Future Learning Blog

If you have used chatGPT before, it can sometimes feel like talking with someone who has done too much of their 'research on Facebook', filling in gaps with random facts marginally related to the topic just so they can respond and keep the conversation going. However, if applied or 'prompted' correctly, with the user utterly aware of the limitations and ethical considerations, chatGPT can be a helpful research assistant. There is already a wide range of tools available that are built on chatGPT that can support many of the things described below; however, I am still a bit hesitant to rush in with most of them being 'freemium' or asking you to upload your own research and other details or data into their database, I'm happy to stick with the open version of chatGPT as it is what our students have access to. The following guide highlights some prompts, some follow-up questions and most importantly, what you need to do next to follow up and build your knowledg...

Where is external assessment going, and who are we thinking of when we are deciding the future of assessment beyond 2020.   This picture is the actual view I was confronted with, walking into our local community college gym, aged 16.  A place where we had played volleyball, netball and cricket was now being used to measure how much we knew about the things we had spent our school lives practically doing inside this hall, to see if I could pass GCSE PE.  It is now clearly ironic the amount of time that we spent actively exerting ourselves and demonstrating competency in the ‘doing’ of the skill was now going to be measured by writing down everything we knew about it in 2hrs to double check we knew what we were supposed to know.  The previous 24hrs before this vista had seen me cramming the information written on tiny ‘flash cards’ into my short term memory, even up to the walk down the corridor to find my seat I was memorising the diagrams I had drawn about ...

Here are some of my personal reflections of the response to our findings in a recent piece of work.  This research originally examined if and how collaboration has disrupted practice.  It was submitted to the CORE Education Research and Inquiry Symposium at ULearn 2016.   Lynley Schofield and myself are postgrad facilitators at The Mind Lab by Unitec and were intrigued by the disruptive potential of cross sector collaboration.   The Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative learning) is a disruptive enabler, designed to bring teachers together to take part in constructive discourse and tangible collaboration through applied assessments.  As we have developed and refined the course over 2 years and with 1700 educators we have enabled more collaborative assessments and discussion time, and heard less deficit theorising with educators blaming other teachers for their perceived shortcomings in learners from other schools. ...

Some excellent news which was recently in The Gisborne Herald... The Mind Lab by Unitec in Gisborne has been successful in applying for the Curious Minds funding from MBIE - The Lab was awarded $26,000 to engage more young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The funding will be used to create and support Te Wānanga Whakawhānui at The Mind Lab, young people between the ages of 7-18 will be able to apply to be a part of the academy which will be developing the bright young minds in Tairāwhiti.  When learners are part of the academy they will attend afterschool and weekend workshops at The Mind Lab for a gold coin koha - usually these workshops range between $130-$150 for 5-6 sessions, this cost has been subsidised by the funding.  The workshops will be in computer coding, electronics with Arduino, web-design, app development, 3D printing and design.   The Mind Lab already has financial subsidies from The Eastland Community Trust and ...

Graduates of our March 2015 intake Last week was a special week for The Mind Lab by Unitec in Gisborne, not only did we discover that we had been successful in our application for funding from the MBIE to support further equitable access to The Mind Lab , but we also had the chance to celebrate the success of our first 32 graduates on our local Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice of Digital and Collaborative learning . This cohort was an extremely courageous group of early adopters and innovators who dove headfirst into the unknown, these were the first teachers in Gisborne to gain this achievement and they have paved the way for many educators to follow in their footsteps.  They made many sacrifices along the way to gaining the qualification, and in order for them to do this they had tremendous support from whanau and loved ones, as well as their schools and students.  I know all of them stepped out of their comfort zones to make a difference to the learne...

Image from  Geof Wilson This  is a recent opinion piece that I wrote in the Gisborne Herald, although some of the points are 'sensationalised' I am aiming to mobilise community support to consider how important education is and how everyone should be involved in reimagining this in Gisborne.  The children we have here are amazing, we only have to help them prove it.

Several years ago I adopted a flipped approach to learning in PE as we were short on devices and technology in our classroom, we were known as a 1:1 iPad school, one iPad in one school!  As a class we were aiming to move to a more digital environment but didn’t have the equipment, so the obvious choice was to move to a flipped model.  I was happy to find out that most (65 out of 70) students had access to computers and the internet at home.  Special arrangements were made for the learners who did not have access like loan devices, and access to school devices during and after school. Several years on and educators are still talking about flipping the classroom and it was our topic at The Mind Lab this week, there was some great discussion around the concept and different ways it could be implemented effectively - so I thought I would re-visit again.  The idea behind a flipped model of education is that much of the content is covered outside of the classroom thr...

