Reflection 2

I have learned to much in my journey through EDEM630 so far. One of the most interesting things has been applying change to the models. The learning/Adoption trajectory has been the most meaningful so far, and I found it easy to apply to my research in Assigment 1.1.
The MOOC was really interesting and full on. At 1 point I was totally overwhelmed and emailed Niki and Wayne about the prospect of withdrawing. I thank them for their support and encouragement. I have now submitted assignment 1.1 and will submit 1.2 by the end of this week.
I have completed my scenario matrix but I still have a lot of work to do around this before I really understand the whole concept. I am hoping this will come through my work on Ass 1.2.
Scenario planning seems like a plausible and sensible way to go about running life in general. I think it is so vital to look through to the present, not live in the past. We have started to use this in our planning, instead of going historically with how we have been teaching, we have been looking at how to move forward and what we actually need to teach the students. It will be interesting to see what ERO think in Term 4 Week 1.
I am very pleased we were given an extension on our assignments. This is one of the most supportive courses I have been enrolled in by distance learning. I have enjoyed getting to know people through Twitter and their blogs. It has definitely given me a sense of belonging within our group. The sp4Ed feed is very cool, although everytime I log in it makes me feel as though I am not contributing enough. I do have to remind myself to check in all places for feedback and support. I have saved all my webpages to visit into my EDEM630 folder on my bookmarks bar (something I learned this year and sooo helpful).
I feel that there has been so much knowledge for me to get my head around and not enough time for me to do it. I am really enjoying the learning, and I am just managing to sneak enough time in for the basics but feel as tough there is so much more to it.
Every week I have had to prioritize something whether it has been work, motherhood, or study.  This weekend has been interesting...I finally felt like I had everything under control and then on Fri morning we had the scare of our life with Tyler waking up with croup and not being able to breathe in properly....So we had the ambulance and our Dr here at 4am. They put oxygen on her with adrenline in it (who knew) and gave her steroids. She perked up and we kept her on steroids for the next night and she is much better, phew...... had Friday off with her which was actually very refreshing and just so nice to have a day with my girl. We then set up for our open home on Sat, Tyler woke up coughing and then vomited all over the freshly mopped tiles on our way out...had to laugh!! Finally got out the door and over to Nanas so dave and I could go out for my cousins 30th last night....then back onto the computer today for some more study.....I don't think I could have scenario planned for that one.

Some questions I still have...How can we motivate teachers who are still unsure of technology?
Will ict become part of a BTchLn qualification? It would be interesting to see with the likes of Wayne and Niki being on staff at UC if scenario planning was used for our qualifications if things changed, or they may have since I graduated.

Looking forward to finishing Ass 1.2

Scenario matrix

Drivers of change in education

Here is a list of drivers in change in education.

• Openess - open content, open data, open resources
• MOOC
• Informal learning
• Role of educators
• Online learning
• Games based learning
• School strategy
• Student voice
• Virtual learning environments
• Personalized learning
• Project based learning
• Research
• Accountability
• Competition
• Accessibility

3 major trends significant to my context.

• Student voice

Definition: Giving the students an opportunity to influence their own learning. 

I selected this trend because I feel as though student voice would have an impact of the kinds of video tutorials the Teacher would select. Students give warranted feedback about what is and what isn't working and I feel it is important to teaching and learning.

• Role of educators

Definition: The role of the educator is the role of the person in charge of the content being administered.

I selected this trend because I think that the roles are changing and it needs to be addressed. Teachers can't ignore the fact that with the changes in education, changes in their roles as educators need to happen. It is important for my context because teachers still have a role to administer video tutorials.

• Virtual Learning Environments

Definition: An e learning education system

I selected this trend because it is important to online tutorials. You can have environments where the Teacher has specific tutorials embedded for student use.

To be honest I had quite a bit more written but Blogger has been playing up and it didn't publish it so when I went back it hadn't saved my final post...so this is what it is....

Scenario from the perspective of a decision maker

So from what I can gather we can pick and choose who we are looking through the lens as, and what our school may be characterised as. This isn't any reflection of the current role I am in now, I am purely relating it to the reading I based my scenario on. 

I chose the reading Teacher Networks. Today's and Tomorrows Challenges and Opportunities for the teaching profession. I chose this because I come from a rural school and we are quite isolated, and I am the only Year 6,7,8 Teacher so it takes effort to network and communicate with other Teachers outside of our walls.If I was an Area Leader for ICT then it would be absoloutely mandatory for Teacher to share knowledge and ideas around ICT for those Teachers in that area to gain new skills and have confidence in their own. This is also meaningful to me too as I have started 'etwinning' through this course with my twitter, blog and WE profile.

