questions and discussion about other aspects of the learning process.

Following further enquiry, it has occurred to me how limited student awareness of effective pedagogy can be. For example, many of the students I’ve spoken with recently were unsure of the value behind collaboration, unable to define “critical thinking” and often judged teachers on the basis of the quality of the notes they hand out. If our changes in pedagogy are to be affective, surely it would be best if our students  know the specific reasoning behind our actions? Surely it would also make sense that if our learners were empowered with more knowledge of this kind they would become change agents in themselves? Imagine schools being equipped with hundreds of informed individuals, all able to offer high quality feedback about the quality of the teaching and learning they experience? Maybe before  we focus on helping students “learn to learn” we should actually start by helping them “learn to teach”?

These recent experiences have caused me to re-evaluate my own vision of student centred learning.  Not only should they be their needs be at the centre of all our actions, but they should also be equipped with the knowledge and opportunity to have a significant effect on the process. They should be so connected with the learning process that they are able to question  the actions of their teachers to ensure their development is optimised. At this point they will be truly active learners. To make a comparison with another setting, I’m now feeling that students should be able to question the  pedagogy of a teacher in relation to their learning, in the same way a patient can question the practices of a doctor in relation to their healthcare.

When was the last time your doctor made you take a test that you didn’t no the purpose of?  Can our students say the same about the tests their teachers set?

Hey folks…

If you haven’t got involved with this project yet, take a look… It’s rare when someone sends you a box of goodies that allows the kids at your school to get involved with a meaningful project with an internationally recognised organisation (Smithsonian Institute) that looks at how global issues are affecting us locally and beyond. Get amongst it…

Check out this video for more info

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfskgeIQv7o

Hey guys.

Since this is all new I am yet to post something interesting. I’m sure this will change in the very near future..

In the meantime take a look at the other parts of the site to see the kind of projects I’m involved with and the ways we could perhaps work together in the future.

You can also make contact with me in all kinds of ways so give the “contact me” link a click.

Cheers guys.

This is the first post on my new blog… Hello