Unsticking the stuck

“Twitter is too hard for me to use.” That statement stopped me in my tracks earlier today when I was trying to persuade some colleagues about the benefits of networking via Twitter.

 

I’m on a maths training programme called MAST. It’s a big 2 year academic thing that can contribute to a Masters degree (if you want it too). Myself and the other participants are at different stages of study and some of us are stuck.

 

Some of us are stuck because the university’s VLE is old and outdated, without the functionality and flexibility of the kind of interfaces we’re used to like facebook.

 

Some of us are stuck because the material is hard. There are hard words to understand and apply, like ‘didactic’ and ‘quotitive’ (a word I used in my last post).

 

Some of us are stuck because in the local area network meetings we still haven’t actually formed a network – we come to them, we learn some stuff but then we don’t talk about it in between.

 

Now it seems to me that Twitter would be a good solution to this. We could have a tag for our group and communicate when we’re stuck to each other, post useful links, help each other with the tricky parts of the course. It might even make the rest of the face-to-face meetings more meaningful.

 

The problem is that out of the 28 participants and 2 course tutors, only I use Twitter. A small group of them use Facebook and have set up a Facebook group, but say that ‘Twitter would be too hard for them to use.’

 

That was such an interesting statement and I have to say that 6 months ago I would have said the same thing. Since then however I’ve decided that it is my responsibility to learn about new technologies so that I can help the children I teach and their parents understand them better and use them more safely. On the way I have discovered that they have really helped me plug in to learning networks and be generally more effective.

 

So how do I persuade the others that Twitter is the thing to do?

 

Firstly, am I wrong – is there a better solution? For example, setting up a wiki page buckling down and setting up a discussion on the university’s oh-so-clunky VLE? Something else.

 

Secondly, maybe I should just join the Facebook group and convince people to come to Twitter from there?

 

Any other solutions? Does anyone know how to create a Twitter epiphany amongst thirty sceptical maths specialists?

Can you keep the diplodocus safe?

Sometimes the river winds through the country of maths. Many educators see maths as being an entirely different country from the rest of ‘educationland’ and this post will emphasise some of those differences.

The thing is, most teachers don’t get maths. Not only do they not get it, but they do not want to get it. That is why the numeracy strategy in the UK has been a moderate success – it provided such a tight framework for teaching maths that teachers didn’t have to get it, they just had to deliver the lessons put in front of them. As Sir Peter Williams put it:

“The United Kingdom is still one of the few advanced nations where it is socially acceptable to profess an inability to cope with mathematics. We need to urgently reverse this trend so every pupil leaves primary school without a fear of maths..”

This attitude if prevalant in the nation must also be prevalant amongst teachers.

So, how many 4s are there in 20?

At what age should a child be able to work this out? It is a quotitive division – you could express ot as 20 ÷ 4 = 5, but it is quite a different question from saying ‘share 20 sweets between 4’. In the latter question, each of the ‘4’ would receive 5 sweets. In the former there are 5 groups of 4 in 20.

It is grouping vs sharing. It is quotitive division vs partitive division.

Children are exposed early to partitive division. They are sharing from reception and before. They share sweets, teddy bears, small plastic dinosaurs and even an 8 chunk bar of chocolate if they’re lucky (incidentally this latter example is actually a fraction problem – but don’t tell the reception teacher that).

They are not on the whole exposed to quotitive division. In fact grouping isn’t really referred to until Year 2.

So here we have 2 equally valid meanings to the word division, with one being taught from reception and one being taught from Year 2. I wonder which one will be better understood? Forgive my sarcasm, but it seems obvious to me that our framework has let us down here. Younger children can group. They could make a group of the chewy sweets and the hard sweets. They can group their teddies by size, colour or even in groups to go off to their teddy bear’s picnic. They can group dinosaurs by how angry they are.

