Starting with the Who

Last week saw the launch of Shared Histories, a France-New Zealand schools cross-curricular project  spanning the five years of the commemoration of World War One Centenary, starting 2014.
Initiated by the French Embassy in Wellington it corresponds with both the signing of an Arrangement of Education Cooperation between the Ministries of Education of France and New Zealand, the official launch of the Centenary Commemoration by François Hollande, President of France, and of many initiatives up and down New Zealand.
Shared Histories in New Zealand currently receives the coordinating support of the French Embassy, the Ministry of Education (NZ), NZAFT  and ILEP

Shared Histories is about fostering the Duty of Remembrance. Participants will interact around building a consciousness that human experiences are universal.
It provides a framework for New Zealand and French schools to form partnerships and work on common projects on the theme of WW1.

It is not about simply developing language skills:  it is about developing personal relevance for the all the students involved, through genuine social interaction and explorative reflection, supported with authentic documents and experiences.

This is a personal account of two extremely rich days, working with competent, visionary and courageous colleagues who see Shared Histories as the framework for cross curricular collaboration in their schools as well as the opportunity to engage with their students in the discovery and analysis of the world around them.

I was invited to facilitate the conversation around collaborative project building and the scaffolding role of ICTs.

inspired from Julia Atkin's Values & Beliefs about Learning to Principles and Practice

It is about project co-construction at all levels involving conversations and negotiations to establish grounds for collaboration and cooperation, to take action and make choices together but also independently from each other.

We worked around this starting with Who. Quite a few participants had already thought through and defined the project that they would like to carry. Starting with Who reminded them to consider who are the participants in their project  and potentially questions their assumption about the fact that the project they have in mind is the best idea until they know for sure that it is wide enough and encompassing enough for all participants to take ownership of it also.

WHO as identified by participants:
students in French class, History class, English class, vertical classes, librarian , Media studies , art, music teacher/students extra curricular students, principal, parents, school community, RSA, old boys network,

Considering Why also drew in a fair amount of conversation, as the Why? participants came out with is their Why, not the Why that is a common purpose designed and adopted by the community of Who which is going to give the project a life! This served as a reminder that in designing a project, it is important to consider who executes the project, their reasons, their motivation, and to provide a scaffold that allows participants to find their own drivers.

WHY as identified by participants:
opportunity for a cross curricular French led project, create a school partnership with a French school, create a product, opportunity to use language in an authentic communicative context, multilevel, identity, cross generational

Moving onto the How was about thinking of actions that will make the project happen. It was a worthwhile step as it focussed participants on the type of learning outcomes  they want their students to get out of the project. This was also a starting point to think about the type of tools that can serve the purpose and forced people to consider the capturing, selecting, curating of information, the creation of content during the process, the feedback and conversations emanating from this process…

HOW as identified by participants:
research, gather, archive, share, connect, build framework, involve, define setting, communicate for the project, communicate about the project, relate, reflect, build collectively, discuss, manage contacts, feedback, develop global citizenship awareness.

Arriving at the What, participants were invited to consider the value of capturing the process that leads to the completion of a project. Often the proposed projects at this early stage are prescriptive. The stages of development to lead to this are worth capturing as they will tell the story of the project and also allow to get feedback and tweak/progess. Building in regular check points also gives visibility to individual and groups contribution so that all involved have a clear view of their involvement, what they are learning and how they are learning. What is produced out of this process can end up being a range of creations, and a quick brainstorm around what it can look like indicated that participants were considering a product they could have control over (e.g.: a video, a wiki etc). This led to go back to Who? and to build a project framework that allow for creativity and interpretation for all involved to shine through.

Key Words for building a Shared Histories project as identified by participants:
Time, sustainability, partnership, flexibility, communication about the process, about the product, visibility.

Participants can use the Who, Why, How, What circles to work with their partners in their school as well as their French partners. Getting to know each other from the outset is essential to work towards defining a common framework that is negotiated and  actionable over time and distance, including a range of actors, supported by ICTs that are accessible to all involved.

Shared Histories provides an ambitious opportunity. The scope and range of the project came to life as teachers from French and New Zealand met on Saturday morning via video conference. Shared Histories is definitely real and the welcome as well as the input of the French from the Amiens academy was an amazing reminder that what we had been working on for the last few days was actually starting now!

