The 5 Hour Film Project

How do you keep a group of 146 Grade 8 and

9 students occupied for an entire day? This was the challenge I faced this week.

On Wednesday, our school had a number of different activities happening that meant all the Grade 10 and 11 students were off campus doing either drama workshops or attending a pre-conference meeting at another Round Square school. The Grade 12s were given the day to make some serious headway on their ORTO (One Research Task Option) projects which constitute a large chunk of their year work for various subjects. This meant that there were a number of teachers who would be occupied either with the 12s or off campus with the other students and the 8s and 9s needed something to do. Enter Mr Kirk. 

Last year, when the idea was originally pitched, I tentatively used the name ‘iDay’, thinking that I would use the time to do some skills training—you know, 5 ways to maximise the effectiveness of Evernote or 3 ways Adobe Voice can be used as a study tool? However, owing to several factors, not least amongst which is the fact that such skills development stuff is rarely met with any kind of enthusiasm, I thought maybe something else was in order. Furthermore, many of the students, simply by following the ‘what does this button do?’ approach, have figured out ways to use Apps in meaningful and exciting ways. I’m sure I’ve got more to learn from them than they have to learn from me.

So, the question remained, what to do?

While I was wondering about this, I considered all the functionalities and Apps which did not require internet and which would enable me to group students around a common goal. The one that came up again and again was the camera, GarageBand and iMovie. Bearing this in mind, an idea began to form.

Last year, I had the privilege of attending the 48 Hour Film Project in Cape Town. The premise for this endeavour is that film companies gather on a Friday evening. They are then given a list of mandatory elements to feature, and then they are assigned a genre of film at random. After this, they have until Sunday afternoon to write, cast, film, edit and master their films for screening on the Sunday evening. It’s an ambitious project, and some of the end results were really amazing, especially considering the constraints the film companies faced.

Using this as a template, I put together an idea for the 5 Hour Film Project. Students were divided into groups of 15 by going through the Grade list and writing the numbers 1 to 10 next to the students. I mixed 8s with 9s to allow for a bit more interaction between the groups. Also, the 9s completed a section on making silent movies during their drama lessons last year, so I thought they could apply their expertise and simultaneously teach the 8s about what they’d learnt. 

After the groups were assembled, they were given the brief: create a movie that is no longer than 5 minutes long and which features ‘The Great Zamboni, Professional Juggler’, a key and the line, ‘Just a dream away’. The groups were then assigned random genres (drama, action, fantasy, adventure, crime, horror, romance, comedy, superhero, sci-fi) and that was it. The groups also needed to design a poster to promote their film. They had been asked to bring props and costumes with them, but they had no guidelines about thes

e and could use whatever they liked.

For the remainder of the day, the students kept themselves busy with brainstorming, storyboarding, scripting, filming and editing their films, and other students were tasked with getting the poster designed. Just about everyone was engaged and involved in the whole process and there was barely any teacher interaction required at all. People wandering around campus were met with screaming vampire-esque aliens running away from lazer blasters (Free FX for iMovie), wizards wielding their hockey stick staffs, dance offs, mermaids, terrifying school principals and sports stars all just getting on with what they needed to do. 

The day ended with a screening of all the final products which were incredibly entertaining, and considering the time they had to complete the task, pretty well polished. I will be running screenings in the Learning Commons during the week which will hopefully inspire the younger students.

All in all, the project demonstrated that when students have a clear common goal and when they are given the space to be creative, they rise to the occasion marvelously. There were no curriculum standards or lesson plans or marking grids necessary, and not once was I asked ‘Is this for marks?’. 

I feel this is a view into what modern relevant education needs to be: student centred with an emphasis on collaboration, and with teacher input only where it is necessary. They need to find their own way, trial what works and what doesn’t, brainstorm collectively and throw themselves into what they’re doing. If we can find ways to emulate this in all our subjects (to varying extents), then I think we’ll have more engaged students who are able to problem solve and think critically. 

