I will get back into blogging each week...
I will!
There have been HEAPS that we've covered over the past few weeks and I am pleased to say that a lot of what we have been doing in our Mindlab sessions have come in really handy for my own practice and set up for our HTV.
SO over the past month my colleague Holly and I have been trying to make some big changes in our classrooms by applying the innovation we proposed in August for our first digital assignment. The gist of the proposal was to have the students in our classes combine, to organise and produce their own web-based television programme. No this probably not a new innovation in the wider world of education (think newspapers, radio stations, prior versions of student-led TV) but something new for us was the amount of real collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making skills we have handed over to our students. Are we going to be successful? The kids certainly think so... so watch this space! Exciting stuff.
Last week in class we looked at Agile and Lean concepts in the world of education. There are still many concepts I have to get my head around but there were also many ideas I immediately liked and want to explore further.
Agile and Lean Education
With its foundations in manufacturing and IT industries, agile and lean methodologies can be applied to education. Agile methods change up the traditional command and follow processes that can be found in many sectors of life. Kropp, Meier, Mateescu & Zahn (2014) state, "Such methods emphasize the importance of highly interactive self-organising teams and close collaboration of all stakeholders, as well as values like courage, openness and respect." Linking in the importance of 21st Century skills for learning, agile methods mesh extremely well towards preparing our students for that unknown future.
The Agile Manifesto ( http://agilemanifesto.org/) highlighted the following:
- Individual and actions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
We are asked to apply this to education and created
- Learners over prescribed curriculum
- Authentic and contextualised learning over worksheets and textbooks
- Collaborative relationships over didactic transmission
- Teachable moments over lesson plans
There were many really great adaptations of this from our group as well.
Lean
According to Barney and Kirby (2004), educators can learn from lean production methods the importance of empowering teachers by training them to problem solve and then expect them to be self-reflective and to continuously improve their practice. The thing I liked about both was how easily I can pull in these ideas into my own classroom. we looked at Kanban, also standup meetings and self-organising groups. I immediately used all three of these ideas in my classroom the very next day and have been doing my own research into some of the practices and tools used in Agile schools using Lean methods too.
Positives and questions I have about Design thinking in Ed:
+ great to see a methodology that focuses on the implementation and use of 21st C skills as well as values.
+ Educational settings could do with getting rid of Muda- bureaucracy is very high. Limiting systems or streamlining could be great. There are so many competing priorities in Education.
+ Self-directed and driven students
? We are not pumping out consumer-driven products- or are we? This goes to the heart of the purpose of education.
? What are the downsides or negatives of using this approach. It can't be without a cost perhaps?
? How does this type of self-directed and collaborative approach apply to all our students? Esp ones with learning and behavioural needs?
? What is the research behind this approach in an educational field? Has it been tested? Are the outcomes noticeably different?
Steve Peha
Steve Peha is an American educator and IT manager. I watched a youtube link given to a group of Microsoft exec ( I think) given by Steve Peha in 2011. I found it really interesting and recorded some ideas and notes as follows.
- Agile Manifesto
- Technology has not changed educational outcomes.
- Roland Fryer discovered that educational incentive pay did not have any positive outcomes on student achievement
- "How can we run a school with no method for improvement?"
- Waterfall methodologies have failed- dumping kids off to the next group of teachers/schools etc after 'we' have done with them. Is the right way to think about our students? There's no collective ownership and protection of these students education.
- Applying software methods to help students and schools raise achievement.
- Chester Finn- National Journal of Educational Experts blog
- Agile (Scrum, Kanban, lean)- huge gauge on productivity, -use the humanistic values in this system. - higher quality work.
- Use the culture of agile to improve
- Right shifting ( not in this video but something else I've picked up).
Barney, H. & Kirby, S.N. (2004). Toyota Production System/Lean Manufacturing. In B. Stecher and S.N. Kirby (Eds.), Organizational Improvement and Accountability Lessons for Education From Other Sectors (pp. 35-50). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
Kropp, M., Meier, A., Mateescu, M., & Zahn, C. (2014). Teaching and learning agile collaboration. In 2014 IEEE 27th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training, CSEE and T 2014 - Proceedings(pp. 139–148). IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSEET.2014.6816791
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