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Real Concepts in a Virtual World

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In 2018 my class was lucky to be a part of a Channel Nine article showcasing the New Minecraft EDU platform for schools in SA. What a wonderful experience it was. 2 hrs with a full bustling computer room, several students chosen to speak, official department spokespeople present and everyone ready to get the main sales pitch across.

It was a great lesson for all. The 2 hour session was edited down to about 2 minutes but all kids that were prepped, spoke on the article and I managed to make myself look slightly better than ordinary. It amazed me how little the department and Nine News actually cared about talking about the cross curricular units of work and the ways in which the students were being submersed in a virtual world. Actually, I had just taken part in an advertisement.

National 9 News Article

The next day, everyone was happy, parents were proud, kids were walking tall and teachers commented over the morning break. The clip was being watched by a lot of people and my students were telling me everytime we passed another 1000 hits. As we hit 15000, I smiled and decided to have a look at how it was being accessed. Unfortunately, my innocent interest turned to intrigue when I noticed the 100+ comments posted…

….and then that intrigue quickly turned to frustration!

comments like:

Sarah J – ‘Yep see how this will educate our youth who are already lazy and rude!’

Carmen F – ‘Whatever happened to teamwork out on the play field or with a board game?’

Brett L – ‘So we’re paying school fees for our kids to play games and teachers want a pay rise ha ha they must think all parents are stupid.’

Tom H – ‘Haha team work isn’t really teamwork when one person has headphones on!’

Why is it that these people presumed that the use of a digital sandbox platform meant that we were decreasing the learning possibilities? Why did they react with such negative force? What was the cause of people feeling they needed to comment in such a way as though my teaching was merely putting a child on a game?

I began to really question my practice and approach to all the digital resources at hand and think more about this. Was I using Minecraft as an educational tool or was it merely a new age colouring in book.

This was late in the year and our major unit was wrapping up. The students were now functioning in their virtual class city (Shichi Hachi Muchi – Room 7 & 8). We had turned the creative mode off several weeks before because the students had developed their businesses based upon requests submitted that demonstrated a clear understanding of the supply and demand needs of the city.

The journey on this unit had students using digital technologies for design, collaboration, communication and data. It enabled the students to lead and look after real world issues in a virtual setting for Civics and Citizenship. The students maintained a personal budget that also assisted students to monitor their learning progress and personal goals. It crossed 6 curriculum areas and had a 100% finish rate for the unit.

I have since continued to improve the unit of work, with incentives for extra work, and self monitoring being two large changes. In 2019 we are completely using Minecraft EDU, and my Minecraft minions have been working really hard to get our new and improved future city ready for the first home owner.

The experience has made me realise that there are many people that will try to look for fault in everything we do and that we must continue to work hard to use technologies where they can enhance learning. People will use technologies as the new age colouring book but I am not one of them. I want more, and simulations, virtual worlds, transparent templates, cloud sharing and so many other technologies are making my classroom an amazing place to be.

If you want to know more about my units of work and approach to teaching with digital technologies, please join me at the Leading a Digital School Conference at Crown Melbourne in August where I will be running two workshops; Minecraft across the Curriculum and Make Learning Real.

Steve Whitehead
IT Coordinator

Can I hack it? A reflection on designing digital solutions to authentic problems

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Written by my colleague, Megan Tubb

I didn’t realise I’d been hacked! After 12 years of teaching highly structured units of work, I found myself teaching in a way that forced me to loosen my grip on the reins of the curriculum. What started as a small discussion with my grade 6 students about the problem of litter in our playground had grown into something so much richer.

My 11 and 12 year old students were: 

  • driving the direction of our learning.
  • thinking of digital solutions to address a real problem in their environment
  • making strong connections to the adults in our local and wider community

The kids were empowered and full of pride! Meanwhile, I was struggling with self-doubt and fear. I had been pushed right out of my comfort zone to face each day with a level of uncertainty. It was innovative. It was challenging. It was exciting.

Could I hack this new way of teaching?

As the world continues to evolve, our education system is lagging behind. We know it is our imperative to develop our students to become active adults, well-equipped to fulfil their potential and find meaningful pathways for their future. Yet for so many teachers it is too threatening to step away from complete control of the direction of learning.

There are educators who are pushing back against old paradigms. Teachers who acknowledge that the old way just isn’t good enough. These teachers know the value of 21st century learning skills. They recognise that in order to equip students with these skills, they need to take a different approach that shifts away from teacher-centred learning. It requires educators to be innovative, creative and brave enough to value students as capable and contributing citizens – key players in the act of learning.

