It has been a busy week, through my travels last week I brought a sphero, inside it was this notebook. One of the things that I liked was the Design process that is listed
ASK // What are the problems? What are the constraints?
IMAGINE // Brainstorm Ideas. Choose the best one.
PLAN // Draw a diagram. Gather needed materials.
CREATE // Follow the plan. Test it out.
IMPROVE // Brainstorm improvement. Make changes.
When I saw this, I though of our own Learning Design Process.
It has become more important for me as I enter the second year at HPSS that I use the words to help develop students understanding of a common language.
As I start to develop my foundation SPINS for term 2, an ideas was put forward from a staff member to help develop the theme of Space and Place.
The museum Following this conversation, you begin your tour of the school with the mentor
at your side, providing a running commentary and introduction to its key features.
First, you walk back through the museum. The mentor explains that the museum
is one of the most important parts of the school as it is a place for capturing and
building a shared history. Each museum in each school is different: some reflect
the industrial histories of the area, others a particular event and its causes, others
specialize in a particular fi eld from botany to nuclear engineering. The purpose of
the museum is central to the work of a future-building school, the mentor argues,
because the museum makes visible that the world hasn’t always and won’t always
be like it is today.
The museum, says the mentor with a hint of melodrama,
releases us from ‘the tyranny of the present’. It is a space where the other possible
futures that might have emerged are made visible, where the uncertainty and
contingency of each discovery is made apparent, where the struggles people had
to go through for each scientific breakthrough, each piece of legislation, each
new work of art, are presented. History, these museums show, is not a simple
progression of inevitable change, but a site of debate, contestation and choice.
These museums show how things have been different in the past, they provide
a record and a collective memory of other ways of doing things, they provide a
resource for confronting new situations. They are a commitment to remembering
and nurturing different ways of living in the world.
The museum ‘exhibits’ are
often objects that are annotated with different historical accounts. Produced by
the students either with new research that challenges them, or with greater
discussion of the period, the exhibits often have alternative history simulations
attached to them, crafted beautifully by the students, showing how a different
decision at a key moment might have led to a different trajectory for social
change. Some of the most annotated artefacts are those associated with the great
war of 2020 that many children have a fascination for – surely it would have been
easy to avoid this, they argue. Each annotation, each alternative simulation
becomes part of the museum’s own resources, accessible not only by the school
community but by the wider world. One corner of each museum in every school
is also dedicated to the ‘museum of uninteresting objects’, which is wholly curated
by the primary children, who are challenged to bring in an object that is of
absolutely no interest at all; objects don’t usually last long, the mentor says, as
the school’s members are usually pretty quick to point out something of interest
in everything. This part of the museum, again, says the mentor, is important in
encouraging students to look at things differently, to make the familiar strange,
which is a core component of the future-building school.
An except from Learning Futures, Education, Technology and Social Change by Keri Fisher.
So I plan to have students investigate virtual or augmented reality ideas and develop skills to incorporate them into their projects.
The second SPIN around the theme of Space and Place is to look at develop skills in Digital Media, to use our community as the context. We have a number of new initiatives on the point, so having the students developing a webpage to display content that they have created, edited and developed will be an important part. The idea is for students to develop skills.
Floortime is one that allow skills to be developed, outside the classroom of assessment?
The idea is for students to develop various native birds and introduced species and add a form of movement to them using electronics. I have an entire page in my book of notes that I have written up while planning this tonight, so I can go back to the teacher and present my idea and listen to the changes that they would like introduced to be able to cover the skills in their area. I think this is what I am liking about HPSS, is the co-teaching, not being SILO'd out. Being able to learn from others and develop the principles of HPSS.
One of the parts that I like is how it fits into the theme of space and place.
The question now remains, how have I fitted in with the guiding principles of Floortime?
The guiding principles of Floortime are:FloorTime replaces MyTime. It remains a time where students have greater freedom of time and teachers are encouraged to be as creative and responsive as possible.
Guiding Principles for all FloorTime modules
- All sessions are as flexible and responsive as possible
- All FloorTimes would be vertical (Year 9-11 together)
- Teachers will offer engaging pop-ups based on interests and needs
- Students are encouraged to be self-directed as appropriate
- Students are encouraged to run pop-ups based on interests of students in the group
