Future of Learning Masterclass

So after an amazing day of talks by inspiring people, we got the chance to dig a little deeper and look at how we could change things in education. The Masterclass was run in two groups - Youth and Adult. The youth group were Year 7-10 students from around Christchurch and the adults were from a range of places around New Zealand and overseas, representing schools and businesses. These are my notes from the combined sessions we had. From this we have a small group working on an exciting venture which hopefully you will hear more about later in the year!!

Tuesday Session 1: Jason Swanson
How might we transform learning to meet the challenges of the future?

Every student should experience learner-centered education so they are ready for what's next.

Group agreements: Have diverse ideas and perspectives. Stretch past your comfort zone. Participate fully. Step up and step back, listen to others.

Think about one skill or attribute you rely on today that wasn't valued or taught in school.

Standing up for what is right

Learn to speak out

Positivity

Confidence

Life skills and social skills

Future focused curriculum

How to study, best way to gain knowledge

Problem solve from different perspectives

Having a rich inner thinking life. Space between conversations

Being collaborative

Being yourself

Into the future :

The future is not a fixed point, it is ours to create. The future rarely arrives unannounced, there are trends that give us an awareness.

What happens if...

Change doesn't just happen to us, we interpret it differently.

Framing, transform learning
Scanning, trends and patterns

Futuring, create images of the future

Visioning, what do I want out of it

Designing, think of ways we can create artists that achieve the vision.  Adaptable, How to create plans that are flexible and adaptable

Cone of plausibility

The further into the future the more variables there are. Think of lots of scenarios.

3 types of future: Possible, Probable-narrows it down a bit, Preferable-vision area

Framework for how they come up with forecasts (more info at https://knowledgeworks.org)

People change at a faster pace than structures. Society changes slowest.

Parents reluctance to change education because it is what they know.

Provocation, how could education change

 Partners in code.

Era shift. Major change from one era to another. New ways of interacting, new economic models, expenditure advances in tech that move us into a whole new way of thinking and doing.

There are things we take for granted that are quite new. GPS, YouTube

We live in an exponential world but education seems to be resistant to change.

Drivers of change :

Optimised selves. Understanding of our bodies, fitbit, pedometer. Through tech we can monitor performance and get feedback. Can we begin to harness wearables etc to design learning?

Alternate economies: how do we find where we got in a world of choice? Finding the right niche. Student debt, under employment force us into different work. Need for education to help quid epistle into the right fit. Personalised learning, how do you prepare someone for a career that could be very different.

Labour relations 2.0:

How do we negotiate new machine partnerships? How do we prepare students for a new world of work.

Smart transactional models:

Have increased transparency. How are decisions being made. Diversifying structures and rules.

Blockchain digital ledger model. Resource sharing

Could we use block chain and smart contracts?

Shifting landscapes : navigating complexity. All about change. Have to put strategies in place to navigate change. Schools get teams to solve community problems. Perhaps learning is organised as ecosystems. Sharing of resources and expertise

Equity is not a given. It is a key design challenge. When we redesign education it has to be a key feature.

Walls of the classroom have to become increasingly porous.

Best time to be a learner but maybe not the best time to be a student.

How can we educate the whole person?

How can we balance the learning and the community tension?

How can we create flexible approaches?

How do we define equity?

What about these changes seem exciting?

Being part of the change

Choice and personalisation

Robots can be useful

More coding jobs

Wouldn't it be awesome if we worked like this with adults and children together

What seems challenging? 

The spaces

How

Robots taking over. Need teachers to empathise.

Getting communities on board

Job uncertainty. Will uni credentials be valued anymore?

What new questions and insights come up?

Passion and pathways important

Mood meter on wall - we got to put sticky notes on how we felt to see the overall mood of the group

Tuesday Session 2 - Adults

This session was about analysing strategies to create change

We had 5 large sheets of paper around the room with the following topics in the middle:  Personalised PD, New Assessment and Credentialling models, Educator Roles, Technology for Agency, Partnerships

We then had to start unpacking this as to what it could look like in the future. Jason challenged us to do "headline type" statements and keep working out from each statement. We could move around the groups or stay in one. After that we then had to choose one of the statements and list the challenges and opportunities that it could bring. 

I really enjoyed this way of looking at pros and cons of ideas.

Jason talked about the Generative Thinking Model and explained that we would be using this Design Process model to work on a strategy

So we were given 5 questions:

How might we:

Balance personalised learning and collective need?

Solve real world problems as curriculum?

Encourage collaboration across diverse roles?

Use AI/Machine learning/automation to free up teacher/staff/employee time?

Address issues of technology access?

