Learning for the future

Over the past few months I've been reading a lot about where people consider the future of education to be heading. I find it interesting to delve into the various perspectives about what education might look like in the future and would like to share some of these.

The first is a summary of some key points from a webinar discussion between two key players in the world of education and learning, Ken Robinson and Peter Senge. Their discussion was entitled 'Learning for the Future' and offered the following snippets:
- Schools are still the answer. What we have to re-think is what a 'school' is.
- It's not that (some) students don't want to learn, its that they don't want to learn the way that we're teaching.
- Schools as communities of learners: We learn from each other - learning is a social act. It is deeply personal and inherently collective (I love this quote). Learning for the future involves learning what it means to think together, to act together.
- Schools are organised the way they are because of the technologies available at the time.
- Just as in an agricultural model of farming, too much emphasis on the yield, output and results will eventually destroy the soil and land beneath the surface. The same metaphor applies to learning. Too much focus on output, results and the yield will eventually destroy the 'story of learning' that exists as part of the culture.

I'm also currently reading through Future Wise: Educating our Children for Changing World by David Perkins. He offers the following six broad trends that are pushing the boundaries of what's taught and the way it's taught:

(1) Beyond basic skills - 21st Century skills and dispositions: There appears to be a global trend converging towards the cultivation of critical and creative thinking, collaborative skills and dispositions, leadership, entrepreneurship and the related skills and dispositions that speak strongly  to living and thriving in our era.

(2) Beyond the traditional disciplines - renewed, hybrid, and less familiar disciplines: Themes such as bioethics, ecology, recent ideas from psychology and sociology, and other areas that address opportunities and challenges of our times.

(3) Beyond discrete disciplines - interdisciplinary topics and problems: Many curricula introduce students to daunting, contemporary problems of an emphatically interdisciplinary character, such as the causes and possible cures of poverty or the trade-offs of different energy sources.

(4) Beyond regional perspectives - global perspectives, problems, and studies: Attention not just to local or national but also to global matters, for instance, world history or the global interactive economic system or the possible meanings of global citizenship.

(5) Beyond mastering content - learning to think about the world with the content: Educators are encouraging learners not just to master content academically but also to notice where content connects to life situations, yields insights, and prompts productive action.

(6) Beyond prescribed content - much more choice of what to learn: In some settings, educators are supporting and coaching learners in choices about what to study well beyond the typical use of electives.

I find it an interesting exercise to reflect on how many, and to what extent, my school is enacting these 'six beyonds'. For some schools, these have been a part of the conversation for many years, yet progress is limited. Others have been shaping the path for some time. It seems to me that more and more these sorts of attributes are becoming more common in school frameworks.

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iPads: Us or the students?

We are approaching the end of our year long pilot with iPads in Grade Three. We've had 20 iPads to share between five classes for the year and I personally feel like these have been a useful addition to the classroom. I believe the general consensus of our Leadership team is that iPads are best used for consuming rather than creating, hence they may not be the best investment for the school. I'd like to make two points in regard to this. 

Firstly, teachers and admin teams are generally making this decision. While they may collaborate, the buck ultimately stops with them. Some might say that's fair enough too. After all, the school is providing the budgets to purchase hardware and the teachers are responsible for making sure that learning occurs. Why shouldn't they have the final say? I'm not saying that they shouldn't have a voice in this decision, but they shouldn't be the only voices. If they are then I believe that the system of feedback & decision making has some limitations. 

All teachers and administrators are making decisions about technology that is relatively new to them. The first iPads were launched around 3 years ago and before that us old timer adults used laptops, desktops, calculators, abacuses and chalk and slate! If the school were deciding whether to introduce individual blackboards for every student then almost every teacher would be qualified to contribute an opinion, having been at school at some stage in their lives where a blackboard was used. I'm fairly confident that every one of these teachers would also  feel quite blasé about the initiative. However, for someone that never before had any way of sharing some written information (or a diagram) with a class of between 20 - 40 students, this could be quite exciting. That's how most of us feel about iPads too. These are machines that are capable of doing things that we've never been able to do before. But not for a lot of our students. iPads were released in 2010. They operate similarly to iPhones, which were launched in 2007. If we use a random marker of 3 years of age for a child to be able to use one of these devices effectively (and it could even be younger), then that means that conceivably a student up to the age of 10 wouldn't be able to remember a time when these weren't around. The point I'm trying to make is that for some of our students will consider iPads to be technology just as much as some teachers would consider a television technology. Thomas Whitby, from The Educator's PLN, puts it quite nicely when defining what technology is:

