“Helping Humanity with Deep Learning” was a sentence that stuck with me since I was exploring this material about Deep Learning by Michael Fullan and his partners.
Image abstract from the video of the lecture of Michael Fullan.
Thinking about the aspect “Life and learning merge” from “Deep learning”, I could give a clear example from my classroom teaching practice.
One example of entrepreneurship and taking action in the real-life was:
Greeting cards to create and to sell as a fundraising plan.
This is a great example of creativity the way how the 3rd Graders explored based on the star structure, to create a snowflake or a winter celebration ornament, for their cards.
I often support student agencies, and lately, the children took an initiative to create greeting cards, crafts, and other artworks for sale to make a fundraising event at our school for “The Angel Tree”. This is a direct example of how the children think beyond the classroom and apply in real life the skills that they achieved to take action.
Traffic signs for our biking paths at our school
Another collaborative plan is for the next unit of G1 about “How the world works?” and particularly transportation. Because the children at our school love to ride a bike and they have restricted areas, they made a petition to the school principal where they would like to ride the bike in a wider area and it was approved. We decided together for our safety we need to create “Traffic Signs” where we should stop, park, bike, turn left or right, forbidden, etc. We would like to create those signs during the Art Class. The signs will be in real size and we hope to integrate them at the playground at our school in the near future after we will finish the project.
Planning a Museum at our school.
Another idea was to create a museum at our school. The children and we were frustrated that we cannot go on field trips and we thought why not create a museum at our school where different classes could visit and explore the different collections and the travel idea to a museum.
This would be a bigger collaboration project with different classes (EY2, KG, G1, G3) which takes more time and preparation for making a successful project. We thought about how can we integrate technology at this young age with the interactive idea of museum exploration. We came with the idea of how to use a special app where they can choose the picture of a highlighted piece and they could receive a voice message about what is that object about. This would be a good challenge for “Communication” and “Critical thinking” as a concept as well.
Talking about communication, we might like to create some emojis cards to help to express our feeling and communicate better with each other. Especially for the lower elementary students that might help very much in the future.
Thinking about character education, we revised the profile learners two years ago and we created new banners based on our original artworks from different students across the elementary school during the art class. This was a school-wide collaboration project and the original ideas of our little citizens are printed on the big banners and seen by everyone around the school.
A wonderful example of creativity:
Last week we created with students from Kindergarten racing tracks and racing cars. First, they learn the letter “R” in their classroom, and afterward, they drew with oil pastels the racing car tour and other details around.
We were applying the scientific approach of an explorer, thinker and tried to explain to us how the forces work and how could we express that speed and motion on a racing track.
To resume from Michael Fullan some of his main concepts are the:
Impressive 6C
- Skim Chapters 1 + 2 of A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning (source)
Deep Learning
“The goals of deep learning are that students will gain the competencies and dispositions that will prepare them to be creative, connected, and collaborative life-long problem solvers and to be healthy, holistic human beings who not only contribute to but also create the common good in today’s knowledge-based, creative, interdependent world.”
What are the New Pedagogies?
- New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (video)
“New pedagogies are a new model of learning partnerships between and among students and teachers, aiming towards deep learning goals and enabled by pervasive digital access. Most instructional elements of the new pedagogies are not ‘new’ teaching strategies, although we would say that active learning partnerships with students are new.”
Old pedagogies style-based only on the ability to deliver content in a subject.
“New Pedagogies”
“The foundation of teacher quality is pedagogical capacity – teachers’ repertoire of teaching strategies and the ability to form partnerships with students”
“The explicit aim is deep learning that goes beyond the mastery of existing content knowledge. Here, deep learning is defined as ‘creating and using new knowledge in the world.’
- * Technology has unleashed learning, and the potential for students to apply knowledge in the world outside of school; new pedagogies leverage all of this in the formal learning process. •Teaching shifts from focusing on covering all required content to focusing on the learning process, developing students’ ability to lead their own learning and to do things with their learning.
- *Teachers are partners with students in deep learning tasks characterised by exploration, connectedness and broader, real-world purposes.
- • Learning outcomes are measured in terms of students’
- * 1) capacities to build new knowledge and to lead their own learning effectively,
- * 2) proactive dispositions and their abilities to persevere through challenges, and
- * 3) the development of citizens who are life-long learners”
Why?/ New models
“Today, our economies are shifting.”
The new models are ones of
- learning and innovation
- entrepreneurship
- creativity
- global collaboration.
