Personal Passion Project - Reflections After Eight Years

For the past eight years my students in Year Six have participated in a Personal Passion Project during Term Four. It is a way to finish their time in Junior School with a project that connects their passion with all they have learned about managing inquiry/design based projects to that point. Over the years it has proven to be a highlight of the year and has produced amazing results. With a change to the Australian & NSW syllabus we have had to revise our approach to the Personal Passion Project and so now is the perfect time to reflect on the past and identify the lessons learned.

Firstly a little history, in 2007 Redlands was in the final stages of an experiment with Middle Schooling. Years Six, Seven and Eight were involved and the key difference between the middle school and a traditional primary school was that students spent most of their day in one of two classes; Humanities and Sciences. Teachers worked in pairs with one taking the two classes for Humanities and the other taking these same classes for Sciences. Each teacher had one of these classes as their 'Homeroom' class with a pastoral focus. This model worked well as the team of two teachers knew the students in their classes well and was able to share insights and perspectives about the students that might have been missed by one teacher working alone.

My 2007 homeroom class contained the year group's top cluster of students, at this time we partially streamed classes. These students were naturally high achievers with some unique personalities and quirky interests. By the time Term Four arrived I needed to offer them an alternative to the homework they were used to, something that would challenge their abilities and motivate them to show what they were capable of. My idea was to offer the option of a 'Personal Passion Project' as a homework task. I had expected only a few to take up the offer, in the end the whole class did and the degree of enthusiasm was such that I needed to find time within the timetable to allow the students to work on and share their developing projects.

The idea of a 'Personal Passion Project' was not unique in 2007 but was less common than it is now. Ideas like ‘Google's 20% Time’ were not well known in Education nor was the term 'Genius Hour' commonly used. How to best structure and support a Personal Passion Project was not something I had given much thought to as I really did not think many students would take the option. The result was that the class and I sort of fell into the project and learned as we went along. A key to the success at this point was the collaboration that took place between the students. Without prompting from me they were encouraging and supporting each other through the projects. This collaboration ensured that deadlines were met and that individuals never felt overwhelmed by the scale of what they had taken on.

The results of this first year showed the potential of the concept. I had students designing and making horse blankets, creating dance costumes, exploring architecture, writing books of poetry, investigating aerodynamics and writing short stories. What impressed me most was the depth of understanding the students were able to demonstrate at the end of the projects. The students had solved real problems, applied the design cycle and managed their time effectively; they demonstrated all of the skills I hoped my students might have developed after seven years of formal education.

At the end of this year I had the opportunity to chat with a Year Six teacher from a nearby school. I heard of how difficult the students had become in the last weeks of the year. As I taught two Year Six classes I could relate to this experience but only for the class not involved in the Personal Passion Project. For the class that had been involved the experience was very different. While one class was moving into holiday mode the other class was at their most engaged. Late in the final week of term we spent a morning sharing our projects and discussing the process. I asked the class 'should I do this next year?' and the resounding response was 'yes'. The general feeling was that this was the best thing they had done at school.

The signs were positive and when I shared my experiences from this pilot programme with my colleagues in 2008 they were keen to give it a go. This time all of year six would take on a Personal Passion Project during Term Four. This would require some additional planning and as this was now a core piece of our teaching would require more detailed programming. This was also our first year back in Junior School with a traditional one teacher per class model. This first year was a great success in many ways but there were also lots of lessons to be learned in a short period of time. Fortunately thanks to a skilled group of teachers and enthusiastic students we were able to solve most of the little problems that came along. 

The Personal Passion Projects have produced an enormous variety of projects, too many to list. There are those that recur each year and others that are truly unique. It is the projects that fall furthest from what one expects of a Year Six student or are least likely to be covered in a traditional syllabus that stand out. Projects like these:

In 2012 two projects stood out; one as it was the sort of project that at first I thought was going to be too difficult, the other because it was quite unexpected. The first student decided he wanted to build a laser CNC engraving machine from old printers. What impressed me from the outset was that he knew exactly how he would make it work and what difficulties he would encounter along the way including how he would control the movement of his laser in two axis and how he would program it. In the end it worked almost as expected and if not for some last minute issues with the laser being fried by excessive voltage, would have been perfect. The second was a project to explore low cost emergency housing for cold climate situations. This became a highly scientific investigation of the insulation properties of a range of recycled materials.

In 2014 a student in my class decided he would make a guide to creating an ‘Internet Start Up’ company. His final product was exceptionally well produced and based on detailed research into the strategies that would allow a company to grow rapidly and adapt to unseen or changing circumstances. His work impressed me but more importantly it impressed the many parents with a business background who could fully understand the quality of his recommendations.

Some projects have proven popular such as making a skateboard or surfboard. The most recent adaptation of this has been a student using 3D software to design his surfboard and then investigating options to have this 3D printed. There have also been a number of outstanding efforts at recycling furniture or creating new fashions from pre-loved clothes. Greatest success has come where the students have had a clear vision for their designs.

For some students the Personal Passion Project has been their first taste of real success at school. While we tend to steer students away from projects that involve a more technical ‘make’ aspect due to the limitations of working in a junior school; however, we have made exceptions to this rule. One boy who was passionate about surfing set to the task of making a surfboard using traditional methods of foam and fiberglass. Working with a member of our Senior School Design and Technology department he was able to do this. This was a student who had struggled to produce quality work in the classroom but on this project set and achieved the highest standards for quality. He learned that by taking a risk and giving attention to every detail he could achieve success and we all learned that the right project and the right environment will allow students to achieve great things.

There are also notable examples of where students have taken on more traditional projects but produced results beyond expectation. In 2007 one girl decided to write a piece of music and record this using software. For a school with a strong music programme this is not so out of the ordinary but this girl had little interest in computers before this project and needed to teach herself ‘Sibelius’, a highly technical piece of professional software. The result was amazing, was produced to the highest of technical standards and in its simple beauty hides the complexity of thinking behind it.

