Month: February 2015

Keeping the main thing, the main thing – Posts about Feedback from #28daysofwriting

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loopz by Rosa Menkman

I started 2015 in Perth. Well in actual fact I had trips to Brisbane and Sydney as aperitifs and then headed to Western Australia. I was helping with some professional learning days at a large independent girls school we have been working with since the beginning of 2014. Our mantra for the sessions was:

Keep the main thing, the main thing

And feedback with its long lost twin, feedforward, is pretty close to being one of the most important elements of learning and curriculum design. I will spend some time in future posts sharing how I see it all and how it aligns with a prototyping disposition. For now, here are some great blog highlights from educators sharing their thinking on feedback as part of #28daysofwriting.

 

Alex Gingell shares how he used an Experience Tour to help with the professional learning discussions on feedback in his school.

I wanted staff to ‘immerse’ themselves in feedback. To gain an understanding of how feedback works across the school and to give them a tool that would enable them to develop their own perspective of feedback in their practice. This tool is designed to be used over a slightly longer period of time and having started, I would now like to provide the opportunity for staff to continue their ‘tours’, moving from reflecting on feedback in books, to experiencing feedback in each other’s classrooms.

Experience Tour: Feedback by Alex Gingell

Great to see the DIY Toolkit being hacked to suit the needs of our school developments. An interesting post well worth a look.

 

 

In this post from the Four Seasons in One Kiwi blog, @StephT shares some of the discussion about feedback in terms of leading a school.

a good leader shows they are human, takes on board feedback, uses it to improve the way things are done but does not allow themselves to sink under the weight of it.  We did not think that the leader that journeys up the Nile in a heavy armour plated frigate was that of a good modern leader.  That, we felt, was a leader that ignores feedback and has armoured ears, which could, consequently turn into a disaster zone.

Day 7: Educational Piranhas #28daysofwriting by @StephT

Great to get some on the ground, fresh insight into the principal role within a school – read the rest of the post above.

 

 

This post from Dave Stacey outlined an interesting concept to explore when structuring the timing of feedback. Something I will be returning to in a future post of my own.

We need to get much better about the point at which we give our feedback and make sure students can act on it (DIRT time is an idea that’s been kicking around for a couple of years, and if you’re a teacher if you’re marking without it, you’re probably wasting a chunk of your time – try here and here to start, but there are loads of great blogs on it). We can restructure our assessments, we can make better use of cloud technology to provide feedback BEFORE the final deadline, or ensure that students get a second go at delivering that presentation.

I shouldn’t feel bad for saying ‘well done’ – #28daysofwriting day 5 by Dave Stacey

 

 

Nicola Richards shares her first steps into using the SOLO Taxonomy in helping students understand the specific parts of their journey. By the sounds of it the taxonomy helped the class also provide effective feedback to peers, which is often tricky if we don’t have a notion of what specifically to say.

So my first real “work” for my class this year was to write a paragraph with a video as a stimulus. Once they were finished we discussed the key concepts and then I asked them to peer assess the paragraphs using a simple SOLO rubric. Most found it easy to identify where their partners work was at and could also identify next steps. I can see me using this regularly for peer, self and teacher feedback. I am passionate about the use of SOLO taxonomy (thanks @arti_choke) and keep finding ways to incorporate it in my teaching and learning. This was a great example as it fulfills many of the key requirements of effective feedback too.

28 days of writing – day 5 by Nicola Roberts

Explore more of Nicola’s post on her blog nixpixmyideasonstuffeducational

 

 

I look forward to writing and learning more from the reflections of others about feedback and do my bit to keep the main thing the main thing.

Image loopz by Rosa Menkman

500 Not Out

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This is my 500th blog post.

I am not one for milestones but this digital space has been close to my heart ever since I started. It has contributed in so many different ways to where I am today. So I am taking a minute to look  back a little on where it all began.

I started writing a blog back in late July 2006 (wow, close to 9 years ago). It was called ICT in the Classroom and I set out to share about just that:

“So here I am – first blog about me and my ICT. It is something I am passionate about and hopefully this space will be somewhere for me to channel my thoughts a little and to explore my experiences of ICT in my classroom.”

In those days I had a blog with Edublogs. They did a sterling job of helping me get started.  I am still grateful to James, Sue and everyone at Edublogs for helping me and thousands of others get started with blogging.

My first real post was about, surprise surprise, blogging! And it would seem the enduring nature of this tool remains strong today:

“This whole blogging thing has caught up with me. I have started one for my son to record his first few years with us – I hope it will be something that he enjoys looking back upon later in life. It is great fun to do.

