Nano Presentation!

Upon leaving #Ignition13 Sonya (@vanschaijik) asked if I would give a three minute (nano) presentation at the first #teachMeetNZ that she is courageously (and effectively!) lifting off the ground.
This is happening Saturday 4th May at 2pm! 
It will be via Google Hangout and will stream live.
Sonya got a range of teachers say they d give it a go just like that! (Compare this with what it takes to get to agree on a date and time to meet with some colleagues...)
 
And I said I would join in. 

I am not too worried about the tools, I have used HangOut and screenshare quite a lot (especially since Skype removed screensharing), and right now it looks that the format of TeachMeet requires that I send the moderator (Sonya) my 12 slides spaced with 15" in between. Total time presenting is 3 minutes. That is the scary bit.

Thought I would talk ePortfolio why not? Although I toyed with an idea around Intercultural Competence (maybe another time LOL!)
And that got me to trial the text to speech SlideSpeech. The developer John (@slidespeech)  was showing its capabilities at #Ignition.
I remain unconvinced about the mechanical voice and the intonations. Maybe better than the French accent though. (Edit: I have now chosen to do a voice over version though!)  On the plus side the synthetic voice will deter from focus on content: getting a point across in 3 min flat is a big ask, and I am unsure that what I am saying is either clear or convincing. Having said that I will actually be presenting on the day. If you want to watch, it will stream live from here. There are some cool people lined up.

Anyhow, here is my first ever 3 min worth. I will really welcome feedback my critical friend!

                   You Teach You Learn - ePortfolio approach  

May 4th:
#teachmeet took place and it was a great experience!
Very good presentations indeed! Worth checking out here and more about the presenters on the wiki
Due to last second "stage fright" I pressed on the wrong button and my slides did not display properly. Luckily I was stopped midflow and could readjust! When you show something on Hangout you dont actually see as the other participants. Yet did not capture well on the clip... La prochaine fois!
So here is what I actually presented. Hover over the little cog option tool (bottom left) to bring up speaker's notes):

On the subject of Intercultural competence...

Twitter (@Sarah_FLE, a French teacher at the Institut Français in Madrid) and a post on Facebook Le Zinc by Lesley brought this website to my attention:
Voyages en français

http://voyagesenfrancais.fr/?lang=fr

It is inviting interaction from visitors to the site. The curator is also involved in classes quadblogging across countries.
Its section Miroirs is dedicated to adopting an intercultural approach, that awakens the curious and reflective in the learner.
This website is a mine of amazing ideas that would feed a problem based learning approach. Not quite language learning as we know it, but what can be taken from this to incorporate in the classroom as you know it?

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)

Cultural, intercultural, bicultural, multicultural - 3

So what tools have we got at our disposal to support the work of the Language teacher to be culturally and interculturally competent?

(I am writing this post to support the facilitation of some aspects of the upcoming ILEP workshops . It is a means to get my head round the complexity! It will be interesting to see how the "knowledge and experience in the room" during the workshop make the conversation evolve! I hope that participants do not turn up thinking they will be given ready solutions!)

Te Tātaiako- Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Maōri Learners has been developed to meet the goals of Ka Hikitia so that teachers think of what it takes to have success in teaching Maōri learners. Ka Hikitia, the Government Maōri Education strategy is being redeveloped for another 5 years starting 2013.

Te Tātaiako

Te Tātaiako (here) is a highly readable (and printable) 20 page document to support teachers' work in personalising education for Maōri students.
It lists 5 main competencies (in orange my quick summary) :
Wānanga - dialogue with learners and communities
Whanaungatanga - active engagement in working relationships
Manaakitanga - integrity, sincerity and respect towards learners' culture
Tangata Whenuatanga - providing context where the identity, culture, language of the learners affirmed
Ako - teachers taking responsibility for their there own learning as well as for the learning of the learners
Then the document goes on to detail each competence with explanatory criteria as well as examples of learner voice and whanau voice.  "For registered teachers, the focus is möhio: knowing how to validate and affirm Mäori and iwi culture, and applying that knowledge." (p.4 Te Tātaiako)

It is the must-print and the must-discuss when work is done around supporting the achievement of Maōri learners.