So when it comes to the question ‘how many 4s are there in 20?’ We may at the moment say that we can’t begin to talk about that with children until they are 7. We certainly can’t express it in symbols unto they are 9. But actually, if they understand the numbers, there is no reason why they can’t be asked the question much earlier:

  • The camels cross the desert (sand pit) in herds of 4 at a time. How many herd can you see in the sand pit?
  • The teddy bears only ever have their picnic in groups of 4. Look at those twenty bears… how many picnics do you think there will be.
  • Those diplodocus are only safe from the tyrannosaurus rex when they are in groups of 4. Can you make those 20 safe? Please?

Ah! Division by dinosaurs. You can’t beat it!

The Network Curriculum

It has taken me 12 years of teaching to return to some of the educational theories that I was supposed to learn at college. Twelve years of being very busy, very earnest, doing lots of good stuff, but sometimes completely missing the point. When I did return to those theories I found there was a new one that hadn’t existed when I was first at college.

 

What educational theories sit behind ‘networks’ and the act of ‘networking’? Behaviourism? Cognitivism? Constuctivism? – Answer: all of the above.

 

Connectivism is what you’re doing right now if you’re reading this. You’ll find yourself on the third and fourth bullet point of George Siemens’ blog about what connectivism is. I’m glad I found it.

George Siemens’ paper
helped describe the kind of teacher I am becoming when I was searching for some material to help me present at a conference a few weeks ago. It helped me connect the inspiration I had received from Ewan McIntosh to be a ‘literate’ teacher with the networks I had begun through Creative Partnerships’ Bright Space and their agent Marcus Belben alongside the BXL technology tree project and partners Frankley CLC and Stan’s Cafe to be first primary school to do Scalextric4Schools. Apologies for the number of ‘ands‘ in that sentence.

 

There are two things that stand out to me from the aformentioned paper:

 

The first is: Karen Stephenson’s“Quantum Theory of Trust”. This is essentially that networks can only work successfully when everyone can trust each other. Trust between the partners I have worked with has been essential this year.

 

I have found that there is a trust too between the participants of the Google Teacher Academy – we trust that we want the same thing – to improve our knowledge and understanding and therefore our impact on young learners. As a recent convert to twitter (about 10 days old…) it has been amazing to slot into a network of people, to learn from them and to (hopefully) contribute a little of my own understanding. It is just as George Siemens says: ” A learner can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.”

 

The second is that ‘the pipes are more important than the contents of the pipe‘ – or in Marcus Belben speak – ‘the network is more important than the framework

 

What is really interesting to me is that our curriculum this year has worked because of who has been involved, not because of what it is or where or whenit happened. It worked because of the network. Yet we live in an educational climate where the framework has been all important.

 

The framework is a set of rules, processes and policies by which people should act.

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Frameworks are very efficient when communication is poor because they are a set of standards that are written down. They describe success and failure. The national curriculum has been such a framework. Further frameworks have been added on such as the national numeracy and literacy strategies, QCA units, APP.

 

These frameworks have not only de-skilled teachers from the ability to network but they have taken away the desire to network. Teaching in the UK for some has become about ‘delivery’ rather than the marvellously creative act of teaching – making learning fun, relevant, challenging and aspirational. The frameworks began with those goals at their heart, but in some schools the teacher has been cut out and stopped from thinking for themselves and making connections between the frameroks and the real people. Teachers have been encouraged to stop trusting and instead to fear Ofsted, SATs, league tables, the media, parents, children – in fact pretty much everybody.

 

This comes back to Dr Stephenson’s Quantum Theory of Trust. If we can only start trusting each other the effects will be ‘quantum’. The network is more important than the framework. At least that’s true in almost every sector of employment outside of education.

 

I was reflecting on the ‘tone’ of twitter interactions since I started a few days ago and wondering what judgements people make of them and therefore of me and conversely what judgements, fair or unfair, I am making of others. There’s a real skill in that (and I’m not sure I’ve cracked it yet…) – a skill that children have to be taught. I wondered if my curriculum really prepares children for that challenge when they hit secondary school and beyond.

