Month: July 2017

World’s Largest Lesson – shared with our Year 5 Class

On By Margaret SimkinIn education, effective teaching, SustainabilityLeave a comment

As part of my role I have shared responsibility for teaching Year 5 Library lessons. I thought it would be great to share the UN Goals for Sustainable Development early in the coming term.

This is what I am planning to cover:

Quick warm up:

This lesson will commence with a reading of  Dust by Colin Thompson

Dust

An extract from the publisher’s description of this text:

“A beautifully illustrated book that sensitively looks at the themes of peace and social justice In a perfect world, this book would not exist. But we do not live in a perfect world. At any given moment of any given day, there are people dying from natural disasters over which we have no control. Beyond natural disasters we add disasters of our making, but even if we all learn to live in peace, there will still be millions of people who need help.”

Then:

This video will form the introduction partly because it is very pertinent of itself, but also because one of our Middle Years (Year 6 – 8) classrooms is named after Malala. These students may well be studying in that room in 2018.

Malala introducing the The Worlds Largest Lesson from World’s Largest Lesson on Vimeo.

Our Library catalogue has many titles relevant to this lesson, for example there are 186 titles related to sustainable living in our Junior Campus Branch:

Sustainable living books

Using the search result in QR format – an example of saving paper – and their class iPads, I can integrate the skills we have been building for retrieving specific books from our shelves.

Sustainable living search result

The activity will reinforce the concepts of:

  • our ability to contribute to the sustainable development goals as individuals and a group,
  • the importance of global goals (and the United Nations),
  • collaborating on global educational goals.

The lesson will be taught in the first week of our term – on the 20th July, which is when our first class is scheduled.

It is important that students living in regional Australia realise that they are part of a bigger world and can participate in global initiatives.

This will be modelled to them through sharing this at the end of the lesson:

The World’s Largest Lesson 2016 – with thanks to Sir Ken Robinson and Emma Watson from World’s Largest Lesson on Vimeo.

The results will be blogged about on our school library blog and shared through Twitter, and I will model for them how this will occur bu using the #theworldslargestlesson

Worldslesson

Teaching for Sustainability in our School Library

On By Margaret SimkinIn Collaborating, Concepts, Connecting, content, education, SustainabilityLeave a comment

We often don’t think about the things we implicitly teach. Recently, I completed a survey for The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) on our contribution to the United Nations Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This is an example of how we can introduce the complexity of this to younger students:

What is Sustainable Development? from World’s Largest Lesson on Vimeo.

It is interesting to stop and think about what we might be modelling to our students beyond actual subject teaching – something the school library needs to consider on a regular basis.

These are the targets that I believe we are working towards:

These three are probably the most obvious.

SDGs 1

We are so lucky to belong to our College Community – with a long and proud tradition, a strong focus on health and well-being, dedicated and passionate teachers, and a well-established curriculum and pastoral care system based on Justice. We expose students to a number of world issues where these targets are far from being fully implemented and our opportunities to work towards these goals are provided through fund and consciousness raising.

Next, these two are related to each other:

SDGs 2

Last year we had a display based on LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Intersex) Rights. The concept resulted from a member of staff attending a professional learning event at our local hospital. Up to date and relevant material was purchased, and a display space near the public phone, located in the Tower building, has been set up with relevant and medically approved brochures. We also create focus displays on New Internationalist topics of note, and refer students regularly to issues relating to refugees and people fleeing war and or natural disasters.

Another set of connected goals which we model as well as teach can be seen in these three target areas:

SDGs 3

The subjects we teach that cover these areas include Geography, English  and Science.  The way in which we live these are as follows:

  • paper recycling bins
  • Papercut is now controlling our printing – which allows for jobs to be cancelled if they are no longer required, and prevents students printing to all the printers in the school but only collecting from one. This has had a massive impact on our paper and toner use.
  • OneNote notebooks which are now ubiquitous across the Senior Campus are also saving us from printing as many work sheets etc.
  • We also consider the environment when we turn on the air conditioners, and lights – and determine the timing, temperature and duration of use based on necessity rather than just having them running.

Can you think of other ways that we are meeting these goals? If so we would love to hear them.

The logos in this article have been used as laid down in the UN Guidelines for use.

Options For Tertiary Study in 2025

On By Margaret SimkinIn 23 dig things, Concepts, education, learning, Thing 12 Comments

Christian Long: Imagining tertiary education in 2025 from EDtalks on Vimeo.

For a long time people have forecast the end of teaching as we know it – but surely we are entering an era where options will morph into something other than the known, something better, something more open and flexible?

In this short film, Christian Long raises a number of questions including:

                                              What are the options tertiary students will face in 2025?

                                              What will it mean to go to school?

He raises some questions that are unanswerable at this present time, but which will affect students currently at school, and for whom we are still providing something more like the experience of our medieval forebears,rather than the agility that the connected world provides.

He reminds us that it is hard to measure the return on investment for attending a tertiary institution now, let alone into the future, even if that is as close as his chosen time frame of eight years.

He challenges tertiary institutions to think about what they are and what they should be; university campus planning should allow for more agile uses, including partnering with other organisations. “Place” will be less bricks and mortar, rather than something that will form part of a fabric of choices ranging from face to face, several days immersion, virtual attendance, flexible spaces and incubators. Just in time learning at scale rather than a set time-frame resulting in a specific degree; adding up to an ongoing and learner driven life long education.

Our schools would do well to be thinking along similar lines.

References

Long, C.  (2012). Imagining Tertiary education in 2025 [Motion Picture]. Retrieved July 5, 2017, from https://vimeo.com/50512142

 

The Importance of an Adaptable Mind

On By Margaret SimkinIn 23 dig things, Collaborating, discussion, education, knowledge networks, learning, peer learning, queries, Reflection, Thing 11 Comment

This clip was set for viewing as one of the first tasks in CSU’s 23 digital things challenge, which I stared this morning.

It is a beautifully created visual and auditory stimulation of what is takes to make our world a better place.

The list of vital skills for our modern world contains five qualities that machines can never have:

  1. Curiousity
  2. Creativity – in the sense of liberating human energy -based on Howard Gardner
  3. Initiative
  4. Multi-disciplinary thinking – not multi-tasking but multi-asking
  5. Empathy

It left me with the question: What human skills can I offer the world?

References

Shlain, T., Steele, S., Goldberg, K. (Producers), Shlain, T., Steele, S., & Goldberg, K. (Directors). (2015). The Adaptable Mind [Motion Picture].