I would like to discuss with you and other Language teachers, who may have internalized these, if I am right in thinking that these competences and behaviours are also at the heart of Intercultural competencies, or if not at the heart where they sit in relation with the iCLTs.

Should this turn out to be verified, what needs to be mobilized by the teacher in order to:
- make the connections cultural competence-intercultural competence and ensure they are explicit for all learners?
- provide culturally responsive and engaging contexts for learning?
- provide regular timely feedback/feedforward to help progress and make it visible?
- develop a relationship with all the language learners, with respect of all of the languages and cultures they are bringing in the classroom?
- document classroom and outside actions, student voice, whanau engagement, achievement, success, trials, steps taken to support learner's progress?
- reflect upon progress against the criteria?

In comes the unmissable opportunity to see how ICTs and eLearning can help with evidencing the development and growth of the cultural and intercultural competence of the teacher.
There are many tools out there that allow to :
- access information (eg: MoE websites, professional reading, NZCER, Universities etc)
- initiate/participate in conversations (eg:, professional forums, VLN groups, listserves, social media...)
- collect evidence (eg: webtools, cloud drives, apps, pictures, videos, sound files)
- select and display evidence to demonstrate some particular aspect of the competence
- reflect (individually and/or through sharing with others, in or outside your school) on progress being made, where you were at when starting, where you are now, where you are going next.

I can see how an eportfolio* system like MyPortfolio come in as a handy tool as it allows for all of that to happen in one space!

And in order to document and think about what I am doing and how I am doing it, I really need a meaty driving question which is going to be at the heart of my professional goals for a determined period of time. Central to effective pedagogy is Teaching as Inquiry and this simple reflection tool can be a step to start the process. Teaching as Inquiry has plenty of benefits as it allows to incorporate all of the school/teacher initiatives (eg: particular aspects of Cultural Competence/elearning/ iCLT) in one cycle, and allows to establish a time scale for steps to happen by.
I would actually think along these same lines to document and reflect on my practice over time if my professional goals were assessed through Appraisal. It is a matter of lining up what I set out to do in knowledge of what I ought to do within my context with what I want to achieve over that cycle.

And if carrots are needed to effectively get started or get serious...   Professional learning goals must be aligned with the Registered Teacher Criteria. Te Tātaiako have direct links with all of the twelve criteria. So by working on developing these competences, teachers are effectively working on demonstrating that they are meeting aspects of these criteria. But it is not a box ticking exercise that can be crammed in a month prior to renewing your Teacher Registration. It needs to be planned over a cycle (3 years), all twelve criteria need to be evidenced, the key indicators defining the set of values to measure against. 

The Enabling eLearning Registered Teacher Criteria and eLearning is a "resource that illustrates how e-learning examples can be used to support the  Registered Teacher Criteria. The twelve criteria have been "unpacked" with examples provided for each criteria"(Source).  I used to refer to its precursor a lot and this current version is very recent. I will make use of this and link to MyPortfolio use in the upcoming workshops. Numerous tools are mentioned, there are many options to investigate.

           Cultural Competence + Teaching as Inquiry +  eLearning
=
        effective culturally responsive Language Teacher

Phew...

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*an eportfolio lands itself to this type of documenting: it is about filming the process. Understanding, developing, using competences and skills happen over time. It does not all happen at once nor is there a right or wrong. An eportfolio allows to show steps taken to work towards a competence (collecting and selecting evidence), in knowledge of the criteria, to reflect over these steps, to connect with others (HoD, colleagues etc) for feedback and feedforward,  then to decide on the next steps in a learning process knowing what has come before. Hence an eportfolio suits an inquiry and along the way users of an eportfolio gain in digital competence and capability.
___________________________________________________________________________________

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.

________________________________________________________________________________
*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.

Cultural, intercultural, bicultural, multicultural - 1

I am setting out here to try to debunk some stuff I am finding somewhat hard to get around. It is likely to take more than this post, so I will start here with what I am trying to do and with some resources gathered to inform my exploration.

Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching is "a set of techniques", six principles "for putting interculturally informed pedagogy into practice"

"Students build their awareness of language and culture, their language knowledge, their cultural knowledge, and positive attitudes towards themselves and others. Intercultural communicative language teaching (iCLT) encourages students to make comparisons and connections between languages and cultures" (Learning Languages Pedagogy, TKI)

In this 6 principles I recognise the following words that relate directly to Learning:
    - actively involves
    - make connection
    - social interaction
    - reflect
    - take responsibility

"The development of intercultural competencies" has become an essential feature of school education in NZ and other Western countries, and the responsibility for this falls to some extent, but not only, on languages education and thus on the Language teacher.

Statistics New Zealand, in its National Ethnic Population projections, informs us that Maori (+29%), Asian (+145%) and Pacific (+59%) populations will continue to increase their share of the NZ population by 2021 (that's 8 years away!), with Europeans only increasing by 5%. All ethnies bar Europeans will have a much younger age structure on average of NZ population bar Europeans,  who are overall getting older. And all ethnies bar Europeans will have more babies thus more children going through school. Add to this the growing diversity of cultures, backgrounds, religions and languages that migrants bring to any NZ regions (example in the Bay of Plenty) and it is looking vibrant indeed!

All of these reasons (and the specific context of teaching Languages in Aotearoa NZ) makes me want to move on with "developing my intercultural competencies" as this multicultural mix is coming to a classroom near me rapidly (or is already there depending where you are located geographically).

Source

These are all reasons why as a teacher of French,  I am not to merely transmitting information about my culture but I have "focus on raising awareness of culture and culture-in-language in the lived experience of the students and people from the target language culture(s) as well as other cultures present in a classroom or community"

 Language learning itself won't necessarily foster a positive attitude to other's culture hence the need for interculturality to be addressed explicitly and openly in the classroom.


What does interculturally informed pedagogy look like in the language classroom?

• construct knowledge through EXPLORING cultural practices
• make CONNECTIONS between cultures, and between existing knowledge of culture and language, and new learning
• social INTERACTION that involve communicating across cultural boundaries
• REFLECT ‘critically and constructively on linguistic and cultural differences and similarities’
• TAKE responsibility for their intercultural growth, assisted by teachers who, for example, foster engagement with difference and awareness of stereotypes. (Ref: Dellit 2005, pp. 26–28)

I would like to discuss this specifically to think of actions in the classroom that support this (use of some radical controversial materials to engage? role playing? online communication with native speakers? make culture explicit, open with key questions to wonder about eg: how do they do it, how do I do it, is it different, the same, what do I notice, why, what do I learn from it, what do I learn about my own culture, myself from what I have learnt? )

What is iCLT setting out to do?

"to foster interculturally competent learners who can confidently navigate intercultural interactions and relationships",

• who are tolerant and have a positive attitude towards others' culture,
• who can communicate with a native speaker without necessarily being fluent themselves,
• who welcome diversity and also are able to see some universal similarities amongst cultures including their own,
• who can confront and reflect on their preconceptions and prejudices,
• who can resolve and/or learn from misunderstandings arising from miscommunication,
• who develops a strong sense of one's own identity
  who is a cultural intermediary between one' s own culture and the foreign culture
  

So what do I do as Language teacher?

I am a French teacher who is French. "What does it mean to me to be French?" "What does it mean to be French in NZ?" "What makes me French?" "Who am I?" are questions that I am now more curious to think about. And if I am to grow a culturally responsive pedagogy, I ought to develop intercultural competences which ban assumptions, distance myself from conventional attitudes about differences, show deep interest in others' cultures, including of my students in my classroom, provide these students with the opportunity to not only eplore another culture and language but above all gain or strengthen their awareness of their own cultural and language through discovering another.

To move forward with this I need to go back and the urgency is to know my students, all of them, for who they are really.
And to learn to do that in a New Zealand context I want to turn to the kaupapa around teaching/learning strategies for Maōri learners and raising Cultural Responsiveness.

ePortfolio: Tag, Reflect and Assess - Still from ICOT2013

The Tagging the Learning Journey- A new model for assessment by Ewan McIntosh appealed as soon as I saw it on the ICOT2013 programme.

