Week 9

A personal learning network is an informal learning network that consists of the people a learner nteracts with and derives knowledge from in a personal learning environment.
Leadership

  • Flipped preparation (required): Find your school vision statement (not mission statement) and add it to your location's Padlet, ready to share in class. Each padlet is located in the Class Notes for this week. DONE

“Empowering Learners for Life”


Digital

Flipped preparation (required): Read the article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and complete the survey form: ​tinyurl.com/TMLConnectivism

DONE

 Leadership
A Vision of the Change Process
In this week sessions we explore two ways of looking at the process of leading change. Although both of these may seem simplistic on the surface, their ability to provide an overall vision for the change is important. "In reality, even successful change efforts are messy and full of surprises. But just as a relatively simple vision is needed to guide people through a major change, so a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure." (Kotter, 1995).
School Vision and Learning
In his book on collaborative leadership, which builds upon some ideas form the work of John Hattie, De Witt (2016) notes that “Hattie often asks educators whether they have the word ‘learning’ on the first page of their school website or in their school's mission and vision statement”
School Vision Statements
In the session we will be reviewing the school vision statements added to the Padlets for each area, and looking for both common and distinctive themes. Here are the links to the Padlets:
Collaborative Leadership - What Makes A Leader Impactful?
De Witt (2016) identified the following features as being important in collaborative leadership. In each case the 'effect size' from Hattie's work is included. Hattie (2008) claims that an effect size of 0.4 is the expected impact on learning of a given practice. Higher than that is a positive impact:
  • Instructional leadership (0.42) - a focus on learning
  • Collective teacher efficacy (1.57) - collaborative leaders foster collaborative expertise
  • Assessment-capable learning (1.44) - collaborative leaders meet students where they are and bring them to a new level
  • Professional Development (0.51) - foster and inspire professional learning and use their venues/meetings to do it
  • Feedback (0.75) - collaborative leaders foster growth in stakeholders and themselves - feedback helps them get there
  • Family engagement (0.49) - giving a voice in the process
De Witt also notes that is it important to challenge thinking: "In order for collaboration to be real and for teachers, students, and parents to feel as though they are a part of a school climate in which they are valued, collaboration needs to include times where we not only learn from one another but also challenge each other’s thinking."
De Witt's Collaborative Leadership Framework is shown below. It outlines four types of leader, and suggests that leaders should move towards being collaborators. He suggests that leadership is situational, that all leaders might use these types of leadership in different contexts, but that they should always aim to be collaborators. The framework is meant to offer a reflective tool for leaders to study and understand how they might be leading and setting goals, depending on the situation. 
The ultimate goal where the Collaborative Leadership Growth Cycle is concerned is to choose an area in which leaders can be more collaborative at the end, as outlined in this cycle from DeWitt & Slade (2014). "Regardless of where leaders start, whether they spend time in the bystander, regulator, or negotiator stage, they can take the necessary steps to move into the collaboration stage." (DeWitt & Slade, 2014).
Kotter's 8 step Process
Kotter (1996) stresses that management and leadership are different things. "The simple insight that management is not leadership is better understood today, but not nearly as well as is needed. Management makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones."
Kotter (1996) suggests that there is an 8 step process for leading change.
  1. Create a sense of urgency (identify crises and opportunities)
  2. Build a guiding coalition
  3. Form a strategic vision and initiatives
  4. Enlist a volunteer army
  5. Enable action by removing barriers
  6. Generate short term wins
  7. Sustain acceleration
  8. Institute change
This diagram summarises the most recent version of Kotter's process (Kotter, 2017). It is similar to the 1996 version but emphasises some broader cross-institutional roles.
The model has evolved over time from a sequential step by step process to a more agile and iterative approach. Both approaches can be valuable. Kotter (2017) International eBook can be downloaded after filling in the form found on this site The Kotter International eBook
Leading Change in the Digital Curiculum
For our final activity in the session we will be looking at the context of addressing the progress outcomes of the “Designing and Developing Digital Outcomes” technology area from the digital curriculum. These progress outcomes can be found at tinyurl.com/TMLDDO (English) or tinyurl.com/TMLDDOTeReo (Te Reo). 
The following links should be helpful in applying either Kotter's or DeWitt's ideas to the following question
'How you would lead a change in teaching within this curriculum area?'