Another is an exploration of ‘Conceptual Art’.  The finished artwork demonstrated high levels of creativity and a keen understanding of the genre. What was most surprising here was that the student selected a project outside of his comfort zone while he could have used his exceptional talent for writing and ensured himself a successful and less challenging end of year. The final piece incorporated video, audio, sculpture, re-cycled materials and performance art in a way that described the artists journey towards maturity.  Read his history of Conceptual Art

There have been a number of books written through the Personal Passion Project but two stand out as examples of the surprising talents this can reveal. One was a book of poems written and illustrated by a student in 2007. This students attention to detail and desire for perfection bordered on obsession but in this project she used these personality quirks to great effect and produced a refined product of simple beauty and emotional depth. The other standout book was produced last year by a young author who wrote her first novel 'Aftermath'. She used her writing to develop a compelling story that draws her readers into a dystopian world that seems all too real. Read or Download 'Aftermath'

The Personal Passion Project has been enhanced for many students through ongoing reference to the Design Cycle and many students are able to fluidly move from one phase of this cycle to another as appropriate to their investigation. We introduce this cycle in Term One but the Personal Passion Project is the first time where students are applying this with complete independence. We display this cycle in our classrooms and have a copy on the website that accompanies the project. - Redlands Year Six

Graphic courtesy of ©International Baccalaureate 2007.- http://www.ibo.org/

Graphic courtesy of ©International Baccalaureate 2007.- http://www.ibo.org/

 

Over the years we have continued to refine the processes we apply to the Personal Passion Project. We have gained insights into the sorts of projects that work well and which will cause difficulties. We have added a degree of structure while maintaining the required degree of freedom necessary for a personalised project. The results of this learning are presented below.

1. Be prepared to be amazed - The quality of the students projects will go beyond what you expect. This is particularly important when a student comes to you with a grand idea that seems too hard or overly complex. If the student has the right level of passion for the project and an idea for how they will get started they will more than likely complete the project and complete it well.

2. Don't let your fears get in the way - The students are almost certainly going to select topics that you have no knowledge of and don't have the skills to support. At this point it could be easy to let your fears and insecurities get in the way. The best way to move forward is to listen to the student; do they know what they are doing? do they know which questions they need to answer? what problems they need to solve? If the answers to all of this are positive, start looking for an expert to help when times get tough.

3. Some students need a push in the right direction - Some students will come up with projects that are too simple with answers that could be easily Googled. We introduced the students to 'High Order Thinking Skills' and built these into the planning forms students complete. Projects need to include elements of synthesis, evaluation and creativity with the minimum requirement adjusted for individuals. We provide students with a list of verbs appropriate for the top levels of Bloom's taxonomy and help them use these in framing their topics.

4. Some students design a project that has nothing to do with their passion - A student might have a passion for surfing and decide they are going to write a book about the history of the sport. The problem is they have designed a project where they will need to be a historian, a researcher, a writer and you know they don't enjoy doing any of this. Maybe with the right topic they will gain a wider interest in these things but most likely they will quickly dream of days at the beach.

5. Some projects are just not possible - It can be hard to say no to a project but some are just not feasible. A classic example is the student who wants to design a better tennis racquet by selecting the right mix of shape and materials. The problem is that the modern tennis racquet uses high tech composites and even with million dollar R&D budgets the differences between one design and the next is hard to prove. 

6. Time and Scale - Some projects will clearly take longer than you have available, others are simply too large in scale or will rely on the involvement of too many people. Setting manageable goals and working to an achievable timeframe is important. At the same time you need to ensure that the concerns over time constraints are genuine. Creating a detailed timeline with estimates of how long each phase will take is beneficial on many levels at this stage. For the students the conversations around how long the project will take can include some rewarding reflection on how they approach tasks and can assist in their development of an understanding of their learning style. Some students need time to talk about their project and unpack ideas socially, others need quiet time to think through the steps, some just dive in and fix mistakes and redirect their plans as they go.

7. Too many changes - One of the challenges for some students has been the ever changing project. They select one topic, discover they don’t like it or encounter a problem they can’t easily solve and change to another topic. A week later and the process repeats. Setting a definite deadline after which there can be no changes is important. In the end the students work out that they have to make their ideas work.

8. Just enough planning - Over the years we refined the level of planning the students were required to do before commencing on their projects in earnest. The initial version required great detail and length processes for developing focus questions and setting targets. For some students and some projects it worked well but for others it got in the way. Eventually we got to a point where the planning had just enough detail, so we know the students have an understanding of their project and that we can support them along the way. View our simplified planning template

9. Relying on experts and building a team - Many of the projects students have explored over the years fall outside of the expertise of their teachers. I have no idea how to sew for example and have been of equally little help to students who are basing their projects around dance or music. Across the school we have found amazing partners with the skills we needed and in most cases they are keen to spend time with a student who they share a passion with. Building a team of support around the project is key to its ultimate success. Being mindful of the workload within this team is also important. We have had some colleagues so keen to help that they become overloaded and although they never complained we had to be careful in managing the demands on their time.

10. Collaboration & Self Organised Learning - Because this is a Personal Passion Project we have not included team projects. Nevertheless collaboration between students is an important part of many projects. Where possible foster the opportunities for collaboration while allowing each student to maintain control of their project. The power of collaboration will lift the quality of the projects as students share ideas and encourage each other to go beyond expectations. Collaboration will also solve some of the problems with projects outside the teacher’s comfort zone. This year I had a group of students focused on game development and their ultimate success was a direct result of the community of like-minded learners they created around their projects. This is a perfect demonstration of students adopting a self organised learning environment as they connect with their passions. 

11. The invisible safety net – For the Personal Passion Project finding the right levels of scaffolding, teacher input and guidance is one of the challenges. We want the students to feel that they are working independently while maintaining an appropriate level of support. In many ways we are wanting to provide an invisible safety net that allows the students to take risks independently while having the support they require.

12. Documenting the process and ensuring time for reflection - Giving time to active reflection on the process has been important. Students need to be able to take a step back and assess what they have achieved and what remains to be accomplished. Sharing these ideas with peers is most beneficial and allows you to train the students in reflecting on their learning and in giving feedback to their peers. The act of reflecting on the process has also benefitted many students when it is time to share their projects with the world as their audience is as interested in the process as they are in the product. This is particularly true for projects where the process is not obvious or is underestimated by the audience. A good example is game design projects in which the finished product does not reveal the level of knowledge and effort that was required.

13. Real Audiences – For all learning adding a real audience for the students is critical, too much of what students do is produced for an audience of one. For the Personal Passion Project presenting to an audience in the end of term ‘Gallery Walk’ has been critical in ensuring the success of the projects. The students gain a real sense of achievement from this day and the feedback is always genuinely positive.

For 2015 we are planning to move to a ‘Genius Hour’ model with students engaging in a scaffolded programme of project management skill development throughout Semester One that leads into planning for and completing a Personal Passion Project across Semester Two. The difference will be that the learning experience will be distributed across the year, one hour per week. We hope that this fits with the demands of the new syllabus from a time perspective while retaining the best parts of the present model. Certainly at the end of the year we will reflect and share what has been learned.

