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!

Pause... focus and... SQUIRREL!

Those of you who are tuning in to my ramblings every day will notice that I didn’t post yesterday. Believe it or not, it was a literal interpretation of the proposed topic in the little book of prompts. The topic for the 8^th was ‘Unplug’ and it talked about how we know when to unplug from all the electronics and take a break. I decided to take this to heart, and I unplugged for the evening. I spent the time meditating before going to bed, which proved to be a most wonderful exercise.

Today, the topic is to talk about addiction and the things that distract us from achieving what we want to achieve. I’m particularly guilty of this, because more often than not, my aspirations for doing well are stymied by one of my own flaws. Consequently, this post is about what to do to help yourself avoid distractions and get back on track.

1.            Is it a distraction in the first place?

To answer this question you need to be honest with yourself. Are you browsing the internet looking for something that is pertinent to what you’re doing or are you just wasting time? Do you really need to take an hour’s break or is that excessive? Only you will know the answer to these questions, and you need to be truthful with yourself. Sometimes you really do need to take an evening off and that’s ok as long as you really are going to get stuck in with renewed energy the next day.

2.            Why is your mind wandering?

Have you ever completed a project where the time just seemed to disappear completely? Have you ever been so absorbed in what you were doing that you didn’t notice people around you? I feel confident in thinking that nearly every one of us has and this is a beautiful place to be. I’m also fairly sure we did it without needing to be on some kind of medication. The point I’m making here is that if you are really and truly engaged in what you are doing, your mind won’t wander. This means that if you want to avoid being distracted, you need to work on making what you’re doing meaningful and engaging for yourself. If that’s not possible, perhaps you need to re-evaluate the task’s importance.

3.            What’s bothering you?

Things that upset, worry or concern us are like termites gnawing away at our ability to focus and think clearly. Anxieties and problems tax our already-taxed brains and prevent us from performing optimally. This is where time out can be helpful if it is used as a way to work through whatever is weighing on your mind. However, if you do nothing but dwell on your issues without working on ways to resolve them, then the time out is going to do more harm than good.

Problems, whatever they are, need to be addressed in some way. Ignoring thoughts and emotions is a dangerous strategy, because they always surface again, and often at the most unhelpful times. Addressing a problem does not necessarily mean resolving it, though. It means you take the time to suit your action to the scenario. Worrying about anything is counter-productive, because your worrying about something will have no effect on it whatsoever. Worrying about not being able to pay the rent at the end of the month is not going to make money materialise or your landlord give you a break; worrying if people will like you is not going to do anything to their states of mind. The only person worrying will affect is you, and it will do so negatively. Worrying has got to go and this is a form of resolution.

If anything else is bothering you or upsetting you, you need to go through the steps outlined in the serenity prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the determination to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

To simplify:

• If you cannot change something, let it go. They are draining and wasting your precious energy.
• If you can change something, then do it. What are you waiting for? Make a plan, and get stuck in. Sometimes just getting started is all you need.
• Don’t dwell on matters for too long. You need to take the time to think about whether the issue is worth all the effort in the first place. This is where meditation is extremely helpful.

4.            Keep your eye on the end

Remember that whatever you’re doing is for a purpose. If you believe strongly in that purpose, then you need to keep your mind focused on that. Yes, doing sit ups now might be a pain and they might not be all that fun, but in the end, you’re getting to get fitter and stronger and that’s the whole point isn’t it. Writing reports, doing research and going to talks might seem tedious at times, but if you remember what it is you want to achieve and you focus on how what you’re doing leads to that goal, it becomes a whole lot easier.

5.            Lighten up

Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I look at a map of the world, or I watch a video about the size of the universe. Sometimes our problems seem enormous and insurmountable, but we need always to bear context in mind. You are a single person in one place on an enormous planet that is but a tiny speck in the colossal universe. Somehow, every time I do this, my problems seem a little less massive.

This is advice I give to my students too, and it is advice I try to live by, but I mess up often. Lightening up means not beating yourself up when you get distracted. You’re only human after all. 

Exhale. Relax. Regroup.

