Trust No Sources - Books vs Internet

A question that is repeatedly faced by educators and students is how can we know whether to trust a source of information or not and what sources should we value. I wonder if at some point not long after Gutenberg’s invention of the press if educators debated the merits of printed works over handwritten. Were students admonished for ignoring scrolls in favour of books and was paper derided as an inferior source to wax tablets? Such is the dilemma faced in the digital age as we struggle with the question of books versus the web or libraries versus the internet.  

It is a question with perhaps no clear answer for the moment and yet a sense of inevitability that the future will be dominated by the delivery of information in digital formats. With the convergence of mobile devices and ubiquitous access to the internet just a short promise away it seems that the potential to carry entire libraries worth of books and reading matter in a pocketable device should send printers out of business. The ease of purchase and wide selection of books available online is already making it most difficult for bookstores that are not able to value add to their customer’s experience. For larger stores unable to offer a bespoke shopping experience to a community of readers this has already occurred, remember Borders? But beyond books the internet places at our fingers a wealth of information and resources that few but the largest of libraries may ever hope to match and across formats and media. Why then do Libraries and with them books persist? What is it that makes books continue to appeal not just to a few as may be the case with vinyl records but to many? 

There is something magical about opening a physical book. The mystery that is exposed and unpacked with each turning of the page. The feel of the pages, its weight and its shifting balance as you progress page by page towards its ending. Time in a well stocked library is like a walk in a forest of potential ideas, you feel their possibility through your skin and breathe in their vapours. On my shelf I have two volumes from 1886 written by James Martineau and titled ’Types of Ethical Theory’. Perhaps not as prestigious as the copy of Freud’s ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ that lies in its modern cover beside them but more special partly for their age and partly as they hold the handwritten notes of their previous owner (Frederick Wearne)  from 1945. These are books with a history of their own and I like to imagine why they may have been selected reading at such a significant time in world history. 

Lately I have been reading books more frequently, it was habit I had moved away from relying instead on podcasts for ideas. At first I relied on audiobooks and still do but often I wanted to read a piece over and over to parse its meaning and at other times I wished to quote from what I had read. Often I would supplement my listening with the purchase of a digital copy of the book for reading on a device; a routine I am sure the publishers and online sellers appreciated. Increasingly I found I wanted to share my reading with colleagues and while sharing is becoming a possibility with digital books it relies on a degree of tech savviness not all have and of course access to an appropriate device. For ease of sharing a physical book has digital licked and so I have been purchasing some books in old fashioned paper version such that they may be handed on and have their ideas spread. Maybe this why books are not going away. 

What is interesting is the debate that occurs around the choices young people apparently make around their sources of information. ‘They just ignore the books’ is one often repeated claim or “they just go straight to Google and find the answer’. Not always but often the underlying message is that by not using books they are at great risk of being misinformed and led astray by poorly sourced information from the likes of Wikipedia. There is a reality that students are often poorly equipped to use the information available to them on the internet, rely too heavily on the first results provided by their favourite search engine and rely too much on a small selection of sources. They make poor use of the tools available to them and even when they do stumble upon the best sources use them poorly. I see many students skip away from an excellent source because it fails to answer their question with a snappy graphic and requires some detailed reading. But then did we not do the same thing when all we had were books? Were we all highly capable users of the Dewey system with well honed skills for skimming and scanning pages of information? As Alan November states our goal should be to equip students with skills to find and use the very best information available to them, not to advocate for use of one media over another with no good reason.  

At the core of the issue is one of trust. Can I trust this source of information over another? On the surface level this too frequently becomes a discussion of the media used for the information. The internet versus books. The questions should go much deeper. Can I trust the research methods used? Is this author reliable? Is the information accurate and a true reflection of some version of reality? Does it relate to my inquiry? Has the research been repeated and if so by whom? Is there a bias in this writing or is it politically motivated? So many good questions to ask about every source of information we rely upon and ones that have little to do with how we access it. In a time when journalism, publishing and advertising go hand in hand these are questions we should ask often. There is much more to be explored here than a question of books versus the internet and our students deserve to be provided with the skills and dispositions required to ensure they can and do make use of the very best information available to them. 

By Nigel Coutts

Revealing our Lifelong Learning

Few would argue that life-long learning is an unworthy goal without real benefits for our long term mental health and happiness. Engaging with new ideas, concepts and ways of doing things is the ideal strategy for a healthy mind and a disposition towards better understanding the world and challenging our entrenched beliefs. According to many life-long learning is also an essential disposition for coping with a rapidly changing world. As teachers the notion of life-long learning has an additional element as it is both a personal goal and one that we set as an outcome of our teaching. We hope that our students will leave school with a desire to continue learning long after we have said our farewells. Perhaps the best way we may achieve these goals is to allow our students to see us as learners who seek new learning and enjoy the challenges that this brings.

During the summer holidays I enjoy taking on a project. With long days and free time available a project has been the perfect way to keep productive while learning a new skill set. A chance to do something I would not normally do as part of my teaching routine. This break I have been constructing wooden workbenches and even though it has been a project for school it is one that has challenged my minimal carpentry skills. I have mastered the shaping of mortise and tenon joints (having cut eighty of them), developed an appreciation of applying repeatable processes and enhanced my understanding of the properties of different timbers. I have aimed to make each workbench slightly different and this has led to some creative re-purposing of materials and storage containers. Each bench has something that it makes a little bit unique and quirky and each includes elements that should make it a functional combination of storage and workspace. Hopefully when they are placed into classrooms the students enjoy using them and they encourage some effective making. I also hope that over time the students adapt them to their needs and add ideas of their own.

Part way through this process I read an article by John Spencer on his Blog in which he argues that ‘Teachers need a genius hour, Too’. Such a concept is an ideal way to tackle the challenge of being a life-long learner amidst the business of our lives. The key is that it is time set into our schedule and it is for us to achieve learning important to us. John stipulates that this time is not to be used for anything work related, that it is time dedicated towards personal learning not professional development. John describes how his family has been able to make adjustments to accommodate this time and ensure it is a part of their schedule. Just as for students the choosing of what this time is used for is an important element of its success. It is interesting that an idea that started with adults working in industry has migrated into schools and is now being appropriated by teachers in their personal life.

Spending time on Twitter reveals a small ocean of people who are engaging with their personal learning and sharing its benefits through their networks. The value of our personal learning networks is a combination of avenues for sharing our learning and for engaging with the learning others have undertaken. Social media has opened new realms of shared experiences around and through learning but much of it occurs away from where it may be spotted by our students. There is a danger our well crafted personal learning networks serve to reinforce the notion that we are experts who know the right way to solve any challenge we face in the classroom without the need to learn. If only our students saw how hard we work behind the scenes to learn and enhance our craft.

If we want our learning habits to rub off on our students then we need to ensure they catch us in the act of learning and that we describe our processes for learning to them. Metacognitive reflection on our teaching practice is all very nice but it is more likely to influence our students if we share the process with them. For this to happen we need to move past the fear that if we are not seen as experts with all the right answers chaos will ensue. This challenge extends to school leaders who should be encouraged to share their stories of learning with their teams without fear that they will be viewed poorly for admitting they are continuing to learn and develop.

In an environment that encourages a growth mindset it may be essential that students see their teachers struggling to overcome challenges. Talks about the need to embrace failure and to see obstacles as a learning opportunity seem hollow unless they are linked to personal experience. Bringing stories of our personal learning into the classroom adds a new dimension and honesty to our discussion of how we may best attack challenges. Letting our students see us struggle with a challenging problem takes this to a higher level, allowing them to offer suggestions goes even further to sharing the reality of a shared learning environment.

Google is widely cited as starting the trend of giving staff time for personal projects. Their ‘20% Time’ model has been copied and borrowed widely as a way of encouraging people to pursue projects they are passionate about but not at the core of their responsibility. In schools this type of personal learning could be the way to allow students to see their teachers learning and problem solving. Just as we may model reading habits during quiet reading times, taking on a Personal Passion Project in parallel to our students may bring new opportunities for shared learning and a greater appreciation of the benefits of life-long learning.

By Nigel Coutts

Predictions for Education in 2016

The start of a new year brings the perfect opportunity to consider the time ahead and make some predictions for what might be the next big thing. With change as inevitable as taxes a new year is likely to see new ideas bubble to the fore and some old ways of doing things shift into the background. The danger with making predictions is the unpredictable nature of change in education coupled to the pace of technological evolution that continues to bring new opportunities.

On the technology front much of what has been important to our implementation of ICT should be disappearing from view. Creating Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, webpages and even video will remain a part of the educational landscape but the maturity and simplicity of modern computing platforms and particularly tablet computing should mean these skills require little direct attention in the classroom. What was once a cutting edge use of technology can now be taken for granted. With this can come a focus on how these and other technologies for presenting ideas can empower learning. What should become more prevalent is an emphasis on collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom. A spin off the increase in ‘connected educators’ will be the opportunities for global collaborations between classes. For this to happen schools will need to look to the potential for sharing of ideas across cultural boundaries and with flexible approaches to time and place of learning.

With the increased popularity of ‘MakerSpaces’ and an understanding of the learning power that making unlocks this is a trend that is set to go mainstream. With close connections to creativity and innovation making allows students to realise their ideas in three-dimensional realities and engage with a whole new set of problem solving opportunities. Making supports integrated problem based learning scenarios where students combine STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & mathematics) with their imagined solutions to real world needs. The ‘MakerSpace’ is core to this approach as it is the place that unlocks the imagination and encourages exploration and play. 

The modern ‘MakerSpace’ will be nothing like the old wood-shops many of us remember. Making today is a blend of hands-on tooling with digital production methods enabled by 3D Printing and CNC devices. 3D printing has been a growth area for a number of years now but until recently cost was inhibitive and the machines required a dedicated user to keep things on track. With costs stabilising at an affordable level and sophistication increasing to a point where machines can be described as reliable 3D printing is another trend that should be mainstream by the end of 2016. What we need now is an affordable option for laser cutting to emerge in a form suitable for use in schools. Current costs for this sort of machinery puts it out of reach of all but large secondary schools, lower costs could put this on the budgets of primary schools and increase the size of the market and thus bring further cost reductions.

Growth Mindsets has emerged in the past two years as a significant trend and one that continues to grow favour. The danger is that it is a seemingly simple concept that hides degrees of complexity. It is not enough to say a school is going to develop a culture that promotes growth mindsets and then do little other than put up the posters. Understanding the power of the subtle messages we send through our feedback, reporting measures, assessments and praise takes time and careful consideration but are essential elements of a culture that genuinely supports a growth mindset. We need to raise awareness of how our thinking about our success and failure impacts our future learning. We are also seeing increased discussion of ‘Mindfulness’ as a strategy for reflection and self-awareness. Mindfulness and Growth Mindsets could become a merged field during 2016 as individuals seek to better understand how their mental states can be influenced and shaped by the way we think about our thinking. 

Thinking about our thinking or metacognition is by no means new and yet despite years of good research into the benefits of learning to think the evidence is that we continue to have deficient models for thinking. Perhaps a personal hope is that in 2016 thinking gains more of a focus in schools and we begin to aim at producing students who are intelligent as described by Jean Piaget because they 'know what to do when they don’t know what to do’. This will require attention to teaching students more than just content but the skills and dispositions required to do something useful with what they know. Maybe 2016 will be the year when we realise that filling the minds of young people’s heads with information they can readily locate using the devices they carry with them everywhere is not an efficient use of our time or theirs and we begin to focus on what can be done with the knowledge we have ready access to. Why teach thinking?

2016 is likely to be the year where ‘Innovation’ becomes the new buzz word. Schools have been innovative for years now but in the past that innovation was about what the teachers and faculty did. Innovative schools were the ones that tried new ideas and emerging technologies to achieve largely the same goals traditional schools were achieving. Now ‘Innovation’ moves from being about how we teach to becoming what we teach. Thanks to Sir Ken Robinson creativity has been on the agenda for some time now but it was an idea that often needed some clarification as to what it meant. Combine creativity (the development of ideas in our imagination) with innovation (the implementation of ideas into real solutions) and students have a process for problem finding and solving that can be implemented beyond their school years. All this creative innovation is going to need a process to help students track their progress and ‘Design Thinking’ is likely to emerge as the preferred structure for this sort of thinking.