Vuorikari, R. Garoia, V. Punie,Y. Cachia. R, Redecker, C. Cao, Y.  Klamma, R.  Cuong Pham,M.  Rajagopal, K. Fetter, S. Sloep, P.(2012). Teacher Networks Today's and tomorrow's challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession. Brussels, Belgium: European Schoolnet.

My decision-making context:
I am reviewing the scenario through the lens of a highly motivated Area Leader in ICT (e.g North Shore, Mid Canterbury, etc)  who wants teachers to share their learning and skills to motivate others. My School is characterised by having lots of relevant, working ICT resources, but not a lot of communication between staff.

Overview of the scenario: 

"The teachers Lifelong Learning networks (Tellnet) project used eTwinning as a case study example of a Teacher network. The aim was to identify the main structures and mechanisms that are effective in sharing practices and encouraging innovation and creativity among teachers" 

Vuorikari, R. Garoia, V. Punie,Y. Cachia. R, Redecker, C. Cao, Y.  Klamma, R.  Cuong Pham,M.  Rajagopal, K. Fetter, S. Sloep, P.(2012). Teacher Networks Today's and tomorrow's challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession. Brussels, Belgium: European Schoolnet.

The authors proposed the 5 scenarios below. 

Scenario 1  eNet: European Education Network - Expansion of eTwinning as centralised network
Scenario 2  MyNetwork  - User-centred social network approach 
Scenario 3  Intelligent Agents  - Technology-focused approach 

Scenario 4  Diversified Teaching Career - Autonomous learning and teachers as mentors
Scenario 5  Informal Learning Camps - Bottom-up peer learning 


Scenario 4  Diversified Teaching Career - Autonomous learning and teachers as mentors

In relation to this scenario there are many factors which would be drivers for change there are the Teachers role,  significance of networking, having the resources, time, funding, student involvement, 21st century schools and support from local communities and people in leadership roles.

Brainstorm list of recommended decisions:
Scenario 4  Diversified Teaching Career - Autonomous learning and teachers as mentors

Time is a very interesting one for me and if I was driving this scenario it is something I would take into consideration. Teachers are very busy and although we all like to think that whatever we are passionate about is the key element of teaching, we all have different ideas. I have recently been involved in some PD around ICT through the Mid Canterbury Fibre Connected Schools and whenever we have something to do they offer a release day in return. I think this is a great idea and it motivates me to want to be involved because I feel as though they take my time as seriously as I do. Time is precious, and if you can value that for Teachers I think they would put more into what you are trying to achieve. In this case I would give Teacher release time to be involved in this scenario, assuming I had funding for it (in a perfect world).

This scenario would need someone timetabling the networking initially so I would set up meetings so Teachers could get to know each other face to face (if in a district) and then start to see the benefits of sharing and briefly catching up online. This would also show them how time can be saved e.g. no traveling, at your own pace, and you choose the time of day.

In order to make the networking significant there would need to be an initial brainstorm of what Teachers wanted to network about. We would need a set of guidelines to start off with e.g. Great online Maths tools, Story Starters, etc. It would then expand from there once teachers were comfortable eTwinning their ideas.

Devices - I have started to feel as though there is a huge emphasis on what we are 'using' as oppose to what we are 'doing' as educators in the 21st century. For me it is about how we use the device and that we actually use it. Networking would be based around curriculum areas as oppose to devices. I have found that if someone has a great idea on an iPad, it can be tweaked to match another wireless device. Therefore I will encourage Teachers to network around what they are doing and how they are doing it as oppose to what they are using.

Teachers need to be accountable to be involved so I would ask for feedback and reflections on the proposed scenarios.

I am sure I could write all day about this, but as Wayne has implied so often, skim read and make main points.

Two most important strategic decisions: 

Devices -I think this is very important. There is such a strong emphasis on what we are using. It is constantly talked about in staff rooms, in local papers and when networking. I feel as though Teachers need to be reminded that any ICT resource can be used to support learning and it is not a competition of who has what in the Teaching world. We are away from the 1 size fits all model, so we should be able to taylor any device to what we need. It is so important for Teachers to network about the 'things they are doing' because I come across Teachers doing great things everyday that say, but I don't have an ........ so I am not doing as well as ...... I just feel as though you can give 1 teacher a digital camera and with networking they can achieve so much more and become so much more confident than a teacher with an ipad who tries to go at it alone.

