Week 21 Research

I'm having trouble doing this on my laptop, so this is a trial to see if the desktop is working!

A week of my new TELA laptop refusing to cooperate has shown me just how important the hardware and systems behind digital devices is.

I've been reworking these questions for the last week and I think this is close to my final version.

Mt research question

How do teachers use Communities of Practice to support students' learning of 21st century skills?


My inquiry question

How can I use the library to help students develop curiosity and resilience?

I'm keen on getting some feedback about my questions.

Week 19

Week 19 Reflective Practice

Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Reflective Model - Jay and Johnson

reflectiv

Today I’m writing on two different topics that I find inspiring to focus on.  The first is the development of a makerspace community in a landscape of practice.( Wenger)  At the moment the landscape looks like this:

Members of both communities of practice are aiming for the same goals, although the students might not explain it in these words.  I would like to see if I can develop both communities so there are more links between them, by adding a range of makerspace activities.  Members of both communities would expand their knowledge and develop a shared identity. Interaction between the two groups would become more social and would be voluntary. Care would need to be taken so students welcome teachers as participants in their group; and teachers embrace the students’ philosophy of fun, relaxation, and challenge on a voluntary basis.  Both groups would be expected to develop a growth mindset, by focusing on strategies to improve, and experiencing failure as a learning step for example. Maker culture develops self-organised groups, and can be practised in informal settings like a library  It has its basis in Constructionism.

This image shows what I hope will be the outcome.

My second focus topic is to work with a group of teachers to develop the 21st century competencies and qualities of curiosity and communication in our students.  Our students do not display much curiosity - whether this is because I can’t find a way to observe or measure it, or am looking for it in the wrong places I’m not sure.  I would like to see if I can develop some strategies to arouse curiosity in the students and communicate about this in some way. I am reading about slow assessment to see if this gives me some ideas.   I would tap into two communities of practice to achieve this - the teachers in our school and the Librarian community of practise I belong to.  The librarian network is a virtual community as well as a face-to-face group, so from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds but all with a passion for librarianship.

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Maker culture  Maker Culture from the Innovating Pedagogy report (2013).

https://app.themindlab.com/media/19945/view

Dweck, Carol 2015 Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset' https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/community-resources/2016/06/DweckEducationWeek.pdf

Dweck, Carol 2016

What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means

https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means

Schon, S, Ebner, M, Kumar, S (2014) The Maker Movement. Implications of new digital gadgets, fabrication tools and spaces for creative learning and teaching https://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/sites/default/files/asset/Learning%20in%20cyber-physical%20worlds_In-depth_39_2_0.pdf

Slow assessment (http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2015/Gervasio_Detterbeck_Oling.pdf)
Wenger, E. Learning in Landscapes of Practice  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn3joQSQm4o

Week 18 Reflective Practice

Since the first part of the Mindlab course has finished I have been required to take on the management of a large number of chromebooks.  This has meant taking responsibility for equipment, and developing new systems and processes where necessary. This has required liaison with two major groups – those managing the chromebook processes, and those using the equipment. While several people have the responsibility for different areas of the process, there is no one with overall responsibility or authority.

I often felt out of my depth until I learned how far I would have to go to get to a baseline to start from; and learned who to approach for information and help.  I also got a great deal of satisfaction from successfully solving problems and providing solutions for others. I worked through quite a lot of frustration as, while I had responsibility, I did not have authority to deal with some issues.  There was not one person with this authority, and I have now set up a meeting with a leadership group to sort out this issue.

As I developed an understanding of the task, I developed systems to deal with issues as they arose – usually on a “just-in –time” basis.  As a result I often had to refine or rebuild a system as it was trialled. The second result was that I became the only one in the school with an overview – albeit superficial in some areas – of the many aspects of working with chromebooks.  This included accounting; ordering; insurance and repair aspects; storage, dispersal and collection of equipment. I learned skills to design and work with spreadsheets; and of communication with whanau, staff and trust members as well as service providers, both face-to face and using email and telephone.

I became interested in agile resourcing after speaking with a worker in a business that provides services for the public.  She mentioned agile resourcing as the way the business shared human resources when and where needed, moving people on a temporary basis (from a day to six months or more) between departments where their skills and knowledge were required.  The Agile Manifesto listed ten principles, which I realised I was following (slightly altered to fit my circumstances):

• Satisfy the customer
• Adapt and respond to changing requirements
• Deliver working equipment frequently and promptly
• Collaborate
• Work with motivated individuals
• Face-to-face /one-to-one direct conversations
• Working equipment and processes
• Sustainable systems
• Technical expertise ( The manifesto lists this as technical excellence, which I can’t aspire to, but I have learned  techniques with software and equipment to improve my technical knowledge)
• Simplicity (Again, something I am working towards to merge all the components of dealing with chromebooks.)

There are two other principles which at this stage are not happening – self-organising teams, and team reflection.

The subtheme all of this relates to is the role of current and emerging technologies. Technology can only transform teaching and learning if the infrastructure is there to support “the inspiration, capability and opportunities for innovation”

Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective 2012

https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

http://agilemanifesto.org/ Manifesto for Agile Software Development 2001 Beck et al

Week 17 Reflective practice

How do I reflect now?  I critique what I am doing, look for aspects I am pleased with and enjoy that feeling of success or completion or satisfaction that results. This has been worked for, through discussions with psychologists, counsellors, other teachers, reading about and practising mindfulness, learning about bullet journaling, as well as reading about reflection.  I make a conscious decision to celebrate successes, however small.

How else do I reflect now?  I critique my actions and look for areas that I can improve or take another step on.  These are not necessarily negative – I can improve on a success just as I can improve on a failure.  I can decide that the step I had planned to continue with is correct, wrong, needs further research, consideration or discussion.  If I am considering a failure or a problem, I can decide to review one or more steps, retry with minor changes, or even throw the baby out with the bathwater and go back to the beginning

I am learning to record my reflections by writing.   I sometimes write and destroy a first writing reflection because, since it is usually on a negative occurrence, I write to get all my feelings and thoughts crystallised in any order, and often criticise others and assign blame.  The physical action of tearing or screwing up paper can also help me take a metaphorical step back and begin to take note of the context of the event. From this new perspective I can usually find a few specific ideas to focus on, examine, evaluate, learn more about or change my actions. This seems to me to be what Finlay describes when she summarises Atkins and Murphy’s work.

When reflecting I find some structure helps.  If I am reflecting before action, I regularly use structures like de Bono’s thinking hats, Ryan’s Thinkers Keys, or Universal Design for Learning , our school values and student graduate profile, to both structure and check my thinking.  Because I work in a school that is predominantly Maori, I also use the “Whare Tapa wha” structure to guide my thinking; and to remind me there are several other cultures represented in our school minority. It is too much to use all of these structures all the time, but often awareness of a feature can help me to develop my thinking.  It is quite comforting for me to read Finlay’s comment “Models need to be applied, selectively, purposefully, flexibly and judiciously.”

What are my next steps with reflection?  One of the things I have become aware of writing this reflection is how long some of the structures and theories I use have been around.  This does not mean they are irrelevant, but rather that I need to search out more current ideas and see what I can learn from them. 

Writing and sharing my reflections is an area I have not done.  I lurk on a few blogs, but rarely comment.  I look back at blog posts that have resonated with me for some reason, and use these as a basis for thinking differently, or further.  I check on blogs written by people whose views I have come to respect, and think about their ideas and mine.  Sharing a blog post means opening myself to having other people do this with my ideas, and that feels uncomfortable. 

I’ll just have to cultivate a positive mindset, and decide that from discomfort will come growth!