Bringing experts and primary sources into the classroom = transformational

Below is a story from GEMS Royal Dubai School, which I would like to share.  As per previous posts, I was skeptical of using Skype, Hangouts and so on for whole class interactions, mainly because I was concerned that it doesn't put individual children in control and it has a bit of an 'Inactive Whiteboard' feel to it.  I was wrong (again).

I've seen a few of these now and the thing that has changed for me is the use of primary sources and experts who would otherwise have been unable to share their knowledge and, more to the point, passion and feelings with the children.  In each example I have seen, the teacher has reacted in exactly the same way at the end of the session:  "As their teacher, I could never have given my children what you have just given them - thank you so much!"  I suggest that's transformation...

Do watch to the end of the video for Mrs. Stone's reading of 'The King's Letter' and we can add inspirational as well...

My thanks to Mark Stone and Anne-Marie Murray and of course Mark's amazing parents.

Year 6 Topic: ‘World War II - Skype to New Zealand’

Teacher:  Anne-Marie Murray

The day that I introduced the topic World War II to my Year 5 class in Royal Dubai School I quickly realised that all of the planning I had prepared for the next 3 weeks would be completely useless. Having taught World War II for 3 consecutive years in England I was pretty confident that the activities and lessons I had planned would provide the children with all the skills and knowledge that they needed to understand the war and its impact on children in the UK. I was wrong!

It quickly became apparent in my first lesson that I was dealing with a number of different nationalities, each bringing different perspectives, experiences and stories of WWII. The classroom became a hive of discussion about how each of their countries had been involved in and affected by the war. It was fascinating to watch but I quickly realised that these children would need something much more personal and real to help them understand the perspective of the war from a child in Britain. Books and photographs were useful to an extent but to make their learning memorable and real I had to think outside the box.

That’s when I approached our Digital Learning Coach, Mark Stone. I was fortunate enough to have a weekly coaching session with Mark and in that time we had set up Skype links with a school in Sweden, introduced Edmodo, had the children using Dropbox to collaborate in their learning and had incorporated the SAMR model in my classroom, making the children familiar with using the terms of the model to describe their learning.

I would regularly chat to Mark about my classroom practice and the challenges that I faced as a teacher in an international setting. Mark quickly came to know about my ton of useless planning for the WWII project and as I banged my head against a brick wall he told me about his parents’ story. Mark’s parents had been children in England during WWII. They now lived in New Zealand and had always shared stories of the war with Mark as he was growing up. Mark realised that there was no point in him telling me the story when in fact his mum could tell me the story herself; moreover, through the medium of Skype, his mum could tell the whole class her story.

I raced back to my classroom to tell the children about our idea. The excitement in the classroom was amazing. Children naturally began to collaborate together to create lists of questions to ask and within an hour we had come up with fascinating questions for Mark’s mother and father to answer. We emailed the questions to them to have a look at and set up a date for our Skype. In the meantime I used the children’s questions to plan my lessons. These lessons were based on their genuine interest in the war and the planning became personalised for my class rather than a general plan to work from. The learning was transformational and the children’s motivation was off the scale. They were well and truly gripped and it was brilliant to be driving their learning forward.

On the day of the Skype the children were so excited. They had their questions lined up and, as Mark’s Mother and Father appeared on the screen, the whole room fell silent. The children listened attentively to their responses and the level of their questioning indicated that they were captivated by the stories being shared.

Following the Skype session the children wrote letters to Mark’s parents. The letters demonstrated that the experience had had a massive impact on the children. They were deeply touched and inspired by the stories they heard and they invited Mark’s parents to be VIP guests (via Skype) at our VE day celebrations the following week to signal the end of the topic.

On VE day the children sang WWII songs to our New Zealand guests of honour and shared some of their learning throughout the project with them. The Skype with New Zealand became an integral part of the celebration day.

At the end of the project I was keen to see what the children thought of the process. We used De Bono’s thinking hats to evaluate our learning and to think about how we could use Skype in the future to help us engage in our learning. Their responses were honest and inspiring. Skype had given them the medium to engage with WWII survivors who had lived in England at the time. The children still had their own stories of the war but they now had a real understanding of what life was like for children in England during WWII.

