Mindlab Kids Website

There is a large shift towards establishing a curriculum that is based on STEM. The Mindlab has created the below website for children to explore STEM concepts at home and alongside their families. Please see the attached images and video's for more information.

Leadership in Digital and Collaborative Learning

Below is an overall list of the topics covered in this 16-week course. Please click on any associated links that will take you to those relevant weeks.

• Thought Leadership and Followership
• Reflective Practice and Key Competencies in Leading
• Implementing Technology Innovation in the Classroom
• Research Informed Leadership
• Developing a Growth Mindset
• Leadership Theories and Styles
• Distributive Leadership and Leading Online Discussions
• Leading Change and Strategic Planning
• Multicultural and International Perspectives on Education
• Entrepreneurialism and Crowdfunding
• Agile Based Leadership
• Design Thinking in Leadership
• Teaching as Inquiry
• Innovative Learning Spaces
• Gamification in Leadership
• Research and Community Informed Research

Digital and Collaborative Learning in Context

Below is an overall list of the topics covered in this 16-week course. Please click on any associated links that will take you to those relevant weeks. 

• Epistemology and The Purpose of Education
• 21st Century Skills
• Virtual and Augmented Reality
• Collaborative, Constructionist and Constructivist Learning
• Computational thinking
• Connected Learning and Connectivism
• Blended Learning and the Flipped Classroom
• School Transformation
• Less Assessment. More Engagement
• Real World Problem Solving and Crowd Sourcing
• Agile Based Learning
• Design Thinking in the Classroom
• Inquiry Led Learning and Robotics
• Maker Movement and 3D Modelling
• Games and Game Development in Education
• Mobile Learning and WYOD

Week 16: Digital- Sensors and Sensibility

This week we looked at two tools used in modern day society that allow children to explore the world around them at any time or place.

The first one was a mobile sensor task. 

This allows children to use a device where they can use GPS location apps, data capturing tools and sensors. This creates an environment where learning is situated, contextual and collaborative for learners.

We used the tool 'Sense-it App'. the nQuire website has missions that children can complete to explore this tool.

nQuire Website: http://www.nquire-it.org/#/home
Sense-it Missions: http://www.nquire-it.org/#/home?type=sense-it

The second tool was brain sensing tool. 

We used sensing devices from ThoughtWired and the app 'Brainwave Visualizer'. These tools develop cognitive and motivational skills during online learning environments.

ThoughtWired Link: http://www.thought-wired.com/
Brainwave Visualizer Link: https://store.neurosky.com/products/visualizer-2-0%20

Week 16: Leadership- Gameification in Leadership

This week we explored 'Gamification'. The below video is an example of how educators can integrate 'gamification' into their curriculum programmes. This tool is used to create a sense of engagement and experience with a certain learning task. 

Week 15: Digital: Games and Game Design in Education

This week we explored how we can learn through games and play. We explored a range of tools that can be used to support this.

One of the first ones was the link and information below, called 'Gamefroot'. This tool provides the opportunity for learners to create their own games. 


Link to the Gamefroot website: http://gamefroot.com/education/ 

Action-bound: Another tool for children to create apps for smart photos and tablets 
Link to the Action-bound video: 

Week 14: Digital- Design Thinking in the Classroom

For this part of course this week, we had to create a prototype based around a barrier that we have in relation to online learning. This was directly related to the fact that in two weeks, our Post Grad course shifts from contact hours each Wednesday to online learning. So, one of the barriers that I had was that I spend quite a bit of time on the small tasks in my classroom such as, marking books, putting feedback on books, telling children where things belong in a classroom. This prototype that my buddy created, does all these things for me by simply following my instructions. 

Week 13: Digital- Inquiry Learning and Robotics

For digital learning this week, we downloaded a tool on our computer that allowed us to follow and create a coding formula to make a robot move it's arm. We had a to copy the process that was given to us and once we got it working, we could change different formula to make it go faster, slower, higher etc. Here is a snippet of our robot in action last week. 

Week 13: Leadership- Teacher Inquiry into Student Learning

This week we had to select a teacher inquiry model that we liked, from a Google slide presentation of different teacher inquiries models. We chose to explore the model below because it provides an opportunity for children to explore the 'discovery' phase first, before developing wondering questions. The question we had posed was, "Will (ro)bots reduce the need for human teachers?" Here were our thoughts below, based upon the different aspects of the inquiry model we selected.

