PLE I hear Thou

(cross posted from here)

"- Can you picture and describe your Personal Learning Environment?
- Learning? Isn't that the stuff I had to do at school?
- Yes.. but surely you did not stop learning the day you graduated, did you?
- True… I suppose my experiences, my goals, my thoughts, my responsibilities, my training, my projects, all constitute ongoing learning..
- And it looks you are onto a good thing, so keep with it as "your ability to learn is the only lasting competitive advantage!"

I have been thinking about the place of the ePortfolio in a Personal Learning Environment. ePortfolio and Personal Learning Environment can both be a software system or a concept. I am considering the latter here.

The ePortfolio is a great personal space to collect, select, and make sense of information, throw ideas around and verify the more potent ones.
The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a layered, variable, distributed, open, collaborative space.
ePortfolio and Personal Learning Environment are inherently linked, each feeding the development and make up of the other.
PLE is nothing new, but since it is bound with technology its form, shape and purpose continue to evolve with it.
 
To me a Personal Learning Environment is a self crafted connected ecosystem comprising of people, tools, and spaces:

 - that I build, maintain
 - that grows and adapts to my needs
 - that is both physical and digital
 - that serves my purpose,
 - from which I collect information,
 - with which I experience new learnings, am comfortable with or challenged into doing new things,
 - that lets me engage in conversation around topics of interests
 - with which I interact and share my understanding of these common interests
 - that allows me to chose the media, the time and the place at which any of this happens
 - where I feel "at home"
 - that lets me dream, frame ideas and act on them

My PLE is a mash up of : friends, peers, mentors, with whom I have a relation of trust, clients, influencers that I respect and who I connect with via a range of tools, Twitter, my go to social media for short and sharp info and for just in time conversations on specific topics, ePortfolio as planning and goal setting space where I archive and reflect on flow, blogs, including mine , Feedly where I make up my own reading lists from blogs of interest, online forums and groups,  and google scholar on serious topics, google alerts, Youtube for "how to" do something, curating tools like Scoop It and Pinterest when researching for a project, LinkedIn as my office, Facebook as my playground, Quora as my knowledge base where I sit tight and absorb,  Evernote to keep notes, email where many a one on one conversations are continued and developed, Pocket to save and organise links of interest… Elements in my PLE are public, others are shared with a selected audience, some face to face, others online, some are private to me.

Some spaces come and go, some topics come and go, according to my needs and wants, new people are added as connections widen and grow, interests evolve, opportunities arise. My PLE is a living space.

It is undeniable: the way I learn and work is increasingly project based, individualised, flexible and is also increasingly less structured, less time and space dependent. And adapting to new ways of working and learning require more self discipline, self determination and independent thinking to answer questions such as "how am I doing?" "what problem am I trying to solve?" "how can I do this better faster more efficiently?". Hence my need to articulate my understanding of my own online presence and pin my position in this environment I create.

As I develop the skills and the mindset to evolve in this environment I develop a more open approach to sharing ideas and meeting new people. I engage more in conversations, seeking new information, making new knowledge, and together with my network push my own boundaries. The Internet has multiplied the opportunities to become agent of my learning, transferring knowledge between context and domains as well as people, so I ask myself:

Taking charge of one's own learning is the default attribute so do I want to be limited by institutionalised software?  
Sharing what I know and make it explicit is not an option, do I want to have control of how and when and with whom I do this?

With a device at my fingertips any time any where, it is easy to access an ongoing flow of information, to communicate, to create, share, cross pollinate thoughts and ideas, to participate in a network I build over time,
I can also capture and archive meaningful pieces, organize them for a purpose, and reflect upon them. I blend formal learning with informal, learning is no longer the work of the individual, it is the work of the network! I am "done learning" I am self directing it!

Along the way the boundaries between my personal self and professional self blur and blend.  And with it the need to "develop a strategy to manage the various information streams" and design and organize my own learning, and recognize it happens in different places, with different people, in different contexts.

The challenge for any learning institution, should they be schools, universities, training providers, companies L&D, is to recognize that individuals' access to information, tools, devices, experts and peers impacts on their ability and willingness to drive how, what and when they learn. The learning institution have to adapt their learning design, the tools they provide, to support the development of learner attributes. Through fostering a sense of community, nurturing a stimulating environment and culture conducive to serendipitous knowledge transfer, ideas and solutions generation the learnplace/workplace will start realising the potential of knowledge sharing and the innovation and opportunities it brings about.

The challenge for the individual is to have awareness of their own network, maintain it, grow it and diversify it. And to realise its potential for personal and "collaborational" growth. My PLE is constantly changing making managing time, sources and relationships within it unprecedented and complex. My PLE is constantly challenging, hence my deep engagement with it.

---

Readings:

Pontydysgu: New Thoughts on Personalised Learning EnvironmentsGraham Attwell: Personal Learning Environments
Ilona Buchem: Definitions of a PLE
Harold Jarche: The ability to learn is the last competitive advantage
Jane Hart: The Social Learning Handbook

Photo courtesy of: tata_aka_T [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The year that has been

The year that has been… I woke up this morning realising today is December 7th. 2013 is nearly over.
There has been some good, some great and some less good and some messy! 

