Sir Ken Robinson - Keynote

SIr Ken Robinson Keynote Address
The place where talent meets passion is very important
Isn't what I do who I am?
Tweeted asking people to name a job they would hate. Importance of finding things that will fulfill your spirit. When in close harmony with others things roll smoothly.
Talent often buried and needs to be discovered. Paul McCartney didn't like music at school. HIs music teacher thought he had no talent. Same for George Harrison. Teacher had half the Beatles in his sight and he missed it!!!!!
Human talent is like the world’s resources. Able to be depleted
Two critical matters facing us.
1.Headwind of a cultural ideology that minimises human talent in a very narrow way.
2. Need to change the culture of education. A global strategic issue - we invest millions of dollars and its fundamental to the success of future economies. Often there is no reference to the children involved.  All dealt with at a strategy level.

GERM - Global Education Reform Movement !
Based on standardisation of education. Has done nothing to improve systems
Relationship of data to Learning is critical
About  20% of USA kids don't enter 12th grade after completing 9th grade
System is failing now.

Many people don't find work long term. Graph of  Youth unemployment in Europe tragic.  Over 50% in Italy, Greece and other European countries
Tragic loss in terms of human capability.

Ed Systems industrialised in ways that are antipathetic to human behaviour - intellectual conformity - narrow idea of academic ability - people who don't fit the mould considered not to be very bright.
SIr Ken got polio. Was put into special ed with kids from 5 to 11.
Physical disability often treated as if there is some intellectual impairment as well.
Conformity encourages such ways of thinking.
Every human life is different
“To be born at all is a miracle so what are you going to do with your life?” Asked The Dalai Lama
We overlook the wonderful resources and talents in our students
The process of learning is the process of arousing curiosity and asking the questions to guide the learner, not to fill them with content

Human life is not linear, it's organic.
Our greatest creativity is in the life we compose for ourselves.
We must give our children access to the talents that lie inside them.

“Creative Schools: The grassroots revolution that's transforming education” Sir Ken's latest book.
From an industrial model to an organic model of education.

Industrial agriculture - has laid waste to soils and waterways - mass extinction of the creatures that share the planet with us.
Organic farming based on mixed farming. Not focussed on the planet but focussed on the soil. If you destroy the soil you don't get the right result.

Understand the culture of learning,  An act of creation, a human process.
On the verge of a fantastic revolution in education
From the ground up revolution not the top down.

Fusion Photos

Te Kura's "shout out"!

Redefining the Student Experience: Personalisation and Content Optimisation

Presented by Sheryl Ching and Chris Lawrence

The "parser process" wows!

Phase 2 interactive online tools - so impressive!

Listening to students and teachers as we move forward, but move forward we must - it's what our students deserve to hold their place in today's world.

Great questions - good work you two!

Te Kura = Learn Your Way

ePortfolio - Beyond Artifacts

Presented by Krista R. Mallory - Dalhousie University

Attended by Anne

In final stages of implementing Brightspace; started last September

All expected to be working within the environment at start of Fall semester this year

Works in Centre for Learning and Teaching - instruct instructors - associated challenges

Te Kura takeouts

Similar approach taken to rolling out ePortfolio - teachers first

Strategically building belief in power and purpose of reflection on learning

Putting video at the centre of the learning experience - Capture

D2L presenters Matt Lucid, Technical Product Manager
Attendees:- Sheryl & Marg
Capture is a webcasting, media repository and video recording tool. Capture is fully searchable and can be accessed on any computer or mobile device.
Question posed at start of presentation was how to turn video into knowledge?

Key points of the product:-
Record and broadcast live or on demand with rich media
View from lectures on mobile or desktop via HTML5 responsive design
Support for HD and SD video for on-demand streaming
Users can control if its in HD or SD depending on the quality of internet connection.
With live webinars product streams according to quality of internet connection.  Multi-bit streaming to keep event flowing.
Closed captioning available
Can upload content outside of capture and upload to the capture media repository.
Cross library and in-video search (useful if students want to search to just watch a piece of the video). Shows ** where the item that was searched for is found so students can go straight to the topic.
Can slow down or speed up the video.
Switch between screen share and speaker if both are being used in the video.
Automatic closed captioning via built in OCR.
Searches on tags
Mobile-first Brightspace Daylight user experience
Built in post production editing
Tight integration with Brightspace learning environment
Microsoft Outlook Integration
Real time polling with live events, allows for real time chats.
508 compliant for accessibility
With integration has widget on course
Course video is available as a course widget for students
Three components - you dont have to purchase the hardware.

