The publicity for the Hour of Code December 9th -15th has made me think about the role that coding has in schools of moving the relationship we expect students to have with technology in education from students being consumers of content to students being creators of content.
It has also got me, as a child of the 70's and early 80's and a teacher from 1990 onwards, reflecting on how the pendulum swings in education. My first experiences of computers at school in about 1982 involved binary programming, punch cards and making something, possibly, move on the screen after a few hours. I have to admit that as a student, unlike some of my friends, I found this less than inspiring.
When I began my teaching career things had moved on a little and we were using LOGO in class to try to get a Valiant Turtle to move along the ground which it did about 25% of the time before running out of power. For a long while LOGO commands were included in Mathematics curriculum in the UK and examples of good LOGO activities can be found on sites like nrich . However LOGO tended to be taught in a compartmentalised way rather than exploring the transdisciplinary potential of coding.
More recently coding seems to have faded into the background as it has been assumed that it is no longer needed as it has become less important to understand how devices work in order to use them. So then we come to the present time when the pendulum looks to be moving back in the direction of coding being viewed as important again. Why should this be and what are the benefits?
If we are to accept Alan Kay's definition that "Technology is anything invented after you were born",then Smart Phones are not technology for our Kindergärtners, tablets are not technology for our Pre K's and laptop computers and the internet do not count as technology for any student still in school. This is something anyone still proudly talking about a C21st education and C21st skills should bear in mind.
The question then arises how do we use the ubiquitous tools of the late 20th and early 21st centuries most effectively to aid student thinking? One key use of the tools I would propose is to enable them to become tools of creation for students as opposed to tools of consumption. In order for this to happen effectively coding plays a key role in empowering students. Unlike my school day struggles with BASIC and punch cards, Scratch and similar programmes allow students to drag and drop blocks of code to quickly and simply achieve a motivating level of success. Sites like learn.code.org allow teachers and students to pick up the basics quickly. What is required is a commitment by schools to ensuring that coding is viewed as a C21st literacy and an empowering of students to become creative and skilled users of that literacy across all curriculum areas. In doing so we will unleash the power of the tools all students take for granted and place the ability to be truly creative in the hands of all of our students.  

Bill Lucas and Guy Claxton in their excellent book New Kinds of Smart make the point that a common misconception about intelligence is that 'The mind and body are separate and truly intelligent activity is located in the mind.' Lucas and Claxton point out that our emerging knowledge about embodied cognition shows that the physical and the cognitive are deeply entwined.They conclude that, "It would be great if that deep coalition of the physical and the cognitive were to inform the curriculum in more schools.'
As I wrote in my previous blog post, Design for Life (see below) this desire to ensure that students have ample opportunities to learn with their hands was one of the moving principles behind implementing a Kindergarten to Grade 5 Design course here at Nanjing International School.
As the Design element of the curriculum has developed I've been inquiring more into the Maker Movement and Design Thinking and recently came across an amazing book Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager, Ph.D. in addition to a great deal of practical advice, this book clearly outlines the potential of Making as a central aspect of the learning process but is also clear about some of the potential pitfalls. I would highly recommend that people get hold of a copy as it makes a very clear case for the importance of designing and making things both physically and on computers whilst addressing some of the concerns.
As I tinker with my own understanding of the potential of design thinking and making in the classroom number of potential pitfalls seem to need to be addressed:
1) Empty Creativity: Matthew Crawford in The Case for Working with your Hands (published in the US as Shop Class as Soulcraft) makes the point that Einstein was not a creative physicist in isolation from being a highly knowledgeable one. "Creativity" Crawford argues "is the by product of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice." (p51). As we empower students to to come up with creative solutions and creative problems how do we also ensure that they are becoming skilled at using the tools, both physical and mental, they need to solve that problems. Unless carefully structured we run the dangour of creating a group of frustrated students who know that if they'd ever learnt to programme or to solder or to saw they would be able to solve something. Even more worryingly creating students who are not frustrated by this and feel the goal is to talk about what you would do if you ever learnt any skills. How do we ensure that there is the necessary rigour so that creating something is not the end. Creating and building something that genuinely works should be the goal.
2) Abdication of responsibility by teachers: One common pitfall of inquiry based teaching is hearing teachers say "I don't need to know it the children can find it out." Whilst for certain specific knowledge this is true, Martinez and Stager are very clear on this point; "In case we have been to subtle, you should learn to program,solder,build a robot or design a 3D object,especially if you expect children to." Teachers do not need to become expert in all fields of making but they need to have the curiosity to learn slightly ahead of their students.
3) Learning the Design Cycle becoming more important than Designing: How do we avoid the importance becoming knowing the phases of the design cycle over and above being able to design.This is the flip side to point 2 how do we ensure that teachers don't become overly prescriptive and make design thinking about an abstract thinking process rather than physical designing and building.
4) Students not thinking deeply about making: The Agency by Design project
is trying to link the Project Zero Work on thinking with the Maker movement and talk about giving students agency to have the knowledge skills and understandings to design effectively. Martinez and Stager argue that "Making is a way of documenting the thinking of a learner in a shareable artefact." How will teachers become skilled at understanding and enabling the thinking process of a student engaged in making and tinkering?
I am excited by the potential for a truly rounded learning experience that Design Thinking and the Maker Movement offers but wary that without great teachers and great teacher training it may well not live up to that potential.

