discovering poetic licence and the ability to fly. a journey

8/14/2019 Discovering Poetic Licence and the Ability to Fly. a Journey

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Discovering Poetic Licence and the ability to fly.

A journey towards E Maturity

Draft 2.

Using Blogs as a way to allow children autonomy over their learner journey and a tool to find and

communicate their voice with in a supportive learning community.

The Aerodynamic Failures of the Humble Bumble Bee.

A metaphor possibly relating to: The exploration of critical thinking andinteraction, within our Digital world.

Thoughts behind the title:Reflections in research:

The increasing use of technology in all aspects of society makes confident, creative and productive use of ICTan essential skill for life. ICT capability encompasses not only the mastery of technical skills and techniques,but also the understanding to apply these skills purposefully, safely and responsibly in learning, everyday lifeand employment. ICT capability is fundamental to participation and engagement in modern society.

ICT can be used to find, develop, analyse and present information, as well as to model situations and solveproblems. ICT enables rapid access to ideas and experiences from a wide range of people, communities andcultures, and allows pupils to collaborate and exchange information on a wide scale. ICT acts as a powerfulforce for change in society, and citizens should have an understanding of the social, ethical, legal andeconomic implications of its use, including how to use ICT safely and responsibly. Increased capability in theuse of ICT supports initiative and independent learning, as pupils are able to make informed judgementsabout when and where to use ICT to enhance their learning and the quality of their work.

National Stratergies Statement.

Digital technology provides us all with opportunities to participate in new kinds of learningHowever, only those withcritical thinking skills and experience of digital technologies will be able to both harness these opportunities anddiscriminately use them, rather than avoiding them or accepting them passively Digital literacy provides an opportunityto link established canons of knowledge with popular cultures.

Critical thinking for our digital world. BECTA Research piece in progress.

The increasing digitalisation of the world, Will require digital literacy of all children for their full participation in society.

(Rose. J. 2009.)

Technology, for me can be related to the humble bumble bee. Aerodynamically it should be impossible for thebee to fly, but it does. Fir me, Technology can offer the potential for our children to fly, when perhaps, in theview of some, they shouldnt, but again, just dont tell them, watch and find pleasure.

I have the privilege of having many flyers within my school, two of their Flights I would like to sharehere as exemplifications of the potential technology possesses in allowing our children to achieveautonomy over their learning.


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The Narration of a Learning Journey.

The Abstract:

This piece of work you are about to read serves as a narration through one project conducted with a year twoclass. The projects focus looked at how we as teachers can move more towards the role of facilitators,allowing the children to have autonomy over their learner journey. Through out the study narration clips,images and views have been used to both exemplify ideas and thoughts that I might not clearly articulate andto serve as a accompanying visual narration of what actually happened, illustrating the ideas and pedagogieswith real pieces of learning.

If as adults we believe that sustained thinking, possibility thinking, questioning and interacting with the worldare key skills that ultimately allow children to become great learners, shouldnt we allow for some part thechildren the opportunity of have complete autonomy over what they study? How they apply and display theirunderstanding? How they use the skills that we model, directly teach? How they develop, rehearse and revisesuch learning with our facilitation rather than direction? Leading ultimately to a point in their journey wherethey are both confident in developing the skills they have learn and confident in using them to innovate, createand publish their learning to a supportive audience.

Putting political power behind this possibly personal perspective

What about the digitalised world, Next Generation Learner?

Does technology not offer us a way of interconnecting ideas, innovations, thoughts, ethics and responses to the wolrd inwhich we live instantaneously? This isnt just important to our children, its import to our next generation, of which we will

still be part of, therefore having a stake and responsibility.

http://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.htmlhttp://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.html


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Arriving at independence.


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Flight One: Millie and The Highwayman.www.pleasurereaders.blogspot.com

http://pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/2008/01/highway-man_2188.html

Following the impact of the poetry project and implications and potentials the use of technology unlockedwithin our learning community, we decided to use the blogging format to continue developing home schoolrelations. Using blogs as a way of inviting the parents to comment and join in with their childrens learningjourney. This as already witnessed in the Listen2poems blog again allowed our children to quickly progressfrom direct guided, to supported learner. More importantly, as the childrens confidences and competences inusing the technology increased, so did their abilities to use it creatively, critically and autonomously. Duringone pleasure reading session I witnessed a group of children logging in to each others developing blogs,posting supportive comments and critical feedback, then returning to their own blogs to read what others hadposted and develop their learning. This was a first witnessing of independence in learning, the learnerachieving E-Maturity.

Within my learning day I ensured that each child could have time to both post and read comments within theirblogs, creatively using this process to invigorate guided reading activities, choice times and the beginning ofeach day, from 9 to 9.15, those moments when youre waiting for the last child to arrive.These short sporadic times became invaluable and grew into more focussed session, with a slot everymorning from 9 to 9.20 being dedicated to a review of the reading blogs and a session of reading for pleasure.

