Codifying Educational Language - Passing it on...

I dread preparing lesson plans. Yet, it's an important step to verbalise the contextualisation of learning to unique audiences. With different batches of learners with disparate learning needs, barriers to learning, learning styles, socio-economical background etc., one could imagine the countless number of lesson plans that would be churned out to support all the learning! Think about this - how wonderful and efficient it would be to be able to share and re-use all these lesson plans without having to modify them heavily for adaptation?

Unfortunately, a lesson plan is no more than a record of the type and sequence of learning activities that occur in a classroom. This could not be readily replicated to other learner groups and even if replicated, the outcomes may not be reproducible as well. Faced with all the variables, how could we then, formulate a common educational language for sharing as most importantly, for educators to be able to re-use and apply the learning activities and the underpinning pedagogies almost instantaneously and effectively?

The answer could be found in Learning Design. Last year, an assembly of learning design experts congregate at Larnaca, Cyprus to collectively concur and produce the 'Larnaca Declaration', a super-long piece of document aimed at defining the crux of Learning Design and on the explicit manifestation of a common and definitive set of 'educational notation' to guide Learning Design and most importantly, to ensure that the design products are poliferated with ease. I briefly skimmed through the document and what really stopped me in my track was the use of music notation as an analogy to suggest the need for development of a similar language to guide the codifcation of implicit knowledge of how teachers teach, the types of actvities chosen, how learners learn etc. and the genrational transfer of such knowledge. I am in full agreement with this sophisicated idea though I do acknowledge that this is an arduous task. 

The document went on to expound the use of LAMS as an effective Learning Design Software system to attempt to capture and make explicit the learning activities and its associated pedagogical approaches. I won't talk about IMS or EML for now but using a LAMS for learning design work enables the user to appreciate the entire architectural flow of design decisions, sequencing and control of learning activities etc. In other words, the system helps one to think aloud a learning design concept. In contrast, a LMS merely serves as a repository where learning activities and resources are simply "parked" and confined to individual classes with minimal opportunities for replication. Will, one could argue that most modern LMS boast the capability of replicating course templates, but really, the course template does not really exhibit any trace of learning design. For instance, learners could easily access all the learning activities such as viewing course lectures, partipating in forum discussions etc. ALL AT THE SAME TIME and hence, there doesn't seem to be a need for extensive design in the course learning. 

I'm not sure if the Larnaca makes mention of this, but in my opinion, I thought that we should also leverage on knowledge management principles, techniques and tools as well to help establish some form of data semantics in the course of harvesting learning design outputs.

Whatever the case is, I thought that the efforts in pushing for a more inclusive and common platform for educational language to take flight were laudable and I really look forward to its fruition one day!

XoXo

Augmented Reality - How Real can we get?

Attended a very interesting session today at ICEM. A senior lecturer from MacQuarie University presented the possibilites of leveraging Augmented Reality technology or simply termed as 'AR' for education. For the skeptics out there, I was once like you where I loathed the idea of flashing sexy technology for learning. Not until today when I am totally wowed over by AR's affordances to immerse learners in an unprecedented learning environment beyond what the human minds could ever imagine!

Before you begin to dish out on the exorbitant cost involved, the time investment and not to mention about the level of technical expertise required to pull this educational stunt, I would like to assure you that the AR technology has evolved since and has permeated the masses. For those of you who aren't exactly sure what AR is, allow me to provide you with a simple definition. As the term 'Augmented Reality' suggests, the technology aims to fuse or merge virtual and real-life elements to produce rich media resources for learning and visualisation. How the fusion occur is really simply building overlayers of virtual elements over physical elements i.e. a physical location. AR is not as tech-intensive as Augment Virtuality and of course, Virtual Reality which really lay at the other end of the spectrum.

It's really invigorating to know that we could optimise technology to enhance learning and this could play to our advantage if we know how to harness its potential well. Of course at the othe end of the pendulum speaks of the possible cyber threats that may potentially undrmine the use of technology for learning. Common threats such as cyber-bullying and even getting to users to observe cyber-etiquette are challenges that we need to overcome. 