In previous blogs I've spoken about bringing in Tech innovations and the difficulties in making them transformative. However the most perhaps the most effective and revolutionary classroom innovation I have seen introduced in the past few years is that of 'No Hands Up'. Coming out of Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black's work on Assessment for Learning this simple yet powerful strategy resets the balance of the classroom. Students are selected at random by their names being drawn to answer teacher questions (we use lollipop sticks for this). Every student knows that they may be called upon to engage with learning at any time. Further more it ensures that classrooms are not dominated by the few who normally answer all the questions. This has a powerful impact upon all students who start to perceive that everyone  as having a valid voice in learning. As this opening up of engagement in the classroom occurs it allows for all students to view themselves as learners and develop what Carol Dweck refers to as a Growth Mindset.
Further more the approach forces teachers to assess the purpose and types of questioning they are asking. Closed knowledge based questions are far less effective in this scenario than deeper open questioning. If your purpose in asking a question is to elicit whether all members of the class (and not just the 2 or 3 who always answer) have aquired a particular piece of knowledge, then having them write the answer on mini white boards and hold them up, is a far more effective method.
As Dylan Wiliam has written in an article How to ask better Questions
It has been estimated that in an average career a teacher will ask over a million questions, the vast majority of which they know the answer to!
Far too many of these are lower order questions which simply require factual recall. These kind of questions may keep pupils awake but they do not help them to learn anything new.
Teachers need to ask fewer but better questions.
The introduction of 'No Hands Up' into classrooms not only involves all students but makes teachers analyse their own questioning techniques. An increase of wait time occurs as questions that require thinking become more prevalent. In addition more authentic questions tend to be asked where the teacher genuinly wants to know the answer rather than is seeking validation that someone in the class has listened to what they said.
Whilst introducing No Hands Up is not without difficulties or teething problems as both teachers and students (particularly students who are used to being the ones who answer all the questions) adapt, it is a vital component in developing a thinking classroom for all learners.
Those of you who have done it for years I would love to hear your comments and experiences and for those of you who haven't tried it yet I would encourage you to do so and I would love to hear about you experiences.

Some colleagues of mine have just returned for a Beyond Laptops Conference at Yokohama International School. One of the things they brought back from this was a discussion of Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model of technological innovation.
This model describes four levels of technological innovation;

Substitution,
Augmentation
Modification
Redefinition

The first of these two levels are seen as being enhancement and the final two as transformative. Puentedura describes this process far more effectively than I could in the video linked to below and in a pdf found on his website and linked here.