Schools had been provisionally paired in the light of their initial project outline.  Each introduced each other, in their respective or the other's language, exchanged a few ideas around how they envisage to go about the project.

Shared Histories in NZ school actually started on Saturday 7th November. It is an exciting challenge ahead.

ePortfolio Forum Takeaways

Thoughts in no particular order arising from having attended the 2013 ePortfolio forum organised by ePortfolioAustralia.

- Met lots of like minded people whom you don't need to explain what an ePortfolio is!
But:
- What is an ePortfolio? remains an open question. A tool? A space? An approach? A story?
For me the ePortfolio starts with the "who". Who is  making use of it? "Who" moulds the shape the ePortfolio takes as it is his/her specific purpose (evidencing of learning for assessment, reflective practice, professional learning, workforce entry, employability, career management, online presence, showcase of achievements, process of learning etc) that is the driver. "Who" 's life journey leaves positive digital traces, the ePortfolio, dynamic by nature, documenting and keeping a memory of experiences and accomplishments.
So:
- When introducing ePortfolio it is crucial to know "who" and empathize with the needs and wants, the goals and aspirations of "who".
The actions involved in building a structured ePortfolio (collecting digital assets, selecting them for a purpose and a determined audience, of connecting ideas through thinking, and connecting with others for comments/ collaboration) constitute a personal, educational, professional story.
And:
- by showing selected parts of a structured, purposeful ePortfolio, users demonstrate digital competence. And a digital presence. Enough said.
Also:
- Implementing an ePortfolio has to combine a top down and bottom up approach, framed by learning design. Top down to ensure infrastructure, access, support are available. Top down to support relevant curriculum development and pedagogy that lend themselves to ePortfolio development. Bottom up by giving tangible, relevant, authentic reasons to develop an ePortfolio and opportunities to users. Bottom up by making explicit the potential for developing digital literacy as well as making visible a wide range of skills beyond the qualification recognized by the institution.
Talking of skills:
- More and more conversations around employability revolve around not only the hard earned qualifications, but also around soft skills (communication, critical thinking, willingness to learn, knowledge sharing, being a team player, listening skills and ability to teach, mentor…) The ePortfolio is a perfect venue to evidence and develop these skills.
Thus:
- To engage learners into an ePorfolio development, they must be involved in shaping it and taking control of it from the outset, through punctual explicit training if necessary, but mainly by empathizing with each individual's goals and scaffolding their steering.
Moreover:
- an ePortfolio is not just the work of an individual: the sharing with an audience, commenting from peers, feedback and feedforward from teachers or lecturers, collaborating on projects and gathering feedback, communicating on forums, crowd sourcing an idea that shape a personal ePortfolio. Learning is social.
Which leads me to the tool:
- Mahara allows for granular permissions, ensuring privacy if/when/where needed, has a resume building, aggregates productions made in range of files off or online, has a built in social network. It allows for pages to be submitted for assessment. It can be hosted on a dedicated server or online. Which means also that it has got to be institutionalized in the first place… This is important for context. At least to start with!
What is (even more) exciting?
-   ePortfolio, the learning centre, evidence gatherer, thought processor + open badges, the visible indicator of accomplishments, skills, interest, across communities and platforms = lifelong and life wide learning!

Why are ePortfolio supporters still pushing the rock uphill?

- Learning in 21st c has changed. Not everyone has noticed.
- ePortfolio have mainly gained traction in education so far. Period.
- Technology is changing everyday. It is not at the heart of ePortfolio building though.
- ePortfolio as a vehicle for common vocabulary across stages of life (school> training/university> work/life) is yet to be realized (although OpenBadges may offer a step towards this!)
- their potential for employability and careers is huge, or so it promises. Employers need to be shown ePortfolio more readily. Employers want qualifications AND skills so employers need to be involved and asked if/ how they can make use of eportfolio for recruitment but also for productivity and skill evidencing for themselves and their employees. While supporting digital literacy development. Or else it will remain an academic pursuit.
- Professional associations need to be made aware of ePortfolio potential for ongoing professional learning, accreditations and evidencing of on the job skills. That could have some impact on the employers' perception of ePortfolio.
- Careers services outside of learning institutions (job re entry, immigration, skills gap analysis etc) need to be made aware also.
- There is no longitudinal research (that I am aware of so please do correct me and comment if I am wrong) to see if ePortolios continue to be populated by their owner pass education.