Here is an interview from Radio New Zealand National where I had the opportunity to talk about how The Mind Lab by Unitec can be the catalyst in transformational change in our district.  The Eastland Community Trust and Activate Tairawhiti have been instrumental in allowing amazing opportunities for all of our learners, students and teachers through access to emerging technologies and hands-on learning experiences. From RNZ national... "Tablets, smart phones, applications, animation and building games like Minecraft are ubiquitous in households..... but how do teachers get to grips with emerging technologies and ensure they are used to enhance learning in the classroom? The Mind Lab by Unitec is running post-graduate courses for teachers to learn to make the most of the digital age through learning opportunities in Auckland, Gisborne, Wellington and Christchurch. Tim Gander is the Centre Director for the Gisborne Lab."

Here is a recent piece I wrote for PENZ about innovation in physical education, but it could be adapted to any subject area, AR is an area which can be applied in an interdisciplinary way.  These ideas are inspired by some of the areas we work on at The Mind Lab by Unitec . My son with an Augmented Reality book. 'When a woman becomes pregnant her breasts augment, they increase in value, and usually size, due to the impending birth and need for sustenance for the new born child. Therefore when something is augmented it has a useful function added to it, and in the instance of augmented reality we are attempting to add value to real life.  I was wondering if this was an inappropriate way to introduce augmented reality, but since we are all PE/Health educators I feel we have a good understanding of the scientific uses of the human body in describing something! Augmented reality (AR) along with virtual reality (VR) are two rapidly evolving disruptive technologies that have ...

Last year I spent plenty of time thinking and reflecting about my own practice as a classroom teacher - I developed a need to question everything I was doing - you could attribute this to the action research process, but also the necessity to understand why I was even in a classroom with other humans trying to teach them - whatever that entails, I was challenging myself with questions around what learning, knowledge or even teaching was - and why were we spending so much time doing whatever we were doing for around 8000 hours ? I had started thinking about this again as I watched an EdTalk that had just been released that was filmed during the whirlwind which was ULearn 2014.  The talk was about the learner agency work I had been focussed on, this again rekindled my ideas around the term and questioned my understanding of agency, and how I was supporting the concept in my teaching.  I feel I need to revisit this again after watching myself talk so enthusiastically abou...

It was devastating to miss out on winning the Gigatown competition by 0.2%, especially as this was due to a social media element which Gisborne was completely disadvantaged in due to our smaller population compared to Dunedin (the overall winner).  It was even more frustrating to hear that our 'plan for success' was a clear winner with all judges agreeing that it was the strongest proposal.  I believe the investment that Chorus and many other companies would have put into our region had the potential for the most radical transformation out of all of the final contenders. The discussions that arose from all the hard work that so many people in the Gisborne community invested in have recently come back into the limelight as a steering group has been formed to action many of the ideas proposed in our original plan, this is extremely exciting as the momentum that was built around the competition bought together large groups of people from different sectors that would not hav...

This video is a summary of the work I have done around learner agency this year as part of my  +CORE Education Limited  eFellowship.  It has been an amazing year and I have had several opportunities to talk about my research, I recently returned from the #PENZ inspired leaders conference where I presented on the research panel, it was rewarding to know there were other people who were interested in what I was doing as this was a topic I chose through seeing a gap in what was known about how we could change education in traditional settings to fit a more agentic approach - there is plenty written, tweeted and blogged about around what is happening in new innovative institutions (which is great) but it can get disheartening for people who teach in schools that are not so dynamic and set up for modern learning practices. This whole process has been amazingly valuable for my students and myself, hopefully it can also be constructive for others in similar situations...

In this second instalment of the adventure Han Solo, Chewie, Luke and the droids have escaped Tatowiine and are embarking on a mission to Aldaraan to rescue Princess Leia….to keep in with the monomyth plot we are now entering the road of trials, where things will test us and many challenges await.  To read the first part of the adventure have a look at this post . This is how my brain works when I’m mapping out what has happened this year….Illustration: Andrew DeGraff  This enquiry has been a cyclical process, and at this stage as a class we have been successful in co-constructing agency, investigating metacognition, and exploring how we learn as a class - but as on

These are some of the thoughts floating around in my head on the flight home, a roaring cold southerly pushing the tiny plane and my big ideas back up to Gisborne…...The past e-fellows experience in Wellington has been a challenge, however - at this point in time I don’t feel as mentally or physically drained as on previous e-fellow trips,  we had plenty of time to synthesise our inquiry’s at the amazing beach front house we called home for 3 days.   In this trip I grappled with what true agency meant, and rolled between the notions of freedom of thought, choice and direction and the underlying aspects of effectiveness, efficiency and academic rigour - and how agency has a part to play in all of these - and is true agency ever obtainable, or is it as elusive as the green flash at that moment where the sun sinks into the ocean beside Kapiti island? This all melded together into a timely reinforcement of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how that can relate to ...