What I am trying to do here is to connect the development of an ePortfolio, the use of Tags as introduced by Ewan, and the principles of Assessment for Learning. I go on to suggest what it could look like for the Language learner.
A tall order: hopefully by the end of this post I will have outlined a vision ofhow it is all meant to work together to "enable student to take more control over their assessment" (E. McIntosh)

ePortfolios can be a showcase of the best, the final products that are the result of following a task.  The teacher can access the product, and grade it. This is an initial step in the eportfolio world for Language students and teachers in NZ: NCEA Interact and Write internally assessed standards require a portfolio of evidence. That is 3 to 5 pieces packaged together to be graded, by the teacher.

Yet a move to portfolio assessment offers a great deal more by opening a wonderful box of opportunities to, amongst others:
- change the nature of the tasks (Is "one fits all" still current when personalising learning?)
- change how the tasks are assessed (feedback, feedforward)
- redistribute the assessesing cards (self, peer, teacher)
- make the learning process visible to both the student (learning to learn) and the teacher (measuring the progress not just the achievement)
- hence know the students better and know how they learn better (to ensure that each assessment is appropriate and fit for purpose)
- give the students a chance to think critically and reflect about their work (gain awareness of not only what they learn but also how they are learning)

Add "e" in front of portfolio and e-porfolio become a vehicle for teachers and students to develop together their digital skills and competences, as well as their creativity.
Then you start having an eportfolio as a process, showing the stages of learning ("filming the learning", from beginning to end, with initial draft, rework, feedback, to final draft) that are now visible, can be revisited to identify how skills have evolved (reflection), to showcase success (to parents and/or third party?) and to establish where to next.

Ewan McIntosh at Clair2013 presenting Reflection

What Ewan McIntosh explained in his workshop is how his team and the teachers in the London school worked together on shifting the onus of assessing from the teacher to the student. So that the students own their learning, by organising it, reflecting on it and sharing it. So that the teacher, by refering to these reflections, gets a way richer, fuller picture of each individual's learning journey, thus empowering him to plan the next learning step, in full knowledge of where the student is at and in conversation with them.

Ok I must add here that Ewan's workshop is set up in the concept of Design Thinking (here is an example), in a provocative inquiry learning project that the students themselves entitled "London is full, evacuate", that all teachers are on board revisiting their assessment strategies, that the notion of time seem to be strategically ignored and that a range of technology is provided.

I am not (yet!) trying to delve too much on how this could look like in a French class.
What I am trying to do here though is to extract the possibilities considering our framework (NZC, Achievement Objectives, Ellis Principles, iCLT, and effective pedagogy) to develop the use of an eportfolio to support language learning. 

- Know your students, spend time,  have them define for themselves why they are learning French, ask them to show you the type of work they produce in other areas, invite them to list what they see as their strengths and weaknesses, what they find easy or hard, what prior knowledge or interest they can bring to the class. Make this a first eportfolio activity, by recording this on a profile page or a blog post for instance.

- Allow to let go of the tyranny of time and programmes. Make time to explain and discuss what a learning process is, why they are engaging in thinking about their learning in the French class, make time to have them "picture" what an eportfolio looks like, what type of stuff there is in it, collaboratively. Suggest they share their strengths and weaknesses with others in the class to build a support network (KC: Relate to others). Make a place and time to really know students, and be able to say how we know them.

- Design authentic ("is there a genuine need to do this?"), passion tugging ("are we going to have a good solid argument about this") and engaging ("would I want to do this if I was 14?) task. If unsure of the response, put it to your students and invite them to tweak it for their purpose. (KC Participating and Contributing). Involvement in the assignment brief can only deepen engagement. Plan for collaborative and collective assessments. Build in opportunities for students' creativity to come through by letting them chose their direction and their medium for completion (slideshow, video, poster, online, on paper...) Model, and if needed, prompt them:

eg: If preparing for an upcoming trip to New Caledonia, brainstorm what preparing involves: some may choose to investigate places to visit and create a pamphlet, other make a useful phrase booklet to print, others prepare a mihi or a cultural show and record the process, others again might publish the itinerary for their hosts families etc. (KC: use of Language Symbol and Text)

- Define, clearly,  together,  what constitutes high quality work: discuss, display on walls, talk together about it... The students ought to internalise this to own it. Use official curriculum or ncea stuff if you want but cut the jargon out of it with your students. Making connections with how they learn in other learning areas can help them engage in the process of learning French and it will show on their eportfolio through their reflections (KC Thinking)

- Consider that any task can lead to potential evidence towards the criteria.