 

The network curriculum is one in which:

  • the child learns to cherish their networks, acting to protect them, to learn from them and to contribute them.
  • The teacher writes ‘who’ on their planning before anythiong else – thinking through who their children will meet each day, week and term and planning different types of interaction for each child – 1:1 peer and with adult, group, whole class, online, performance, guided, un-guided, etc. Also the teacher values themself and teaches from their own strengths and passions.
  • The manager nurtures and develops the day-to-day interactions between people.
  • The leader holds the bucket upside down (see my old blog from 2008 about ‘building capacity‘) .

In saying all this, I still think the national curriculum is a good thing. It has good standards (which, incidentally, are being undermined by APP – but that is another story that will be told another day), it is broad(ish) and provides a common basis for all children. It’s just that I want to see the national curriculum as a servant to my network of teachers, not as their master.

 

And to be fair to all of us that have worked under the national curriculum for so long now, we didn’t know there was another educational theory out there until recently. It is by the network I discovered this and to the network I will return.

 

As a footnote I would love to know if any teachers who have recently come out of college, such as Oliver Quinlan, who’s recent blog posting on Problems with timetabled learning inspired me to put these thoughts together have had any input on ‘connectivism’ and could fill me in on my considerable gaps in my knowledge.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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It’s worth noting the odd tributary when I pass it. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was one.

 

Reading the Little Princegave me permission to be childish again. As a young adult it broke me out of the urgent teenage years of self importance and over-philosophising.

 

To be honest, I can’t remember the story too well – I had two copies one in English and one in French, but I lost my English copy. I do remember the point made at the start of the book that children are taught out of drawing – out of being creative by self-imprtant adults – the picture of the hat

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(or not the hat as the author points out) is a graphic illustration of adults ‘not getting it’.

 

It’s a point that Sir Ken Robinson echoes in his well known TED talk of a couple of years ago. Click here, if you haven’t seen it.

 

It’s also something I reflect on when I think of my own children’s creativity. When my daughter was three she was painting pictures like this one.

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I predicted that someone at her school would teach her out of painting what she sees and start teaching how to draw an outline. Now I’m no expect on the development of observational art and it may well be that when she was three that was just a step she was going through. But the warnings of both Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Sir Ken Robinson tell me that I need to protect their creativity. I need to keep their learning enoyable, help them work co-constructively with peers and adults, and teach them how to be reflective.

 

All these are fundamentals to our change school programme at Paganel.

 

It’s only a small tributary on the river, but seems significant today – thank you to Google for marking his 110th anniversary.

 

As a footnote, the other thing about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is that I always planned to turn one of his quotes into a song. He said “Aimer, ce n’est pas se regarder l’un l’autre, c’est regarder ensemble dans la même direction.” This means (roughly, as my French is not too good) “Love is not looking at each other, it’s looking together in the same direction.”I have some chords (well 2 of them – G and D) and a tune and also the idea to get people singing the line in different languages. Maybe that could become a Year 6 project for the future…

Technology Tree Conference

It was my second year at the technology tree conference and I got to present my thoughts about how it links in with the primary curriculum. Marcus has already written a blog entry on his views, so for a different perspective, look here.

 

 

I mainly went there to show off our Paganel Scalextric project. 3 children came with me and were able to talk about the process of making their own car, racing the cars and commentating on the races. It was great to see the children commentate on the adult delegates as they raced the cars the children had built. It was also great to have at least 3 schools sign up for the project next year – we can now have a primary school scalextric competition – how FAB will that be?

 

 

In my presentation I wanted to say how the national curriculum has been a rigid framework for education over the last 15 years just as the rest of the world has been discovering that the network is more important than the framework.

 

 

I started with a slide full of words that Michael Gove had recently spoken. I know it’s bad form to use loads of text on a Powerpoint but I wanted to make the point that the curriculum change wanted by the new government are just words at the moment. I highlighted words like ‘prune’, simplify’ and ‘over-prescitpive.’