As we continue to develop our understanding of how we learn. Informed by brain science we are moving towards a point in time where we are able to base our teaching on a clear and accurate picture of how the brain functions for learning. With an awareness of neural diversity and cognitive architecture brain science offers an opportunity to bring a new level of scientific efficiency to our teaching that should allow all students to reach their potential. 2016 is not likely to be the year where we gain and implement perfect knowledge of how we learn but a growth in teacher and student awareness of the factors behind our learning should help.

by Nigel Coutts

Lessons Learned from Genius Hour

After eight years of engaging our students with a Personal Passion Project during Term Four we shifted to a ‘Genius Hour’ model for 2015. In the end the results from the students were impressive but along the way some lessons were learned and we are looking forward to making some minor tweaks for 2016 that should further enhance the learning opportunities. What remains clear is that students given the opportunity to bring their passions into the classroom produce results that go above and beyond expectation. It has also been obvious that success is linked to the establishment of conditions that encourage risk taking and reinforce the importance of learning and design as an iterative experience.

The key difference from previous years was that students started their projects late in Term One and had time each week during Terms Two, Three and Four to develop and then implement their plans. An hour was allocated in the timetable for this and we were able to have all five Year Six classes working on their Genius Hour projects at the same time. This allowed opportunities to combine as a year and to share ideas across classes thus creating opportunities for students to share ideas with colleagues who had a common interest. It also allowed us to invite guest speakers to visit the Year Group and share ideas from their careers. To facilitate this, we reached out to our school community and had offers of support from project managers, technologists and graphic designers. Each visiting expert added a new dimension and deeper understanding of the process that the students would be engaging with while revealing the real-world applications of what the students were doing; finding questions, imagining solutions, developing plans and managing projects.

Early on we introduced students to the importance of finding the right project to explore. To do this they needed to identify their personal passion and then connect this with a question that had real significance. We introduced students to ‘A More Beautiful Question’ as a resource and shared examples of questions that led to the discovery of new ways of solving challenges. With an understanding of the process and the seed of an idea students spent the next few weeks planning their projects. In keeping with the application of a ‘Design Thinking’ approach these plans remained open to change throughout the year and the final products and solution in many cases showed significant diversions from what was originally imagined. Understanding that this is inevitable is something we will cover in our initial introductions for 2016.

The diversity of student projects was one of the highlights. We had a number of students who selected projects connected with novel writing and the results were impressively evolved and interesting works of fiction. A group of students with an interest in fashion and fabric crafts emerged and supported each other in the process of learning to sew. While their projects had some common elements differences in approach and desired result showed the complexity of the projects the students imagine. We are fortunate to have expertise in this area amongst our staff and are able to call on specialist teachers from our Senior School to fill in the gaps. More importantly the projects create real learning opportunities for all involved as problems emerge and solutions are discovered through a collaborative learning experience. The danger of teacher expertise stomping on student discovery never became an issue partly due to careful teaching practice in not revealing the answer too early in the process but also through a genuine need for shared learning that resulted from the originality of the projects.

Some rather unique projects emerged and presented interesting learning opportunities. One boy wanted to construct a set of shin guards that would combine fiberglass and foam to offer an increased level of protection and comfort. With no prior experience of using fiberglass, teacher and student had to combine our learning skills to discover a process that would work. Plans were made and changed, and evolved as we experimented with options and relied on internet sources to discover a workable solution. In the end he had a pair of shin pads that met his original expectations and show promise as a new design. Another novel project was a dog sitting service loosely modelled after ‘Air BnB’ that through a website connects people requiring dog minding with people willing to provide such a service in their homes. The aim is to provide pet minding services in locations where there is presently nothing available and at a low cost.

A number of students took on artistic projects. One of the standouts was a book of candid portraits taken of students as they worked in class. The portraits reveal the subjects’ characters and emotions as they engage with their learning and were beautifully presented in a printed book. One student imagined a tree made of recycled chop-sticks. This project took on rather massive proportions and involved hundreds if not thousands of carefully washed and assembled chop-sticks. Other projects included photographic collages, hand crafted lamp shades and a collection of purses woven from plastic shopping bags. We had students working on electronics projects, go carts and a snowboard adapted for use on a trampoline.

With all of this making happening it became clear that we were a little unprepared from a tool and resource perspective. This will be partly solved for 2016 with the creation of a Makerspace with enhanced access to the resources required. We will also have a set of tools and a mobile workbench available for each of our Year Six classes. These additional resources will bring a need to up-skill the students in the use of new tools but should also allow them to imagine new solutions. Understanding what is possible is one area that some students have struggled with in the past so we plan to include an introduction to making as part of our planning process for the future.

For some students the process of implementing their plans presented new challenges. Obstacles and failed prototypes were not always seen as a step towards success. This demonstrated the importance of understanding that design is an iterative process with failure as a necessary and unavoidable component. Such experiences bring opportunities for a practical application of our ongoing conversations about the benefits of a ‘Growth Mindset’. A benefit here was that the making process provides inherent feedback as to what doesn’t work. The challenge has been to establish a culture that supports experimentation with a suitable expectation of quality. The expectation of quality was supported by the looming reality that the projects would be presented to a real audience at the end of year ‘Gallery Walk’.

Throughout the year we were able to make some little tweaks to the way that ‘Genius Hour’ functioned. One was that we were able to add extra time in Term Four beyond the prescribed hour and this allowed students to spend longer blocks of time on their project works. The planning process we had imagined did not suit all students and this was modified and adapted as we went. For 2016 we plan to further modify our use of this time with students completing three projects throughout the year rather than one. Students will begin with a short research based project in Term One in which they select the topic and method of presentation. In Term Two students will explore through de-construction a product of their choice and then collaboratively design an improved version. With these two self managed projects behind them students should be well prepared for a larger scale project in Term Three and will again benefit from additional time in Term Four to complete their ideas.

With each iteration we learn more about the inclusion of Design Thinking, student passions and project based learning within our yearly programme. Each year the students amaze us with what they produce and they leave us with greatly enhanced confidence in their abilities to manage difficult and complex learning experiences. Running a ‘Genius Hour’ project can at times be exhausting and messy and challenging for all involved. The pay off is a learning experience on a grand scale that provides a solid platform for future growth.

By Nigel Coutts

With thanks to Clare McPhillips, Amber Bidwell, Jo Robinson & Jake Turnbull 

Creating a Generation of Innovators

Innovation is very much on the agenda in Australia and globally. The OECD publishes lists of nations most likely to succeed through innovation and nations seek to encourage increased innovation to maintain their competitive edge. The result of this in Australia is the recent launch of a new ‘Innovation Australia’ policy with wide reaching measures to encourage and foster a culture of innovation. Education has a role to play in this process acting an an enabler of innovation that builds capacity in future generations. 'Our education system, therefore, must equip students to be successful entrepreneurs, hold a diverse number of jobs or work across a number of industries.’ (www.innovation.gov.au)

STEM is one of the key enablers identified by the government and an area to be targeted in efforts to enhance the nation’s capacity for innovation. Along with Digital Literacy and programmes specifically targeting STEM to girls, it is clear that innovation is seen in a somewhat narrow way. What is needed is a broad culture of innovation where diverse skills and dispositions merge to offer the best chance of a unique idea emerging and importantly making it to market. Significantly the definition of innovation very much includes the ability to deliver on the imaginative ideas Australians are known for but are presently handing off to international developers to capitalise on. For schools such a definition is useful as it encourages a shift away from vague conversations about creativity and imagination and looks at how these skills can be used in ways that bring about change. With a shift to innovation we should see students engaged in a process of ideation that results in practical solutions to problems they identify and engage with. A creative process powered by imagination, inquiry, design and a well considered ‘So What’ question that encourages students to do something innovative with their ideas.

But all this talk about innovation in schools brings a new set of challenges to already time poor teachers. What will this look like in the classroom? What skills and dispositions will our students require? What strategies might we employ to foster innovation?

Innovation requires a pedagogy that values a student focused learning processes over teacher directed transfer of knowledge. Teaching for innovation is by nature messy and imprecise. In the short term results on traditional assessments may not be what we would expect from traditional methods but if we desire to produce innovators this needs to be accepted. It is also to be expected that learning to think innovatively will initially unsettle some learners, some who may have thrived under conditions where learning routines and adding to their knowledge bank was the norm. This will need to be accommodated and while challenging for all lets not pretend that traditional methods were providing the conditions necessary for every child to shine.

The key elements to aim for might be something like the list below. These are the elements of effective teaching with an aim to encouraging students to find and solve problems. Innovation is likely to be enabled in classrooms that promote these ways of thinking and learning. Nothing here is new but it is interesting to bring together a set of ideas discussed elsewhere on this site around the theme of innovation.

1. Student Choice - Students are not likely to develop innovative ideas in an environment where the ideas and the focus of their thinking is dictated by their teacher. Students need to make choices about what they are learning and how they are learning for at least part of their day. Choice allows students to pursue their passions and that brings a greatly heightened level of engagement.  – For more read ‘Learning by Choice: 10 ways choice and differentiation create an engaged learning experience for every student by A.J. Juliani’
2. Question Finding & Ideation - Students need opportunities to seek out big meaty questions that matter to them. True innovation comes from finding answers to questions that have not previously been answered, questions that may not have been asked. Encouraging students to find their ‘Beautiful Question’ should be one of our prime goals if we hope to build innovators. – For more visit - 'A More Beautiful Question' or 'The Questions that Matter Most' or 'Questions that Encourage Deeper Thinking'
3. Risk Taking and Failing - A Growth Mindset - If the goal is innovation you are unlikely to get it right the first time. Our students need to understand that failing and learning from our mistakes is an important part of the process of innovation. Building a ‘Growth Mindset’ will help build the required resilience and allow students to see their failed attempts as a rewarding part of the learning process. – For more visit ‘Promoting a Growth Mindset’ 
4. Turning Ideas into Reality - Making Mindset and Toolset - Creativity and imagination are wonderful and should be encouraged but innovation is driven by putting an idea into practice. More often than not this process is going to involve making something and it is in this process that we find out if our great idea is going to work or needs some more planning. Students need experience with making to have an understanding of the processes that go into the products we use. Thinking with your hands brings a new way of seeing the world and for innovators that new perspective can lead to the required breakthrough – For more visit ‘Making as Problem Based Learning’ 
5. Creativity & Critical Thinking - Essential elements for innovation and it is not an accident that they are often lumped together. The trick is to know when to let our creativity run the show and when to allow our critical brain to put the brake on. For more visit - 'Creating & Innovating'
6. Collaboration - We have a vision of innovators working in isolation. The lone genius who discovers the next big thing. Innovators like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison are largely to blame for this concept but the reality is even they worked as part of a team. Collaboration and the ability to develop ideas in a team is essential and something our students need practice at. For more visit 'Thinking Interdependently'
7. Thinking Skills and Metacognition - Thinking in general is something we do not do well but it is a skill that can be improved. Habits of Mind, Making Thinking Visible, Thinkers Hats and Keys are all tools that will allow students to develop their skills for thinking. Metacognition or ‘thinking about thinking’ will help students to analyse their thought process and understand the decisions they are making.  – For more visit ‘Encouraging Metacognition for Learning’ or 'Thinking about your Thinking'
8. Understanding of Design Cycle and Valuing Process over Product - The design cycle is used by innovators because it works. Having a structure for the process of innovation brings focus and helps us to stay on track. We often say we need to think outside the box but as Ewen McIntosh points out ‘We need the box’ if the box is a structure that helps us develop our ideas from raw imaginings into something useful.  – For more visit ‘An Introduction to Design'
9. A STEM Foundation - This might not be required for every innovative idea but increasingly it will play a part in many of them. Understanding the fundamentals of STEM, knowing what is and isn’t possible and being able to speak the language of technologists and engineers will ease the process of bringing many ideas into fruition.  – For more visit ‘Is STEM the Key?’ 
10. Role Models - If our students are going to think like innovators they need exposure to innovative thinkers. As teachers we need to allow our students to see the innovative thinking we do. Along with this they need to see us make mistakes and engage in a process of evaluating where things went wrong. Reaching out to the community, making connections with universities and industry are other ways of bringing innovators and innovative thinking into the classroom. One easy way towards this is through the CSIROs ‘Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools’ programme. For more visit ‘Creativity in Science and Technology: CREST’ 
11. Empathy - Lastly but possibly most importantly our students need empathy. If we are to innovate towards a better world it starts with empathy. For more visit ‘The Cultivation of Empathy’ 

Developing an innovators mindset takes years of exposure to this way of thinking. After years of teacher led learning in school and then university it is too much to expect a young graduate to suddenly shift gears. We need to allow our students to experience the innovators mindset while they are young and we need to enrich our students' capacity for innovation before they enter High School. Our students start school with the imagination they need for innovation, we need to add the processes that will allow them to turn their ideas into the next big thing.

Does Mathematics Education need a re-think?

