Day 5 - Australian Science and Mathematics School

Another beautiful sunny day and were off out for another school visit. Below are my notes from the day.

A specialist public school that caters for the three final years of schooling (year 10-12) before entry in to higher education. Established in 2002 the purpose built facility on the grounds of Flinders University is designed to promote and support highly collaborative, interactive student-directed learning with an innovate curriculum.

Whilst ICT as a subject is not taught, the use of ICT assists learning throughout all the subject areas. Students compile eportfolios to demonstrate their work for university, they are fully online, all resources are available to students online.

Check out www.21centuryschool.com

The learning environment is designed to be open, interactive collaborative and ICT rich. There are very large learning areas that allow several classes to be working at the same time along with various points for collaborative and individual working. There is less teaching at the front of the class, students are guided in small groups and the students are encouraged to be self motivated learners. There is a strong belief that students can be taught to be self-directed, megacognitive learners. They have developed a comprehensive framework that values deep learning.

A lot is put into professional development to ensure that teachers, curriculum and environment are equipped for this style of learning. Through the professional development delivered at the school, teachers can gain credits towards further qualifications, such as masters or doctorates. Time is allocated to teachers to allow for professional development within their timetables. All development is done as a team, when an new initiative is put forward, a team is put together and each are given 100 minutes off timetable to develop the idea.

Rather than explicit subjects as we know them, subjects are more broad and enquiry would cover many different subject areas. Tutor groups have around 14 students and at most a teaching class would be 26.


Personalised Learning and Personal Learning Plans

Vertical tutor groups who meet for 40 minutes a day with their tutor. The relationship between tutor and student is seen as key to their learning. Students create personal learning plans constructed as an electronic portfolio. "the heart and soul of the portfolio is reflection". Students are given a template for their eportfolios.

We were shown around a template for an eportfolio (got a copy to bring back), it would be an excellent thing to integrate into our tutorial program - of course, as ever, access to computers would be a problem!

AHMS Online

This is the first school we have visited where they have a fully embedded Online Learning Environment. The first thing that impressed me is that it seems to be fully integrated with their MIS system, so for example, the register can be marked on there. Looking at the design of the learning pages, it seems fairly similar to how we do it in Frog. When the student logs in, the opening page shows their due assignments, which would be a nice addition to ours. Teachers happily take on board that they are responsible for their learning areas, this is part of the induction training for new staff - it is expected that all staff will do this.

The whole platform seems very similar to Frog in many ways, the assignment page seems almost identical, the way that the lesson pages are put together seems very similar and the file structure and calendar seems to work in a similar way. It's quite reassuring that this is working well across the globe!

It seems that part of the reason this Deep Learning concept works so well in this school is because every teacher takes it on board, they continue to revisit the principles and use the same terms throughout their learning exercises. Again, we hear the importance of the staff being given time to develop these theories, develop their online content and continue with their own professional development.

One difference that I have noticed about the staff in schools here, is that staff seem much more supportive of each other and far more likely to offer their help to each other - less competitive? - perhaps this is partly because of a lack of league tables? Perhaps because they are given the time to work more collaboratively and share their ideas?

Students with SEN sometimes have support from extra staff, but the structure of the lessons allow the opportunity for more one on one support, of course staff are expected to be fully aware of the needs of all the student in their class. By using only the MIS!! There are detailed student notes on there including things like conversations that have been had with parents, events that have happened in class and anything that may be useful for other teachers of the student to know. I am fairly sure that I haven't been shown anything that could not be done using eportal/facility, but this seems much less clunky and far more friendlily displayed.

To end the day we went on a learning walk around the learning spaces. Despite the apparently unstructured lessons, it was clear that most students were making good progress, were engaged, and had responsibility for their own learning. I asked a member of staff if they were worried about letting the students go off and work in another area and she said no, they have a deadline and they would be silly not to complete the work now! It would be really great to trial one of these styes of learning spaces with our students, I think that, whilst it would be difficult at first for the teacher, the students would step up to the new environment.