The new Victorian Curriculum

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As has been the practice for a number of years, the first SLAV conference for 2016 focussed on the role of teacher librarians and school library staff in the learning and teaching program.

The 18 March SLAV Conference entitled Student Centred, Curriculum Centred: Exploring the new Victorian Curriculum, was launched with keynote David Howes, Executive Director, Curriculum Division, Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).  David introduced the new Victorian Curriculum  to delegates, explaining similarities, differences and integration with the Australian Curriculum (ACARA).  He emphasised that the new Victorian Curriculum supports the Victorian State Government’s goals for education which has as its aims:

Over the next 5 years:

  • 25% more Year 5 students will reach the highest levels of achievement in reading and maths.

Over the next 10 years:

  • 25% more Year 9 students will reach the highest levels of achievement in reading and maths.

  • 33% more 15 year olds will reach the highest levels of achievement in science.

  • More students will reach the highest levels of achievement in the arts.

  • More students will reach the highest levels of achievement in critical and creative thinking.

David also introduced the  Teaching and Learning Toolkit which is an ‘accessible summary of educational research’ designed to support quality learning and teaching.  Its layout is based on the research of Prof John Hattie, where from a series of explicit goals you delve into the site to discover research and practice to support the topic.  This will be an excellent professional learning tool for teachers.

Rhonda Powling captured the Twitter stream from the Conference to create this Storify which includes tweets relating to David’s presentation and others on the day (more about them to come).

SLAV delegates appreciated the depth of analysis and explanation provided by David who appreciates the role of the school library that is actively working with teachers and curriculum leaders to provide the best possible outcomes for students.  His full presentation is available on the Member’s section of the SLAV website.

Top Tools for Learning 2015

webtoolsLast week Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies released the 2015 Top 10 Tools for Learning.  Now in its ninth year, this list is a creditable indicator of trends in the top online learning tools used worldwide.  It has been compiled from the votes of over 2,000 individuals from 63 countries, working in different roles in education and workplace learning.

For the 7th consecutive year, Twitter is the most popular learning tool but it is now closely followed by Youtube.  The closing of this gap is not surprising as students will tell you, if they want to learn how to do something they head for Youtube.  Statistics indicate that the number of people watching YouTube each day has increased by 40% y/y since March 2014.

Top of the list are Twitter, Youtube, Google Search, Google Docs/Drive, Powerpoint and Dropbox.  Screencast-O-Matic has returned to the Top 100 at 27th place after last appearing in 2011 at position 82.  This is perhaps a reflection of its popularity as a video creating tool for Flipped Learning and assessment feedback in the classroom.

Amongst the tools moving off the list in 2015 are: Hootsuite, Zite, Voicethread, Flickr, Storify, Glogster Edu, Tumblr, Wikispaces, Pearltrees, Voki and Paperli.

It’s surprising that Flipboard has not yet made the list but its time will come, no doubt.  Check out Jane’s presentation with the full run down of the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2015 and associated resources yourself for a wealth of popular learning tools.

Source: Image

 

Upcoming conference – School Learning Commons

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On Friday, 8 August, the School Library Association of Victoria will host a one day conference on the theme of the ‘Learning Commons’ model of school libraries – The Virtual Learning Commons: Building a Participatory School Learning Community.  Great excitement surrounds this conference as key presenters will be school library professionals and champions of the Learning Commons model for school libraries, Dr David Loertscher and Carol Koechlin who are making a rare trip to Australia.  During their brief visit, school library professionals will have the opportunity to attend the conference and special workshop days to develop the model more fully according to their own needs.

Dr David Loertscher, Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University (USA) and Carol Koechlin, staff development leader and instructor for Educational Librarianship courses for York University and University of Toronto (Canada) are synonomous with  school library leadership, instruction and information literacy skills development.  They are well know for publications such as Ban those Bird Units and a series of books on the Learning Commons model.

Resources to support school libraries as Learning Commons, can be seen on The School Learning Commons Knowledge Building Center website.  David and Carol also discuss the concept in detail in their article Climbing to Excellence: Defining characteristics of successful learning commons.

Their publications include: The Virtual Learning Commons | The New Learning Commons: Where Learners Win | Building a Learning Commons: A Guide for School Administrators and Learning Leadership Teams but are really too numerous to list fully.

This conference will focus particularly on the Virtual Learning Commons (VLC).  As schools move to 1:1 technology and easily accessible online resources, the VLC becomes a valuable tool for teachers and library staff alike in organising resources and guiding instruction.  Delegates will be provided with a framework for developing an online resource to support information literacy skills instruction and guided inquiry.  This really is a ‘can’t miss’ professional learning opportunity for school library professionals.

Full conference details and registration are available on the SLAV website.

Student blogging with Verona Gridley

Verona Gridley, classroom teacher at St Luke the Evangelist School has developed an excellent blog that acts as a resource for her students.

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Verona explains how she uses JuniorsJig with her students.