 

I followed with this picture:

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It shows a rigid framework – some scaffolding. It’s my picture for the national curriculum of recent years – something that has helped build an educational structure of standards and rigour, but something that has also deskilled teachers from thinking for themselves. You can tell this by the use of the word ‘delivery’. Teacher’s ‘deliver’ the national curriculum. That verb really devalues the word ‘teach’.

 

 

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Next I showed this picture. It shows a network – rather a large one. Ewan McIntosh showed a very similar picture at a talk he gave a few months ago – thetalk that got me blogging again. I said how teacher’s had been deskilled not only from thinking for themselves, but also valuing networks just at the time when we need to be teaching our children how to network effectively.

 

 

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Then I showed these pipes. I had been reading some stuff about educational theories and how all our education system is based essentially on two theories – behaviourism and constructivism. But a new theory has been developed in recent years called connectionism. This is summed up by the statement “the pipe is more important than the contents of the pipe“. I held up my phone and pointed out how easy it is to access information through it and so we need to be teaching children how to use networks accurately and safely.

 

I then showed pictures of 2 different kinds of coffee cup.

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Professer Anne Bamford had used similar images at the Creative Partnerships Conference back in February to illustrate the value of design. One coffee can cost£1.00, the other could cost£5.00. Design makes a 500% mark up – it’s worth something.

 

Just as the processes learned in technology tree through working with business on designing and making somethingare also worth something.

 

I finished by pointing out the links inherent in technology tree – inspiring witing and maths, developing speaking and listening and also linking between teachers – all things that make more teaching more effective and efficient.

Google Teacher Academy

I’m quite excited about the prospect of attending the Google teacher Academy in July this year. It’s the first one to be held in London and I got in to it partly on the strength of my video which you can see here.

 

The video is a bit mad really – you obviously can’t teach telekinesis to primary phase children – it’s more of secondary school job if you ask me.

 

It also helped to start discovering some well helpful people on the internet who can give advice on technology and the like. Doug Belshaw was one. His blog lives at http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/

Leaps in technology

Some of us are a bit slow in the uptake.

We’re teachers.

We’re a bit slow because we’re so busy doing what we think we should be doing that we don’t take time to make our lives easier.

If only we spent a few moments finding the things that would make our lives easier, then we’d be less busy and teach better.

The pipe is more important than the contents of the pipe.

Today I made my life a bit easier. I learnt how to do Twitter. It took me 10 minutes. Then I learnt how to e-mail remotely into my blog. I’m doing that now from my phone.

Leaps forward in technology – for me anyway…

Exploring Children’s Attitudes towards Mathematics

The river winds on its course and today has taken an unexpected detour from Scalextric into maths.

I’ve just read a paper by Ben Ashby with the above title and for my MAST study I’m to reflect on what the key factors are that inhibit maths learning within my setting. I think the two main ones are confidence (particularly in girls) and self-belief.

Confidence
I think Mr Ashby is spot on when he writes that girls ‘frequently attributed success and failure to external factors, such as luck and the perceived difficulty of a question.’ I’m often frustrated that talented bright girls don’t take any credit for their own skills – it’s almost as if it’s not cool for them to do so – they have no role models who are good at maths – no-one to aspire to – so why should they be. If only every up and coming female celeb was as forthright about maths as Carol Vorderman…

I disagree, however, with the the author of the paper when he writes: ‘The reason for this is currently unclear and warrants further research.’ From reading the ALPS book, which draws from a range of well-known brain-based learning research, including Howard Gardner, it is clear that high achieving girls in particular have a problem with their concept of intelligence. They think they can’t learn more past a certain point – that they have reached the limit of their intelligence. I spend much of my time with higher achieving girls teaching them the attitude of resilience rather than discrete knowledge or skills. Not that I’ve cracked it yet…

Self-belief
This is a big problem at our school. So many of our children have convinced themselves that they are no good at maths. Some parents tell them that they were no good at maths either. It’s also not cool to be good at maths.

