Laverty08’s Blog

This week’s topic made me immediately think of my elder brother – a complete gaming freak! His love of the computer game started with ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pac Man’ in the 1980s. His obsession led to exploration of other games and progressed with the technology. It used to concern my parents – the amount of time he spent in his room playing games, rather than studying.

When he explains the online ‘shoot to kill’ games, he sounds as if he is speaking about real life. He loves the thrill, the adrenalin and the comradery he has with his online mates. Knowing how to win these games and navigate through the multi-layers is harder than it looks. There is literacy and language involved in the process. If only my parents had known that he was learning!

Gee (2003) highlights many ways in which computer games can help language learning. One issue that disallows people to notice this, is the premise that computer games are only used for enjoyment and are only for fun’s sake. Seeing as though our students live in an online, digital, multimodal world, we need to adapt to and accommodate this within our teaching and their learning. If games can be used for literacy learning – multimodal literacy – we should encourage (and monitor) their use.

Breaking down stereotypes around gaming is also something that teachers of the Y generation need to work for. If they are unaware of the technology, they need to familiarise themselves, look for the learning that could take place and decide whether it can be used in order to develop literacy and/or social skills. I discussed in my Wiki post that the benefits games can have on learning other languages should be explored. Interactive, virtual games can provide excellent opportunities for students to learn different languages in an interactive and connected manner.

I enjoyed this week’s readings and Wiki posts.

This week’s discussion around Knowledge Repertoires got me thinking about the difference between true new learning and pedagogy that looks like new learning, but is actually not quite there yet. There were different examples in the Wiki posts that touched on elements of New Learning. For example, they had elements of students as active knowledge makers, based on the amount of work they were doing (Kalantzis and Cope), but may not have had social cognition and collaborative learning taking place.

I spoke about Universal Design for Learning in my Wiki post, which was aimed at helping all students learn, regardless of ability or disability. It had many principles that underlined its use. However, looking at the principles, I realised that they were really only guidelines for learning, not pedagogy.

After completing my learning element last week, I reflected on the Learning by Design framework. It allows teachers to design curriculum that is meaningful and has complete and well structured pedagogy. 

The move for me now, is to incorporate more technology in to my learning element. When I taught the learning element, I did use Wikis and Blogs, but forgot to type them into CG Learner. There is a lot of social learning and collaboration, which is where I think education needs to be for our students to be successful in the future.

I guess like with most things, the more I use CG Learner, the more I feel comfortable with it. There are teachers in my staffroom who are not doing the course who have begun using CG Learner. I think the best thing about it, is that it is accessible from any computer. There is no need to save the work onto a USB and transport it, with the risk of saving too many copies. It is available online and other collaborators are able to access it, add to it and so on.

The discussion we had around whether to keep the student side or not was interesting, I believe writing of the students side, does allow you to think about how exactly you will explain or introduce the activity to the students. But for experienced educators, I think it would be less time consuming to write the teacher side only. As Bill mentioned, do we just expect that students are able to understand the teacher talk and therefore only write that one? I agree with this idea, as we don’t often show students the learning element anyway. Or should we be doing this?

 Overall, I believe CG Learner is an excellent resource. It is accessible, easy to use and easy to share.

I found the discussions on Committed Knowledge and Knowledge Relativism extremely interesting. I attended a Catholic school and was taught each subject in primary school, based on the Committed Knowledge model. Our teachers held the knowledge and we learnt from them. The facts were the facts and that was that. Religion was not questioned, it was taught to us and we followed the rules of it. In saying this, I don’t believe it was all bad. I believe I learnt good values from primary school and ways of living and treating people which I live by now.

What changed for me was in high school when of course, we learnt Darwin’s theory of evolution in our science course. We were allowed to compare the seven day theory with the Darwin theory and make our own informed decisions. The highlight for me was in my senior year when my religion teacher asked us to take an element/rule of the Catholic Church and discuss whether or not it was relevant to today’s society. I think that was when the shift from Committed Knowledge to Knowledge Relativism was taking place – at least in my education. ‘Scepticism and cation about whether any one way of making knowledge can produce ‘truth’’ (Kalantzis and Cope) was evident.

My wiki post this week was about Critical Literacy. As I mentioned, it was born out of postmodernism and cultural relativism. The ideas that “…different points of view might be represented, without insisting on the correctness of any one point pf view, explicitly or implicitly”  and “…(some texts) have a habit of leaving out the knowledge and perspectives of those who are not powerful”(Kalanzis and Cope), prompted the need for a critical literacy. Critical Literacy allows students to think about their truths and experiences and think objectively about a text.

Without making the move from Committed Knowledge to Knowledge Relativism and the realisation that life experience and scepticism are important, it would be difficult to move to New Learning.

Nature or nurture? Or both? The students which we teach come to school with a vast repertoire of experiences. For us to have true New Learning Kalantzis and Cope state that it has a “social perspective which recognises that, as so much of what is learnt is sourced from outside an individual’s brain, there can be enormous variety in knowledge and learning”. Social Cognitivism understands that students’ experiences contribute to their understanding of the world and their learning as equally, if not more than the chemistry of the brain.

We, as educators need to understand this and find a way to bring the experiences of our students into the classroom. We need to provide rich learning experiences which enhance thinking, problem solving skills and collaboration skills. The classrooms we establish need to be based around a social way of learning. I believe that when students learn from and teach each other they learn best.

