Saturday 5 March 2011

Evidence of learning

The Apple Leadership Summit in Singapore has a number of key themes:
  • challenge based learning
  • developing rich, learner-based environments which leverage technology; 
  • the convergence of mobile technologies, content and pedagogy (how we teach); 
  • developing and utilising authentic assessment artefacts; 
  • a process called 'reverse mentoring' which is a great way to help students demonstrate their learning.
One of the ideas that struck me yesterday was the idea of developing rich artefacts to show learning. This idea was suggested during a workshop with Marco Torres, who is an educator from Los Angeles. Marco challenged us to consider 'What does our top learner look like? What defines them? What are they like and what skills would they have?

Marco believes that teachers should have their own portfolio of learning and that a good principal must be a voracious learner him/herself. I think this applies to all educators - the better learners we are, the more able we are to encourage/develop this in our students. Marco asks some really thought-provoking questions about teacher learnership: What evidence shows me that the adults are learners in our schools? 

For the first time we now have the tools that change according to the need at hand.

Analog vs. Digital - he makes an interesting analogy that the piano is an analog device that you are limited to have to learn in a particular way
-can a piano change according to the need at hand?
-do I want to learn the cello, or do I want to create music that a cello creates?
Is schooling built as this huge analog device that we must learn to use in order for learning to happen?

Learners love to share and learners love feedback. People are loyal to those who provide them with remarkable moments. Learning requires quality feedback and now we can enrich that feedback in exciting ways. Here are some other reflective questions:
  • What does our evidence show about us as learners? 
  • What does it show about our learning?
  • How many remarkable moments have I provided my colleagues or students lately?


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