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Innovation and Creativity…IMO

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I don’t know about you, but I have seen this before. I have been this before. It’s an easy trap to fall into. You unwrap the bright and shiny new ‘thing’ that will transform your classroom. The solution to a problem we never knew we had. And the gateway to a whole range of new and exciting problems that didn’t exist before but now do. If only it did what we wanted it to do or even delivered some of the expected outcomes?!

Design has many names. Many ruses. So many different acronyms.  At its heart, though, it seeks to do the same thing, whatever the label. Design is about solving problems. It is about solutions. Testing solutions. Improving solutions. “Design is the link between innovation and creativity, taking thoughts and exploring the possibilities and constraints associated with products or systems, allowing designers to redefine and manage the generation of further thought through prototyping, experimentation and adaptation. It is human-centred and focuses on the needs, wants and limitations of the end user.” (IB Design Guide 2015, p. 4) Once we scratch below the surface and take away the shiny things, Design is problem solving methodology and technology is useful, only if it too, solves a problem.

“Why?” before “What?” If I had a mantra, it would be this. ‘Why’ am I doing this has to come before the ‘what’ do I need to make it happen. I cannot solve a problem without knowing what I am trying to solve.

I see Innovation as the output of creativity. The product of creativity. If creativity is the noun…then the act of this creativity finds its place through innovative thinking and doing. At times we blame lack of resources on our ability to innovate when in fact it’s the constraints that inspire innovation. It is not about what I have, but what I do not have that inspires innovation. And this drives our learning. To be innovative sometimes we need to limit what we have, what we get and what we give. We challenge our students to think. When you break that down. Challenging students to think shouldn’t be outside the realms of what we do, but it often is. And here is the response.

The five cogs of innovation

“Tell me how to do it?” is the cry of the student who is stuck.

“Well I could. Or you could just try something different. Have a go at solving the problem yourself. It doesn’t matter if you get it wrong. You just need to attempt something different to what you have already done.”

And at times they do. While others will not even budge. Fear of getting it wrong has been smashed into them so many times that the thought of not getting it right the first time overrides any natural curiosity. Some students would prefer getting in trouble for not trying, not even attempting to get it right, because its beats the shame of getting it wrong. And that says something about our schools. Our system.

Something needs to change.

Innovation as a classroom subject pushes our students to think they can, rather than believe they cannot and then asks them to attempt things they may not have otherwise tried to do. And the results are things we could not have imagined. Every class is different. New leaders emerge. Students in control of what they learn and how they learn. Our dream is students develop a mindset that they will attempt anything. No matter what they have been told in the past and no matter what others might think they can do. It’s the mindset I want our Design teachers to have. To take risks. To be different. To try something outrageous. And who knows what might happen?

Looking forward to talking more about this at the Leading a Digital School Conference….. And moving forward together.

Matt Zarb

Reference:

IB Design Guide © International Baccalaureate Organization, 2015

Saving Swimmers in the Flipping Pool

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It has occurred to me that some days I am like the pool lifeguard, in a flipping pool. I’m up there on my high chair, I’ve got the pink zinc across Help Saving Swimmers in the Flipping Poolmy face like war paint. I have my whistle for the troublemakers, I have my flotation device for those who entered the pool and weren’t ready to. I’m also there to support the new swimmers and to provide slow lanes for the more adept swimmer who have been at the pool a long time and are keen to keep swimming but at their own pace. I’m also clearing lanes for those swimmers who are keen to take on Michael Phelps and occasionally get a leg cramp. I look after them all.

I am privileged to have teachers honestly share their concerns about teaching with devices and associated organisation systems with me. These concerns centre around the expense to families, robotic replacement and how to make a measurable difference with the devices. The transformation that the journey of flipping brings to these challenges is so positive.

It has literally, for some, been the difference between quitting or remaining employed. Time and time again I have been told that before starting to use flipping, resignation letters were written. PLD has turned this around and reignited a passion for teaching, teachers often use the lifesaving reference, “Thanks, this is a lifesaver.”

Teachers frequently begin their digital journey, worried that being a 1:1 device environment would be another extra, in a place where there is already a deficit of time and energy. However, as we near the end of our 1st full year promoting inflipping with KAR, I am finding that this is changing. There is now a view that digital is the nuts and bolts of being able to flip and still have time to do the extra things that teachers always dream of doing.

The flipped online PLD courses and face to face training that I do, has given teachers the confidence to bridge the digital divide and the pedagogy to feel confident that embracing a digital classroom can maximise learning not just enhance distractions.

Teachers are embracing a structure that allows them to teach and meet all of the different goals and individual education plans without putting themselves through the mincer. I personally used to give the analogy that it was like facing a very hungry nest with baby birds all squawking at the same time. Now with the ease of Google Classroom and inflipping as one teacher put it to me today, “The kids have lots of learning chances, as many times as they need.”

