Assessment...

I have been pondering how to assess the children's learning from a SOLE. There is plenty of opportunity for light formative assessment at the end of each session, where we discuss what the children learnt but my main concern is how to assess retention of learning. The issue here is that although the children are obviously finding out a lot, when asked at the end of a session, everything is still fresh in the mind from the last half hour. How do I know that the children have actually learnt anything that they will remember?

There are many methods of assessment to use, the preferred one in Finland seems to be an in-class test, but if we want to keep with the spirit of SOLE then perhaps a test is not the best way. Although it would be very interesting to try, for instance, a science unit and then give a standard test at the end.  A suggested method in the SOLE toolkit is getting the children to produce a poster with everything they find out written down. This of course has its issues. The children may not write down everything or may simply copy from the internet and not learn anything. What I want to assess is, to really prove if SOLE education works is learning retention. What happens when we come back to the topic. Have the children remembered anything from the experience?

Session 2: 15th May 2013 - A bit more focus please

Last session I wanted to apply a bit more focus so would only set one, very open, question. First, to set the mood, I asked them to tell the group anything they knew about Vikings. They knew more and were more keen to tell it than last week so that was encouraging. We covered topics from travelling the world to living in wood houses. Next we discussed how to use the internet to find information. Here began an argument about Wikipedia entirely in Finnish so I have no idea what happened but I think it ended in favour of the site. I also highlighted the uses of YouTube in information searching.

I set the question "How did the Vikings live?". Gave them some ideas about food, housing, clothes and sent them on their way. Again as we began there were arguments about who had the computer, who was where first etc. etc... but it ended quickly with one group going to a different room to work. With regards to the work I noticed that they spent most of their time on one website; finding a good site then reading the lot. I'm not sure if this is good or bad but as you will find out it doesn't have a negative effect. I am still not happy with the way they record their findings. Today I did see some pictures and something resembling a lay out but everything is very unorganised. I will have to do something about it next session. It is not that I need everything to be neat and tidy but I suspect they are reading and learning a lot more than they actually write down. Writing is a very good method for the internalisation of information and also acts as a memory booster. This became evident when I asked a question in the feedback session about what the Vikings wore and one of the girls tried to answer, couldn't remember what she knew, only that she knew it, looked on the sheet but hadn't written it down.

The only way I can find out what the children have actually found out is during the feedback sessions at the end. This is often in Finnish so I require the teacher to translate but some children do speak in English. On the topic of "How did the Vikings live?" we had many answers. We talked about the Viking travels to america, and some interesting research into Vikings having children with the Native Americans. We touched on the topic of slavery and mentioned a bit about what they ate and wore but two very comments came up about what the Vikings were like which I was really hoping the children would find. First: "the Vikings were very hygienic people". Right back at the very start it was suggested that they were horrid, dirty barbarians but the same child who said that produced the aforementioned statement. Second: "Killing and raiding were only minor parts of Viking culture. Most of the Vikings made their living through farming, making things and trade". This again is a very important point as it corrects some very widespread misconceptions.

   

Session 1: 8th May 2013 - An introduction

Setting The Stage

In the very first session I wanted to raise interest for the subject and elicit lots of prior knowledge and good questions. It was supposed to run over two 45 minute lessons with half an hour for lunch but in reality with had one 20 minute lesson and one half and hour.

How do you interest a group of 16 children in a topic they don't really care about? Play spot the teacher of course! My opening line was "I am a Viking". There was some disbelief at this statement but after showing several pictures with my alter ego "Fiac the Viking" hidden within and challenging them them to spot me they soon believed what I said. After explaining how the lesson was going to run "I don't want to teach you, you can teach yourselves", we ran out time but I asked them to think carefully of any questions they might want to find the answers too while out at break. I then played this video.    

To my surprise they didn't all instantly get up and leave to play football but each and everyone stayed to watch. I have never seen them be so attentive or be this quiet before. 

After break I played another video and asked them to right down everything they think they know about the Vikings. When  I got the group to feedback what they wrote we got some very interesting answers. As expected we got the usual, "Vikings killed everyone", but there was talk about what they wore, what they ate and what they looked like. There was even some debate about whether or not they had horns. I have to admit I didn't expect such a good response and when it came to asking questions, "What do you want to find out?", they appeared to be genuinely interested in the topic and asked some very interesting questions. They weren't soul searching or particularly open questions but they could be put into brackets such as "how did the Vikings live?", "Where did the Vikings go?", "Were they really bloodthirsty killers?". This is where I believe I made a mistake. I didn't focus on anything in particular but left the questions on the board and sat back to see what happened. 

So How Did It Go? 