I have:
 - deepened my understanding of the scope and role of ePortfolios, researched and analysed methods of implementation outside of schools, inquired into their potential for employability, professional certifications and acreditations, as well as personal branding.
- dived in to identify and articulate the attributes of the Life Long Learner
- related the building of an ePortfolio to digital identity, digital footprints and key digital literacies.
- made sense of the inherent links between personal learning and social learning and how to scaffold them
- assessed ways of restructuring the way we work to make best use of both personal and social learning
- evaluated a range of online tools and services to support the ePortfolio approach
- started using design thinking
- worked on OpenBadges, instructional design
- realized I am only a technology consumer ...
- had a first go at synthesing this into a minimum value proposition to get started with ThinkAgency
- contributed by invitation to many projects and conversations but failed (so far) to get all the stakeholders I have engaged with to contract me…

This has led me to:
 - identify salient common points between the "world of education" and the "world of work"
-  slowly break away from my "edu" echo chamber and go and listen/participate in other communities
-  discover an engaging and switched on to learning professional community
 - see the need for a common vocabulary when labeling and describing skills, strengths, competence
-  invest in attending conferences where I have listened, participated, presented, met with
-  see and work through others' problem with them
-  value openness as the modus operandi
-  talk a lot around dreams and ideas (sigh…)
-  throw myself in a lot of new related stuff wanting to start to understand OpenBadges potential, IT stuff around metadata, experiencing basic coding...
-  feel frustrated by not staying focus



Which in turns has opened my eyes to: (the confronting....)
- how limited I actually am to see the big picture: I find it hard placing boundaries around my ideas to have them evolve beyond just that
- the tyranny of too much autonomy! (especially let lose with a connected device)
- how limited my mastery around IT is beyond using/consuming
- how easily I forget I can't assume and must verify all hypothesis...
- how unable I seem to be at actually establishing my own actionable purpose!

Yet fabulous stuff happened such as:
- experiencing the world of entrepreneurship and start ups
- getting a feel for this whole ecosystem and going in with eyes wide open
- drawing some connections to the world as I have known it so far
- acquiring vast amount of new learning (some of it yet to be connected)
- witnessing what truly persuasive and convincing look like in practice
- starting to understand value in a commercial and business sense
- developing solid partnerships


I have maintained and grown lasting existing friendships.
I have worked on balancing my PLN, opened new channels and participated in a range of conversations.
I might have done it with too much gusto….
My teenage-like heart has fallen in love at first sight with many enlightening, supportive, challenging, critical new friends.
I count on time and actions to tell how these influences evolve!
I live with and love the most honest and caring dragon. I must never lose sight of this.

2013 as the "Year of Trying"! 
In the unstoppable momentum I have been saying yes yes and yes to so many things: I have done, got feedback, got knocked, undone, redone.
Today it feels that in terms of accomplishments for the year, well,  it is close to a "not a lot to show for". 
To move forward into 2014 I will need to do less Yes to learning and more Yes to executing.
I have a few weeks before making New Year's Resolution. Phew.

Why am I doing this?
The ability to learn is the only lasting competitive advantage for any organization. H. Jarche
Can I build a business model around this?
I have the ideas, the people, the want and the drive.
2014 will be the Year of the Concrete Steps.

Meet Abbi

MOOC "Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials" - Understanding the Open Badges Ecosystem and Building a Badge System

CHALLENGE ONE: Define a Current Ecosystem.

Consider an industry or community of practice where you anticipate that badges could have a positive impact

 _______________________

       Meet Abbi. Abbi is quickly coming to her seventeenth birthday, with mixed feelings about leaving school. She lives in Takapuna, north of Auckland New Zealand. She started college in brand new buildings 4 years ago. Abbi is in year 12 now, and in a year's time in December she will have to have decided what she wants to do next. Abbi does not mind going to school, even if sometimes the 5 lessons a day get in the way of all the other things she really wants to do. She is quite athletic, and with the school' s soccer team training in winter and the surf life saving club in summer, she keeps fit.  Abbi's efforts in both disciplines are often celebrated, as her soccer team came first of their division this season under her captaincy, and she has received many a trophy already for her surfing ability. Abbi is a popular girl with a good group of friends and she often signs them up as a team for charity events, organized both at school and the community. Her goal this year is to get the largest team to raise money for CanTeen, since her team only came second last year and missed on the "big prize"! She knows she needs to draw on her organizational skills as well as on her time management to pull this off this year: her part time job at the local supermarket is now taking up 10 hours a week. She needs to save up as much as she can for when she leaves school, should it be for university or training or maybe a gap year.  Abbi is busy. She goes from one lesson to the next with long to do lists of assignments deadlines for her 6 different subject areas. Most of her NCEA standards  being assessed internally, she has to compile a portfolio of evidence over the course of the year, culminating to selecting the best pieces for final submissions. Her teachers are on the whole pretty helpful and keen to support her but she finds she needs constant help with unpacking the achievement objectives. Above all the sheer volume of what needs to be produced for each of her courses puts her under pressure. Abbi does not actually have neither the time, nor is she regularly offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning. She wants to achieve with Excellence as her mum keeps telling her that it will give her more options for after school. While she has overall above average literacy and numeracy, she gets little feedback in the way of the skills she is developing through managing all of this coursework, participating in all the extra curricular activities . She is also considering going back to handing her work in written form since her teacher, while providing positive oral feedback on her creativity, found it hard to assess the cartoon strip she designed with an online tool and presented as evidence towards her History credits via her ePortfolio.  Abbi is concerned mainly by getting school work done, rather than how she is getting it done.


