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Your Students Are Changing: Are you?A GPS for 21st Century Learning and Teaching

By: Najwa Chalabi

Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND

Author contact: najwa.chalabi@tcdsb.orgAuthor Biography: TTeam Leader for Teacher Leadership and Learning Program, an Ontario Ministry of education Initiative. Grade 1, 2, 5 and 6

Teacher at Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). Supervising Principal and Instructor in Charge for International Languages Program at TCDSB. Additional Quali-fication instructor for Special Education Specialist Part III, and Part I and Course Writer for Additional Qualification Special Education course on Autism. Professional Devel-opment Network PDN presenter across the province of Ontario. Special Education/ Multiple Exceptionalities facilitator and promoter of equity and inclusion using technol-ogy and differentiated instruction. Presenter and speaker at various technology con-ferences such as ECOO Educational Computing and Organization of Ontario, Global education Conference, OMLTA Ontario Modern Language Teachers Association, and Special Education conferences such as CEC Council for Exceptional Children. Recipi-ent of TCDSB Exemplary Practice Award and the Ministry of Education’s grant for a self-developed project under the 2007-2008 TLLP (Teacher Leadership and Learning Program). Team Leader for Free The Children organization and an Angel Foundation Ambassador, both Social Justice organizations.

Activity SummaryThis chapter is an attempt to answer the question: “How do we Change with Change?” We come from all over the world with different bags packed with skills, experiences, and cultures. This is about creat-ing awareness in order to start a conversation about Change, to open up the walls of our classrooms, and to visit and invite the virtual realities and communities that have no borders

Class or subject area: General / Primary or Junior Grades - Language/ Science

Grade level(s): Any Grade level

Specific learning objectives:• Research about the why, what and how do we change.• Reality about how grade 5 /6 students used technology and how grade 1/2 went global with their

learning.

Introductory Research “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelli-gent, but the ones most responsive to change” ~ Charles Darwin.Looking at this quote, picture and diagram I ask: what does it

tell us, what does the word Change mean? What is it that is changing? Think of the 5W’s of change; this picture says it all: wherever change is hap-pening, one way or another there is the ripple effect of change on each one of us. No matter where we are in the world the effect of change will reach us. This is what inspired me to re-search and write about: the need for change using the 5W and 4+ 1 dimensions of change.

Why do I need to change? What do I change? Who is going to follow up with the change? How do we sustain change? Where and when do I start the change? Our students are changing continuously, tools, curriculum, technology, society, and expectations of teach-ing and learning are in the process of changing. The face of our cities is changing. We need to redesign the way we learn and this requires us to start thinking about global learning beyond the walls of the classroom that we hang student’s work on. This also requires us to start thinking about the change in relation to students’ skills more than content and core areas, and rather to extend our knowledge in a global way. How are students trans-forming this knowledge and leaning to be ready for the coming 15- 20 years from now, and how is their education now prepar-ing them to be ready for tomorrow?Workforce statistics spells out Change. More demand exists for skilled people, and the gap is in-creasing between educated and less educated; the percentage of non-graduating students makes us wonder about where are they going to in society? What kind of skills are they acquiring to help them succeed in life?

Change is not an overnight process. This quote “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” -- Alvin Toffler. It is not the 3R’s (Reading, Writing and ‘Rithmatic) only that we are learning in the 21st century. It is the 3 R’s and 7 C’s of skills that include communication, cooperation, competition, collaboration, computation, which are needed in this teaching learning process for all kinds of career and life skills.

Think about the question if the change process is a linear or cyclical process? It is both, as we need to learn and unlearn to allow us to relearn, look back and relearn. We need to gradually teach that process and keep in mind the goals of learning and unlearning and break it down into phases.