I can’t wait for the next iDay!

Time to power up!

Empowerment is a cultural thing. It depends on the environment in which one is operating. Throughout my life, I have been directly involved with technology. I’ve been interested in it, and it has been something towards which I have always been drawn. As a result, I quickly became identified as a “nerd” or a “geek”. I spent afternoons working on the computer or playing games, and I became very familiar and comfortable with the systems. As a result of having done this, I have nurtured an attitude of giving things a go. You know, the space where you have the freedom to take a shot at figuring something out. I won’t get it on the first attempt, but I’ll give it a fairly good effort. I believe this can be attributed to years of trying to get programs and games to work, to repairing internet connections and on being exposed to new platforms. One has to immerse oneself to become capable and familiar with the material. Without having gone through the trial-and-error process, I do not feel I would be as equipped to work with digital media as I am now.

I think there’s a general assumption that often happens when one observes someone being good at something. I’m certainly guilty of falling into the trap of thinking that someone is just naturally gifted and that their talent comes to them without much effort at all. Really, the exact opposite is usually true: it’s hours and hours of working at the task that creates familiarity and, eventually, mastery and not just raw talent. Of course, talent plays a part in all this—aptitude cannot be ignored completely—but it’s the effort that is made that makes all the difference. 

None of what I’m saying is particularly new or revelatory. This is all stuff that people like Malcolm Gladwell and Ken Robinson have been writing about for years. What I think hasn’t necessarily been spoken about, though, relates directly to what I do for most of my working days: deal with getting staff and students to be more capable and empowered users of technology.

Any of us who work in technology know that much of our time is spent troubleshooting. It can range from something as simple as needing to change a setting on an iPad to needing to rebuild servers to ensure that essential services are running. Almost every day, I have students and staff members coming to see me to get their digital textbooks working, or their wifi configured, or their email set up or to sort out their wireless presentation software etc. While I am always glad to help with this, I’ve begun to realise that this is not actually educationally sound practice. 

I am, first and foremost, a teacher. Our jobs as teachers are to empower others, to help them to see their own potential and to enable them to do things that they did not know they were capable of doing. Often, to do this we must push our students to do new things. We have to provide the space in which they can work things out for themselves, and, in so doing, develop the ability to be more self-reliant in future. Taking over the task for them defeats the purpose completely and often has a negative impact.

Let me illustrate this with a personal example: when I was young, I often wanted to help my father with tasks. I would try to help with the gardening, or sweeping or painting, or washing the car, but always the story ended the same way: he took over and did everything. It was always quicker and easier for him to do the job himself, so that’s what he did. Eventually I stopped offering to help and when I was asked to do things, I deliberately did a bad job so that he would just take over and I could get back to whatever I was doing (usually playing computer games). I learnt nothing. And now when I need to do things around the house, I lament the fact that I haven’t learnt them. Luckily the troubleshooting mindset I have from working with computers means I have a method of sorting out the problem, but it would be preferable if I had a clearer frame of reference. 

So, now I’m starting to employ this in my own day-to-day practice. I don’t just take the iPad or mouse from the student or teacher, I talk them through the process, or I point them in a direction. For many people, computers and technology continue to be sources of intimidation and bafflement; otherworldly pursuits for select individuals who “get it”. The problem with this is that the computer stuff is not going away. It’s not even slowing down. If people want to be equipped for life in the future (and by ‘future’ I mean any time ahead and not some dark Blade Runner-eque world), they are going to need to know how to take charge of this technology and not be trumped by it.

As teacher trainers and teachers, we need to be empowerers. We need to create spaces where our ‘customers’ feel able to take chances, to investigate, to fiddle, to ‘see what this button does’. If we’re not doing that, we are not fulfilling the fundamental purpose of our job, and that is a very sad thing indeed.

We need to ensure that our strategies for staff development are focused on taking the fear away, on helping people learn how to troubleshoot their own problems and to give things a go. Once that culture has been created, those of us who are doing the training can spend more time on extending and showing people how to make technology an even more powerful teaching tool and how to move the curriculum in exciting and meaningful directions. We are all ‘computer people’ now, and the sooner we all start acting like it, the better.