        Meet Tania. She is Abbi's Spanish teacher. Tania is in her early 30s and likes her job. The school environment is pleasant, she has been here for three years now and has built a good rapport with her colleagues and her students, who respect her. She likes the area, her young family and partner live nearby, and they can enjoy the proximity of the ocean year long. Tania has had to change a lot to her teaching since she started ten years ago. The New Zealand Curriculum was implemented in 2007, and was quite a departure from the previous documents. This fairly slim document intends to be a holistic guide to all New Zealand schools to review their own curriculum and align it with the firmly student centered vision of the National document. Tania has been involved from the outset to grasp all of its intent, based on community engagement, learning to learn, and future focus. She is experimenting with her teaching, and has moved away from the painstakingly crafted units of work she used to base all her teaching on.  She is making some use of the School Moodle where she posts resources for her students to access. She'd like to use it more as she sees the potential but she has also undertaken a year long Professional Learning course which aims to accompany her pedagogical evolution towards a task based approach to teaching and learning. Tania uses the teaching as inquiry cycle to ensure her teaching meets the learning needs of her students. Tania is busy. She has a range of classes and responsibility for her learning area. She knows she could engage in her inquiry with more depth. Tania does not actually have neither the time, nor is she offered the incentive to step back and consider and reflect on her learning as a teacher. She also knows that deadlines for the high stake NCEA assessment are always looming. Despite having been aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum, offering students a more personalized and individualized pathway to achievement, the managing of portfolio of evidence proves very tricky and imply students taking "more ownership of their learning". Tania witnesses that all of her students are also getting to grip with their new responsibility, and the response varies greatly according to their level of engagement. Plus, Tania is intent on getting good grades, as the overall image of her Faculty and of her school, will be reflected on the results. To maintain her students' level of success, as measured by the tests, she is putting on the back burner discovering with them what online tools they could use to produce work, and her students, while they BYOD, use their device mainly for research, word-processing or sharing a googledoc and sometime use language learning apps. Tania feels she "does" teaching to her students while she wishes she could do more to get them to make sense of their own learning, as intended by the NZC. She also knows that the Key Competencies too often slips under her and her students' radar. When she stops and considers, she knows they ought to be the common language across all learning areas, as they encompass knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Tania knows too that these competencies are for teachers, learners and anyone beyond the school community.


        Meet Greg. Greg owns a medium size business, based on hydraulic engineering. He still drops his daughter Abbi at school in the morning: she can sleep in a bit longer if she rides with him rather than bus it. He has an engineering qualification and his business, thanks to a recent contract with a Chinese manufacturer, is doing quite well. Greg has been in the area for twenty years and benefits from the import/export activity generated by the Port of Auckland, the most active in the country.  Greg typically employs between 25 to 30 people. He would like this to stabilize but the lower skill employees come and go, often at the drop of a hat. He has also found it hard to find suitable match to join his management team, as he is often left disappointed that the qualification and veneer presented on the resumé does not convert into workplace skills once hired. Overall, he finds critical thinking and problem solving skills, often coupled with below par communication skills, are sorely missing. Greg is busy. He needs to travel to get more work. Competition from cheaper countries is a constant threat. While he knows he ought to do something to invest in the professional development of his employees to retain them and also to support them gain more quickly the skills he views are essential, he needs to invest in other areas first. Greg always wonders what the kids really learn at school. 



These descriptions showcase there are some good bases on which to dream a badge system development in New Zealand.
Here comes the not so distant future:

Abbi will start gaining badges, hopefully Openbadges, identifying and showcasing her sporting and community engagements and successes, issued by the reliable institutions that are offering these opportunities. Those institutions will find badges a natural digital extension to the cups, badges and certificates they already issue.  She will display them on her ePortfolio (MyPortfolio powered by Mahara, available to all New Zealand schools as SaaS) which won't be the rather dry venue where she has only been collected her speaking and writing evidence for Spanish. She will see her achievements accumulate. Abbi will start to engage in keeping a more consistent record of her learning, and possibly seek more opportunities to earn badges.  Or, why not, start issuing some to her friends when they achieve the Canteen challenge?
Through seeing the badges displayed on Abbi's portfolio profile, and engaging in conversation with her about their significance, not only will Tania get to know her student just that little bit more, but also will start thinking how she will herself issue badges. Not only it would get her to look more deeply into Moodle functionalities, she has always wanted to do to spend more time on that, but it will also be a way to finally evidence the Key Competencies in a concrete, visible, understandable manner: students getting expandable badges for essentials skills they progress on, but also for the aptitudes and competences they develop. Issuing badges credentialing time management, intercultural competence, communication skills... Tania is getting very exciting at the prospect! The visual badge would go a long way in materializing the complexity of each of these concepts, the task is now to be break them down in simple manageable steps.
When Greg reads Abbi's report inviting him to view Abbi's eportfolio, as she has not had the time to show him her badges, he will discover the Openbadges Abbi has been collecting and the competencies she has developed. Greg will relate to the vocabulary being used in the description, as these are the very things he wishes to see his employees develop or at least articulate. Short of thinking he could build badge issuing into the professional development plan he is currently considering to offer to retain his employees, he understands the value the Openbadges would bring to the interview table, or better still, prior to that as he selects the resumés. Greg  will start to see that kids in New Zealand schools really learn to learn at school.

I would argue that the New Zealand strong sport and service community coupled with a forward thinking education system offers, in appearance, a fertile ecosystem where there could be a multitude of opportunities to try and build a Badge System with a concerted approach. The next challenges will definitely allow to dive more deeply in the complexity of what it entails.


Pascale Hyboud-Peron
20th September 2013

A different kind of a week end...

How to find real life learning, with an authentic purpose, in a supportive, energetic environment, where collaboration and competition keep momentum, curiosity and drive going?
How to test what I can add to a team of people I don't know, in an unknown setting with an unknown challenge?
I have signed up for Tauranga StartUp Weekend•, a 54hr "learning curve" where up to 80 people from various professional backgrounds (tech, design, marketing, entrepreuneurs...) get together to form/join a team on an idea that is pitched on the first night, build a viable business, convince investors.
This is going to be a little... "uncomfortable"!

