The Seqta Changemakers Conference is a new offering from Seqta that includes 3 days of interacting and learning with people from all over Australia.
Kicking off Day 1 was a masterclass with Alan November, an international leader in Education technology and how it applies to modern learning.He certainly can capture an audience and provoke reflection about how technology can change the way teachers approach their art. It is a pedagogy-first approach that is hard to argue with (although there were still some yes-but's around!)
Some of the main ideas from today...
- archive.org - as the name suggests and internet archive that boasts the way sites looked on any given day. Want to see what Facebook looked like 10 years ago?
- WolframAlpha was highlighted - shame on those Maths teachers who had not heard of it! It is beyond a Maths-answer-producing machine, but a computational knowledge engine. Worth a look!
- Idea for Quizlet or Kahoot - get students to write their own quizzes they can then use to test their peers.
- Blinklist - read 4 books a day? Interesting!
- One class idea that really resonated that he spent some time on - the idea that students learn best from other students, not teachers. One teacher in the USA has the entire course covered with videos (mathtrain.tv) - made by students in the class. For homework students make videos to demonstrate their understanding. These videos are online and students from all over the world have viewed them. This authentic audience was incredibly motivating for the students.
- Mathmistakes.org - a site full of errors, exactly what we want to celebrate in a maths class where kids are so accustomed to having to be right all the time, which leads to fear and no spirit of adventure and having a go!
- Alan discussed primary sources and the importance of critical thinking online for students. The work of a modern library at any school would involve promoting these ideas:
- BBC v Wikipedia on the Vacanti mouse - how do we find the primary source? Google operators or power search with Google - ALL students should be taught this!
- e.g site:edu.au filetype:ppt Romeo&Juliet
- Teacher A - creates their own powerpoint, lectures to students in class and gets them to take notes. Teacher B - sources powerpoints using the above syntax from 6 different countries and distributes them to students. Working in groups they are asked to remix the powerpoints into their own presentation then reflect as a group on the difference in emphasis from the different countries. Most students want teacher A - because the teacher does all the work!
"Our job at school is to learn what our teacher already knows" - a student
- Book to read "The emotional side of school change" by Robert Evans
- We also went in detail into the change from lecture to collaborative learning facilitated by Eric Mazur at Harvard. See the video The AP50 Experience:
- Eric's exam strategy:
- Individuals do the exam first
- Students are then divided into groups and are asked to do the exam again by working together, discussing and debating their answers. They submit the exam again as a group.
- The students final mark is the average of their own mark and their group's mark.
- Using this strategy, students have a reason to help others in the course!
- The curse of knowledge - a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.
Letting go of control is the BIGGEST hurdle teachers face in switching to a student-centered classroom.