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Marcus
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"If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 03:46 AM
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"I am not a teacher,
I am a fellow traveller,
of whom you ask the way.”
-George Bernard Shaw
There is an old system within the education sector.
There is an old system where students are expected to sit at desks and listen to the teacher who knows everything and as students don’t know everything they are expected to take it all in and then achieve high marks in the exam because they have listened.
But perhaps - just perhaps this isn’t the way teachers should be teaching; perhaps maybe the students have a voice? Perhaps it is the students that know the answers to the questions and perhaps it is the teachers who need to be shown the way. Perhaps times are changing....
For example yesterday at 5.30pm some of my friends and I walked about 20 minutes across town to the home of our ‘guide on the side’, Donna Dyet. On Friday I had arranged a group meeting with the members of SPLICE (Supporting Personalised Learning In Community Environments), to touch base before she left to represent us at a conference in Melbourne this week. Several other students in SPLICE met us there, and we discussed the script and what jobs we were going to allocate to people for our up-coming video this week. So that when Mrs Dyet returned from the conference we would have something amazing to show her.
Now we didn’t have to do this but we are so passionate about the SPLICE project that we chose to. Please bear in mind most of us had been at rehearsals all day and we were then taking another 2 hours out of our day, before we had our dinner even, to discuss learning.
This is a different style of learning, one where the students make the decisions and run the discussions. Sure our ‘Guide on the side was present’ but it was we who did the planning, we who were collaborating, to teach the teachers.
Today I edited footage taken of this discussion, and if you click here, you will get to see what tomorrows style of learning may look like. Also as a bonus you may see some friendly faces from the forum. Look out for Sara, Zay and Liza and maybe even a glimpse of me at one point.
This isn’t the most professional video, it wasn’t planned it wasn’t scripted.
This is on the spot learning and collaborating and that’s what I think makes it that much more special. 
I really like this new way of learning, I think its the way forward - but what we have to remember is that teachers have spent a lot of their lives being apprentices for their career, right from the moment they first started school. So they may have some difficulty in changing their teaching style to include the 21st century look. Teachers still have the idealism that, if it’s not broken don’t fix it. They turned out fine being taught in the old ways so why change/fix it? But it’s not about fixing it; it’s just a fresh lick of paint.
Please take a look at the video its only (2 minutes) and please share your views on whether or not you think SPLICE has the right idea towards education in the 21st century.
This post was edited on: 2009-05-04 at 06:25 AM by: Newklear
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Zay
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 06:19 AM
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Great one for posting that Marcus.
I hope many people will get to see what we do. =D
And maybe give us some ideas on what they think we could do...?
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shobana
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 06:53 AM
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One word-amazing!
The thing about you guys is that you're serious about what you're doing. I loved how you all have a discussion taking in ideas from everyone. I agree with you that it's not easy for teachers to change. But it's not like we're asking them to completely let go of their own teaching style, rather its about incorporating a new way of learning into the system which allows a student to be actively involved in what he or she learns. We can't deny the facts that sometimes students know more than their teachers when it comes to a certain topic, but its a give and take situation that exists now. You learn from me, I learn from you. I have some teachers that encourage us to question what we learn. Why does this happen? How did that take place? Those sort of questions. And I realized that these classes are the ones where students tend to perform better. It's our natural inquisitive nature that makes us perform better. So yes, I do think the SPLICE way of learning is the way to go in the 21st century.
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shobana
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 07:01 AM
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To add more. Sorry, I like this topic a lot. As you said on another thread, students nowadays seem to think that education is restricted to school, anything outside of that is completely and utterly irrelevant. So I have a question for you: How do you encourage them that community based or outside school hours learning is something worthwhile and is not a waste of time?
Even in my school, those who are involved in outside activities are always the same few people. No one else seems to see the benefit that we see in after-school learning.
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Ben Shepherd
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 07:03 AM
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shobana wrote:
To add more. Sorry, I like this topic a lot. As you said on another thread, students nowadays seem to think that education is restricted to school, anything outside of that is completely and utterly irrelevant. So I have a question for you: How do you encourage them that community based or outside school hours learning is something worthwhile and is not a waste of time?
Even in my school, those who are involved in outside activities are always the same few people. No one else seems to see the benefit that we see in after-school learning.
That happens at my school as well. It is really hard to get different people to commit to extra-cirricular activities...