References
DeWitt, P., & Slade, S. (2014). School Climate Change: How Do I Build a Positive Environment for Learning?(ASCD Arias). ASCD.
DeWitt, P. (2016). Collaborative Leadership: Six Influences That Matter Most. Thousand Oaks CA: Corwin
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Kotter, J. (1995). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995, 59-67.
Kotter, J. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Review Press.
Kotter International. (2017). 8 Steps for Accelerating Change (eBook). Kotter International
Maeroff, G. (1993). Building teams to rebuild schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 74(7), 512-519.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday. 
Digital 

Before Class
After reading the required article 'Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age', fill out the following form with your responses to check your understanding of some of the key ideas within it. 
Wisdom of the Crowd
We begin this week be reflecting on last week's the Wisdom of the Crowd activity, guessing the number of jelly beans in the jar. Surowiecki (2004) claimed that "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart, and still they are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, and even predicting the future." The earliest exmaple of this phenomenon was observed by Francis Galton at a country fair where people were asked to guess the weight of an ox. The mean average was close to the actual weight. The standard deviation was expansive but the key was that the mean average was exceptionally close. This demonstrates the ability of the mean of the group being able to solve a simple problem.  see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Variance_and_standard_deviation
Connecting and Collaborating
When we talk about digital and collaborative learning as the two main concepts behind the postgraduate programme, this linking of digital tools and collaboration acknowledges the critical role of information and communication technologies in enabling contemporary forms of collaboration. The "learners in the digital age are able to connect and collaborate with people beyond their physical environment. They can connect a range of information or data and draw on a range of perspectives to collaboratively generate and critique new ideas." (Starkey, 2012).
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and Environments (PLEs)
A personal learning network is an informal learning network that consists of those people who a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from. These may be people known personally, but equally they may be people who are only connected via the Web, and there may be no personal interaction, simply an exchange of learning.
The term 'personal learning environment' (PLE) is sometimes used in conjunction with PLNs, but focuses more on the toolset that learners use in order to implement their learning networks (PLN). In essence, it is possible to have a personal learning network that is entirely face to face (though this would be rather limiting). In contrast a PLE assumes a digital toolset that will support the interactive learning process (EDUCAUSE, 2009).
DeWitt (2016) states that “Having a PLN is a necessary requirement to being an instructional leader because your PLN will stretch your thinking, offer an encouraging word, share resources, and help you bring out your best.”
Connectivism - the work of Siemens and Downes
There are several principles of the theory of connectivism, as outlined by George Siemens in 2004, in his article “Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age” (Siemens, 2004). Siemens has also pioneered the types of online course that have been labelled 'MOOCs' (Massive Open Online Courses). 
Stephen Downes, who has worked with Siemens on these courses, emphasises that their style of MOOC is connectivist (cMOOC), while other types of MOOC use more conventional approaches. Downes has collected his extensive writing on connectivism into an online book (Downes, 2012). In this book he notes that “The scope of my work covers three major domains, knowledge, learning and community. Each of these represents an aspect of network theory: the first, examining the cognitive properties of networks, the second, looking at how networks learn, and the third, tracing the properties of effective networks. These also represent the processes of learning, inference and discovery in society writ large.” (p.9).
In today's session we will be looking at six of these essays using this http://tinyurl.com/DownesEssays
  • A Gathering of Ideas (p.32)
  • The Space Between the Notes (p.62)
  • Diagrams and Networks (p.78) 
  • Creating the Connectivist Course (p.503)
  • Where the Future Lies (p.578) 
  • Engagement and Personalized Learning (p.580)
Principles of Connectivism
Siemens (2004) summarises the eight principles of connectivism as:
  1. Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
  2. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
  3. Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
  4. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
  5. Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
  6. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
  7. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
  8. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
References:
DeWitt, P. (2016). Collaborative Leadership: Six Influences That Matter Most. Thousand Oaks CA: Corwin
Downes, S. (2012). Connectivism and Connective Knowledge: Essays on meaning and learning networks. Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/files/books/Connective_Knowledge-19May2012.pdf
EDUCAUSE. (2009). 7 things you should know about Personal Learning Environments. Retrieved from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7049.pdf
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. eLearnSpace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Starkey, L. (2012). Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds. New York, NY: Doubleday, Anchor.


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