Before embarking on the integration of technology to classroom learning, a trainer or a teacher has to first deal with a wider set of what I would term as 'first order barriers'. Taking reference from the TPACK framework, we need to recognise that the mastery of technological skill sets is not a given and yet, is a crucial component driving the successful implementation of digital learning endeavours. Teachers and students alike have to be comfortable in manipulating and navigating the technological aspects of the learning above and beyond any other things. Similarly, like what I've mentioned earlier - teachers have to be aware and address cyber behaviours. There could possibly be a disparity in behaviours when someone hides behind the facade of a digital identity as compared to real-life interactions.

Fortunately, the experts had taken cognizance to these pertinent issues in the form of advocating digital literacies. The set of digital literacy skills is well-defined under the 21st Century Learning Framework and you may want to consider them in your learning design. 

Well, time for me to rush off for the morning keynote for Day 3! Hope that the day's sessions would be jam-packed with more refreshing and though-provoking ideas!

ICEM 2013 : We-learning? - Day 1

What exactly is "We-learning"? By now, we are well aware that the education paradigm had shifted to embrace collaboration, communication and constructivism. The primary underlying idea of 'We-learning' is not only focussed on catapulting the learner in the centre and be contented with learner-centricism, but to now enlarge the focal point to include learner-learner sharing and co-teaching. A lot of new ideas could be generated and harnessed out of this very collaboratve linkages established between learners when they get together and communicate!

It's the 63rd year that ICEM is organising the conference in Singapore and I'm pretty excited to be part of this learning fiesta! Running concurrently is a LAMS conference as well. For those of you who are not familiar with LAMS, it actually stands for Learning Activity Management System. The fundamental design purpose of this system is different from the LMS and based on my limited understanding, an enterprise or IHL would acquire a LAMS if the management really wants to focus on the effective management and deployment of learning events, sequences, sharable and re-usable content such as OER. Whatever the case is, these heavy weights are here to stay and they are no longer seen as peripheral tools playing second fiddle in supporting learning. In fact, the LMS has been lurking around since the '90s and in recent years, has penetrated the education landscape as a core engine driving and impacting organisational or instituitional learning.

Moving on, I would like to share an interesting presumption put forth by one of the presenters. The poor fella was trying his level best to put together the presentation though he misses out on what he's supposed to say! Nonetheless, he challenged the fixated frame of belief that people have on learning and how the belief is guided by norm-referencing how institutions are organised. To put it simply, he asked " why should there even be discrete blocks of audience and roles in a learning context, especially against the backdrop of a collaborative setting?" For instance, why can't teachers and students learn together, especially in common topics such as digital literacy. A further question was thrown to the floor, " Why does students 'learn' and teachers 'develop themselves professionally'?" On the outset, the idea to 'break down the 2nd order barrier' seems seductive to me but on closer examination, I thought the proper functioning of any processes or structures should be anchored on some form of legitimacy? Surely, some form of structure should be in place to power and steer the entire learning process with certain rules of engagement embedded in it. Yes, some of you may argue that as long as the frames are built in, the targets shall then be able to operate within the parameters to achieve the desired outcomes. Unfortunately, I do not think this would be true for our social construct where a 'figurehead' needs to be established to sheperd or worse still, to 'whip them into shape'!

Anyway, I have sumed up the day's programme... Let's hope that Day 2 will be packed with more interesting stuffs!

XoXo

"Funtastic" Week at JGC!

If you are deterred by the exorbitant fees by Julia Gabriel Center, I strongly urge you to consider the quality of its programme; the thoughtfulness and commitment of its teaching staff. I'm totally wooed over by the tremendous effort that were invested to make the day for each and every child who attended the 1-week long holiday programme.