We have tried some things that have addressed the balance. Maths happens first now each day, so that children can do it when they are most alert. We also use sets in Key Stage 2 so that the range of ability is not so vast as it once was. This helps both the teachers, who have less differentiation to sort out, and the children who can see that everyone in the group suffers from the same amount of struggle.

We have also tried maths classes for parents, but so fare only a small number (10 or so) have taken it up – but I think changing parental attitudes is key.

I’ll be back on Scalextric tomorrow.

Football in Education

I get very excited each time the World Cup comes around, in a way that always surprises me. You see, I’m not much of a football fan really – I follow Birmingham City and make it to a one match every couple of seasons and much of the way football is run disgruntles me – the seemingly dodgy businesses representing many clubs and the rather arrogant timing such as in 2005 when the Premiership started before England had finished winning the Ashes and in 2008 when again the Premiership started before the Olympics had finished.

 

However I really enjoy the World Cup (and have done since I spent a joyful 90 minutes with two friends hitting the screen with cricket stumps and elastic bands aged 10 during that infamous Germany v. Austria game of the 1982 World Cup) and I enjoy the opportunities it brings into my classroom and my key stage.

 

This year the host country, beinng South Africa, has provided some great opportunities for maths, writing, history, geography and music. And that’s before we even get to the World Cup.

 

When it comes to the World Cup, I’m looking forward to a range of different maths things to do with the data of the World Cup. The Fifa website is a good source for this, but unfortunately much of the interactive stuff is filtered out by our LA, so a safer option is the Schools Fantasy League, although this does involve paying money (it’s well worth it for older Key Stage 2 children particularly). For one off lessons I’ve often found the Primary resourceswebsite to be a good one. In school we use Espresso and that always has a good set of resources that you can use for a longer sequence of lessons.

 

The main thing in all this, however, is motivation. Certain year 6 boys are particularly difficult to motivate during the latter stages of the Summer term, due to their impending move to secondary school. Studying the world cup gives them a chance to use their maths skills in solving longer problems, with a purpose that keeps them focussed.

Vygotsky Diary 3

Some general comments about the last couple of days and some links to Vygotsky and Piaget…

Friday – Drayton Manor

I’m not sure that sitting on a bench with a load of lunch bags whilst the class of children run around a theme park counts. I certainly don’t know how to compare what I’ve done today with what I know of Vygotsky and Piaget.

Go on. I suppose there is one thing I was thinking of. The children have gone round the park today in unsupervised groups of 2-6, checking back in with the teachers at hourly intervals. When I first proposed this system, my colleagues were horrified that I was suggesting letting the children go off unsupervised – but it has worked really well for the last four years. The children have not only to demonstrate independence and teamwork, but also the ability to tell the time… There is something Piagetian in this. The children are ready for this level of independence, whereas a couple of years ago they wouldn’t have been. There are some children who struggle, but they’re helped by their peers. There are also some children who, either by familiarity with the park (i.e. they have been there many times before) or by their own internal confidence, seem to demonstrate too much independence – they didn’t check back in when we were expecting them, but were still fine.

Monday – SRE (Sex and Relationships Education) Theatre.

Every year we have a marvellous theatre company coming in to help us with our SRE for Year 6. They’re called Loudmouth and what’s brilliant about them is that they use actors to teach all the tricky bits of SRE. They develop empathy for the opposite gender, so that boys see what girls have to go through and girls see what boys have to go through, and they encourage children to think about what emotions they are causing in others by their words and their actions. Also it means that in any further discussions in class I can refer to Daniel or Claire (the characters in the play) rather than either talking generically or inappropriately talking from personal experience.

In terms of ‘readiness’ the children are in exactly the right place to receive this – they’re all curious about the changes they are about to go through in puberty (or for some ‘are already going through’) and they will have heard much rubbish either from friends or from the media that has confused them.

It’s interesting watching the play as they use a lot of humour to teach the tricky bits and also to say some of the tricky words to do with SRE. I reckon humour increases the size of the ZPL. The children (and staff) were put at ease by the humour and learned loads more as a consequence. Ah, constructivism – you’re winning out today…

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