Now let’s look at the student perspective. There isn’t one kid today in our modern culture that doesn’t have access to a computer. Most kids today live with cellphones, if not Smartphones. If you don’t know already, a smartphone is simply a complex computer with phone capabilities. What many adults don’t get is that computers and smartphones are not considered technology by kids. They are not in awe of the capabilities of these tools. They expect it. It is part of their world. Educators should not be so arrogant as to think that they have the ability to decide whether or not kids can use these tools for learning. The kids do it with, or without adult permission. Any educator has the right to choose to live in a cave however, they do not have the right to drag their students in there with them.

It was stated at a staff meeting recently, with reference to a possible introduction of BYOD for our Elementary students, that 'we need to give time for the students to be comfortable with using these different types of technologies'. I disagree with this. A high majority of our students are already comfortable using a myriad of devices. I think a more accurate statement would be that 'we need to give time for the teachers to be comfortable managing these different types of technology'. An even better statement would go more or less along the lines of 'we need to give time for teachers and students to collaboratively learn how these technologies can be used most effectively'.

When we talk about creating on iPads - or any similar device, our students need to be given a voice. How can adults alone make the decision that laptops are better for creating and iPads are better for consuming? As adults we are dealing with new technologies that change the way we consume, collaborate and create. Of course we'll prefer 'the old way' of doing things - we're comfortable with it, we know how it works and we've been doing it that way for several years. However, we shouldn't always be making decisions for students on the back of our own experiences. In the end it all has to come down to the students. 

My second point refers to the development of these types of hardware. While I agree that there are some instances where I prefer to create on other devices (such as laptops), I've maintained the line over the past couple of years that as apps are developed in more elaborate ways then creation becomes easier and preferable on the iPad. My students have experienced this to an extent this year. The two examples I'd like to share are from the DoInk and Blogger apps. Doink was previously available as a Web 2.0 site and the students used laptops or desktops to create animations. I have found it to be a great tool for formatively assessing student understanding of certain concepts throughout a unit of inquiry. DoInk ceased to be available as a website this year and now can only be used as an app. It is available for iPhone and iPad and my students this year thought that it was easy and effective to use on the iPad (having used it in previous years on the laptops). This year we used the program to see how well the students understood how changes in the Earth could impact the way humans live their lives. You can see that we had some varying results here and here. 

Many of my students also prefer to update their personal blogs using the iPad (and Blogger app) instead of on the laptop. We had originally used Posterous and when it shut down it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the app for Blogger is much more effective to use. The mobility of the iPads means that the students can blog from almost anywhere and this also serves to personalise their learning. Not all aspects of blogging are better on the iPad though. We can't edit HTML code on the iPads and its more difficult to embed other documents in some cases. As I mentioned at the beginning though, as the apps improve so will the creative ease. The ways that schools and teachers use iPads also have an impact on how effective they can be for content creation. Two recent posts from a Swiss International School and a school in the USA highlight this. Another friend of mine also alerted me to this publication, which highlights the value of mobile devices and social media in the pursuit of personalised learning.

The choices we make are generally made with the best of intentions. But education is changing and we need to be mindful of who we're making decisions for: Us, or our students?

Sir Ken Robinson's message

The above video is another talk by Sir Ken Robinson. I chose to post this talk as I think it is a nice summary of his message regarding education. His first book, 'Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative' is one of the few resources I've read that has dramatically changed the way I teach, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in education. 'The Element' is also a great book and I'm eager to read the second book in this series - 'Finding Your Element' when it is published on the 21st of May.

The only problem was the flying chickens

Our next Unit of Inquiry looks at the power of imagination and creativity. Passion projects, Genius Hour, Oasis Time - whatever you choose to call it, is going to be a big part of our approach for this UOI. We figure that this is a great opportunity for us to let our students really go for it without having too many other 'demands' on us. Hopefully the results will be so amazing that this will become more of a regular structure next year.

