Creativity is not a talent

The #edchat Daily provided me with so many fasinating educations links, and today I stumbled on an old talk by John Cleese on Creativity, worthy of being a TEDX talk. For half an hour I was captivated, found myself laughing in agreement and wondering if I was providing the environment to foster creativity for my own students.

Creativity is not a talent but a way of operating or a mood which allows their natural creativity to surface, these people have learnt to play and play for its own sake. Creativity is unrelated to IQ, everyone can be creative. However creativity is NOT possible in closed mode.

Closed mode is the mode we in most of the time at work. We ar active, and slightly anxious often in an exciting way. We are purposeful and get things done. Open mode in contrast is relaxed, less purposeful, more reflective, and encourages curiosity  In open mode we use humour and are more playful and under less pressure. We can play! The main characteristics of play are it's secludedness and it's limitedness, this sets it aside from daily life.

When we have problems to solve we should operate in an open mode. Yet once we find a solution we need to be able to switch into closed mode to implement and complete it. Both are important but importantly they should be used purposefully at the right time. Turning on the creativity requires setting up the right situation, and John has a recipe for that too. 

To get yourself into open mode you need five things:
Space - Time - Time - Confidence - Humour

Space: create a space away, sealed off from your usual daily areas.
Time: plan for a specific amount of time, an hour and a half weekly is good. 
In your space and time create an oasis of quiet, space and time to play.
Time: give your mind as long as possible to come up with something 
original. Successful creative professionals play with a problem longer, and are prepared to "suffer" the inner discomfort, tension to solve a problem. We often take the easiest route, the first solution. Rather defer the decision until required time, allow yourself pondering time.
Confidence: get rid of fear of making a mistakes and set the scene for the essence of play. While being creative nothing is wrong, always give positives, absolutely no negatives. The Japanese give the first opinion at meetings to the most junior, so they have confidence to talk about what they thought.
Humour: gets us from closed to open mode the fastest!

Creativity is the moment of contact between two separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning. Some ways to encourage it are to deliberately try inventing random connections, and use your intuition to judge it's value. Edward De Bono called it "intermediate impossibles," stepping stone to another idea.

I feel revived, regenerated and ready to set my students up to tap into their creativity, are you? 

Ulearn 2012

This past week I attended my second Ulearn conference where teachers and other professionals get together during their holidays to learn, teach, collaborate, share, network and inspire one another. 

I presented again this year along with my collaborative teachers to share our journey and hopefully inspire others to give it a go.
Abstract: Collaboration is about producing something greater than you can on your own, its output is better or greater than the sum of its parts. As a team of co-teachers we have discovered the benefits of  cooperative and collaborative teaching. In this presentation we will share our experiences of moving from a single teacher directed classroom to a cooperative and collaborative studio where three teachers share guardianship for teaching and learning. We will share our successes and failures, ideas and tools that have aided us on our journey so far, and explore some models and research that guide us.

Keynotes, Breakouts and Tasters

What I love about these conferences is that you see true collaboration being modelled at many levels. 
Twitter: #ulearn12  -  conference participants tweeting teaching and learning gems from a huge range of keynotes, breakouts, presentations, workshops and tasters. 
I won a uTunes voucher for the best tweet that summed up the theme of the conference.

Google Docs: There are so many good events that we miss but collaboration happened on a large scale at Ulearn12 as all Ulearn shared notes are shared and it is easy to get notes from other workshops.
Our school staff all collaborated on one document for all our notes as well. It is wonderful to have collaboration happening as a norm across our whole staff.

Google+ and Hangouts: aside from some workshops covering this, they were very quiet digital spaces.




Some of the keynote and presentations I attended:

Keynote: Dr Jason Ohler - New Media, New Kids - New Literacies, New Citizens

• Be a door opener - be the teacher on the screen in 50 years that inspired greatness
• Everybody has a customised work space - what about customised learning?
• Personalising learning through mobile technology and connectedness.

What is good thinking?  by Mary Anne Mills

• What is the evidence that your students’ achievement is rising now that they are learning thinking skills? 
• She spoke not about strategies but the 7 Dispositions of good thinking. 
• We train kids to ask questions, but do we ourselves good ones ourselves? 
• What are the assumptions they make and how do we unravel them?
• We need creative thinking that is thinking outside the square and we need to provide the right dispositions for them to thrive.

