CAS Cat 2 workshop at WUIS Day 1

   Paradigm shifts in understandings and implementations of CAS

A read through the new CAS guide for 2017 intrigued me a lot. It just made me reflect on  much the Diploma program is dynamic and informed by the latest developments and research in education. The new guide had so many areas that signified two main highlights...

1. How much collaboration is needed across the various disciplines of of DP

2. How much more more meaningful, contextual, engaged and relevant each CAS experience is meant to be.

The few areas that caught my attention were as follows:

1. The scaffolding of CAS strands having explicit meanings and the various approaches the school could embrace

2. The application of the CAS FRAMEWORK of Investigation, Preparation, Action, Reflection and Demonstration. A definite tool to determine the success of a CAS experience. 

3. Shifting the focus from getting CAS hours to achieving learning outcomes.

4. Guidelines to setting up meaningful reflection that shifts from narrative writing to deep rooted critical thinking and analysis.

5. The Research part of Service led so much into the curriculum integration. 

My AHA moment

We were given an activity on reviewing whether or not a CAS proposal would be accepted and approved or not. This opened up for so much of debate and conflicts amongst the participants and challenged our mindset and comfort zones. When we applied the given CAS frameworks no way we could reject any of them. However what came up as conversations amongst participants was how we get biased by our own experiences and prejudices and what affect that has on the approval of the proposals. 

Two interesting ones are mentioned here.

The second one was very special for me as I found myself supporting and justifying something my sons are immersed in. Playing online games in a collaborative platform. When we put this on the CAS framework and I tried to connect it with all that I see at home and hear from my sons.

We made our own analysis how the League of Lefends game could become a CAS proposal. The activity challenged our thinking and comfort zones.should we be open to other forms of creativity too?

See here for our justifications of accepting this proposal as we tied it to strands, learning outcomes, and learner profiles.

The entire CAS program now seems to gel with IB philosophy of creating internationally minded people with strong skills, ready for the 21st century.

Why should educators be connecting their students globally?

This blog is being written as a part of the quadblogging concept where three educators including me are responding to the question "Why should educators be connecting their students globally?"


Let us first scaffold the meaning of connected learning

(Ito et al.) defines connected learning as " broadened access to learning that is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity. Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement."
Next why do we need to incorporate connected learning?

 In the report the school is visualized as one node in a broader network of learning available to young people, By building a learning community  we can call on the untapped capacity in more informal and interest-driven arenas to build more learning supports and opportunities. In an era when our existing educational pathways serve fewer young people, it is critical that we build capacity, opportunity, and new models of success, rather than orient our efforts solely on optimizing the playing field of existing opportunities.

What are the outcomes of connected learning?

This reference to the existing educational model which gives less access to learning is the key reason why we as educators should connect our students globally.Connected learning focuses attention on the spaces of integration and translation between divergent domains of knowledge, culture, and social practice.Connected learning is oriented to outcomes that are both individual and collective in nature. These include 21st Century skills, dispositions, and literacies such as systems thinking, information literacy, creativity, adaptability, conscientiousness, persistence, global awareness and self-regulation as well as the cultivation of interests, building of social capital, and a positive orientation to academic subjects. Because the connected learning model takes an ecological and networked approach, these individual outcomes are tied to societal outcomes that are collective in nature. These include building high quality forms of culture and knowledge, civically activated collectives, and diverse pathways for learning and recognition. In this way, the support and cultivation of individual capacity is part and parcel of a broader vision of an educational system that is vastly more effective, equitable and essential.

What are the approaches to learning in a connected learning model?

The approaaches to learning in the above model has:

1. Equity
2. Full participation
3. Social connection:
4. Peer-supported: 
5. Interest-powered: 
6. Academically oriented:

Ann Michaelsen, a teacher at Sandvika High School just outside Oslo, has been invited to Bett - the education world's biggest tech fair, held in London - to share her ideas with other technologically minded teachers.She mentions how connected learning on social platforms of twitter have helped her students gain access to a wider world.(Rice).