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Marcus
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 07:42 AM
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shobana wrote:
To add more. Sorry, I like this topic a lot. As you said on another thread, students nowadays seem to think that education is restricted to school, anything outside of that is completely and utterly irrelevant. So I have a question for you: How do you encourage them that community based or outside school hours learning is something worthwhile and is not a waste of time?
Even in my school, those who are involved in outside activities are always the same few people. No one else seems to see the benefit that we see in after-school learning.
Ok what you have to understand is that is only a small portion of the splice team. Those are just the kids from Highschool. We still have students from the primary and the intermediate who have a massive role in SPLICE. We have 28 students in total.
SPLICE didn’t begin over night; it’s actually been something 3 years in the making. Back when I was 16 in the last term of school I was told that I had been recommended by my teachers to attend this workshop with students from all the community schools.
Originally we took part in 1 or 2 workshops in 2007 and spent some time getting to know each other, working in mixed groups and becoming used to sharing ideas in a comfortable atmosphere. This preparation was essential as students were largely unknown to each other and ages ranged from 10 to 17 years. We then participated in activities designed to provoke discussion around their values and beliefs about learning and teaching. Mrs Dyet used excellent ideas from Dr Julia Atkins work to help provoke these discussions.
Last year we tried again, but at the beginning of the year instead of the end. The project was a success and we worked together to find out just what we wanted from our teachers. We created “We have a message”which was an ok video but we being amateurs at the time didn’t know what we were really wanting to do.
However, at the beginning of this year I received a phone call from Mrs Dyet, she told me that she had applied and received funding to continue the project which had been renamed S.P.L.I.C.E. Already she had made a video with the intermediate, and this time the quality was much better. So with now two videos under our belt S.P.L.I.C.E set out to make the impact needed for change to take place.
Mrs Dyet asked me who would be interested in this project, because you are right Shobana and Ben, not everyone wants to make a difference, and they would rather sit back and let other people do the work for them. Luckily I had a few friends who were intelligent, like minded, lifelong learners who after seeing the last video felt inspired. Liza (another original member) and I invited them to join us and we picked up friends of friends of friends, little brothers, sisters and people who wanted to make a difference. From the Intermediate and Primary students were chosen on the basis that they had a voice, a voice to share.
This post was edited on: 2009-05-04 at 08:36 AM by: Newklear
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Marcus
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 07:43 AM
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And so we amassed 28 odd students to visit the college for 3 days of workshops. Working together we asked each other, just what is it that we want to achieve through our work? Our first challenge was to create a newspaper centre spread which would be our main form of publicity. We worked with a graphics design artist who gave up 3 days of her time to help us achieve this (See we were working with the community already ). In this we included a link to our website where the community could find a survey, answers to this survey will be fundamental in helping us report back with our next video after the one we are currently making.
Over the term 1 holidays we had two meeting days and Mrs Dyets house (That’s dedication!) where we shared lunches of Dominoes Pizza (YUM) However I was on holiday during this time so missed out 
In these two meeting days those who attended planned and wrote the first draft of our script. (We are now using google docs to collaborate together, it is soooo much easier!!!!) On the Friday of that week I met with the team and we went around the community interviewing people and businesses/organizations to use in our video. It was really amazing to see how eager they were to help us out. They all want to further to the ties between the local schools and themselves and are passionate about our quest.
Since then we have held many meetings at school – and as you can see in this thread, out of school (Even on weekends!). Tomorrow we have a scheduled meeting that I am chairing and we will be planning our student statements, both written and visual and we will then film these on Thursday/Friday.
This shall be quite interesting because as part of an awareness campaign at our school the SADD Committee (Students Against Drunk Driving) are staging a crash scene. Now this is going to be tricky as several members of SPLICE are going to be ‘dead’ for a week and will not be able to talk accept writing on a white board to a teacher!!!!
You will have to wait and see how we will get around this 
This post was edited on: 2009-05-04 at 07:50 AM by: Newklear
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Marcus
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 07:43 AM
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But back to the original question - Get the usual people involved, there’s nothing wrong with that, remember we only have 28 students in total from our town. That’s all you need maybe 8-10 people from each school. You don’t need a huge amount of people to make a difference, just a lot of passion and ideas. Use our videos as an example to inspire yourselves, and then make your own and showcase your videos to the school in assembly. Raise awareness, and then you will find more people getting in on the idea. You will be surprised how many people get behind you. Get your local ICT teacher on board to teach you how to make and edit a video, after working on the Student Voice Project I went on to make the top 5 in a national video competition. If you a motivated, dedicated and don’t give up you WILL make a difference, to your school, to your community and too your country, “You have a message” has been seen from teachers all over the world. I have, with Sara and other members of the team actually visited a University where we presented the video as their first lecture for the semester.
