New Pedagogies Deep Learning

Its been very exciting to learn that we have been accepted into the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning global project. Can we change the system? The education system that has become test driven and lost the love for learning.  I hope so and I will put in all I can to help. Will you help?

Lea, Jake and myself attended the opening presentation on Friday afternoon.  It was a rainy Friday afternoon, not the time when you would think you would be receptive to lots of information.  However it was powerful and expertly ran by Wayne Craig, Lyn Davie and Marc Blancs. The presentation covered the who, why and what about New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL). Our project involves the development of the how.

Who, is very interesting as there are 80 schools in Victoria and 20 from Tasmania representing Australia and then it goes global. 10 countries each with 100 schools participating.  These are the countries involved, Canada, USA, Columbia, Uruquay, Senegal, EU cluster, UK, The Netherlands, Latvia,Australia. So many countries all working towards the same goals of developing the skills for Global Citizenship, Collaboration, Character, Communication, Creativity & Imagination, Real world Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Knowledge Construction. Assessment of these skills, which has been previously found to be difficult, will be a feature of the New Pedagogies.  Ways of working and relationships between students and teachers will be remastered to a partnership where both stake holders work together to plan, engage and assess learning.

Michael Fullen has written a whitepaper

Towards a New End: New Pedagogies for Deep Learning

that explains the why in detail but in short students are finding school boring, drop out rates are increasing, unemployment rising and students have disenagement with their whole life.  Teachers are finding it harder and harder to teach. Governments are using appraisal to improve teaching rather than development of teachers and lastly the world has fully embraced digital technology into all spheres of life.
The NPDL will be an action research project that calls for design, action, evaluation and redesign along with learning relationships development. Changes in relationships, practices and measurement.

At the presentation we were set three tasks to complete back at school. The first task was to select the 3 skills from the list of seven that we think are the most important.  So I have made a form so you can have your say also.(see below) It would be great if you could fill in the form and there are only two questions.

The second task is to decide which three skills are most important for our school at Epsom. While the third task was to write a narrative for our school.

Many thanks for your thoughts and I'm looking forward to the New Pedagogies Project and hope this project will make our kids' lives richer. It's kids that matter and every child can learn and should be their best. 

We left the afternoon with our heads buzzing full of ideas, thoughts and overflow.