Some of the best wiki posts so far were posted under Behaviourism and Brain Developmentalism. I feel that it is important to look at past practices in psychology before we can move forward. That is not to say that Behaviourism and Brain Developmentalism are all bad. There are important findings and links between the modern past and the more recent times which we can use to inform our design of New Learning.

The reason that Behaviourism is often humoured is paraphs the fact that a lot of it was based on primal instincts. Take the stimulus-response-reinforcement idea. It is how we train our animals and it is also what works – for some students. It is often what entices adults to turn up for work on a Monday. The part of Behaviourism that I disagree with is the notion of testing or measuring ‘natural differences in intelligence’ (Kalantzis and Cope). This way of thinking about students causes a deficit before the test has begun. It lends itself to the idea that you are born with certain intelligence… sure you can learn things, but ultimately you are as smart as you are and that is where it ends. What is intelligence and how can it be measured anyhow?

Brain Developmentalism was an interesting shift in the way people perceived learners. It allowed educators to perceive students as human beings who can learn at different rates. Although it noticed this, most theorists believe that all students learnt at the same stages, often grouped by age. Brain readiness is an interesting concept. When you think about it, there probably are certain steps in development which are affected by age. What about experience though? Surely students on one side of the world would experience different things to a child on the other. I guess that is why we are now looking towards a Social Cognitivism view of learning.

This week’s posts got me thinking…

We all know that inclusive education in its best form can only benefit all students of different sex, age, race, culture, family background etc. The life worlds of our students are diverse and each as important as the other. We know we need to move beyond a tokenistic view of inclusiveness and design a curriculum and environment which enriches the learning for all of our students.

My question is how much time and money will this take? Okay, so I know we can’t really work out the money side of things here and now… but let’s think about the time. And I don’t mean teacher planning time, but a time frame to change people’s thinking.

We, at the core of the teaching business know what works and what doesn’t. We can use action research to inform our practice. How do we inspire ‘blockers’ in the government, parents and the community to see things the way we do? It has taken years to break down the discrimination of disability, sex, race and culture etc. And there is still a lot of work to be done. So how long will it take for an understanding of the culture of ‘new learning’ to immerse? An understanding that sees funding, acceptance and development of truly new ideas.

Some of this week’s posts have great examples of inclusion taking a step forward. But we have a long way to go.

Using CG Learner has been an interesting journey for me. I have been using the Word template for the past three years, so at first I found it difficult to adjust to the online version. After getting my head around the online template, I found that it was quite easy to use. Some of the features are especially helpful, including the preview bar on the right which allows you to see the activities as you add them.

I have worked with two other staff at my school to plan learning elements for their classes. The more I teach it to others, the easier it is for me to use. The responses from the teachers I have been working with have been; it is easy to use and they like the fact that other teachers can be co-authors. Currently at school, for us to work on a Learning Element in Word, we need to be very careful that we only save one version. This at times does not work and therefore different versions of the one Learning Element are being saved. CG Learner allows us to collaboratively work on a Learning Element at different times, however keeping the single version updated. So far so good!

Alvin Toffler: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

New Learning in an inclusive school would recognize this. We need to help our learners learn how to read and write because they are important skills for survival in the world. In saying that, we need to question the importance we place on these skills. Thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration skills are highly important as well. Knowing how to learn, question, reflect and apply one’s learning skills to all aspects of life is what really matters.

This quote makes a link to Rita’s post this week about teaching learners how to write in a way that values diversity and establishes good communication. We should start with acknowledging and drawing on the strengths of each learner’s life world. Then devise an educational experience which embraces all types of learning in different mediums and using technologies that bring communities of learners together to facilitate their own as well as other’s learning.

Arthur Koestler:

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Albert Einstein:

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

Inclusive education for today’s learners needs to be one that embraces difference; recognizes and builds upon learners’ life worlds; and is aware of, but not limited to pigeonholed learner attributes. Education should inspire creativity and build capacity in learners to be teachers of other’s and their selves.

In the future I imagine schools where students mix with ages different to their own, where they all have access to technologies that enhance learning regardless of sex, race, culture and religion. This is not to say that these attributes should be ignored. However they should be recognized as what makes the individual and that each individual needs different things to the next.

The challenge now for us as educators is to make inclusive education happen. We need to challenge the way things have been, the way things are and the ideas that the governments have for the future of teaching and learning.

The beginning of recognition, is simply that. Recognising that material, corporeal and symbolic attributes of learners matter is the first step in the right direction. Many action plans and grants have been handed to educators to at different times, to erect different ‘problems’; girls education, boys education, Indigenous Education, lower economic-status groups and the list goes on. Money is good, but the plans for the money should be simpler.

If we are to move beyond assimilation and recognition, we need to improve the learning opportunities and outcomes for all of our students. We need to recognise that within sub-groups each member of the group is different. They each have different life experiences, needs, understandings and learning styles.

Recognising difference is the beginning. Knowing how to and the importance of understanding different learners at different times is the next step. After this should come an education that is born out of a need to cater to a new generation, one that lives in a 21st Century world. Tokenistic recognition of difference is no longer enough for this world. What needs to come next is a sophisticated New Learning; inclusivity at it’s best.