We each chose a question that we felt we wanted to work on (we could change if we wanted) - I chose the first question

The rules were:

Let go of your agenda

Listen in order to receive, active listening and pay full attention

Build on what you receive

2 ears one mouth, proportional to its importance

Make your partner look brilliant

You can't be wrong

Keep moving forward

Opportunity:

What are the users insights?

Talk to users and experts to clarify the questions. We are all users.

We then had a "Discovery conversation" with one of the experts in the room - our group had Hamish Duff to question.

E.g What was an experience or situation that you felt was uniquely tailored to you?

Questions, tell me about a time when...

How would you define...

Watch body language. Dig deeper

We wrote a max of 5 words on sticky notes that captured what we heard/saw rather than what we thought.

Then we shared and put the sticky notes on large paper and clustered them into broad categories that we labelled to identify the insights from the user to hopefully help solve our problem. We then looked at how to reframe the question, if needed.

Our question was reframed to "How might we weave personalised learning and collective need?"

Design

The next step was to brainstorm solutions.

Cluster and label your solutions, adding, revising and synthesising them

Which solutions are most innovative?

Which would have the most impact on the design challenge?

Vote on the one that is most compelling

At one stage in this process, Cheryl came over with a book - "Non-Obvious 2018 Edition: How To Predict Trends And Win The Future" by Rohit Bhargava with a chapter on Lightspeed Learning which fed into one of our ideas. 

The rest of the day was spent unpacking our solutions and ideas.

Wednesday - Session 1 - Technology

The first session was an opportunity to explore some technology and talk with experts about how we might be able to solve our problems.

There were VR units, robots, all sorts of toys to play with as well as some amazing people to talk to that work in this industry. 

I was hesitant about the Windows Mixed Reality desktop but as I got into it, I could see a lot of potential uses. Our world is going to change and we are going to have to keep up!!

Session 2 - Pitching our idea - EricaAustin - E. A.Curation 

Erica came to teach us how to pitch our idea to others.

She got us to pitch about an item we knew well (phone, laptop, pen) to a small group for 30secs, then 20 then 10 - keeping it succinct and exciting! Small amount of time to grab attention

Impact and how you are benefiting the community.

What is your uniqueness?

What makes a good pitch? Performance, passion, taking audience on a journey, good use of format, simple to follow, relationship to audience and space, comfortable and confident.

Doesn't matter if you mess up, part of your performance

Passion, time to show off. Pitch yourself as well as the idea.

Storytelling - take the audience on a journey to evoke an emotional response, create characters and follow them through the pitch.

Pick one or two people to pitch. It takes time to adjust to different people so don't want too many

Easy transitions between slides. Slides there to support.

Holding phone? Notes?

Learn the beginning and end but can refer to notes inbetween

Pause for people to think

Format: Who are you? Problem you are solving. Your solution. Who is the customer? Why are you unique? What are you asking for? Maybe you can partner with someone. Have to ask one thing, come to an event, support us in that idea, give more info.

Time frames, could switch around components. Work out time slots

Relationship with audience and space. Get a feel of the space, could be spotlight, stage, where are judges sitting.

Talk like you are friends with the audience

What are you wearing

Know your lines. Memorise start and end, notes in middle

Practice:

Video yourself and feedback. Practice in front of people. Time your pitch. Try to do it in half.

Slides:

Don't use comic sans or times

Don't go over margins

Keep it central for quotes

Power of pauses. Let them read quote

Branding, don't need on every slide, maybe use just colour or part.

Use simple graphics

One image with one word.

Get slides to help illustrate a point.

Unsplash.com high quality images

Session 3 

Prototype

We then spent some time on our Prototype solution and what it might look like.

We then pitched this to another group and got feedback.

We completed a Future of Learning Canvas which was a fantastic was of getting all the detail in one place.

Impact

The last session was on impact

What is it we made and whose lives would it change?

What human need is being addressed and how are we addressing it?

What kind of impact are we hoping to create?

How will people engage with it?

What are the next steps?

We put all the ideas of what had to be done next and put them on the Roadmap. Our group (Michael, Andrea, Gina, Liz and myself) are super keen to keep working on our idea and have organised ourselves a Slack channel to keep working on this. We are also going to meet up face to face (and Skype Michael in from USA perhaps!) in the near future.

We then pitched our idea to a few groups from both the Adult and Youth Masterclasses and heard theirs. Really amazing ideas and lots of potential.

I enjoyed the opportunity to work with people from other sectors, not just teachers but also with the youth who have a different perspective on what our future might be.

Thanks to Haeata for giving me this opportunity - I loved every minute of it and know that this will just be the beginning of more learning and collaborating. It's exciting.