Recently, and somewhat belatedly, I read Seymour Papert's 1981 book Mindstorms.
I was struck how, despite huge changes in technology and countless very expensive technological innovations, many of the changes he envisioned have still not come to pass.

I think that the TPACK model mentioned in the video provides a strong clue as to why this is so.

This model argues that truly effective technological innovation occurs when a teacher is combining a high level of pedagogical knowledge with both technical and content knowledge.

Too often schools make the critical error of viewing the tool as the pedagogy and its presence in school as an end in itself. Looking at many school's websites you will see phrases such as "We are a 1:1 Laptop school" or an "ipad school" etc.  It is much less common to have schools who outline why they have the technology or what they are doing with it.

In order to help school's to do clarify their purpose in introducing technological innovation I have created a Digital Usage Review template based on the recent NESTA report Decoding Learning: The proof, promise and potential of digital education. The template is available in the resources section of this site.

I would suggest that for technology to live up to its transformational promise educators must be able to have clarity about the following questions, which for want of a better name, (suggestions welcome) I'll refer to as:

Pinchbeck's 3 P's of Technological Potential

1) What do I hope the technology will achieve in terms of my students learning? (PURPOSE)
2)How am I going to make critical pedagogical decisions about the use of technology? (PEDAGOGY)
3)How will I ensure my own knowledge of technology,pedagogy and my curriculum enables me to choose the correct tool to achieve my aims? (PREPARATION)

Educational Technology remains a truly exciting vehicle to enable students to expand their thinking and present their understanding in ways that have profound meaning to them. However if educators don't engage deeply with the purpose of technology and the pedagogy it supports, the full potential of technology will remain unrealised for another generation.

Alan McLean in his excellent book The Motivated School makes a very thought provoking point when he states that, “The teacher’s role is not to give success to students but to put success within their grasp.”

This is a view reinforced by John Hattie in Visible Learning for Teachers where he states,”Feedback thrives on error but error should not be considered the privilege of the lower-achieving students.” Too often schools, in their desire to get students to reach objectives, concentrate on the students not meeting the objectives so the lower achieving students get most constructive feedback. Higher achieving students, for whom the objectives are more easily achievable, often get little feedback and are allowed to coast. These students can begin to view the goal of education to be getting a good grade rather than to challenge themselves to move beyond the known. The consequence that this has when these higher achieving students first encounter something they find demanding, and are unable to cope with what they view as failure, is unfortunately all to familiar.

Both Hattie and McLean touch on a dilemma that many of us face as teachers and as parents. We desperately want children to succeed, its why we went into teaching in the first place, yet we know that long term success often only comes as the result of reflection upon short term set backs. How then do we create a school culture where everyone has the confidence to make mistakes and be supported to exploit the learning potential of their errors to the full? As far back as 1967 the Plowden Report in the UK summed up this dilemma as the " the twin pitfalls of demanding too much and expecting too little" (Plowden Report, 1967, p. 311).

Carol Dweck’s work on Mindsets has greatly influenced my thinking this area and if you have not read it yet I would encourage you to do so. Dweck speaks of there being two types of mindsets that a person can adopt when confronted with a new or challenging task. The first of these is a fixed mindset where a person believes that success is the result of fixed factors over which they have little control e.g. intelligence or talent. As a result of this mindset people tend to give up easily when presented with a challenging engagement. Either the challenge reinforces their existing belief that they are not talented or clever enough or, equally devastatingly attacks their self perception of themselves as being intelligent or talented. Opposite to the fixed mindset is the growth mindset where people view themselves as constantly able to improve and attribute success to effort and hard work more than to being intelligent or talented. Those with a growth mindset embrace challenges and persist with them welcoming feedback on how to improve.

One key point Dweck makes is the importance of the language used by adults in reinforcing the values of a school and its attitudes to achievement and intelligence. It is very easy for us to tell a child who has been successful “Well done you’re so clever,“ “Your such a good artist” etc but these type of comments give a clear message to students that if they don’t do well they are stupid or if the picture doesn’t work out they can’t draw. Think also of the message we are giving by labeling students ‘Talented and Gifted.’

