The Davies's Blog

The Learning Element – Drugs

davies81 — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:10:04 +0000

This Learning Element was a revamp of an old one I had used the in past. Glenn and I decided to try and incorporate more technology into the students learning and some current drug issues in today’s sporting world. An interesting for Glenn and I was introducing new teachers to the LbD format. Although we did not delve too deeply into how the learning processes work, it was interesting to see how people reacted to the process. To summarise their thoughts, I believe they liked how the processes scaffolded the activities you teach into different areas providing a variety of learning tasks. As Glenn mentioned in his presentation of the element, LbD provides teachers with a more interesting and engaging way to write units of work. The process supports teachers in creativity and the end result is a combination of lessons that are far from the boring and repetitive worksheet style learning.

Glenn and I made a conscious effort to try and link the element to the new Connected Learning Environment that we are working with in ACT schools. Xtranormal is a website that will allow students to make basic animations by simply typing text into a text box. Students will critique and analyse each others work and comment using the CLC. We also were interested in creating stronger links to what is current in todays society. Ben Cousins is a famous AFL player in Australia who became addicted to drugs. Recently he released a documentary looking at his habits and how it affected the community around him. Glenn and I will ask the students to critically analyse the film and comment on weather it has been helpful or not in sending an anti drug message to young people.

Overall this process has been very exciting. Technology is providing so many more opportunities for students to learn in new and interesting ways. LbD provides the perfect scaffold to enhance creativity and promote engaging learning.

Assement for Learning

davies81 — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:58:54 +0000

For me assessment for learning and not of learning essentially means the assessment is part of the learning. When we asses our students it needs to work in conjunction with learning and not just as a means to give a grade and write a comment. The assessment should improve learning outcomes for students and aid in the growth of the individual learners. My example of this was the Peer Mentor class that I teach at Stromlo high School. The assessment in this class is given from the teacher and the peers in the class. The progressive nature of the class allows the students to read the feedback on each lesson delivery and improve on their performances. Students must continually reflect, discuss and critique their work and the work of others. This process enables the students to build on prior experiences and refine their delivery and content. Next term we will be visiting 3 local primary schools and working with 400 young students. This pressure focuses the students desire to improve and to have engaging and informative content to deliver. The final assessment we will use is a presentation where the PM students reflect on their learning over the last semester. I believe it will become evident that the students have improved dramatically through their experiences abut also through the style of assessment we used.

Standardized Testing

davies81 — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:45:18 +0000

NAPLAN is here to stay. As I mentioned in my presentation, I don’t necessarily agree with standardized testing and understand the ugly and impractical side of the testing. However, what the testing is providing for me is some interesting data. SMART the program that ACT schools use to analyse the data provides user friendly graphs and information for classroom teachers to use. The interesting thing for me is that the data has been incredibly accurate. The students that the data identifies as low in literacy and numeracy are invariably low and equally as important the students who are high are invariably high. I have been able to use this information to give me a broad overview of who is in my class and the differentiation required for high and low students in my class. As a result I have been able to support my students better and scaffold their learning to get better outcomes. I understand the arguments against standardized testing but have also seen the benefits it has provided me with in the classroom. Of course I am able to identify these students through my own assessment and analysis in class but again that is not my argument. If we are made to take the tests then lets use the data productively.

IQ

davies81 — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:34:14 +0000

It was interesting looking at IQ testing as opposed to standardised testing. My imporessions after listening to everyones post is that IQ testing is very specialised. What I mean by this is that IQ testing is not a good measure of how intellegent all people are because you need to define inteligence before you can do this. What is considered importand and valid knowledge in one culture is not necessarilarily the same in another. We have all heard the arguments that IQ tests are culturally bias and also bias in many other ways. If we are going to use IQ testing as a measn of intwellegence testing then we must be sure of the purpose. I am not sayingthey dont have their place. Infoact I am sure they are important in some aspects of life. However, I dont think we can use them as an accurate meas4ure in the school environment.

The Learning Element

davies81 — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:43:04 +0000

Glenn Currie and I wrote a learning element based on a professional development workshop we attended on drug and alcohol education. The session was facilitated by the author of a new resource that was being introduced into ACT schools called Challenges and Choices. The professional development session was excellent and teachers were pleased to have new and innovative ideas and strategies to deliver drug and alcohol education to their classes. Despite the fact that the lessons in these resources are sequential and in age appropriate bands, we felt that placing these ideas into the learning by Design structure would ensure the content is balanced and covers the experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying fields. I have not had the opportunity to teach the learning element because I have been in an office based position for the last 10 months but I can comment on the collaborative approach to planning using CG Learner and LbD.

Writing the Unit

Glenn and I are both passionate about Health and Physical Education so when the opportunity came to write this element we were both excited. As we had both attended the workshop the previous week the principals for best practice and drug education were fresh in our minds. One of the key discussions we had was that whenever teaching students about alcohol or drugs it is important to take a normative approach. What I mean by this is that if you are discussing the use of ecstasy amongst 12 – 15 and the statistics tell us 97% don’t take the drug then it is important to reinforce this and not the fact that 3% of teenagers engage in this behaviour. These discussions helped us focus on our approach to completing the placemat. The activities and resources we used from the Challenges and Choice manual had to be framed in the context of a normative approach. This would become more important later on when completing the teacher component of the LbD using CG Learner. Planning on a placemat always provides a good visual to see if our activities flow and it if we are providing students opportunities to learn in all of the learning areas.