When our students reflect on what they have learnt in class, they are proficiently taking out some of their implicit understandings and clearly documenting it in the form of a blog. By both reading and commenting on others’ blogs, students start to learn from each other. A blog is a tool. It is a learning tool that can be tapped into by students, parents, and the global community.

Our Class Blog has enabled me to integrate all curriculum areas by promoting multiple literacies and skills. Through reflection on our discoveries and experiences we are able to share and deepen our understandings. It shows growth over time of our new learning, connecting with experts and finding out from broader sources.

There are growing connections with readers that show the great advantages of being part of a network and receiving feedback from contributors within a broader community. Our class has received feedback from all corners of the globe. When we received comments from beyond the school community a new digital dimension is opened. Overseas teachers, students and parents are taking the time to read our blog and leave meaningful and thoughtful comments.

Students are aware, that they are able to reach out beyond the schoolyard to share discoveries and experiences and in turn touch someone enough to leave a thought or offer a new perspective. Our young students can reach an authentic audience, that gives feedback and contributes new ideas and thus become part of a tangible global community.

I love the idea of students having a global and authentic audience and I believe that students take more care and effort with writing that will be read and commented on by a number of people. Congratulations Verona for providing this opportunity for your students as well as using your blog to communicate with parents and friends of the school.

Listen2Learners

Hamish Curry, the Education and Onsite Learning Manager of the State Library of Victoria has kindly sent the following information:

HI warmly invite you to join me at the groundbreaking Listen2Learners event.

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The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the State Library of Victoria, together with the UK’s Professor Stephen Heppell, are staging Listen2Learnersto enable you to meet students who are learning with technology and demonstrate how they are shaping their digital learning world.

Listen2Learners is a chance to understand the types of skills, expertise and enthusiasms which young people have, and to hear about it from the students themselves.  Creative primary and secondary students from across Australia will tell their own stories about how they are using technology to overcome barriers, meet personal challenges and access learning in the 21st century.

Professor Heppell, will be on hand to tell you what other systems are achieving by listening to their learners.

The event will be held on Monday 11 October 2010 in Experimedia at the State Library of Victoria.

Please visit any time between 10am and 2.30pm to speak with the students, meet Professor Heppell and network with like minded people from across the education sector and beyond.   Light refreshments will be provided.

Register your attendance here.

For a glimpse of what you can expect to discover at the Listen2Learners event, please visit the website and follow the event on Twitter # Listen2Learners.

I know you will value this opportunity to see the kinds of things students are doing with technology, driven by their own passions and interests.

I look forward to catching up with you at Listen2Learners.

Listen2Learners sounds like a brilliant initiative and Stephen Heppell is an inspiring speaker.

The many and varied roles of the teacher librarian

Carl A. Harvey II is the library media specialist at North Elementary School in
Noblesville, Indiana.

Carl A. Harvey II, a library media specialist at North Elementary School in Noblesville, Indiana has developed a document on the expectations of teacher librarians/school library media specialists/school librarians.

Covering eleven points such as teaching, addressing new technologies, collaborating, leading, learning and innovation, this document is a great starting point for anyone who needs guidance about the diverse role of the teacher librarian.

Although US in origin, this document is relevant to Australian school libraries. However, one omission does seem to be the lack of acknowledgement of the contribution to reading programs and support.

Thanks to Keisa Williams for the heads up on this document.

Learning from the Extremes by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong

Learning from the Extremes is a  recently released white paper by Annika Wong and WeThink: mass innovation, not mass production author Charles Leadbeater.

A two page executive summary of this important 40 page document that focuses on schools and learning has also been released and covers these main points:

  1. Improve school:  essential but not enough
  2. Reinventing school: cracking the code
  3. Supplement school: invest in families and communities
  4. Transformational innovation: a new logic to learning

The main points relate to the thoughts that schools that are collaborating and creatively using technology are the way to go, however, reinvented schools are not enough if families and communities do not value learning.  Learning must also take place outside of the school and include parents and the community. Specific programs that ‘pull families and children to learning by making it attractive, productive and relevant’ are applauded.

The authors advocate ‘new, low-cost models for learning’ and a massive shift in education policy. They conclude:

Governments should continue to look to the very best school systems to guide improvement strategies. But increasingly they should also look to social entrepreneurs working at the extremes who may well create the low-cost, mass, participatory models of learning that will be needed in the future.