By Nigel Coutts

Deep Learning

A recurring theme of articles on this site is the question of what our goals should be and a clear element of this is a desire to go beyond a recall of facts and encourage deep learning. Whether this be as a result of asking non-googleable questions, encouraging students to evaluate ideas that matter and create original content while applying a mix of thinking skills and habits of mind, the aim is to evolve our students into deeply reflective learners.

Katrina Schwartz on Mind/Shift reports a study into Deeper Learning that raises some interesting points on how this may be achieved. The study reported six competencies for deeper learning; 'mastering content, critical thinking, effective written and oral communication, collaboration, learning how to learn, and developing academic mindsets.'

The report discusses a range of strategies that promote deeper thinking including careful design of the questions students are asked to engage with, the inclusion of opportunities for students to be hands on and build things and for them to deal with real world problems.

Allowing students to have a voice in the design of topics that genuinely engage their interests is one strategy offered. At Redlands students during their final term of Year Six engage in a 'Personal Passion Project'. Students design this project in collaboration with their teachers and are able to pursue any topic as long as it is personally relevant and designed in a way that will require them to use their high order thinking skills. This means that students are encouraged away from topics that require only recall or curation of facts easily found on Google. In practical terms this often involves a minor adjustment to the wording of a project; a process assisted by the use of verbs applicable to Bloom's 'High Order Thinking Skills'. Over the years we have run this project the one consistent element is that student engagement goes through the roof, the quality of thinking is very high and the results are amazing. In recent years students have made a laser engraving machine from old printers, explored low cost recycled insulation materials for emergency housing and evaluated programmes for training netball players at an elite level. At the end of term students present their works to an audience of parents and teachers from our Senior School. Access to a real audience is an important part of this process and ensures students see the relevance of their learning, not to mention the importance of the positive feedback provided by an impressed group of adults.

The report touches on the importance of developing mindsets that will allow student to achieve success with four beliefs identified as crucial;  

  • I can change my intelligence and abilities through effort, 
  • I can succeed, 
  • LI belong in this learning community, 
  • This work has value and purpose for me.

These mindsets closely resemble the Positive Thoughts identified by 'Lifelong Achievement Group'. Developed by Andrew Martin 'The Motivation and Engagement Wheel' groups factors that promote and block success into four categories; Positive Thoughts, Positive Behaviours, Negative Behaviours and Negative Thoughts. Positive Thoughts include, self-belief, valuing and learning focus while Negative Thoughts include uncertain control and anxiety. Read more about the 'The Motivation and Engagement Wheel' at lifelongachievement.com

Deep Learning is identified as an emerging trend for Education in the '2014 NMC Horizon Report' where the maturation of existing technologies in schools is predicted to see an expansion in the use of this to fuel deeper levels of engagement with challenge based learning linked to real world scenarios. 

As technologies such as tablets and smartphones now have proven applications in schools, educators are leveraging these tools, which students already use, to connect the curriculum with real life issues. The active learning approaches are decidedly more student-centered, allowing them to take control of how they engage with a subject and to brainstorm and implement solutions to pressing local and global problems. The hope is that if learners can connect the course material with their own lives and their surrounding communities, then they will become more excited to learn and immerse themselves in the subject matter. Read 2014 NMC K-12 Horizon Report

Read the article 'Beyond Knowing Facts, How Do We Get to a Deeper Level of Learning?'

by Nigel Coutts

25 Things Skilled Learners Do Differently

One of the reasons we teach the Habits of Mind is that we understand these are the habits of both successful people and learners. We blend the Habits of Mind with Thinking Routines because this provides a tool kit for students and teachers to use as they seek to increase their application of the habits. But is this the sort of process skilled learners do that distinguishes them from those who struggle?

Saga Briggs writes for Open Colleges and describes '25 Things Skilled Learners Do Differently’. In this comprehensive list with succinct descriptions of what learners do one can identify many of the Habits of Mind and also situations where skilled learners are applying worthwhile thinking routines. Saga identifies that the things skilled learners do are learnable and sees the list as a set of strategies we can teach. I would suggest that a useful way of attacking this challenge from multiple angles is to use a combination of Habits of Mind and Making Thinking Visible or Thinkers Key style thinking routines.

What are the 25 things skilled learners do differently?
See how the Habits of Mind and Thinking Routines work together.

by Nigel Coutts

Inquiry Based Learning is dead, long live inquiry.

In the ebb and flow of educational theories and approaches to learning one can see many commonalities to the world of fashion. A good idea emerges, becomes mainstream, is appropriated by a wide number of educators who blend the essential elements into their methodology and over time the once good idea becomes an oversimplified or slightly misunderstood model of what it once was. In no short time another idea emerges and this takes the place of the last. The link to the fashion industry is that most educators know to keep their old resources, as what was out of fashion in one decade will be the darling idea of the next.

And so some are saying that this is the case for Inquiry Based Learning. The logic of this claim lies in a report by Liem & Martin (2013) on the effectiveness of Direct Instruction over alternative instructional methods. This report, based on a meta-analysis of existing studies dating back to 1996, showed that Direct Instruction was the most effective means of instruction for a wide range of students across a mix of factors and resulted in the highest levels of achievement. "a bulk of evidence supports the benefits of DI and its key instructional practices relative to minimally guided or unassisted instructions."

Before we get too far into this discussion it should be made clear what is meant by direct instruction. 

"Direct instruction (DI), which originated in the work of Engelmann and colleagues in the 1960s, is a systematic model of teaching that focuses on a sequenced and incremental mastery of curriculum- based competence and a capacity to apply generalizable skills to tackle other similar questions/problems (Adams & Engelmann, 1996). DI is implemented through carefully planned lessons in which students are provided with substantial, and yet gradually reduced, guidance (i.e., mediated scaffolding).” (Liem & Martin 2013) 

The implications of the report are that teachers can facilitate learning for their students by applying a DI model that; ensures students see the task as achievable and manageable, provides a clear sequence of well thought-through instructions, by teachers posing questions and modeling the use of problem solving strategies and providing students with opportunities to deliberately and purposefully practice the skills and knowledge they learn. This model when looked at on both a small scale lesson to lesson basis or on a learning journey across multiple years of education makes sense and is in keeping with the practice observed in many classrooms at one point or another.