But “it just makes sense” is another thing I am often told usually with a lament that why was this not shared sooner? In my role across many different schools, I have not had one teacher ever come back to me and state that they disagreed with the notion of inflipping or that the approach could not assist their practice in some way.The leadership in the cluster of schools has been exceptional. It is a fantasy to dump devices into the hands of students and expect staff to miraculously instigate innovative pedagogies. Staff have been given the time and support to trial practice and learn just as we would hope happens in classrooms with students.

Digital immersion is consistent with the virus model. The virus of excitement. This involves seeking out teachers who are keen and open to trial new things. Effort is put into engaging these staff as early adopters. The teachers you know like to explore the deep end of the pool. Once these classrooms are underway with the right support, the next tier of staff will

Virus included in the Flipping Pool

want to see what all the excitement is about. Adults all subscribe to the Keeping Up with the Jones’ theory and thus the virus will spread. The excitement of staffroom talk regarding the success of the inflipping is also key to this virus spreading and student success will also provide a motivator.

We have started small with teachers choosing a curriculum area they are confident with and then inflipping 1 unit or 1 groups tasks. VERY VERY quickly this escalated due to student success.

I have found that by assisting as many staff as possible to complete the level 1 Flipped Course there becomes a shared language and pedagogy for staff to scaffold each other in shared learning, “techy tips” and resources. We have also used differentiated teacher PLD days to engage and motivate staff. This has culminated in a mini-conference with staff from my cluster sharing with others including staff from other schools. The power of teacher led PLD for teachers is undeniable as is using an open classroom strategy where amazing practitioners welcome observer teachers into their rooms. The level of awhi (support) that this collegial support brings to a school on a shared journey is inspiring to be a part of.

When teachers share success with me, with as much enthusiasm as the children they teach, you know the passion for education has been reignited. Active learning inquiry, thinking based projects, 20% time had almost been driven out of education in a relentless pursuit of higher reading, writing and math grades. The joy and interest these pedagogies can bring to a classroom and to student learning is mirrored by the engagement and enthusiasm teachers have for motivated learners. The boredom of drill and skill …page 23 in your textbook practice cuts both ways. Teachers who are inflipping in our cluster now have the time to do the stuff that sets minds churning and creativity is making a wildly organic come back.

Quite apart from the first-hand observations I have made, where teachers are brimming with excitement, is the depth of worldwide research and practice. As a leader and facilitator, a solid platform from which to engage in what is, for our region, a very new shift in practice.

The foundations that the FLGI online course structure provides affords a differentiated scale that makes this an extremely useful resource to augment my inflpped PLD.

So I’ll continue to support and watch from my life guard chair. I’ll enjoy the view as the people in my pool are once more becoming enthusiastic about what they love to do. I’ll watch as they relax and become more confident in their careers. I’ll be happy with the spread of this virus in my pool. There will be no more semi drownings on my watch.

Leadership actions matter: step three

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This post is a continuation of step one and step two published earlier.

Today’s world is increasingly complex and fast-paced.  This brings new and stimulating opportunities to enhance learning, while at the same time, it requires us to navigate the disruptions that come with phenomena such as globalisation, technological advancements, and the changing nature of work. Leadership is the key…..

Lead yourself to lead others

To expect teachers to do what school leaders are not doing themselves will be a barrier to driving innovation and transformation in schools. School leaders need to ensure that they are modelling the change they wish to see. This is achieved by their rhetoric matching their actions. Rather than imposing change, it is essential that school leaders are setting an example via their own practice.

When teachers see leaders working side by side, displaying enthusiasm and optimism to work together in creating future directions for the school, and facing the same challenges during times of uncertainty, it illustrates that it is a shared endeavour, and encourages others to embrace and support the change. So how might school leaders model the change they wish to see? Look for opportunities to model new pedagogical approaches in professional development and model the effective use of technology in school operations. This might include flipping a whole school PD, using online collaborative tools for staff collaboration or undertaking a professional development session which demonstrates the effective use of flexible spaces.

Leadership: Flexible Learning Spaces

Why do my students’ grades improve with flipped learning?

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Just like all teachers, at the beginning of the year, I check out the available data on my new students regarding their grades last year. I then promptly forget this information due to the frenetic pace of the first few weeks of term. I then get to know my students in my in-class flipped mastery classroom and make my own evaluation of my students. I think that I am able to predict those students who will get As in my subject because they demonstrate grit, and agency and are progressing through the course well. So, I was surprised the other day when I went back to the data and found that a good number of students that I thought would get As actually got Cs last year.

