Alive in the Swamp was a very interesting read for me.

It began by discussing the fact that there

is a major loss in enthusiasm for school as student progress from kindergarten to grade nine. There is a
slight increase in enthusiasm in high school, but it is very slight. The article makes the claim that
students and teachers are psychologically and literally being pushed out of school. Meanwhile, there is
also the counterforce, or pull, of rapidly expanding digital innovations creating an explosion of
opportunities. The paper goes on to argue that three powerful forces must be combined to catapult
learning dramatically forward: technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge. It also suggests that there
are four criteria that new learning systems must meet; they must be irresistibly engaging for student
and teachers, elegantly easy to adapt and use, ubiquitous access to technology 24/7, and steeped in
real-life problem solving.
Interestingly, there is an argument that teacher as a facilitator is not enough. Teacher as
activator is much more effective. This requires reciprocal teaching where student and teacher are
both teachers learning from each other. It is believed that this change will be part of the solution to
the main problem; however, we still need to delve a little deeper. In order to do this, an index was
created. This index contains 3 main criteria with 3 subcategories for each one. The goal is to be able to
achieve a green rating in each category.
The first main category is Pedagogy with subcategories of: clarity and quality of intended
outcome, pedagogy itself, and quality of assessment platform. The second main category is System
Change with subcategories of: implementation support, value for money, and whole system change
potential. The final main category is Technology with subcategories of: quality of user
experience/model design, ease of adaptation, and comprehensiveness and integration.
In order to get a green rating in pedagogy, it involves some of the following points:
- Clear outcomes
- Strong benefits
- Learning outcomes communicated
- Modelling used to quantify impact where possible
- Student and teacher both clear about success criteria
- Teacher as change agent
- Problems and questions placed in real-world contexts
- Emphasis on intellectual risk-taking and trial-and-error problem solving
- Healthy partnership between student and teacher
- Teachers open to alternatives and are adaptable
- Students engaged through enquiry, learning is personal, students feel teacher
support
- Psychological support of learners
- Teachers trained to focus on personal experience of individual student
- Adaptive, interactive and integrated assessment system
- Formative and summative assessments
- Assessments show detail for every stakeholder
- Assessments measure activity and behaviour
- Assessment system is integral to learner and their sense of engagement
- Assessment helps motivate the learner
A green rating for system change involves the following:
- Innovation service/product team provide full implementation support
- Time and effective technology support
- Professional development is included
- Teachers are vital change agents and integral to success of the innovation
- Focus of professional development is on teacher learning to know the impact the
teacher is having on the student, provide feedback for student, and to master the
motivation of students
- Teachers understand that training is necessary
- Constant monitoring of professional development
- The innovation produces twice the learning outcome for half the cost
- School and learner are significantly better off with the innovation
- Innovation scales virally to schools throughout the system
- Little central management necessary
- Clusters of schools learn from each other
- New developments are made collectively with collaborative learning
- Implementation team understands simplexcity and sticks to priorities as it strives for
scale
Finally, for technology, a green rating involves:
- Technology is irresistibly engaging for the learner
- Learner has little difficulty learning different functions
- Digital tools are participatory, engaging, co-creative, and collaborative
- Innovation captures student engagement and interest
- Technology is highly connected to the internet to allow real time adaptation
- Technology is easily assessable from any device
- Elements of technology, pedagogy and system change knowledge are integrated
- Teachers confident in technology integration and understand how it functions
- Innovation is technologically ubiquitous and every learner has equal access and
opportunity
- Technology embedded in the school/enables teacher interactions with students
- Technology contains a comprehensive set of materials and supporting learning
mechanisms
- Assessment platform is seamlessly integrated into the technology
- Technology and content and curricula are personalized based on student
performance
My reasoning for making the list that I did was so that it was easy to see it all outlined. I did not
mention what a red rating looked like because it is basically the opposite of the list that I just created.
We should be more concerned with what we are trying to achieve and accomplish than what we are
not.
As I look at this list, I feel like there are a lot of things that are going to be strengths for teachers
and a lot of things that are going to be challenges for teachers. I also would like to note that I feel like
the strengths and challenges are going to be different for each individual teacher (much the same way
learning is different for each individual student).
Some of the difficulties or challenges that I foresee, from my own personal point of view,
include things like:
- The fact that the list is incredibly long
o Teachers have a lot to think about when they are teaching, and my concern
is that they are not going to always be thinking about this long list
however, it would be my hope that some of the things on this list are just
second-nature to some teachers
- There are things that are out of the teachers control
o Ensuring the support system is effective is not the responsibility of the
teacher OR ensuring the technology is highly connected to the internet
- Time
o I am curious to see how teacher can create such individualized learning for
student when there is a limit on time with classroom sizes being the way
that they are, this is going to be a difficult task
- Collaboration between schools
o Although this idea is a good one and could be very beneficial, I have some
concerns about how this is going to happen. From my own personal
experience, we had very different types of environments in our small town
schools despite the fact that the towns were only 10km apart. What works
in one school may not work well in another. Where do we draw the line on
collaboration?
- Real-world Context
o This is somewhat linked to what I mentioned above there could be a lot of
differences in what is considered real-world from one school to another. I
would even argue that there could be major differences within the school,
depending on where the school is located.
- Technology
o Keeping up-to-date on technology may be a bit of a challenge I would not
have felt this way 10 years ago when I first graduated high school, but I
definitely feel that way now.
Some of the strengths that I see with this system include the following:
- Assessments
o This is something that I personally feel I have learned a lot about in my
university experience personalizing assessment as well as using both
formative and summative. It may be challenging to begin with, but
experience will help!
- Professional Development
o Again, this is a personal feeling if you want to be a teacher, you have to
understand that you are going to need to constantly keep up with training
and be adaptive/flexible
- Relationships
o Healthy relationships between teacher and student for the most part, I
feel like this is something that you have to be good at in order to even make
it through the program this should be something that is almost second-
nature to someone who is going to be a teacher
- Clear, communicated outcomes
o These outcomes are VERY well-defined for us (at least in Alberta) and
therefore it should be easy to communicate them to students as well as
parents
- Technology
o Although this was listed in challenges, I think it can also be listed here a
teacher who has the ability to build relationships with students should be
able to figure out what technology will keep the students motivated and
engaged
Overall, there are challenges and strengths related to anything. If it is possible to incorporate all
of these things into classrooms, there is definitely going to be a benefit to students as well as teachers.
However, I am somewhat skeptical. I do not feel that being able to check off everything in the list that I
made is necessarily indicative of engaged/motivated learning. I do believe that all aspects are important
and beneficial, but it is possible that there are some students who will need more or different
learning/teaching. I understand that personalized learning is discussed and, in theory, should work I
just want to see what happens in practice. I believe that there are always exceptions to the rule.