Much better to give feedback that is specific and actionable “You really thought about the options there” “You’ve really concentrated on your use of colour in these pictures.’

Setting up this culture from the earliest years of school creates a learning environment where mistakes can be dispassionately looked at and learnt from. To use the colouring feedback above had the painting not worked out it allows a conversation of “This part  doesn’t look right why do you think that is?” “Because I didn’t concentrate on my colours and painted it all black.”

How much more effective for developing the confident thinkers would all schools be if they made clear that mistakes are encouraged?

How much livelier would the discussion be in every classroom be if all students were clear that the point of learning is, not to feel complacent about what you got right, but to feel inspired to learn by what you got wrong?

If you liked this blog entry you will enjoy the You Tube video below which I originally discovered on the Mindsetworks website.

“Libraries gave us power then work came and made us free.”

OK so basing an educational theory on a classic 90’s indie anthem might not be the best idea. However I feel the Manic Street Preachers encapsulate well in those opening lines the key educational idea that children learn most effectively when asked to create and design things that requires them to apply what they know. We let children’s thinking run free when we allow them to work with what they know.



“The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention.” Seymour Papert

Seymour Papert (the inventor of LOGO) referred to learning through making as constructionism.The theory of constructionism has two main principles:

1. Learners construct their own understanding most effectively by making something rather than passively receiving meaning from others
2. The learning is most effective when the product is something that can be shared.
   

A good summary of constructionism and overview of current research can be found in the recent report ‘The Proof,Promise and Potential of Digital Education’ (p25). More details of the idea can be found in Papert’s book Mindstorms.

My thinking about the importance Design and Construction as part of student learning has led to the employment of Primary School Design Integrator for the next academic year at Nanjing International School (NIS). The aim of the role is to increase the opportunities for students to use the design cycle both to develop new knowledge and skills and to apply the knowledge and skills from the rest of the curriculum in practical context.

Structure of the Curriculum

The curriculum is still evolving but will be structured around 3 strands that will enable students to develop specific knowledge and skills sets whilst structuring their thinking using the Design Cycle.

Below is the initial framework for how this might look.

This is followed by a film clip of John Rinker who will be NIS's first Primary School Design Integrator answering the question "Why should we teach design in the Primary School?"

I recently had the pleasure of meeting two people who,although coming from different places, made me reflect on the power of provocative questions in encouraging students to think. The first of these was Lynn Erickson whose workshop on Concept-based Curriculum and Instruction for the Thinking Classroom I attended in Hong Kong. The second person was Ewan McIntosh who came to Nanjing International School to provide consultancy about our new Design Centre. Ewan and Lynn both discussed the roles of provocations in activating student thinking. In this they have much in common with Edward de Bono who in his book Think! comments "provocation provides a means by which you can unsettle your mind in order to increase the chance of having a new idea."
This provocative idea that we as educators can need to carefully craft our questioning of students to prioritise provocative questioning struck a strong chord with me. 
With this in mind I thought through the levels of questioning that I've used in the past with a unit that is taught in many schools, 'Exploration has contributed to change'.
Thinking about this unit I came up with the following provocative questions to drive the unit:

• When does an exploration become an invasion?

• Do explorations always result in change?

• Should humanity continue to explore?

• Is there only one right way to interpret an event?

• Can anyone be an explorer?

The power of these questions to engage students seems to me to be far greater than those of the previous questions I had asked students:

• What changes have explorations brought about?
• How do explorations affect different cultures?
• Why are the effects of explorations perceived in different ways?

In order to answer the provocative questions, students are forced to synthesise knowledge and apply it in a complex argument. In addition the disagreement that the provocative questions will raise in the class should bring in an element of emotional involvement and buy- in that was previously patchy.


I am looking forward to continuing to explore the possibilities of provocative questions as truly effective driving elements in engaging students with thinking and questioning.

Below is a video of Marina Gijzen an inspirational PYP teacher at Nanjing International School talking about her response to provocative questions.