- Assure them that errors constitute learning, that is why there are drafts on which they get feedback and that they keep them as a record of their progress. 

- Hand over to student to capture evidence of learning when it occurs. Great use of devices, own or not, and wifi! Not a "let's record this now because today is recording day"! Not everyone can capture evidence of their own learning at the same prescribed time, and not everyone will update their eportfolio this way either. (KC: Self Management)

- Let the students tag the evidence meaningfully, this will help internalise the criteria for high quality work (KC: using Language, Symbol and Text)

Ewan McIntosh suggests three different categories of tags to start with
(I am adding in brackets some tags that could be used for Languages)

- what it is (Eg: read, write, type of text, interact, present...)
- the skill or competence (eg: language, culture, produce, spelling, pronunciation, past event, future event, accuracy, fluency ...)
- an "emotion tag" how the learner feels about it (Great, hard,  proud, love, must do better, hate, boring, success... those tags could be in the target language)

Tagging online evidence allows to organise it. 
eg: find all the evidence tagged "interact" and "proud" at the click of a mouse and thus help the student identify which they would like to submit for a showcase portfolio towards 1.3

- Prompt them to use these tags to reflect on their progress (KC Thinking)

Ewan McIntosh suggests to scaffold reflective capability with simple questions to start with:
- where have I been? (eg: "I found it hard to describe a situation in writing")
- where am I now? (eg: "here I have used some language with success and x understood my description")
- where am I going next? (eg: "I must do better with the accuracy of my pronunciation to avoid misunderstandings)

Over a period of time and depending on the level of language acquisition, students can start to use the target language to tag and then reflect .

- Comment on their reflections punctually, using a reminder prompt ("do you know what to do next?"), a scaffold prompt ("ss that enough help?') and an example prompt ("what will you do if you get stuck again?". Leave a mark to acknowledge you are reading and using their reflections to inform your teaching.

- Step back, observe and trust them to start commenting following a similar model on their peers' work.  Consider assessing yourself only sporadically at a designated time (eg: maybe only after rework of an initial draft that has been peer assessed twice or for some designated pieces)

- Consider that different students produce different ePortfolios. You may start with carefully designed templates which will help make the purpose transparent and communicable. Accept that they should just help with the process and that individual students will progress and capture evidence of learning at different stages and through different learning opportunity and possibly personalise their eportfolio.

SO here are some ingredients to "film the learning": Provide great assessment activities (and plenty of them), scaffold them to learn new stuff and revisit previously acquired ones, co-define with students what high quality work looks like and what it involves, provide descriptive feedback in a timely manner and always look towards improvement.  Assist in selecting, in conversation with the student, what constitutes the best pieces for submission to be evaluated formally.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I am merely trying to clarify what steps could help students and teachers understand what are really, in my opinion, the reasons to consider building an ePortfolio: it can be hard initially because  students may not have any piece of evidence to add to their portfolio (if they have been used to producing and saving digital evidence in say, their own drive, they are a step closer to get started!)

They will use self management, digital skills, critical thinking, opportunities to work with others, to learn to trust/critic judgement from a range of people, to gather their own evidence that they can meet the requirement of the task,  to learn not to complete an assignment to be seen just by one, the teacher. The type of stuff they will need to do all life long, when school's out for ever!

Next we can start thinking about some tools that can help with this!