How can we utilise these pockets of innovation within schools to generate cultures of innovation across a whole school? One possible avenue is to draw on the Stanford d School’s principles of “hacking for school improvement”.  ‘Hacking’ has the following characteristics:

  • quick and fast with a bias to act
  • a culture of prototyping (just try)
  • using what we have
  • low risk

This model acknowledges that some teachers can be reluctant to try new ways of doing things because of a need to ‘get it right’. It aims to remove this pressure by grounding innovation in low-risk experiments that value and encourage a bias towards action. According to the Stanford d School:

“Since doing beats talking about doing, we embrace jumping into new, invigorating experiences. Sure, there’s some initial discomfort, but the reward becomes clear as educators stretch beyond their comfort zone to pick up new skills and mindsets.”

By taking a leap of faith and trying something new, rather than waiting for it to be perfect or right, teachers speed up their own learning process. In adopting a fail forward approach, they use their own valuable experiences and reflections to improve the practices they have experimented with.

Leadership at Taroona Primary School saw the initial litter work I was doing with my students. They applied ‘d School’ school improvement hacks to enable, encourage and support me. My experience not only built my personal capacity in the area of authentic learning, but it also served as a model for my colleagues.

Pushed by my principal, pulled by my students’ passion, I very quickly came to realise some of the benefits of bravely working in this new space.

Buy in

Students identified litter in the playground washing into the River Derwent as a problem.  The first thing that excited me was that the students were passionately connected to their learning. This created

Students installing the bird feeder they designed to keep currawongs away from rubbish bins

motivation, as they were invested in their efforts and outcomes. I realised that authentic learning is not only ideal for extending highly able students but also for students who are disengaged and difficult to motivate. There was buy in from my whole class!

Students are likely to think laterally, go left of field and dream big, rather than think something isn’t possible.

I had many projects on the go with students. Some worked, some didn’t. But what each project showed me was that with the naturally inquisitive, creative and uninhibited character of children, creatively solving real problems is a gift for teachers. Students are likely to think laterally, go left of field and dream big, rather than think something isn’t possible. And throughout all this, the significant community connections and learning that took place as a result of the journey, cemented my conviction that this was worthwhile, despite the uncertainties and challenges of working in this new way.

Digital Technologies

What also became obvious was the natural fit for digital technologies. Students intuitively considered digital solutions as part of their design-thinking approaches to problems. Our school had recently taken up the challenge of being early adopters of this curriculum area within the primary sector. It was so exciting to see digital technologies being organically applied within the authentic learning process. It brought alive our vision of ‘aligning and enhancing our current work with the digital technologies curriculum’.

My experience therefore served to build personal capacity in the area of authentic learning, as well as serving as a model for my colleagues.

We know from our own experiences that teachers are dedicated and want the best for their students. It’s what drives them to turn up every day. So why then is there a reluctance to adopt a culture of innovation that welcomes authentic learning? Why aren’t all teachers using the genuine and novel problems that exist within schools and communities to provide an opportunity for students to actively contribute as citizens in their own right?

Authentic Learning is Messy

Innovative, authentic learning can be a bit like what it feels like letting your toddler have a playdate with some friends. Even though as a parent you know the benefits of free unstructured child-led play, adults can be reluctant to just let kids go. As an adult, structured activities are easier. The adult knows that the fall-out following child-led play can be messy! And the mess can be both literal and figurative. For those who like to be prepared, organised and in control, this style of learning can be challenging. While pre-teaching and scaffolds are a critical part of the journey and are a requirement for student success, the open-ended nature of authentic learning means that it is not always predictable, the progress can be slow and the outcomes are often unknown.

Like a child-led playdate, authentic learning in a school setting provides genuine opportunities for creativity, collaboration, communication and innovation in a way that could never be achieved in a highly structured, adult-centred environment.

Many teachers like the comfort of having content areas mapped out for the year in neatly-defined lessons.  They may justify their reluctance to relinquish control by claiming loss of curriculum coverage. Yet the curriculum is firmly at the centre, incorporated in every aspect of the authentic learning journey. Will everything you try work? No. Will the failures be frustrating? Absolutely. The difference is, authentic learning allows the curriculum to come to life through the actions of engaged, contributing citizens who are making their mark within their school, community or beyond.