It's time to get out the building and into the "world" post education to go and find out if ePortfolios live up to their status of life long learning companion!
That is the road I am choosing to take with ThinkAgency. While remaining faithful and committed to my interest in ePortfolios in schools.



References: 
Prof Phillip Long from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology will share what the role of the eportfolio will have in a distributed digital learning future.
Dr Alan McAlpine (Queensland University of Technology’s Career and Employment Unit) will share what’s happening with the use of eportfolios in the recruitment and employment marketplace.
(Will link to both keynotes recording when made available)
Shane Nuessler Learning Design Reflections in Higher Education
Portfolio the work of an individual? Kristina Hoeppner
Pictures from the ePortfolio Forum
Angela Shetler' Storify of ePortfolio Forum

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

ToolSprint!

Something really cool happened on Saturday: a full house of Language Teachers ready to learn, listen and network at UofA for the revived Auckland Langsem! Aaron Nolan, newly elected NZALT President for the Auckland region supported by an enthusiastic Conference committee did make it happen and the classic conference programme was full of the Best Practice people. (Programme here)

Prof Rod Ellis rocked the lecture theatre with his 11 principles to start the day!). I have read some of his publications, watched many youtube clips taken from participants at his conferences, but it was the first time ever I listened to him live. Was worth it, made the principles come live and inspired me to think about the following: 6 years on, and Prof Ellis who was commissioned by the MoE for the NZC still presents on these principles on which rest the Languages curriculum to Language teachers, and keeps it fairly fresh. I can feel another blog post coming up soon (and will link here!) here!

The unavoidable focus on NCEA standards,  with an example of bad texts and bad questions, presented by the NAF, drew in a crowd...  Felt for the presenters scheduled on the same slot though.

Ass Prof Martin East presented on his research on the adoption of the "Interaction" standard after the "Conversation" standard has been abandoned. He has gathered teachers' voice ( a v. interesting concept which in itself would need a lot more attention paid to by education researchers, don't you think?) and in a nutshell, and I hope not to "interpret' too much, he found that while teachers agree that interaction is more authentic they are finding it very hard to manage to capture evidence of it in a meaningful setting and in practical way, thus are either not offering it or only as an option for their student. There is thus a tension between the pedagogy and way to assess the product of the learning. Would NZQA at any stage engage with language teachers, in the light of this research and Pr East's subsequent one, to discuss/review the interact standard? It got me thinking: interaction would maybe better to importantly underpin all that happens in/outside the language classroom (as suggested in the Principles)  and evidence of progress could be captured, reflected upon by the learner and used for formative assessment by the teacher BUT could be summatively assessed for standard purposes in a different manner (see DELF, IELTS, IBac etc.)

Anyway it will be interesting to see what Pr East, now President of the NZALT will use his research to leverage opportunities for conversation between practitioners and NZQA. I asked him if his findings had been published yet but no. This is Uni stuff with all the protocole, it ain't a blog post! :-)
So that takes me you know where: this format of Professional Learning does provide ideas and stimulation to participants but the rush from one session to another, the variety of input, and styles of presenters always leave the participant a little hazy eye by the end.
It would be interesting to see these formal settings at least provide an opportunity for participantsto share what they have gathered in their kete from the experience before they leave, to allow them to connect the dots between each presentation. Because they do exist of course, the connections, and they contribute to drawing the big picture!

Can you tell the space type I was in from this pic?

An example of this was the invigorating conversation I had with Liz Scally over lunch. She saw a bit of my session where I go over what I have called "Digital Citizen: 10 Desirable Competencies . We connected that the vocabulary used for these competences is quite similar to the one used to describe the Languages standards, and relate to Learning.

These are just raw chunks of thoughts arising.  I would need to refine all of this a great deal more, nothing better than a conversation around any of this would help me move my understanding forward!