The Learning Commons, One Year On

It's been just over a year since the Learning Commons opened its doors, and what a year it's been! I'm going to limit the writing here and let the images speak for themselves. I am so excited by what we've been able to achieve and am even more thrilled at the prospect of many more successful years!

Laptops are just some of the new devices that are available.

With all the furniture on wheels, it's easy to fit the whole College in for a meeting.

It's not often that I get a photo with no students in it - clearly the term is almost at an end!

The mural behind the reception desk is meant to illustrate school life in all its facets. We're holistic here, so every pursuit is equally important.

Despite all the technological implements, this white board is probably the most-used resource in the room!

LEGO Mindstorms Robotics

Custom beanbags, affectionately known as Plops

It's been an exciting road and there's only more to come. This year alone we've added over 1300 media items to the collection and it's just going to grow bigger and bigger.

Next stop: 1:1 devices!

Mixtape Monday: October

What makes it into your mixtapes? If this is a concept that’s foreign to you, what I mean is, what’s on your playlist?

In the past, committing something to a mixtape was a process that was done with great consideration and thoughtfulness, because skipping through tracks was problematic and you had to listen to the whole thing as you created the tape. When the CD came along, the process was far easier, but you still had be careful about which tracks you were going to fit into your precious 80 minutes of recording space. Now in the age of the playlist, things are much simpler and you can chop and change as you like, which is great, but it also means we’re not spending as much time deciding on the content, because if we make a bad choice, one simple click and it’s gone.

I’d like to try to amalgamate these concepts into the playlist I’m going to introduce today: each choice is carefully thought through and has been watched from beginning to end before making it onto the list; I’m only going to choose five items for the playlist and I plan to update this list fairly regularly with fresh and interesting stuff.

So, without any further ado:

1. Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms. A slightly simplified version of his amazing and ground-breaking TED Talk, this video talks about what’s wrong with education and why we’ve got to work on changing it. You’ve almost certainly heard this before, but it’s worth a refresher. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

2. Alan Watts: What if Money Didn’t Matter. Again, something that I think has done the rounds fairly extensively, but nevertheless, this is a powerful message to wake up to nonsensical cyclical existence. Speaks for itself really: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd1IkirWmDo

3. David Foster Wallace: This is Water. This talks about shifting perspective towards seeing things that are there, but which we didn’t realise before. I show this to my classes and it stirs up a lot of debate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKYJVV7HuZw

4. 30 Things You No Longer Need Because of Smartphones. Short and to the point, this video shows just how far things have progressed. Where will the next five years take us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCowytZ0qV4

5. Linchfield Primary School: We Are the Young. If you want a feel good song for the day that’s guaranteed to get buried in your head, this is it. This is what you get when you take the time to let kids shine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xFi0k5BBIM

Please feel free to comment or tweet me with your playlists or recommendations. I love discovering more.

Till tomorrow…

You do what?

When people ask me what it is I do, I often find it difficult to respond. The standard answer, though, has been that I run a collaborative learning centre. The focus of the centre is to promote the acquisition of 21^st Century Skills which will enable students to lead more meaningful lives in the ever-changing world. This generally cues the next standard response, which can be summarised as ‘Huh?’

          So, what exactly does all this mean?

          Firstly, it’s important to remember why the centre has been called ‘The Learning Commons’. In a previous post, I outlined the reasons for its name, but, just in case you’re only joining the conversation now, the short and simple explanation is: Learning – more than simply acquiring knowledge. Real learning means engaging with content, making sense of it and using it to generate new ideas that have value and personal relevance. Commons – after the village commons: a place where all could come together to use the space as they needed. A place for meeting, for interacting or simply a place to settle down to some quiet reading.