Once upon a time Mathematics was easy to teach. A typical lesson would begin with a direction towards a particular page of the text book and would conclude with the ceremonial marking of the answers. This process was repeated over and over, year after year and in the end students would be able to repeat the required method with a satisfactory degree of accuracy. Understanding was not a requirement and as such the teacher needed to know only a little more than the student or perhaps only have ready access to the answer page. But times change and today Mathematics is an area of study that requires a deeper level of understanding from both the student and the teacher. This change is the result of numerous factors each demanding a rethink of our pedagogy for mathematics and has led to calls for specialist teachers and professional development for teachers of mathematics in Primary schools.

Increasingly Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are viewed as focus areas for national growth and the emergence of an innovation driven economy. Most recently in response to the Australian Federal Government’s ‘Innovation & Science Agenda’ the Office of the Chief Scientist released a paper that specifically calls for enhanced teaching in Mathematics. 'Mathematics is central. Student success in STEM is dependent upon an understanding of mathematics and the ability to apply it.’ (OCS 2015 p4) This paper points to research that shows teacher education candidates have ‘either a poor mathematical background, or significant gaps in their mathematical knowledge’ and 'displayed significant levels of ‘mathematics anxiety’ (OCS 2015 p3). This finding is backed by primary principals who report 51% of graduates ‘could not teach mathematics to a reasonable level’ (OCS 2015 p4). While at a secondary level students encounter specialists in Mathematics and Science, research shows that students make choices about their career pathway during their primary years (Broadley 2015). The lack of exposure to teachers who are confident in the delivery of Mathematics education or who are not passionate about the subject is likely to hamper continued study in STEM fields. Beliefs about the level of ability required to cope with Mathematics or STEM courses at more advanced levels of study plays a role here and anxiety about the content is transferred from teacher to student (McDonagh & Ferguson 2015). 

In response to this deficit the Office of the Chief Scientist (2015) calls for a three pronged attack; increase the prestige of teachers by lifting entry requirements for teacher education along with the provision of specialist teacher support and enhanced professional development programmes for pre-service and existing teachers. The report looks to the practice of high performing systems such as Singapore that provides 100 hours of professional development to its teachers every year. Importantly the report identifies the role for Principals in driving STEM innovation; ‘Change begins at the top, requiring an understanding from principals that STEM is vital; that teachers require time to master it, and to collaborate; and that progress can be achieved and ought to be expected through a whole-of-school approach.’ Such commitment to change needs to be built upon a clear understanding of what quality age appropriate pedagogy for STEM and in particular Mathematics is and within existing systems this knowledge is rare. While teaching in Science, Technology and Engineering may be largely absent from Primary Schools, Mathematics teaching is well entrenched and occupies a significant part of any school’s timetabled learning. Bringing about change in the practices utilised will require a shift in thinking about the nature of mathematics not just more of the same. In many instances our current approach to mathematics is deeply flawed. 

One critic of existing mathematics education is Conrad Wolfram the founder of Wolfram Research Europe and brother of Stephen Wolfram, maker of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha. It is a family with maths running through its veins. Conrad identifies a problem in how we teach mathematics 'Those learning it think it's disconnected, uninteresting and hard. Those trying to employ them think they don't know enough. Governments realize that it's a big deal for our economies, but don't know how to fix it. And teachers are also frustrated'. (Wolfram 2010) The problem comes from the underlying beliefs about what mathematics education should be about and the disconnect between this and maths outside of schools. Mathematics education in schools is comprised of 'dumbed-down problems, lots of calculating, mostly by hand.’ (Wolfram 2010) In the real world according to Wolfram maths is very popular but it is used by people for a purpose, not pure mathematics and not the calculation heavy model of schools. The short answer is to move away from a desire to make the simple aspects of mathematics hard by preventing the use of tools that do this part of mathematics very well. Teach a mathematics that leverages the power of computers and in doing so shift the focus onto the mathematical thinking that is essential for deep understanding and real world applications. As Wolfram puts it 'Stop teaching calculating. Start teaching math’. (Wolfram 2010)

What this means is that we should be spending more time on developing the ability to ask mathematical questions, more time on checking that a mathematical solution is viable and relevant to the problem and then spending more time on making sense of the answer. Between the asking of mathematical questions and making sense of the result lies calculations but Wolfram is emphatic that this step should not occupy the 80% of maths learning presently devoted to it. The use of computers and calculators in mathematics education has always been contentious. Most students of mathematics will at some point argue that they should be permitted to use calculators in their lessons. Hand calculation is believed to enhance the recall and understanding of mathematical concepts but perhaps we are focusing on the wrong concepts. Empowered by computers and calculators we should expect students to engage effectively with Mathematics at a deeper level with greater levels of real world application than is enabled by repetition of algorithms or manipulations of arcane formulae. To what end do we labour table-facts at the expense of engagement with a mathematics that is genuinely relevant and of use within a STEM context?

Beyond shifting our focus from teaching calculations to teaching maths is a world of new possibilities for the learning of mathematics through emerging technology. Mathematics is essential to STEM as it plays a role in all disciplines but it is in the integration of mathematical learning with the other disciplines that new opportunities emerge. Taking mathematical thinking and combining it with robotics, computer coding and engineering brings new layers of meaning and engagement. A child solving a problem within a robotics project will be forced to apply mathematical thinking but is unlikely to identify the task as boring or irrelevant as it is immediately relevant to the task. An example of this can be seen when students are given the task of programming a SPHERO robot. SPHERO is a small acrylic ball that uses a combination of motors and gyros to move from place to place. It can be controlled directly from a smart-phone or programmed to follow coded instructions. An engaging challenge for students that SPHERO makes possible is programing it to complete a maze. This engages students in calculations of speed, distance, time, angles and acceleration. The device provides immediate feedback and students are able to quickly test multiple iterations of their code. In a collaborative environment ideas and learning are shared and students quickly fine tune their programmes.

Increasingly schools are experimenting with ‘Making’ and with this, further opportunities for mathematical thinking emerge. Through projects that incorporate traditional timber crafts, 3D printing, small scale manufacturing, electronics and computing the world of making presents boundless new challenges for educators. In this sort of environment mathematical learning is one of the tools to be mastered and its relevance is inescapable. This is the sort of environment that all students need access to but it is an environment that is still uncommon in Primary schools and one that challenges teacher abilities. As schools begin to pursue new options in this sphere great care must be taken to support teachers as they move their teaching into these new domains. Without the relevant pedagogical content knowledge ‘Makerspaces' are likely to be little more than extra-curricular add-ons with only tenuous connections to the real curriculum.

What is needed is an ongoing conversation around what Mathematics education could and should look like. Conrad Wolfram poses questions about the teaching of Mathematics that should be considered in this conversation; 'Why are we teaching people math? What's the point of teaching people math? And in particular, why are we teaching them math in general?’ In seeking answers to these questions we may better understand what it is about Mathematics that makes it worth learning and with that answer in mind a clear vision for what it means to 'learn' mathematics might emerge.  

by Nigel Coutts

Kate Broadley (2015) Entrenched gendered pathways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics: Engaging girls through collaborative career development Australian Journal of Career Development Vol 24 (1) 27-38

McDonagh, M. & Ferguson, T. (2015) Accenture finds more than half of 12-year-old girls in the UK and Ireland believe STEM subjects are too difficult to learn. Accenture Accessed online 1.11.2015 

Roslyn Prinsley and Ewan Johnston (2015) Transforming STEM Teaching In Australian Primary Schools - Office of the Chief Scientist 

Conrad Wolfram (2010) Teaching kids real maths with computers. TED Talk

The Joy of Teaching

For teachers in Australia the year is drawing rapidly to a close. It is a time for packing away classrooms, taking down displays of student learning and saying farewell to students as they move on to new classes. It is also a time for reflecting on the journey that has led to this point and the adventures that have occurred along the way. This annual cycle of endings and new beginnings is one of the unique aspects of teaching; one of the many opportunities and challenges that make teaching somewhat different to other professions.

To the general public the appeal of teaching is too often simplified to the benefits of the vacation time available. To teachers these days are understood as the much needed time to recover from a performance schedule that places great demands on our mental and physical resources. Each day in classrooms across the world teachers are doing their act, performing for their audience and using their understanding of pedagogy and curriculum to provide learning experiences that meet the needs of every student. At the ending of one year it is worth taking a moment to ponder what is so remarkable about teaching as a profession.

The new year will bring with it a new beginning, with new students and families to know and understand. It will bring with it patterns that are well versed around programmes that have survived the yearly review, events such as camps and routines of meetings and interviews. We begin the uphill climb again with new students and some new turnings along the way. The path to the top is never quite the same but we pass familiar places along the way. This mix of the familiar with the ever changing nature of teaching and learning ensures boredom in the role of teaching is easily avoided. Meeting the unique set of challenges our students bring with them, forces us to continually invent new solutions. Change is an inevitable part of teaching.

Beyond the changes that each new set of students bring with them comes the opportunities for change that new technologies and teaching methods bring. The affordances of technology bring new opportunities and effective teachers and schools will strive to evaluate the options as they emerge and integrate those with the greatest promise. The challenge is to pick the real gems from the assortment of shiny new options that are quickly found to be lacking real merit. Education’s rapid embrace of fads is well noted and yet difficult to avoid. Some emerging trends are showing great promise but require a significant shift in how we engage our students. Shifts towards STEM or STEAM bring challenges to our pedagogical content knowledge and our operational structures. For many the ongoing roll out of the National Curriculum brings another set of challenges as we interpret the new outcomes and blend these with our existing practice.

Each year also seems to bring a more detailed and scientifically based understanding of how we learn. This expanding science of learning informed by MRI based brain research is changing our view of intelligence and revealing brains that possess a potential for change and malleability that we previously felt was not possible. This brings a need to shift our thinking about what intelligence is and how we may facilitate the greatest success of all our students. Integrating this research with understandings of leaners uncovered in the classroom presents new challenges for teachers and ensures there is always something new to explore.

New students, new methods, new technologies and new understandings mean teaching is a career that should never be routine. While a few teachers cling to their long favoured programmes and methods with unwavering commitment such behaviour is increasingly uncommon. Evolution, revolution and innovation is increasingly the norm. A key driver of this is the spirit of collegiality and sharing that is such an essential element of the profession. Teachers have always loved talking about teaching; just ask the non-teacher friends who get stuck at social events amidst a group of teachers. This collegiality has gained a boost from social networks such as Twitter and FaceBook. Social networking has made it possible to build connections with teachers at a global scale and ensures ideas spread alongside meaningful evaluations of what works and does not. The image of an isolated teacher alone with a class should exist no more as we make connections and share our experiences.

Every job brings with it elements we wish we could spend less time on and teaching is not immune. It is a profession under a public spotlight with a role to play within politics and in the shaping of society. Our schools and our teaching plays an important part in creating the future and preserving the past. Accountability and external control are inescapable elements of the education landscape. How we respond to these pressures and the manner in which we frame our profession requires care and vision. If the shape of education is to be determined by teachers and not the whim of politicians then we must more effectively communicate how we may best meet the needs of all stakeholders.

While change is unavoidable the most rewarding aspect of education as a profession seems to remain constant. As a group teachers are a wonderful set of people to spend time with. Maybe it is linked to the factors that bring us to the profession in the first part, that desire to help others to improve. Maybe it is the shared experience that comes from the challenges we face in the classroom. The heart of every school is its people and it is the communal spirit and common purpose that unites us as a profession.

Looking back at the end of the year allows for reflection on the greatest reward teaching brings. Across the year our students transform in front of our eyes and while the day to day change is too small to notice the cumulative effect from the start of the year to the end is plain to see. Few professions allow you to play such a significant role in the growth and development of an individual as teaching does. Our efforts directly influence the direction our students will take, the futures they will live and the ideals they will value. Those moments when you are able to see the influence you have had are the most valuable and the ones that bring us back each year with fresh enthusiasm.

What does intelligence look like?

How might we define intelligence? What do we mean when we speak of intelligence and what evidence do we seek when we look for it? Is it a singular, fixed attribute determined at birth or does it vary across time and environment? These are questions educators have struggled with for years and thanks to improvements in brain science are questions that today can be given more complete answers. But away from the world of high-tech laboratory research and MRI analysis or neural patterns what evidence of intelligence is seen by teachers and what does this tell us about how our students learn and how we may maximise their potential?

For much of its history schooling has been obsessed with one type of intelligence as evidenced by what is given time within the learning day and that which is the focus of assessment. Indeed, pedagogy, curriculum and assessment within schools has delivered a clear and consistent message about what constitutes intelligence. Knowledge, defined as the recall of information, literacy, defined as the ability to read and write and numeracy, defined as the ability to calculate, have formed the pillars of educational systems and have both framed and been framed by our view of intelligence. Further that which is worth knowing has been determined by cultural and socially constructed beliefs that value particular knowledge over others. This introduces a whole debate about the social construction of curriculum as a tool of power and control that is beyond the focus of this posting. The result of such a narrow definition of intelligence is that it has benefitted those who fit the definition and disadvantaged those who do not. Some examples from the classroom make this point clear.