We followed an system to plan this UOI that is referred to as the 'bubble up approach'. This means that we aim to connect each students' passions to our own curriculum framework. So the students are deciding on their own passion and then bubbling it up through their own persnal UOI to choose a TD Theme, skills, concepts, specific subject areas, action opportunities and anything else that applies to their inquiry. 

We've called upon the expertise of many teachers outside of our regular grade level teachers - there are many experts that can help us. One of these, our librarian, is helping us organise a group of students that want to explore Minecraft. She has run an after-school club with some middle school students and is amazed by how well they manage themselves as a group, make decisions and achieve goals together. In fact, their only problem was that someone was creating flying chickens and sending them around their Minecraft world. This was dealt with by the group once they all discussed the problem and decided on an appropriate outcome. We're hoping that our grade three students can achieve some similar results. Other inquiries include cooking, creating on-line games, building designs out of wood, organising sports tournaments, creating music and artwork.

UPDATE:

It is now early August and I've finally had time to get around to completing this blog post that I started last school year. This gives me an opportunity to further reflect on the outcome of this inquiry. First of all, and probably most importantly, the students loved this UOI. Unsurprisingly, they were all highly engaged and used their imagination to create, innovate and solve problems. What was most interesting in my class is that some students started out pursuing individual inquiries and then decided after a week or two to connect their work with another person. An example of this was a student thAt wanted to organise a race car tournament. He approached the woodwork group and convinced them to design a special track for the tournament. This group the recruited one of the music people to compose some tournament tunes so it would be more of a party atmosphere. Finally, they organised the cooking group to bake some tasty treats for the audience on the day. Conversely, the group of three that initially started out inquiring into ways that they could help endangered animals ended up splitting into a pair and a single because yet couldn't all decide on one way to work together. 

The students completed weekly reflections that centered around six conditions of creativity and how well they were using these throughout their inquiry time. These conditions are outlined in my post 'An Oasis of Creativity'. Some students have better meta-cognitive skills than others, but this task (one of the only 'must-do' items that I asked them to complete in this UOI) kept them coming back to consider the lines of inquiry. 

What didn't work well? Some things. The planning process needed to be better scaffolded for these students. Some were able to identify each essential element but many found this very difficult. Perhaps this is because they haven't done much of this type of work before and hopefully it will help them to make better connections in the coming years. Another problem was finding the time for the students to meet with other teachers or students. This UOI was at the end of the year and, while that means that some events in a school's yearly calendar were out of the way, many teachers especially were busy tying up things for the end of the year. I imagine this will be a problem at any time of the year though. The third difficulty was maintaining the right balance between creativity and efficiency. We had to give appropriate time to the students to allow their creative ideas to flourish, but we also had a specific timeframe that wee had to adhere to. This meant that some students needed the odd hurry up and others needed to be reminded of the ample time that they had left. One other critique that was given by another teacher was that she felt that the UOI was too 'airy fairy' and that her students weren't learning anything concrete. I believe that this speaks more about that particular teacher's mindset and practice than the abilities and productivity of her students. Creative work and inquiry must involve some level of 'cloudiness' and the right amount of time must be spent in order to move through this period. 

Overall I think the UOI was a success. There are definitely things that I will change when I apply this approach to my new class this year, but the value for the students is far too great to give away. The fact that the students can make their own choices about their learning allows them real ownership and, I believe, yields much more powerful results in terms of learning.

The Seeds of Growth

This is an article that I recently contributed to our school newsletter:

The Seeds of Growth: Why creativity is essential in education.

We live in a world that is changing faster than ever before and facing challenges that are unprecedented. These sorts of challenges require innovative ideas and approaches. As such, many governments, companies and people are interested in innovation. The difficulty with innovation is that it cannot be just turned on like a switch. Innovation is a process that involves three parts:

• Imagination - The power to bring to mind the things that aren’t here in the present.
• Creativity - Applied imagination. The process of putting your imagination to work and having original ideas that have value.
• Innovation - Putting original ideas into practice. [1] [8] 

Education, in a nutshell, has three main roles: 

Economic: To provide the skills required to earn a living and be economically productive; 

Cultural: To deepen understanding of the world; 

Individual: To develop individual talents and sensibilities. [8] 

If these roles are examined through the lens of creativity then it becomes difficult to separate them.