Ignite:

• Will (ro)bots reduce the need for human teachers?
• We hope to find out that our jobs are safe from (ro)bots in the future, or that we won’t be redundant.

Ask: (guiding questions, record everything you already know…)

• Already a mixture of online and face to face classes- not AI but not in class
• Flipped learning - banks of resources - a robot could be playing videos
• Teacher as facilitators
• Do robots need constant power and wifi? Who would programme it?
• Could a robot be a mentor?
• What would be the robot to student ratio?
• How can robot teachers encourage creative and innovative thinking for students - imitation…
• Would this change accents around the world
• Will children learn empathy qualities?
• A robot teachers assistant would be great!
• More control of emotions

Find: Organising resources: where do you get information? Bibliography?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-jetsons-get-schooled-robot-teachers-in-the-21st-century-classroom-11797516/

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/976257/?reload=true

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-016-9387-z

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12369-011-0116-9

http://www.livescience.com/5576-robots-replace-teachers.html

In the future, robots will only be used to teach certain skills, such as acquiring a foreign or new language, possibly in playgroups with children or to individual adults. But robot teachers can be cost-effective compared to the expense of paying a human teacher, Meltzoff told LiveScience.

"If we can capture the magic of social interaction and pedagogy, what makes social interaction so effective as a vehicle for learning, we may be able to embody some of those tricks in machines, including computer agents, automatic tutors, and robots," he said.

Week 12: Leadership and Digital- Innovative Learning Spaces and Maker Movement

This week there were six activity stations set up and we had to choose three stations to engage with across the duration of the night's session.

Here is a list below of some of the activities we explored and some associated materials to support these engaging tasks. 

1: Flexible Learning Spaces: This tool provides the opportunity for students to explore classroom environments and then make necessary adaptations etc to a model template. 

 

2: Constructing a Robotic Arm: For this activity station we needed to construct a robot arm in a collaborative group. For me, this provided an opportunity to explore the concept of 'robotics' and for me to engage with different materials. 

Link to the necessary information to construct the arm. 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Pocket-Sized-Robot-Arm-meArm-V04/?ALLSTEPS

3:  Collaborative Slideshow: For this activity, we read numerous readings and different online materials to understand how learners perceive different learning environments and what is important. 

4: Revisit and Reinforce: For this activity, we could choose to go back and explore or do any of the previous activities we had done weeks prior to this week. You could choose to reflections, journal comments, go and back and engage with different tasks like Scratch, Makey-Makey, we ad the chance to explore something that we believed we wanted, too. For me, I didn't choose this activity station. 

5: Embrace change: For this station, you had the opportunity to share your thoughts on this Post Grad course. There were numerous questions you could discuss and one of the biggest ones was thinking about technology and how you can use ICT in your classroom. This video was a very personalised task and a chance for us to reflect on our learning journey. 

6: Create and Deploy: AppInventor and Appy Pie: These two tools provide the opportunity to create a mobile app for your phone. There were detailed instructions provided, these two were very similar in the fact that they are both similar to Scratch Programing, 

 

Week 11: Leadership- Agile and Servant Leadership

Reflection: How could you apply agile leadership to a change initiative? 

Agile learning can be summed up in a simple phrase, 'getting better all the time'. Agile learning is one of the foundations of implementing a successful change initiative. A change initiative is thinking about your own teaching practice, how it could adapted, altered changed, you are thinking about how you can better your teaching for not only yourself, your colleagues, but the children that you teach. An agile leader is constantly looking at bettering themselves as a leader in their own manner. 

Week 10: Digital- Real World and Crowdsourcing

Reflection: How could problem-solving be more real-world based 

This week we did many discussions around real-world learning. How do we create real-world based classrooms?

The video below was an example of how we can be creating classroom environments that allow students to take control of their own learning, through topics and themes that are meaningful and relevant to them. For me personally, we need to be creating classroom environments foster learner agency and self-belief of our own learning, in order for learners to get the most out of their education. Instead of us as teachers deciding on what happens in the classroom, we should be allowing learners to select what they want to learn about.