The children charged into the library, argued a bit about who had control of the computer, sulked, momentarily refused to join in, then set to work researching the Vikings. Imitating moths to a lamp all the children directed attention to the computer screens talking in Finnish and every now and then mentioning the work 'Viikingit". This may have been a ploy to keep me happy but I have reason to believe they were trying their best to answer the impossible questions I had set. This is where lack of focus doesn't help. Although they all found the same website with the annoying pop-up and translated the questions written up, having three to look at and work on meant they weren't really looking for anything in particular and thus, just browsing. They didn't look at what other groups were doing and didn't opt to change groups around. The common pattern was of one working the computer, one writing, another sometimes chipping in ideas and the last just day-dreaming. 

When we came to feedback time there was little to say. They hadn't written much down and apparently not being used to using blank paper had tried to write in bullet points or draw in lines. Yes they did find out a bit about the Vikings but not very much.

The Next Steps

When something doesn't work, try again. Failure is only the point where you give up. This is a new way of learning for the children. They have me, a mad teacher from England who knows no Finnish. They have to work in groups and 1 computer and they have very open ended questions. Of course it will take a while for  me and the children to work out what to do. 

In the next session I want more focus: just one question which they can all work on. The nature of the challenge means that each group will find out something different. I will also talk about ways of using the internet to search for information just to double check that they know how. 

The Project

As great as it would be to be able to let imaginations run wild and give the children chance to truly direct their own learning, it just isn't possible. There is a curriculum which must be followed and topics which the children are required to learn. In this case I have to teach about "The Vikings"!

Oh by the way, did I mention I was in Finland? I don't think I did. So yes, I am in Finland, I can speak a few words of Finnish, most of them to do with maths and all of them I learnt when I got here. As you can imagine there are all kinds of issues arising from the language barrier and you might be wondering how I manage to teach anything at all? Well that is not the topic of this post but just be I can tell you that teaching a knowledge based subject like history has a whole different set of problems to overcome then a very visual maths topic.

The language barrier has actually proven to be quite helpful in this case as it stops me from lecturing the children on the Vikings for the next week and boring them to death with brooch design details from various Viking cultures and in depth discussions on philosophy and what it was to be a Viking. As you might tell, the Vikings are a particular favourite of mine. When Sugata began testing SOLE's in Europe he went to schools in Italy where he gave them questions in English. This meant that the children had to work out the translation before completing the task. My lack of Finnish speaking skills gives me the opportunity to test the children's ingenuity as they navigate the difficult world of internet translations to find out what it is they should be doing.

So here is how the project will run:

1. Each session starts with deciding the question to be answered. The aim here is to come up with an open ended question which the children will find interesting and can research.

2. They then work in groups of 4 or 3 and in keeping with the rules of the experiment can change group at any time. In these groups they work at 1 computer to try and answer the question.

3. As they answer the question there will hopefully be a lot of collateral learning taking place as they read and research around the topic. Everything they learn they have to write down on A3. At the end of the project they will make a presentation about the Vikings.

4. At the end of the lesson each group feeds back something that they learnt that session.   

So what is this rubbish?

When I decided decided to take the first steps into the world of education I had no idea that it was such a mire of theories, practices and ideals. On reflection it seems ludicrous to assume that my very limited experience of education would be the accepted template for use all around the world but having spent 18 years on the inside of the system looking out, how was I to know any better? Now that I'm a budding educator in initial teacher training and have had the world of educational research revealed to me, I am able to experiment with teaching theory and practice having the safety net of only being a student.


I was first introduced to the notion of self organised learning by my uncle, who also introduced me to TED, when he kept telling me about this crazy idea of giving children in India and seeing what happened. Well of course, being the inquisitive type, I had to look this up and found myself several hours later reading about the 'hole in the wall' project and watching talks on its successes. The project started by Sugata Mitra sought to give children in India computers, access to the internet and ... well that's it. They just left them to get on with it. When Sugata came back several months later he found that the children, on discovering that the majority of the internet was in one language had taught themselves English. Sugata took this research to varying degrees of absurdity, including only giving the children access to documents on DNA replication but found surprising results in attainment and more importantly observed the ways in which children learn and develop together.  

In 2013 Sugata was awarded the TED prize and a lot of money to take his research to a new level. His wish is to develop a 'school in the cloud'. For those of you not savvy with the latest computer mumbo-jumbo he wants to build a school where the children teach themselves and each other using the internet. To make this possible and justifiable he needs evidence that his ideas actually work so as part of his project he is appealing to educators to try out a new learning style in their class and contribute to the research. He has released a very useful pack detailing how to set up and run a SOLE - SOLE ToolKit. 

Now that I'm on my second year teaching experience I have a few short weeks to try out the ideas in the tool kit and see if they work. Initially I was quite sceptical about the idea of self organised learning. I mean why would a group of children who have been in school long enough to be bored with it want to teach themselves? But as I think about it more I am very keen to find out if this is actually a good way of re-kindling interest in learning. While I am working on the project I will try to post all observations on here so that I have some where to keep them and so that you, who ever you are, can be mildly interested in the outcome.