The year that has been

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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

Learning is all around!

I have the opportunity to meet with a group of secondary teachers tomorrow morning over breakfast. These teachers have indicated their interest in looking at what IT can enable for their students and joined this group, which is a Priority One initiative through the INSTEP programme. The programme provides valuable links between businesses, which indicate their needs and local secondary schools, which request information about local businesses. This group, called the "IT Enablers group", is meeting for the second time and is made up of teachers from a range of learning areas, but mainly from Digital Technology.
To start with Joy Cottle ( Institute of IT Professional ) will present the ICT Connect Programme, linking schools and ICT Professionals to inspire students to consider a career in ICT. I have heard of the programme, and I particularly look forward to find out how it works.
The other aspect of the meeting is to establish something easy for teachers in the group to connect and communicate about their ideas and experience with enabling students to be confident ICT users.
Steven Vincent (TechnologyWise) will then present a tool to support this communication.
What I will try to do, with the short presentation that follows, is to highlight the benefits of every day technology to share ideas and experience, to continue conversations around a common purpose and to grow a support learning network from within the group. I will talk about how I have grown to extend my support network beyond geographical and learning area vicinities, and relied on social media and groups and forums to further my knowledge, understanding, experience and opportunities. I would be very happy to add members of this group in my PLN.
This short presentation will be preceded by and followed a conversation around establishing common goals and what participants already do to go and get information and ideas and what they would like to see as a first outcome of their commitment to the group.

Preparing for this led me to think about the people and groups in my PLN. I came up with this diagram to try to capture not only my level of connection but also to take a snapshot of who I turn to today for information and ideas, where/who I get inspiration from.
I could have done better and linked the people/communities to their online presence, but playing with Lucidchart was enough novelty for me today!
 I notice from the diagramme:
- Pedagogy, eportfolio, digital identity and capability feature quite highly
- The closer circles are where I feel the most comfortable contributing.
- There are a range of people in this circle who have seriously influenced the way I think about learning.
- There are many other people in my PLN, but this is a snapshot and who/what community came to mind without intending to be comprehensive!

ePortfolio blah blah

It appears we have had very different weeks and not only weatherwise... This is what I have been up to. Hesitations, blanks and repetitions included, but a podcast no longer (?!) than 10 minutes. Lucky you! Put the SoundCloud app on your phone or your browser and give it a go, suggest to your students to create an account, start recording anywhere anytime and share wherever (including MyPortfolio!) It even works for words list :-). Could be useful for revision prior to mock exams!

Enjoy your long week end and keep warm and happy!

MoodleMahara Meet Up 2013

About a month ago, I received, via twitter,  a kind nudge by Allison Miller ( ePortfolio Australia) to invite me to present about ePortfolio in NZ schools at MoodleMahara MeetUp
So that happened yesterday, and I presented online, live, to a real audience of online people and people in a breakout room, for the first time.

The tool was Blackboard Collaborate, I chose to use flat slides, since transitions and pop ups don't import on BbC. I intended to show and tell some live myPortfolio pages from my browser, but the trial run I had with  Carole McCulloch (who was convening, managing and recording the webinars ) put me off it: navigation was too slow and the screen appeared really pixellated in the room.
It was a 20 min presentation.
I talked being a MyPortfolio trainer, delivering Taster Sessions, working with Language teachers and a range of secondary schools. I drew links to the NZC, and teaching and learning, and the people I have met, and hopefully the participants could get a picture of what had been activated to implement an eportfolio system on this scale!

Preparing for this made me realise a few things:
- the taster sessions were a jolly good idea! ( I knew but not how good!)
- that a follow up plan post taster sessions should have been drawn from the outset and not just rely on MyPortfolio users to just go ahead and do it (Prior to MyPortfolio, I dont think that there was another shared online space, I think the VLN started at about the same time, but that was a professional space, not one where students and teachers would be alongside. And creating/sharing online is so new for quite a few teachers still... )
- that my understanding of the NZC intent etc has deepened ten fold since engaging with MyPortfolio, my articulating of what Learning is about has sharpened greatly, my appreciation of the role of Thinking and Reflecting has blossomed equally. Where had I been all these years one might say? ;-)
- so if it has worked for me, surely it will work for all those who chose to look into it.
- and many are, I can see this every day through the shared pages.  This type of modelling is oh so potent, it would need to be highlighted a bit more prominently that is all!


And I need to add (edit 11/05): upon listening to Thornsten Gross presenting his students' use of Mahara in a German school I learnt from him that the Hessen state in Germany were looking at having a shared Mahara instance for their schools also. I am interested in following this development and learn more about it.

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?