Rachel Whalley: Being part of online communities of learning has been an integral part of my career. From the time I trained in the first fully online Bachelor of Teaching degree at Massey. And there are some of my colleagues from there here too. And we graduated in 1999. This was life-changing for me. I wouldn’t have had this opportunity any other way.
So I’ve decided to make my professional life extending learning opportunities for our children through making technology work for us and in developing collaborative learning communities. So VLN Primary is a grassroots initiative where schools from around New Zealand work together to extend the curriculum opportunities for their students through online learning. Hence our whakatauki: We share our resources, our expertise, for the benefit of each and every one of our children.
So for anyone who sort of quickly wants to get that, that’ll follow along or get this afterwards, everything you need is up there.
The video displays a link to the VLN Primary School website.
So this is what the view has been like in schools I think for a very long time.
The video displays a photograph taken from the bottom of a hole in the ground.
It’s been really difficult working in schools when all you see is this. You can see these possibilities out there in a wider world of learning but there are so many challenges in your way in getting there. So I’m celebrating the demise of National Standards as this has been one of the many challenges that have stood in the way of schools having the freedom to embrace a wider and richer curriculum.
Today I want to talk about online learning; how it can extend the curriculum by enabling teachers to connect and collaborate across schools and provide equity and access to learning for our children.
Last year I had a TeachNZ scholarship and I did my research on ‘Collaboration across rural primary schools – a virtual learning perspective’. And I found that there are very many challenges that rural Principals face, but when Principals are able to work together collaboratively and online across schools, that they can relieve many of those challenges and provide benefits for the students and themselves. So Principals told me that they valued opportunities to collaborate and for their children to connect with others to learn online but there were so many challenges that made this difficult. There were just too many stresses in their role that prevented them from being strategic, creative and collaborative.
Because of this our schools and our learners are effectively being excluded from many opportunities. They don’t have equity and access to learning when principals and teachers are under the pump. It’s a term I’ve heard often over the last few years.
Principals I spoke to identified staffing difficulties, high work load, lack of time and access to professional learning and development, resourcing and support being significant challenges. In small and remote schools these challenges are compounded. So it makes it really difficult to step up to work collaboratively and to learn online when this is the daily reality of many principals, teachers and schools.
So I celebrate the end of National Standards and I look forward to seeing tomorrow’s schools become yesterday’s schools. I am optimistic that this will release the pressure valve in schools and I’m starting to feel it already. I think there’s a wind of change moving around our schools at the moment. So I think this will release the pressure in schools and bring about system change that’s needed.
I applaud the work that Nicki Kay has done to progress future-focussed learning in New Zealand schools but that in itself is not enough. Without systemic change that enables schools to meaningfully collaborate, and the resourcing and professional support to go with it, initiatives such as ours will have little impact across the system.
So let’s talk about communities of online learning, or CoOLs. It was suggested to me that to speak about CoOLs would be a very unpopular topic – a dirty word. Sorry but that’s my line and I will be talking about it. But CoOLs, yes it’s cringe-worthy. I cringed when I first heard that term. COLs, CoOLs, really? I’d have preferred ‘Learning Communities online’ putting the learning and the communities first, that happen to be online. So I will continue to use CoOLs so we can frame that up as being on the same page.
So quite a few are in the sector but it is part of our current legislative changes. So let me bust some myths about online learning.
Online learning is not new and it did not come out of nowhere as some critics may suggest. Online learning has been happening in New Zealand schools since the 1990s and even before. But if you’re not part of a school or cluster that’s learning online, or has been learning online, then maybe you can be excused if CoOLs was news to you. Online learning is part of our educational system that has for far too long slipped below the radar.
The video displays a still from an episode of The Simpsons where children are seated in stacked desks watching a teacher on a large television screen.
If this was going to happen in New Zealand schools I think I would give up classrooms and go and flip burgers instead. We need to ensure that any legislations around CoOLs are designed to support good practice in teaching and learning and do not provide gateways to Cave12 or Pearson’s Inc. into New Zealand I think we can be safe in the knowledge that that is not going to happen with our current government. This might be the vision of David Seymour who I actually sat in his office and he described a situation like this. I nearly felt sick. And he had that he’d have the best teacher teaching all of our children in this way and we were trying to explain to him that online learning does not work like that in our schools. This is not our vision of online learning and we won’t let it happen for our learners.
Online learning is socially isolating. Online learning is about children learning in isolation at home, alone, in their pyjamas, in the bedroom with their laptops in their bed… Um, no.
Online learning is about children being taught by computers, software platforms, avatars or even AI – Artificial Intelligence. No. Online learning, or virtual learning in New Zealand schools is about real people connecting with one another through technology. Students connecting with other students and their teachers, in real time at any time through online platforms. Virtual learning is a social experience.
Online learning collaboration is important for teachers too. Principals interviewed in my research said we should be doing more of it.
Online learning is only for rural, remote and isolated schools. Yes, these schools do have much to gain from being part of an online community of learners but the benefits of online learning are relevant to students in any sized school, urban or rural.
So why would you want to collaborate and learn online? What are the benefits? In my research, Principals talked about what was important for their learners when they were part of online collaborations. Children benefitted socially, the diverse needs of learners were supported, children had access to a breadth of learning opportunities, that they were able to develop a range of skills through their collaborative online learning experience.
But it’s not just about the curriculum. Yes we do extend and enhance the curriculum and that was an initial driver for collaborating online, but there’s much to be gained in developing other aspects. Key competencies and digital fluencies for students and for teachers. Children need to have opportunities to engage with others online to develop their social skills. Digital life is part of everyday life for young people.
So I just found this research just the other day about why we should be enabling our children to be socially interactive online, at a younger age.
Principals I interviewed told me that online learning is beneficial to learners but it’s only a small part of the whole learning experience. I totally agree. Blended learning where online learning supplements and supports learning in the physical classroom is considered to be the best balance. A good balance.
The video displays a screenshot of the VLN Primary website.
You can go online and see what we’re doing. Just lots and lots of different things. It’s a really busy place our online learning at the moment. So I invite you to find out more about online learning and how it’s working for learners and teachers in our schools and to engage with us in conversations about communities of online learning or whatever we want to call it in the future.
And what this may look like as part of a changing future-focussed educational landscape. I’d especially ask that NZEI take more of an active role in the CoOLs conversation.
And just in closing I’ll leave these last words to one of our students, Jed: “I love online learning because you can socialise and you get to meet new people you wouldn’t meet any other way”
So he’ll be one of our students that we’ll be helping to become confident, connected, active, involved life-long learners with emphasis on ‘connected’ and ‘confident’.
Thank you