Phase I and Phase II: start with phase I creating awareness, looking on how can we learn and un-learn, move on to phase II after understanding the need to promote the change as a learning commu-nity and not be alone on the highway of change so that we can develop, sustain the change and have the adaptation to go on with this framework.. Along the journey there are many road blocks. That is expected and at times, is needed so that we can end up in a world that accepts the road blocks an move along with them in order to bridge the gap between the skilled and the unskilled.

Another question to ask is: What’s in the 21st century toolbox? If we are to look at and collect tools for the toolbox of the 21st century teaching and learning we see in the middle, at the center is the coresubjects, the essence of teaching and I do not give it away; included also is information technology and the ability to go globally. Trying to master that and the skills needed in 21st century is absolutely challenging.

If we have these skills in the tool box, we will not fall in the trap of the big picture of assessment, which brings us to other questions about Change. Are we assessing content or are we assessing skills? We think we are assessing both; thinking and understanding assessment and defining successcriteria for the learning goals tend to be easy. The hard part is to assess “the” skills, which at times, is done in an incomplete way. It is then, when we change our assessments and look at the skills, that we will be using assessment in 21st century. We need to keep the radar of education on and think about whether our students are asking the right questions. Are we providing them with the learning platform to ask the right questions? What is it that they are learning about? So all these are pointsthat need to come on our radar of education and this is challenging, as change is challenging but how far can we go? We really need to think if we are helping students select the right vocabulary to askthe right questions so that they can learn skills we want them to learn.

Footprints of the GPS (Guide, Perform, Succeed)All during this journey we need to keep our GPS of the 21st Century Education on, so that we can help students to perform and succeed.

The “G” in GuideTo highlight few elements of my vision of the 21st century, I look at a SMART way of teaching and learning. First and utmost is to reach the students, their profile: what are their strengths and weak-nesses? What baggage do they bring with them to class? Are there any special needs or interests? How do I use Differentiated Instructions? We have more tools to digest and many tools to use to help us filter out the education of students and funnel through the skills needed.

The questions about “when and what” to change and where do we go, is up to each one of us. “For any given organization, the important questions are “When will the change happen?” and “What will change?” The only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing.” --Clay Shirky. As the quote says, it does not matter when and what. The important thing is not to rule out Change.

There will be subsets of the challenges not only one. If we start at the heart of that with inclusion as the focus, we write the IEP (Individual Education Plan) and try to accommodate and modify, but this is not reality. Life is not accommodating, so we need to ride the wave and face the challenge, spell it out from the beginning, and arm and empower students with ways to face these challenges. We can include the Assis-tive Technology for Special Needs and Special Education students to give them a level of independence; but we need to look at evidence based learning - how do they learn, what they can do with their learning- in order to make our pro-gramming effective. By doing that we can achieve Universal Design Learning and hence we won’t need that many modifications in the program. We will educate all student, including special education students and reach out globally to other students to talk about what challenges others might have, as each country has its own challenges: be it environmental, eco-nomical, social, socioeconomic, or digital, and create a class room without walls and a world without borders.

I am inspired by Will Richardson’s thoughts about the fact that this is a “Challenging time for educa-tors.” It is a challenging time in this profession. Our students are leading us; the notion of privacy is shifting. It is not about doing your work by yourself. It is not anymore an attendance list but rather who is logged on; our current curricula are becoming less and less relevant to students. We are still using a curriculum that we inherited many years ago. It is a script written for a movie that no one is watch-

ing, so it is time to rewrite the script.

Think of these times as the flow of information age, where the amount of information is infinite and overwhelming. We can get content at the click of the mouse. It is not about what information and where do I get it from; it is about what do I do with this information, how do I screen it to use it ef-fectively. Change is very quick. The pace of change is light speed; we can barely keep up with the change. This is a time where we can access Change at different levels. That is why we need to challenge ourselves to create, map, define and walk the path to different access levels for information so that we can draw and follow the road map to Change. We are becoming hyper connected, news is flowing in our hands every minute, we are moving from “anywhere, anytime” to “everywhere, all the time” concept.

