iCTLT: Day 2 - To Flip or not to Flip? That is the Question.

First, I would like to qualify that I'm not an existing practitioner. Back in those days when I was teaching, I could vividly remembered the mad rush to complete the syllabus in time for the 'O' levels Cambridge. Countless nights were spent drilling content and concepts into the students who survived the sessions by subsisting on a meagre diet of khong Guan biscuits (proudly sponsored by moi). 

Looking back, Web 2.0 social media tools were in existence then and I had also humbly attempted to use the Facebook to create a class community to augment formal class lessons as well. A selection of carefully curated Youtube videos delivering content and 3D modelling of human organs were uploaded to the social learning space. Furthermore, I also remembered using Camtasia, a presentation recording software to record my lectures and Powerpoint sequence flow. These videos, coupled with scaffolding e-worksheets were bundled and delivered via our ver own FB community. Suddenly, there's this deja vu feeling that starts to swell from within - Am I not "flipping" my classroom?

Flipped Classroom, or as Mr Aaron Sams - one of the most dedicated and innovative teacher I've every seen- prefers, Flipped Learning is not an ingenius creation. It's intriguing to know that we've all been practising it or have done it at a moment in time. The astonishing thing is that, flipped learning could be dated back as far as 200 years back - at Westpoint (USMA). Officer cadets at Wespoint undergo a rigorous learning path devised based on the Thayer's method. The Thayer's method stipulates the dissemination of course learning objectives and supplementary reading materials to cadets prior to them attending face-to-face lessons. Keller's Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) in the 1960s also emphasises self-paced learning and mastery of units i.e. progress to the next level when one has master the current set of contents. Keller further suggests that lectures are means of motivational devices that help to augment learning. Flipped learning works along similar principles articulated by these earlier theories. 

I was particularly drawn to Sams' use of the Universal Design Learning (UDL) guidelines to further reinforce flipped learning. One of the objectives of flipping is to hopefully provide opportunities for differentiated learning and UDL has articulated a set of guidelines to enable educators to explore means and ways in delivering the knowledge, accept students' variety of ways in demonstrating competence in a subject matter and in motivating students' learning. Another team of teachers from Bowen Secondary School also presented refreshing idea of using gamification of game-based rules to define their flipped lessons. As opposed to popular conception of gamification, the term doesn't necessary refer to a gaming e-courseware for learning. It just simply means the employment of game-based rules and mechanics i.e. scoreboard, points, badges, levels, tokens etc. to augment a lesson.

"To flip or not to flip?" I guess the motivation behind flipping varies with different educators. One thing is consistent though - flipping a lesson requires tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and conviction by the educator and of course - flipping doesn't guarantee good results or outcomes, but one thing for sure, it could almost certainly guarantee an unforgettable learning process for the students.

iCTLT: Day 1 - Creativity & Entreprenuership? A New Paradigm for Education?

“Harnessing the power of technology tools to enhance pedagogy, enable action, empower learners and to engage learning” seems like a mouthful. In fact, we all know that the digital revolution has spared no one from the formidable effects of pervasive change. Change in almost every area. However, we must remain grounded and true to the way we perceive the core of education. Like how Dr. Yong Zhao aptly puts it, “Technology cannot replace paper, just like how it can’t replace your toilet roll!”. As educators or educationists, we are all guided by fundamental beliefs on the guiding principles of learning, regardless of the means to elicit the process. As long as the learner achieves deep and meaningful learning, we have fulfilled our mission.

I’m going to talk about Dr. Yong Zhao who not only has a wicked sense of humour but also has a creative and ingenious perspective of what education means to the digital natives. Dr. Yong Zhao from University of Oregon, likens the formal school system to a ‘sausage-making machine’ where homogeneous “sausages” or the learners are being “churned” out of the school system. The highly formalised structure was the order of the day back in the industrial revolution period where there was only a single outcome prescribed for school leavers – to enter into the workforce as employees. Back then, millions of jobs were created by a few powerful figures and hence, the nature and volume of jobs were pretty much predictable. Children were hence, whipped into shape to conform to a standard mould of delivering an exacted outcome with a known expectation in their life – basic survival.

In today’s context especially under the dominion of technology, conformity is nearing its demise. The much celebrated order of the day is creativity and entrepreneurship and for schools to be able to realign themselves to the new social trend is to first, stop killing and stifling creativity in our children. With the abundance of information comes the power of having choices. Whether a choice is good or bad, it is still a choice sought after by a group of consumers. A very good example provided was on the element of attraction exuded by a celebrity who in actual fact, has yet to do anything great or have any special talent. And yet, legions of fans celebrate the ‘nothingness’ of this person! The idea is, the fact that ‘nothingness’ i.e. no special talents, no exceptionally high intelligence could be even be worth celebrating simply tells us that choices are created by the creatives for the purpose of satisfying consumers' behaviours today. 

Contrasting the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom (the western powers) with East Asia countries such as Singapore, Japan and Hongkong, Dr. Yong Zhao pointedly 'rebuked' the western states for doing a 'bad job' in killing creativity and hence, their 'sausage-making machines' had inadvertently produced other kinds of 'hybridized meat products' other than the standardised 'sausages' prescribed by a certain receipe. The outcome is clear. These western powers are still economic powerhouses, driven by an incessant spirit of entrepreneurism of its people, despite the long history of poor performance in standardised test scoring. 

In Dr. Yong Zhao's lastest release, "World Class Learners", he had echoed the World Economic Forum's (2007, 2011) view to emphasise on the importance of entreprenuership as the key driver to grow and sustain the economic landscape in the coming century before the current system of employeeship stagnates. On this note, school systems should allow creativity space to blossom and sincerely embrace the concept of multiple intelligences of human. "To create and to engineer is human" (Zhao, 2012) and this is so true.