Universal Design for Learning - Lynne Silcock 

• See CAST website for more information.
• Aiming at reaching the students who are not special needs but failing in their learning.
• Autism >1 per 100  -  Hearing = 10/100  -  Dyslexlia = 5?7?10? /100 - ADAH = 2?6?/100?
• How many are special? MoE target the bottom 5% but what about the rest of low achievers?
• The Class (Studio): diversity is valued = greater diversity (range of needs)
• The curriculum is designed for the “average”
• Universal Design for Learning is a approach to learning / a flexible framework
• (designing your curriculum so it meets the needs of more students, especially those ‘under the radar’).
• The big picture: designing your curriculum so it meets the needs of all students using multimodal 

Keynote: Khoa Do 

• Focus on what we have, not what is lacking - be grateful.
• If you get knocked down you have to get back up... Resilience.
• Tell authentic stories.
• There are ways to cross every barrier!
• Knowing your teams weaknesses are better than knowing their strengths

Keynote: Kevin Honeycutt - Collaborate, innovate, educate!

• Record yourself so you can teach collaboratively with yourself (Flipped Learning).
• Kids need us in their digital playground.
• We should be collaborating as a community for kids.
• If we get kids doing great things with technology they won't have time for the bad things.
• Authentic audiences make you a better writer; blog.
• Create - don’t just snack on other people’s brilliance.
• The trick is to help them learn to do it(digital) responsibly and safely.
• Help students manage their devices and not vice versa.
• There is no age limit to learning.
• Work with brain - talk to brains takes away judgement of appearance.
• Don’t wait to be good at something before you try - just do it!

After Kevin's inspiring keynote he happened to end up with us for a tea break. We chatted about our school and how we could connect again in the future. 

Learning to Inquire: Developing curious minds, and deep understandings for a changing global environment by Chic Foote /Helix Consulting 

• http://todaysmeet.com/ULearn1 (like Twiducate) but you can transcrip the discussion  however neither has a widget for embedding.
• Learning IS inquiry - What do we mean by inquiry?
• Being inquirers ourselves help solve the challenges of teaching.
• We don’t have to always teach our students literacy through the same lens
• - Global Competencies Matrix

3 Teachers 3 Classes 1 Vision (The Learning Hub) 

• Started with "what if": create collaboration with single cell classrooms?
• Spaces are important.
• Using wiki/blog to deliver some content.
• Year group (Y2, 5, 6) mix well, special needs kids fit in more easily.
• Students get to mentor / tutor / support each other.
• Classrooms connected with “learning street”.
• Students can work at their stage not age.
• Use one teacher teach other roam / support approach.
• James Nottingham - Challenging Learning (been working with PD) allow kids to wobbly etc solve problems ‘pit’ on own but knowing the there is support 
• I like that they teach the student the vocabulary and concept of ‘the pit’.

Again my brain is bursting with learning, growing, and having fun at Ulearn12, till next time. . .

Google Apps for Education NZ Summit

The Google Apps for Education NZ Summit was held at Albany Senior High School, a fantastic example of high school using spaces to enhance learning. I wish I had been to a high school like that. A few highlights of my day.

Meeting the Google for Education team: makes me want to become a Google Certified Teacher even more. Come to New Zealand Google Certified Teacher programme, please.

Making Magnificent Maps - Jim Sill

Jim showed us around Google Maps and Earth. The distance measurement is a great Maths tool and being able to embed photos and video on maps is potential storytelling.

There are so many possibilities for learning and here are a few I had:

- Draw or overlay school plans on Maps (our property still shows an empty field)

- Create virtual tour of our school.

- Map a year of our school with photos, writing, links to blogs, Docs: a multimedia yearbook. Some mapping tools are Scribble Maps and Google Mapmaker.

I have always struggled with getting workable links out of web album sites like Picasa and Flickr. How ever I learnt how to get the right photo url link for an image in both sites. Just right click on the image and Copy Image URL. Nice.

The rest of the day was interesting but had come expecting to be challenged yet found a lot of the presentations was stuff I knew. I ducked into one informal chat session to ask for help to solve a Site issue that's been bugging me for ages. That header in Sites, I hated not been able to control it. So while waiting I started digging away in the settings and see a shiny new Edit site layout label.