It was during one of these times that Millies Flight began. After over hearing a discussion the children werehaving about a certain story plot in Eastenders. I decided to challenge their understanding of fate, betrayaland tragedy with storytelling with a much richer stimulus than the popular soap. These issues, in my opinionare often overlooked in the early years and to often text are selected on happy, overly joyful emotionalresponse. So, I gave them a copy of The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyles.From here it was my privileged to watch how the children developed this discussion into a three week longproject, determined by them, with myself a facilitator of their most wonderful ideas. Within these weeks thechildren wrote their own plays, learnt passages of the text by heart, enacted dramatic retellings and emotionalcharged performances, drew beautiful illustrations and wrote a wonderful collection of narratives and poems.When discussing that this is actually a text that they should be looking at in year 5, the children and theirunderstanding and ownership of the project took one further step. The children had observed me and our ICTCoordinator playing around with some new video conferencing equipment. They sat and watched us play, as Iwould the children in my class, then asked, Can we use this stuff to talk to year 5s, can we video to anotherschool and share what we have done? And so we did. We set up the video conference, networked with a verysupport school, held many conference sessions through which the children shared all their writings,performance and discussion and further used the technology to allow the year five children an opportunity tobecome leaders in learning, offering feedback, analysis and supportive innovations and ideas. As adults,again we were nothing more than facilitators of the technology and learning, setting it up and stepping back.

Again I am finding it difficult to really explain or exemplify the impact it had on the childrens learning and howtruly E-Mature/Independent they had become. So, once more I will try to illustrate my passionate ramblingswith images from the childrens own learning.
http://www.pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/http://pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/2008/01/highway-man_2188.htmlhttp://www.pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/http://pleasurereaders.blogspot.com/2008/01/highway-man_2188.html


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Flight Two: Discovering Edenwww.edenproject.blogspot.com

Burnham categorises profound learning as:

Meaning, Creativity, wisdom, intuition, moral, challenge, interdependence.

These experiences of child autonomy have left me with a strong viewpoint, thats to ensure that both mychildren and the children I teach dont live their lives through other peoples second hand views andperceptions, a nightmare vision Tim Smit describes as a world of non- biologically related clones in ahysterical oversimplification of a possible future. He continues, The antidote is to take a few risks,and let the mud squidge through your toes from time to time.

The impact of the listen2poems project and my learners abilities to autonomies their learning, analyse, reviewand innovate throughout The Highwayman project were to evermore change the learning contexts I facilitatewith the children I teach.

Reflecting on these experiences it became evident that the such innovative projects were much moremanageable, sustainable and therefore much more likely to become realities in other practices if the focus onchildren as researchers moved from the methodologies of research and into a focus on developing childrensresearch skills within contexts they have chosen. Not researching into how we learn, but using research skillsto deepen learning experiences.

I wanted to ensue that all children within my class would have the opportunity to conduct independent,autonomous learning projects, recorded and evolved through blogs. In ensuring this would again be part ofclassroom practice and not a club or add on, once more I creatively played with both curriculum and provisionmapping, looking at skills needed to be covered with frameworks and National Curriculum studies and thepossibilities of the learning context and such skills being conducted through the children sown learnerjourneys.

After meeting Tim Smith and becoming truly inspired by his work. Munnaan, aged 6 at the time, pledged tocreate his own dome in our schools grounds.

Within this project Munnaan quickly moved through the key learning characteristics associated to a childmoving from directed learner to independent enquirer. Initially time was spent developing his key skills,already a competent blogger, Munnaan further asked to be shown how to scan in documents from his ideasbook, a learning scrap book that I encourage each child to fill with wild and wonderful ideas, ideas others mysay are not possible but ideas the child would love to explore. Accompanying the skills associated withscanning, Munnaan further took direction I developing his filming, downloading and uploading of materialskills. This period was one of rapid speed, skills modelled and then practiced. This was essential though, as Ibelieve the learner needs to journey through all the key paths, not just enter into the learning context as aindependent, but have new skills, and challenges shown to them, modelled and discussed, explored so theycan in turn analyse and innovate themselves, giving them a learning and technological cultural history throughwhich they can take an idea, past learning message and create a unique response, original to them and theirlearning. Munnaan did this. The concept of bloging, scanning, filming, online chats, digital imagery are notnew or unique or original, but the way in which he used them and evolved his ideas clearly are.
http://www.edenproject.blogspot.com/http://www.edenproject.blogspot.com/


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Leaving Little Hooks behind.

When developing this case study write up I was asked to think about hooks, little pieces delight, momentswhen as a practitioner and facilitator you realise that That cant be ignored.

These are my little hooks, the flights the children in my class took when becoming independent learners andthe possibilities that e-maturity offered them. Potentials that allowed them to fly:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the children for letting me watch them fly.
http://www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=124637046323277376&widgetType=LinkList&widgetId=LinkList3&action=editWidget

discovering poetic licence and the ability to fly. a journey

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