         The next term that requires delving into is ‘collaboration’. For most people working in education, this term has typically been translated into group work, and this is not entirely incorrect. Obviously, for collaboration to take place, several people will need to work together and they will need to reach some kind of common goal. This is a good practice for students to become accustomed to, because it is one of the most needed skills for the workplace. People need to know how to work with others, to discuss, to throw ideas around, to argue and to come to an agreed solution. Without this skill, students do not know how to draw the best from a group and how to contribute meaningfully.

        However, what has tended to happen with group work is that the whole group does not get as involved as would be helpful. Typically, group work involves a conversation with one person ‘scribing’ and writing down the group’s decision. This means that those who do not want to speak up are not heard, and they can get away with it, because ‘the group’ only has to submit one assignment. There has been an attempt to remedy this by including group assessment grids with the other assessment stuff, but this generally results in two things: the group members, not wanting to be unkind to their peers, rates everyone highly regardless of their input, and the assessment is not actually used in anything substantial, rendering it completely pointless.

         For the practice of working in teams to be meaningful to all those involved, there needs to be some kind of shift in the way that it is conducted. The skills inherent in working with others are invaluable, so it important that students are exposed to it, but there needs to be a way to make it more engaging. This is where collaboration comes in.

       Collaboration – real collaboration that is – means working together in such a way that each individual’s personal abilities are utilised to the best of the group.

           Let’s use an analogy to make this a bit easier to understand.

         Some of you may be familiar with the programme called ‘Extreme Makeover – Home Edition’. For those who aren’t, the basic premise is that a needy family has their home completely rebuilt by a team of constructors and designers. The reason I’m making this comparison is because it is a team who take on the project. While everyone participates in getting the house completed, each member of the team speaks to someone in the family and assigns him or herself this room as a personal project. The rooms are then customised according to the recipients’ tastes and likings as well as having the designers’ personal flair added to them. When this all comes together, the house is completed and each room has its own personality, depending on the occupant.

            The reason I’m making this analogy is because this is what happens when people collaborate: a central goal is completed by combining the skill sets of the members within the group. Real collaboration involves having each member of the team take on a ‘personal project’, an aspect of the task that speaks to his or her individual skills and interests. This means that each member is given the chance to use their talents to the benefit of the group as a whole. Furthermore, the fact that each person is tasked with a different aspect to complete means they are accountable to their peers, because if they do not complete their part, the group as a whole will lose out.

           This is what it is like in the workplace: individuals are assigned different aspects of a task and they are expected to complete those aspects. There are more careers than I have time to mention here which make use of this approach and if we want to equip children to be ready for the world of work, then we need to ensure that they are well acquainted with the idea of working collaboratively to reach a common goal.

          The next aspect to the answer regarding what it is I do involves talking about 21^st Century Skills. This is a term that gets bandied about fairly cavalierly in educational circles, but it is seldom explained in any real depth. I shall try to give an overview now, but many of the terms are going to need further examination at a later stage.

                In a nutshell, 21^st Century Skills are:

·         Ways of thinking (including problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking)

·         Ways of working (including collaboration and communication)

·         Tools for working (including ICT and Information Literacy)

·         Skills for living in the world (including citizenship, career guidance and personal responsibility)

Together, these skills are meant to equip individuals for meaningful life in the 21^st Century, a time of great change in nearly every sphere of the way society operates, and in so doing, change the face and shape of the world in which we live.

Hello and welcome to the Learning Commons

Welcome to what I hope will be an ever-growing collection of thoughts, discussion starters, musings and vents from my desk in the Bridge House Learning Commons. 

I plan to use this blog as a way of communicating the ideas which underpin the way we run the centre and as a means for opening up discussions about developments in the world of education. I'm not going to make any promises about the frequency of posts, but I hope there will be a steady flow of ideas from now on.

To start with, allow me to introduce the Learning Commons:

This is a general view of the space, but there are a number of areas within it that all need special mention.

The first area is the junior reading area. The emphasis on this space is on encouraging students to engage with the space and with the books. While I am all for promoting technology in education, books still have a firm place in our schools, at least for the time being.