What do you think? Can this work? Something wrong in here? Where is the French I hear you think?
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Thanks to all the following for your virtual great help:

NoTosh Projects
Playing Tag: Ewan McIntosh on Assessment at ICOT2013
Great tips and tools to create eportfolios
Core ten trends 2013: Personalisation
Assessment for Learning TKI
Using the ePortfolio to validate students' learning
Senior Secondary Achievement Objectives Learning Languages TKI
Effective Teaching in Languages TKI
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Making Sense Of - ICOT2013 Goodness

The first I heard of SOLO Taxonomy was at Learning@School 2010. It was back in the glorious days when Flo and I were on a bit of mission to "try heaps". The mission was not clear, that's why maybe it sort of petered out after a few years, yet it was full of joy and questioning. Lots of goodness (one is visible here) came out of it and our friendship is all the richer for it!
So at L@S2010, Flo attended a breakout  where Pam Hook was introducing SOLO. Flo explained to me what she understood, and I sort of left it at that: I was like a possum caught in the headlights and had a kete full of stuff to look at again, investigate and went to look into ePortfolio and mahara-myportfolio as it seemed that providing info on this was answering a genuine need within my Community of Practice. Hence the need to revisit good ideas often, in different contexts, at different times for them to start taking shape...
I have since many a time come across teachers, mainly in primaries, who are hooked on SOLO. I have at times look into it: this introductory clip prompted me to pay more attention:

Lincoln High School Craig Perry and Fiona Bamford's ICOT2013 "Facilitating a whole school thinking framework for lifelong learning" brought it to life for me. (Their presentation here)
I chose to attend their breakout for several reasons: secondary school, lifelong learning, but also the fact that Fiona, Languages amongst other responsibilities, was presenting.

It was just great! And I am not even talking about SOLO! Craig and Fiona's was the story of a secondary school which over time, a long time, have trialled and errored their way into finding a language, common to all, across Departments and Learning Areas, teachers and students,  about learning to help the Lincoln students "say where their learning is at" and "know what they need to do to improve".

Craig Perry and Fiona Bamford ICOT 2013

A story of commitment to make a change, of champions dedicated to the cause, of persistance and of supportive, benevolent leadership. It also highlighted that change happens when specialist support from the outside combines with a genuine identified need from a community. That time is dedicated to make it happen and that it is understood that it does not happen overnight and that there are many hurdles in the way. I appreciated to see how the different Departments at Lincoln have applied SOLO to the NCEA Standards, so that students can see common across subject areas, to help crystalise their learning.  Fiona stressed she was still in the process of doing that for Languages. Nothing happens fast.  I also liked how from their adopting SOLO there is a common approach for literacy. That indicated a great deal of cross curricular collaboration.  I had the opportunity to go to Lincoln in March 2012 when Fiona and a team of Language teachers took a look at MyPortfolio:  I wished I went back to work with them now, equipped of what I know about their work and what I understand about facilitation: we could have made more relevant connections more quickly.

I think that we could benefit, as Language teachers, to hear more from Fiona's journey, how she has moved to thinking in "Thinking" terms rather than just in "Language Learning" terms, how it is effecting her students and her teaching.  We chatted briefly at the end of her presentation and she indicated she had once addressed Language teachers in a PD setting about SOLO but it was not much attended. Hum, maybe the word NCEA was not prominent enough in her prez brief to attract the crowds... (This is intended to be a sharp, cutting remark, you noticed?)

It also confirms that in order to change it is about sharing a vision, believing in it, trusting the process and enabling effective support.

Craig Perry published a really good blogpost today. An eloquent post where he writes that despite being opened to be challenged on his views and beliefs about SOLO by the "Thinking Gurus" at ICOT2013, he walked away all the more convinced that SOLO is providing what Lincoln is about for their students.

I want to come across more similar stories.

Steps towards what? More thoughts fuelled by ICOT2013

I have just finished reading this post entitled "Change or Die".  Two points stick with me:

- change is not supported as the overall agenda is focused on improvement rather than transformation
- there is a lack of "big picture", where steps are managed rather than lead towards a clear common vision.

Individuals, like you and I, have enjoyed and continue to get benefit from discussing, reading, participating 2cts worth to debates, trying to make sense of what Learning is about. I  personally often feel that to give it serious thought and consideration (and to be taken more seriously!), I need to be more systematic (oh here you are Ruth: that is a trigger word that has you switched off!) in order to reflect and take action. This is certainly what Going Back to the Drawing Board means for me.