Sometimes we all just need to stop. We need to take a moment to look at what we’re doing and pat ourselves on the back for being where we are. Regardless of how things have gone in the last few weeks or terms, we are doing good work. We contribute to developing the potential of those individuals who happen to wander into our teaching spaces and in ways both great and small, we touch lives.

It’s easy to forget all that when you’re drowning in marking, when it feels like the end of the term is a thousand years away and you swear that if you find yourself working after midnight again you are going to have yourself committed somewhere with padded walls. We all mess up. We all have lessons that end with us thinking ‘that was BAD’ and we have all graded tests which have left us thinking ‘I’ve failed, I’ve failed. They know NOTHING!’

Regardless of how much you feel as though you’ve failed, you haven’t. The very fact that you care, that you are upset by what you feel is inadequacy shows that you are very, very far away from being a failure.

Still, I know my words are competing with loud inner critics who know all your weaknesses and know just how to get under your skin and so at times when you feel it’s all too much and you can’t go on with it any longer, I have these four steps for you:

1. Cut the criticism

We all love to criticise ourselves. We set ourselves standards we wish to achieve and when we don’t get it 100%, we’re devastated, frustrated or just plain angry. Remember, your inner critic is often an unfair one. I don’t advocate comparing oneself to others, because I think this brings on personal destruction. What I believe in strongly is that if you can look yourself in the mirror (a worthwhile practice in itself) and say honestly, ‘I did my best,’ then you have won. Your best is all you need to give to be wonderful.

2. Learn from the mistakes

If you’ve not yet watched ‘Meet the Robinsons’ from Disney, do yourself a favour. There is an amazing scene in which the protagonist’s failure is applauded and he gets upset. One of the other characters responds by saying, ‘Failure is good. From failure, we learn. From success, not so much.’ I agree wholeheartedly.

3. Write a pick-me-up to yourself

On a day when you’re feeling fantastic and on top of the world, write yourself a letter. Tell yourself why you love what you’re doing, why you want to keep on doing it and offer yourself words of encouragement. Yes, you will probably cringe when you eventually read it, but you know what, it will lift your mood anyway.

4. Tomorrow is another day

Scarlett O’Hara was right. There will be days when it will all go to pieces. Your students won’t respond, or an idea you thought was amazing will fall flat. The internet will crash, photocopiers will jam and your car won’t start. It’s days like this that make us grateful for the wonderful days. Again, that inner critic of yours will hone in on bad days like a fly to manure and you’ve got to learn when and how to listen to it. Sometimes, it’s best just to whistle as you wave the day goodbye and dust yourself off for another go.

You are doing amazing, wonderful, incredible things—even if it doesn’t always feel like it. And when those times strike, remember you’re not alone. 

#WorldTeachersDay

Today I’m talking about appreciation.

It’s World Teachers’ Day, which came as a surprise to be honest. I never know when any of these commemorative days are happening and almost always find out after the fact, so I’m quite pleased to have discovered today before it’s over.

The point of any of these days is, I believe, to show appreciation for whatever is being honoured. Instead of launching into a long verbal meander about the merits of teachers and their importance, I’m going to take a different tack.

Herewith are the greatest teachers I’ve had the pleasure of being taught by:

1.         My father. He is a genius with his hands and his ability to see something before it exists astonishes me. The greatest lessons he taught me were that firstly, if I was going to do something, I had better do it properly. The second lesson was that I could do anything I wanted in the whole world, as long as I was the best at it. I’m not claiming to be the best at what I do, but his lesson inspired me to be the best I could be at everything.

2.         My mother. Thanks to my mother, I was not stuffed full of pills and told to sit down and be quiet. She was always my champion when I wasn’t understood at school and she went to great lengths to develop my potential. She has taught me never to give up, never to settle when life says no to my dreams.

3.         My grandmother. She taught me, above everything else, that knowledge is a beautiful thing and that knowing more about our world is a wonderfully rewarding practice in itself.

4.         My Grade 9 English teacher, Mrs Chittenden, who got me interested in Shakespeare, who put up with reading my awful poetry and who would sit and listen to me talk when it felt like no one else in the world would. She taught me to value myself.