Instead of being sorted by author, books are shelved by letter, which helps learning them easier. The boxes at the top are for picture books and there is a sense of organised chaos here in that they are randomly arranged to make a good rummaging necessary.

During lessons, students find books, then grab a cushion and they are read to or they are given time to read on their own. Usually when this happens they go off into another nook somewhere in the Learning Commons, but I'll get to those in a little bit.

Soon we will have some rugs and a greater variety of cushions available and this will enable students to tailor make their learning environment to a certain extent.



The highlight of this area, though, is the 'reading fort':

This unit has been included to add a touch of interest to the area and to create variety of spaces. In designing the layout and furnishing of the Learning Commons, the emphasis has been on making the space as multi-functional as possible and to make it appealing to as many students as possible.

The next area is the senior library.

The shelves are looking a tad bare at the moment because of the expansion of storage capacity from the previous library, but there's plenty waiting to be accessioned, covered and put onto them, so they should look at lot healthier soon.

All the shelves are mounted on casters to make it possible to move them around when we need to or when we feel like a change in the space. The odd splashes of colour are just to add variety and, at this stage, have no more significance than looking attractive.

The senior section also moves away from the traditional library model in that each section is sorted by genre and then by author. This was done for a number of reasons, but essentially it makes it easier for students to find books to read. It also makes recommending books easier for teachers. Now all you need to know is the student's interest, and you can find him or her something suitable in a relatively short space of time.

Among the books, there are a few reading nooks that have been designed for students who want somewhere cosy to cuddle up and read. Again, this ties in with the idea of having a variety of spaces available for the students to go.

Even though the space is full of more senior works, when the juniors are given the space to go where they please, the nooks are also a popular choice for them. 

The name Learning Commons was chosen because it implies a shared experience - one where all are always welcome to do as they please as long as they are considerate of others. This is in a bid to encourage behaviours that will be advantageous in the world beyond school. 

As I mentioned before, while we are working on staying on the cutting edge of technological advancements in education, the book's role has not been forgotten. Hence, the non-fiction section:

You might have worked out by now that I'm not a huge fan of straight lines, so there are as many curved units in the centre as we could get to work.

This space is right next to the desktop computer stations, so students can access the non-fiction work close to where they are working on projects. The shelves are low to allow students to put heavy books on top and work on them without having to carry them all over the place.

As we move down towards the 'bottom' end of the Learning Commons, the emphasis is more on quiet, active study than on the more raucous social behaviour encouraged in the other sections. This is why the colours are more muted. The forest vinyl mural which extends over the windows is meant to create a sense of calm and tranquility. There are also plans to lift the carpet in this area and replace it with fake grass which should make the space a really interesting one.

This last area consists of a collaborative work area and individual working stations with 'visors' to help mitigate distractions:

These bean-shaped tables can be configured in a number of ways depending on how the students wish to make use of them.

At the moment, we are still waiting for the proper seating to come through, but soon this will be a far more functional space.

Incidentally, students have found that the little nooks under the tables are wonderful hiding spaces and many have taken to spending break times hidden away beneath them.

Hopefully these cubicles will be conducive to productive individual work. There is enough space for two students to work alongside each other if they so desire, but single users will be able to spread their books and notes out nicely.

There is a plan to include/add pinboards or whiteboards above each station to aid the studying process. The area also has its own dedicated wi-fi access point to ensure that all students can connect their devices if they bring them. Each desk unit also has its own power point to ensure that charging won't be a problem.

There is also an outdoor area, but that's going to stay under wraps until the plans and development have finished (probably another year or so). Needless to say, it's going to extend the Learning Commons into an even more versatile teaching and learning space for all to enjoy.

When people ask what the vision behind the centre is, I direct them to this quote which has been adhered to one of the pillars:

I hope this has piqued some interest, and I hope to keep you intrigued in the coming weeks and with the coming posts. It's an exciting journey ahead, that's for sure!