Here is the ToolSprint presentation I gave. I love tools. That is if we start using them with the "Why?" !

One very useful model...

Aaron Nolan, NZALT Auckland Regional Officer, has asked me if I would give a presentation about useful tools for the Language Classroom at the upcoming Auckland LANGSEM (August 24th, UoA, Epsom Campus).
While I would have favored to facilitate a tool "smackdown" à la Educamp, this does not fit well in the standard Conference schedule (I won't give up mentioning it again and again though!)
So what can I do in 30 minutes, which is the time I have available? I can forget hands on, but having said that, connected participants can always have a quick look at the tools if I share the links at the outset. I think it will be pretty fast paced too, so I will pre warn people and stress they can re visit the information at anytime.

Tools for learning or learning supported by tools? 

http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

I will divide the 30 min into two distinct parts:
a-  tools for the students to learn, create and share
b-  tools for the teachers to connect, curate and share ( and post the link here when done!)
Well... This opportunity opens two doors:
- to stress the need and use for an eportfolio to aggregate creations, to share them with an audience, to receive feedback and to reflect on the learning.
 - to refer participants to one very useful model to help teachers integrate Education technology: the SAMR model.
Here is a very useful short video to explain it:

The SAMR model is useful in many ways:

- it raises awareness of how we use tools in the classroom,
- it indicates that there is progression, until it is seamlessly integrated and ubiquitous
- students direct their learning more effectively as tasks are redesigned and modification takes place
- it also expands the world of the teacher and students beyond the classrom
- above all it reminds us why we use tools in the classroom: for the learning to take place!

It is good to continue to investigate ever changing tools but it is important to keep focus on what learning needs to be achieved.

Helen Prescott  gave an effective 3 min presentation in the Primary context at TeachMeet#2  full of practical examples and links to the Key Competencies

The wheel below combines Blooms with SAMR and a wide range of Apps (while these are apps for Ipad, many are also available via the browser or on Android).
The "graduates attributes and capabilities" (my point of focus at the moment, at the heart of my eportfolio "dada") at center of wheel are closely reminiscent of the Key Competencies.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/05/new-padagogy-wheel-helps-you-integrate-technology-using-samr-model/

The action verbs and activities are also present in NCEA Languages Assessment standards, from which are derived a lot of the languages programmes in our NZ schools.
There certainly won't be anytime to generate any conversation during this presentation at the Langsem: shame. It would be a chance to start a conversation around how to assess and provide feedback on creations which are not merely text based or just spoken. I'll think of another media, wonder if the good old NZAFT listserve will be receptive this time?
Anyhow I hope that I can direct participants to this post and that it plants a seed for them to grow, as well as allow them to make connections with what is happening in their school and the world of education technology at large.

PS: Blogger's interface, like any other google tool, defaults to French as my IP is in France at the moment. Midly enerving but also rather irritating to have this mish mash of languages on the screen!

Day 3 #Ignition13

I went to Ignition13 with a couple of things in mind and came back with many more... Since I have been thinking about it all day,  I called this post Day 3!

Here is what I wanted to find out about:
-  What does a two day unconference look like? I wanted to experience how the succession of time slots complement each other. My only prior experience was with attending some Educamps and with running a immersed FrenchCamp last year.
-  How are teachers accessing PLD in their schools? What if it has not been "planned for?" Some of the participants paid their own registration, others came as a school team but all came to share something with others beyond their school and all recognised that there is something to learn from one another. What are some models of "in house" PD? Thought to hang on to #1
- Is eportfolio part of the landscape, if so to what extent and how? I got asked about MyPortfolio beyond Dec. 2013 which I can't answer because I don't know and it is frustrating, but I am better off thinking happy thoughts. There was evidence of use by teachers, there was talk that it is too much for primary, there were also concerns that despite building the eportfolio in primary it was never looked at by the next teacher at Intermediate. There is a need for more eportfolio information. What is going to change the game here? Thought to hang on to #2
- I set out to feel very humbled as I expected to mix with a wide range of people "who are doing it" "who are walking the talk" and "sticking their necks out". I was right to be prepared and I hope not too many noticed my jaw drop at their awesomeness. I had not thought though that the format and above all the people would make this such an inclusive event. And such a provocative one. Phew and thought to hang on to #3

SO this is where it gets very messy!

