I got away with a one this weekend. While my colleagues attended their mandatory IB workshops I had a chance to attend the foundation day for John Hattie’s upcoming Visible Learning conference in March next year.
I approached the conference with a very vague understanding of Visible Learning (so vague that I thought I was going to be in for a grab bag of visible thinking strategies). The day was a bit of an onslaught of data at times, yet by the end of the day I had a real sense of clarity about the research based findings being presented. Jayne-Ann Young was an engaging presenter and in between her rugby jokes she caused me to stop and really reflect about my practice in the classroom. Throughout the day I found myself considering what effects student learning and particularly my impact on student learning, thinking about how my students will remember me, talking about learning not about teaching, discussing the differences between effective feedback and blind praise (perhaps a real issue in my practice). Perhaps my most crucial take aways were the affirmation of clear learning intentions and success criteria for students and the links between the characteristics of visible learners and what I consider to be 21st century learners: Collaborative, Creative, Critical, Communicators (and they Care).
This was a great introduction to visible learning and it has really whet my appetite for John Hattie’s arrival in Japan next year. Luckily I have some pre-reading to tide me over until then as I won a copy of his latest book on Visible Thinking for “Tweeter of the Workshop”. I had a great time tweeting throughout the conference with a select few of the other participants who were also active during the conference. In a auditorium lecture situation twitter was the only real way that I could engage with my peers around the room. I managed to find loads of great teachers to follow (@nainisingh, @Nosidoog1878, @illywhacker1, @ICT_Seisen, @cmiddleton79 to name a few) and a bunch of new ideas and perspectives. I think it is official, I have become an edutwitter convert this year.
Check out my thoughts during the day below in my first attempt at a Storify
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