Economic - Business leaders constantly promote the desire to hire creative, innovate employees who can work in teams and communicate well. In 2008, and again in 2012, IBM conducted a survey of over 1000 CEOs around the world, asking them what were the keys to their future and prolonged success.  A summary of their answers shows that top performers: 

1. Hunger for and embrace change, rather than react to it.
2. Innovate beyond customer imagination to reach the technologically sophisticated.
3. Seek new ways to organise globally to tap worldwide talent. [5] [6] [10]

The economy is asking for graduates of education who are competent in these things. In a world where over-qualification is becoming more of an issue, businesses aim to recruit the best staff possible and they look closely for these attributes. Educating the population through an out-dated, industrialised model will not achieve the economic goals it sets out to. So, instead of educating our students with the same model as the past 100 years, we must approach it in new ways. This means that some of the things you see happening at school will look different to what parents may remember them to be like when they were younger [1] [8].

Cultural - The world is becoming more connected, complicated and challenging.  Finding ways to live together is becoming more interdependent and dynamic. As the world becomes smaller, the ability to collaborate and understand how others feel becomes more and more important. A major part of innovation and creative thinking is the aspect of collaboration and working in teams. This is not to say that new ideas are thought of exclusively with other people, but generally ideas and innovations are created and improved on through the critical feedback of others. Focussing on creativity in education means that students have opportunities to develop the key skills of collaboration. Without these skills, cultural education becomes more difficult to achieve [1] [8].

Individual - Education is also about helping people find their own course in life. It is about helping them find what has value and meaning for them. It is of course important to have some commonalities across all schooling systems - everyone needs to be able to read, write and add. However, it is also important to encourage human capacity amongst all of the students we teach. This means we need to breakdown the traditional ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ dichotomy and value the passions and expertise of all. Everyone has talents, inspirations and skills and education should allow these to flourish [3] [4] [7] [8] [11]. 

It was stated earlier that education must be approached in new ways. In PYP schools (and other similar programs) we follow a curriculum framework and philosophy of learning that actively encourages the development of essential attitudes, one of which is creativity. We allow elements of choice for our students in their learning. We assess them individually and as teams. We give them opportunities to play, explore and pursue personal inquiries. Creativity is about making connections and developing relationships. In PYP schools we have a transdisciplinary curriculum where students are encouraged to seek connections between what they are learning and how it relates to the world, themselves and to others [2]. We utilise new technologies that present fresh possibilities for creative work. We strive to create environments that encourage risk-taking.

As human beings we have an extraordinary power - the ability to imagine things outside of our current experiences and to express them in forms that other people can engage with and grasp. No other species on Earth has this ability. If you’re pursuing original thinking then there are a lot of wrong turns. Failure is not the right way to describe this - it is experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t. If you live in a culture where you’re frightened of failing then innovation and creativity starts to be inhibited. If fresh thinking and new ideas have less emphasis, and the focus shifts to ‘getting the right answer’, then people become frightened of making mistakes and being wrong. If you’re afraid to try something new then you’ll never come up with anything original. [1] [7] [8] [9]

As teachers, we endeavour to create conditions that provide our students with the freedom to be creative. Our aim is to give children the opportunity to allow their skills, knowledge and capabilities to shine.

REFERENCES:

[1] All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (1999). National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. 

[2] Boyer, EL. (1995). The Basic School: A Community of Learning. San Francisco, USA. The Carnegie Foundation for

the Advancement of Teaching.

[3] Edwards, C, Gandini, L and Forman, G. (1998). The Hundred Languages of Children. Greenwich, Connecticut,

USA. Ablex Publishing Corporation.

[4] Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York, USA. Basic Books.

[5] IBM CEO Case study compendium. Published by IBM Corporation. Available for download at:

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03535usen/GBE03535USEN.PDF

[6] Leading Through Connections: Highlights of the Global Chief Executive Officer Study. (2012). Published by IBM Corporation. Available for download at: http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03486usen/GBE03486USEN.PDF

[7] McGrath, J. & Davies, D. (2012) The Future Will Not Be Multiple Choice. Published by Mind Shift. Available for download at: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/02/video-the-future-will-not-be-multiple-choice/

[8] Robinson, K. (2001) Out of Our Minds: Learning to be creative. Capstone Publishing, Chichester, West Sussex, UK.

