Learn Create Share as a framework for distance learning

Officially, it is school holidays at the moment, but I know that many of us are currently occupied with the task of transitioning our practice to suit the 'new normal' of lockdown. There has been a flurry of activity and discussion online about this transition, much of it focused on issues of access and gadgetry. Questions of access centre around the infrastructure - who has devices? Who has internet? How can we provide for those who are missing out? The gadgetry includes all manner of sites, apps, services and tools that are being made available to 'support' schools to lead learning remotely. The lolly scramble of resources and advice can be quite overwhelming, especially as we all want to make sure that we are keeping up, creating equity and 'doing it right'.

A wise woman once told me that 'any teacher who can be replaced by a computer should be'. When we centre our discussions on the device, on the app, on the site, we forget the most valuable resource for learning is the teacher. I would like to see our discussions focus more on the teaching, and how to support teachers to amplify their expertise in a remote learning model. Those of us who are part of the Manaiakalani Programme are incredibly fortunate to have been well-prepared for the situation we are currently experiencing, through the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy and the kaupapa of Visible, Empowered, Connected and Ubiquitous learning.

So how do we ensure that when we take away the physical and social structures of the school day that our model for teaching and learning holds up? Now we are thinking beyond issues of access, and looking at what is going to make an impact. Let's look at each element of our pedagogy in turn to see how Learn, Create, Share can act as a vehicle for effective remote teaching practice.

Ako | Learn

Teachers each have their class site as the central hub for teaching and learning, this remains the same whether our students are in the classroom with us or learning remotely. We know that managing learning through the site allows teachers to focus on high leverage teaching practices, and empowers learners to take greater ownership of their learning. By adding in rewindable learning resources such as video explanations and demonstrations, we can achieve A4 learning, ie anyone, anywhere, anytime at any pace. These elements are things we have already recognised as components of effective teaching practice. To maintain connection with our learners, we can schedule face to face time using Google Hangouts Meet. A hangout may be a 1:1 conference between teacher and student, a small group, or a whole class. These meetings should be recorded, which allows them to become a rewindable resource as well as safeguarding teachers and students. 

Hanga | Create

When we build in opportunities to create, we push our learners to engage deeply with their learning in order to make something new to show their understanding of skills and concepts. Create is not about busy work, it is an opportunity for learners to think, discuss, apply, synthesise and justify. Teachers can support the focus on higher order thinking through creativity by providing/co-constructing success criteria that connect the quality of thinking to the level of achievement. Visual presentation and digital fluency skills may also be developed through the creation of DLOs, but we need to be careful to keep the learning focus (whatever skill or concept we are teaching) squarely in our sights. Our feedback in blog comments should also focus on these success criteria.

While are students are learning remotely, there are all sorts of creative ways that they can demonstrate their understanding. This blog post shows how students have created sets of objects from around their home to demonstrate an understanding of fractions. We can see that this student has had to think about how to represent fractions using physical objects, and shows some understanding, although this could be developed further. Non-digital artefacts can be captured through photos, video and audio recordings.

Tohatoha | Share

Sharing adds depth to learning by inviting others' perspectives and feedback, and through the reflective thinking required to write a quality blog post. Sharing is also a crucial part of staying connected with each other while we are all in our respective bubbles. Students who have individual blogs can share their learning regularly and independently. Teachers can amplify students' blog posts by reposting them on the class blog, drawing attention to them during daily hangouts or greeting videos and writing quality comments. If learners do not yet have their own blog, the class blog can be set up to receive posts via email. Here is a great example of parents supporting their children to share by photographing and emailing student created artefacts to the class blog.

Commenting on blog posts allows us to engage learners in sharing ideas through discussion, a high leverage teaching practice. Although this discussion may be asynchronous, which is different to in-person discussions, the time lag allows all participants to spend time thinking about their responses and contributions. Teachers can support discussion by asking thought provoking, open-ended questions and explicitly teaching learners how to monitor and respond to comments on their blogs. Class blogs can also be used to post provocations that require students to respond to the teacher and each other, using evidence to justify their position. 

There is little that is certain as we look ahead to the coming term, the remainder of the school year and beyond. What I feel sure of though, is that we have an excellent framework for leading learning in uncertain times, through Learn, Create, Share. The confidence that I have is definitely helping to ignore the bombardment of 'gadgetry' offers in my inbox, and I would encourage any teacher or school leader who is concerned about the move to remote learning to remember effective practice and stick to what we know. 

Resources to support LCS 

Learn Create Share diagram with links
Recording of Kelsey's Screencastify toolkit
Using Google Hangouts Meet

Create: Exploring Create in the Manaiakalani Programme

Sharing with our stakeholders

Yesterday was the annual Kootuitui stakeholders event, an opportunity to bring together our fantastic sponsors and partners and show off what has been happening in our three strands of Education, Health and Homes (Whaanau). I had the privilege of working with a group of year 6 learners from Papakura Central School to put together a presentation of how they use their chromebooks to Learn, Create and Share. 

Each of the students had their own idea about what they wanted to talk about, and how they would share their knowledge. Through a bit of planning and conversation, we managed to refine everyone's ideas so they could achieve maximum impact in minimum time. We had a tight window of less than a week to be organised, and no more than 15 minutes total time. At our first meeting, we made a shared slide deck, where each person could take one slide to plan and develop their contribution. Because I was working in different schools, and the students had busy timetables, we used the comments function to communicate and keep track of progress. We spent an hour on Tuesday afternoon bringing everything together and making sure all of the bits joined up to make a coherent presentation. 

In the slide deck below, you can see what the students came up with. Arpit shared a screencast of accessing learning through his class site and the other apps and sites he uses, he chose to speak to the audience while the video was playing. Tara used a google form to ask her classmates how they use their chromebooks to learn, create and share and presented their responses as word clouds. Sam shared a blog post about a piece of work she had done, giving a commentary about how she had made it. Emily created an animation about how to write a quality blog comment, and we used screencastify to make it into a video (small Mrs Cameron cameo, listen out for it). I think I will include this in my cybersmart facilitation.

The students got a hugely positive response from the audience, with lots of people making the effort to come and speak to them afterwards. They were rewarded handsomely for their efforts with second, third and fourth helpings from the refreshments table. For me, it was a fantastic experience to work with learners who were confident and creative users of their chromebooks, as much of my work to date has been with students who are starting out on their cybersmart journey. Thanks to Keith and the team at Papakura Central School for hosting us, and for developing these awesome rangatahi.