Attending conferences is an amazing opportunity to learn new ideas, confirm long held beliefs and meet enthusiastic teachers. Today's Leading a Digital School conference was no different. There is something special about being out of the usual school environment and focused on improving.
Some of my take-aways from today:
Jill Hobson - Transforming using BYOT (slides here)
Some of my take-aways from today:
Jill Hobson - Transforming using BYOT (slides here)
- Stop with the lists of things students are not allowed to do. Tell them "I trust you". Write it on the board. Focus on the 95% of students who want to (and will) do the right thing. Support them. Focus on responsible use, not appropriate use.
- Don't block stuff. Stuff is happening anyway! Every school is a BYOT school.
- Need to check who can't access the web from home - loan out MiFi devices to students who need one (WiFi down at home, moving house, at Grandmas etc)
- Need to invest in infrastructure - parents are buying devices.
- How do we communicate with parents? Must be two-way. Parents are still the most important factor in students achievement.
- We need to have learning goals, not hardware goals. What do we want? Higher order thinking, collaboration, self-motivated students. How can our BYOT program support that?
- Love this video. Many lessons to discuss here
- Some ideas!
- Brainstorm tools on your device to demonstrate your understanding
- Create an image to show your understanding
- Reach consensus, respond as a team
- Create a "How to" video
Mal Lee - The Digital evolution of schooling
A great session and following Keynote. Mal has a way of stating things that nobody could disagree with that have profound implications for education.
- Schools have to go digital to remain viable. School are just as prone to digital disruption as taxis, video stores, banks, newspapers, booksellers, retailers etc
- Paper v Digital - norms need to be challenged eg 9 - 3 timing
- We have squeezed all we can out of the current model
- Where are we on the path to digital normalisation? This phase is characterised by
- All teachers using technology authentically
- School systems relying on technology
- Technology is invisible
- Assessment beyond the walls of the classroom
- School website is critical
- 20% of learning time is in school so 80% outside - what are we doing to support that time?
- Digital Darwinism - the phenomenon when technology and society evolve faster than an organisation can adapt.
- We need to continue to grow and adapt as a school. The journey to digital normalisation is characterised by messy, unplanned, non-linear growth
- The Principal must lead all of this
- What is our digital vision?
- Everyone needs to have a macro view - teachers, parents, students
Jill Hobson - Peering past the Pixie dust
Jill used Classflow - a very similar tool to Nearpod.
- We have heard of ROI - what about ROL (return on learning)? We can evaluate a lot of things around this idea eg report comments!
- Develop a common language using models for technology integration:
- SAMR
- www.loticonnection.com
- Grapplings spectrum of technology uses bernajean.wikispaces.com
- Technology integration matrix fcit.usf.edu/matrix
- Conduct classroom walkthroughs that focus on technology integration and how it relates to your learning goals
- Ask "what are our best uses of technology"
- Teachers should observe each other (Swivl)
Martin Levins - Marking work
- Track changes (Word)
- Pages add comments
- Using Doctopus/Goobric/Flubaroo with Google
- Students use screencaptures to show HOW they produced something - detail the process
- If questions or assessments can be Googled - change the assessment.