So what shall I take with me to "pad the ride?"
- a bit of tech end user experience,
- some facilitation skills
- a burgeoning understanding of the Design Thinking mindset (I'll have to tell you about that as I am putting this in real time practice for ThinkAgency!)
- my ability to generate ideas
- a capacity to look for, find and analyse relevant information
- my "to do" list obsession
- an aptitude to look for "work arounds"
- all that the world of teaching and learning has armed me with: patience, stayability, keeping things simple, working with others, curiosity, solving problems... will all this come handy?
- an open mind, ready to fill the kete!
- my brand new phone (again!) my laptop, my chargers.

And here is what I shall leave behind:
- preconceived ideas
- fear of the unknown
- feeling overwhelmed in front of awesomeness
- worry that I will be out of my depth.

So will I pitch on the night or what? One minute to convince an audience that your idea is worth spending time and energy on? It has got to be done.

• About Startup Weekend: Startup Weekends are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs.  Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations.  Participants create working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and education.  Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take the first steps towards launching your own startup.

I am not that visual...

Many are trying to establish a definition of what an ePortfolio actually is. And describing the nature, scope and meaning of ePortfolio will be done in relation with who establishes this definition for what context. I particularly liked this introduction to ePortfolio for students at Victoria Uni.
One comment written by Sarah Stewart on an anti ePortfolio blog post steered me towards picking an other lense to consider ePortfolio. She wrote "ePortfolio is what you want it to be!" Yeah!
I decided to drop (for now!) the institutionalised lense (education context, assessment, evaluation, measured improved outcomes, definition, implementation, eportfolio system...) and to focus on the individual ePortfolio owner* whoever that may be at any time of their life. Folios are life wide and life long and need to be considered from the user's perspective, who is a curious self motivated autonomous proactive agent of his/own learning (coming from a school near us soon!)
I came across this Guide to Digital Portfolio and I liked its presentation format. Maybe because it is flat and linear and that it caught my eye is a reflection of my limited ability to think differently :-)? I would like to master Prezi so that I convey my thoughts and experience about things through using it, but so far my attempts have left me disappointed in the result. I need to work on why? (and suggestions to guide this reflection are welcome!)
Anyhow this is my attempt at describing what an ePortfolio is. For me. Work in progress.

* Bloggers keep blogs, need to think of a name for a person who keeps an ePortfolio...

Conversation matters

What follows is a mix of thoughts arising from reading from different altruistic online sharers and talking with a range of people dedicated to French language and culture.
The latter I met at the Alliance Française AGM held in Christchurch where I was invited to attend as representative of the NZAFT. It was a timely reminder, considering where my thoughts were at earlier in the week (as vented in my comments) that Languages must be, ought to be, have to be celebrated as a main dish on the Smörgåsbord on offer to learners in New Zealand schools. And tonight, thanks to the company I kept recently, I am even almost ready to say French rather than the generic Languages ;-)!

You are here flickrcc

My presentation at this meeting allowed me to focus on what most teachers of French do very well: they love French! Not just French the Language but also all things French. Conveying the love to dwindling numbers, through complex pedagogies which need to be given more time than seems available to internalise them, with the perceived end goal limited to striving for a credit count is at times a tall order.
Compare that to the situation of our Alliance Française colleagues whose role (apparently!) consists of teaching students who come through their doors with a self motivation, a need, a reason to learn French, free of any formal assessments, one would have reasons to be thoroughly jealous of these conditions!
Last November I had the opportunity to work alongside some of the young "volontaires internationaux" at the AF in Wellington as we were training to be DELF examiners.  I realised I had much to learn from their take on the Approche Actionnelle as well as their approach to evaluation. To my pleasure they too expressed a vivid interest in understanding more about French in NZ schools. It thus indicated that there are grounds on which to build a rapprochement in order to learn from each other. Yesterday's meeting reminded me of this and it was an opportunity to formalise a wish in public for it to actually happen. What shape it takes is yet to be devised and as NZAFT decide things at committee level, it certainly is not entirely up to me.
But just now I think I know how it could possibly be put to good use for the greater good!
And this is born of several other things happening this week:

- talking about New Zealand school teachers of French lead to talk about NZ schools, in particular the recently opened primary and secondary schools with their modern learning environment, open plan spaces and collaborative teaching aiming to have students direct their learning.  It is indeed here to stay with many existing schools embracing this approach and embarking on the journey of innovation. This was news to the French Embassy Education attaché who was very interested in knowing more. All I know is names of schools, a few teachers who I follow on Twitter and have occasionally met, but enough to understand that this is working on transforming education right here and now. What I also seem to pick from these new schools is that Learning Languages doesn't seem to feature much. It was a shame he thought and why he asked. I suggested, unsure: Teachers not ready for the leap of pedagogical faith,  new principals not ready to give it full attention while either the Correspondence school or the VLN can somehow attempt to fill that gap, not enough parents pushing to have a language taught, teaching teams fully focused on literacy and key competencies and forgetting that the cultural competence of our NZC is intrinsically linked the intercultural competence developed through language learning? Who knows?

- exchanging with you here along our last posts and comments, you describe your attempt at weaving in your new classes a pedagogy which invite students to direct their own learning is meeting with resistance at this stage. As we discussed I am surprised to read that students are so change adverse. This could indicate that it is such a departure from the usual expectations they have grown used to in the environment they are learning in,  that it will take time and continuous effort on your and their part to start to see the long term benefits of the approach.

So from this one could jump to a very quick (and certainly wrong) conclusion:
          - new learning environment, self directed learning=not conducive to language learning
          - traditional learning environment, Sage on the Stage teaching= conducive to language learning

- upon talking new NZ schools with the young AF teacher her eyes just lit up and it all seemed to make sense to her: open space where furniture is arranged to support interaction, nooks and crannies for practice in solo or pairs, breakout spaces for recordings or rehearsing, devices for listening and research, students looking for what they need to make meaning in their own term, decent time allocation to allow for continuity, having her course and resources online for students to access whenever wherever, doing on the spot tutorials when the need arise, offering specific breakouts at specific times, planning with teachers from other learning areas to incorporate language and culture where and when necessary, ... she pictured it all there and then! She got it. Which told me: French Languages can be integrated in this way if you have the teaching and the attitude right. And thus be a fully fledged item on the buffet for the curious and imaginative and risk taking learner, not just a Learning Area in the NZC!