The report is clear on additional points that should not be ignored. "However, this is not to dismiss the constructivist view of learning–which is often believed to be supported by minimally guided instructions–because DI principles and practices are indeed useful to promote the process of knowledge construction.” Andrew Martin has also spoken of the need to avoid a dichotomous approach to DI vs. Inquiry or Problem Based Learning; the best results can be achieved by using the right approach for the desired outcome rather than being guided by dogmatic beliefs. What the report is not advocating is a teacher centric classroom in which the students are the passive receptors of information provided by the teacher with all aspects of the lesson delivered lecture style. Reducing a DI framework to ‘Chalk & Talk’ is not the intent of the report although an appropriate measure of this will occur.

What the report does not touch on is the question of ‘What should we teach?’ 

If you have listened to any of the recent TED Talks by Sir ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra, Ian Jukes and others, you will understand that education is facing a radical change as we move to preparing our students for a post industrial revolution era. Ian Jukes outlines a world already emerging in which the repetitive cognitive tasks so common in offices of western nations today will be replaced by machines or unskilled workers in emerging nations. You will have heard that as a result of the growth of the Internet, teaching students isolated content is a fruitless task. What is needed is an educational system that teaches students to think, imagine, create and solve problems that do not yet exist. Not that this is a truly radical idea, Einstein understood this and stated ‘Education is not the learning of facts, it’s rather the training of a mind to think’. What our students will require is an ability to be inquisitive, solution focused problem solvers who are able to apply their imaginations towards creative endeavours and to do this in an environment of collaboration.

David Perkins, a founding member of Harvard Project Zero offers insights to these questions in his book 'Future Wise: Educating our Children for a Changing World’. Perkins conducts research on creativity in the arts and sciences, informal reasoning, problem solving, understanding, individual and organizational learning, and the teaching of thinking skills. He advocates that teachers and curriculum administrators rethink what gets taught in schools. 

"What’s conventionally taught may not develop the kinds of citizens, workers, and family and community members we want and need. The basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, even if strongly developed, aren’t enough. The familiar disciplines in their traditional versions, sitting in their silos, constrained by regional perspectives, and taught to all comers for purely academic understanding aren’t enough. The universe of what’s seen as worth learning is expanding. (Perkins 2014)

David asks us to identify the learning that is “Lifeworthy, that is, likely to matter in the lives learners are likely to live”. He questions many of the lessons we as teachers believe as critical for all learners to experience using the infamous quadratic equation as an example of a concept taught to all but relevant to few. 
"Opportunity cost makes a fundamental point about decision making: when we decide in favor of one course of action, we forgo others that might have generated certain benefits. A cost of the path we choose is loss of benefits from the abandoned paths. With quadratic equations as with anything else, we have to ask not just whether they are nice to understand in themselves but what might have been learned instead.” 
David suggests that much of what was taught was useful in a world where the future that our students entered was similar to that experienced by their parents; predictable and known. Tomorrow’s world will not be like this and we consequently need to be more "future wise”.

This focus on a particular set of flexible adaptable skills is not intended to be at the complete abandonment of knowledge or content. 
"To be sure, it’s nice to know everything in those textbooks. We want to be careful about what we toss. Knowing a lot well at an acquaintance level— a cappella, cholesterol, zygote— is a hallowed mission of education still relevant today.”(Perkins 2014) 
The important part of this is the phrase ‘acquaintance level’. It is useful to understand that there were significant historic periods and probably useful to be able to name them, but for the non-professional historian specialising in renaissance life in the villages of southern France, a deeper knowledge is not required or beneficial. Knowing enough to provide points of reference and starting points for inquiry is in most areas of study enough. 

The next question to be answered then is how may we best prepare our students. What pedagogical approach will arm them with the skills required in this brave new world where they are the creators and shapers of knowledge and ideas. Clearly it makes sense that we teach them these skills and dispositions and provide them with opportunities to apply these. Doing this does not however require a classroom environment devoid of direction and guidance from experts. If our goal is to teach students to swim we would not do so by pushing them into the sea, but we would also not expect them to learn to swim without ever getting into the water. Yes we want our students to be able to independently inquire and solve problems but we also need to show them how. This is where much of the debate about the merits of Inquiry Based Learning vs. Direst Instruction falls apart as it should be our goal to produce students adept at Inquiry Based Learning but this should not dictate our methodology. Every student needs to be shown how to inquire, how to develop big questions, how to solve diverse and novel problems and how to be creative. We need to model these skills, allow time to reflect on their utility and provide tangible strategies to apply. Further to all of this our students need opportunities to apply this kind of thinking to problems that matter to them in a safe environment that is tolerant of failure and provides guidance when things go wrong and we do all this so that eventually they will do this without us.

Our students will learn in a multiplicity of environments and in a variety of individual and group settings. This has always been the case but today the tools enabling this learning have grown in potency. Every laptop is a billion volume library with an array of multimedia learning opportunities available that we as humble classroom teachers can not hope to compete with in terms of student engagement regardless of how colourful our whiteboard displays may be or how interactive our Smartboards are. New ways of learning, sharing, making and creating continue to emerge and the school day increasingly forms a small package of a child’s total learning. Acknowledging this and allowing students to bring this out of school learning into the classroom adds new dimensions to what is possible. It also provides new challenges as we lose control over what our students are learning, what they know and what they can do. One solution to this is for teachers to empower students as teachers, to take a step back and allow the students to lead. Sugata Mitra through his ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment found that this style of collaborative learning could be very effective particularly when it is empowered by a non-expert mentor. He refers to this as the 'Role of the Grandmother’. In this model the teacher allows the students to share their knowledge and skill, to work together to solve a problem while the teacher interjects the well-timed encouraging word or question to re-shape their thinking. Building on from the strategies we have taught the students and the modeling of problem solving we have provided this model makes for excellent independent practice. Our goal remains as the production of talented inquirers and problem solvers but here too this is developed in ways that scaffold success.

A linked perspective on this and one that touches upon the ultimate significance of Inquiry Based Learning is presented by Chris Lehmann who writes "In a true inquiry-based model, how learning happens isn’t as important as whether that learning encourages students to try to learn even more." If we take this idea and see the success of our programmes in a mix of student engagement with the process of learning now and their desire to continue as learners beyond the constrains of our schools we are likely to have a different conclusion on which model provides the highest level of achievement but we are not freed from the question of how we will enable our students to be successful inquirers. 