[9] Stanford Breakfast Briefings - The Enterprise of the Future. Available for download at:

https://breakfastbriefings.stanford.edu/briefings/enterprise-future

[10] The Enterprise of the Future: Life Sciences Industry Edition (2008). Published by IBM corporation. Available for download at:

https://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/gbe03080-usen-ceo-ls.pdf

[11] Vygotsky, L. (1999). Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The MIT Press.

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The value of creativity

I'm in the process of writing a short article about the importance and value of creativity in school. Below are four interesting clips that I've recently watched. I think they highlight several key points relating to my topic.

Trending students

Our current UOI in Grade Three falls under the TD Theme - How We Organise Ourselves. The central idea is 'Digital media influences the way we access information and connect with each other'. Through the first two weeks of the unit each class has inquired into what we understand digital media to be, what our responsibilities are in virtual environments, how we can evaluate information on-line and how we use & organise digital media.

Over the past week in my class we've been exploring some of the different types of digital media that the students might choose to use for their process assessment task. The students will have to create a presentation to educate their parents on the responsible use of technology. They will have to find and evaluate information about responsible use in order to decide which is essential for their presentation, and also think about what will be the best tool in order to connect with their parents. Maybe their parents will come to school to see their presentation, maybe they won't be able to and would prefer to view it on-line, maybe they like to see videos, photos, text - there's a lot for the students to consider.

This week we've explored a couple of web 2.0 tools that might be useful for the students - Photo Peach and Prezi. Next week we'll look at a few more so the students can have the freedom of choosing which one will be most appropriate for them to use. For each tool we first run through a demonstration of the tool and then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of it. You can see the students' analysis of each tool on our grade level blog here and here.

One of the most interesting things I've noticed from the students' feedback is that they've highlighted as being a disadvantage the fact that you can't create a game that could be played on any of these sites. This is something that I hadn't really considered as even being an option. Obviously it is to the students, though, and I can't wait to unpack their thinking with this. I'm now looking for a good tool to show the students how to use in order for them to create a game to help explain digital responsibility.

K12Horizon is a project that focuses on emerging technology and their applications for K-12 education. One of the trends they identified this year in their annual report was game-based learning. A friend of mine blogged about some of the findings earlier this year and here is what she wrote about game based learning:

Game-Based Learning - there is a lot of interest in exploring the potential of game-based learning and the Horizon Report identifies several areas where these will be used in schools, for example developing students' team building skills, teaching cross-curricular content in engaging ways and simulations that allow students to try out different creative solutions to problems.

My students seem to have their finger on the trend pulse more than me with this and I think this example highlights the importance of making sure that the curriculum is student-centred. I can't wait to explore this further with my students and see what they create.

Photo credit: Toca Boca

An Oasis of Creativity

Over the past two weeks I've been trialling a learning experience with my students which I call Oasis Time. I've borrowed the term from John Cleese, who coined it during a lecture on creativity. You can watch a short section of it below or for the full version click here. Before I go on, however, lets be frank, Oasis Time isn't exactly a ground-breaking idea and I'm certain something similar been arranged in many classrooms around the world. I'm simply sharing a process that I have found to be effective for me. Hopefully it can also work for someone else - or they can adapt it to suit their needs.

The idea: The two goals that I based this class time on were (i) Increased motivation for my students to learn and (ii) Greater opportunities to develop and display creativity. 

Oasis Time essentially only has two agreements that need to be followed. 

• As long as you try your best to follow the five conditions of creativity (outlined below), you can work on anything you wish to inquire into. 
• At the end of the week you have to be willing to share with the rest of the class whatever it is you're currently working on. This doesn't mean you have to be finished, just willing to share your progress.

I've observed that when students have the opportunity to explore personal inquiries then they have the best chance to problem-pose, which is a common missing link in many inquiry classrooms. I also find, that for whatever reason, this is one of the most difficult skills for students to master. By exploring personal inquiries, the students are practicing problem-posing and other useful skills of inquiry (such as making connections and patterns in learning, going beyond factual information and exploring things in conceptual way and collaborating) in an authentic way. 

Throughout my teaching career I have always had the best intentions to allow my students the time to explore their own inquiries. Unfortunately these sorts of initiatives tend to be the first abandoned when time becomes limited. This is frustrating because it makes it seem like these learning experiences aren't valued as much as they probably are. By specifying a name for this time and sharing it with my students I have set up structures that everyone has a certain level of control over, and this helps ensure that Oasis Time regularly takes place. 