5.         My cousin, @clairegunnphoto, who gave up everything to pursue her dreams and who is now living that life. She taught me to follow my heart and she helped open my eyes to the world by sharing perspectives.

6.         My great friend and mentor, Nigel Bakker, who showed me how to be excellent at what I do and who helped shift the way I approach teaching. He continues to be a source of inspiration, guidance and a pillar of strength.

7.         My girlfriend, Jordan, who teaches me directly through the heart. She has an uncanny ability to see through all my nonsense, and to get to the real crux of what’s happening in my head. Her wisdom, patience and unbelievable compassion are an example to me every day.

8.         Finally, life itself continues to be my greatest teacher. With the many different experiences and moments it makes available to me, I am taught more and more and more and I hope the learning never stops. Well, until it has to, if you know what I mean.

I hope today is one of meaningful reflection for all of you. If you’re a teacher, I hope you are congratulated and thought about by those around you and that you take some time to consider the impact you have on others’ lives. Regardless of what you think, you are making an impact, and I hope you are aware of this in order for that impact to be the best one you can make.

If you’re not a teacher, then take some time to reflect on those who have taught you, whoever they may be. You would not be who or where you are today without them.

PS: Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that we can't add an apostrophe to a hashtag, thus making #WorldTeachersDay technically grammatically incorrect? Sorry, but you can't turn English teacher mode off! ;)

A sense of style

Wow, these just seem to get tougher every day. My brief is to talk about style and fashion, but I don’t really think that’s all that pertinent to what I want to write about here. Don’t get me wrong, I love clothes and dressing smartly and all the rest of it, but I don’t think this is the forum for that really.

What I have decided to do in a bid to twist this topic to suit my purposes is talk about the art of presentation. It’s kind of related to style, so the link is not quite as obscure as it might seem to be.

One of the difficulties I face on a fairly regular basis is getting students to take pride in their work. I have had so many semi-crumpled bits of scrawl handed to me that I could wallpaper a room with them. I’ve seen students deliver presentations accompanied by slide shows that could not have taken more than 10 minutes to design and I’ve had term projects that are woefully short and not thought through correctly submitted to me.

When I was a student, and in fact even today, I cannot bring myself to hand in something that does not look good. I wrote about worksheet and assignment design a few days ago, and that same mentality applies: it’s not just a case of putting a picture on the page and choosing a funky font to ‘zhoosh’ (wonderful South African word) it up a bit, it means making sure that the picture helps to draw students in and provide a bit of context. The font needs to be appealing, readable and suited to the purpose. If I use colours, they have to work together, there needs to be a sense of blending. If you look at my pages on the web, you’ll see there is at least some sense of aesthetic going on there. Now I’m not claiming to be an expert designer, but what I mean is that I’ve taken time to decide how things work together to create a final product. It was like this in school too.

However, it seems that the majority of students either couldn’t be bothered to do all this work, or they lack the necessary skills to do so. My suspicion is that it’s more the latter than the former. I was never taken through designing an effective PowerPoint presentation or taught how to make a poster appealing. There was a mark for it on the rubric, but no actual teaching ever happened. And that’s a big problem.

My rant here is not just because I’m dissatisfied with lacklustre work, it’s because of the ramifications this has beyond school. Sure, handing in a mucky essay or poster in Grade 9 is not going to mean the end of the world, but beyond the school walls it is. Writing emails in a professional context and being unable to structure sentences coherently or express oneself properly is going to be an enormous handicap, but students don’t know anything about that world and it’s pointless going on about it. The second any person over the age of 20 says, ‘When you’re out of school…’ they’ve switched off, so don’t waste your breath.

I think the solution to getting this to work is a layered one. Firstly, the idea of taking pride in what one is doing needs to be instilled. This can only happen if students buy in to what they’re doing, which brings me to my next point: perceived value. If students feel that what they’re doing is meaningful and has value, then they are more likely to want to put an effort into it. The next layer is incentive, and this one leaves a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth.