Let us look at some of the learning theories and compare this learning theory behind the connected learning model?

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that “learning must be a way of being – an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast o the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events…” (1996, p.42).

Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

So why should educators be connecting their students globally?

Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.(Siemens)

How global collaboration helped me develop my identity and give an accelerated learning?

In my blogposts I have kept an ongoing record of all the transitions that happened. This post talks about how I connected to people in USA and started developing my own identiy , way back in 2012 from India. 

In this post of mine I share how I connect my present batches to previous ones to enhance learning.

The live feed ( as shown left ) from my blog develops a sense of achievement and motivation for further connection and sharing.

References:

1. Ito, Mizoko et al. 'Connected Learning: An Agenda For Research And Design'. Connected Learning Research Network. N.p., 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2015 . <http://clrn.dmlhub.net/publications/connected-learning-an-agenda-for-research-and-design>.
2. Rice, Carolyn. 'Social Media Transforms The Textbook Lesson - BBC News'. BBC News. N.p., 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2015 . <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25888737>.
3. Siemens, George. 'Elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory For The Digital Age'. Elearnspace.org. N.p., 2004. Web. 20 Oct. 2015 . <http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm>.
4. Basu, Rajashree. 'My Journey.....As An IB Educator: Global Collaboration'. Rajashreebasu.blogspot.com. N.p., 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2015 . <http://rajashreebasu.blogspot.com/search/label/Global%20Collaboration>.

Crossing cultures in Education

What challenges does one face when one crosses cultures in the field of education? How difficult is it to transfer knowledge in a setup which is completely different from what you are used to?

Edchat,. Wider Horizons - Four Go To Kenya. 2013. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.

In response to the video shown above as a part of my ongoing PGCEi course from the University of Nottingham I am responding to the questions stated above.

The video shown here is very relevant in the context of my own experiences which have actually undergone a radical change since the time I became educated till the present scenario. I have been a part of  such didactic classroom setups in India myself as a student. Teacher was the centre of attaraction and copying and rote learning were the only mechanisms to score good marks, which was the method of assessment.

After my higher education, I taught as a teacher for seven years in a state board school with a static curriculum with little scope of application of information, but quite similar to what I had gained my education from. There was no chance of social interaction , let alone learning from them and neither were such theories valued in the school culture . I was asked to refrain from any kind of collaboration and learning from any of the international schools in the city as the school authorities felt that such connections would not benefit my teaching.

You are a good teacher if you can yourself memorize information and pass the same skills to students to help them achieve good marks. As shown in the video the concepts of teaching by the teachers from England were as allien to me as they were to the African teachers in the video. 

Teaching the international curriculum for the last 8 years of my career has seen a radical paradigm shift to my teaching pedagogy. I can relate more to the English teachers in the video who were actually looking for signs of learning in the classrooms. The method used by the Kenyan teachers would leave the children with very limited scope of engagement with the key concepts of the content , as mentioned by the English teacher that the process of investigation was important rather that the result. 

The teachers found it difficult to settle down in an atmosphere where students failed to comprehend the instructions given to them and hence generate suitable responses. In the context of China where I teach now , I am facing similar challenges and even to a larger extent. The students have very low language levels of English and hence fail to comprehend instructions. Thus it is difficult to generate the active and engaged learning atmosphere that one is looking for.The brain of the Chinese students is tuned to recieve knowledge imparted in a repititive manner, which makes them good scorers in Mathematics. However they fail to apply the same skills when it comes to critical analysis of content to a particular context as mentioned in the banking system of education by Friere (p.53).

However there exists a motivation for self achievement which needs to be tapped in for generating active involvement and engagement with classroom teaching and learning. 

Freire, P. (1996). Banking v Problem solving methods of education. Pedagogy of the oppressed, pp.52-57.