So, maybe Inquiry Based Learning is dead. Maybe once we take a few moments to reflect on its passing we will be able to see that in truth we misunderstood its place in our classrooms and see it as our ultimate goal and not a methodology. Once we do this we can go back to trying to understand how we may best support our students achieve their potential and prepare for a world beyond our classrooms.

By Nigel Coutts

Read & Write for Google

Every day we expect our students to engage with a wide variety of texts as readers, writers, editors and researchers. For many of our students this reliance on text presents a real challenge that can stand in the way of them achieving other goals. For a student still struggling with handwriting or typing, a routine task that requires a written response can be an obstacle to their success, despite a detailed understanding of the content. A student with a difficulty in reading will encounter similar obstacles when a task requires them to access information from a written text and the demands of bringing a mix of ideas presented in a document from working memory into a coherent summary can challenge many learners.

For teachers looking to apply a Universal Design for Learning approach these obstacles to learning could be overcome by selecting alternative ways of engaging with or responding to the content or students could be guided towards using Read & Write for Google.

Read & Write provides a useful set of tools for students who struggle with text. It provides a text reader, speech input, highlighter and summary tools, dictionary and picture dictionary. It works with Google Docs, PDF, ePub and Kes bringing new functionality to each format. It is free for teachers and is well worth exploration.

Jason Carroll of Spectronics Blog provides a detailed introduction to Read & Write for Google - Visit Now 

 

By Nigel Coutts

EduTech 2014

In June I had the opportunity to attend EduTech 2014 in Brisbane. Billed as the largest Educational Technology conference in Australia and boasting keynote speakers such as Sir ken Robinson and Sugata Mitra this was an opportunity I was looking forward to. Looking back now on the week I can confidently say it lived up to expectation. It presented a vision for a future in which education has a key role to play but a model of education unlike that we are used to. 

The common message was that schools need to change, to move towards the development of skills applicable to life long learning in an environment where creative problem solving is valued. Schools will best serve their students by moving away from content delivery and by embracing an understanding of the tools available to the learner in a connected world. The speakers outlined a confluence of factors that make the chalk and talk model of the past obsolete. The rapid expansion of connected technologies, changes to the global career market, population pressures and emerging industries present new challenges and schools will need radical transformation if they are to remain relevant.

Sugata Mitra started the week off and presented well-researched evidence for why the students of the near future will learn in an environment fundamentally different to the schools built to meet the needs of the industrial revolution. He spoke of the lessons learned from his ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment in which students who were provided with access to the internet were able to meet learning goals considered impossible. This research led to the SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environment) model which is becoming popular across the world and is evolving into ‘The School in the Cloud”.  

Listening to Sugata describe his research process was entertaining and compelling. He described setting up an experiment designed to fail in which he provided a group of students who only spoke Tamil access to resources for the study of gene replication. He hoped that as this was a sufficiently complex topic and as the information was provided only in English the students were destined to fail. Disappointingly they did not. At the end of the experiment they were able to describe in their recently developed English how genes replicated. What was perhaps most surprising was that despite this feat of learning they began their response with “We have learned nothing, except  . . .’ where the ‘except’ was a beautifully coherent description of gene replication. From his research Sugata concluded that the power of the Internet is the learning it makes possible in an environment of collaboration. 

At the heart of this models success is collaboration. The students learned from each other, sharing knowledge, testing ideas, putting together the pieces of knowledge they gained and together drawing conclusions. This aspect of his research throws into question the trend towards 1:1 tech programmes. The forced sharing and collaboration that came from a scarcity of resources needs to be built into systems where each child has their own device.

Sugata also spoke about the role of the right type of feedback and encouragement in this model describing the ‘Role of the Grandmother’. The feedback or encouragement from the non-expert encourages the learner to continue to explore. To facilitate this he has employed a team of ‘grandmothers’ who listen to what the students are doing, provide non-specific positive feedback and thusly encourage the students to continue their exploration. This is so unlike the feedback commonly given to students where they are told whether they are right or wrong.

Lastly he spoke of learning as an edge of chaos phenomenon. Learning is described as what occurs when one is faced with the unknown and needs to move forward. For this chaos to exist though teachers need to give up a degree of control. We may like a completely ordered system where all is predictable; however, if we set up a predictable environment how do we know we have predicted everything. In chaos new outcomes become available, new learning can occur and discovery becomes possible.

His research challenges notions of a need to spoon feed content to students. Learning in a SOLE does not always have to be obvious. The best questions might be ‘I wonder ...’ and the trick is to not have an answer or to pick a topic with no answer. With this in place and with access to the right tools students are able to Self Organise their learning, to collaborate, to evaluate and explore directions not otherwise conceived. The possibility SOLE offers educators is a model for a learning environment where the core skills developed are exactly those students will require in a post industrial revolution age. 

Anthony Scalcito – Microsoft - Daily Edventures Blog

Next on the agenda was Anthony Scalcito of Microsoft. He spoke of the need for a Holistic Transformation of Learning. Building on from Sugata’s SOLE model he described how learning has fundamentally changed – ‘your students are learning without you’. In the internet age kids grow up surrounded by learning.

Anthony spoke of the 1:1 movement and how too often educators start with the wrong questions about how to use the device not what we want to achieve for the students. He outlined how his research and experience shows that the best innovations are when the learning environment changes. By putting discussions about dynamic exciting learning on the table and talking about how we set up environments for learning and not focusing on what gets taught or what device it gets taught on is essential.

A key advantage of technology enabled learning according to Anthony is the opportunity to deliver enhanced levels of differentiation. Schools can achieve an A-E grade in the same way for all and at the same pace OR aim for an A grade achieved by all at their pace and in their way. Having spent time recently researching ‘Universal Design for Learning’ this ideas of adapting the learning to the learner, instead of trying to adapt the learner to the learning or allowing some learners to achieve less because the system does not suit them makes sense. Technology allows this shift so all students move on to the next step when they are ready. 

Anthony shared some tools Microsoft is developing to enable this enhanced learning environment.

·       ‘Office Mix’ is a set of tools for creating online courses from the familiarity of the Office Suite of applications. Easy to use and to create content

·       Oslo. Bringing content to you in a manageable form with tools for collaboration. 

From his classroom experience he shared the story of an innovative use for Skype. Mystery Skype is a game played between schools on a global level where classrooms connect with each other and through a Question and Answer process try to guess where the other school is located. The students seemed very engaged with the process and learned a good deal about cultures as a result. 

He spoke of the ‘New Pedagogies for Deep Learning Project’ as a potential source of ideas. This project is definitely worth further exploration. 