The 'legendary' JGC is touted to be the go-to center if you want your child to excel in speech and drama and to exude confidence in communication skills. While some begrudged parents saw this as yet another over-hyped marketing gimmick amidst the buffet of endless cram school choices in Singapore, I would like to be on the 'yay' side to attest to JGC's quality. Let me share a little on how JGC indeed, does live up to its name.

Firstly, I thought the teachers are an enthusiastic bunch, not to mention that they spout the standard English language. Their expressive persona were so vibrant, together with the catchy tunes sang to make the little ones' heads turn! The entire atmosphere was contagiously exciting with giggles and jiggles, kids and adults alike! A lesson would typically began with free exploration time where the kids get to play with toys, instruments, read a book etc. before the scheduled class activities begin. The rest of the lesson would be filled with puppetry shows, sing-a-longs, art and craft activities etc. There was also a break in between where the kids were delightfully treated to some healthy snacks distributed by "Sally the Snack Lady"! Culminating towards the end of the day's lesson would be a series of songs led by the "Three amigos" clowns who would appear decked  in colourful  jester costume. These clowns in fact, formed  the small 3-man band that plays live music for the sing-a-long sessions. 

On the last day of the programme, the JGC staff painstakingly put together a carnival galore as a grand finale to the programme.This was the first time ever for them to stage such a carnival event and I must commend them for the effort put in! There were a couple of "carnival booths" with interesting activities for the kids. Each kid was given a carnival card which he or she is supposed to get it stamped at every booth visited. I personally liked the 'music jukebox" booth where kids get to choose their favourite tune performed "live" by a clown! The clown basically hid behind a makeshift structure with curtains and when the performance starts, the curtains would be drawn and he would begin singing while strumming his guitar! 

I thought that most of the booth ideas were rather novel and the teachers had to design and create the booths' items and materials from scratch using simple materials! My boy, hubby and myself really enjoyed every single bit of the carnival and we were rather emotional when the carnival ended and when it was time for us to depart. Just before we left, I checked with one of the teachers if the regular enrichment programme follows the same lesson structure and activities as the holiday sampler programme. The teacher told me that everything remains except for the characters i.e. the snack lady and the clowns whom were inserted as part of the holiday programme. I thought they should include these characters as well in their regular programmes! As we stepped out of the centre, each child was given a "ice-cream balloon" as a souvenir gift. I thought it was a really innovative idea to secure an inflated balloon to a paper cone and to pass it off as an 'ice-cream'! As a momento, we also received a photograph of our family which was earlier taken at a 'photo booth' (one of the carnival booths).

To sum up, I would be going back to JGC, only if there's a regular once a week session available for ILT, who's currently hitting a year old!

** Again, above are based on my own personal opinion on JGC. Do share if you have any experiences with the centre as well :)

Rethinking the Way we Think

;This year's Redesigning Pedagogy Conference held at the National Institute of Singapore (NIE) is back with a bang, centering on the theme of "Thinking: Time for a Rethink". The Conference has since made its debut back in 2009 and for every year, had successfully achieved its mission of congregating the greatest minds in current pedagogical research trends and practices and diffusing these invaluable knowledge to the rest.

It's unlike most conferences where you would expect keynoters to dwell on rocket science - the selection of papers are mainly focussed on the research-practice nexus. I think this is the main selling point - To apply pedagogical researches in educational pyschology, behavioural sciences, teaching and learning environments, cutting-edge ICT tools into teh context of the Singapore classroom. The volume and quality of discourse really reframed my thinking and perception of education, in particular, the process of learning and what it means for someone to "learn".

Apart from gleaning best practices for transfer to my area of work, as a concerned parent, I pounced on this opportunity to harvest insights to guide ILT's development as well. As one would expect, the Conference saw the recapitulation of a couple of well established themes dominating the educational landscape such as digital learning, flipped classroom concept and collaborative groupthink. A couple of educational luminaries' works i.e. Vygotsky, Piaget etc. were also revisited to rethink how some of these classical theories/principles may be re-applied to the 21st Century classroom.