It is no longer an option to see schools as places that prepare students for “the real world”.  We ARE the real world!

Hilary Purdie and I are presenting two sessions together at the Leading a Digital School Conference being held in Melbourne at the Crown Promenade Hotel on 8, 9 and 10 August 2019. Our sessions are Bias to action – using hacks to create a culture of innovation and Pump your PL – why mindset alone is not enough for teacher transformation, please come and join us.

Abandoning ‘The Age of Manufacture’ concept: How collaboration works for learners and teachers.

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Finding your passion changes everything

 In his book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, (2009) Ken Robinson writes  “Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture.”

Children all around the world are growing up in villages where the “date of their manufacture” has never been considered. Children enjoy opportunities and experiences based on their interests and their needs. However, throughout much of the developed world, this is not the case. At some point in our history, the idea of ‘schools’ was born and the industrial model was applied. Children of similar age were placed in rooms, provided with information (inputs) and then tested on their ability to remember this information (outputs). They were taken out of their learning environments and placed in schools and classrooms but for what purpose?

These are the kinds of wonderings that have niggled at me for a number of years. I have taught in classrooms where students were grouped by age, I’ve taught in small country schools were siblings, cousins, children of all ages learned and played together. I am a parent of three children and at no point could I say “well you are 10 and at 10 all children must be ….. or do ….” My children learned to walk, talk, read, write, ride a bike, cook at different ages. Their needs could not easily be correlated to their “age of manufacture”.

I have been principal of Paekākāriki School since October 2015. In that time we have implemented a school structure that helps students find collaborative learning and playing opportunities with children of a variety of ages. Our systems enable teachers and leaders to be collaborative in their everyday practice. Our process started with extensive community consultation in 2016 and we began the 2017 school year with multi-level classes in collaborative learning environments.

Paekākāriki is a small village and it was important to us that our school reflected the village values and philosophies. It no longer seemed right for us to separate children based on their age, these were children who joined clubs and sports teams with younger and older peers, they played with others in their neighbourhood based on similar interests, not a similar age. We carefully planned out how this could be actioned within our school setting, a setting that still had a very traditional physical layout. We began 2017 with 3 learning areas; our first area is aimed at supporting transition into school for our 4 – 5 year olds and their families, the second space is for those more settled into school (typically years 2 – 4), and the third space is for the students in Year 5 – 8. Students work in these spaces with a number of teachers based on needs and interests. Some students and their families took to the changes quickly and with ease, for others it has been a more difficult process as change can be very uncomfortable. Families are given the option of having siblings join the same ‘whānau’ class or to be separated – there has been an appreciation for this choice and families are able to do what works best for them. Regardless of the decision, a family has made we will often see siblings sitting together to share ideas, discuss a problem or even just reading together.

Adjusting to this new way of working provided challenges for many families and learners. Spending time educating our community about how this works on a day to day basis has been important. Students are now reporting higher levels of enjoyment of school, they have more flexibility over their learning programmes as they are not having to wait for others, they can move on and work with other students as needed. Being exposed to a wider range of skills and opinions is also helpful. There is a sense that behaviour is calmer as students know and understand others better.

A key factor that led us to implement this approach was the recognition of the importance of relationships for the learner and the stress and anxiety that can be caused when students transition from one class/teacher to another every year. Our students transition between learning areas twice in the 8 years they are with us. Over their 8 years, they will learn in 3 main learning areas forming relationships with 3 key teachers, known as ‘whanau teachers’. Families also build strong relationships with teachers – everyone develops strong relationships and a deeper knowledge and understanding of one another. We have experienced more settled starts and less downtime at the start of the new year meaning that the learning is picked more quickly and progress is faster.

Teaching teams required more time together to plan and problem solve so we had to make some changes to our meeting schedules to enable this to happen. Staff have worked collaboratively to overcome some of the challenges associated with reporting to parents, communication, timetabling and meeting a diverse range of student needs. We have used a variety of digital tools to achieve this, however, we still recognise the value of face to face communication and sharing information.

This is an ongoing process for us as we seek to continually modify our systems and processes. Paekākāriki School is situated in a village, we embrace the philosophy that “it takes a village to raise a child” and we enjoy working and learning collaboratively as a group of learners with individual needs, where our ‘age of manufacture’ is not the thing that determines our daily pattern.

Come along and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be presenting on this subject along with a session called Barefoot Learner Capabilities: How we are developing competencies for the real world.