Week 9: Digital- Engagment and Agency

Reflection: How do you measure what you value? Do technologies present new opportunities for drawing out and leveraging student agency? How did you plan to assess your Digital 1 plan. Could the student assessment/agency aspect of that plan be ones to criticise on? 

I believe that a learner's engagement in relation to their learning comes down to the teacher knowing their students and how they learn. By doing this, flexibility in relation to how they learn can be provided, because as we know, no two students learn in the same manner. Children need the scaffolding of how to take ownership and responsibility for their own learning. In the classroom that I teach, every child as their own iPad. However, not all children choose to complete activities on iPads, depending on the task. We need to be allowing the flexibility in our classrooms for children to learn in different manners that are suitable to them. 


Engagement: 
Engagement is the thoroughfare into a meaningful education. So, how do we define, measure and acknowledge how it is successful? This week we explored some research around this. 

How is engagement defined? 

"The level of attention, curiosity, interest and passion that children communicate when they are learning, being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in relation to education". 

How are levels of engagement defined? There are five levels of student engagement. 

• Authentic Engagement: engaged in learning that is relevant to them
• Ritual Compliance: no immediate meaning for students, but there is an outcome and therefore some sort of engagement, whether it be university etc. 
• Passive Compliance: students don't see any meaning, but they try and put some effort in to avoid detentions or staying in to do work etc. 
• Retreatism: students are disengaged and don't make any effort to learn, but they don't disrupt other learners. 
• Rebellion: learners don't do the task, disrupt others, 

Here is the link for where this information was sourced

How is engagement measured?

The engaged classroom: All children are engaged in their learning. You don't see a lot of the passive compliance and retreatism and there is no rebellion concepts. 
The Compliant Classroom: The traditional type of classroom and most children are seen as working. So, if you were to walk past you would infer that children are working. Retreatism is a danger and little rebellion concepts. 
The Off-Task Classroom: You can clearly see aspects of the retreatism and rebellion concepts in an off-task classroom. Children are viewed as learners of their own manner. As a teacher, you would be more likely to be focusing your time based around behavioral issues rather than teaching and learning. 

Seven ways to increase student engagement (as sourced from website above):

Week 9: Leadership- Multicultural and International Perspective

Reflection: Would 'Cultural Intelligence' be one of the factors you want to focus on in the future? Or could the change initiative you want to plan in Leadership 1 even be nation wide? 

As educators, we do need to be more mindful of cultural intelligence within our classrooms. As a society, we are so diverse in relation to so many different aspects, so we not only need to be altering the way our classroom functions but encouraging learners to also be more accepting and mindful of cultural intelligence, as well. Children need to understand these differences so that barriers and isolation are also minimised. 

At the beginning of this lesson: 

To begin today's session, we had some interesting discussions around our own cultural intelligence and discussed our personal experiences around the '3 r's'; these are rituals, relationships and restrictions. This stemmed from watching the following video below about comments made about what we say, when somebody asks, 'Where are you from?' 

Individual reflection about the key question, 'Where are you from?'

As a society, we have a natural ability to comment and say that we are from the place we are born in. One of the key aspects of the video above was that we should be thinking instead, of our personal experiences. Experiences lead to how we are as individuals. Although we may be born in a region or country, should that notion define us as individuals? Many experiences, regions, countries all contribute as how we are as an individual. So, when we as teachers ask our learners where they are from, I personally don't believe we should expect our learners to say a town, we should be questioning and encourage deeper thinking to support our learners in thinking about where do they actually come from. 

Week 8: Leadership- Leading Change

This week we explored the Kotter's '8-Step Change Model'. This model describes how change can be used effectively. Following on from this, as a a group, we looked at different influences of each of the steps. 

We also looked into, 'Coggle'. This tool is another form of sharing information in a collaborative manner. This video explains how it is used. 

Week 8: Digital- 3D Printing and Modelling

This week one of the activities was to explore one example of how 3D printing could be used within a real-life context. We decided to explore the 3D printing of a Lunar Base and this is shown below. Following this, we discussed how we could use 3D printing within our classroom context. 

We also spent some time exploring Tinkercad where individuals can create their own 3D models. Here is the first link to a video showing you how to start off using this tool.