Personalised Learning.... and frozen yoghurt

"Personalized Learning is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet the needs and aspirations of individual learners, often with extensive use of technology in the process."

Personalised Learning is in the spotlight at the moment as teachers here begin to wrestle with what it really means. The availability of technology, although still limited within the primary school in terms of one-to-one connectivity, alongside the development of our virtual learning environment, iLearn, means that true personalised learning is now within our grasp.

But what does personalised learning actually mean in this world of multiple intelligences, different learning styles, neuro-plastic brains and all those things which teachers are becoming more aware of? The Wikipedia definition above is a good starting point, stressing as it does the word individual, and noting the aspirations and needs of those individuals, as well as the use of technology.

I have been trying to think of it in terms of the experiences our students have and yesterday it came to me.

During a trip to Central, my son dragged me in to Yoppi. Yoppi is a frozen yoghurt shop and it was the first of it's kind I had ever visited. It was a fascinating experience. Not only did I get to taste a very pleasant dessert, but I also gained some insight into what personalised learning is and why it is so important to our students.

How so?

Firstly, Yoppi looks new. It's attractive, shiny and modern and looks inviting. It's a shop that makes you feel welcome. Secondly, you as the customer can tailor your yoghurt to your requirements or needs.

There are three parts to the overall process. Firstly you can choose from any of four yoghurts to go in your pot. You can add them individually or you can get the machine to blend them for you. Two of the yoghurt flavours appear to be staple, in that they don't seem to change much, but the third and fourth flavours look like they change regularly. More of that later.

Having added your yoghurt to the pot, choosing as much or as little as you like and remembering that it's likely although not necessary that you will have added some of the flavours which are considered a staple, you then can choose from a huge number of toppings to add interest and taste to your choice. In other words, you can personalise your choice to your own desires whilst keeping the yoghurt as a base.

The last stage of the process involves your choice being weighed (evaluated or assessed if you like!) before you pay the bill, which of course is dependent on size.

At this point you can enjoy a totally individual taste, tailored to your needs, aspirations and desires!

Not only that, but you can also influence how your future experience might be by taking part in the voting system to add different flavours when they are changed during the next week. The opportunity to do this encourages customers to become empowered and engaged with the process.

And as for the technology, well, there's free wi-fi! What more could you ask!

The parallels with education are clear. This new type of food experience offers it's customers the opportunity to customise (within the confines of the staple flavours), enrich and personalise, seek evaluation, and influence future choices.

This is exactly what personalised learning should be about.

We could learn a lot from the frozen yoghurt experience. I'll be going back again next week just to make sure!

Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference

Next week sees conference season kick off with the 3rd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference taking place at West Island School. Nearly 30 teachers from across Kellett will be attending to participate in a number of sessions and forums.

Big hitters Stephen Heppell and David Warlick will be the keynotes and I'm delighted to say that Katrina Hall has been chosen to present a session on the use of iTouch Apps in the Primary Classroom. Katrina has previously presented at the 2nd Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference on Games in the Classroom as well as on the use of mobile devices at the Hong Kong Handheld & Mobile Learning Festival at the University of Hong Kong.

The trailer for the session can be seen below;

Outstanding.... What now?

I must admit, I dislike the word intensely, it's not something I think a school should ever say about itself, but I guess if somebody else says it about you then it's ok.

So OfStEd has declared that we are outstanding in every item of it's schedule. That's a fantastic achievement and a testimony to the hard work of the staff who consistently deliver across a huge range of school experiences.

From a technology point of view it will be interesting to see what the inspectors say. They were able to see a wide range of technology usage and commented to me on how the teachers and students were engaged with what they were doing. They certainly saw some innovative uses of technology; Web 2.0 (Shelfari), online Mind Mapping (Mind 42), Nintendo DS within Literacy, iTouch to support phonic awareness etc. OK, so these ideas aren't original but they are in the upper band of classroom innovation.

The report will hopefully highlight these as signs of a school that is continuing to improve. The need to continue improvement is keenly felt within the technology department - any tech department that wishes to be seen as outstanding must be constantly striving to improve, as the landscape changes continually.

I was delighted to see that Scott McLeod commented on my previous posting on OfStEd and I return to his words to help me evaluate what we need to do next.

The following extract from his closing comments at ASB Unplugged has been hijacked by me with some of my own additions.

"Most of you have yet to put a computer in every kid’s hands;"

No we haven't. We are 121 in secondary but in primary we're 124 - that's a decent ratio that I'm pleased with, but not when I see machines not being used. With other international schools in the region looking to extend their 121 programme into primary it may be something that we will consider in the future. Ultimately though, it's what you do with your kit that counts.

"Most of you have yet to incorporate online courses into your curricula in any kind of substantive way."

Guilty as charged - this is a huge challenge for us and will occupy large amounts of staff time during the forthcoming year.

"Few of you are teaching students to be empowered - not just responsible - digital citizens in our new information landscape."

We are making inroads here; schools have a responsibilty to ensure they produce ethical, resilient digital citizens, and we work hard on that. It does need to be a whole school approach and we need to enhance our staff development models.

"Few of you have a staff full of educators that are modeling active participation in that landscape."

Staff need to become more active in using the web as a means of professional development. This is explicit in the ISTE standards for teachers and we will be looking to implement these more widely in the future. It would be great to see more staff actively fostering a digital footprint and developing themselves as professionals online. We have teachers who are now using Twitter as a development tool and we need to encourage more to do so. By engaging with educators on a global level, the impact upon classrooms can be tremendous.