A wonderful experience of global collaboration was our final project inspired by Halloween created with Cindy(Vietnam) and Melanie(Jeju Island) my COETAIL colleagues, when we planned our unit together we taught and we exchange opinions and got reflections from each other. Please see the final project of Course3.
“These factors are combining to establish groundbreaking conditions for deep learning to take off on a massive scale”. Michael Fullman
In New Pedagogies “New Change Leadership” is very important.
New Change Leadership
“They cultivate social capital and leadership,
not only among other leaders but also
* among students,
* teachers,
*parents
*and the broader community of stakeholders, making everyone a participant in the new learning.
They use ubiquitous access to technology to enable and accelerate all these things, and they keep learning at the forefront of all digital strategies. “
“Many current curriculum standards, alongside standardized assessments that primarily measure content reproduction, are the greatest barriers to the widespread adoption of new pedagogies”
New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (long video)
Essential Question(s)
- How might human connections make deep learning possible?
“Everyone becomes a teacher in the new pedagogies, and everyone becomes a learner.”
Sometimes when I teach origami classes, some students amazed me with higher skills in folding origami of new creations. Then I tried to take the place in the classroom as a student and to give the agency to that person to teach their peers new skills in origami. Like this children feel more empowered and share knowledge with confidence with their community. Then I become a learner and my student become a teacher.
Why?
Goal- “Ultimately, these pedagogies foster a new kind of learning that is more engaging and more connected to real life and that better prepares young people for life and work in today’s world.”
- How might the classroom/school environment impact learn partnerships?
Learning in Partnership
“Effective partnering is built on principles of equity, transparency, reciprocal accountability and mutual benefit”
Learning to learn and Peer Tutoring
“Learning to learn, where students become meta-cognitive observers of their own and others’ learning processes, is a fundamental goal in the new pedagogies. ”
Learning to learn requires that
- students begin to define their own learning goals and success criteria;
- monitor their own learning;
- critically examine their own work;
- incorporate feedback from peers, teachers, parents, or simply other people in general;
- and use all of this to deepen their awareness of how they function in the learning process.
Peer Tutoring
- students teach their peers and their teachers are, in our view, a powerful vehicle to assist students in developing awareness and mastery of the learning process.
- peer tutoring requires that students become involved in the process of defining learning goals, providing assessment criteria, and so forth.
The repertoire of new pedagogical strategies in new pedagogy from teachers.
“Project-based learning through direct instruction to an inquiry-based model.
But the key is that the teacher takes a highly proactive role in driving the learning process forward, using whichever strategy works for a specific student or task (and analyzing which strategy works best). In the new pedagogies, this means interacting with students to make the students’ thinking and questions about learning more visible.”
The New Pedagogies – Learning Partnerships
How new pedagogies work in practice?
“1. New learning partnerships between and among students and teachers.
2. Deep learning tasks that re-structure the learning process towards knowledge creation and purposeful use.
3. Digital tools and resources that enable and accelerate the process of deep learning.”
“Students today want to be actively engaged, they want to determine the path of their own learning, chart their own learning journeys. Technology tools have exploded the way they interact with the world around them, and it’s changed how they want to be in the classroom. ” Pauline Roberts, 5th and 6th Grade Teacher, Michigan, USA
Strategies of Learning in New Pedagogy- The Teacher as an Activator
New Pedagogy Teachers are those teachers who play dynamic, interactive roles with students.
How?
- pushing students to clearly define their own learning goals,
- helping them gain the learning muscle to effectively pursue those goals
- supporting them in monitoring how they are doing in achieving those goals
- helping them gain the learning muscle to effectively pursue those goals, and supporting them in monitoring how they are doing in achieving those goals
- help them master the difficult and demanding process of learning.
New System Economics
“We share a body of evidence that suggests how the new pedagogies model, when implemented effectively, can lead to dramatic breakthroughs in learning outcomes. We outline the economic and policy realignments needed to achieve this. Ultimately, the new pedagogies deliver because they provide greater overall value for societies’ investment in education.
They develop the
* learning capacities,
*creative experiences, and,
*‘know-how’
our young people need to gain a solid foothold in the onward trek through life and work in today’s world.”
Here is an important take on, a summary of tips for your teaching for the emerging roles of teachers and learners.
How do you apply the new pedagogies concepts in your teaching practice?
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by Garr Raynolds
An Antarctic meteorite
slice, thinner than a
human hair,
is lit up by polarized
light for analysis.
Smithsonian image.