Where am I going with all that I hear you say?
There is a need to investigate, demonstrate and reflect on how French can be incorporated in a student self directed curriculum in order for language learning to fully contribute to make learners connected to the world they live in, confident to meet others and being able to walk in their shoes in full knowledge of who they are, as well as gaining an awareness that learning is a life long journey and that languages can pop in anytime in their lives.

- of the bloggers who have contributed to this thinking is Claire Amos, a New Zealand educator whose excellent online presence I have followed for some years now and whose work has gone a long way in explaining and convincing me of the role of Teaching as Inquiry. The lady is a sharer of good stuff.  I can't say I know her but I can say she sure has the most awesome eportfolio I know of. Anyway Claire in her current position is undertaking with a team of NZ teachers an edutour of self directed schools in the US and Canada.  I have been reading with interest her accounts, which prompted me to google the schools that they are visiting . Through visiting these schools' websites I could see that Languages featured fully. Sure Canada has a different relation to learning languages that NZ has but that sure indicates that it can be done.

- which got me to contact, Jacques Cool a French Speaking Canadian whose tweets both in French and English I value highly for state of the art information. Hence I DMed Jacques this am to ask him if he knew of any English speaking Canadian self directed learning school where languages were fully a part of the curriculum. He was interested by my question and has sent it on to an expert in this field! WOW there are experts in this field! I now am truly excitingly waiting to hear back.

And then what? A little dream situation: advice from an expert + model schools to learn from + language teaching clued up AF teacher + keen to learn and inquire NZ French teacher(s) + new schools environment in NZ + Learning Language integration+ networking = being proactive in ensuring French (Languages!) is an integral part of a varied rich modern curriculum.

Now where do I start to make this happen?

Do I know you?

Upon reading the last paragraph of Managing the Tools, Managing oneself where different attitudes towards producing work are mentioned, I am wondering how to truly know your students in a secondary school.

In traditional secondaries, students going at a frantic pace from one class to the next to the next five day a week, from teacher to teacher, from one group to another, at the sound of a bell. I have at times shadowed students for a day and the experience left me tired and rather blurred...(This is a related but another topic!)
What one teacher gets to know, at best, is who this individual child is in their classroom, what are their competence and aptitudes for the Learning Area you are responsible for.
Typically we would know about a student who has special needs or who has been particularly "naughty" but for the majority what do we actually know? 
How is the student doing in another learning area? What aptitudes does s/he develop there? How aware of this is s/he? How can s/he draw on this to support work in another area? Is his/her "rushing to get things done" the same in another class? Does s/he apply the same minutiea elsewhere?
What is available to a specialist teacher to know their students better? Are data, school vision, policies, chosen goals used? How do we know if they actually supports this essential action? What exists in terms of collaboration between learning areas to incite them to really know their students? Does it work?

Which way back to the Drawing Board? - Part 2

MyPortfolio is the tip of the iceberg! Upon establishing how my involvement with MyPortfolio developed, I now want to attempt and take stock of how it has impacted my understanding of education in the New Zealand context (and beyond?), my personal and professional growth, my interest in Professional Learning  and generally speaking my own Learning. There is a lot in my kete, and it is pretty messy...

Where am I now? 
Being a MyPortfolio trainer has allowed me to fill many gaps in my knowledge and understanding of teaching and learning (not an easy thing to admit but my reality nonetheless...)

- an ePortfolio makes the learning process visible to whom it matters most: the user
- an ePortfolio is user centred
- it helps develop a sense of individual purpose, self direction, achievement, over time
- it provides a space to gather all sorts of information in a same place: links, images,  files etc which are either gleaned in different places or at different stages of development (drafts, notes, productions...)
- it allows to share this information, files, reflections with others and invite their input.  Its online nature lets you connect with others and that contribute to collaboration.
- it supports a reflective approach to learning: through revisiting things in one place it allows the user to step back and think about what s/he is doing
- it stores work that is in progress and keeps it when investigation for more/different info is taking place
- its ongoing use favors:

    > the development of digital competences (use of webtools, effective research, file/resource management, content creation, use of tags, understanding attribution, creative commons, leaving comments and feedback, participating in an online community and associated behaviours, digital footprint... _
    > exploration and curiosity!
An ePortfolio approach (MyPortfolio use) supports the intent and vision of the NZC. 
An ePortfolio approach supports a socio-constructivist pedagogy, authentic learning based on learners' experiences,  group work, trial and error,  learning by doing, where the learner takes responsibility for their own work: an education is not something that one receives, it is something one acquires.
So that is that in a nutshell for the teaching-learning"ah ah" moments.