The 5 Conditions Of Creativity: So, in order to encourage creativity amongst my students I decided to follow five conditions outlined by Cleese in this section of his speech. As he says, these conditions won't guarantee creativity, but they can certainly help encourage it.

Space: Cleese explains that you need to create a personal space where you will be undisturbed. If you are surrounded by the everyday pressures and constraints that inevitably occur then you will most probably find it difficult to use your mind in a creative way. When managing these pressures your mind operates in a closed, systematic way. Although it can sometimes be difficult in the classroom, especially when the weather isn't suitable for making use of the outside learning environment, my students are encouraged to find a place where they can work undisturbed. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have to work independently, but they are encouraged to position themselves away from elements of the classroom that have a distracting effect on them.

Time: The first aspect of time that needs to be followed is that which refers to the amount of time spent on your creative work. Cleese recommends specifying a distinct start and finish time for your work. He says that this needs to be an extended period of time (up to an hour and a half), not just a 20 minute filler before lunch break. When you have a sustained period of uninterrupted time, in a space that we feel comfortable working in, then you're giving yourself the best opportunity to spark your creative mind into action. However, once you've set aside an extended period of time in a place that you feel comfortable working in, your mind will generally begin to think about all of the mundane things that you 'need' to do - most of which require low level cognitive processing and are things that you're familiar with. Cleese states: 

'It's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, and it's also easier to do little things that we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about.' 

By spending the required time to push through this phase of your brain activity, you allow your brain to enter what Cleese calls the 'open-mode'. It is in this mode where creative thinking can really take effect.

Time #2: The second aspect of time refers to the amount of time that you spend allowing your mind to consider solutions to your problem or idea. It is easy to accept the first solution that presents itself when a problem is posed. However, creative people spend the time required to push through the feelings of anxiety, caused by not having 'the answer', in order to come up with an original solution to a problem. There is a powerful lesson here for students (and teachers!) in letting go of 'the known' and being prepared to remain in a state of 'unknown' in order to develop creative solutions. When we are in a state of unknown then there is generally a feeling of agitation that encompasses us and the easiest thing to do is to accept a solution, therefore removing the feeling. Many times, however, the solution you accept may not be the best one available - it is simply a means to an end. So, if you're prepared to spend the time feeling uncomfortable then you're more likely to be able to discover creative solutions to your problems or questions. Cleese mentions that he finds the most frustrating people to work with are those who feel that they need to be decisive and confident - hence accepting the first (and sometimes easiest) solutions that present themselves.

Confidence: This condition refers to the ability to be open to the possibility of being wrong - and be confident that your experimenting will lead to something creative. Cleese states that it is important to develop a mindset that ensures that, whenever you are in the creative mode, nothing is wrong. Any idea can be put on the table and explored and it is possible that by taking one of these risks it may lead to a breakthrough. In my experience, this can be one of the most difficult aspects for students to grasp. I regularly notice that the feeling of 'being wrong' or in 'the unknown' is something that many students feel uncomfortable with. This then can restrict them from taking the risks that are essential for discovering creative solutions. Developing a class environment that encourages risk-taking and where students feel at ease with the idea that there may be alternative solutions to the obvious one jumping out at them is paramount for this condition to be met.

Humour: For this condition Cleese points out that humour brings relaxation and he believes it is the single most effective factor in moving our minds from the closed mode to the open mode. He also states that humour is an essential part of spontaneity, playfulness and, therefore, creativity. He goes onto suggest that people often confuse seriousness with solemnity, and that anyone can be discussing or working on serious inquiries while still laughing - it doesn't make them any less serious.

Motivation: The second element to Oasis Time that I wanted to achieve is that of increased motivation for learning. I borrowed the idea of working-on-anything-provided-you're-willing-to-share-it from an edited speech that Dan Pink once gave. In an effort to raise the intrinsic motivation to learn amongst my students to a whole new level, I employed some of the principles that he addresses in his talk. The idea is that the students are still using the key inquiry and transdisciplinary skills that I want them to develop, but  they are using them for things that they are truly passionate about about and this will help them to see their usefulness.

Results: Although this is still a relatively new initiative in my classroom I have already seen some fantastic results. In terms of motivation to learn, Oasis Time has been a major success. My students can't wait to not only get the chance to work on their inquiries (and many have taken their learning home to continue developing), but they are also extremely enthusiastic to share their work with the class. This has been a very pleasing aspect of Oasis Time. 