                                       Thanks @NatashaLowNZ  for the reading me so well!
Some general observations:
Emerging Leaders at #ignition13 are self directed learners. The conversations are about Teaching and Learning. Period. We are not exchanging resources here: this is big picture stuff.
All have a network outside of their schools, some outside of the country, ideas they share willingly, warts (very few...) and all,  use social media to connect with others, read extensively, lean on research and best practice, tend to substantiate what they talk about, use ICT naturally, don't think in terms of eLearning as it is before anything Learning, want to learn and use Te Reo more and have an awareness that Culture is in Language and that Language is in Culture. Many present a side of themselves through Ignite talks and this adds to the respect and warmth and support.
The following words are used not because they sound clever simply because they are internalised, (maybe to various degrees but still no need to "unpack"!): Student centred Pedagogy, Assessment for Learning, Key competencies, Teaching as Inquiry, Student Voice, Co construction, NZC Vision and Principles, Te Tataiako.
NCEA is recognised for what it is: an opportunity to evaluate in this very context. Rapport with families and communities around their schools is built and taken into consideration in their work.

All participants' are encouraged to share Ignition13 experience beyond and across so spread ideas further and beat the echo chamber effect, to find "your way to change the world". Tall order for this isolated disinstutionalised cookie but I ll give it a shot here and there to start with.

About thought #1: 
- do Professional Learning Programmes and PLD providers (Universities?) build self direction in their programmes? What tools can they use?  Te Kotahitanga as an excellent model is caned for "costing too much?" What next? Rethink PLD all together?
- is the gathering of evidence of professional learning occurring systematically towards the key indicators of the Registered Teacher Criteria? (Could be collected from evidence gathered over Teacher as Inquiry and tagged according to the RTC?)
- do teachers actually get any "mastery" and "autonomy" to support their professional lives (one of those big "badaboom" questions that did not get answered!) Am I right to think the following happens: school principals align the school goals to the Ministry Goals, state them in their Charter, then Faculty/Departments/Learning Areas state goals in line with these goals and same for teachers who them make these Professional Goals their appraisal goals? Is this allowing for mastery and autonony? Why not?
About thought #2:
- What is the core purpose of ePortfolio? To film the learning occurring over time. A conversation I have re centers the core business of an ePortfolio: think Assessment for Learning, Co Construction, Student Voice. It makes learning visible, amplifies learning, connects learning, shares learning. That should be my pitch if I wish to continue investigating how I can make myself useful in the support of the adoption of the eportfolio approach in NZ schools. I need to bring this to the fore more prominently and convincingly: this is Why. And this is the reason why workshop PD does not work, because this needs discovery and conversations over time. I need to read and research more in this area in particular if I intend the "change the world" there!!  And ought to use an inquiry cycle too. I know that ePortfolio will support the students' learning and the teachers' professional learning. 
About thought #3:
-  A series of sessions I attended complemented each other. The first piece of the puzzle was facilitated by a secondary teacher inviting to discuss Student's Voice and Co Construction and where we where at with that.

There was mention of knowing the students before the planning and using the rigor of the Teaching as Inquiry for the Planning, of the importance of knowing the NZC backwards to frame the action, to engage deeply with the Assessment objectives and all documents, to survey to co construct not as tokenism, to find a common language between students and teachers in order to allow for that. ( I think now too about the Key Competencies as indicators and to "trust the process" as urged by Guy Claxton for positive students outcomes in formal assessment). The contributions, ideas, practice shared flowed very well. 

Then one question arose "What about co constructing between teachers?" Some practitioners in the room have experienced collaborative teaching, some are in schools where it is the practice. Some are not. Some are doing change on their own, no matter what/who gets in the way, for the good of their students and to be true to their pedagogical beliefs.

