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Sunday 25 August 2013

Guest Blog from Shawn Monyihan on Learning from the TLDW conference

Ten Things I Learned at Teaching and Learning in a Digital World


1. Social media are becoming a significant vehicle for instructional leadership and professional learning.  Hence, this is my first blog post, courtesy of my friend and colleague Hazel Mason.  I have also entered the twittersphere.
2. We have amazing teachers and administrators in Peel.  O.K., I knew that before the TLDW conference but the energy and brilliance of folks at the conference was inspiring, humbling, and pride-inducing.
3. Going through many examples of SAMR ladders really consolidated my understanding of meaningful implementation.
4. Ruben Puentedera and George Couros are an amazing combination of "mind" and "heart".  Together, they are the 21st century teaching and learning equivalent of peanut butter and jelly.  
5. Social media need to be a key component of implementation and on-going professional learning.
6. A mix of keynotes, breakout sessions, poster sessions, and ample time to connect in less formal ways is a winning formula for professional learning.
7. It was the first conference that I have helped organize where there was evidence (e.g., twitter, blog posts, etc.)  during the conference that practice was changing.  
8. A real "problem of practice" was the foundation of the conference: "How do we support our students and each other in learning in a digital world?" This created a learning stance which permeated the conference.  Although there were many demonstrable "experts" and "novices" attending, everyone felt challenged and safe to take risks because we were all in a co-learner mindset.
9. The structure of conference enabled "guided practice" to happen all the time.  Remember when we used to have technology workshops where only the presenter had access to the technology and everyone else took "notes"?
10. If we keep our focus on the learning, not the tools, then our practice encompasses both the learning and the tools.

Thursday 22 August 2013

Moving forward with 21st Century Teaching and Learning

It has been about a year and a half since I started my journey towards 21st Century teaching and learning. When my journey began I was really focussed on technology and how the use of technology could enhance the education process. Since that time my thinking has grown in a number of different directions.

I think perhaps the biggest growth has been to realize that 21st Century teaching and learning is not just about technology. It is really about reinventing how we teach and creating new opportunities for children to learn. That sounds like a really fancy statement but what does it really mean?

A 21st century classroom means a dramatic change in the power structure in a classroom. The teacher must move from being the "sage on the stage," to being the "guide on the side." Inquiry based learning becomes the order of the day and students are actively involved in their own knowledge acquisition.

As I have begun to look at ways of translating the ideas of 21st Century teaching and learning into reality I have begun to question how, in the context of our data driven, test driven educational agenda, we ensure the move to 21st Century teaching and learning continues to develop the high levels of literacy and numeracy we believe are so critical to the future success of our students?

21st Century teaching and learning is being touted as a necessary change for education to prepare our students the future. Technology has become a necessary part of life. Children as young as two are using iPads and other forms of technology to read, watch educational programs, play educational games and communicate with members of their families. These children will be walking into our kindergarten classes and what does that mean for how we run our classrooms?

The answers to these questions may seem quite obvious and rhetorical but I am raising them because I recently attended a session with Lynn Sharratt where she led myself and a group of my colleagues through the ideas in the book, Putting Faces on the Data. Since then I have been trying to reconcile the points that she made with the ideas implicit to 21st century teaching and learning. The kind of process that Lynn led her Board through was very prescriptive and specific with the goal being to  raise the literacy and numeracy levels in the Board. The process was very successful but how does that process fit with the creative and innovative thinking encouraged in a 21st century classroom? A classroom by its very design encourages students to demonstrate their thinking in a variety of ways? For me this has become a very fundamental issue and one I believe I need to be able to articulate clearly as a strong advocate of 21st Century teaching and learning.

Today when I met with my Steering Committee we came up with 6 inquiry based questions that we are going to use to guide our work moving forward. These 6 questions will be shared with all of the Principals and Vice Principals in my group and will be used to guide our work moving forward. What is absolutely fundamental and essential to me as an educator is that I am able to quantifiably demonstrate the move to 21st Century teaching and learning is dramatically improving the learning experience of our students while maintaining high levels of literacy and numeracy. Our 6 guiding questions are as follows;


  1.  How do we know that student's are working at or above level in literacy and numeracy when we are using 21st Century teaching and learning strategies?
  2. How do we know that we have a higher level of engagement?
  3. How do we know that boys are doing better in greater numbers?
  4. What data do we have to substantiate our claims?
  5. How do e-portfolios help with these answers?
  6. How do we measure 21st Century teaching and learning with 20th Century tools?

Teaching and Learning in the Digital World

Today was the second and last day of Peel's first Teaching and Learning in the Digital World conference and it was amazing. 600 Peel Educator's gave up two of their last few days of summer to come together and learn, share and collaborate about teaching strategies and pedagogy for the 21st Century. The energy and enthusiasm that could be felt during the conference was absolutely inspiring.

We had two amazing presenters at the conference, Ruben Peuntedura and George Couros. Ruben spent the first day helping us to understand the SAMR model and he helped us vision what a classroom should look like in 2018. Ruben challenged us to understand the incredible possibilities that technology, used effectively, can create for our students. Technology can help students to explore, discover, create and innovate. Through technology we can challenge students to push themselves to discover knowledge, information and meaning far beyond what we may have previously thought possible. Ruben provided us a roadmap for moving forward and concretely demonstrated the SAMR ladder through simulated lesson plans. He walked us through how the classroom experience for students would differ at each rung of the ladder. Ruben challenge our minds, and our practice. George took over for day two and challenged our spirit.

George arrived suffering from jet lag and claiming to not be quite on his game. He had just flown back from Australia after presenting at a conference there. I have to tell you if that was George jet lagged then I would love to see him when he is fully rested. He absolutely fired up the group. He had the crowd laughing, crying (yes crying) and then cheering his ideas and suggestions. He built on Ruben's message from the day before by developing a compelling case for why the use of technology in the classroom is no longer an option. He likened not allowing kids to use their digital devises in the classroom to eliminating all of our libraries. We would never consider closing all of our libraries and yet we would forbid students from using their devises which have become their digital libraries. Why? George was so motivational.

I am sitting here writing this blog tonight because George inspired me to get back at it. Like the other 599 people at the conference I walked out determined to lead the change by changing. If I want my Principals to lead change in their schools then I need to model the change. If Principals want teachers to lead the change in their classrooms, then Principals need to model the change and if teachers want students to lead the change in their learning, then teachers need to model the change.

Computers will never replace Teachers, Principals or Superintendents but Teachers, Principals and Superintendents who use technology will quickly replace those who don't.