Recently our Year Six students have been completing their 'Genius Hour’ projects. As is the norm for this style of project students have imagined and implemented their own projects centred on areas of personal interest. The diversity of projects as been immense and the results displayed at the final ‘Gallery Walk’ were impressive. Throughout the span of this project we noticed that some of our more ‘traditionally' capable students were struggling while others who found routine academic tasks difficult, were shining. We saw that students who thrived in an environment of direct teacher instruction concluding in a summative assessment task lacked the resilience to independently problem solve towards a solution. Meanwhile the physical dimensions of many of the projects combined with inherently immediate feedback of what works and does not work suited others who would switch off in traditional lessons. Undaunted by failures and mistakes some of the students rose to the challenge and overcame obstacles while others looked for external assistance, direction and affirmation. It was clear that for many of the ‘Genius Hour’ projects 'traditional intelligence' was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for success.

The same can be seen on the sporting field. I recall coaching a Soccer team some years ago in which, as is often the case, one player stood out from the rest. This particular year we had an unusually strong team and many of our games were won by a large margin and yet this boy rose above what was clearly a talented group. It was more than his skill with the ball but his ability to read the play many moves ahead and then use that understanding to control the flow of the game. They say good players don’t go where the ball is, they go where it will be. This boy went a step further and through his action dictated where the ball would go so his team could capitalise on the evolving play. In class he struggled to keep up. His results on assessments were never great and on traditional measures his intelligence was low. However, if you analyse the complexity of manipulating to your advantage a field of twenty-two players, a ball, a referee, a complex set of rules and varying pitch conditions you must conclude that this boy was demonstrating a high level of intelligence. Just not the sort that matters in a typical school day.

For years now we have noticed a similar pattern during school camps. Those who seem to do the best while learning in the outdoors are not always those who do best in the classroom. It is more than just knowledge of camping skills but an intelligence that allows problems to be solved, group dynamics to be balanced and leadership to emerge. The performance differential for some between the week at camp and the week before at school can be immense. You have to wonder how impressive these students learning might be if the environment they experienced on a daily basis was more like camp.

The same story can be told for our dancers, who like the young girl in Sir Ken Robinson’s story need to move while learning and find the confinements of desk and chair restrictive and limiting. We see it in students who demonstrate advanced learning in ICT but then go beyond having knowledge and assume a leadership role they would normally avoid when presented with the right environment. Through the use of video we have unlocked the story-telling potential of students who find writing difficult. With the use of iPads in mathematics we have uncovered layers of understanding previously hidden by a poor recall of multiplication tables. Through the use of ‘SketchNoting’ to share understandings of new concepts we are uncovering a deeper learning than was revealed by a traditional essay response and from students who we previously believed had missed the point.

In special education 'Universal Design for Learning’ (UDL) is seen as a way to allow students to achieve despite identified learning difficulties. If we see intelligence as a diverse domain that is variable and manipulable through modifications to the learning environment, the learning task and the mode of engagement, then UDL should be seen as the norm not the exception. Instead of a deterministic one-size fits all approach to education based on a singular model of intelligence, we should always be seeking ways to engage our learner’s potential and empower them to leverage and importantly expand their strengths.

If you want to develop a more complete understanding of intelligence and its changeability and variability read 'New Kinds of Smart: How the science of learnable intelligence is changing education' by Bill Lucas & Guy Claxton It will help you to see and value the many forms of intelligence that exist within your classroom.

By Nigel Coutts

Suggested Readings to Inspire Teaching

With the end of the year approaching and holidays looming for some now is the ideal time to share some suggestions for books and papers to read. A great book can provide the inspiration required to begin the new year positively and this list includes some of my favourites from 2015. In no particular order here is my list of top ten reads to inspire quality learning and promote discussion. 

1.    Future Wise: Educating our Children for a Changing World by David Perkins
How do you answer the 'uppity question’ from a student who wants to know why they need to learn what you are teaching? Do you reply that they need it to do well in the test or are you confident that it is learning they will need to do well in life? In this book Perkins examines what we teaching in schools and makes recommendations for a shift in focus. A key idea introduced early and unpacked throughout the book is the idea of ‘Life Worthy’; learning that is 'likely to matter in the lives learners are likely to live’. Future Wise is jargon free and a great book to share with colleagues, it will help you rethink what you spend time on in class and clarify how you see the role and purpose of education. 

2.    Who owns the learning? Preparing students for success in the digital age by Alan November
The title alone is worth pondering, ‘Who does own the learning?’ If the best learning occurs while the unit is being programmed, if the students have little say in the direction their learning takes then how are we preparing them for their learning futures. Alan has a solid understanding of the implications of technology for learning and combines this with student centred pedagogical approaches to describe a model of education that empowers young learners to take charge of their learning. For teachers the challenge is to get out of the way of the spectacular learning that their children are capable of. 

3.    Learning by Choice: 10 ways choice and differentiation create an engaged learning experience for every student by A.J. Juliani
Students appreciate choice just as much as adults do and are more likely to engage with the learning they choose. Inflexible curriculums full of content that is not personally meaningful is hard to sell to students but a ruler understanding of the purpose of the curriculum and a desire to include choice can transform this. Through the inclusion of passion projects, twenty-percent time and genius-hour teachers are giving students choice in their learning and the benefits are enhanced learning and highly engaged students. If you are looking to give your students choice then this book is the perfect starting point.
 

4.    The Smartest Kids in the World: and how they got that way by Amanda Ripley
Globalisation of education and the rise of international assessments such as PISA has lead to comparisons of national education systems. In this book Amanda Ripley investigates the experience American exchange students have learning in some of the worlds top-ranked educational systems. The experience they share reveals that the true nature of the success of these systems can not be found in the league tables. From South-Korea to Poland to Finland each system has particular advantages and disadvantages and there are no quick fixes to be found. Beyond the hype of global education leaders this book paints a more human story of schools around the world through the eyes of the students.
 

5.    Creative Schools: Revolutionising Education from the Ground Up by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica
Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 TED Talk has reached and inspired a global audience on a new scale for educators. It has inspired teachers to seek ways to educate that do not kill creativity but it has one missing piece, the how to element. In ‘Creative ‘Schools’ Robinson sets out to make the process of school transformation achievable in a practical manner. With advice and strategies ranging in scale from the classroom to the system this book is an ideal tool for any teacher inspired by Robinson’s speeches. 
 

6.    New Kinds of Smart: How the science of learnable intelligence is changing education by Bill Lucas & Guy Claxton
Intelligence is neither fixed or a unitary concept, it is changeable, learnable and varied. Understanding what this mens for education should have a profound effect on how we teach and how we see our student’s abilities. The book explains what intelligence is how, the varied forms it takes and offers practical advice on how new research can provide insights for how we learn. The authors deserve praise for the way they present complex material in such an accessible way that is entirely readable by time-poor teachers. 

7.    Reading the Visual: An introduction to teaching multimodal literacy by Frank Serafini
 We live in an increasingly visual world and this requires a new literacy that combines the various elements of the visual into a compoundable text. Serafini’s book is full of practical advice for teachers of visual literacy based on a clear understanding of how multimedia texts are constructed and are open to various readings. With a set of model units for teachers to follow the book is sure to enhance your teaching of Visual Literacy. 

8.    Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our schools by Ron Ritchhart
In this book Ron Ritchhart outlines the eight cultural forces required for successful schools and the development of thinking cultures. Understanding get eight forces is the first step towards school wide transformation. For schools with an interest in 'Making Thinking Visible' or 'Habits of Mind’ the eight forces are an essential element that take these already effective strategies to a higher level where they can be fully embraced. 
 

9.    Rethinking National Curriculum Collaboration: Towards an Australian Curriculum by Prof. Alan Reid
If you are interested in knowing what the Australian Curriculum could have been like then you should read this report. It presents a view of curriculum in which the content is a vehicle for learning of broad skills and dispositions that are widely transferable. In this model students would learn twenty-first century skills through content. This shift away from content as the goal of teaching would have allowed a curriculum with flexibility to respond to local need and individual needs while ensuring that essential aspects of a long-life education where adequately addressed. Reid’s model provided us with the ‘General Capabilities’ of he present curriculum but shows how these could have been the essential ingredient of a modern curriculum. There are lessons here for anyone with an interest in curriculum design. 
 

10.    Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential by Carol Dweck
The notion of fixed vs growth mindsets has become a common feature in educational dialogue but the implications of this are not always fully understood. This book is essential reading for teachers looking to achieve the maximum benefit from Dweck’s ideas. Beyond the oversimplified explanations often shared this book takes you into the true nature of the mindsets and shows how the reality of their interactions and the potential for transforming one’s thinking is more complex. 

Also worth a look: 
1.    Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world by Tony Wagner
2.    Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing our kids for the innovation era by Tony Wagner & Ted Dintersmith
3.    Invent to Learn: making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager
4.    Limits to self-organising systems of learning—the Kalikuppam experiment by Sugata Mitra & Ritu Dangwal

And something Different

5.    Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

by Nigel Coutts

Making as Problem Based Learning

Recently many of our Year Six students have been involved in projects that require them to utilise the brain of a maker. Facing challenges involving the exploration of how everyday objects are manufactured and while responding to their ‘Genius Hour’ ambitions they are facing a new set of problems and discovering the joy that comes from solving these with their hands as much as their brains.

The shift back towards a recognition of the importance of making is an interesting phenomenon to observe. Children have always enjoyed opportunities to make and through this explore ideas and solve problems. Today framed as a Maker Movement it is easy to forget this long tradition that led to the global success of companies such as Lego and Meccano. In part this movement comes from the emergence of new tools that elevate the options available to makers above what was previously possible into a realm of quasi-production. Digital tools, small-scale computers and open source software combined with 3D printers, laser cutters and CNC machines bring new options and exciting possibilities. However, even without the fancy new tools students can learn a great deal when they are offered opportunities to explore a makers mindset.

Seymour Papert, seen by many as the father of the modern Maker Movement, had it right when he wrote ‘The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge’. This captures the nature of the challenge we have faced as a group of teachers in designing a project where students would explore every-day objects; we had no idea what they might choose or how they may interact with their items but the task certainly provided the conditions for invention. Our students were given the following instructions at the start of the unit:

Using a Collaborative Inquiry process you will analyse a product that you use and consider the many decisions and processes that went into creating that item. Having analysed your chosen products and shared your knowledge with an audience, you will apply a design thinking method to develop improved and enhanced designs based on the original product that demonstrates your understanding of product design.

With that we let the students at it and over the next few days they selected their products. We did set some conditions to avoid students wanting to disassemble expensive home-goods or anything potentially dangerous. In the end the ultimate challenge was to submit their modified designs to the manufacturers of the original item and this proved to be a significant motivator towards quality and carefully considered designs.

The diversity of products discussed as possible candidates was immense and we soon had many small groups of students collaborating around the tasks of disassembling their products and determining, from the clues they found combined with access to the internet, how the product might have been manufactured. This introduced some special moments for learning that present differently when a maker mindset is applied. None of us knew how to disassemble a padlock, how the eyes on a teddy bear were applied or the best way to access the innards of an alarm clock. Immediately it became obvious that both students and teachers were learning and problem solving together. Interactions between group members and teachers centred around ‘What if . . ?’ and ‘How might . . ?’ questions. Trial and error became the norm.

This was the point where the immediacy of feedback inherent to making tasks came to the fore. Imagine a strategy, test it, does it work? If not try a different strategy. This immediacy of feedback not from a teacher but from the task itself allows for rapid iteration and with no value judgement associated with the feedback fear of failure rapidly dissolves; either your plan works or it doesn’t. The second element that ensured success was that the students were highly engaged by the challenges they faced. They had been given choice in the articles they explored, choice in how they would explore the items and choice in how they would share their learning. They were working collaboratively with their classmates but also with their teachers. Realising your teacher is just as stuck as you are turned out to be a powerful motivator towards resilience.