                            "Knowledge emerges when people take uncertain action"

Then boom! Another torpedo of a question: How to co construct change in schools? followed by "What decade is your school at?" to start debunking. Another session that attracted another fair few, yet did not quite flow so well: end of day 2-itis maybe? Maybe simply because those are hard out questions. While other conversations had revolved around familiar (to a certain extent) themes, this one felt left field. It stuck around appraisal (box ticking appraisal?) and a tad of management bashing. Hard questions, little time to investigate together to assess if yes or no there is the freedom to do just that: change the lot. Would be a great question to explore with Design Thinking the NoTosh way. I think that more time and a bit of structure would have lead to a more satisfactory outcome. Or maybe it would be something for a World Café event?

And I have been thinking about this all day!
If schools were stripped down naked what would be the bare essentials to create an environment where each child succeeds and is equipped for his/her life ahead?

What if collaboration forever replaced competition?

If the teacher facilitates learning for the students by empowering them to own their learning, what if  the principal applies the same principles to empower teachers to own their the professional learning? (Helen Timperley's 10 Principles of Active Leadership)

And what if the Key Indicators of the Registered Teacher Criteria and Teachers' Council really were used as they are intended?

Twitter today led me to The Essence of School Leadership for the 21st C : it looks that this Principal is co-creating a culture of change by utilising the powerful, creative, daring bare essentials NZ schools have at their disposal.

Needless to say all this thinking is contributing to change my way of being in this world ;-), through raising my awareness of some really deep issues and inviting me to further my understanding of Assessment for Learning in particular. Still at cross roads, but not stuck in the mud!

Managing the tools, managing oneself?

Further to our wee email exchange on the use of word-processing tools in writing, I've been pondering about your suggestions regarding the use of on-line translation tools. I've been discouraging the students from using them as, although they're fast improving and often give accurate translations for straightforward stuff, they encourage laziness, eliminating as they do the necessity to think about and understand the language the students are producing. On the other hand students seem more motivated when using them. Suddenly it's much easier to be able to say what you want to say rather than waiting for the teacher to tell you what she thinks you should know or might find useful.

I wonder if some of our students wouldn't maintain an interest in language learning for longer if we just went with the flow and accepted that these are tools which are readily available in real life, at any moment. Just thinking of my students who are going on the exchange to Nice at the end of the year and who can hardly string a sentence together, having no deep interest in how languages work, they could easily call up the language they need in almost any situation via their smart phones. It's all about communication, after all. It might not help them so much with listening but even there they could negotiate meaning around problems of comprehension. We can no longer insist, it seems to me, that everyone demonstrate their understanding of how languages work, when there are such obvious short-cuts to communication at hand.

Thankfully, there will always be some students who are curious about how the language works so that old fossils such as myself who love grammar will feel vindicated by their curiosity. I'd have to say, though, that the patience of the majority for mastering structure seems to be decreasing exponentially as they see that they can get by without it. Maybe this is the moment when the focus will shift from language mastery to intercultural communicative competence, even if it is electronically assisted!

It makes me think that language teaching is at a cross-roads. How many people these days know how to do the basic mathematical functions of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication? How many people still know their times tables?Not too many, I'll wager. For me they're the most valuable thing I've retained from my maths days and I use them all the time but if I preferred to use a calculator I would have to admit it's no longer necessary to know how to do them in my head. The other obvious analogy is GPS. There aren't too many people who would prefer these days to use a map to orientate themselves. They trustingly put themselves in the hands of their GPS and let it lead them (sometimes astray). The result is that fewer and fewer people have map-reading skills because they don't seem so necessary any more. Could we be getting to the same point with languages? Maybe on-line translation tools will end up opening language 'learning' to a wider range of students. Maybe we should be focussing more on tasks involving pronunciation, although even here they can get the correct pronunciation at the click of a button.

With my junior classes I've been getting them to make powerpoints and little movies about themselves and using puppets for dialogues. A colleague brought me along another bag full of 'friends' so we now have about 16 assorted creatures who seem to be relishing their stardom. Students appear to really enjoy doing this and some have produced much more sophisticated stuff than we could have expected from students before these tools were available. Differentiation happens naturally as people work in different ways, at different rates. Some work slowly and meticulously and include lots of detail. Others dash something off really quickly and want to get onto the next item on the agenda. Some take the line of least resistance and produce the minimum. The exceptional ones are always focussed and show a good understanding of the task. They go the extra mile, including a lot more than is expected. It's a really good way of evaluating the key competencies as well as giving rein to their creativity. Over the last few days of the term we'll be watching some of these together and eventually they'll all be loaded onto MyPortfolio. We had some problems with files being more than 50MB which we'll have to resolve. For the moment, with interim reports looming I've just had to get them to airdrop them to me which is the simplest short-term solution.