Our idea of presence is changing i.e. login name we are all present in one screen, in cyber space. The dynamics change since we are connected and reaching out to people that we can’t interpret theirbody language. So our job is to facilitate student learning, not only to teach them but try not to block their learning and rather harness them with tools and technology that allow them to better learn in-stead of teach because our time is limited. Standardized testing still emphasize content, even though they are used as tools for School Effectiveness Framework, they are still emphasizing content. It is the one or two questions that do not emphasize content that students are failing in. We must ask our-selves why? What kind of skills do they need to bridge that gap in their achievement? This is a call for the need for Change.

The “P” in PerformPerform is another footprint on the GPS of Change. The challenges of the web are another branch that we need to climb on our journey. I share what Will Richardson mention that the web is challenging our approaches to how we learn, our assumptions about information, knowledge and lit-eracy, and about classroom and teaching. We educators enter the classroom with biases and will as-sess students with our own biases. These assumptions that we have need to be reviewed, rethought, re-learnt and revisited to allow Change to seep in. When we think that our students are using theweb, they are not to use it only for research to collect information but rather to read, write, publish and share their information and product.

The path that we take need to have a Vision at the center. We are to leverage technology. It is not the number of computers that we have which will help us learn, it is how we use technology to em-power students. This is where we stop and ask: what do I need to unlearn and relearn? It is about the students’ future that they are going to use this learning in 5, 10, 15 years from now, which is a whole new and different world. Guide them with tools that help them to survive. It is all about change of culture and the process of having that vision in mind.

If we go back to the 4 W’s or 5 WH, the Who question that Allen No-vember has asked before was “Who owns the learning?” I believe this is about trying to reach the balance in education between the teacher’s teaching and student’s capacity. Let’s just remember that twenty two years of content is shoved into thirteen years of school.

The “S” in SucceedA quick journey of my Grade 5/6 students demonstrates the Success pit stop on the GPS of learning. It also demonstrates that it is not only the

quantity and need of technology, but the quality and how we utilize that. With one laptop we man-aged to leverage technology. An example will be the use of our school board e-class safe site where students and parents were able to access. I created a course shell to do Literature Circles as another approach for Novel Study. We constructed our learning goals and success criteria as a class, and I directed students into some ideas, instruction, and links to use within a safe environment.

This was a unique, exciting and an experiential way of learning. Announcements were communi-cated through the announcement board where students’ learning was alive on-line, discussion boards provided students with constructive and immediate feedback. They co-constructed their learning and learnt about 12 novels instead of one novel only. They were asked to respond to two peers, which allowed them to practice and exercise self and peer evaluation and learnt about what constructive feedback is. When we look at other people’s work, and when we share on Smart Board, these are live exemplars that students were experiencing, co-learning and were inspired from each other. It helped them to transform rather than only transfer the knowledge. They left a legacy.

“Flipping” The “S” in SucceedThis year I extended the learning beyond e-class, by taking the learning global and joining the Inter-national Education and Resource Network, iEarn, through their learning circles of ten schools working on different projects. We created a framework to work on various curriculum subjects, to receive and send information to other schools then consolidate our work with the work received from others. It is an exciting and creative way of constructing learning, collaborating, co-learning, giving feedback, and co-teaching. The educational benefits of these learning tasks were to have students act as editors hard at work. The work in progress process played a critical role in motivating students to learn, to organize and to evaluate pieces of work received from other students and countries. It also exposed students to other cultures, social justice issues and interests and challenges that other countries deal with. Students became authors and publishers of their own learning.

On the following page you will go on a Gallery walk on 21st century street where learning is on any screen rather than one school wall. Sample of stu-dents’ work like Food, Sports, Parent projects are shared below through the links to view, learn from and participate in. The projects unfold slowly for students who might have asked “What’s in it for me?” One common answer is that it gave students a purpose for writing and taught them skills in reviewing, organizing, synthesizing, evaluating, and arranging information. It also opened doors on how to share an idea using various ways of communication and social media such as Blended Learning, Blogs and Wikis. One of the schools abroad requested to have student ex-change and come visit our school for 2-3 weeks to witness “A Day in the Life of…” This is what Global learning is about.