I naturally reflected on what was going on here. I think the explanation is that the students respond well to a flipped learning classroom and my students had not previously experienced it. So what is it about flipped learning that is most likely to benefit these students? I think there are a number of reasons why my students respond favourably to flipped learning.

Active, student-centred learning:

In Alison King’s (1993) seminal work “from Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side” she says that students are not empty vessels filled passively by an instructor lecturing content but instead, understanding is actively constructed (King, 1993).  Flipped learning increases the amount of time students spend engaged in active learning because the teacher is not the “sage on the stage” but the “guide on the side”.

Prince (2004) defined active learning as “any instructional method that engages students in the learning process…….Active learning requires students to do meaningful learning activities and think about what they are doing”. Active learning has been found to increase student performance (Freeman, et.al., 2014). Flipped learning is a pedagogy that facilitates students to engage in active learning (Abeysekera and Dawson, 2015).

Flipped learning emphasizes student-centred, active learning in the group space through a variety of rich, meaningful learning experiences that explore concepts in greater depth and complexity and support the students’ construction of knowledge (Bergmann and Samms, 2012; Talbert, 2017).

Differentiation:

Flipped learning allows all students to work at their own pace. In the individual space, they can pause and rewind the video as often as they like, they can take a little longer to take better notes and they can go back and re-watch the videos later.

The role of the teacher in the flipped classroom also allows differentiated instruction and support for every student every day.  By interacting with every student, in every class, the teacher can tailor their support to the individual student, if and when they need it. In a traditional classroom, it is often the best students that get the most attention from the teacher because they are asking and answering the questions. Whereas, in a flipped classroom, the students that struggle the most get the most help.  “We think that this may be the single most important reason students thrive in the flipped model” (Bergmann & Sams, 2012, p.23).

Relationships:

Jo Boaler (2002) says that interactions between students and the teacher and between students are an essential part of a student’s learning and development. The interactions between students and the teacher in a flipped classroom are more frequent than the traditional classroom model (Bergmann and Samms, 2012). “Flipping allows us to build better relationships with our students” (Bergmann and Samms, 2012).

The reasons I think that my students respond well to the flipped classroom are because of the increased active, student-centred, learning, the differentiated instruction and the rich relationships. Perhaps there are other reasons as well. All I know is that many of my students show significant improvement in their grades in the flipped classroom.

Post script to this post is that the first assessment has now been graded and it has confirmed my suspicions that students are performing better this year in a flipped classroom.

Please join me @ FlipCon NZ or FlipCon Australia where I will be running a Cohort and presenting a break-out, I’d love you to come and say Hi – www.flipconaus.com

References:

Abeysekera, L., & Dawson, P. (2015). Motivation and cognitive load in the flipped classroom: Definition, rationale and a call for research. Higher Education Research & Development, 34(1), 1-14. 10.1080/07294360.2014.934336

Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012). Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day. International Society for Technology in Education.

Boaler, J. (2002). Learning from teaching: Exploring the relationship between reform curriculum and equity. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 33(4), 239-258.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith, M.K., Okorafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wenderoth, M.P., (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111 (23), 8410-8415.

King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College teaching, 41(1), 30-35.

Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231. 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

Talbert, R. (2017). Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Bringing it all together: Literacy, ICTs and the 21st Century Skills

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Literacy, 21st Century Skills, ICTs and a Common Pedagogical Framework.  These four seem to be flavours of the month in many schools, including mine.  What’s not so evident is how schools blend all of these disparate strategies together into one framework.  Too often our lived experience is that the PD delivered for each of these strategies is delivered separately, in a piece-meal approach, and in ways that can contradict each other.

In this article, I’d like to share a framework that integrates these four important strategies, so that units of work can be prepared that take students from learning basic skills directly from teacher modelling, right through to the collaborative application of these skills against real-world, authentic problems.

I’m going to assume that people reading this article are across strategies for teaching literacies, and are onboard with the use of ICTs in education, so I’ll start by looking at the 21st Century Skills briefly, and a more detailed look at a pedagogical framework called The Gradual Release of Responsibility. Note that Literacy and ICT skills are already explicitly identified in the 21st Century Skill Set that I have used for the purposes of this article.

ICTs and 21st Century Skills

The 21st Century Skills have been hashed over by quite a few different groups over the last 20 or so years.  Fundamentally, the 21st Century Skills are those that employers and the community in general see as valuable for people to contribute economically and socially, as leaders or as active participants, and as entrepreneurs in our society.  I’m going to be using the 21st Century Skill Set as defined in the 21CLD Rubrics, written by the ITL Research Group, funded by Microsoft philanthropic organisation Partners in Learning Network. Their list of the six 21st Century Skills are Collaboration, Knowledge Construction, Self Regulation, Real World Problem Solving & Innovation, The Use of ICT for Learning and Skilled Communication. I like their definition of the Skill Set because they also provide specific examples, and describe what we will see students doing at different levels as they develop.  As an example, Collaboration is defined as:

Collaboration: Students work together when the activity requires them to work in pairs or groups to:

  • discuss an issue
  • solve a problem
  • create a product
Table 1: Examples of collaboration

Bringing it all together

Pairs of students give each other feedback. Students do their work alone. A small group discuss issues together. A whole class discussion on an issue. A student uses Skype to interview a student in another school or town Students use OneNote to share their story drafts and give each other feedback. Each student creates his/her own story and sends it to the educator for feedback.

