Walked with 9yo to school this morning. Halfway, she decided that was far enough. I started walking home and just turned around to wave goodbye only to find her running up the hill to her school.
Tag: School
Life is about compromise. For a while Ms4 has been having her nails painted when we cut them. This morning she flaunted them in front of Ms9. I asked Ms9 if while learning from home she wanted to paint her nails? She quickly responded that it was against school policy, only to then follow up with the realisation that she wasn’t required to wear her uniform while at home. Had me wonder about the challenges to the grammer of school because of the current pivot to online learning and the challenges this raises when students return.
Our analysis identified four key aspects of the school climate that are associated with students’mental health and wellbeing. We suggest that by considering these four aspects, schools can take manageable steps to promote an environment that supports student mental health and wellbeing.
- Social connectedness / relationships:
- School safety
- School connectedness
- Academic environment
Practice does not necessarily make perfect, but understanding the affordances and constraints of our tools helps, as does focus on the task in hand.
If we are looking at learning across the lifetime today, we need to think beyond the teacher/student and schooling constructs. Education is already larger than that. This is no different from recognizing that health and wellness is about so much more than a patient/doctor interaction. These professionals do and will continue to play a valuable role, but limiting many of our conversations about education to these formal contexts is inadequate for the challenges and opportunities of our age. In fact, it has always been inadequate. Formal education has a role to play today and in the future, but it is one of many spokes in the lifelong learning wheel.
Bernard Bull reflects on what people need to stay current in a job, shift to a similar job, develop skills that transfer to work environments, move into leadership within one’s field, or make a full career shift. To support this, he provides a series of questions to consider.
If much of formal education is structured around a teacher coordinating and directing the learning, to what extent is that preparing people for the type of learning that will be commonplace for the rest of life?
What are promising examples of schools that appear to be best equipping people for this sort of lifelong learning?
Given this incredibly diverse array of experiences that contribute to a person’s learning, what does an educational ecosystem look like that helps all of us look beyond diplomas and degrees?
How can we help people tell a more complete story about their learning and connect with other people and organizations that resonate with part of that story?
How might new forms of credentials help to tell this story through the structuring of rich and mine-able data?
More specifically, what are the benefits and limitations of AI and algorithmic solutions to connecting people with other people, organizations, and employment opportunities through rich and ever-growing data sets? To what extent might this help us move beyond credentialism? How might it help is address issues of access and opportunity?
How can we leverage AI, learning analytics, and adaptive learning to amplify the quality of learning that people experience throughout life? What are the exemplars today for truly personalized and adaptive systems that optimize learning for individuals and what will it take for us to reach the next generation of this work?
Since so much of life is and will be focused upon learning/re-learning/un-learning, how do we infuse and elevate the human-ness of these experiences by tapping into incredibly powerful phenomenon like wonder, awe, curiosity, mystery, adventure, experimentation, truth, beauty, and goodness? How might historic and emerging insights about these phenomenon help us think about and design the lifelong learning ecosystem of the future?
Given that people are constantly learning and will need to do so even more as technology (and especially AI) creates massive shifts in types of jobs and the nature of work, what are some of the more promising platforms, environments, and resources that help people grow and learn?
Formal education solutions are clearly inadequate and misfits for the type and nature of lifelong learning that I am describing, at least for the majority of situations. As such, how can we nurture and expand our conversation about education to see it as a much larger and more integrated system, one that we do not inhibit by the narrow constraints, schooling metaphors, educational practice ruts that shape much of how we think about teaching and learning today?
I wonder if this is a part of the second wave of MOOCs?
I’ve been researching the sociocultural implications of MOOCs for six years. It’s not surprising that the second wave of MOOCs is getting brought around at the same time as another ‘you don’t need to go to college’ wave
— Rolin Moe (@RMoeJo) May 22, 2018
Open Lecture: 2018 Steve Wheeler- Literacies and competencies for learning in the digital age from Educational Development Unit on Vimeo.
The rapid proliferation and deployment of smart mobile, pervasive computing, social and personal technologies is changing the higher education landscape. In this presentation I will argue that new media present new opportunities for learning through digital technologies, but that such opportunities will require new literacies. This is not just my view – it reflects the views of many other commentators including Lea & Jones (2011), Beetham et al (2009) and Lankshear & Knobel(2006). Essentially, the traditional literacies that have dominated higher education in the past are thought to no longer be sufficient in the face of recent changes. I will explore a range of new 'digital literacies and competencies', discuss the concept of 'digital fluency' and highlight some new and emergent pedagogical theories, including connectivism, heutagogy, paralogy and rhizomatic learning, that seek to explain how students are learning in the first part of the 21st Century.
Biography:
Steve Wheeler is a Learning Innovations Consultant and former Associate Professor of Learning Technologies at the Plymouth Institute of Education where he chaired the Learning Futures group and led the Computing and science education teams. He continues to research into technology supported learning and distance education, with particular emphasis on the pedagogy underlying the use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies, and also has research interests in mobile learning and cybercultures. He has given keynotes to audiences in more than 35 countries and is author of more than 150 scholarly articles, with over 6000 academic citations. An active and prolific edublogger, his blog Learning with 'e'sis a regular online commentary on the social and cultural impact of disruptive technologies, and the application of digital media in education, learning and development. In the last few years it has attracted in excess of 7.5 million unique visitors.More about Steve Wheeler https://steve-wheeler.net/
Steve Wheeler’s presentation is not necessarily a definition of what digital literacies / fluencies, but rather a wander through education today. For Wheeler, the key is finding your desire lines and personalised learning. This not only touches on what is learned, but also how the learning occurs – negotiated, blended, socially. It is interesting to think of some of these ideas alongside Peter Hutton’s work and calls to reform Australian education.
Are schools safe? Statistically speaking, schools are very safe, and in the context of other mortality studies, schools have become better protected while other locations have become more dangerous. Maybe the better question is, “Do students and staff feel safe at school?” Be careful what you wish for if school policy and procedures are decided by outsiders. The people best qualified to make their school feel safer are the students, teachers, and administrators within the building. My recommendation for March 14th and beyond is for students to remain at school and engage in conversations about personal wellness, inclusivity, interdependence, and school climate. As is often the case, “the solution lies in the problem.”