Lastly he spoke of the need to move beyond Data to Actionable Information. For schools the amount of data we have access to is ever increasing. Anthony made the point that we now need to be able to act on that data in meaningful ways and that for this to happen it needs to presented in ways that are meaningful to the end user. When we move to Actionable Information about our students we are able to better plan for and meet their needs.

Student Voices – Brett Moller (Moderator) Faith Ty & Leio McLaren (Students)

This session was handed over to the students. First up Faith described how she had used Garage Band on her iPad to produce a piece of music selected for the Tripple J Radio programme ‘Uneathed’. In front of a large audience of educators this young lady re-produced her track demonstrating her knowledge of music, her talent for composition and the potential of mobile devices. Her award-winning track recorded under her stage name 'Cypher' is worth listening to and clearly shows what our students are capable of when provided with the right tools and teachers who let them explore. 

Listen to Liar by Cypher

Next up was Leio who passionately spoke of the importance of all students learning to code. His story was one that would challenge many educators as his knowledge of coding and ability to learn it went well beyond that of the typical teacher. Leio learned in many respects in spite of the education system but he was lucky enough to have teachers who understood enough of what he was doing to not put barriers in his way. Leio has gone on to produce App’s that have been featured on Apples iTunes store and are already making him money. He is the founder of AppAppAway and is suitably proud of his achievements. He has moved beyond just making and selling simple Apps to developing his own App Development Agency. 

Digital Literacy – Jenny Luca - http://jennyluca.wikispaces.com/EduTECH+2014

Jenny Luca spoke about the skills students require as they navigate an online world beginning with three key areas – connect, collaborate and curate. Her presentation was fast paced and covered concepts from the Australian Curriculum to tools that enable learning. Fortunately her slides are available online via the link above and worth a visit. In particular her slides ‘Future Work Skills’, ‘Ten Skills for the Future Workforce’ and ‘Digitally Resilient’ deserve a second look. The concept of being digitally resilient is particularly relevant to teachers as we explore and sometimes test new technologies. Digital Resilience will allow the teacher to push past the roadblocks and problems encountered and persist with the implementation of a new idea. In Jenny’s slideshows you will find numerous ideas including tools for the digital classroom, simple timesavers and a well-researched approach to privacy. I would recommend anyone with an interest in online privacy and youth online read Deborah Boyd’s book ‘It’s complicated’ that describes how young people really are using the internet and social media and in doing so dispels many of the myths and fears around the topic. 

Panel Discussion

A panel discussion of ‘Future possibilities of the cloud for school’ presented some of the opportunities of cloud based computing and indicated some of the pitfalls that may be encountered along the way. Clearly this is the way computing is moving but while the panel covered the topic well, the panellists failed to go beyond the fundamentals. It was a fair introduction for those beginning to explore Cloud computing but not much for those already living there.

Judy O’Connel introduced the topic of Web 3.0 and described some of the potential of innovations in this area. Judy has shared her slideshow online and for those wanting to better understand the impact the World Wide Web has had over its 25 year history or to see how it may evolve over the coming years this link is worth exploring. http://www.slideshare.net/heyjudeonline/preparing-for-the-impact-of-web-30

Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson was undoubtedly a highlight of the two days. His mix of informative presentation and humour makes for a polished and convincing presentation. He spoke of the need for an ongoing transformation of Education with a focus on creativity. He summarised much of his writing to date and subtly mentioned his books on the subjects of Education and Creativity. In other talks, including his well watched TED Talks he has described the importance of creativity for schools and the sad reality that schools often stand in the way of this process. 

An interesting experiment he shared is based on student responses when asked to complete a drawing. Each group is provided with a piece of paper on which a triangle has been drawn. One groups is told they will be given points for correct answers the other is not. The first group mostly produced predictable drawings of a house with a triangular roof; the second group produced a great variety of creative drawing using more colours and a mix of themes. The results can bee seen below.

 

What differentiated this talk from Ken’s other presentation was his focus on a need for education to change due to increases in population that makes present models of delivery unsustainable. This was a new and compelling explanation for the need to change. If we are to meet the needs of an ever-expanding population we need to look for more efficient ways of doing so. 

Sir Ken was as always inspiring and his speech was an experience that will stay with me for a long time. In some ways though he has perhaps become the iPhone of the Educational speakers, a great experience, the best available but maybe overexposed

Gary Stager - http://stager.org/news.html

Gary Stager started the second day and brought his passion and excitement for the maker movement to life. Gary is the author of ‘Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom’ a book I would recommend to anyone interested in the maker movement for education.  He showed the quality and breadth of learning that occurs in an environment that presents students with multi-faceted problems that engage their desire to learn. Gary is a master of finding tasks that are highly engaging, deeply challenging, academically rigorous and blend learning across the curriculum. He described a meeting in which he and his colleagues analysed a single engineering task involving students modifying a robot to complete a set course. In this one task they had managed to touch on a great array of Common Core Outcomes. Gary’s students must leave the classroom every day feeling they have had a day of play almost oblivious to the many outcomes they have mastered.

Gary is critical of much of the technology use in schools. He described how he is disappointed when schools celebrate their use of Chromebook’s as tools for note taking as though this is innovative. His answer is Making – starting with a computer and using it to make better things.

He spoke of a mythical place called Mathsland; a metaphor for learning mathematics in a land that speaks maths just as you would learn French better in France. He advocates for a new diet of mathematics and demonstrated Turtle Art as a tool for encouraging this. According to the Turtle Art website it:

TurtleArt lets you make images with your computer. The Turtle follows a sequence of commands. You specify the sequence by snapping together puzzle like blocks. The blocks can tell the turtle to draw lines and arcs, draw in different colors, go to a specific place on the screen, etc. There are also blocks that let you repeat or name sequences. Other blocks perform logical operations.

The sequence of blocks is a program that describes an image. This kind of programming is inspired by the LOGO programming language. It was designed to be easy enough for children and yet powerful enough for people of all ages. TurtleArt is focused on making images while allowing you to explore geometry and programming. 

Turtle Art is a good demonstration of Gary’s approach to learning. It is highly engage, challenging and yet achievable by students of all ages and with varying degrees of complexity to suit. It encourages collaboration and provides intrinsic rewards for effort. 