Do get in contact with us at spliceproject@gmail.com
We would love to hear and help you with any project. Whether it is initial ideas or maybe even just advertising on our blogs and wikis we would love to see students from Malaysia doing the same thing.
If you have anymore questions, don’t be afraid to ask
This post was edited on: 2009-05-04 at 07:51 AM by: Newklear
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shobana
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 08:04 AM
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Okay, I understand now. And that's a very good idea-You have a message. I'd love to give it a try but of course it would require time. I'll talk to my school's ICT teacher and see what we can do. Maybe we can collaborate then. So what topics do you guys usually discuss? Is it just what you want from the teacher? Or a lot of different topics. And if you have a few different topics, how do you choose which one to discuss first and so forth? This is actually very interesting and I'd like to learn more before I propose anything to my friends.
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Marcus
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 08:21 AM
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shobana wrote:
Okay, I understand now. And that's a very good idea-You have a message. I'd love to give it a try but of course it would require time. I'll talk to my school's ICT teacher and see what we can do. Maybe we can collaborate then. So what topics do you guys usually discuss? Is it just what you want from the teacher? Or a lot of different topics. And if you have a few different topics, how do you choose which one to discuss first and so forth? This is actually very interesting and I'd like to learn more before I propose anything to my friends.
"You have a message" was a video aimed at current and student teachers showing them what we need them to be like in the 21st century.
The success of that inspired us to look at what else we needed to be changed in our education system. One of the things was from right back in the original video when Sara’s brother Patrick said something along the lines of “Maybe it’s time we went back to how we used to do it, like when we were apprentices”
That thought inspired us that maybe that’s the right idea of thinking, but not so much apprentices – more learning alongside those in the community. So we are still at school and learning there, but we get involved in community based projects etc because think about it, there is more than just your teachers and your parents that help you learn. Say you want to be a doctor, why not actually ask him to talk to you and maybe take part in work experience etc. So many members of the community would jump at the chance of showing us, the students, a slice of their careers, their lives. Why don’t we take up these opportunities?
If you are interested in our thought process perhaps I could edit a put another video (or several) together of our workshops?
I’ll just have to wait till next week though before I get the footage as it is on Mrs Dyets laptop. Perhaps you could use this footage to show your friends and ICT teacher, I really do encourage you to form a group like this It’s all about making a difference.
And don’t forget, any more questions just ask I hope I answered everything but I’m kind of tired its rather late here. So I may have over looked something....
....actually check this out if you want some more footage, its the making of "You have a message". click the first video. The other video is the teachers reactions to the video when they viewed it at a teachers only day.
This post was edited on: 2009-05-04 at 08:24 AM by: Newklear
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shobana
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 4, 2009 - 08:43 AM
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Okay! I'm looking at the video now. I already have a rough idea on what I'm going to do. I'll email you for more info soon. Thanks marcus!
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Marcus
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 5, 2009 - 12:22 AM
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shobana wrote:
Okay! I'm looking at the video now. I already have a rough idea on what I'm going to do. I'll email you for more info soon. Thanks marcus!
Ok thats awesome
If anyone else would like to comment and maybe even add some suggestions?
I know the SPLICE team is waiting to here from you all!
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Liza Bolton
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 5, 2009 - 04:55 AM
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Hey, Shobana. I think it is brilliant that you are interested in what we have been doing. If, and when, you complete your video I think, depending on the topic (i.e. if it is relevant to students here) and length, we might be able to show it at a school assembly here. We'd have to talk to our senior management team, and show it to them....but it might be a good opportunity to get some international viewership.
So, best of luck, and I'd love to stay in touch with you about it as well.
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shobana
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 5, 2009 - 06:24 AM
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Sure thing! I'd love to keep in touch with the both of you. You guys have really great ideas.so good job guys!
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Sara McKee
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Re: "If it ain't broken don't fix it"
May 8, 2009 - 01:22 AM
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Oh awesome Marcus!!
Shobana, we need people like you to help us.
Although there are 28 of us on the S.P.L.I.C.E team we need other people to help us out and give us feedback. =]
Its brilliant that you're so interested in our project.
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