A rubric for measuring the level of Collaboration in an activity

IS THIS WORKING TOGETHER?

In this learning activity:

  • Students are NOT required to work together in pairs or groups.
  • Students DO work together
  • BUT they DO NOT have shared responsibility.
  • Students DO have shared responsibility
  • BUT they ARE NOT required to make substantive decisions together.
  • Students DO have shared responsibility
  • AND they DO make substantive decisions together about the content, process, or product of their work
  • BUT their work is not interdependent.
  • Students DO have shared responsibility
  • AND they DO make substantive decisions together about the content, process, or product of their work
  • AND their work is interdependent.

The Rubric also assists teachers in identifying how their unit can be improved in each particular dimension.

The Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) Pedagogical Framework

GRR is a structured pedagogical framework that, as the name suggests, gradually moves the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student.  There are four distinct phases in GRR.

  1. Focused Lesson: the skill or process to be taught is explicitly modelled by the teacher, with students passively observing.
  2. Guided Instruction: students attempt the skill or process modelled in the first stage, one step at a time, with teacher support or guidance, rather than modelling.

The first two phases are generally the easy part of GRR for teachers because they control the classroom activity entirely, and students do not need to be highly engaged for success.  It is enough that students are motivated by the desire to avoid negative consequences (detention, parental contact etc) for them to succeed at learning activities at this stage, if the activity is within their capacity.  Strategies such as Learning Intentions and Success Criteria will not generally be helpful for students as they are simply mimicking what their teacher is showing them.  Philip Schlechty describes this level of engagement as Ritual Compliance (see A Spectrum of Engagement).

  1. Collaborative Learning: students continue to improve their skills at their own pace, but work collaboratively with their peers rather than the teacher.

In this phase, teachers start to let go of control of classroom activity and set differentiated goals and tasks for their students. Working collaboratively is a key element of this phase. This is not something that students do well at naturally, and so teaching students how to work together, to achieve common goals becomes an important role for the teacher. Phase 3 requires students to be more engaged in their work, as they are under less direct teacher supervision. As students start to take ownership of their own learning, Learning Intentions and Success Criteria also start to become important elements of teaching at this phase. Flipping can be a useful technique in this phase, to allow more classroom time for collaboration and peer coaching.  Philip Schlechty describes the level of engagement required for success in this phase as Strategic Compliance.

  1. Independent Tasks: students apply their learning in new situations.

Phase four is the point in learning where we invite students to apply their knowledge and skills in new situations that are authentic and involve real-world problem-solving.  It is in this phase that students have the first real opportunity to choose an application for their new skills that are of personal interest to themselves, with guidance or advice from their teacher.For success in this phase, students need to show the full characteristics of Engagement as described by Schlechty, that is, both high commitment and high attention to the task at hand.  Students must be intrinsically motivated, and so it is important that the teacher does not arbitrarily assign a task, but involves the students in identifying a task to work towards that is seen to be authentic for the students. That is, Learning Intentions and Success Criteria must be co-constructed. PBL (problem based learning, or project based learning) can be a good a teaching technique that meets these requirements.

Integration of GRR with 21st Century Skills

In an initial attempt to integrate GRR with 21st Century Skills, Table 1 shows a mapping between specific activities related to each 21st Century Skill and the GRR phase in which that activity should be observed.

Bringing it all together

  1. In the 21CLD document, innovation is defined as putting students’ ideas or solutions into practice in the real world.
  2. The authenticity of a product/problem can only be decided by the audience or client, in this case, our students.  This reinforces the idea that students must be involved in planning which problems to solve, as they student themselves must see the problem as authentic, not just the teacher.
  3. Accessing Learning Intentions and Success Criteria is defined as these being both available to students, and actively being used by students.  Simply having them available for students is not enough to say they are being accessed by students.
Table 1: Student activities evident at different phases of the GRR model of pedagogy, mapped against 21st Century Learning Design

A spectrum of Engagement – Phillip Schlechty

Bringing it all together

My name is Stephen Pinel, Head of Science at Unity College, Sunshine Coast and I will presenting a session and workshop around Whole School Engagement at the Leading a Digital School Conference, August 2018 – see the program for more details – www.iwb.net.au/digital/program