A more extensive version of the process has occurred for many of the students as they work to complete their ‘Genius Hour’ projects. For this students have developed intricate plans linked to their personal passions and some of these have involved the design and construction of new products. We have a room full of seamstresses discovering a myriad of problems associated with the making of dresses, learning to think inside out and remembering clothing needs to come on and off. Other students have been shaping timber for skateboards and billy-carts. Solving the problems of steering and braking has led to a mix of novel solutions. Another student has decided to craft a set of shin-pads using a design that utilises foam embedded with in fiberglass to provide better protection. Many of these students are exploring tasks that their teachers have almost no experience with and as a result we are learning together. Our combined thinking skills have been challenged, we have had to think in new ways about the resources we have at our disposal and call on expertise from outside the classroom. Often the best solution has been one offered by the students as they dive into the challenge they have set for themselves. For the teachers one of the best parts of this unit has been the puzzled looks shared between all involved and then the joy when a plan shows signs of working.

When given opportunities to reflect on their learning the students have been overwhelmingly positive about the experience. Even when things have not worked for the most part they have remained resilient and enthused by their learning. They have risen to the challenge and now as we near the finish line are enjoying the fruits of their labours. We have all learned a great deal this semester and much more than how a padlock works, how to size a dress or how to mould fiberglass. The true learning has been linked to how we might approach new learning situations in the future, how we might solve problems we have never encountered before and that we can trust in our ability to cope when we are stuck. If as Jean Piaget claims 'Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do’ then we have all made good use of ours.

By Nigel Coutts

Ten ideas from Eye on the Future

On Saturday I had the opportunity to join a group of very enthusiastic teachers to hear Alan November and Carl Jarvis speak at North Turramurra Primary School. That so many educators from across Sydney were keen to give up a Saturday is a testament to their desire to improve their teaching but also a measure of the respect these speakers garner.

Alan November is the author of ‘Who owns the learning?’ a provocative book that encourages teachers to consider who they may best ensure their students are the ones doing the learning. Alan encourages a re-assessment of how we structure our classrooms and our lessons to place the student at the centre of what is happening rather than to continue in the model where the teacher plays the role of the sage on the stage. He points to the ways in which teachers inhibit student learning when we try to take control and prevent access to the powerful learning tools that all students should have access to. Carl Jarvis is a respected educator who has shown how a passionate leader can transform a school. His story of the transformation of a school from fifth worse to outstanding is compelling. Together this pair ensured a rewarding day of learning and chance to consider how we may enhance the learning that occurs in our classrooms. Here is a little taste of what was shared.

1. Our students need to be able to publish their ideas to real audiences - This was a recurring theme that was perhaps best illustrated by the example of Miller Wilson a boy from the Australian bush who was discovered thanks to his YouTube channel by Ellen DeGeneres. His latest video on catching eels has had over 200,000 views. The other amazing example of students using YouTube to share their learning with a real audience is mathtrain.tv a student created series of mathematical tutorials where the success of the content can be measured by the thousands of people viewing each video. 
2. There are amazing learning resources just waiting for you to find them - Harvard’s most popular course ‘Introduction to Computer Science’ for example is available online and free. edX offers course in a wide range of disciplines from Architecture to Law to Social Sciences and they are all free and online. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is available and students in schools can and do make use of these courses. The question is how does your school’s computer science course measure up? How will you compete and why would you try?
3. Wolfram Alpha is a massively under utilised tool for learning - If you have not explored Wolfram Alpha with your students you really should. Not just for its amazing computational engines utility for mathematics but for how it brings a new level of analysis to all manner of learning. Try asking it to analyse ‘Romeo & Juliet’ just as an example of how a computer makes sense of a piece of literature in ways a human can’t. it brings a new perspective.
4. Prism brings collaborative interpretation of text to the classroom - Around the world right now countless students are reading texts and highlighting the parts they find interesting, the parts they don’t understand and the parts they might plagiarise later. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could make visible the highlighting of your entire class in a way that revealed what areas of the text gained the most attention. This is exactly what Prism does. You set it ups with the text and highlighting scheme for the class to use; maybe red for 'I don’t understand', orange for 'I think I get', green for ‘I understand'. Students read the text and use the highlight function to respond and then Prism shows you a colour coded word cloud where the frequency of highlights corresponds to the relative size of the words. - View Online
5. We are not very effective users of Google - How often do we type in a search term and then just use the top two or three results ignoring the 897,791 other options. Do we know how the results are generated or how reliable they are? Do we know how to refine our results so we are finding what we really want? Alan November encourages us to use Google to find the best information in the world and showed the audience how to do. One of the keys is using Googles sixteen operators to refine your search. Fortunately Google is keen to help its users become more effective and empowered users and as such provides guides - View Online
6. Learning is more important than knowing - How do you respond when confronted by a question that you don’t know the answer to? Do you see this as an opportunity for collaborative learning with the person asking the question? A chance to show that you are both teacher and learner? If we value learning more than we value teaching then the difficult question will never cause us fear. this approach can be extended to the use of technology and allow you to accept a students Minecraft project even if you don’t fully understand how they did it.
7. 78% of students don’t enjoy school - This is rather frightening statistic shared by Carl Jarvis. He adds that more testing is unlikely to change this figure. But learning is powerful motivating force in itself and humans do love to learn, it is what makes us human. So why don’t children enjoy schools? Does it have something to do with who owns the learning?
8. Use Twitter to share your classes learning with the world and to see how the world is learning - A class Twitter account allows you to connect with a mixture of school around the world and enables a shared learning experience for your students. The real power comes when your students ask you ton include the learning experiences they have seen other students enjoy through their online connection.
9. Six strategies for school transformation from Alan November:
   1. Teach web literacy in assignments
   2. Ask deeper questions and encourage and teach the students to do the same
   3. Use Making Thinking Visible
   4. Encourage authentic conversations
   5. Allow students to make a contribution - to the class and globally - knowledge construction
   6. Show students the best in the world - knowledge, ideas, learning
10. Be brave and confront change - Use your support network to help you confront change and help you push through your barriers. Change occurs at the point where you force your brain to create new connections and new pathways but fear stands in the way of this and it is too easy to return to your default position.

Thanks to the team at North Turramurra Primary School for a great day of learning and to Alan November and Carl Jarvis for their time and commitment to education.

By Nigel Coutts

Collaboration & Connectedness the Key to Quality Teaching

Most teachers recognise the potential for collaboration between students and the importance of it as a component of a 21st Century education and yet many do not take full advantage of the opportunities they have for collaboration as teachers. Others have found the benefits and willingly share ideas gathered from their personal learning network and contribute to Twitter chats and attend Teach Meets. For those who have discovered the possibilities that come from being a connected educator this story may help to affirm your participation, for those yet to join the discussion you may just find that spark that encourages your involvement.

Twelve months ago inspired by a course based on ‘Making Thinking Visible’ a group of teachers decided to use Twitter to share their journey towards a ‘culture of thinking’. An online chat was created to facilitate this using #cotchat to bring educators together and share stories of how visible thinking routines were used in their classroom. Over time this became a termly meeting of minds and after each session all those involved went back to their classrooms invigorated by new ideas. From this I have discovered new routines, refined my use of some old favourites and discovered ways to use thinking routines across disciplines based on the expertise of subject specialists. That this group was a mix of Senior School and Primary School teachers only acted to open new avenues for exploration. Those new to the use of thinking routines undoubtedly gained confidence from these chats and were able to have their questions answered.

Most recently cultures of thinking became the focal point for a Teach Meet and this provided an opportunity to meet face to face those with whom we have shared a year long learning journey. Teachers do love the opportunity to share stories from the classroom and thanks to the growing number of Teach Meets this is becoming easier. No longer is there a need to feel isolated within your classroom or even school.

During the most recent #cotchat discussion I floated the idea of having students draw what their thinking looks like. I had seen a similar method used years early when working with a group of teachers implementing a Middle School model. As a team building task we each drew our brains. It was an interesting way to share our thinking and feelings as we embarked on the adventure of creating a school within a school. More recently the idea of using drawings as a window into student thinking about the use of technology was encouraged by our IT coordinator. This was based on a paper by Walt Haney, Michael Russell and Damian Bebell of Boston College. The authors describe a long history of using student drawings within research and as evidence for analysing the effect of educational interventions. They conclude that using drawings can be a powerful tool for documenting and making visible student thinking and feelings. Such an idea fits well with visible thinking where the desire is to make visible the thinking of the students in diverse ways, recorded for future discussion and as a part of the assessment process. In visible thinking students will often use mindmaps, diagrams, notes or drawing to illustrate their understanding of a concept. In this instance I was looking to engage them in a metacognitive process of reflecting on how they think and learn. This was the seed of the idea but a piece was missing.

Teachers who have spent time online have probably encountered the sketch-noting skills of Sylvia Duckworth. Sylvia has a great skill for representing complex ideas in easily understood drawings that are at once comprehensible and beautiful to look at. This was the style of drawing I imagined would perfectly suit the task of students drawing their thinking and I shared this thought online. Thanks to the collaborative utility of Twitter this idea was spotted by Sylvia who most generously shared a slideshow she created as an introduction to sketch-noting. This all occurred in a matter of minutes and the next day I was armed with the resources I needed. That morning I shared the slideshow with my class, told them of how Sylvia used sketch-noting and how I wanted them to borrow ideas from the slideshow to share with me what their thinking or learning looked like. The results were so much more involved and revealing than I had expected and I am certain the students would not have been able to engage with the task as they did without the samples from Sylvia.

Impressed by the results I shared some samples online with the #cotchat community and by the end of the day was able to share Sylvia’s response with the class who were most excited to hear that their thinking had been seen by the teacher who had inspired their drawings.

This is in many ways a simple story of sharing an idea online, having it validated by colleagues and through that connection finding the right resource to make the idea happen. It fits into a bigger story of how we become a stronger profession when we connect and share our ideas. It shows the real benefits of collaboration and connectedness for our students and reveals how thanks to the tools made available by social networks it becomes possible to make real connections with teachers across the globe. It also reveals that even little ideas are worth sharing and hopefully encourages more teachers to share their little ideas so that others may benefit from the many great things happening in schools everywhere.

By Nigel Coutts with sketch-notes by the students of 6C

Ten reasons to teach thinking

The teaching of thinking is a critical endeavour for teachers and one that brings enhanced learning opportunities for students. Unfortunately thinking is not something that we naturally do well and as a consequence it is a skill we need to learn. Understanding this is the first step towards establishing a culture of thinking in your classroom but encouraging an entire school to get on board with this can be difficult and given our already crowded curriculum anything that seems to add to the load is likely to be resisted. Here then are ten arguments to use with colleagues, parents and most importantly students that might help you convince them of the need to learn how to think.

One

Normal education does not improve general reasoning - However; In programmes that target reasoning with specific elements, reasoning is improved - David Perkins

The best programmes are integrated with the standard curriculum, they are not an optional extra - Robert Swartz

Two

Teaching students what to do in the world, what to know, how to behave is EBNE - Excellent But Not Enough - Edward De Bono

Students require opportunities for:

• acquiring and integrating knowledge
• extending and refining knowledge
• using learning meaningfully

Robert Marzano

Three

What makes the good creative ideas stand out from the 3000 others, what do the creative people behind the good ideas have that others don’t:

• Curiosity
• Problem Solvers - This is the easy part
• Problem Finders - This is the part that differentiates them as it is finding the right problems (hard) and then solving it (easy) that means you have a chance of changing the world

Pick the right thing to do and then work hard

Ewan McIntosh

Four

Our lessons should always include Content + driven by the students finding the SO WHAT? - Now you know it SO WHAT? or Now you know it what are you going to do with it or about it?

The 'So What?' leads to student initiated inquiry out of the prescribed content and brings the students passions into the classroom and takes their learning into the world.

Guy Claxton & Lane Clark

Five

If nothing has changed in long term memory then nothing has been learned . . .

An instructional recommendation that does not or cannot specify what has been changed in long term memory; or that does not increase the efficiency with which relevant information is stored in, or retrieved from, long term memory is likely to be ineffective. (Sweller, 1988)

Understanding cognitive architecture allows us to better understand how we learn

Lane Clark

Six

Cognitive Load Theory

Three loads to consider in planning for learning:

• Intrinsic load - inherent intellectual complexity of the task, you can only reduce this so far without the task becoming meaningless
• Extrinsic load - how material is presented, environmental factors, modes of responding, you can make real differences here
• Germane load - motivation, interest, task relevance, buy-in. This is all about engagement and learning that matters to the learner - life worthy learning according to David Perkins author of 'Futurewise'

Three questions to ask that enhance learning:

• How can you decrease intrinsic load?
• How can you decrease extraneous load?
• How can you increase germane load?

Seven

Cultivating learning habits depends on:

• How you talk (what you name)
• What you notice (and ignore)
• What you display
• How you design activities
• How you design space
• How you assign time

A culture is a ‘nutrient medium’ for nurturing growth

Cultures of thinking are places in which a group’s collective, as well as individual thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted as part of the regular day-today experience of all group members

Guy Claxton

Eight

A Metalanguage of Learning

Successful schools create a common language for learning and thinking through a process of collaboration that involves students, teachers, parents and the community and is the foundation for metacognition - A shared language for talking about learning and thinking is an essential step in building a culture of thinking.

