Learning, Teaching and ICT

Yesterday Kim, Gail and I drove out to East Lothian to visit Musselburgh Grammar School and Wallyford Primary School. The day was organised by Ollie Bray, a Depute Head at MGS.

Our first port of call was Wallyford. We visited a primary 7 class where the children were engrossed in their Nintendo DS as they worked to improve their brain age! I was really impressed by how absorbed the children were in the activity. There was a great question and answer session afterwards. I learned that:

• the children love it, but half an hour of such intense concentration is enough for them
• they sometimes forget that they are even in class because it’s the type of activity they would normally take part in outside of school (the atmosphere was very informal – some children sat in small groups on large cushions on the floor)
• they often used this as a ‘settling down’ activity right after lunch
• the 20 to 30 minute activity was counted as part of their mental maths for that day
• some found it frustrating that the voice recognition didn’t recognise their accent (the Australian visitors agreed – the word ‘yellow’ caused them the most problems!)
• Some of them liked the fact they could compete against their classmates – others preferred to work hard to improve their own scores
• age 20 is the optimal brain age (I tried it later and scored 80 …. I’m blaming the voice recognition tool!!)

The children packed up the equipment and we were escorted downstairs to the primary 3 class. These children played the ‘Drawn to Life’ game. The purpose is to create and customise heroes, weapons, vehicles, animals and more. The children then play with their creations and watch them come to life. Once again, these children were totally absorbed in the activity. Ms Betteridge had made worksheets to go along with the game and the children then used the experience to help with imaginative writing. The primary 3 pupils confidently used expressions such as :

• settings
• characters
• plot
• props to help solve problems

I overheard two pupils discussing the coins they had accumulated. They accurately read big numbers such as 7765, 9981, and even 7001. They were also able to easily put these in order of smallest to biggest – very impressive

Back at MGS we had the pleasure of talking to Jamie and Andrew, to 1st year pupils. They talked to us about The Guitar Hero project that they were involved in to aid the transition from Primary to Secondary school. I’ve read about it before on Ollie’s blog, but it was great to meet two of the children who took part and hear things from their perspective. I scribbled down some notes as we questioned them … again, I’ll use bullet points to give snippets of what they said (so, it’s not a chronological order of events!)

• In primary 7 they formed small groups. The groups were chosen by the teacher because the pupils found it difficult to choose from a large friendship group
• the rock bands planned a ‘Round the World Tour’
• Activities spilled into various curricular areas. For example – In music, they practised ‘beats’. In English, they kept a ‘Rock Diary’. In Art they designed their own instruments and drew rock stars
• Each of the feeder primary schools had one guitar and the groups took turn about to practise.
• There were competitions at the weekly Golden Time slots (even the teachers joined in!)
• Once in High School, everyone had a common issue that they could discuss with children they didn’t know
• They were grouped again in High School with new people – again chosen by the teachers. Both boys thought that the project meant that people were less likely to be shy
• New friendships struck up really easily because they all had a shared experince to discuss
• In Craft Design and Technology class, the new groups designed postcards using graphics in Photoshop. These were then sent back to their P7 teachers (they couldn’t remember receiving a reply back?)
• Although they felt very at ease socially with their new clasmates, the boys still felt a bit intimidated by the size of the new school

 I thoroughly enjoyed the day and need to say a big thank you to Ollie (I hope he doesn’t mind that I pinched the pics from his blog – trust me to forget the camera!).

Thanks also to the staff and pupils who made us all so welcome …. and lunch was great, too

Recently I blogged about my initial meeting with Kim and Gail (check out the responses from Cassie regarding their proposed visit to Carronshore! ) … and the comment response from John Connell was completely unexpected! 

I’m sure that the children from Easter Carmuirs are also looking forward to meeting the ‘virtual people’ face to face

I’ve now joined Kim and Gail on 2 of their Scotland visits – and my head is still swimming! I’ll need to create a couple of posts to cover all we experienced.

This is post number 1.

Last night I returned from Edinburgh after meeting with Kim and Gail. They were meeting with Judy, Tessa, Keiron and Cathrin from Edinburgh who worked on a recent research study into how game making might improve literacy. 

On the train back home, I reflected on what I had learned from the experience. Thinking about it passed the time on the train (delayed lots because of something happening on the line )

Here’s what I believe are just some of the things I got out of the short meeting:

• When I met with the others in Edinburgh this afternoon, it made me acutely aware of how small the world is! When they heard I was from Falkirk, Cathrin immediately responded that she works with Marilyn M and others from Falkirk on improving literacy (Bairns into Books) …. and Tessa and I were amazed to discover that our classes were blogging friends! 
• We discussed loads of educational matters, too, and everyone had so much to contribute. Games based learning was discussed in detail, and Kim and Gail talked about their introduction to the potentials of using Moshi Monsters with classes.
•  Maybe the main thing from last night’s meeting is that it was a ‘sharing of ideas’ experience. We all gained from each other, and can now pass the information on in our own areas to improve the learning experiences of the children in our care. 

I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend yesterday’s meeting.