I am highly critical of the culture of ‘marks and grades’ that has developed. Any teacher will, at some point in his or her career hear, ‘Is this for marks?’ If you say it’s not, many students immediately lose interest and if they do anything at all, it will be with minimal effort. There’s no incentive to work, you see. Very few students will want to do something without there being some kind of reward, and the line ‘This is going to help you to understand the work,’ doesn’t quite cut the mustard it seems. This culture has been bred from years and years of being graded on just about everything to the point where the grade becomes a currency. Do well, and the teacher will reward you with stickers, or a free lesson, or special privileges and your parents will respond similarly. Don’t get the marks, and it’s extra work, tutors, extra lessons, being punished etc.

This is why when I say students need incentive, I say so with a sense of wariness and reservation. We need to work on moving away from this mentality. Students need to want to work because they can see the value in doing so. One of the suggestions I have here is upgrading aspects of the curriculum which we cling to because of some sense of inherent value these things have. When was the last time you had to write a formal letter to a newspaper complaining about an article? Even if you did write to a publication, I’m pretty sure you sent an email anyway. What I’m getting at here is you need to take the content and move it forward. Yes, it is important for students to know how to write formally and how to deal with an issue in a way that is respectful, but which communicates one’s opinion clearly, but there are so many ways this can be achieved. Getting them to sit quietly and write a letter complaining about the broken gate to the park is hardly going to inspire creative genius. What about sending each student an email from an upset customer and having them draft the response? You can include all the steps that would be involved in the process too. Suddenly the work seems a bit more relevant.

I don’t know if this is the solution, but it’s a solution. Getting students to see the value in what they are doing is sure to increase the likelihood that they’ll put effort into producing work of an excellent standard. And if we teach them how to go about doing this, I’m sure we’ll all see more engaged and thought-through work.

Once we’ve got the basics done, then we can move on to developing each student’s personal style, and that is something really exciting, because it will be helping them to reach their full potential, and isn’t that what this is all about after all?

Reading Material

And so begins the first day of using the writing prompt book, and the topic for today is ‘Reading material: how do you pick what to read?’ This is one of those instances where I found myself marvelling at the fact that I’d never really considered this before. I didn’t know I have some set of criteria I apply when I’m looking for new things to read, but of course this has to be the case. We need some set of filtration device otherwise we just read everything. In the past this might have been possible, but with the wealth of information out there now, there’s no way any person could read all of it.

So what do I do when I decide what to read?

I must be honest and say that when it comes to fiction, I’m a sucker for a catchy cover. If it looks appealing and draws me to select it from the shelf before something else, then it’s already going the right direction towards getting read. This has changed somewhat with the introduction of eBooks which cannot lure me in with beautifully embossed covers or specially-cut pages, but the graphics and the general aesthetic still play a huge part. That being said, some of the most amazing books I’ve ever read have had completely nondescript covers. ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley springs to mind immediately. Even ‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern has a fairly bland cover, but its contents are anything but bland. I suppose I’m proving the point of the old cliché, but regardless of this fact, a beautiful cover still draws me in. ‘The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet’ by Reif Larson and ‘Cloud Atlas’ by David Mitchell both have gorgeous covers with content to match and I was enthralled immediately.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule and there are a number of novels with amazing designs that just don’t do anything for me at all, because the writing is, as far as I’m concerned, dull and lifeless. And I suppose that’s the real truth of it all: while appearance might lure one in, it’s the actual content that matters most. The design definitely works to get me interested, but to sustain that interest, there needs to be more than glossy and pretty pictures.

It’s much the same when it comes to digital content, I suppose.

When I come across a site or a blog that has been poorly laid out, where I have to dig to find what I’m really looking for or that doesn’t do what it claims to do, then I’m out of there. However, if the designer has taken time to think about how the elements on the page work together, has put more interesting things for me to follow if I’m interested, has avoided the urge of having endless things pop up at me, then I’m more likely to stay for a while and keep looking. Sites like www.edudemic.com and www.fashionbeans.com will have me going back again and again, because they have what I want and they give it to me in a way that makes accessing it a pleasure. Time is precious on the internet and if I have to spend time learning how to navigate a site, it had better not be too long. If I can’t find what I want in a minute or so, cheers. I know I’ll find something better without too much digging around.