Nine

Students have impoverished models of what good thinking is like . . . therefore:

• We need to teach our students to think
• We need to teach our students how to think
• We need to teach our students to recognise the need for thinking 
• We need to empower their thinking with tools, strategies and scaffolds and overtime allow them to select the right tool for their thinking
• We need to ultimately produce students who can and who do think who have a disposition to quality thinking

Ten

Children who have become:

• resilient - have a growth mindset
• imaginative
• curious
• collegial
• and enthusiastic readers

fare better in life AND do better on the test

If we teach our children to think then they will do better on the test and they will do better in life.

by Nigel Coutts

Revisiting Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

In 2001 Marc Prensky divided the world into two broad groups, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. His idea struck a chord with popular culture and has become a dominant paradigm in education. Since then the concept of Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants has been widely discussed, debated and through this much of what was originally stated by Prensky has been misunderstood while other parts have been shown to not quite fit reality. Given the core concept remains a feature of educational dialogues it is worth re-visiting and seeing how the idea might evolve to better serve our needs and understandings of how people born after the internet, learn with and think about, technology. 

Core to the concept is the construction of a group of people termed Digital Natives, describing those who were born into a world of digital technologies. 'Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.’ according to Prensky. This idea of young people being native speakers is essential, it impacts how they approach learning tasks, social interactions, multi-tasking, distractions and gratification of needs. This group of people take technology for granted and have expertise 'acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice’. By comparison Digital Immigrants are those born prior to the widespread dissemination of digital technologies. They will at best come to see the affordances of this new technology but will as Marc describes retain an ‘accent’ that gives them away. This accent is seen in their propensity to utilise digital technology after trying other methods, of falling back on old ways of completing tasks and of relying on the habits from a pre-digital age. 

As with many ideas which may be simply stated Prensky’s world of ‘Digital Natives and Immigrants’ has been oversimplified and misunderstood. In part this is the danger that comes with relying upon a cultural metaphor and a consequence of society’s love affair with neat dichotomies. The reality of cultural groupings is always more complex than can be readily described and subcultural leanings and individual dispositions towards their cultural heritage significantly influence ones personal cultural narrative. A closer look at our Digital Natives and Immigrants reveals unsurprisingly a wide variety of narratives centred around engagement with technology and when applied to the classroom these narratives tell a story of how technology will fit with the learning that occurs. 

Perhaps the first story to be told is that our Digital Natives do not all experience or value technology in the same ways. Prensky’s natives seem to come from a world dominated by fast paced gaming and MTV. This is clearly not the case for all natives and in a world where social gaming is becoming dominant the pace is changing alongside new styles of interaction. There is also the gendered aspect of this description as ‘fast-twitch’ first person shooter type games were never the norm across genders. Nor has the experience of technology remained constant across the years. Young people born today might take technology for granted but they very much expect it to fade into the background. At its extreme there is almost a counter culture emerging against pervasive technology that is not in the service of individual needs. Shiny new toys do not have the alure that they once did and technology that gets in the way, requires any degree of learning curve or is not built into an existing ecosystem is shunned. For another emerging group of students, a division between technology as a social tool and technology as an unwanted or unappreciated aspect of their learning can be seen. Students who are happy to use technology to message their friends but fail to see the utility, that same technology can bring to their learning, are becoming a larger group who need to be reminded that they have access to all the worlds information in their pockets, if they just choose to use it. 

Much of the assumption around the Digital Natives is that they should be able to call on their vast experience with digital technologies to learn and collaborate in new and exciting ways. That the only obstacle to this is that their Immigrant instructors stand in the way of this occurring. The reality is that our Digital Natives do not have experiences that allow them to learn in the wider sense required for todays creative and innovative world. They may in some cases have skills required to learn new tools but they combine that skill with impoverished models for thinking and inquiring that prevent them from using their digital skills in meaningful ways. They rely on instant gratification from game play but lack the required grit and resilience to move forward when this is lacking. Our Digital Natives still need to be shown how to learn and how to use their digital tools for learning.  

On the other side is the oversimplification of the place that technology plays in the lives of Digital Immigrants. Prensky kept this at the level of an ever present accent that can be detected by the native speaker. This interpretation is not common and the term Digital Immigrant carries with it an assumption that members of this group just don’t get technology and that the older you are the less likely you are to use technology. The reality is that it is not one’s age which determines one’s level of engagement with technology but one’s disposition towards it. Some of the most successful integrators of technology I have encountered are (in my politest voice) ‘older members’ of the profession. They see the affordances of the technology and are able to weave its use into their teaching in meaningful ways. Whats more, they ensure their students are active partners in learning, their classroom is a shared space and they allow at every turn for quality learning to be owned by the students. Like all effective teachers they use technology to enhance long-life learning and they help their students to recognise the many tools they have available. They may retain an accent as Prensky describes but counter to the implications of many of the oversimplifications of his writing, they do not present a qualitative divide. 

We are beginning to see the first Digital Natives return to our schools as teachers and while they bring with them an experience of schooling arguably tainted by the beliefs of Digital Immigrants we could expect to see a difference in approach. As with all individuals the differences between new graduates has more to do with their individuality than with their membership of a particular group or more importantly their birthday. Yes, they assume access to the internet, they are aware of certain digital tool sets but they are also unaware of many of the skills and tools considered important for success in a digital age. Coding skills remain rare for example and strategies for the use of technology for critical thinking and innovation are as wide spread in this group as amongst their older colleagues. Clearly their is much room for ongoing learning and the construction of a pedagogy with technology at its core is yet to become a natural part of teacher training programmes.  

Prensky’s analysis continues to spark debate and that is a positive thing. The reality of how our supposedly Digital Natives or Immigrants engage with technology and learning reveals a more complex landscape than a simple dichotomy allows for. A richer subcultural analysis is required where individual narratives of technology's meanings may be revealed.  

By Nigel Coutts

Marc Prensky, (2001),"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1", On the Horizon, Vol. 9 Iss 5 pp. 1 - 6

Education: Competition vs Collaboration

In a time where much of the debate around education is linked to performance on national and international assessments such as PISA, TIMMS, PIRLS and in Australia, NAPLAN combined with calls for market-driven reforms there is a danger that a climate of competition between schools and systems will grow. Such competition while potentially inspiring systems to identify areas for growth may also give rise to a desire to keep ideas that deliver results a secret. What is most interesting is that this potential for competitive secrecy occurs at a time when teachers are increasingly empowered to share and collaborate across schools and systems on an international scale.

Attend a teach meet and you will see many of the strengths of educational systems on display. Firstly, teachers are passionate about what they do and bring creativity, innovation and evidenced based practice to the solution of every-day challenges faced. Teachers are enthusiastic sharers and see the benefits of collaborations within the profession. Teachers are appreciative and supportive of the intellectual activity of their peers and provide nurturing feedback that allows good ideas to become great. Teachers are highly professional, committed to learning and dedicated to ongoing professional development that will deliver results in their classrooms. Lastly it is always apparent that there exists a wealth of amazing ideas within the educational community waiting to be shared and that by engaging in this sort of collaboration you are highly likely to find that solution you have been looking for.

Physical teach meets are great but with social networking the opportunities for virtual collaborations continue to improve. Twitter, Skype, Facebook, ScoopIt, Google Apps for Education (GAFE) all offer opportunities for sharing and collaboration on a global scale. Thanks to such tools it has become feasible that educators can source all of their learning and teaching resource requirements from a pool of ideas created, evaluated and curated by teachers. Such a body of resources is placing pressure on publishers of text books and related resources as teachers increasingly find better options available from colleagues and shared at no cost. The development of this shared tool set requires ongoing two-way collaboration where the value derived from sharing a resource comes from the access it provides in return.

This is where competition is potentially most harmful. If my access to a resource provides my students and my school or system with an advantage am I more or less likely to share that in a competitive market-driven economy? Beyond this is a system likely to invest in developing new programmes that involve an element of risk compared to adopting a widely used commercial solution already adopted by those viewed as competitors? In the world of IT the saying ‘No one was ever fired for buying IBM’ reflected not that they had the best option but that this was the safe option. Competition in a market where success or failure is determined by a narrow, clearly defined measure such as that provided by national and international assessment programmes is unlikely to ever deliver innovation.

The use of these measures not only stifles creative teaching but limits student exposure to creative learning. The trend to following the leaders in the league tables on PISA has most recently shifted the focus from Finland to China. Yong Zhao, Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon and influential speaker on education advises caution. China’s success on PISA has come at a high cost to its students and within China there are calls for a more human approach to education. Zhao shares concerns over the demands and pressure that stellar performance on high stakes testing places on students. 'That’s the secret: when you spend all your time preparing for tests, and when students are selected based on their test-taking abilities, you get outstanding test scores. But is this what we want for our children?’ (Zhao, Y 2010) Further analysis of PISA results reveal a negative correlation between results and confidence in entrepreneurial capabilities (Zhao, Y 2012) indicating that what these tests measure and create may not equate with the ideal graduate disposition innovative industries are hoping for.

Further the sort of competition driven by these ‘High Stake' assessments hides the underlying social, racial and gender issues that allow a system to produce great results for some but not all of its students. Sue Thomson writes 'The results from the latest PISA assessment have shown that Australia does have a world-class education system - for most students - but there's much work to do to raise the achievement level of Indigenous, remote and poor students.’ A nation’s results on PISA readily hides the results it achieves for its disadvantaged and the trend to blame teachers and schools for dips and defects at a national level shifts the blame away from deeper socio-economic factors. Raewyn Connell shares that educators know how to deliver effective education across diverse environments and needs but that this is of little use if the agenda is already set; 'contrary to the rhetoric of ‘evidence-based policy’, neo-liberal policy-making proceeds as if it already knows the answer to policy problems.’ If that answer is pre-set as market-driven reform targeted at driving improved teachers, teaching and schools the underlying inequities will go unnoticed.

Connell concludes that 'Therefore, one of the most important things that intellectual workers concerned with education can now do, is to build alternative spaces - spaces in which critique is possible, practitioner knowledge can find expression and other trajectories for education are proposed.’ I agree, now is the time for educators to collaboratively affirm what education can achieve. To work as a profession together, united in the goal of achieving excellence for all students and to do so through the sharing of our collective wisdom.

By Nigel Coutts

References

Connell, R. (2013) Why do market ‘reforms’ persistently increase inequality? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Vol.34(2), p.279--285.

Thomson, S. (2008). International league: Australia’s standing in international tests Teacher:The National Education Magazine, February 2008 40-43

Visual Literacy - Metalanguage & Learning

What it means to be literate today is significantly different to what it was in the not too distant past. Once, being able to decode text was sufficient even if barely so. Today literacy involves the ability to make meaning from a multitude of text types, formats and modalities. The skills required are more diverse and the opportunities for engagement are much expanded. This new literacy with its multiple dimensions requires teaching programmes with a broad depth and appropriate scaffolds and structures to support learners as they navigate a labyrinthine world of meaning. 

If making meaning from the text is the goal, then it is worth considering what we mean by this. Firstly, the use of the phrase ‘making meaning’ is most deliberate, it is a process and it is one that multiple actors play a part in. Meaning is not embedded in the text by its author to be passively decoded by the reader. A better imagining of the process is to see this as a conversation between the author the text and the reader and to include in the analysis of these conversations consideration of the context within which this process occurs. Between these agentic actors of author, reader, text and context meaning is made. The consequence of seeing literacy as a process for making meaning, is that the result is not fixed. In a most dynamic way the process of making meaning from texts as author or reader will involve a dynamic sharing of thoughts, beliefs, values and understandings modified by context and shaped by engagement with the process i.e. the act of making meaning from and through text transforms all actors involved in the process.

An increasingly significant aspect of literacy is an awareness of the visual elements that fall beyond the traditional components of written text. Termed ‘Visual Literacy’ this is the ability to read and create communications that use visual elements. It combines the skills of traditional literacy with knowledge of design, art, graphic arts, media and human perception. It takes literacy further beyond a decoding of text to a decoding of the complete package around the communication. Visual Literacy expands the concept of literacy beyond the page of the book into a reading of the visual world both as it is enacted by human actions and as this human world interacts with the natural. The point that we are continually bombarded by images is frequently made in support of the importance of ‘visual literacy’. The modern world presents a wealth of images to be read and interrogated, a wide canvas from which to make meaning. It is not surprising then that often the subtle details behind these layers of meaning is overlooked and we read only the surface of what is presented to us. Nevertheless, understanding that many of the elements of our visual world are deliberate constructions that rely on the elements of ‘visual literacy’ should encourage us to take a deeper look and to better understand how we may read and author visual texts to maximum effect.