Not so useful for Te Kura as its more relevant for lecture halls.

Capture Station (hardware)
Media Repository
Capture Encoder - recording software

Videonote and audionote now based on HTML5.

Authentic Assessment in Brightspace - YouSeeU & D2L

Presented by Dr Marsha Bayless, Stephen F Austin State University and Dr Jeff Lewis, Chief Learning Officer, YouSeeU
Attended by Anne

Great session - ongoing flurry of questions from audience
Focused on Virtual Classroom and Authentic Assessment capabilities

YouSeeU - Virtual Classroom

• Seamless integration in Brightspace
• Session duration up to 90 minutes
• Up to 100 session participants
• Recordings available for four months
• Up to 250 sessions per week (for institution)
• Up to 7 webcams can run at one time - instructor plus 6 others; experience has shown that more is distracting

Recording can be downloaded at instructor level in mp4 format

Premium

• Unlimited meetings per week
• Up to 150 session participants
• Recordings available for one year
• Additional phone bridge availability

Screen configurable to however you want it

Fall/September release:

• Participants can be grouped in breakout rooms for group work
• Mobile friendly
• Polling capability
• Captioning capability
• Flash and Java removed for desktop sharing to eliminate plugin problems

Te Kura takeouts

• How to equitably allocate the standard 250 sessions across the organisation
• Great potential across all levels, but in particular to provide "classroom" space for TAH students

Measuring Student Engagment

Sean Yo
James Storm from D2L

Attendees:- Sheryl & Marg

With the daylight upgrade Class progress and User Progress are getting an upgrade to the look and feel.

The BDP ( Brightspace data platform) included with no additional charges. Uses APIs.

Two Changes to User Progress have been made which  require the BDP.
1. Course access progress not just last logged in to any course
2. Notes if the content has been downloaded. ( Interesting for the PDF content that students are still accessing @ Te Kura.)

Insights improvements
Reports accessed through the Insights Portal
Tool usage i.e quizzes, assignments etc. Can be filtered by role type and throughout different time periods. Can Export all reports to CSV!
System logins by role. Can be filtered by course.
Insights can't be trialed.

Course overview and engagement views for instructors
- sits on a course widget
- overview of course access
- filters to number of logins
- access to course access report
- information is retrived from the BDP.
- information can be drilled down to sections so useful for individual teachers, senior teachers and curriculum.

Engagement report
- utlises the information in user progress
- email reminders available within this report
- shows grade distribution
- each column of information links directly to the tool
- name/student ID number for individual students within the tool
- can't view student engagement across multiple courses. Would have to do this by extracting from CSV.

Looks very useful for Te Kura!

Schooling for the 21st Century: Unleashing Student Passion

Presented by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
Attended by Anne & Marg

Twitter - @snbeach

sheryl@plpnetwork.com

http://plpwiki.com/D2LFusion

Used back channel chat to connect everyone at the session

John Dewey:

"The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past. Not for our world. But for their world. The world of the future." 

Clay Shirky - Here Comes Everybody

• Share
• Cooperate
• Collaborate
• Collective Action

Not mentioned in presentation, but would be interesting to go back to Clay Shirky's concept of cognitive surplus - creativity and generosity in a connected age. http://www.shirky.com/ https://www.ted.com/speakers/clay_shirky

General Brightspace update session on tool enhancements

General update by D2L on various tools
Attendee:- Sheryl

Awards
Awards have had a bit of an update including ability for students to access PDF copy of certificate even if they are no longer enrolled in the course.
Enhanced ability to import external badges

Paid for Service
Custom data export bundles allows you to access data reports. Need to look at this in further detail as session didn't go into detail and this could be a way of extracting some of the data we are keen to extract to CSV.

Discussions
Score a rubric while assessing discussion post
Rubric score rolls up to topic score automatically
Include forum description in child topics

Dropbox
Track deleted submissions
Ability to restore back to dropbox
Also can restore deleted news items

Groups
When creating or enrolling a group category a group prefix is now available.
Advanced search option for groups but needs to be turned on in the config variables
It allows for advanced search and group enrolment enhancements

Quizzing
Quiz attempts per user overide can do on a per student basis. Needs to be turned on as a config variable.

