Future Learning Blog

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 ...