There have been some creative solutions and ideas developed by the students. Some found it difficult to accept that they had totally free choice to decide what to do and needed a lot longer to get started. Initially, I saw this as a sign that they weren't prepared to take risks as much as some of the other students. However, upon reflection I considered that these particular students were putting into practice one of the key conditions - time. They weren't accepting the first idea that came into their head because they didn't think it was the right one for them. They were prepared to designate their Oasis Time to coming up with an inquiry that they felt would be interesting and meaningful for them.

As this school year sadly draws to a close, I will definitely use Oasis Time with my students next year. I'll be teaching students of a different age then so it will be interesting to see if there are any differences between the two groups. Some improvements that I'd like to make is to make sure the inquiry skills are clearly explained and discussed with the students. I would also like to develop some form of planning or reflection sheet for the students to use when they conference with me. This would give us the opportunity to consider all of the elements of inquiry that the students are using. I think it would also be interesting to set up a network of schools that are timetabling something similar to this so we could all share our ideas and successes with a wider audience.

Connection vs Protection

I recently watched a TED talk by Steven Johnson about where great ideas come from. His discussion centered around the position that great ideas generally come from hunches - and that two or more hunches that join together develop into a great idea.

He argues that collaboration is the key for the development of great ideas and that we must create systems that allow those hunches to come together and turn into great ideas. Coffee houses during the Enlightenment, Parisian Salons of Modernism were such vehicles. What is it for the 21st century?

Technology is the obvious answer. The opportunity to reach out and connect your hunches with other people's. One of our jobs as educators - and I classify teachers, parents and peers under that umbrella - is to teach each other how to use these tools effectively in order to avoid the inevitable distractions that can result from it's exponential growth. There is much to be gained from the effective and appropriate use of technology.

One of the other points Johnson raises is that intellectual property is regularly patented, copyrighted and trademarked. In order for effective collaboration to occur, we must consider less protection of our ideas and allow for more connection. My students' summative task for their current Unit of Inquiry involves them creating a machine that will solve a task that is identified in a scenario. There were four scenarios they could choose from, each asking them to use their understanding of the principles of force and motion to help design and build a machine. I first asked the students to choose the scenario that most appealed to them and they drafted their own ideas. The next day I grouped them with other people who had chosen the same scenario and gave them the opportunity to join up their ideas with their peers or continue to work on their own. Every student decided to collaborate with someone else and the enthusiasm they have shown to share and develop their ideas has been amazing. I hope this will be a valuable lesson in the power of collaboration for them as they head into next year.

What is Creativity?

I recently (re) watched a speech by Sir Ken Robinson about changing the education paradigm. The above clip is an abridged version but hits the main points. He raises some very interesting ideas, most of which I agree with, and challenges society to redefine their thinking about how we view and value education.

His major argument is that schools systematically (but not deliberately) destroy creativity in our students. Sir Ken defines creativity as a process of putting your imagination to work - applying your imagination. It is the process of having original ideas that have value.

He mentions three key points in relation to creativity. It is a process, not an event. You have to work on and refine it. Historically there are some exceptions, such as Mozart, (who was said to have never refined his work) but this is the exception, not the norm. Robinson states that it is a process we can plan and teach. Like literacy, we can give people the tools to go through the writing process, but can't say what they will write. We can give students the tools to be creative, but cannot tell them what to think.

Secondly, it is about originality. Thinking things that are either new to yourself, your workplace or even to history.

The third point is about value. Any old ideas are not creative - they have to hold value. Understanding which values to apply to an idea is a key part of creativity. Too often ideas are dismissed because people apply the wrong values to them. They relate to their present values instead of what might evolve. A classic example of this is the internet. When it first hit the mainstream some people thought it was clever but not very useful. Tell that to the people who came up with E-Bay!

This third point is something that I think teachers can have a definite impact on with their students. Teaching them how to apply critical judgement in the correct way and with the appropriate values in mind. Alongside this we need to cultivate an environment in our schools where students can feel ok to make mistakes. If we have a fear of getting something wrong we will be reluctant to try anything new, hence no creativity.

Skills are essential for our students. But they also need to know how to apply them in a creative manner.