Copy selected components workflow has been enhanced to include:-
copy course history
Bulk tool configuration
Support for LTI links to be copied course to course

Intelligent agents & release conditions
Practice run of intelligent agents
Can now do any one-off queries without sending an email
List of who the intelligent agent was run for and when
Copy agents within a course
Agents with no conditions are disabled automatically
Agent emails are no longer truncated
Added the ability to change who the agent is coming from rather than the current random D2L address. This would make the intelligent agent feature more personal for Te Kura.**
All the above Included in August 10.64 release
Looking at Intelligent agents being able to send texts rather than emails. This is on the product update plan so is not available yet. If were keen to do this we need to vote on the PIE on the community.

Competency-Based Education Primer

Presented by Michael Moore Senior Advisory Consultant D2L
Attended by Anne

Big ideas:

Place learners at the centre of their own learning experience!

https://www.d2l.com/solutions/higher-education/competency-based-education/

Time is variable

All concepts must be mastered

Delivery of content/material can be more personalised

Pace is variable

More students are set up to succeed

• Referenced University of Wisconsin work
• Increasing importance of soft skills in workforce
• Google CBE resources, webinars, eBooks, blogs etc

How does Brightspace support CBE?

Progress by grade and competency

Proactive and timely communication and feedback

Learning paths determined by pre-assessment (adaptive learning/LeaP tool)

Remediation on specific objectives in an assessment

Learner-initiated progression

Progress recognition (badges/awards)

Flexible pacing

Te Kura takeouts:

How do we respond to the “all concepts must be mastered” dimension of CBE

Make contact with Nate Ewings at University of Wisconsin

Use video evidence from students uploaded to ePortfolio as evidence of prior learning (especially in skills areas)

Challenge - what will we do to capture evidence of progress in soft skills?  Use of rubrics? Student self-assessment?  CLARA reflections plus integration of Enquiry Blogger?

Next generation learning experiences demand next generation thinking

Presented by Ken Chapman D2L and Navneet Johal, Analyst, Ovum

Attended by Anne

Big ideas

Non-traditional students transforming higher education (New traditional)

Key elements of next generation platforms:

• Accessible
• Standards based and open
• Flexible pedagogy
• Learner centred
• Content availability
• Scalable monitoring and interventions

Audience poll using i-clickers - emerging technology you wish you were taking advantage of but aren’t

Adaptive learning and CBE polled highest - presenters surprised that adaptive learning scored so high

Te Kura takeouts

Flexible pedagogy: how well are we doing with integrating the following in our offering to learners

• Progress by grade and competency a priority
• Proactive and timely feedback
• Learning paths determined by pre-assessment
• Progress recognition/recognition of participation
• Remediation on specific objectives in an assessment
• Learner-initiated progression (eg. choice of presentation medium for assessment)
• Flexible pacing

Personal takeouts

Blockbuster vs Netflix analogy - going and picking up selected items to take away vs browsing huge library of stuff available right now to suit me right now. Choice critical

Addressing holes in learner knowledge when they are new to organisation - not all need to start in same place, on same day, in same way

Progress dashboard for students - what might this look like?

Analytics and predictive modelling - how do we apply this and to what purpose?

The promise, perils and progress of EdTech

Open Panel discussion on the current challenges with the conversion of technology and education
Attendee Sheryl

Panel Members
Jeffrey Alderson, Eduventures
Kari Frisch, Central Lakes College
Philip Thompsen, West Chester University
Janet Kamps, Stephen F. Austin State University (runs the online learning programmes)

Important to never forget the human factor that use the technology!
Not about learning the technology its about learning how to communicate through the technology. Communicate encompasses all forms written, oral....
Demonstration by teachers above all has the biggest impact.  Using tools and not being afraid to try is the most authentic approach!

Actionable Insights: Continuous growth

Presentation on using reporting tools from Georgia Virtual School
Jane.obrien@gavirtualschool.org
Attendee Sheryl

Basic information about the school
- Most teachers work remotely
- School setup in 2015
- 134 Curriculum area
- 216 teachers
- 7744 unique students
- 200:1 ratio
- use Eportfolio for teacher reflection and PD
- caters to Special needs
- have private, public and home school students
- continuous, rolling enrolment (quite similar to Te Kura)

Use the Insights Portal
Academic risk tool (part of baseline product)
Course access
Quiz completion and stats
Reports by tools for teachers and students

Valuable to establish relationship with GVS as a number of areas of alignment with Te Kura.





