Our first meeting, a bit nervous, some tech issues around audio and learning to co ordinate meetings in this world, but was there any trees in that forest?...
There we were Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the USA meeting in a virtual world integrating a variety of technologies and collaborating about teaching possiblities for students.
But aside from the technical wonders there was some seriously great collaboration happening.
Skoolaborate is all about the Global understanding that collaboration brings. Here is a taste from meeting one.
A conversation started around our idea about 'design briefs'. Mike D had designed a bunch of display units of different colours, initially to indicate a different type of brief. For example blue for building and green for scripting. I had a meeting with our head of Middle School (Di Cottrel).
Di pointed our that one the major thrusts of learning our Middle School was around learning styles and that the colours could be linked to Thinking hats. The idea being that each colour represents a different way of thinking, for example red is emotional and therefor could be tied to more social briefs, white with facts linking to research briefs etc
This, to me was a fantastic idea but I thought I should check for understanding. The New Zealanders responded similarly to me, and do use the thinking hats concept throughout many of there schools, same in Tasmania but Chris from Japan answered 'Thinking what?' This not only led into opportunities to discuss teaching and learning methods but also made us realise that what is standard and well established practice in some countries or educational institutions may be completely foreign to others - we will need to throughly communicate and collaborate around these briefs.
Next we discussed about how great it was that the Tasmanian schools were involved. This was because some State schools in Australia (particularly New South Wales) have been 'locked down' in terms of access to a variety of social technologies. But is it the same everywhere? Apparently not, our (Australia's) private schools like MLC have much more autonomy in what they can access.
The Tasmanian State system through it's participation in the Learning Together program is concerned that
students must participate as global citizens for the sustained economic future of the state, also that they need to engage learners - impressive.
Paul explained how New Zealand Schools, whilst having alot of variety, are incredibly flexible in their views, infact entrepreneurial, having the freedom and independence to deal with corporate organisations in order to supply excellent technology access to their State schools.
It would be great if you (our readers) could add a quick comment re this about your school systems and their attitudes.
We swapped ideas on tactics on how to 'sell' these virtual spaces to concerned boards or parent groups. What were the issues and why? Are those concerns common?
Chris from Kyoto added some thoughts and experiences from his Pacific Rim project around how to create collaboration. He suggested dividing islands and getting the students to build bridges from each end that would need to meet in the middle - obviously this would force collaboration on numerous levels.
I shared a learning that I had the other day when I found what I called 'a key' - ownership. it was about providing an empty space, to encourage ownership and pride and see what would happen. This led to further discussion around how competition can be use as a motivational tool.
Students could be motivated to ensure that their section of the island is at least as impressive as each of the contributing schools sections. Then eventually getting together to share feedback and suggest improvements etc
During the conversation we lost some audio connections. Meg our 15 year of student, without prompting, summed up the situation, connected the missing two via Skype and moved her computer close to the microphone so that we could continue. This proved that she was both smarter and taller than me! Gone were traditional roles of teacher and student transformed to learners together.
What about Student Voice? a particular interest to MLC school. It came as we discuss how we could reward students who contributed. We discussed a variety of options. We could attach Linden dollars to successful completion of tasks or perhaps we could develop a list of increasing privileges for managing the site. This could end with us allowing students to become an estate managers. Chris seemed a little bemused, 'are you saying you would let the students be estate managers?'. Ofcourse, I said and explained the vision that MLC has for it's girls. We are not educating girls to support wealthy husbands, we are creating future leaders of our country, 'If they can lead a country then they can manage an estate'. This has to be our aim.
Finally Mike turned up and added to discussion around textures and design concepts. Chris was amazed and wrote his own summary of Mike's brilliance.
It all left me realising that we have such a long way to go in discovering how to make this an ongoing and sustainable learning environment for students but opened my eyes at how obvious the opportunities are for teacher professional development. I look forward to winning both battles and hope our thoughts and reflections are helping you.