Increasingly Visual Literacy is expanding into Multimodal Literacy as digital communications allow new opportunities for blending of modes and medias of communication. Visual Literacy can be applied to single images or instances, ensembles or collections of objects/images/artefacts, or complete texts. With this complexity comes need for an understanding of the differences between media and mode. Media refers to the way in which the message is disseminated, includes print and electronic methods and is independent of the mode. A spoken text as an example of a ‘mode of communication’ can be presented across multiple medias e.g. live performance or recording. The relationship between mode and media can be quite simple with a change in the media sometimes having little impact. At other times the relationship is complex and a change in the media can have significant effect on the reading; a live performance might have a much more significant impact than an MP3 recording listened to alone. As is always the case the process of making meaning from varying modes and medias will be influenced by each actor in this increasingly complex conversation.

The degree of complexity that is encountered in making meaning from visual texts can be quite overwhelming particularly for the novice. According to Frank Serafini ‘One of the key aspects of the exploration phase is the development of a specific vocabulary or metalanguage for discussing and analysing the textual, visual, and design elements in particular multimodal ensembles.’ Board of Studies NSW defines metalanguage as ‘Language (which can include technical terms, concepts, ideas or codes) used to describe and discuss a language’ (BOS NSW - English K-10 Syllabus) In this instance we are looking for a language that will empower our discussion and sharing of visual literacy and in doing so we recognize visual literacy as a language. To this end there are a number of alternatives each of which offers differing levels of complexity and focus while providing a structure within which analysis might occur. Used in this way a metalanguage acts as a scaffold simultaneously bringing elements into the reader’s gaze while providing a language with which to describe and share the meaning that is made.

An excellent starting point for a richer exploration of what Visual Literacy is the work of Dr Frank Serafini. His book ‘Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacies’ provides the understanding teachers require as they integrate visual literacy into their teaching. Dr Jon Callow of ‘The University of Sydney’ is another source for anyone seeking a well considered metalanguage for use with Visual Literacy. Dr Callow’s work including a significant component on Assessment of Visual Literacy learning is shared through PETAA (Primary English Teachers Association of Australia). Below is a metalanguage guide distilled from a number of sources including both Dr. Frank Serafini and Dr. Jon Callow. Its aim is to provide a broad coverage of the concepts which may be relevant to a discussion of visual texts. In its scope it it is broad and should be introduced slowly over time so that young readers and authors are exposed to the concepts most immediately relevant and noticeable while more experienced readers have access to a metalanguage with appropriate complexity.

Another excellent resource is the Visual Literacy Toolbox provided online by University of Maryland College. This site provides a bank of questions for ‘Form, Content, Context, Frame and Gaze’. By using this bank of questions the reader has access to a set of prompts which serve to focus the gaze on key elements of the visual and allow for a deeper reading. 

Part of a collaborative student artwork inspired by Shaun Tan's 'The Lost thing'

A beautiful example for visual literacy are the imaginative and visually splendid texts created by author/illustrator Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan’s books and multimedia works are full of detail and exhibit a mastery of visual literacy. According to Tan ‘Neither text nor image explain each other fully, and the reader must fill in the gap of meaning with their own theories, based largely on an emotional reaction – fear, curiosity, amusement, bewilderment. (Word and Pictures, an Intimate Distance’ an interview with Shaun Tan). In this comment the rich appeal of visual literacy is revealed, it invites a degree of reflection and participation that allows the reader to discover something more about themselves and gives the author a powerful set of tools. 

by Nigel Coutts

Girls & STEM

Watching video from the Apollo space programme one can’t help but notice how things have changed since those days in the early 1970s. Banks of small round rectangular screens, dot matrix printers, a myriad of switches and dials each with a specific task to perform and a design aesthetic that says functionality in mild mannered green. Beside the technology are the men who made the space programme possible. Men in shirts with narrow ties, sensible hair styles and the obligatory cigar. What is missing beside the sort of computing power we carry in our pockets today are women. In the 70s science and engineering was what men did and from a quick look at the statistics there continues to be much room for change. 

Research reported by Kate Broadley (2011) shows that in New South Wales participation rates for girls in mathematics and science fell from 16.8% in 2001 to 13.8% in 2011. A similar but smaller downward trend is reported for boys across this period. The same picture is seen in the United States where Leaper et al (2012) report that 'among the recent doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S., women accounted for 27% in mathematics, 15% in physics, 20% in computer science, and 18% in engineering.’ and Milgram (2011) report that 0% of graduates in energy management and petroleum are women.  This at a time when 58% of two-year college enrolments are women. In the UK, WISE (Women in Science and Engineering Analysis of Labour Force April-August 2014) reports that just 12.8% of the STEM workforce are women. 

This is at a time when STEM skills are increasingly in demand. According to the Office of the Chief Scientist (Australia) ‘Science and innovation are recognised internationally as key for boosting productivity, creating more and better jobs, enhancing competitiveness and growing an economy.’(OCS 2014 p7) Analysis of the Australian job market by PwC shows that 44% of current jobs are likely to be at risk from computerisation and technology over the next 20 years and that 75% of the fastest growing occupations now require STEM skills. Adding to the significance of gendered career choices is research reported by Broadley that shows 'at 24 years, those who work in STEM occupations earn on average over $100 per week more than those who are employed in non-STEM occupations’. The bias in the selection of STEM pathways is thus becoming a social justice issue as patterns of participation described here for women are also present for other marginalised and disadvantaged groups, a fact recognised by Office of the Chief Scientist when he calls for 'high levels of participation and success in STEM for all Australians, including women, Indigenous students, and students from disadvantaged and marginalised backgrounds’. 

The question that must be addressed is why do girls avoid STEM disciplines and what might be done to reverse this trend? One clear piece of evidence is that girls are as able in STEM fields as their male counterparts. Multiple research projects in Australia and the United States show that when other factors such as social economic status are accounted for results between genders in STEM subjects are equal. (Broadley 2011) and Peters (2013 p1) 'In fact, girls and boys throughout their formal schooling in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations have enjoyed equivalent test scores in problem-solving and Science literacy.’ Despite this reality of equitable ability a recent report by Accenture in the UK showed that 60% of girls aged twelve believe mathematics and science is too difficult to learn. This study also revealed that 47% of the 4,000 young girls surveyed felt that STEM disciplines were better suited to boys. 

Two studies (Broadley 2011 and Leaper et al 2012) have applied Eccles (2009) ‘Expectancy-Value Theory’ (EVT) of motivation to an analysis of girls perception of STEM disciplines. EVT explores the roles that an individuals expectations for success in a field and the value they apply to that field have as critical factors in motivation and engagement. Where the individual has low expectations for success and they value the task lowly they are unlikely to engage. Positive results are found when a range of personal and social factors are supportive of girls having high expectations for success and positive valuing of STEM disciplines. Leaper et al (2012) report that girls were more likely to have strong maths/science motivation if they experienced less conformity pressure (to typical gender roles) from parents, they endorsed gender equality, or they had been exposed to feminism. Social support for maths/science from peers was also found to positively impact engagement. Eccles (2011 p195) found similarly 'Furthermore, gendered socialisation practices at home, in the schools, and among peers play a major role in shaping these individual differences in self-perceptions and subjective task values.' 

Research shows that girls make their career choices early, before age 14 (Broadley 2011) and possibly before they move into High School. Peters (2013) shows that girls interest in STEM careers as they exit school was best predicted by interest as they entered Secondary School. This means that schools need to ensure that girls are receiving affirmative messages about the potential of STEM pathways while they are in Primary school. The traditional approach of providing career guidance as girls approach their senior years of schooling is too late as significant choices about the broad directions likely to be taken have been made. This problem is exacerbated by the limited imaginaries that girls (and boys) have about their potential STEM related futures. The stereotypical image of a lab-coated scientist is as damaging to the image of STEM as it is false. Research shows that our young people have limited and limiting views of the diversity of pathways available to them in STEM fields and that STEM skills will be increasingly critical to many careers not traditionally associated with sciences. The danger for schools is that this message needs to be received while students are in the care of generalist teachers whose knowledge of the diversity of STEM disciplines is as impoverished as those they teach and who teach science guided by a traditional science curriculum.  

Rosie the Riveter was an iconic image based on reality that encouraged women to take on traditional male careers during WW2 - What is Rosie's equivalent for today?

The dominant response suggested by the research is to provide young girls with positive role models and mentors who will ignite their passions and reveal that STEM provides opportunities for girls. Watermeyer reports on the success that ‘Discover!’ has had in Cardiff, UK. Discover! is a STEM programme that pairs young girls with female Mentors and Role Models. Watermeyer (2012 p697) reports that 'we are confident in the value of Discover! in confirming and extending the scientific imaginations of young female learners and a sense that the programme is a catalyst for their future imaginaries.’ This success is largely a result of the exposure to successful and inspiring role models and ongoing support from female mentors. The importance of role models and mentors is supported by Broadley. and Milgram. with both indicating the importance of their involvement during the primary years. Milgram expands on the nature of the message required from role-models explaining that women need to see that work-life balance is achievable within STEM disciplines 'For this reason, it is critical that biographies of female role models used in outreach materials emphasize not only the path these women took to arrive at their chosen careers, but also the joy they found in their work, as well as their personal interests and family stories.’(Milgram 2011 p6) 

Donna Milgram (2011 p5) writes 'Women and girls need to see female role models in the workplace that look like them—over and over and over again. They need to receive the message that women can work in STEM careers and be successful and fulfilled in their work life while still having a personal life, and they need to receive this message repeatedly.’ This is a message that needs to come through multiple channels including schools, parents, peer networks, industry and the media. Programmes such as CSIRO's Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools is one model that builds supportive connections between industry and schools. Industry should not wait idly for schools to deliver a gender neutral STEM workforce but should actively seek opportunities to develop partnerships and provide suitable role models to schools and clear descriptions of the diversity of options available. 

The benefit to society is greater than bringing equity of career choice to girls but is about bringing new feminist perspectives, values and ideas to a growing field of endeavour with a critical role to play in our shared futures.  

By Nigel Coutts

Kate Broadley (2015) Entrenched gendered pathways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics: Engaging girls through collaborative career development Australian Journal of Career Development Vol 24 (1) 27-38 

Eccles, Jacquelynne. (2011). Gendered educational and occupational choices: Applying the Eccles et al. model of achievement-related choices. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 35, 195–201 

Campbell Leaper., Timea Farkas & Christia Spears Brown (2012) Adolescent Girls’ Experiences and Gender-Related Beliefs in Relation to Their Motivation in Math/Science and English Journal of Youth Adolescence (2012) 41:268–282 

Donna Milgram (2011) How to Recruit Women and Girls to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Classroom Technology and Engineering Teacher; November 2011 

Office of the Chief Scientist (2014) Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: Australia’s Future. Australian Government, Canberra. 

Heather Peters (2013) Girls’ Rosy Future in Green STEM Disciplines Redress August 2013 

PwC (2015) A Smart Move: Future-proofing Australia’s workforce by growing skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) /April 2015 

Richard Watermeyer (2012) Confirming the legitimacy of female participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM): evaluation of a UK STEM initiative for girls, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33:5, 679-700 

WISE (2014) Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and mathematics: The talent pipeline from classroom to boardroom - https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/uploads/wise/files/WISE_UK_Statistics_2014.pdf

Why build a Personal Learning Network?

'Inside the Black Box’ was written by Black and William in 1998 and in it they describe the classroom as a black box with inputs and outputs but what occurred inside was a mystery. For many teachers the reality has been that what occurs in their classroom has been both private and isolating, a matter between the teacher and his or her students but a task largely tackled alone. But this isolationist view is, in the age of the social media and networking increasingly challenged and more and more teachers are finding their voice, sharing their ideas and gaining valuable insights from a global community of connected educators.  

Understanding the value of the collective knowledge teachers have is a critical step towards understanding the role of a Personal Learning Network. In each class we teach there is a unique mix of personalities, mindsets and learning dispositions, alone we are likely to face new challenges meeting the needs of this mix of learners but collectively it is almost guaranteed that a colleague somewhere will have confronted a similar scenario. Within this collective intellect we will find answers to many of the questions we confront, new approaches, alternate plans of action and a great pool of resources to draw upon. Your personal learning network offers you access to the wisdom of a global collective of teachers with insights to what works and does not work inside the classroom. This is knowledge shared directly from the coal face, shared by busy teachers with real students and the same demands to meet standards that you face, not text book writers or publishers who are more interested in selling books or programs. 

