Contemporary Issues or Trends

Doing the readings in this activity reminded me of my brother is so many ways.
The first is how technology has changed in our lives- when my brother was four years old, my mother took us to her work at the bank. She was a teller and in those days everything was done by hand. She was in the process of being trained on the computer. Her boss took us to see this amazing computer. It took up the whole room and had a variety of flashing lights, and all my brother wanted to know was, where the screws were. We were removed from the room very quickly. In those days computers where huge and slow, now they are incredibly small and incredibly fast and the speed of technology growth is mind boggling. The other thing that I am reminded about him is how he struggled at school and just was not interested, today he manages control system designs and system configurations. As a primary school kid he scraped through each year, junior  high was a bit better, but when he hit the last two years of high school everything came together and he passed his final year with 6 distinctions. For him it was electronics that was the light bulb. Sir Ken Robinson talks about divergent thinkers- well I think that four year old who wanted to know what made the computer work didn't fit into the "production line mentality of the schooling system he had to go through. How many of the students in our classrooms are like that four year old? What can we do to engage those students?

I totally agree with Sir Ken Robinson, as I did five years ago, we need to change the paradigms. But now I have a better understanding of 21 century learning and the skills our students will need. We need to shift the focus to student-centred learning, fostering our students' strengths and interests.ERO (2012). The trend I am going to discuss is collaborative learning.

Sir Ken Robinson talks about how children are better at some things and not others, some children like to work in smaller groups rather than larger groups or on their own. He claims most learning happens in groups and that collaboration is the stuff of growth. I have introduced collaborative learning in my classroom this year, as part of wanting to shift the paradigm and also as our school is doing communities of mathematical inquiries.  The collaborative approach focuses on four principles:  the learner at the centre, interaction and doing, working together and solving problems. I have found this to work for most of the children in my class as instead of sitting on their own thinking of ideas and generally getting very little done, if they have some one to discuss ideas with and produce a joint piece of work, I get better quality from my students.It also frees me up to act as a guide and to interact with my students and guide their thinking. It also allows children to learn from each other. I have moved from grouping the children myself to allowing them to choose their own groups. I have an arrangement in my classroom where there is no set seating. Students can choose who to work with. After reading  about seating in the NMC Horizon Report (2015) I will improve this  by introducing the idea of who can "help their learning not harm it" and tie it in with our school motto of "value yourself and value your learning". I can impress the idea of being responsible for their own learning. All new ideas I am working on this year. 

Our notes on collaboration in DCL discussed how traditional schooling does not prepare students well for the work place. In today's word business  projects often require collaboration across companies. (21st Century leaning design). So when planning for collaboration- teachers need to make sure the tasks given have shared responsibilities where all children make decisions together about the problem, after discussing pros and cons, and their work is interdependent. It would be a good idea to let children work across classes too, maybe even across schools.



References

Education Review Office. (2012). Evaluation at a glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand 
       Schools.    Retrieved  from http://www.ero.govt.nz/About-Us/News-Media-Release...

ITL Research. 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Microsoft Partners in learning. Retrieved
          from https://app.themindlab.com/media/19751/view 

New Media Consortium. (2015). NMC Horizon report: 2015 K-12 Edition Retrieved from 
           http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf

The RSA. (2010). RSA Animate- Changing Education Paradigms.[video file]. Retrieved from
           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U