Skype to NZ Video  http://youtu.be/glOgoPEv52U 

Transformation vs. Improvement - and one proposed example

This is a great post by Derek Wenmoth on the gaping chasm between improvement and transformation:

http://blog.core-ed.org/derek/2013/03/two-agendas.html

Once again, we see that visionary leadership is critical to transforming learning and providing our young people with the skills and attributes they really need to thrive and survive.  It's just not enough to have a handful of hero innovators in each school battling against the odds to change the world.  All they manage to do really is create pockets of excellence.  Only the people at the top can scale this excellence to make it 'normal,' to transform the culture and to say, "this is what we do here."  If they've done a good job then I suspect we wouldn't recognize the place as a school, such is the level of transformation needed.

Here is one example of something we may not recognize in our schools at present, not really tech-related, but I suggest transformational, innovative and with the potential to provide enormous benefits for learners.

This idea came out of a recent project I was working on with my colleague, Mark Stone, who is the Digital Learning Coach at a school in Dubai.  We spent some time in the evenings visiting children in their homes, interviewing them and their parents about digital learning and seeing how learning was organized in the home environment. It started out about digital learning and we were really looking at how the use of digital tools differed in and out school.  What we learned, however, went so much further and was quite unexpected (you could say we were uncovering the curriculum, not covering it - cliche alert).

We found out about extended families, the culture and history of each and every one, what and when the children ate and who the best person in the home was to support each child's learning in different situations.  We were even at one point offered some home made Romanian vodka crafted by Granddad on the shores of the Black Sea.  The warmth of the hospitality was quite overwhelming.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, spending just 1 to 2 hours in each of these homes gave us an insight into the lives and learning preferences of these children that was previously hidden and which was, quite simply, a revelation.  Perhaps the greatest piece of learning for us was that, at home, we saw the children as true individuals, not part of a class that had to be managed.  When we talk about personalised learning, what do we really mean?  Well, we saw it in the homes - children deciding when and where to work - and on what, when to have a snack to keep their energy levels up, when to take a break, which parent or grandparent to ask for help, which device to use and so on... you name it, they were in control of it, always under the careful guidance and with the support of adults passionate about supporting their learning.  In short, it took very little time and effort on our part to gain a much deeper understanding of each of these young people as individuals.
This is important because, when I worked at the school a few years ago and was running a parental engagement workshop, we asked the parents the question: "What makes a great teacher?" The answer was pretty much unanimous in the room: "Your best teachers are the ones who really know and love the children, who see them as so much more than names on the register or numbers on a spreadsheet.  They engage with us and make a huge effort to be a part of our family."  Moreover, they proceeded to name the school's "best teachers" - again, with pretty much unanimous agreement - and on exactly this basis.  No one mentioned test scores.

So what's the innovation to come out of this?  How can we transform learning based on this experience? Well, this is one small suggestion to get going - not aimed at this school in particular, but to try in any school.
This is what I would do:

1. For the first half term every year, I would start school an hour or so late, with teachers having that extra hour to spend as they like - have a lie in, a swim, go to the gym or relax in Starbucks. If there are logistical issues for parents with this, provision could be made with a skeleton staff, a bit like a breakfast club, but a late one!  The Principal could run it.

2. There would be no after school commitments for teachers in the first half term.

3. Instead, teachers would spend an hour or so every weekday after school visiting their children and parents in their homes, getting to know the families and their circumstances.

Of course there would be logistical issues - working parents, etc..  But guess what, if the parents aren't there when the kids get home, who is?  Teachers would benefit greatly from experiencing whatever the children experience when they get home.  The objection will arise: aren't the children losing an hour of schooling? I suggest this would be more than made up over the year by the teacher's enhanced understanding of each child as a learner. 

Would all the parents welcome the teachers into their homes?  Probably not. Would those who do see their children benefit significantly?  In our experience, we suspect so.

This may sound crazy.  That might just mean it's a good idea.  I'd suggest it's more transformation than improvement and that makes me feel confident that it's along the right lines.  And we'll never know if we don't try.