Post Number 2

Today’s visit to Musselburgh Grammar School and Wallyford Primary was superb and there was so much to take in ….. I’m glad I took notes:-)

 Post 2 will follow very soon … but I’m not sure what else I can add to Ollie’s great description of the day

At a social event just before the end of term, I was approached by a young probationary teacher (I’ll call her Ann). She asked for some advice regarding using online spaces with her primary 6 class of pupils. She shares the class with an experienced teacher who had set up a class blog and wiki space. Each of the children has their own page in the wiki.

Ann is finding it difficult to understand the point in the children having such an online space. At various times throughout the week, the children are expected to add to their space during their timetabled visits to the computer suite. She is aware that some children are beginning to resent this (they seem to be mainly reiterating what they’ve learned in class) and she asked if it would be possible for us to meet up soon after the holiday season to discuss these issues.

I’m hoping that, by ‘thinking out loud’ via this blog post, I’ll be in a better position to offer advice. ….. Once again I’ve reflected on my CT Case Study. The bullet points below have been extracted from the dissertation in order to help me articulate what I learned from my own experience of using online spaces with children.

• Prior to the commencement of the research period for the dissertation, the children my Primary 7 class were encouraged to use the tools in class time, especially during our timetabled visits to the school computer suite. Occasionally the children were asked to incorporate a homework tasks into their blog or wiki. For example, each child had a recordable mp3 player and when studying World War 2, they were asked to interview an older member of their family (e.g. gran or grandad) in order to find out about life in the past so as to give them a sense of history. These were then shared with all the class members via the interactive whiteboard. Once the study began, however, I refrained from these practices so that the children might establish ownership of the tools. They were encouraged to use them when and how they wanted to.

•  Each pupil personalised their blogs by choosing their own individual look and theme. All of them successfully created avatars and, in the case of the boys especially, the inclusion of pictures and videos in posts was very apparent. The children quickly established the different uses for the blogs and wikis. The blogs being used for reflections, thoughts, short pieces of writings and uploading pictures, and the wikis for more extended pieces of writing, such as imaginative stories – usually updated over an extended period of time.

• Buckingham (2008) argues that through using the new media, young people are learning primarily by means of discovery, experimentation, and play, rather than by following external instructions and directions.

• It was decided to adopt such an approach during the research stage and pupils were left free to choose the content of their blog posts and wiki writing. Guidance was provided through creating a sense of online audience by submitting comments on the children’s posts regularly. Offline, new interesting posts were shared with the children. The findings show that this had the effect of influencing others to add new blog posts on their own blogs – often on the same subject. The findings in this study show that by laying the foundations, then allowing the children the freedom to write as individuals, led to blog posts such as Maryam’s

• Giving the children the freedom to use their online spaces as they wished allowed a deeper insight to their persona. An online community did develop, but that was on the periphery. The sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and personal likes and dislikes began as online blog posts. These were then developed in the offline classroom setting, giving rise to opportunities to increase motivation by modifying the programme of study to one that was more ‘child led’.  Early on in the study, doubts began to creep in about whether or not leaving the children ‘to their own devices’ might result in blog and wiki entries fizzling out. I felt despondent at the lack of written posts by the boys in particular. An entry in my online journal, however, describes the level of enthusiasm they displayed when demonstrating to adults how we use the new media.

• The findings show that the boys in the class were more interested in uploading pictures and videos than in writing blog posts.

• In her investigation of young people’s use of social media, Stern (2007) uncovered an explanation for the motives for including artwork and images in their blog pages. In the literature review, she was noted as arguing that the main audience for their blogs was the authors themselves and that they were self reflecting as they tested out different versions of their current and possible identities. She also maintains, however, that they were continually testing out other audiences too, and that they were hungry for peer approval.

• Typical examples of the children’s responses to being allowed to use their spaces this way are cited here: 

       ‘Yes, because in our own blogs we’re allowed to write about what we want to write, so we’ve got to know each other better.’

      ‘Some people in class don’t talk to me very much, but I can read their blog and find out more about them’

    ‘I feel that I know my close friends even more now because of what they write on their blog’ 

• Other ways in which the blogs and wikis directly influenced teaching and learning came about after the sharing of blog posts in class. For example:

     As the pupils began adding more posts about what jobs they would like to choose, we began to  seek out people from the ‘World of Work’ to come in to class and tell us about their job. We interviewed them and posted the videos on the class blog

     Some of the children shared their love of reading in their blog posts. As a direct result of those posts, a book club was formed. The club was run by the pupils themselves and they shared their favourite books on ‘library loan’ basis and discussed their favourites

     During her placement, Miss L agreed to set up an art club. This arose because a number of the children had written blog posts about their love of drawing

 

 Writing this post has definately helped me focus on what I’d like to say to ‘Ann’ during our meeting …… and I’m also delighted that my months of hard work collecting information for my research hasn’t resulted in my dissertation lying somewhere collecting dust

This afternoon I met up with KimP and her HeadTeacher, Gail. We had a lovely afternoon together …. and there are plans to meet up again during their short visit to Scotland.

More posts pending

Meanwhile here’s a flavour of our lunch together today. The champagne was planned ‘virtually’ a while ago when Kim helped me with my M.Ed by agreeing to be my ‘critical friend’. I can’t thank her enough for her effort in keeping me focussed when I really struggled at the ‘last lap’ as I out of steam

 We visited the Falkirk Wheel after lunch.