Here are some of my learning and some of the observations I have made while training teachers to use MyPortfolio:

- Always start by having the group talk about the "Why?" and work back to "How",  massaging in "supporting questions" if/when necessary.
- Have plenty of examples: teachers like to see what it looks like! But dont show them all at once, insert them when the need arises  (And throw in some whizzy tools!)
- Make sure there is a final product: teachers want to be able to have something to show for for their time involvement (in this case a first page, with a few artefacts and a journal entry shared to a friend or to a group for feedback)
- One size does not fit all! Skills, interests, purpose, pre knowledge, contexts, infrastructures are different everywhere! This was particularly a hard one to get around with the time constraint (90 min) the content (presenting the space as a reflective tool) the format (guided discovery) of the Taster Sessions. For half day workshops all of this was extended and the day workshops enabled a lot more conversation and exchange sometimes around the Why but mainly around the How! (This is the object of a concluding remark to follow)
eg: I went over time often, and no one ever rushed out ;-) ! That is my very own measure of the willingness to engage all the teachers I have worked with so far have effectively displayed!  I discovered that teachers did not always see the reflection as the primary buy in, so I weaved it in after presenting the group function (teachers primarily interested in seeing how they and their students communicate on this space for assessment purpose for instance). I saw with my own eyes there is a huge discrepancy in the level of skills required to perform a range of basic steps on a computer which at times hindered the guided discovery approach.  The least skilled the least likely to work within a small group thus the need for me to take time during the training to show one skill (eg: embed external media) to one person and this person teaches others during the session.
- emphasis is put on the importance to start with a small concrete step and build on it, to be strategic about it and start with the end (the why!) in mind. And if necessary to spend more time on the why. 
- Stepping into the eportfolio world ("What I can do" rather than "what I know") both students and teachers are learners need to own their criteria for success. Hence a departure from traditional practice and process for teachers and their students...

Following this immediately by a list of assumptions born from observations that I can not back with hard evidence but that are surely feeding my interrogations!  (Yet to support some of these generic observations you may want to cast an eye on Cathy Wylie's Secondary schools in 2012 Main findings from the NZCER national survey ).

- Use of ICTs is developing. Is it a part of a school strategy? Is there evidence of it effecting students' learning in any given school? Is there any supporting PD?
- How do teachers move from being internet consumers (the model students get) to content creators?
- Equipment and internet access vary a lot from one school to another one learner to another. What to do to lessen the divide?
- Words used to describe actions are not always accurate (eg: I am an early adopter= I have an eportfolio account, we are implementing = we have played around myportfolio at department level, our students create content = they have shown me their powerpoint made from the template I gave them, my principal wants us to use myportfolio across the school= my principal is justifying allowing the 1/2 day PD, I follow a teacher as inquiry cycle to inform my teaching=  my professional goal is to implement level 3 ncea etc.) How to ensure terminology use describes a reality?
- Strong focus on NCEA and assessments load: is this concealing at times the teaching and learning changes brought in by some of the AS (eg: .3 in the Learning Languages area)?
- The idea of collaborating across schools is welcome but effectively not done that much. How to move to from a "sharing resources" culture to "sharing experiences and big ideas"?
- Online discussion forums to ask questions are used tepidly (the groups started in myportfolio training are not used,  many myportfolio users contact me via direct message rather than post a question on a forum...) Which is a vastly different from the rich conversations and exchanges I witness on say Twitter (eg: #edchatnz) (totally voluntary) or through dedicated NZ educators forums (eg: VLN) where the conversations are either brought on or kept going by dedicated facilitators.
(Tom Whitby in this recent blogpost summed up eloquently and aptly what I merely sensed:
"There is now a new gap in education. In a system riddled with too many gaps, this is not good news. Technology and social media specifically have provided tools that enable educators to connect, communicate collaborate and create. That ability makes a difference in individuals. It enables reflection and relevance. It is also creating two groups of educators, the connected, and the unconnected. The discussions of the connected seem to be focused on the future and moving toward it. The discussions of the unconnected seem to be steeped in the past with little or very slow-moving forward movement." This is a different conversation and blogpost altogether but it still matters as an eportfolio/myportfolio use hinges on the same principles.
-  How to move from Professional Learning to be considered as something that ought to be provided/received to something to go and get? 

Last but not least of my learning from being a MyPortfolio trainer and involved in the French Teachers' Community:

- Digital literacies play a more and more important role: digital competences and skills need some sort of recognition
- There is a need for a strategic approach to elearning in every school, developed from the Why? and the pedagogy it aims to support/enhance, with criteria for success bought it worked towards by all staff and
- Individual Professional elearning needs (How?) to be identified from professional learning goals which are in line with the school strategy
- Ongoing Professional development plans need to support the strategy.
- All of the above is necessary for the teachers to engage fully and meaningfully, in support of  personal and professional motivation,  into revisiting their pedagogy, their skills in a supportive environment.

Phew... yes I have learnt a lot.
With no community support budget for MyPortfolio as it stands, plenty of individual teachers wanting to know more but have no access to PD budget, heaps of colleagues who have started and wonder about the next step, what am I going to do with all this?

Which way back to the Drawing Board? - Part 1

Before I can move forward I need to take a good look where I have come from and establish where I am now. Yes that is about my journey with MyPortfolio so far. And it is about my lack of visibility into the future. Something tells me MyPortfolio is here to stay on the NZ Education landscape but as I write someone is still to decide for its funding post December 2013. I usually tend to take things one day at a time, as the journey I am about to retrace indicates. But with what I know now, it just doesn't cut it. I know I need to go back to the drawing board but don't quite know the way.