But hear me out!  I would be motivated to systematise my approach if there was a need (self motivated or else) to have an outcome for a particular purpose. I am in the rather comfortable position at the moment where no one demands of me to perform at any level. This affords me to spend time considering a range of issues arising from different sectors and interests. I choose to spend time with the NZAFT and associated projects, I choose to continue to support people use of myPortfolio, MoE funded or not,  I choose to keep informed to do these to the best I can and if I have the opportunity, to move things along. I assume that if I was employed as a teacher in a school, time, energy and freedom spent on these choices would be considerably limited.

I have been freed to investigate in my own terms, to learn stuff when the need arose, to seek and find help, to do and undo, to have the confidence and curiosity to do so,  to bring to the light that my absence of formal linguistic training (I am often "found out" in conversation with Language teachers! ) can be made up for with other aptitudes and understanding of Learning I have developed, to create, maintain and continue to widen a network of thought provoking, informed, convincing professionals beyond school colleagues and my immediate community of practice.  It is my own paradigm shift: I have changed. What I have learnt in the last couple of years, exposing myself to arguments and thoughts about teaching, learning, assessments, ICT, theories, practices, social media, internet,  beyond the ones imposed by a manager or a system, is that "things do not have to be the way they are" and that "we don't know what we don't know".  Hence I can say here that all I have learnt from this freedom I would wish to continue to grow in any circumstances.

Kerry Spackman The Moral Scale

But what I can say also is that I am unsure of the reasons why I am doing it...
- What level of the Moral Scale  am I really operating at? Am I doing this for me only (since I have no obligation) ?
- Am I doing this because I am looking to "make a dent in the universe?" (Kerry Spackman at ICOT2013) ?
I would like to think it is about taking a tiny step on the Bottom Up approach ladder.

Kerry Spackman The Moral Scale

So to go back to Change or Die: What /who makes a vision clear enough, encompassing enough, trusted enough and supported enough for every teacher to feel empowered that they too can change, and as a result  for every learner to learn to be in control of their learning? That the move from thinking at Level 1 "How does it affect me?" to Level 5 "What's in this for society as an institution?" is enabled?

Derek Wenmoth: Change or Die? Vision, Trust and Support

While aspects of Kerry Spackman's keynote varied from boring me to worrying me  (I am not convinced that I need Knights to save me) one key message that was taken away, as aptly highlighted by Derek Wenmoth, is that "influencing peoples beliefs is very important in the process of bringing about change in society".

And this is something that every teacher can do. Children must be prepared for the world they live in not the one I grew up in: in my today's world, the population is aging and all expect to live a long time, ethnic groups learn to mix and mingle, notions of distance and time are just about a thing of the past, values are open for discussion etc. So who better than a teacher should be in the position to present a clear vision of the future to their students, and should help each one of them make sense of it in their own term, lead them to want to be involved, so that they grow to concern themselves with society and their role within it? All teachers need to question what they do if they are to model and instill this effectively.  And that means questioning and contribute to transform the system they work in.

via Rachel Saxton  ZenPencil

So why am I writing this messy post? If I really want to go Back to the Drawing Board, I need to know where I have been.  I ought to see more clearly where I am at now. And then it will inform me of where I should take my next step.  In the immediate future, it involves taking a step with you Ruth as you go back to school. Then I will see.

ICOT Part 3: The Other Dimension

I wrote here that I went to ICOT2013 by myself.  It is only partly true as a number of factors have contributed to exchange ideas and share experience with many, to meet people and discover their background and their interests, and to work together for the common good.
This is enabled through the Twitter backchannel: the comments using #icot2013 to form a thread, the links to support what is been presented, the immediate reflections, pictures, times for informal meetings, light banter... All that contribute to a sense of community, for all tweeps are "in the same place", but also to broadcast and amplify what is taking place to whoever follows #icot2013 from afar. 
Managing tweets by added them to Favorites allows to keep them for further reading. I chose to collate tweets in a spreadsheet as I know I will refer back to them. I have failed so far to convince you Ruth of the time and place and usefulness of Tweeter. A conference like ICOT2013 is the type of event to experience its strength: my memory of the event and my understanding of it will be all the poorer without it. Many delegates are using Tweeter, more or less regularly, some give it a go for the first time and see it do its thing. 
You could have followed #ICOT2013 and possibly felt that somehow you were there if you could have read the tweets generated during Ewan McIntosh's opening Keynote, or Guy Claxton's breakout! Tweets are informative, questioning, meaningful and often lead to something else, equally or more interesting. If this is not good enough a case to make time for Twitter, then read on!
 
