SUNDAY+Stream+3c


 * || 14:15 – 15:45 || = STREAM 3c: INCREASING ENGAGEMENT: IS STUDY IN THE FUTURE STUDENT-DESIGNED, SELF-EVALUATED AND COLLABORATION-BASED? = ||
 * ||  || How do we balance the incorporation of new skills such as problem-solving with traditional subjects? Is cross-subject (interdisciplinary) teaching the way forward? Aligning creative teaching methods with a national/state curriculum to ensure basic academic skills are met.

Is self-evaluation possible for all students? Can everybody make the most of empowerment or is it only for the strong students? Pupils’ motivation is reinforced by their awareness of their development. A greater emphasis on pupils’ independence as creative learners need not equal a lessening of rigour.

* organising the curriculum around themes that draw from different subjects;

· **//Jeff Utecht,//** //Learning Coordinator, International School, Bangkok, Thailand// · **//Gever Tulley,//** F//ounder of the Tinkering School, USA// · **//Sudhir Ghodke,//** //Director, Educational Initiatives, India// ||
 * re-organising the school day or adjusting the school year to allocate longer blocks of time to activities;
 * introducing a number of pathways through the key stages (ages 10 & 11) in order to meet the needs of learners of all abilities and interests;
 * developing personal and social skills, as well as special needs, and developing children’s understanding of how the brain works, of learning styles, and of multiple intelligences;
 * teaching children the value of collaborative work.
 * use of the collaborative approach instead of the teaching model
 * allowing for early specialization and focus (when children "know what they want to be when they grow up") ||
 * ||  ||  Opening remarks (10 minutes): **//Ewan McIntosh,//** //Director, NoTosh Digital Media & Education, UK (moderator)//  ||
 * ||  || //Speaker panel:// ||
 * ||  || · **//Ewan McIntosh,//** //Director, NoTosh Digital Media & Education, UK (moderator)//
 * ||  || Worst Ideas:

teach children without guidance and give them goals and methods for accomplishments of peer review and measurable outcomes.

Have students collaborate and design a standardized test to assess collaborative learning program. Then they will learn and assess what can't be assessed in a standardized test and collaborate to design an alternative assessment for collaborative learning --> metacognition > meta assessment.

Change the schedule to allow for more time on the daily timetable to make it 7 instead of six hours and more gym/pe classes and timet o meditate and lunch time projects and personal planning time and reduce homework requiring tech time and less computer time so they will read books. || media type="custom" key="7148211" align="right"

**A [|100 hour challenge] to make a change, make a difference.**
THE FIVE BIG QUESTIONS WE MIGHT WANT TO ANSWER: 1. What needs to change in "traditional" thinking about school and schooling to let student-driven learning thrive? 2. What needs to change in our view about the role of technology in schools? 3. What needs to change in our view of students today and their connected social lives? 4. 5.

EWAN MCINTOSH'S COMMENTS I have a line of thought I'm pursuing at the moment about how school might borrow from the creative industries (film, TV, digital media) in terms of using Design Thinking processes to plan curriculum strategically as well as at a lesson-by-lesson level. Design Thinking as I simplify it is the process of Immersion (in a set of real problems), Synthesis (finding the connections and tangents), Ideation (solving the problems we come up with in Synthesis) and Prototyping (making stuff to test out our ideas). I've some lovely examples of (nearly always) elementary school students learning in this way, rather than the traditional "here's your maths lesson, here's your English lesson" way.

JEFF UTECHT'S COMMENTS My line of thinking lately has been around communities and how we can create communities both in our classrooms and on the web to foster learning opportunities for students. In my school we're using Facebook groups, blogs, and other systems to create communities of learners that can both flourish in the classroom and outside it.

GEVER TULLEY'S COMMENTS I think we should stop measuring the students and start measuring the systems. How many hours of deeply engaged learning did the student experience today? How well did the school prepare the student to make a deeply meaningful discovery? How many epiphanies did the student have today? How self-directed were the students today, and how much pre-programmed curriculum did the teachers have to rely on? Self-evaluation carries some of the same dangers that external assessments do (focus on the results of the evaluation rather than the learning process, reduction of creative options considered when problem solving, etc) - we don't want to accidentally migrate the external assessor/authority into the student's mental model - it's better to de-emphasize assessment and focus on building an education culture that values competence, knowledge, and skill. That's a more resilient, sustainable model.

Other things we might want to touch on: - nurturing and developing curiosity with a goal of retaining a life-long love of learning - creating meaningful learning experiences that emphasize self-discovery - supporting long-term explorations (letting kids follow their ideas) - assessing mastery and competence instead of testing and letter grades - the problems of assessing too early - failure as progress (supporting projects that don't go as planned) - developing tenacity and persistence

SUDHIR GHODKE'S COMMENTS

1. Self-evaluation is a critical component of learning and if assessment itself becomes a learning experience rather than just a snapshot of the effectiveness of a different learning experience, there is one less "thing" to do.

2. Instantaneous feedback is a key element related to engagement. current methods of assessment put too much stress on the educator (to provide relevant and immediate feedback to ALL students, individually) so due to lack of time educators choose summative and consolidated assessments over formative and individualised assessments. So if we need to move towards the ideal (as gever has stated), self-reflection has to be integral to the process of teaching-learning.

3. Research on misconceptions shows that collaborative learning helps students "sponge" conceptually correct conceptions from a group which in turn help students displace deeply held misconceptions and reach conceptual clarity. This requires the educators to be aware of the misconceptions and provide time for collaborative learning interactions.

4. I agree completely with Gever's comment on failure as progress. Creativity can be nurtured only if children are given the message that it is ok to fail and persist.

SG comments contd...

Some thoughts triggered by Ewan's Big Questions

- Will need to empower adults (parents, educators, other key adults...) to deal with challenges put forth by "thinking" children. More questions, lesser blind acceptance, demand for participation in decision making from children leading to feeling of loss of control, insecurity and anger in adults.

- The above investment of energy from the part of the adult to deal with the challenge can come about only if the adult considers "helping children think and apply" as core goals as opposed to covering the curriculum (which is more from the transference of information paradigm)

- I also think that the relationship between the real-world and the school need to be more co-investible. Parents see schools as solutions to their "problem" of how to keep their children occupied. Schools and TV are contributing to a large portion of child time and unless this changes, the "real" problems that children will be exposed to will seem unreal to them. Children can be part of project teams in the real world where they can see the relevance of what they are learning and the real world gets a perspective of an unfettered mind