Where have I been?
- 2009 - New Languages NCEA Internal Standards, aligned to the NZC, require a "portfolio of evidence" "gathered over time" "selected through a student/teacher negocation process"
Immediate thought arising: how to manage this practically? (At this stage I am not thinking too much in terms of pedagogy and NZC!)
- Hear of Mahara an eportfolio software, developed from the needs of a consortium of NZ Universities to provide their students with an eportfolio space. Tiki tour at a local college that has an install. The word eportfolio enters my vocabulary. 
- Feb. 2010 - Attend Learning at School, discover amongst a plethora of tools that "support teaching and learning" (yep I do love the tools still) my first intros to  "Why"  using an eportfolio.
- Keep my ears to the ground in terms of ePortfolio with further investigations to deepen my understanding  The phrases learning journey and lifelong learning become familiar. It also becomes clearer to me that technology pointers are only going to help a little, that what we are looking at is to change the way we have been assessing and to give the students the responsibility to own his/her learning. Which prompts me to download again the NZC and to this time properly read it. Page 36 in particular retains my attention:
 

- I dwelve some more as I am now aware of MyPortfolio a hosted instance of Mahara made available to NZ schools, funded by the MoE.  It is not until Ulearn10 that I find out more information and meet users. The practical in me sees a solution for students and teachers for the internal assessments. I have not got enough hindsight at that stage to gage the transformative "power" of this technology on teaching and learning.
- Feb. 2011 - First real intro to MyPortfolio at Kristina's workshop. I am sold! I also meet Ronja a Language teacher who shares my enthusiasm. She does have classes and students to try it with! (I am no longer teaching). I make my first pages, to discover the functions. The Learning Languages Group is created, I join the MyPortfolio Discussions Group. I effectively take my first steps in the MyPortfolio community. Till then my immediate community has been the French teachers of NZ, being an NZAFT exec  which reinforced the bond created by redeveloping and maintaining french.ac.nz and managing its Listserve.
- Paul (then in MoE team that has started MyPortfolio) was keen to see the MyPortfolio word spread and potential users found. Free 90min taster sessions were already made available on request to all primary and secondary schools in NZ. There were two trainers and the rapid growth of early enthusiasts contributed a contingent of local trainers. The idea is to grow interest and develop use from within the community of users. Thus a need for a critical mass of users for this to grow organically! 
- Paul asked me "how can I help you?"? 2011 was a NZALT Langsems year. Language teachers meet in the regions. I suggested I could hold MyPortfolio introductions and workshops at each of these Langsems, and that I could contact the then Regional Language Advisers and offer a day's training at Cluster levels. I surveyed Language teachers. I got on the road.  I kept my journal. I learned by doing.
- Jan. 2012 - There is still plenty of demands on the MyPortfolio taster session calendar, and with one trainer left I am offered the opportunity to take his place until the contract runs out end June 2012. 
- New format (90 min taster session is not a half day workshop that I have ran so far), new people (from 48 different schools many primary, a few big secondary, across Learning areas, people I don't know!), new surroundings (visiting schools not conference rooms!) new focus (in 90 min, the standard taster focus on the Reflection, whereas the focus had been on managing assessement and feedback with Language teachers), new geographical horizons (up and down the South Island, and some part of the lower North Island), new way of doing things (making contact at potential user's request, explaining who I was, reminding them of their interest,  connecting them regionally as a small group, facilitating the "finding time and place" that suits all! sending reminders, located the schools geographically, this is NZ after all!, writing invoices, keeping tab of expenses... ) new outlook on what the NZ education landscape looks like on the ground, across sectors, new awareness (no such thing as "one fits all model" rather "one fits one"), new reality (good infrastructure access innovation exist in pockets and are unevenly distributed). One very lasting picture is built from the numerous interactions: MyPortfolio is a shared online space which functionalities definitely "open up new and different ways of learning" (NZC p.36) and supports fully the Vision of the NZC for "young people who will be confident connected actively involved life long learners". These were a short . These six months went so fast.
- March 2012 - New opportunities arise. I am invited to work with GCSN schools as a consultant. That adds another layer to my understanding of the diversity and the complexity of the issues at play when introducing something new. More than ever it is the "Why" that must lead this. I see school grounds really affected by the earthquake   , whole neighborhoods deserted with houses destroyed and boarding up and places and other schools and neighborhoods which appear to look as they ever looked. What I quickly gather though is that everyone, teacher and student, that I spend time with has been affected deeply by the catastrophe. What I am amazed with is the demand for something new, at the interest generated by eportfolio and myportfolio, at the warmth of the welcome, at the openness of mind. I end up going back to work in Christchurch GCSN schools in November 2012 and again in March 2013. 
- Working with the Christchurch schools lead to work with schools from the Wellington Loop and with a cluster of teachers located in the Nelson region. I meet again teachers I have met before in other myportfolio workshops. Learning happens when it is revisited often, in different contexts, over a period of time.
- I enjoy contributing to the online MyPortfolio group forums where I can, I learn from the questions and I continue to develop my understanding of online communities and how they "work", how its contributors seem to move quite fast and focus on the future.
- I accompany the work of three language teachers in three different secondary schools and of  their students using myPortfolio remotely, we meet regularly online, take stock and map next steps.
- March 2013 - The MoE continues to support hosting and development of MyPortfolio till at least Dec 2013. Some schools continue to want to know more about MyPortfolio and get in direct contact with me. ePortfolio is now almost a household name now for many in New Zealand schools, it appears often in online conversations and generates conversations around the pedagogy which leads to its use, the reasons why, the type of tools to build one etc. It may have entered the vocabulary but not so widely the practice yet. All good things take time. Hence my multiple interrogations! (To be continued)

1 min 37

Et si elles faisaient ça en français qu' est ce qu' elles apprendraient qui n est pas possible d' apprendre avec un papier et un crayon?

Cultural, intercultural, bicultural, multicultural - 2

Ko te kai o te rangatire he kōrero (leadership is putting words into action) summed up Deanne Thomas and Wharehoka Wano's  ICOT2013 breakout Cultural Leadership

When I saw De and Whare presented, I jumped to the opportunity to "meet" them. I had listened to their Keynote Language, culture, identity and raising student achievement a while back. It had sat at the back of my mind since for two reasons:
 - the importance and place of story and personal story telling
 - the importance of history
in any educational context and more particularly the educational context of Aotearoa.
De and Whare in this Keynote pointed out that some Maōri students know little about their language their culture, their place, and that is a slow process to re establish that. Part of this process is acknowledging local histories and tikanga of the students, so that all are "comfortable in (their) own self, (their) own boots before moving on into the wide word".  