He shared the story of ‘Sylvia’s Super Awesome Maker Show’ as an example of how a wide range of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) outcomes can be explored and assessed through design and make tasks. Sylvia started publishing her online show when she was quite young but her knowledge of maths and engineering was already evident. For Sylvia the complex maths and science she masters is just a part of the fun she has in making things. Her high levels of intrinsic motivation, the relevance of her learning and that she is in control of it guarantees success and is the perfect model for learning in all our classrooms. 

To ensure even coverage Gary also touched on the importance of Literacy. As a result of technology students are writing more, writing better, writing differently, and with an ethos of sharing. He added that computer programming mirrors the writing process and that modern knowledge construction is inseparable from computing. 

Suan Yeo – Google -Social, Collaboration, Creativity: Empowering the Next Generation 

Follow Suan on Google Plus

As an opener Suan of Google Education, shared this image as a commentary on our engagement with Social Media. This led to a discussion of FOMO or ‘fear of missing out’ as part of an explanation for why we are so engaged in the online social world. It is of course this world that our students spend so much time so it worth understanding.

Suan described the challenges we face in teaching digital literacy to digital natives. He described the growth of computing and the speed of change that has occurred. A cute example of this is the YouTube video of ‘Kids Reacting to Old Computers’. 


A further demonstration of this is the infographic he shared that shows ‘The Internet in Real Time’. Developed by Penny Stocks this infographic updates itself in real time showing the expansion of key sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, Amazon and Google. It is amazing to watch how quickly the numbers increase.

He asked the question ‘If you are asking Googleable questions you are asking the wrong questions. What are the questions that are ungoogleable?’ Thinking about what this mean for the classroom and your teaching can be a little daunting, so much of what we ask students could be answered with a Google search. Combine this with some of the points made by Gary Stager on the use of Wolfram Alpha for solving mathematical questions and there is a real challenge for educators. 

Suan shared a great Blog by Steve Wheeler and pointed us to Googles Education page.

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk

http://www.google.com/edu/

Tom Barrett – Creativity and the Australian Curriculum-http://notosh.com/ 

Tom Barrett spoke of dichotomies in designing learning, of Direct Instruction with its advantages of rigour, reliability but a focus on teacher led learning and the product of the lesson vs Inquiry Learning with enhanced creativity, originality and student led learning with emphasis on the process of learning.  As with all things it should not be one or the other.

He spoke of the need to understand the impact that direct instruction has on limiting opportunities for discovery, that tools that move us quickly from the unknown to the known spoil chances for deeper inquiry - Googleable vs. Non-Googleable Questions

Tom asked ‘How do we design learning to create inquisitive faces for our students? How often do our students look puzzled and it is a good thing?’. This sort of thinking was common to many of the speakers at EduTech and linked back to Sugata’s opening comments about the ‘edge of chaos’. 

He cited Bonawitz (2011) - "The double edged sword of pedagogy- instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery" a great idea to lead into the explanation of an analysis of the interactions between Direct Instruction and Inquiry Learning.  Tom indicated that ‘When we add a process to inquiry learning we gain the opportunity to include the rigour that can go missing in the sometimes fluffy world of Inquiry Learning’. 

Tom’s speech presented in Oslo and available online mirrors much of what he presented at EduTech in a slightly longer form. View Online

Chris Betcher  Creativity in the Classroom -  http://chrisbetcher.com/ & http://www.mydailycreate.com/

Chris took Ken Robinson’s call for creativity into the classroom and showed how it needs to become a ‘deliberate daily act’. He shared his project to do something creative every day for a year and spoke of how this forced creativity was changing his way of seeing the world. This idea became ‘My Daily Create’ a blog of daily creativity inspired by range of other ‘365’ projects such as http://365project.org/ . Through this project Chris has shared many great ideas for using technology in simple, creative ways. Each posting includes notes on the process and inspiration for the piece making this an archive of creativity and a resource for those seeking ways to include technology in the classroom. This has inspired Year Six at Redlands to take on the Homework challenge of creating four creative somethings every week. 


Margaret River Primary School - Sinan & Craig - http://mriverps.wa.edu.au/

Margaret River Primary School is located south of Perth and presented their approach to Inquiry Learning. There approach hinges on the establishment of an environment that supports inquiry, building inquiry into their scope and sequences and developing opportunities for staff to share and celebrate their success.

The school has borrowed the ideas and language developed by Stephen Heppel and others including ‘The Third Teacher’ for the development of a learning environment. This means they have created Fireplaces for small group collaboration, Watering Holes for sharing, Caves for individual or partner learning and Mountain Tops for celebrating success. Each space has a unique character that suits its use and can be implemented in a variety of ways to suit the wider structure of the classroom or school. Thinking about how these spaces can be created is the first step to modifying the learning environment to best suit the learners needs.

Another key idea shared by Margaret River was there regular WOW sessions. This is a time for teachers to share an idea that has worked with their colleagues and to celebrate success. This was seen as a critical step in driving change across the school. They shared a nice video that demonstrates the importance of first followers to institutions wanting to implement change. They described how by nurturing the first followers they have been able to bring about an irresistible movement towards becoming the school envisioned by their executive. 

 

Ian Jukes – Aligning Technology Initiatives in the Age of Disruptive Innovation 

Ian had the hard job of wrapping up the conference and ensuring that it ended as well as it began. Anyone uncertain of the message that Education needs to transform itself if it is to meet the challenges ahead was left in doubt after Ian’s passionate, fast paced speech. He described how many of the jobs we currently prepare our students for will be moved off-shore or to services such as oDesk and that to ensure our students find a place in the world we need to focus on ‘Long Life Skills’. 

Ian began by outlining the basis for his assertion that education needs to change. He shared a series of graphs that showed where the jobs are moving to, away from agriculture and manufacturing towards jobs that involve creativity. The move away from agriculture and manufacturing and its causes linked to mechanisation is well documented. The category of Service industries is also in decline or is at least plateauing. In the remaining category of the traditional office worker the importance of what Ian referred to as Routine Cognitive Tasks is also declining and moving away from countries like Australia.

Because ‘Routine Cognitive Tasks’ are not location dependent they can be out-sourced to the cheapest bidder on a global scale or be completed by a computer. oDesk is a service that provides access to a pool of workers who can complete these Routine Cognitive Tasks through an internet based service. A company determines they have a need for a set task and then use oDesk to locate a person or small group willing to complete it. Consider the task of reading reports, instead of having a teacher in Australia do this a school could use oDesk to have the editing completed at a much lower cost by a worker in another part of the world. Because the task is not dependent on the person being based locally this sort of out-sourcing is easily achieved. This leaves students in countries like Australia unemployable unless they have skills to creatively solve problems. 