"As far as I can tell, none of you has robust student assessments at every grade level that target higher-level, more cognitively-complex thinking and doing and being."

Getting there. We have been looking at higher order thinking skills but we haven't managed to consistently develop them within units that use technology. We are aware of this and have made some progress.

"None of you has moved to a truly personalized learning environment for every student, one in which students’ progress is facilitated and perhaps assessed by technology and is organized around student competence and completion rather than age and grade level."

In truth we're a long way off this although various initiatives have helped us down this road. We're built around what Heppell might call the Victorian model as are most schools and I could only see us ever nibbling at this.

So, that's Scott McLeod's challenge for school improvement. I'm going to add a few more that I'd like to see us tackle!

We should be questioning our curriculum and examining it in the light of what technology can enable us to do and what our students can produce. We can't keep going on about 21st Century Learning without identifying what's 20th Century Learning and questioning it's validity. It's no good saying to hit HOTS we should be podcasting if we can't say what those podcasts should replace... newspaper reports, postcard and letter writing?

We need to look at how we can use technology not as a replacement tool but as a transformation tool. Let's use the new tools we have to collaborate, create and problem solve. We've made some good progress here but there's still a long way to go.

We need to foster a feeling of innovation, creativity and excitement consistently throughout the whole school by capturing the expertise we have and highlighting it and building upon it.

As all schools and organisations do we need to take a good long hard look at ourselves regarding the environment by using our technology in a greener way and utilising it to help us become more ethical and resonsible in our use of resources.

So, outstanding we may be and that's great news, but we've still got huge amounts of work to do and there's no question that we will be striving to achieve much more in the coming year.

The tag cloud is from our ICT School Improvement Plan (SIP) for the forthcoming year.

ICT INSET Day

While the National Day/Moon Festival celebrations were a great opportunity for students to enjoy a long weekend, staff were hard at it on the Friday, attending a training day looking at our use of ICT and considering how we can encourage our students to become more 21st Century literate by providing them with appropriate classroom opportunities.

The day began with a presentation on how technology has impacted upon our lives and the implications this has for our classroom practice. We looked at evidence of students learning outside of school and at ways we can provide more authentic uses of technology within the classroom.

Staff then attended a variety of workshops on the following subjects;
Five Websites You Can't Teach Without!
Creating a Wiki
Using Computer Games in the Classroom
Voicethread
Kellett Kit - easy to use tech in the classroom

The afternoon session was spent looking at teh ISTE Standards for students and considering how we can use them within our curriculum.

The day was a very positive experience and it's a clear sign that as a school, we are determined to maximimise the use of technology to the benefit of our students. many thanks to all those attended and a special thanks to all those who presented some great workshops!

ICT INSET Day from Clive Dawes on Vimeo.

The Non-Netbook

I love this video which is currently doing the rounds and is beginning to attain cult status as viewing figures go through the roof. It is apparently the result of an impromtu walkabout by a teacher in a classroom at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

The ensuing conversation, whilst being very funny, raises huge issues and questions with regard to how our students see their use of knowledge resources.

We could of course discuss the implications that this has for us as teachers... but I don't have a spare 20 hours to consider it at the moment so I'm just enjoying it instead!

My favourite bit is when he clicks on the word to try to get some context help.

Digital Learners Today

Whilst at the HK 21st Century Learning Conference this weekend I was reminded of this video which has been around a while and I thought I'd share it here. It's important for us to remember as "mature" teachers that our "customer base" has changed somewhat in recent years.

Now, where's that seatbelt?!

What Gives?

I'm really looking forward to attending the Hong Kong 21st Century Learning Conference next weekend over at KGV. This is clearly an important event as HK schools continue to adapt to the need to shift their curriculum to take into account new technologies and new ideas.

I know that Paul McMahon who is helping to organise this event feels the pace of change in HK should be much quicker. However, he should take heart from the recent Education Bureau publication 'Right Technology at the Right Time for the Right Task'. In this document, Dept Secretary for Education Chris Wardlaw acknowledges the crucial role that new communication technologies have in schools;

"teachers and students are using blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds for collaborative learning and sharing knowledge in cyber-connected communities. The value of such peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges and collaboration is that the more a student knows about a relevant subject, the more he/she is recognized and sought out by peers for his/her knowledge. In turn, the more he/she shares his/her knowledge, the deeper and richer his/her understanding of the subject becomes. In addition, by facilitating students to work together to investigate problems according to their interest, these applications can help them develop inquisitive learning skills."

Collaboration is a key word here and influences much of the thinking behind ideas of 21st Century Learning, alongside enquiry based learning, critical thinking, analysing and filtering information, media literacy and digital citizenship.

The issue for our schools is how we integrate these skills and ideals into our already crowded curriculum. And if we are able to recognise and implement 21st Century Learning, are we also able to recognise and evaluate the worth of 20th Century Learning?!

Something has to give in the curriculum to allow for these essential new skills to be taught and used, but the question is what?! As somebody brought up in the 20th Century it can be difficult to come to terms with the fact that skills valued during my own schooling may no longer be relevant.

When I first started teaching (132 years ago) I could recognise the handwriting of all my colleagues. I could probably only recognise the writing of one or two of my current colleagues.

I'm sure my handwriting was always the neatest! What price neat cursive script in the 21st Century?!