I have no doubt my ponderings will set off some reciprocal ponderings from the North. It'll be interesting to see what you think. Am I right or am I right?

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?
___________________________________________________________________________________
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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ICOT Part 2: Reporting Back

I wish now I had been disciplined enough to put down some reflections at the end of each day at ICOT2013... See the line up of keynotes and presenters here

Mai Chen reminded me in her outstanding keynote (listen to it here) that the students we have in front of us in the classroom need to also be empowered to be citizens with a voice, empathy and willingness to make a difference beyond “Me”. The day after her keynote an article was published in the Herald: “It is becoming clear that we need to be measuring the performance of government very differently”

Picture taken during the subsequent Kerry Spackman Keynote
 that Mai Chen previewed in her address

 Mai Chen asked “What do we think is in the public interest anyway?”, and that if there is a framework how do we hold Governments accountable to act in the public interest?

If these questions drive society involvement we ought to prepare today’s young to feel and to know they are equipped to participate fully. Mai went on to announces that “the fresh thinking for 2013 is that we need to broaden the criteria against which we measure the progress of Government in achieving the public interest, to include those non-material things, like happiness and equity, which are critical to our future sustainability and wellbeing”. 

If I try to make sense of this as a teacher, I interpret it as:
- a further cue to do away with the bean counting credits and standards as a means of evaluating how well students are learning and to incorporate soft data such as enjoyment, sense of personal achievement, reflection, curiosity, optimism in evaluations
- giving teachers and educators the impetus they may need to contribute to help students become better critical learners as they too will have an important role in the society we live in.

Brendan Spillane captured in five short convincing minutes, in his Ignite* talk “Pull up a chair” , how “thinking becomes wisdom”. Thinking is like “a campfire to gather round” and his talk really set the tone for the conference.
*Ignite talks are a 5min presentation format supported by 20 slides. EduIgnite evenings are organised regularly I am looking out for the EduIgnite Evenings as I would like to attend one this year (as a spectator to start with!)

Thinking of the format where Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes, it would be a fab thing to consider doing in class, first modelling to students on something I really care deeply about and then invite them to come up with their own Ignite talk. An opportunity to communicate a convincing, effective personal response to something they deeply care about.

Guy Claxton and Ewan McIntosh (I’ll come back to Ewan keynote and breakout separately) make it compelling to stop looking at the knowledge look at the process behind learning. What is actually looks like in practical terms for teachers and learners is the heart of our conversation Ruth. What follows may help. I have to immerse more to offer anything practical, and even then, does it mean it will be practical in your own experience? What strikes me is that both make a clear case for having all school, discussed and systematic approach. It will be interesting to see to what extent an individual teacher’s approach, in a secondary, in one learning area breaks through the established patterns. Hence the documenting of the steps taken here on "Back to the Drawing Board"!

Guy Claxton argues that "Mind Expanding has to happen now" (Mind Expanding Education MEE) in a packed solid breakout room.
The Building Learning Power approach creates learning cultures in schools. There is plenty to investigate here.
The first step is to step back and reflect, have a willingness to try things and think on your feet.  He urges to “take a deep breath and look back to look at the way we deliver “ and to get rid of jargon and instead use plain language and not parrot official documents. We need clarity. I see this as teaching as inquiry and/or action research.