In the opening speech delivered by Ms Indranee Rajah, Guest-of-Honour for the event, three tenets of this year's Conference theme were highlighted. Firstly, educators must genuinely believe that all students can think. Extending from this fundamental belief, proper structure and conducive environment scaffolds must be developed to  facilitate thinking. Of course, it would be rather superfluous to make the former comment and leave the students to exercise their own thinking. Without proper scaffolding, most of the students are not able to elicit and reflect on the quality of their own thinking. Henceforth, the last tenet emphasised on getting educators to model the thinking process i.e. to teach students "thinking aloud" or to verbalise their thoughts. Having said all these, it's definitely an uphill task that all educators are facing. If you would have noticed, gone are the days where educators focus on domain-specific teaching i.e. teaching of Mathematics/ languages/ Sciences etc. Instead, there is a phenomena shift to focus  on teaching and assessing pedagogical process skills such as meta-cognitive thinking in the form of self-assessment/reflections; design thinking and even reasoning skills i.e. using Paul's Reasoning Model.

Indeed, my mind was invigorated by the intellectual discourse throughout the 3-day conference. Radical research findings were surfaced amidst a pro-conservative educational setting. For instance, someone shared the notion of playfulness as a character trait correlating to better learning and consequently, better academic achievements. Another speaker also highlighted the importance of language as the key to unlocking our minds to participate in 'interthinking'. In a nutshell, language acquisition has a great impact on how human thinks in a group. When an individual conceives an idea, he or she would have to effectively communicate the idea to someone else and that person must understand what is being conveyed before the idea becomes "knowledge".  Building against this backdrop, the speaker then emphasised on the importance of "exploratory talk" or the quantity and quality of "talk" that goes on in a group discussion.  Someone else even suggested that conformity to school system leads to the demise of creativity in our students.

This is a lengthy post. Yet, I would like to encourage parents to rethink the entire notion of learning. Learning is not synonymous to education. Having a stellar education record doesn't necessary means that a child can learn effectively, make sense of the complex world and grapple with the reality. The only way is to teach your child to learn about learning and to think about thinking. These will almost guarantee his or path to success in life  and to remain resilient in the face of adversities.

P/S: This blog post reflects my humble opinions and they are in no way, affiliated to any other sources.

Refreshing the Fundamentals

I'm not sure if anyone of you have heard of the newly-minted Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), but I have. A couple of days ago, while scouring the internet for some information on training frameworks, I happened to stumble upon the new agency, launched apparently to wield the spectrum of early childhood education and development matters. Indeed, I must say that this is a laudable attempt to integrate childhood learning principles and outcomes with the more social aspect of provision of childcare services.

Early childhood education landscape and the childcare scene had recently hoarded the limelight at the "Our Singapore" conversation. Concerned parents fervently shared and prayed that their two cents worth would be somehow heeded by the authorities. As part of the panel, I too, would like to weigh in on this issue.

Personally, I thought that we should probably start to reflect upon our own expectations for our children and cut the government some slack. Yes, things may not be all together rosy yet, but at least the authorities came out to address the issues plaguing the childhood education system upfront where they could have swept all the dust under the carpet. I think we must admit that the policy view point, it is no mean feat to unfix the damages done and to mitigate the situation right away. I thought at least the authorities have the fortitude to pick up the pieces and run with them from now on.

The refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (KCF) is another notable attempt by the authorities to delineate and promulgate the desired outcomes of learning for the pre-schoolers, coupled with key support structures and learning environments to support their holistic growth and development. I'm especially thankful for the parents guide that was published to inform us of the guidelines. My only qualm is that while the concept of the frame was well-conceived, I'm not exactly certain how this piece of document could be operationalised. Nothwithstanding, I'm sure this has put us on the right footing to a certain extent.