The TransitionChange is all about transitions, about acceptance, about planning and starting early, by building a strong network around the student and the learner, by developing plans that connect with the transit-ing goals towards change, all done by having support network in the community along the way. The message is to empower students with skills to help them earn their learning and be able to decide about their future, to have a global outlook that helps them be ready for the chal-lenges and opportunities in the world. Your students are changing, are you? Students need to develop their net-work and go out and publish their ideas and work. This is not something that happens overnight. It is a one step at a time approach. We start by guiding “G”, then releasing the responsibilities of learning gradually “P”, and facilitating learning in order to allow students to perform and succeed “S”.

Along the process one must not forget the cultural discon-nect. If we research people about the best way they like to learn the number one answer will be in a group not alone. It is a code for us educators. The number two is by doing; so give them the opportunity to master their own learning, and number four is technology use.

Let’s bring research into reality. It is all about having the e-readiness so that we can synchronize the information we have and hear the call and need to “re-engineer curriculum-delivery” as Allen November called it, in order to motivate students and ourselves to work into such projects and allow

us to outreach other classes and students and work together.

The framework to use is up to us and to what we need to do with our teaching and learning. The important thing is to do less teaching, more facilitation, and more student directed discoveries of learning. The pillars of change framework, considers at the heart of it, the context programming. It is more about context than content. Content is everywhere em-braced with assessing students and schools, boards, teach-ers and classroom to work as professional learning commu-nities and not stand alone.

Pit Stops in the Context of ChangeContext is best expressed through this quote of punc-tuation. It is all about where to put the comma. Context is powerful: how we read things and look at things. This is what we need have as the culture of learning need to be changing.

Another pit stop is differentiating instruction DI. It is another twist but DI and cooperative learning need to be looked at under the umbrella of 21st century skills. It

is about rebalancing education whereby there will be less teacher directed teaching and grouping and more student directed learning, where they can lead their own and tip over the balance of redirection. This does not imply the teachers’ job is on hold but rather it is changed to be the facilitator and the guide to students who will be empowered and learn critical thinking skills and problem solving to find the elements needed for learning.

The backward design of learning cycle allows us to move on to the next pit stop of education, where we

are flipping evaluation to the end of the line rather than having it front and center, and not teaching to the test. In this diagram we see that at the end of the arrow is evalu-ation; planning will be at the start, where powerful in-struction can help achieve discovery and evidence based learning. The cycle is about students discovering their learning, assessing, constructing feedback with different levels of accessing curriculum. We need to move from the individual teaching levels to the global education so that we can support, expose and share the learning.

Conclusion

This article is a call to swing our arms and grab the change so that no teacher and no student are left behind. We need student based lessons to join the 21st century teaching and learning. We need to have: that courageous conversation, the awareness of technology, what to unlearn, and finally to open the stage to learn more with others and about others.

Tickle your mind with any of these ideas. The path is made by walking so let’s walk it together. Try to venture the path for this journey. It starts with small steps, along which more nurturing

will allow an idea to flourish and help cross the road blocks on the way

And remember to be sure to use the GPS of the 21st century and it will steer you in the right direc-tion

ReferencesWill Richardson Videos• How will you teach me in the 21st century.mp4• 21st Century Learning in 3 Steps the 3 C’s: competition, cooperation & collaboration videos• Will Richardson on 21st Century Learning.3gp• The Shift: Weave into…the Web videos\Read_Write Web with Will Richardson Pt1.mp4

Computer Chronicles Learning Circle http://www.iearn.org/circles/lcguide/cc/cc.html#writing

Wiki- Sharing the learning http://computerchroniclesfall2011.wikispaces.com/Projects