Interesting piece on learner analytics. D2L have created an analytics blueprint which looks to be a useful resource.  Can download online here https://assets.d2l.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Learning_Analytics_Blueprint.

Supporting Learner Self-Directedness and Persistence in a Competency-Based Curriculum Through Automated Tools

Presented by Stephen Beers & Nathan Ewings - Instructional Designers, University of Wisconsin

http://flex.wisconsin.edu/

Attended by Anne

Big ideas:

How do you make a course work without an instructor?

Why do some learners get lost along the way?

How soon should learners start and how late is too late?

How do we help learners persist?

Next steps: add suggested timelines to all self-paced courses; use My Awards tool

Wish list

Personalised calendars - pre-populated with events by course developer; calculate events based on relative dates from time of enrolment; allow learner to personalise the due dates for events

Te Kura takeouts:

Analyse progress through course against time for successful and unsuccessful students - establish patterns of who started when, where in course they came to a halt, which assessments were more challenging, which more manageable.  As a result of analysis, apply conditionally released News items, intelligent agent emails to learner and LA to motivate learner, scaffold and develop persistence

Need for real-time feedback to keep students on track; including messages such as “How are you doing?  Many students need to spend more time on this activity than others.. “

Staged planning for success messages with a competency/learning to learn focus could be something for us to consider

My takeouts: Self-paced doesn’t mean the student doesn’t need structure; getting the balance right so student is not overwhelmed is critical

Tips and Tricks for Engaging Learners with Brightspace

Presented by Dana Knarr, D2L
Attended by Anne & Sheryl

Focus

• Instructor Presence
• Intelligent Agents
• Replacement Strings
• Announcements tool
• Video note
• Content tool

Te Kura takeouts

We are making good use of full range of options available. 

Intelligent agents presentation

Dana - Trainer for D2L

Number of these things we are already doing but a couple of key changes/highlights to the product:-

- You now do a practise run with intelligents agents to confirm it works as it should
- Also can pull a report to say last run date and a list of students that it has been run against

Content reports area - something to investigate further
- Top Table of contents
- Top drop down reports > users > details users visited > avg time spent. Potentially offers another view of student activity
- Export to CSV needs to be investigated


Need to take back to Jen B

If you build it, they will come

Presentation from Holli Brown, Gwinnett County Public schools
Elearning facilitator

School operates on a blended learning model.
Courses are focused on being student-centered and interactive
Supported by a F2F and online teacher training program of 20 hours over 6 months around common instructional design principles.
Use the ADDIE Model and UDL to underpin development
Four door model (this is a new analogy for me) consists of:
- The library: which is content
- The playground: games and practise activities
- The cafe: discussions, social learning opportunities
- Evaluation model: evaluation, rubrics and quizzes

Useful Design Examples used by the school when planning resources

Ready to go!

Conference about to begin - great atmosphere.  Enjoyed a warm welcome from the Australia-based D2L team last night which set the scene for a purposeful and rewarding conference. Anne

Looking forward to today's Keynote at 4.00 pm - Sir Ken Robinson as well as some stimulating sessions during the day. - Marg

Keynote and starred Presenters

John Baker CEO D2L
Quite inspiring as a new father (Emmeline born 7 weeks prem) talking about the imperative for changing the education system - one child at a time. Recently addressed UN on the numbers of students outside schooling. 57 million children not attending school. Te Kura's work of vital importance for our young kiwis. Education being transformed by visionary educators. On a continuum towards a learner centred model - more people in more places with more opportunities.
Most exciting times still ahead. Teachers enagaging with students at the roight moment. Learning wrapped around the learner.

Angela Maiers
Two words can change the world. Lives change. Worlds change. "I Matter."
Gallup 2015 88% workforce want to work for someone who cares for them. We don't feel like we matter. Mattering gap amongst students, not an achievement gap. How hopeful are students when they get to school. What is their overall satisfaction and wellbeing
4th grade 3.72
12th grade 2.05
Secure the Heart or you don't have a shot at their brains or business.
Our mission
Rise of Youth suicide
It starts with us
I matter.
Worthiness is a daily practice
The practice of  saying a persons name three times is proven to be beneficial  2 - 20 seconds
Availability is what is important to others.
Focus on the brilliance of others.