- This tweet leads to this GoogleDoc.   

Follow the link to read the Keynote notes many delegates have contributed to, as they happened. Started by one, "broadcasted" via Twitter, and all the sudden many hands make light work to keep a record of what is being presented. It is certainly of more value if you are or were of attendance, but the quality of the quotes and the ability some have at synthesizing as they take in never stops to amaze me.

And through Twitter, you also get to read what people think or how they make sense of it. They may share their thoughts/ experiences of their blogs and mention it on Twitter. We both agree knowing there is an audience is an incentive to consign reflections. Some might see this as a sort of a showy behaviour, and not all thoughts and reflections are bone equal (here is an example!!). But what best way to collect thoughts and ideas, to later select them for a particular purpose? Why keep your notes to yourself? Will you ever read them again if they are on a bit of pad?  How will you get feedback? What better way to make your learning visible to ... yourself or your boss! 

But no need to convince you of the value of blogs, this is one battle won. For now. Until you and I find or invite an audience, whoever it may be, we can be each other's audience! I could have written about ICOT2013 but it would not be the same should have had not read the following blogs, from various authors, educators with different backgrounds, at different stage of their careers. And I may never have been aware of them should they not had been tweeted about!

• @howen blogs in real time, as it happens. The Problem Finders are her note on Ewan McIntosh's Keynote and  Creative and Critical Thinking: Creating Space for Innovation is her notes on Ewan McIntosh's workshop she attended. By scrolling through the January 2013 blogposts, more ICOT2013 live commentaries are available. Hazel is a seasoned social media user who has great expertise in online communities facilitation.

• Steve, @geomouldey, is a geography secondary teacher and was involved in the NZCER project he reflects on in his is post about Key Competencies and Effective Pedagogy.

• Matt, a primary teacher in his second year of teaching, @hunch_box, wrote Playing Tag - Ewan McIntosh on Assessment very shortly after the end of the workshop.

• @dukelyer, an experienced primary teacher, moves Icot2013 into his long term memory in his post where he consigns what he will report back to colleagues who did not get the chance to attend.

• @mattynicoll, a secondary Science teacher, blogs about his attempts at improving the classroom experience for his students. He publishes his ICOT2013 reflections here 

I will be revisiting these teachers' blogs, amongst others, which I add to GoogleReader and read every so often, as a magazine.
So no, I can't say I know this people well, I can just say that there are commonalities and that all of us are animated by making sense of teaching and learning in our own terms, with the influence and the input of others. I don't know any regular blogger in our immediate community of practice, do you? Is the French teachers community still is my most immediate community I wonder?

I am indebted to educators who like @ewanmcintosh, and many others, blog and share what they do openly. I need to immerse myself more deeply there before I can see better: a case of going deeper in the dark hoping to see some light! Blogging invites questions and comments and conversations. And that is through a comment that I was introduced to @charte' blog. Chris's is highly likely to help me break down how design thinking, formative assessment maybe applied in a language acquisition environment: he was a language teacher in the UK who did a lot of very cool (and well documented) things when they got the New Curriculum there. He is now in Melbourne, has developed a love for SOLO taxonomy and I can't wait to dive in his blog either! 

A gem of a perfect ICOT2013 summary that was just so bang on for me was @virtuallykaren's Big Ideas emerging through the Week. GO read it if you read only one from that list! Spoiler alert: Karen highlights thinking processes and heuristics, necessity to have real meaning and purpose for students to get stuck in, and focus on making thinking process visible. 

ICOT2013 was definitely an opportunity to meet people, and if not face to face then, it happens virtually over time.