My own blog will be a learning curve as well, I have begun to explore the ways that blogs can be used in education and specifically with my class next September. At my first teaching post I had to build and maintain a website, fitting this around work is hard. The beauty of blogging is how easy it is to create and publish work online.”

It is “fun” and even easier nowadays to publish content in beautiful ways.

I also began to understand the social aspect of blogging. As I have said before, for me it was the first social platform I experienced. I connected with other bloggers through the beauty of the pingback. If you were added to a blogroll it was a massive win!

Commenting was essential for establishing connections in those pre-Twitter days. This is where the rich discussions would unfold. Sometimes far outweighing the published words in the original post. Another blogging habit would be creating a post based on someone else’s writing. This reaction or commentary style post was common and helped snowball ideas. This was especially true when they were about classroom practice.

I had the privilege of reading many blogs to gain some idea of how to behave. I am grateful to Peter Ford, Ewan McIntosh, Doug Belshaw and many others who helped me figure it all out. Getting a blog comment from these legends was always exciting. (Amazing to think that now I can call Peter and Ewan my colleagues)

I hope that projects such as #28daysofwriting help you discover or get back into this glorious habit. And I am resolute that I will be around to talk about my 1000th blog post.

The Future of #28daysofwriting – your ideas wanted

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Fast forward another 22 days and we will be looking back on a solid month of writing, giving out fingers a well earned rest and wondering how we made it through. But what comes next.

I started the idea to get back into a writing habit and be much more consistent with my blog and the act of reflective writing which I enjoy so much. I don’t know about you but even after just 6 days things are different and I am loving the challenge. Of course having over 100 other educators, bloggers and companions for the journey is making it extra special and I am staggered by the response from everyone involved. There is even a bunch of Grade 5/6’s having a go which, by all accounts, is going down a storm.

So what happens next, the group simply disbands and we go our separate ways, warm and fuzzy inside from the companionship, the new writing connections we made across our network and in our own habit? We find a mountain cabin and spend the rest of the year reading the posts. Or can we continue to develop this idea further.

BadgeHere are some ideas that have been shared around already:

  • 28 Days of Writing occurs again at some point in the future allowing a new cohort of colleagues the chance to enjoy the journey together.
  • 28 Days of Commenting – a fading part of our community in my opinion and something we all should do as much as writing our own content. Perhaps such a clear focus on it will help. Maybe a new group could be writing whilst another is commenting 😉
  • A classroom ready version of the challenge – something that is perhaps shorter and gamified for the classroom to get kids enjoying the experience. As I mentioned above it would be lovely to have classes taking part, perhaps looping into #classblogs and the like.
  • Developing some strong aggregation tools to help people enjoy the growing number of posts – after all if 100 people write and publish for 28 days that is a significant amount of reading. Any stylish, functional aggregated lists will help. I am thinking a Flipboard magazine or Feedly collections etc
  • How might we celebrate the achievement or even the milestones along the way? Writing and publishing for just 7 days straight is a pretty great achievement and that is just 25% of the way through!
  • What fun badges could we make for the different types of writing, content and experiences we have along the way?

For this to continue and become an enduring feature of our writing community it will pay to consider some new ideas to take it forward. At the heart of it is a simple idea which no doubt will continue but I would love to see what more we can do to refine it.

What would you like to see next? Please share you own thoughts, ideas and reactions in the comments below.

As ever good luck with your own 28 minutes!

8 Reasons You Should Have A Professional Blog

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The way we share our thinking and reflections nowadays has burgeoned with so many different creative platforms. Blogging is one of the original social networks and has been a cornerstone in my professional life for many years now. Take a look through these reasons for reflective posts on your blog and commit to the future of your writing space.

1 – Make Room for Yourself

A blog or publishing platform serves as a wonderful personal space for you to retreat to, the digital version of a shaded tree, the tranquil spot for us to ponder and work through our thoughts and ideas. Preening this space is a common behaviour, with widgets and sidebars tweaked and themes tested. A blog becomes a personal / professional thinking space.

2 – Catharsis

One of the major reasons for writing regularly that I hear is that it is a deep thinking process that is becalming. When you have to communicate your ideas to others, to an audience, whether real or projected, it forces you to tie off the loose ends and to work towards greater clarity. Personally this is a hugely important process for my own thinking. The scattered threads of ideas and concepts come together through the act of writing and the satisfying synthesis of my thoughts is often cleansing.

3 – Model a Growth Mindset

Pretty much everyday in the workplace or in places of learning we ask others to reflect and share what they are thinking. This is especially true in schools and places where learning happens. The last few years has seen a huge shift towards reflective portfolios and gathering personal evidence of thinking and learning. But we need to model this too. We will be better placed when we deeply understand what it takes to regularly reflect and make written records of that thinking. We need to model this behaviour and we need to better understand what we are asking of others – writing your own blog helps with this.