Bin these Words! G.Claxton ICOT2013

He mentions how school leavers in the UK are accepted in prestigious universities on the strength of their grades and wind up two month on at the Mental Health service as they are petrified, scared and vulnerable as they are asked questions they do not have a ready answer for. I know how that feels, I am only started 20 years on to know better how to go about investigating and inquiring. Guy Claxton also talked about the Imposter Syndrome,  “a psychological phenomenom in which people are unable to internalise their accomplishments” which can appear if you are , for instance caught unable to answer an on the spot rich question. All of this highlighting “Students must be encouraged to sharpen their wits, ask questions, and think for themselves” (What is the point of school? ) to ensure they are confident and connected. He also says that we can have both high stake assessment and a culture of learning, that we need to TRUST THE PROCESS (Ewan McIntosh uses this too)
In the Vital, Challenging and Possible interview referred in the tweet above, Guy Claxton spells how that there can be Key Competencies AND Assessment , that students can get test scores AND develop the capacity to flourish. This interview followed his lecture Can Schools prepare you for anything? Recorded here.

Will this sustain your inner fan girl appetite for all things Claxton Ruth?

On the topic of Key Competencies and Pedagogy, NZCR  have worked on creating a Self Auditing Framework to support teachers’ inquiries into how well the Key Competencies are being embedded into learning. What strikes me at first glance is that I understand all the questions: NZCR heeding Guy Claxton’s no jargon approach! There are numerous Examples of Practice which could serve as a model to reproduce with a Language class, why not? And it could be an attempt at bringing in the international approaches within the setting of the NZC. What do you think?

ICOT Part 1: Getting There.

Foreword: writing this "preamble" prior to a more definite account as it is still not clear in my head how/what to report on ICOT2013. Bear with me! What follows is likely to help the process.

I went to ICOT2013 (International Conference on Thinking)  The 5 day, big ticket speakers, breakout loaded event was indeed something to remember.  The outstanding line up  E.  De Bono, G. Claxton, E. McIntosh, Mai Chen, amongst other education and thinking luminaries, was promising: when else would there be the chance to hear all these people in New Zealand, at the same event? The waves of enthusiastic expectation crushing in my twitter timeline were convincing. The opportunity to spend time face to face with people I usually interact through social media was compelling.
I registered early November with the feeling I ought to go and I ought to be prepared to be very much outside my comfort zone. I was going with minimum prior knowledge of what was going to be presented, I was going on my own, with no agenda and no one expecting to hear back from my experience. I justified the expense of the fees, travel and accommodation to Peter by telling him I was going on a geeky city break. He had not asked any justification… I was curious, I just had to go and see.

Then came the dilemma of selecting breakouts. I rationalized my choices by drawing on the following questions:

- What does "thinking" look like in the classroom?
- Can we have critical thinking without an inquiry process?
- How can a teacher help their students make sense of their dispositions for learning?
- Can ICTs effectively support thinking and life long learning?
- How to have a common approach to thinking, learning to learn, in a secondary school with its specialist subject areas and all other silos?
- How to make assessment for learning understandable, visible and "rewindable" for all parties involved?
- And what shape and form does all this take when the focus is second language acquisition?

It has been the best part of three weeks since ICOT2013 finished. I have not answered any of the questions above. I have many more. I can not do it by myself. I can not do it fast.  That is a lot of "not" statements but I will use them as cues to keep my optimism up: here is to a lot more conversations and head scratching ahead, and you Ruth, and Lesley and Kheya and… will be up for it!

Going to ICOT2013 has helped me crystallize bits of knowledge and understanding about teaching and learning gathered over time. What has become more definite is that some primary schools are doing extremely well at fostering students as masters of their learning destiny, within eye-catching, agile learning environments, supported by a range of tools used purposefully, and staffed with reflecting practitioners who share their practice, engage in conversation across the sector, take risks and have strong,supported, opinions. What has taken shape more clearly is that there is a need for a common language about thinking and learning, spanning across subjects, used by both teachers and students. It has shed light on the urgent need to stop doing what we have always done if we are not getting the results we want, sheltering behind NCEA as a shield against changing practice effectively. It has elucidated the problems there may be about using ICTs: if it is merely the substitution of something that can be done with a pen and a pad, then it won't redefine the nature of the tasks learners could otherwise come up with themselves and fail to transform current practice. It has brought to the fore that without inquiring deeply, meaningfully, systematically and collaboratively into teaching and learning,  chances change happens and is significant to impact on students'  confidence and ability to learn independently is close to nil.

These are my ICOT2013 take aways. Until I substantiate. 

David Koutsoukis  The Seven Selfs of Self Leadership