Another point to highlight, I must consider myself fortunate as I'm literate and I'm in the business of training and education and hence, I can better appreciate the policy nuances surrounding this entire issue. Think about others who may not really understand the impact of providing quality learning environment and education to their children at a young age, they would never be informed of the promulgated framework. They might not even know the existence of the ECDA! I thought that the authorities should reach out to this segment to educate them via other means than expecting parents to access the information by downloading the parents' guide on MOE's website. I suspect some parents may not be well-informed of the changes. Go on, reach out to them so that we deprive no child.

Above are purely my personal opinions. Please feel free to share yours too if you happened to stumble in!

The 'A's and the 'E's!

It's the time of the year again for the Annual Learning and Teaching Seminar held in NTU. This year's theme is on assessment and feedback.

So, is it "assessment FOR learning" or "assessment OF learning"? Well, I guess Singaporeans are attuned to the idea of learning for the sake of clearing the examinations. The outcomes of learning encapsulated in the form of a paper qualification is very much coveted and hence, little emphasis has been placed on the quality of learning processes to get people to that end. I'm not suggesting that we should disregard the learning outcomes in any way; but we should discern the true meaning of of these outcomes. Graduating with a degree does not qualify the internalization of knowledge and practices in the field of study. Often so, the availability of opportunities to scale professional experience and development in different work contexts greatly impact and shape job performances and employability.

The Guest-of-Honour just unveiled a new concept as I was typing away - "Assessment AS learning". Here, the assessment component is embedded as part of the learning process. A very good assessment tool to exemplify this concept would be project - based assessment. This mode of assessment is pretty much formative in nature and as members of a project team, you get to concurrently learn and to be assessed. In addition, teachers, who are the project supervisors, serve as "knowledge source" pertaining to the project discipline(s). Apart from assimilating knowledge from the teachers, the students themselves are great knowledge pool for interdependent learning when they tap on one another's "expertise" and prior knowledge to synthesize or construct meaningful knowledge to address the issue at hand.

I would like to coin this new concept as the "3-in-1 mix" where you would find the three tenets of education namely, "teach, learn, assess" - all rolled into one! Well, guess I would stop here for now. Do take some time to mull over this if you are a parent... And please expire your views...I would be glad to hear from you!

When you lose that mobility...

Ever since the jolting announcement by MAS to impose cut-throat restrictions on car loan amount and tenure, I've learnt to appreciate and savour every single moment of convenience brought along by my car. The mobility which I've enjoyed thus far has buttressed itself in my daily life and dissociating it from my life is almost close to impossible.

We are well aware that the current COE prices have skyrocketed to astronomical figures and that the current land infrastructural system may not be able to support the burgeoning volume of vehicles plying the roads. Furthermore, the quality and reliability of public transport system remains yet another contentious topic often raised in kopitiam talks. I am not dismissing these issues lightly. Transport woes are closely tied to societal dynamics and I thought that there may be a host of confounding factors contributing to the current state of affairs. In my humble opinion, a suite of policies addressing different factors may be developed and introduced to target the issues. In addition, each policy may assume a more gentler tone and when collectively implemented, would achieve similar desired outcomes too.

Anyway, my car will be due in 4 years time. Initially, I still harbour the slightest hope of getting another car after the deadline, albeit a 2nd hand one. My slightest hope was extinguished by the abrupt motion put forth to bring a halting stop to the fleet from flying off the car showrooms. I can almost imagine our poor fellas swatting flies over at the showroom! Having a car for me is never a luxury; it's a convenience, especially when you have a little one-cum-a stroller in tow. But I must also agree that convenience sometimes breeds indolence and I'm guilty of that too! So, I'm not sure how I would snap back to the good o' times of squeezing into jam-packed public transport entities. Ironically, it seems as though I may be regressing vis-a-vis a developed and robustly advancing nation state!

Well, the only consolation that I have is that ILT would be 5 years old by then and hence, our circumstance then would not necessitate the ownership of a car. At press time, I am still cracking my head to think of an ingenious way to circumvent this ruling. Do share with me if you have a trick or two up your sleeves!

P/S: Please note that I am sharing my views and opinions in my own capacity as a concerned citizen ;)