Further discussion is invited at http://www.getideas.org

In the next few decades hundreds of millions of young, poor families will migrate to cities in the developing world
in search of work and opportunity. Education provides them with a shared sense of hope. Many will be the first
generation in their family to go to school. It is vital the hopes they invest are not disappointed.
Ingrained Failure
Yet even in the developed world, education systems that were established more than a century ago still underperform,
mainly because they fail to reach and motivate large portions of the population. These ingrained
problems of low aspiration and achievement among the most disinvested communities in the developed world
are proving resistant to traditional treatment.
The Four Strategies
This report outlines four basic strategies governments in the developing and developed world can pursue to
meet these challenges: improve, reinvent, supplement, and transform.
1 Improve School: Essential but not Enough
The most obvious strategy is to spread and improve schools. By 2015 most eligible children will have a place at
a primary school. The lesson from high-performing school systems like Finland is that to get good results you
have to attract, train, and motivate good teachers and provide them with good facilities to work in.
Today, though, too much schooling in the developing world delivers too little learning. There are high rates of
teacher absence, high drop-out rates among poorer children, pupils repeating years in large numbers, high
failure rates in final exams, and low progression to further education and training. More children are going
to school for longer but too many are not learning enough. Even in parts of the developed world sustained
investment in schools and teachers has not led to expected improvements in educational outcomes.
School improvement on its own will not be enough to meet the need for learning. Relying solely on this route will
take too long. Governments must turn to more innovative strategies that will come from outside the traditional
school system.
2 Reinventing School: Cracking the Code
Different kinds of schools are needed to teach new skills in new ways. Around the world innovators such as
the Lumiar Institute in Brazil, charter schools in the United States, and independent schools in Sweden are
reinventing school. They use technology more creatively and provide more personalized, collaborative,
creative, and problem-focused learning, in schools that have as many informal spaces for learning as they
have classrooms.
3 Supplement School: Invest in Families and Communities
Even reinvented schools, however, may not be enough to change cultures in communities where formal learning
is not valued. Families and communities have a huge bearing on whether children are ready to learn at school.
Executive Summary
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 4
That is why innovation beyond the classroom is vital to supplement schools. The Harlem Children’s Zone and
the preschool play groups run by Pratham in India are prime examples of social innovation to promote learning in
communities, outside schools, and often without formal teachers.
4 Transformational Innovation: a New Logic to Learning
However, to get learning to the hundreds of millions who want it in the developing world, transformational
innovation will be needed. Transformational innovation will create new ways to learn, new skills, in new ways,
outside formal school.
Transformational innovation is being pioneered by social entrepreneurs such as Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the
Wall and the Barefoot College in India, the Sistema in Venezuela, the Center for Digital Inclusion in Brazil, and
many others.
These programmes: pull families and children to learning by making it attractive, productive, and relevant;
often rely on peer-to-peer learning rather than formal teachers; create spaces for learning where they are
needed rather than using schools; and start learning from challenges that people face rather than from a formal
curriculum. The test of these approaches is whether they get useful knowledge into the hands of people who
need it rather than exam pass rates.
From Improvement to Innovation
To make learning effective in the future, to teach the skills children will need, on the scale they will be needed
(especially in the developing world), will require disruptive innovation to create new low-cost, mass models for
learning. Even relying on good schools will not be enough.
This means there will have to be a wholesale shift of emphasis in education policies.
School improvement is still a vital goal. But more emphasis will need to be put on innovation that supplements
school, reinvents it, and transforms learning by making it available in new ways, often using technology.
The chief policy aim in the 20th century was to spread access to and improve the quality of schooling. In the
future it will be vital to encourage entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation in education, to find new and more
effective approaches to learning.
Learning from the Extremes
That kind of disruptive innovation may well not come from the best schools. It is much more likely to come
from social entrepreneurs often seeking to meet huge need but without the resources for traditional solutions:
teachers, text books, and schools. Disruptive innovation invariably starts in the margins rather than the
mainstream.
Governments should continue to look to the very best school systems to guide improvement strategies. But
increasingly they should also look to social entrepreneurs working at the extremes who may well create the lowcost,
mass, participatory models of learning that will be needed in the future.
To join the dialog about this paper, go to www.getideas.org

Students as Documentary Makers with Mitzi Goldman

Victorian teachers are invited to participate in this free professional learning session.

Students as Documentary Makers with Mitzi Goldman

Throughout this session teachers will find out how media is a deeply engaging tool when students use it to express their learning about the real world.

When: Monday 31st August 2009, 4pm. Sign up here – http://www.knowledgebank.global2.vic.edu.au

Where: Online in Elluminate. This event is free but you need to sign up – http://www.knowledgebank.global2.vic.edu.au

Who: Mitzi Goldman has spent 25 years as a film maker and educator in the Australian film industry. She has directed and produced over ten documentaries for television including international co-productions. Mitzi was Head of Documentary at the Australian Film and Television School for six years and is now executive director of the Documentary Australia Foundation. Mitzi is now focussing on sharing her educational vision of students as documentary makers.

What: In this online conference with Mitzi Goldman, teachers will find out how media is a deeply engaging tool when students use it to express their learning about the real world. Mitzi will engage participants in a discussion about the educational and social benefits of using media to produce documentaries. Teachers will learn the basics of documentary making and how they can get started in their classrooms. They will find out how media can be used as a tool to express the learning that takes place when students are given the tools to deconstruct, analyse and understand the information they encounter all around them.

This event is free but you need to sign up – http://www.knowledgebank.global2.vic.edu.au

For more information email knowledgebank@edumail.vic.gov.au