CG Learner is a fantastic tool that allows us to easily transfer our ideas from the placemat to the LbD format. At this point Glenn and I started to think more about the resources required for teachers to deliver this unit. Again it is simple to add attachments to the program and we can develop our ideas and resources as we proceed.

Learner Diversity

As we know the students in our class learn at different speeds and have different capacity for knowledge. Learning by Design allows students to work at individual levels if the teacher creates this environment. There are opportunities for students to have choice in assessment tasks and particularly when applying their knowledge creatively. At this point, students who have been participating in the unit of work can use the knowledge they have acquired and demonstrate this in a variety of creative ways. Also, experiencing the new and known provides opportunities for students to learn about others in the class and their perspectives on different issues. Alcohol and drug education is a sensitive issue and students from different cultural backgrounds will have diverse opinions about its role in society. The strategies Glenn and I have chosen in our unit focus on small and large group discussion and debate. We require students to explain their beliefs and thinking which further caters for diversity in the cohort.

Conclusion

Learning by Design is an essential and comprehensive process. I like how the knowledge processes build on each other and that planning and writing of learning elements is sequential and flows. The Placemat identifies gaps in your teaching and helps you think of ways to reach students using all of the learning areas. CG Learner and the LbD philosophy has provided us with a multimodal approach to create lessons for our diverse and technology savvy students.

Multimodality

davies81 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:04:38 +0000

Multimodality seamlessly combines graphics, text and audio output with speech, text, and touch input to deliver a dramatically enhanced end user experience. When compared to a single-mode in which the user can only use either voice/ audio or visual modes. Multimodal applications give people multiple options for inputting and receiving information. This makes the application much easier to use and provides more information an accessible way. As teachers we often use multimodal approaches even though we do not recognise it. Using web resources is one of these ways. The internet requires students to comprehend text, video, images and sound in an ongoing way and to extract the correct information to draw appropriate conclusions. The use of multi modal texts is important in creating interest and relevance for our students.

davies81 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:49:37 +0000

There are so many forms of new media today that people use to communicate. 20 years ago the only people published were academics or people with power. Since the technology revolution and the introduction if the internet anyone has the ability to make publications through a variety of mediums. Blogs are one of these forms of media. I was first introduced to blogs when a friend of mine decided to go travelling and wanted to make a record of their trip. The interesting thing about her story is that her blog became a reference point for other travellers. She recorded restaurants, historical sites and other places of interest. I know that she has continued this blog and is constantly updating it and posting new and interesting adventures. Blogs provide an avenue in schools for students to be published and reviewed by their peers. A unit of work might have a weekly blog where students can record the interesting things they learnt and post pictures. This then becomes a space where parents can see what the students are doing and it provides a clear record for the students of the key concepts taught. It think with any new media you are only limited by your imagination as to how you can use it. As teachers it is our job to ensure we are current and innovative in our approaches to incorporating technology.

Video Games

davies81 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:17:02 +0000

The reading by James Gee raised some interesting points. Creating relevant and interesting work is a focus of all teachers and using video games can help do this. Many students who sit disengaged in classrooms will go home and spend upwards of 8 hours engaged in video-game play. Gee effectively answers this question and makes a strong case in favour of video games supportive of learning as opposed to mindless entertainment. Video games require the use of many skills to successfully complete challenges. This in conjunction with the entertainment and competition factors makes a strong case for the successful use of gaming to promote literacy in our classrooms. All this seems to be to easy but as in my Wiki post see logistical difficulties in using the technologies in our classrooms and issues around creating false realities for our students. Life is not always entertaining and on occasions we need to do work that is laborious and disengaging. For some teachers this might be writing reports or marking essays. Despite all the enthusiasm in the world by the 80^th report we struggle to maintain our enthusiasm. If only these types of task were in a video game format with daemons to conquer and empires to save.

Pedagogy and Curriculum

davies81 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:02:42 +0000

The clip I chose this week was a good example of mimetic knowledge as the student in Good Will Hunting clip recites the information with out any thought given to original ideas or opinions. The scary thing is that this was in many ways the same form of education I received at the University I attended. There was a lot of emphasis put on our ability to recall facts and remember information for exams. We did not often get the opportunity to think critically about what we were being taught let alone think of new ways of doing things. In fact it was intimidating to step outside the norm and suggest new ideas as this was often met with negative feedback. I feel like the most worthwhile learning I engaged in was the practical placements at schools where I had the opportunities to develop my teaching style.

Knowledge Repertoires

davies81 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:31:21 +0000

It was difficult this week to think of a practical example where I have seen elements of LbD being used in other curriculum design formats. The Exhibitions program at Lanyon High school is a fantastic initiative. When it originated It used elements of Learning by Design. Students often have opportunities to experience the known and new in the topics studied. The also were given the chance to apply what they had learned creatively during their individual project and presentations to parents and friends. At Lanyon we now use the LbD format in Exhibitions to ensure all essential learning areas are covered and to help prevent gaps in the students learning and teacher preparation. Exhibitions has offered students at Lanyon High the opportunity to take responsibility of their learning and choose a creative path to develop and use their knowledge.