The flip side of access to this collective knowledge is understanding that you also have valuable knowledge to share. When teachers begin their journey towards a Personal Learning Network this is one of the barriers they face; the false belief that their ideas are not worth sharing. Only when you take a risk and begin sharing do you see that your experience has genuine value to the network. By joining an online conversation, responding to questions, sharing a link or making a blog post you add value to the network and become a co-constructor of knowledge. Personally this moment occurred for me while participating in a Twitter chat (#aussieED). Sharing my ideas alongside other teachers was a confronting moment but one that quickly revealed a community that is welcoming and actively encourages participation. The reality is that Personal Learning Networks become more beneficial and of greater value as they scale, new memberships and contributions avoid the dangers of a small pool of contributors becoming an ‘echo chamber’ where dominant ideas go unchallenged.  

Time spent developing your Personal Learning Network is time well spent but it does take time. The danger busy teachers face is in becoming so engrossed in dealing with the day to day business of teaching that we make poor choices when it comes to time spent on our personal learning. We manage to find time for our students, for phone calls home, for report writing and programming all the while letting our engagement with learning slip down the list of things to do. Ensuring your personal learning is a priority is essential and should be seen against the value it brings to your students; enhance your teaching and you enhance their learning. Munro, Hopkins and Craig recognise this when they state ‘Student outcomes depend on the teaching in the school, its pedagogic capital’. For you, your school and most importantly your students time invested in building a Personal Learning Network is time spent developing your pedagogic capital. 

How ever you approach your PLN you must keep the key principle in mind; it needs to be Personal. The way you choose to build your PLN, the connections you make, the ideas you explore, the resources you share need to be relevant to you and should connect with your interests, expertise, passion and learning goals. If you are not finding value in your PLN, change it.  

My journey towards a PLN started a few years back but for much of that time it was something I dabbled without any real commitment. A little bit of Twitter, the occasional blog post, articles shared with colleagues by email, some social bookmarking. The trigger was seeing what deliberate, regular engagement could produce. This came thanks to Chris Betcher sharing his blog ‘My Daily Create’ with the audience at EduTech 2014 in Brisbane. Chris had decided to make creativity a deliberate daily act inspired by Sir Ken Robinson but looking to make creativity more than an idea. Each day for a year Chris has posted to his blog a piece of creativity and the results are quite special to see. More than anything else his blog shows personal growth and an engaged audience many of whom have undoubtedly been encouraged to pursue their own creativity. After listening to Chris I decided to post to my blog on a weekly basis. So far this year I have missed just one week which I blame on being overloaded by ideas while presenting at ICOT in Spain (something my blog gave me the confidence to do).

Blogging on a regular basis has helped me understand what I do as a teacher. It has expanded my understanding of learning, forced me to read more widely about education as I search for ideas that may evolve into posts and added a new dimension to my reflective practice. Regular writing with an audience in mind has provided insight to the process of writing that I have shared with my students and the blog has become a resource I call upon when sharing ideas and planning with colleagues. I have taken a certain pleasure in building an audience but I have kept sight of the belief that the blog needs to firstly have value to me. This means I continue to write about topics of interest to me rather than looking for ideas that may have broad popularity, I am not going for ‘link bait’.  

Alongside the blog I have become more engaged with Twitter and found a community of educators there with great ideas to share. Through Twitter I have been able to build connections with educators around the world and each connection further erodes the walls of the black-box. As a member of an online community you will find you can have value in multiple ways. Social media needs an audience and even as a passive observer you add this to a network. Commenting on content shared adds a different type of value as does favouriting and re-tweeting. Social media needs people to curate and refer content, to find ideas and allow them to bubble to the surface. Lastly of course content creators provide the ideas to be shared whether it be Podcasts, YouTube clips, blog posts, LinkedIn articles or original tweets.  

When you first dip your toes into Twitter you are likely to have mixed reactions. Many first timers find it overwhelming and question the sanity of the colleague who so highly recommended it. At some point if you persist it will begin to make sense. These images might help with that process. If you see Twitter as a way of collecting ideas that you will later sort through and make sense of you will struggle. Twitter is not a gentle flow of ideas, it is a rushing torrent, your bucket will rapidly overflow and you are likely to mourn the loss of so many good ideas. The key is to think of Twitter as a fast flowing stream that you visit when you have time. You enjoy the ideas that flow past while you are there, you grab the best ones for use at a later date and you let the rest float by. If you are not watching the stream you don’t think about it, you just know it will still be flowing when you next visit and most likely some new idea will float by.  

So how will you build your Personal Learning Network? What ideas, interests, passions, discoveries do you have to share and how will you add you voice to the community of educators? Begin by trusting in the value of your knowledge and experience and then share it with the world. 

by Nigel Coutts

Black, P & Wiliam, D (1998), Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment, School of Education, King’s College, London.

Making the most of Bloom's Taxonomy

Spend time in any school talking to teachers and even students about thinking and learning and you are likely to hear the phrase ‘Bloom's taxonomy' passed around. More than likely you will see it displayed on a wall as a set of processes learners engage with when working in the cognitive domain. Quite possibly it will be arranged in a pyramid or as a ladder with knowledge at the bottom and either evaluating or creating at the top. It might be labeled as 'High Order Thinking' and the teacher in the room is apt to inform you of how his or her students are encouraged to spend more time thinking towards the top of the ladder than the bottom. Despite the enthusiasm many teachers have for Bloom’s and the work of its lead author Benjamin, few educators have read the ‘Handbook’ that outlines its structure and most of the lovely posters leave out two key components. Beyond this aspect though there is a better way to imagine Bloom’s Taxonomy that sees it more as a 'choose you own adventure’ than a ladder to be climbed one rung at a time.

Sadly when most educators think of Bloom’s they think of just the single domain, the Cognitive, that rules so much of what we do in education. Had we focused on all three domains equally we may have better understood the part we do use and be much closer to a holistic view of education where the ‘Affective’ and ‘Psychomotor’ domains are viewed as equals to the cognitive. It is a shame that partly due to our obsession with Bloom’s we ignore the important aspects of our student’s feelings (hearts) and their doings (hands) despite these clearly playing a part in the taxonomy.

Since its introduction Bloom’s Taxonomy has been revised, revered and reflected on both positively and critically. I do not intend to enter into debate here on the quality of the research behind the taxonomy or lack of evidence for the hierarchy itself. The reality is that Bloom’s has become entrenched within the language of learning and this alone gives its power as a learning tool. What I would like to do is suggest a use for it that sees it as more than just an aspirational ladder but as a tool where each rung has value and may assist in driving learning forward.

Begin by moving past the idea that Bloom’s is a hierarchy with the implication of a linear progression of thinking from most simple towards most complex or valuable. See it instead as an intermeshed set of cognitive tasks that we combine and re-combine as our learning needs change. Such a process is particularly relevant to an inquiry process and using Bloom’s as an adjunct scaffold in this way can help students reflect on their learning. The process of inquiry might start anywhere on this jumbled up Taxonomy and where it progresses to next depends upon the learners progress through the task of solving a problem, creating a solution or refining an idea.

Typically the students will start with a question, one they have been given or one that they discovered or imagined. If it is their question the process most likely commenced before the question was formed with some wondering or evaluation of a piece of knowledge they had found. Once we have a question we can proceed and where the student goes next depends on what they already know or believe they know about the question. Maybe they do begin with a quest for knowledge but maybe they begin with a process of evaluating what they know. At times it might be appropriate to begin with creating a solution, as is the case when a ‘fail fast’ design process is applied. The next cognitive step depends on the results of the first. Try a new idea through a creative idea and when it fails you are likely in need of some evaluating. Maybe you are applying what you learned and re-testing. Maybe you found some interesting pieces of knowledge and now need to understand what you have absorbed.

The key is that the learning process is never neat, it is messy with lots of back and forth movement. There is no straight line path to learning and using the right type of thinking at the right time is more important than using the wrong skills even if it is a high order skill. ‘Evaluating’ when you should be ‘Applying knowledge’ or when you have no knowledge to ‘Evaluate’ will not help your learning move forward and nor should ‘Creating’ or ‘Evaluating’ only come at the end of a learning journey.

Use Bloom's Taxonomy to encourage students to talk about their thinking and plan their learning journey

If you do have a lovely set of posters for Bloom’s Taxonomy consider taking them down from the wall and using them with your students as a set of cards. Ask the students which card are they using in their learning now, which card might they use next and so on. Ensure the cards are mixed up and be careful to not let your old beliefs about their hierarchical value of these skills block your students from choosing the right card for their learning. You might find that suddenly your students are genuinely excited by that old taxonomy on the wall and use its language to describe their learning adventures.

by Nigel Coutts

Atherton J S (2013) Learning and Teaching; Bloom's taxonomy -  http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy

5 Steps to a Killer Poster Presentation

With thanks to Lawrence G Miller PHD and CEO, Miller & Associates for this guest posting. Follow Lawrence G Miller on Twitter @lawrencegmiller or LinkedIn 

A big piece of paper with text and images?  A pretty simple form of educational technology, but this is a format that can be as richly engaging as any our more contemporary digital formats.  It’s a poster!

The exact origins of the use of a single sheet of paper to encapsulate research findings are not at all clear.  In the late 1960s scientific research conferences exhibited simple posters that consisted of graphs, diagrams, and pictures, but did not contain text other than captions.  Within a few years, several scientific conferences established the poster presentation sessions that established the format pretty much as we have known it.  Today, posters have become a popular format for virtually all academic disciples, including education.

There is a certain challenge to excerpting research data or summarizing a complex project on one piece of paper.  You can think of it as akin to the Twitter paradigm of a message in 140 characters of text.  Yet, a well-designed, attractive poster can be a great learning experience in itself.  The design process forces the creator to synthesize and articulate their project or study.  Further, the experience of displaying the poster and engaging in a dialogue with interested conference participants is an extraordinarily rich experience with multiple benefits.
Here are five suggestions that will help you create a great poster and maximize the benefits of presenting in this format.

1.     Let It Flow, Let It Flow
A great poster has a logical flow to it.  An on-looker should be able to follow the intent of the poster.  In a more formal scientific-style poster, the material that is on the left side would be the set-up.  Here one would find the purpose of the research depicted on the poster, the research questions, and the methodology used.  The center area on the poster usually displays the data results of the study.  The right side is where one finds the interpretations of the data and the conclusions of the study.  The bottom right is typically where the bibliography would reside and any acknowledgments such as funding sources.

2.     Follow the Rules, Break the Rules
A poster that is entered in a competition should make sure to include all of the elements specified by the competition rules.  Reading and understanding the rules will make certain that your poster will receive all of the points that are assigned for specific areas.  However, there is room for creativity.  For example, a vertical format poster (think portrait as opposed to landscape) can make a poster distinctive.  One creative poster was constructed of 6 separate posters assembled with wooden slats.  It followed the rules for special dimensions, yet made a distinctive and effective presentation.

3.     Pictures Tell the Story
Images not only are an important way to display data, they also are a crucial design element.  Appropriate charts and graphs are typical of good posters, but sometimes a photographic image or an illustration will say something that numbers cannot.  Images should be really good photos or very simple charts or graphs.  Do not overload your images with information as they will lose their effectiveness in attracting people to stop at your poster.

4.     Clean, Simple Fonts
Nothing makes a poster look more cluttered than the use of inappropriate fonts.  Using fonts such as Arial, Franklin Gothic, and Futura make a poster look nice, but they are also very readable.  Do not mix fonts.  You can use Bold and Italic, or slightly different versions of a font family to call attention to the elements of your poster in terms of its flow.  Also, avoid using all capital letters – upper and lower case makes for easier reading.  Keep in mind that your poster will first be viewed by people who are “shopping” for topics of interest and will not initially be very close to your poster.  Your headline at the top must be large enough for people to easily ready it from a distance of five to ten feet.

5.     Engage During and After the Session
The real beauty of a poster presentation is that only those who care about the topic are likely to come and visit with you during a presentation session.  This one-on-one engagement can yield some of the richest experiences possible for both the presenter and that audience of one who cares about the content.  Be certain to have a handout that gives more depth than the posters could ever present.  The handout is where you can go into detail about your project or research.  And, don’t forget your business cards.

Just one more thing . . .
Creating a poster is a great learning experience.  Its use should be considered by instructors at all levels and a valid “deliverable” for group or individual work.

Hess, G.R., K. Tosney, and L. Liegel. 2014. Creating Effective Poster Presentations. 

Office of Undergraduate Research, Poster Presentations, University of Texas at Austin, 

Waquet, Francoise, Posters and Poster Sessions: A History, Center for History of Physics Newsletter, Volume XL, No. 2, Fall 2008