Can iCLT techiques, which aim to foster interculturally competent learners who can confidently navigate intercultural interactions and relationships, apply to support Maōri learners learn as Maōri?

I need help understanding what cultural responsive pedagogy encompasses. For that I wrote  Tamara Bell  an email to ask her if she could help:

"... I was wondering if you could put me in the direction of a couple of edtalks or other short videos that could be used as a starter and/or support to conversations around teaching and learning strategies for Māori learners and raising/working on cultural responsiveness in the Language secondary classroom please.
I see there is a wealth of information out there. But I would like to make the right choices to instill curiosity and foster reflection for the participants at upcoming workshops for French and Spanish teachers, organised by ILEP,*  to continue to look into this post workshop, to make connections with what is happening school wide in their institutions

Language teachers base their curriculum on the Six principles for intercultural communicative language teaching and if you had any suggestions to make on how this can, potentially, link with cultural responsiveness, I would be grateful for your input... "

Tamara graciously replied really shortly afterwards with a wealth of resources! I felt so supported!

Here are some clips Tamara has recommended to watch:
(>what follows each resource are my quick notes upon listening)

Russell Bishop "A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations"
> care for Maōri students as Maōri, for their performance, that they learn/embrace/give opportunity for the funds of knowledge they bring to the classroom, interact, negociate, use strategies to engage effectively, keep evidence of student performance to guide where the teacher is taking the teaching and the students know their outcome in a formative way.
> improving teaching strategies and the effectiveness of teachers in increasing the engagement and academic achievement of Māori students.

Phoebe Davis "Critical Elements for Raising Maōri Achievement"
> forming relationship with students and whanau is fundamental
> know that there are a range of kids, which iwi  and acknowledge whakapapa
> it says that you are for real and they are for real > what matters is that you try
> make the effort, think of activities that connect the teacher and the students (eg: acknowledge the different places, the people you may know in common etc)
> being culturally located >  talk to maori iwi > Where is our school? what does it mean? acknowledge the community.

Maria Tibble "Professional Responsibility to Maōri students"
> what has had the most impact for Maria are Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia as both allow to move away from an emotional approach to an evidence based professional approach to discuss the types of relationships, the pedagogy that make a difference for Maōri students.
> Rather than the teachers intellectualising the situation it is the students' voices that said that pedagogy, culture and relationship make the difference to Maōri students
> Maria urges all teachers to read, reflect, keep informed and relentlessly look into what makes a difference to Maōri Students, to commit to change.

Maria Tibble "Culture Counts"
> locate yourself culturally (where I am from, who I am )
> show you care about students as people (you invite students into your world as you culturally locate yourself, this opens a pathway for the students to follow and in return bring into the classroom their story)
> engender a relationship that has to be authentic,  spend the time, authenticate your commitment to Maōri students by saying to them "your culture counts"
> show you care about their learning

Questions: So what to take away from these videos? Do I recognise the cultural differences?  What does cultural responsiveness look like in the language classroom? How is the scene set? How do we know the rapport is building? Which activities foster inclusiveness? What has been tried and tested? Where is the part of the Target Language? How do we know it works? What do I adapt in my teaching?

Tamara also shared this acronym listing key ingredients to consider to that effect :

Questions: Which of these ingredients make it regularly, all the time, seldom in the language classroom? What do they look like in practice? Which activities are they incorporated in? How aware of them are we? What contributes to embedding them? What do we action to know the students in front of us? How do students and teachers keep trace of their performance? How do we know it works?

Another two great resources Tamara shared for feeding the conversation and the reflection:

• Culturally Responsive Practice in a mainstream school
• a Refresher about What Works for Maōri Learners a forum on the VLN where educators exchange stories and ideas. Lots to read and learn from, and definitely the type of conversation to aim for with Language Learning in mind. Many Language teachers work with Te Reo teachers and form the same Department. What can be learnt from each other?
  
  Where am I at now? Can iCLT techniques apply?
• To move on to implement a more culturally responsive pedagogy there is need for conversation amongst teachers who are actively involved, for seeking and finding evidence, keeping track of it (taking responsibility for their learning), for making connection with the students, knowing what they have got to say, bearing it in mind in the teaching, using it to inform the next steps of learning,  connecting and interacting with family and community, enabling support from within the institution, for wanting to keep informed and reflect on practice often and meaningfully.  These to me are the tenets of effective pedagogy.
•  What if a more culturally responsive pedagogy brought about the better more effective teacher and thus benefited all of our learners, regardless of cultural and ethnical backgrounds?
•  And in order to make this learning journey "visible, traceable, rewindable and sharable" what if it was the perfect opportunity to blend in tools and online spaces in the practice to assist in this journey?

Writing this post is about raising my own awareness of what Cultural Competence entails. I am hoping to learn from your own experiences and other colleagues' who may have been more exposed than me in their school environment and have started to embed or are embedding these competences in their teaching. 
I also start to see where culturally responsive pedagogy and iCLT interweave as there is a common vocabulary and a common intent.  It may be worth bearing in mind the teams of extremely competent educators that might support Language teachers in their inquiry, namely TMoA at Core Education and Te Toi Tupu Blended learning PLD (that I am aware of). I would like to suggest that NZALT and ILEP make contact with these organisations in order to invite them to facilitate workshops and give presentations.

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*the workshop that I will facilitate aims to raise awareness of moments of learning, capturing these moments in order to be able to say how we know where we are at and decide on a next step: this can happen with the digitalising, collecting and organising of learning evidence (for students) and of professional engagement(for teachers) and the tools that support the necessary reflection that emanates from this process.