4 – A Space to Reflect

As reflective practices go the writing process is a unique one in that the output is so tangible. It is nothing like just thinking through your coffee break about what occurred in that last lesson or making mental notes about how a project went. When we reflect and write that reflection we are being deliberately meta-cognitive as the process forces us to make language choices in how we are going to record our thinking. Such a deep meta-cognitive task means that writing is a strong reflective activity.

5 – Ship Your Ideas

Get them out there. Use your blog to craft them over time or post them up quickly in their raw, nascent glory. But get them out there, share your ideas. Ship. When we take the disposition that we are going to share our ideas and thinking we begin to open up to how others can help us. When you begin blog posts with: “So I have had this idea…” you extend an invitation for people to come along with you and to perhaps build something together.

6 – Gain Perspective

When we are open to comments and thinking from others we are much more likely to gain a richer perspective on the issues we may have originally shared. Writing and sharing a blog post on an issue or idea we are working on allows us to see it from the reaction and perspective of those who read it. From those connections and comments we gain valuable insight – “I am not the only one”, “There is a different solution I have not thought about”, “I want to find out how they worked through this.” Gaining perspective on our own issues and challenges is huge benefit from sharing our own blog posts.

7 – Build a Community

Without question one of the core motivations for my own writing is to participate and engage with a community and to gather like minded others (and those who think differently) around the blog posts I share. The discussions that spring up and unfold underneath our blog posts often offer rich ideas and resources. It is a social platform after all and it is about making connections with others – I remember the days of the Blogroll (lists of other blogs you read) and the Pingback (adding a link to someone’s blog post) being currency in an exchange that strengthened the ties amidst bloggers. Don’t forget the community of other writers too, read and comment on their blogs, message them via Twitter, learn about them. After all the connections I made through blogging changed my career.

8 – Build a Professional Thinking Archive

As somebody once said to me “Nobody else is going to tell your story” – your blog becomes a powerful archive of your thinking, ideas, projects, successes and professional reflections. When consistently added to over years it forms a strong part of your professional existence and clear way to communicate what you are about. Reminiscing on old post, especially during periods of your life that were rewarding or deeply challenging is a privilege – it offers you a way to peer back into the mind of your former self. Not simply to look at the old photos and groan about the haircuts, but to be able to reflect on the way your thinking has changed, grown and adapted over the years. Blogging gives us this privileged chance to speak to our future self.

How Worthwhile Is The Learning You Are Designing?

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We have all seen the likes of these documents before, a system-level framework for effective teaching, a document that states the fundamental principles of what is expected of teachers in a particular region. The Canadian Teacher Association paper titled “What did you do in school today? Teaching Effectiveness: A Framework and Rubric” is no different in that regard. It is a multi-year research piece about the effectiveness of teaching.

However, what is particularly arresting about this piece is the plain-speaking language used. Often the weight of unhelpful language and Edu-jargon causes us the poor reader to get lost in sometimes and the true meaning is lost most of the time. So it was refreshing to read such simply stated principles in the document about teacher effectiveness:

  1. Effective teaching practice begins with the thoughtful and intentional design of learning that engages students intellectually and academically.
  2. The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the world in which they live.
  3. Assessment practices are clearly focused on improving student learning and guiding teaching decisions and actions.
  4. Teachers foster a variety of interdependent relationships in classrooms that promote learning and create a strong culture around learning.
  5. Teachers improve their practice in the company of peers.

For each element they expand on the principle with some clear justification for example in the first principle – Teachers As Designers, the authors refer to crafting opportunities for learning that:

…awakens the human spirit’s desire to know. The result is a deep, personal commitment on the part of learners to explore and investigate ideas, issues, problems or questions for a sustained period of time.

This speaks to my passion for the craft of what we do and emphasises the design skills and dispositions needed to do our work so creatively.

The other principles are just straight forward and make great sense to me – however, there is one stand out phrase for me. Principle number two:

The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the world in which they live.

That one sentence delivers such a challenge and provocation to what we do that it almost leapt off of the page at me when I read it. If you read further into the rationale for this principle you will quickly find a reference to the design of learning that is authentic to those individuals we are with, even providing a useful rubric as a guide, reference and starting point.

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How is the learning we are designing worthy of the time we all put into it? How might we ensure we make every learning moment count with our students and still leave room to take opportunities when they arise?

The worthiness of learning is a measure that may reveal real challenges for some and most certainly will lead to rich conversations for those that care.