Which gives you the website minus the header and logo. You can also adjust the footer and navigation bars as well. I like it because it give me more room for creativity. 

So a day of learning, great company and as always; I love Google for Education!

Are you Co-teaching or Collaboratively Teaching?

Co- is for?

Co-Teaching
- to teach jointly.  

Co-llaborative Teaching
- to work together with others to create more than one could individually.

According to Cook (2004), co-teaching can be collaborative, although does not need to be. Collaboration usually refers to how individuals interact with each other, not what they are doing. Any activity including co-teaching, may or may not be collaborative.

Co-teaching Rational

• Meets need of individual students
• Provides more individualised instruction
• Opportunity for flexible scheduling
• Can create positive model for social interactions
• Sense of collegial support 

Co-teaching Characteristics

• Two or more teachers shared guardianship and responsibility
• Heterogeneous group of students
• Shared delivery of instruction in some curriculum areas
• Shared physical space - ownership
• Participation based on student need 

Factors to Consider

Every class is different and is community made of many different people with different needs, some factors to consider when selecting a co-teaching approach are:

1. Student characteristics and needs- consider students personality and learning needs
2. Teacher characteristics and needs- consider human nature and personality types
3. Curriculum, including content and instructional strategies- consider the type of content and instructional strategies
4. Pragmatic considerations- consider the setting and spaces

Co-teaching Approaches

One Teach, one observeOne teacher leads while another purposefully observes for specific types of information and together they analyze it.

One Teach, One Drift

One teacher leads the instruction while the others drift, or focus on small groups based on student need. Which can allow for differentiated teaching. It also lends itself to when one teacher has a particular expertise.

Parallel Teaching

Teaching planning is created collaboratively between teachers. The same planning is then taught to half or groups at a time. 

In mixed Year classes it allows for group differentiation by stage not age.

Station Teaching

The lesson content is usually split into various activity stations which students rotate through. Teachers often at one station each to provide scaffolding / teaching, other stations may be independent. We often use during inquiry - content is complex but not hierarchical.

Alternative Teaching

One teacher teaches the main group while the others work with smaller groups to pre-teach, re-teach, supplement, or enrich instruction.

Often used when student mastery of concepts vary largely.

Team Teaching

Teachers plan and teach students, together in a coordinated way. Teacher need good comfortable professional relationships. Instruction becomes conversation or to demonstrate some type of interaction to students.

Co-Teaching to Collaborative

Research indicate that co-teaching, has traditionally been used to provide support for students with mild to moderate disabilities (Sileo, 2003). It also reduces the teacher to student ratio (Friend, 2001). Collaborative Teaching blends the same ratio of teacher to student as a traditional classroom but blended together.

Co-teaching provides a foundation for collaborative teaching; co-teaching = activity (verb) and collaboration = how (adverb). There is no one way for successful collaborative teaching, yet the rational, characteristics and approaches of co-teaching provide a sound foundation to build your team. I would say collaborative teaching requires even more:

•  Supportive caring relationships and open communication between teachers.
•  Honest modeling of collaboration in learning, social and professional lives.
•  Passionate agile teachers who are lifelong learners.
•  Sharing, using, and owning spaces.
•  Shared guardianship, structured responsibilities.
•  Using digital tools to enhance collaboration.

Rule of Three

Stephen Heppell - I have a simple rule of three for third millennium learning spaces.

1. No more than three walls so that space is multifaceted rather than just open.
2. No fewer than three points of focus so that the "stand-and-deliver" model gives way to increasingly varied learning groups.
3. Ability to accommodate three teachers/adults with their children. Larger spaces allow for better alternatives for effective teaching.

Have you had any collaborative teaching experience to share?

References

Cook, L. (2004). Co-Teaching: Principles, Practices, and Pragmatics. Retrieved from http://www.ped.state.nm.us/seo/library/qrtrly.0404.coteaching.lcook.pdf

Friend, M. (2001, February). Co-teaching for general and special educators. Paper presented for Clark County School District, Las Vegas, NV.

Heppell, S. (2004). Stephen Heppell’s rule of three. Retrieved from http://rubble.heppell.net/three/

Sileo, J. M. (2003). Co-teaching: Rationale for best practices. Journal of Asia-Pacific Special Education, 3(1), 17-26.