#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?

The Hon. Mr Kirk takes the floor...

Today my task is a huge one: I have to imagine I’ve been made the ‘Prime Minister of the Net’ and decide how I will run things, and what platform I’d use.

Now that, dear readers, is tricky.

How do I begin to imagine managing something that is so vast, and which continues to become more vast by the second? In one of the presentations I gave on the necessity of integrating technology and teaching, I listed some of the facts about how technology is growing. I’ll spare you all the stats now, except for one: more footage is uploaded to YouTube every month than the three major television networks in the United States have produced in the last sixty years. Sure, most of the footage is of cats or people falling over things, but that’s beside the point. What is important to note here is the quantity of what is available. I don’t know if you’ve ever set yourself the task of trying to ask Google a question it didn’t have an answer for, but if you haven’t, give it a go. I’ve still not managed to think of anything.

However, this is digressing from the main point of this post. To return, I’m going to add another little anecdote about a philosophical question I often ask people who are complaining about something like the national health system or, more relevant to me, the education system. When they complain, I ask, ‘Ok, if you were made minister of X tomorrow, what’s the first thing you do?’ That’s really hard to answer in my opinion. In South Africa, where there are so many things which need addressing, where do you start? What gets to go first?

This is the same sort of maelstrom that starts in my head when I think about managing the internet. I mean, where would I begin?

I suppose the first thing to look at here is the presumption that the internet is something that needs managing in the first place. As it functions currently, it’s very organic. Sure, there are thousands of companies that provide some kind of hosting or publishing service, but there’s no real central approval point on the internet. Anyone can do pretty much anything they want to, and there’s bound to be someone out there in the ether who’s interested in what they’re doing. I think that’s a fantastic thing.

Of course, that means there’s plenty of junk too.

Yesterday I wrote about selecting reading material and how if something doesn’t grab me on the web, I’m unlikely to spend time reading and looking at it. Anyone who has spent time looking for things online knows that one seldom gets what one is looking for on the first go. My standard practice now is to open the first six Google results in separate tabs, read all of them and then create an amalgamated solution in my head. This has become almost unconscious, but I can see how this would be problematic for those who are new to the net, or who do not yet know how to discern good information from bad—a skill that should feature prominently in every curriculum in my opinion. Maybe if there was a central management point, content could be moderated for accuracy or for usability. Then again, try to imagine setting up a team to manage that task. You’d have to have thousands upon thousands of people who are able to research everything from aardvark farming to Zzyzx Road real estate sitting at computers and taking hundreds of thousands of requests every day.

So I think what I’m getting at is that in the event of my being elected to manage the internet, my first act would be to abdicate immediately. There’s no way I could begin to control the uncontrollable beast that is the World Wide Web, and I think that’s the way it’s meant to be really.

What I would change is the way students are taught about this incredible and most powerful resource. The Internet has already changed the way humans live more than I think we realise and this is a trend that is not going to change anytime soon. Despite this fact, very little is being done to help students learn how best to make use of this tool, and I use the word ‘tool’ very deliberately. Using the internet correctly and in a way that makes a meaningful difference to life is one of the most important skills any student should be learning today.

And I don’t just mean knowing how to research or being able to organise their documents on Google Drive properly; I mean we should be teaching students how to make social media work to promote them. It’s one of the most powerful resume tools that exist and yet to most of us it’s just a fun distraction, a way to interact with others. I also think students should learn how to create content that engages and draws others in. Why are they still making posters about an historical event when they could be designing websites or curating online exhibitions and developing interactive eBooks? All this stuff is so accessible and so ready to be made into something amazing, but very few educators actually ever get there.

The reason I teach is to make a positive difference in the lives of others so that they will want to make a positive difference in others’ lives too. I believe that equipping them for the developing world is one of the best things I can do, and that’s what I spend my days working towards. Perhaps I’m misguided, but somehow I don’t think so.

If you agree with me on any of these points, then I hope that if ever a day comes where I might be up to be elected into a position where I can make these kind of changes, that you’ll vote for me. At the rate things are happening today, who knows, that might not be such a crazy thought after all.

Till tomorrow…

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. 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This month I’m trying something new: prompts. I have a nasty habit of getting involved in products with all sorts of verve and enthusiasm and then allowing them to fizzle out fairly soon afterwards. That’s why I’ve signed up with WordPress.com’s ‘Writing 101’ course which is free and which will give me daily prompts to inspire my writing. Now, being me, I’m going to avoid simply writing about the topic that’s prompted. Instead, I’m going to go with whatever associations my crazy mind makes and then go from there.

The first thing that leapt into my mind when I looked at the prompt was GoPro. You see, today the Learning Commons received two brand new GoPro Hero 3+ video cameras. They truly are things of beauty. I say this not just because they look cool (which they do), or even because of the potential they have for our students to generate some truly amazing material. What really amazes me is the attention to detail and usability of the products. Let me explain.

After having opened the box, it took me very little time to figure out what went where and how to get the device up and running for the first time. Then, following the information in the instruction manual (yes, I read them), it was no trouble at all getting the camera to communicate with my iPhone via the app. Using this, I could see what the camera was seeing, start recording, change the mode of the camera and turn the device off. I need to stress that I managed to get all this right in about 15 minutes or so. 

This is something that is truly beautiful to me. I can still remember how arduous it was having to install anything remotely technical. Getting Office to run for the first time took a day’s worth of loading and unloading stiffy discs into a drive and waiting for the files to copy bit by bit. And then, inevitably, when you got to disc 32 of 36, somewhere a gremlin would strike, the process would be interrupted and you would have to start all over again. That is, if your computer hadn’t found itself being hurtled through the nearest window.

As time progressed, things got slightly better, but they were still a hassle. Setting the timing on the video recorder so that you didn’t miss your favourite show while you were out for the evening was a process that required several Ph.Ds from at least two major universities. Well, that or a dad who knew which knobs to twist. I should also point out that getting the video recorder to ‘talk’ to the TV in the first place was a tricky matter too.

Now, everything is infinitely easier. To get any device to connect to another, one simply takes a single HDMI cable and plugs it into an HDMI port. Done. My computer updates and installs programmes often without my even knowing it’s happened. I can present from my iPad while I walk around the room, and the picture appears on the wall in real time. And I can take a tiny piece of previously unexplored tech out of the box, and have it remotely tethered to my phone within minutes. Take a moment to think about that. Then, take a moment to think about where it will still go.

I have no doubt that in 20 years, my children will laugh as I regale them with stories of being excited about the release of the first smartwatches. They will try to contemplate what life was like when we had to have actual hard discs of plastic to listen to music and, horror of horrors, wait for new albums to arrive in the stores. I believe this kind of progress is beautiful and I am so excited by what it holds for us.

There are many others who will not feel this way. They may view technology as invasive, or obstructing and they may see many of the newly-emerged gadgets as fads. And, you know what, they may be right. However, I prefer to see these developments as opportunities to learn, to develop and to grow. Making things more easily accessible opens the world for so many people, including our students and it broadens their capacities to change the way we live our lives; to make them better.

So, ultimately, what the GoPro represents to me is the beauty that is human ingenuity. It represents our capacity for improving, for innovating and for creativity. I have no doubt that the students will be astonishing me with their creations very shortly. Judging by the hours of footage users have uploaded to YouTube of their amazing experiences that have been captured using these little cameras, there are many great things to come. I am so excited to share those with you when they eventually arrive.

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.