I think this same principle applies to assignments and tasks I create for my students. If they are not visually appealing, it makes engaging with them different. Likewise if it takes my students too long to get to the bottom of what needs to happen, they’ve also failed.

It’s important to remember that our students are consumers who are growing up in a culture of mass consumerism. If teachers don’t buy into that mentality by making an effort to make their work stand out and be noticed, then it’s unlikely students are going to be all that interested in engaging with it. However, it’s also important to remember why we’re setting the work in the first place, and if your assignment is just a bunch of pretty pictures, you’re unlikely to keep them engaged and interested for very long.

A final point to note is that if there’s too much, people also tend not to want to read, and I suppose on that note, I had best end today’s thought.

More tomorrow, if you’ve been drawn into reading this, that is!

Prompt response

So, the prompt thing didn’t quite work out.

I clicked all the buttons, entered my email address wherever I was asked to and I waited. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’m quite annoyed that the little project on which I had hoped to embark faded into nothingness before it even got off the ground. I’ve since downloaded Wordpress’s very helpful eBook, 365 Writing Prompts which I now plan to use on a more regular basis, so let’s see if this finally gets the ball rolling properly.

However, this gave me an opportunity to reflect on something my students do: they wait for me to tell them what to do. I often get irritated and frustrated by this, because I want them to take initiative. I don’t want to be the dictatorial figure standing at the front of the room barking orders day after day. I want to give them some kind of idea and then let them run with it. I’ve tried this, but it doesn’t seem to work. What usually happens is I end up with a room full of kids looking straight back at me. Some will give it a go, but the majority tend to feel lost and frustrated by the lack of anything concrete to go on.

After much trial and error, I concluded that I needed to strike some kind of balance with how my lessons were structured. Firstly, there needed to be a sense of freedom with whatever I set. Students had to know that they could take control of their learning; they could let their minds wander. Secondly, there needed to be a sense of guidance, reassurance so that students at least know what is expected of them. They need a prompt.

This last detail has always bothered me, but now, having gone through this experience with the blog prompt, I understand how they feel.

I don’t know where to start each time I write one of these. I sit staring at a blank screen and, inevitably, I delete the first twenty attempts at writing something. Nine times out of ten, I abandon the whole idea and the blog goes unwritten.

The other contributing fact to the unposted post is fear of judgement, of failure. I want these posts to mean something to someone somewhere. Yes, I know that’s vague, but I don’t really mind who reads what I write as long as what I have to say adds some value. Perhaps it’s a different way of looking at something, or a brilliant example of precisely how not to do something. Regardless, I write this for a public forum, and that comes with the anvil of potential judgement looming over my head.

What if what I write is stupid? What if people find them boring?

Eventually I get over this fact and I remember that really, I’m doing this for me. It’s helpful to get one’s thoughts down and often while reading through what I’ve written in the past, I’m reminded of details I noticed back then and so it doesn’t really matter who reads this, if indeed anyone does at all.

This experience is very similar to what students go through on a day-to-day basis: first, they don’t know where to start. With such an enormous wealth of information available to them, it’s difficult to point oneself in any direction. If you’ve ever tried to teach yourself something without having some sort of programme mapped out for you, you’ll know this is very tricky to do. Teachers today need to be curators of knowledge. We need to collect, compile and guide students through what we have managed to find and in doing so, we need to teach them to do it for themselves.

The other block which stands in the way of unbridled student engagement is fear of failure. Education has made getting the answer wrong one of the worst things that can possibly happen. I’m guilty of perpetuating this, because I have to set tests where there are correct answers, and where incorrect ones do nothing but show the student what he or she doesn’t know. I have to do this, because of an educational system that needs to standardise, needs to test and filter and assess and report at every given opportunity. I’m sick of it, and my students are too.

What’s the solution? I don’t quite know yet. I’m still waiting for the right prompt, I guess. 

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!