Reflecting - This is a really important part of scenario planning and because my scenario has so many drivers of change I think it would be a great tool. Teachers and the students can use assessment techniques, video, photos, conversations, tweets, blogs or whatever they want to to share their successes and their challenges. In the long run if we are sharing these stories it will start to save each other time as we can see "They have tried that, didn't work" or "I like that if I tweak it I can use it"

Transferability of recommended decisions for the scenarios alternatives:
I think that my decisions are important in any teaching/ classroom context. They are relevant to the 21st century classroom and would work equally well for alternative scenarios. In order for these scenarios to be successful there definitely needs to be drive in every school. There is no point in trying to establish a networking group if teachers decide to opt out. It would be pretty hard to network with the same few networkers every time. I also think that as the Leader I would need to initiate networking online and ask questions. It would be great to establish a wiki or blog or open website where the networks could share all their ideas and have an aggregated feed from their Tweets and Labels. I feel as though in order to keep Teachers motivated the extra work outside of teaching needs to be made easy and accessible. If a webpage was established where it was quick and easy to add links and videos and successes or ask questions I think it would be more meaningful and have a higher success rate. 

Scenario planning....I feel like it puts a title on something I knew about but didn't have a name

I think scenario planning is a future thinking approach. I think that it works well in most contexts, in fact I can't think of one where it wouldn't work. It is more about the people running it as oppose to the context itself. When I see the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach I feel as though this is the opposite of scenario planning as it doesn't create any kind of change at all. I think change is important because it creates opportunity for new learning and new life. Change in education is especially important because it teaches students how to cope with it and also gives them so many more opportunities. I have really enjoyed the readings and video and it seems to make sense to me. I can see how it would benefit organisations, but I really do think that it would require someone with authority driving it in certain situations.

I would like to learn more about how educators can bring scenario planning into schools in specific curriculum areas. Is there a way to do it effectively? Are schools in NZ using scenario planning? I wonder if it was being actively and consciously used if everyone would be open to it. I feel that as an individual I use it on a minor scale. I would be interested to hear from people who have attempted or successfully used it in a primary education setting. I wonder if it is something we could get the students involved in. One of the readings referred to getting the students to plan from their future, why not. Talking ownership of your learning is one thing, taking ownership of your own future would be pretty cool.

how would we use scenario planning for online tutorials?

There are loads of online tutorials out there already. On youtube you can find out how to do a hair style, or how to learn a new Maths strategy. If I look at scenario planning in relation to using online tutorials it makes me think that businesses may want to use the online tutorials to generate profit. It might be a hard ask though, as there is so much knowledge out there through online tutorials already. 

Youtube is an interesting example and it kind of pulls away from my idea but in the same sense, it is relevant. Youtube was originally formed in 2005 to share video uploads. From there it has been purchased by Google and on March 21, 2013, the number of unique users visiting YouTube every month reached 1 billion. (Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube 01/1/08/2013)

What am I trying to say....???

If I was involved in scenario planning for a specific company running specific online tutorials, the scenario planning would be around generating a profit to help growth within the company. I think youtube have gone about this the right way in the fact that they don't charge for the use of it, but they charge for advertising on there. I think that if a company generating online tutorials for specific skills tried to charge for the tutorials then it would be hard to run. On the flip-side  you can gain qualifications through online tutorials which people are generally than happy to pay for.In scenario planning you have to look at the bigger picture and decide what people will want, not just what is good for your company. People need to see the online tutorials as a 'need' as oppose to a want. ALso when scenario planning I think I would have to look for some kind of WOW factor. What is the use of planning from the future if you are recycling ideas and therefore living from the past?

Session 2 Sp4Ed Discovering Scenarios

"Scenarios can't predict the future so whats the point"

"Scenario planning does not predict the future....it considers the complete scope of likely forces that might have an impact on an organization." Retrieved from http://business21c.com.au/wp-content/uploads/strategy-tube/Case04.pdf 01/08/13
After doing a lot of reading and video watching and feeling like I am going into brain overload, I am all for scenario planning. I think it is really important to plan for the future. We do micro scenario planning as teachers all the time. We plan a lesson and then in our minds we do the 'What if's' and we have a vague idea of what we might do if those 'what if's' occur. As a mother (18month old) I feel as though I am becoming a very effective scenario planner. If I go to the supermarket I already have planned what isle to go down first to get her what she needs to eat (so it doesn't look like I am shop lifting) but so we will make it through the journey. In relation to ICT I think it is so important to scenario plan. There are always so many options and in order to be effective implementers of ICT in our schools we need to narrow down our options and have a plan. Oliver Freemans video was very interesting, I like the way he refers to learning from the future, not learning from the past. I think scenario planning is a very important part of our future. The past is the past...