The more things change, the more they stay the same

In my recent post NZ Research & Articles - Online Teaching & Learning, I commented on the similar themes coming up in the research from nearly two decades of learning online. To illustrate this, and just because history really interests me, I want to share this report.

Te Pouaka Whakaako ki te Kāreti o Ngata
Telelearning and Contexts of Awareness at Ngata Memorial College. Report prepared for Te Puni Kōkiri by Ken Stevens (1998).
This case study of telelearning at Ngata Memorial College in Ruatoria, compares students who are telelearning with those who aren't and what their perceptions were of the wider world.
Telelearning (audiographics) provides students with a connection with the world beyond school and extends educational and vocational opportunities for students and adults in remote communities.
In this report Steven's raises the government's commitment to equality of educational opportunity and how developments in ICT have  wide ranging implications for schools, in teaching & learning, and administration policy.
He unpacks in detail the differences between telelearning and distance education in relation to how each was positioned to serve the society of the times. Distance education belongs to an industrial age model; telelearning to the information age. Steven's goes on to describe the changing educational environment where:

• schools are inter-connected through ICT networks, 
• technologies are used to provide new and better ways of learning, 
• ICT skills will provide employment advantage, 
• there will be an urgent need to provide the mass provision of appropriate technologies to classrooms. 

These are key themes that are still important today, as are individualised model of teaching and learning and the changing role of the teacher, which are also discussed.

This report was written just on the advent of Tomorrow's Schools and describes a highly centralised system of education without which small schools would be challenged to provide a quality education in a increasingly competitive environment. This has been a huge change since this time and in itself has been a key driver to the growth in collaborative online networks in the decade to follow. Steven's mentions the growing reality of the virtual classroom with the development of Cantatech & TOSItech and a developing East Coast network (which could be the precursor to the KAWM Network).

There were a number of recommendations from this report to the Ministry of Education. Some are summarised below:

• Recognise their pioneering role in telelearning education and support the expansion to other NZ schools;
• Expanding links to Colleges of Education;
• Recognise the Māori cultural context and consult with the broader Māori community;
• Be recognised as a special technology school, 'a valuable educational laboratory' from which other schools could learn;
• They should no longer be considered a small school but be funded as a virtual school.

It is interesting to see the work that was pioneered by Ngata Memorial College is still very relevant today. Maybe now we are 17 years into the 21st Century we will start to see the change that the Information Age has promised being realised for NZ learners.

Call to action for Governments & Policymakers - support Open, Online & Flexible Learning.

"Access to, and success in, open, online and flexible learning are key solutions to the pressing development challenges and needs of 21st century societies, emphasizes the November 2014 Bali message by ICDE’s higher education leaders.

Recommendations from a recent summit in Bali called on ICDE and UNESCO to continue their efforts to support and encourage governments to:

• Create favorable frameworks for opening up education – making education at all levels available to all through open, online, flexible, blended and distance education.
• Stimulate the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) – publicly funded educational resources licensed to make materials needed for learners freely available to all.
• Enable learner mobility through the development of transnational qualification frameworks, which make the recognition and transfer of qualifications, course credits and learning within and between jurisdictions part of the fabric of an open, global education system.
• Encourage the adoption of quality standards, guidelines and benchmarks for open, online and distance learning to be mainstreamed into quality frameworks and protocols.
• Foster innovation in the form of new approaches to the assessment of learning outcomes, prior learning and work-based learning; new approaches to instruction, which both increase learner engagement and learning outcomes; and new ways of collaborating and connecting to learners and higher rates of student success.
• Invest in research focused on best practices in the design, development, deployment and delivery of open, online, distance and flexible education; the use of open educational resources; the mobility of learners; new business models for the operation of educational institutions; and new models of public assurance and accountability."

Some key messages for our government here - not just for higher education but for the schooling sector too. These recommendations are not about bandwidth, networks or infrastructure but about building capacity in people, systems and open resources. 

More detail from the Bali UNESCO Policy Forum here.

Know Your Learners

One of the themes that was recurrent during the recent DEANZ conference was the importance of getting to know your learners. Along with the call (aimed more at Higher Ed. delegates) to be ready because these connected, confident and digitally minded kids are coming to you next! I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to get to meet some of our learners over the last couple of days while tagging along to VPLD Hui in Auckland.
Orere students let me know before i arrived that after my visit 'I would never be the same again!' What has been experienced can never be unexperienced - it was great to get to meet you and help you move forward in your online learning :-)

#vlnpkids know your learners #Orere #f2f pic.twitter.com/rUr6YHIRQq

— VLN Primary School (@VLNPrimary) May 31, 2014

And the one they want the world to see! #vlnpkids virtual learners are real learners 😎 pic.twitter.com/3s25PD53EQ

— VLN Primary School (@VLNPrimary) May 31, 2014

Teaching online (without a camera) is like teaching in the dark, we don't see those visual cues, a puzzled look, a spark of understanding or even a yawn! It takes a lot longer to get to know our students, what their needs and interests are; particularly more so if they are shy and stand back from interactions. We are really looking forward to having the critical mass of bandwidth enabled schools to turn on the cameras soon.

Sole Charge & Rural Teaching Principals Conference

I have spent the last day at Sole Charge & Rural Teaching Principals Conference in Palmerston North, connecting with many of our VLN Primary principals and sharing our story.

It is great to have this time with Principals away from the busy distractions of daily school life and to talk about what matters for our students and how we can work together to make a difference to their learning.

Principals from the Rural/Remote Schools Project

Our conversations now are no longer so much about how does this online learning stuff work, and what can we learn together (although there is still some of this in introducing new schools). We know it works and we are aware of the potential there is to push the boundaries in learning opportunities for our students. Conversations are now beginning to move into how can we build this capability across our schools, and how can we improve what we are doing? What are our children achieving through their participation in their online classes and how is it making a tangible difference to their learning. What evidence have we got to support our understandings beyond anecdotal feedback & observations. Time to step things up another gear!