Our students will likely have 10-17 careers by the time they are 38 and so need to ‘learn, un-learn and re-learn’ at a rapid pace to meet changing needs. Ian pointed out that in the future we all need to understand that ‘If you want loyalty buy a dog. Don't expect from employers or employees’. Schools need to prepare their students for this world by developing these skills.  New opportunities for enterprise bring with them new challenges for schools e.g the birth and growth of the app developer. But this does not mean we teach app design in the same way we taught grammar, the skills needed now will be outmoded by next year or sooner, we need teach the mind set required for app design. What is needed is a problem solving, design process with inquiry skills and the ability to quickly learn and unlearn skills to suit the needs of the task.

Ian distinguished two types of skills and indicated that schools need to focus on the long life skills:

  • Short life skills are the ones that quickly become redundant or outdated.
  • Long life skills are creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving and social intelligence 

He asked the question ‘Are schools in the content delivery business? If that is so, then we are going to be out of a job soon’. According to Ian ‘Our present system is not broken, it is obsolete, outmoded. We cannot make little modifications, it is time to redesign’. He compared schools to Banks. If they retained their old model with antiquated operating hours, branch only access and a reliance on cash for all transactions they would be gone. This could be related to countless other industries that have faced or are facing radical changes to their business model. 

He concluded his very fast paced presentation with five key points for schools as they adapt to meet the challenges ahead. By understanding each point and its impact on what and how we teach we have a chance of remaining relevant. 

  • Connectivity is transforming knowledge
  • Why should we memorise basic facts when we have constant access to these. Relates back to Sugata's ‘back pack’ metaphor where the individual carries a supply of facts in their phone not in their brain.
  • Students are our customers and we have to compete for their custom. They have options and these options will expand and they will access to options that do a better job. It is not about doing what we do well but doing what is relevant.
  • Adaptive technology can replace much of what teachers now do.
  • Our students learn differently and so we need to teach differently, we must adapt our teaching to them rather than expecting them to adapt to our methods.

 

Three things

Here are three little things you might find useful from the land of little blue birds,

The first is a delightful piece of music by Weird Al Yankovic that captures perfectly how many English teachers feel when exposed to what passes as grammar in the modern world. This alone could replace every Grammar text.

Watch 'Word Crimes' on YouTube

The second one is a Graffiti Wall with a purpose. Set up a space on a wall where students can write and then invite them to add one quote per month, or maybe per book they read, just the one that they most want to share with the class. As they can only pick one they must be selective and be able to justify their choice. Once they have put their quote on the wall they can not remove it or add another so the choosing is important.

Read More 

Lastly an interesting reminder of why Finland is achieving academic success. By deliberately focussing on meeting the needs of every child, making Learning Support the norm for all learners, not the exception.

Read More

IBM predicts the future of Education

Given that IBM created Watson, a learning computer that was able to win Jeopardy against some of the games greatest human competitors, it is not surprising they are interested in Computer Learning. This is the theme of this year's '5 in 5', five predictions for what computing will bring in five years time. The first of these predictions has particular relevance to education and predicts a future where learning is targeted to the needs of the individual based on information gathered by teachers and their support network over years.

 

One of the difficulties teachers experience is the transfer of knowledge about our students from one year and one class to the next. IBM predicts a future where thanks to the application of 'Big Data' techniques the transfer of knowledge about every child is seamless and truly informative for effective teaching. Every teacher will have easy and timely access to a complete picture of each child's learning profile including strengths, weaknesses, interests, and history. Armed with this information the teacher will be better prepared to meet the individual needs of their students.

 

Read more about this prediction - The classroom will learn you

or watch the video for a clear description of the impact Big Data can have on education

 

A Classroom that Learns You

 

In five years, classrooms will learn about you, and personalize coursework accordingly. It's the end of the era of one-size-fits-all education, and the beginning of personalized learning. Every year IBM makes predictions about 5 technology innovations that stand to change the way we live within the next 5 years.

Chromebook Update

Back in March of 2013 I wrote about my initial experience with a Chromebook. Since then I have continued to use the device and in doing so have become increasingly impressed with it given the low cost of ownership. I have also enjoyed the benefits of a cloud based device and the multi-user experience this brings.

For me the advantages of the Chromebook are its lightweight, low cost and ease of editing and sharing documents. As mentioned in the previous post the experience of using services such as Evernote and Google Docs is excellent and I have not found a situation where the devices dependence on cloud storage has been an issue, after all I can always use my phone as a hotspot for WiFi. The Chromebook has good battery life for sporadic use and I am never that far from a power point. The screen is good enough for the intended purpose and the keyboard is nice if not spectacular. I like that it starts quickly, is not a burden to carry and that after a little tweaking go my Google profile it makes access to my digital life across devices seamless. It was the Chromebook that led me to discover the joys of Google's sync services and I am happy for that.

My class found the device intriguing from day one. It was not the typical laptop they were used to and thanks to the low cost I was happy to share it with them. A number already had Google accounts and used Docs and GMail. For these students using my Chromebook was just like using their laptop. They logged in with their details, had access to their files and their applications. Once they were finished they passed it on to another student and the Chromebook was instantly ready for them. Given the choice many of the students prefer the Chromebook to other computers, particularly smaller Netbooks but also the class set of slightly ageing iMacs. This is partly the novelty of using the teacher's computer but they also like how quickly it becomes their computer ready to use just they way they like. For those who have fully embraced the cloud lifestyle they even have access to their music and games and photos.

We have also enjoyed the ease of sharing that comes with our move to the cloud. A student working on a picture book can easily share his work with me before printing and I can see the edits and drafting as they occur. We can confer in real time on documents and will choose to do so in a range of ways empowered by us both having access to the document in question. As I speculated the Chromebook is well suited to users who are not tied to a legacy of Microsoft Office Documents, for the students Google Docs does exactly what they need with the flexible access option they need between home and school and across devices.

The little Chromebook has become such a hit that for some students it has become the birthday gift or preference and the class is graced with multiple Chromebooks now with others expected. For the parents the cost of the device is tempting as an initial outlay and with a reduced replacement cost should the worst happen. 

So after several months the Chromebook is increasingly earning its keep. Yes it is plasticky and it doesn't meet all my computing needs but it does do most of what I need and in so many ways makes sharing easy. Now if I can just get a small stack of them.

By Nigel Coutts

 

Read original post - Early Days with a Chromebook

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