Māori pedagogical frameworks & relationship with technology tools This post is an excerpt from a project I have been working on lately, if you'd like to have a browse through the full resource have a look at this site .  The overall findings confirm that the approach to inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogy starts with relationships, and getting to know the learners - this is applicable in all teaching and learning situations and not uniquely with Māori ākonga - eLearning can be used in a way to collaborate with community and connect learners to their past, present and future places in society. While there is no specific pedagogical model to support eLearning and no pedagogical model specifically for Māori it is possible to interweave many of the unique components of both to support successful outcomes (figure 1.1). A large amount of research has been completed to identify the unique components of kaupapa Māori for successful learning and eLearning. This post i...

In my CORE Education e-fellowship this year I have been investigating learner agency, this blog post summarises the first steps I took during term one on my ongoing journey to enlightenment (I’m still not there yet).  I have employed an action research method for the investigation, and to help unfold the narrative of my experiences I’m going to use Joseph Campbell's traditional 'monomyth' outline as it fits well with the developments and cycles in this research process; this blog post is the introduction, the first part of the story where everyone is just milling about and life is carrying on as normal, but then something disrupts the status quo and there is no turning back.   To contextualise the media reference further, it is a bit like when Luke Skywalker is on Tatooine staying with uncle Owen and aunt Beru wishing he was somewhere else, he find’s a message in R2-D2 with Old Ben (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and before he knows it he is jumping on the Millennium falcon with Han Solo...

Poke-a-muscle and whack-a-bone are two really fun web apps that refresh understanding of human anatomy.  I'm using them today in my lesson and getting the boys to screen grab their best score and post it to our Google+ community to encourage some healthy competition between the students.  I finished the lesson off with a collaborative problem solving activity that I found on the TES website which asks the students to match up statements about functions of the skeleton !

This is another excellent tool that has been created by New Visions Cloud Lab , and  +Andrew Stillman  in particular.  I read about this in the GEG NZ group and was perfect timing as I was just about to launch into using Google sites as a way for my Tu Tane students to record their journey towards becoming a good man. I wanted each student to have their own site to use, and for me to be able to check on the sites and any edits or additions from a central location - siteMaestro allows you to do this and it isn't that tricky to set up, all you need is a site that you'd like the students to use, and a list of their email addresses!  It's so easy I made a video of it below.  The link to the site to install the Add-on is here . Overall I think it is a brilliant management tool when allowing students the power of using collaborative sites in their own learning journey.

Last year I was inspired by +Sonya Van Schaijik  to organise a TeachmeetNZ event with other physical education teachers in NZ, and managed to connect with  +Libby Schumacher-Knight   +Aaron Mead  and  +Julia breen  through a Google+ hangout.  The idea was to share some ideas around how we were going to integrate e-learning into our PE teaching the following year, it was a great learning experience and we managed to stream the event live at the Physical Education NZ conference in Auckland, which made it even more worthwhile!  During the 'hangout' we presented our ideas, one of my ideas was to use Google+ communities to allow students to connect and support each other on a platform they were familiar with, as well as using it as a tool to teach digital citizenship and digital literacies - I wrote briefly about the outline of the community on a previous blog post . Part of Google+ is the' hangout' function, this is a video conferencing/mes...

                                                        Leaving Poverty Bay It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from the second 2014 e-fellow experience of the year.  Christchurch was our destination, a place I’ve not visited for 15 years since I toured around the country in a 1981 Mitsubishi Mirage with surfboards on the roof, a tent in the back and not a care in the world.  Plenty has changed since then and I was astonished by the level of disruption, hardship and destruction still felt by the earthquakes back in 2010 and 2011.  However I was really amazed by the level of good old kiwi ingenuity and positive outlook that allowed the residents of Christchurch to continue on and rebuild their city.  Learning communities like the GCSN have really supported the rebuild in the educational sector by connecting sch...