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Link to a recent a lecture on Critical and Creative teaching - watch and consider doing things differently in your planning

Using games in humanities

Understanding play is critical to understanding learning
Play is the basis for cultivating imagination and innovation
Seely and Brown

So what about this play thing? For many educators play is recognized as a critical tool for children. They consider that through play they come to understand, experience, and know the world. However as we get older (and the teaching force fits into this category), play is seen as unimportant, trivial, or as a means of relaxation and learning switches to something you do in school where now you are taught.

“What we fail to fully grasp is that play is the way that children manage new, unexpected and changing conditions, exactly the situation we now all face in the fast-paced world of the 21st century. Play is more than a tool to manage change; it allows us to make new things familiar, to perfect new skills, to experiment with moves and crucially to embrace change —a key disposition for succeeding in the 21st century.”

Seely and Brown believe play as part of a new culture of learning does the above in four ways:
1) By thinking about the problem as a crisis in learning rather than teaching
2) By looking at the incredible power of new cultures of learning that are happening already and understanding what makes them successful
3) By tapping new resources: peer to peer learning, amplified by the power of the collective, which favors things like questing dispositions over transfer models of education and embraces play as a modality of exploration, experimentation, and engagement.
4) By understanding how to optimize the resources (and freedom) of large networks, while at the same time affording personal and individual agency constrained within a problem space created by a bounded learning environment.
Play provides freedom to act in new ways which are different from "everyday life" within a set of rules that constrain that freedom. Think of any game a kid creates of make-believe. It is both fantasy and it has to have rules (which may be arbitrary and even ridiculous), but what it results in is a world of imagination and something entirely new and innovative.

In short, play cultivates imagination and innovation, two capacities critical for individuals to function and be successful in the 21st Century.

Such consideration of play brings me to the idea of games and game-type activities (simulations, quizzes, puzzles etc) in the geography classroom. Here is just a selection of free game type activities/resources available on-line which could and in the view of Seely and Brown should be embraced by the geography classroom.

Fun is OK!

* Test your knowledge of world geography
http://www.geosense.net/

* Games for Change curates digital and non-digital games that engage contemporary social issues in a meaningful way. These games have been created by cross-disciplinary teams from around the world.

Ideas to inspire: Online Geography Gaming: This site contains links and background to hundreds of online games and simulations for use in the geography classroom. The site also has ideas and links to ICT and on-line collaboration tools. An amazing one-stop shop for teachers to incorporate games and fun into the classroom for students to learn.

Here is a selection from the excellent Ideas to inspire site (28 out of the 102 profiled on the site)

* Electrocity

* Stop disasters

* 3rd World farmer

* Sim sweatshop

* Darfur is dying

* McDonalds game

* My Sus House

* My abodo

* Flood Sim

* Google Flight Sim

* Sporcle: Place based games

* Place games and quizzes

* Classic Sim City

* Oil and extraction

* Free poverty

* Global rich

* Trans Aid: transport issues and aid

* Refugees: Against all odds

* Climate change Pentathlon

* Food force: Humanitarian food game

*Race against global poverty

* Climate challenge

* Earthquake: make a quake

* Urban plan

*Environmental quiz game

* Shipping

* Virtual volcano

* Map Zone games

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Socratic Circles - inquiry through discussion

Socrates 470/469 – 399 BC) was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher.

Related sites to HumsRus blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
GeogSpace
AC History Units
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVjL6xWzWiQ

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Socrates quotes: starting to think!

I know that I know nothing.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Wisdom begins in wonder.
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

A request from the Primary Years tutorial - Socratic Circles to enhance creative/critical thinking

A Socratic Circle (also known as a Socratic Seminar) is a pedagogical approach based on the Socratic method and uses a dialogic approach to understand information in a text. Its systematic procedure is used to examine a text through questions and answers founded on the beliefs that all new knowledge is connected to prior knowledge, that all thinking comes from asking questions, and that asking one question should lead to asking further questions.A Socratic Circle is not a debate. The goal of this activity is to have participants work together to construct meaning and arrive at an answer, not for one student or one group to “win the argument”

Teachers use Socratic Circles in different ways. The structure it takes may look different in each classroom. While this is not an exhaustive list, teachers may use one of the following structures to administer Socratic Seminar:

Inner/Outer Circle or Fishbowl: Students need to be arranged in inner and outer circles. The inner circle engages in discussion about the text. The outer circle observes the inner circle, while taking notes. The outer circle shares their observations and questions the inner circle with guidance from the teacher/facilitator. Students use constructive criticism as opposed to making judgements. The students on the outside keep track of topics they would like to discuss as part of the debrief. Participants of the outer circle can use an observation checklist or notes form to monitor the participants in the inner circle. These tools will provide structure for listening and give the outside members specific details to discuss later in the seminar.^[The teacher may also sit in the circle but at the same height as the students.
Triad: Students are arranged so that each participant (called a “pilot”) in the inner circle has two “co-pilots” sitting behind them on either side. Pilots are the speakers because they are in the inner circle; co-pilots are in the outer circle and only speak during consultation. The seminar proceeds as any other seminar. At a point in the seminar, the facilitator pauses the discussion and instructs the triad to talk to each other. Conversation will be about topics that need more in-depth discussion or a question posed by the leader. Sometimes triads will be asked by the facilitator to come up with a new question. Any time during a triad conversation, group members can switch seats and one of the co-pilots can sit in the pilot’s seat. Only during that time is the switching of seats allowed. This structure allows for students to speak, who may not yet have the confidence to speak in the large group. This type of seminar involves all students instead of just the students in the inner and outer circles.
Simultaneous Seminars: Students are arranged in multiple small groups and placed as far as possible from each other. Following the guidelines of the Socratic Seminar, students engage in small group discussions. Simultaneous seminars are typically done with experienced students who need little guidance and can engage in a discussion without assistance from a teacher/facilitator. According to the literature, this type of seminar is beneficial for teachers who want students to explore a variety of texts around a main issue or topic. Each small group may have a different text to read/view and discuss. A larger Socratic Seminar can then occur as a discussion about how each text corresponds with one another. Simultaneous Seminars can also be used for a particularly difficult text. Students can work through different issues and key passages from the text.

No matter what structure the teacher employs, the basic premise of the seminar/circles is to turn partial control and direction of the classroom over to the students. The seminars encourage students to work together, creating meaning from the text and to stay away from trying to find a correct interpretation. The emphasis is on critical and creative thinking.

These Youtubes give further insight to the use of socratic circles in the primary classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CPLu3qCbSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfH_fhAme0

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Practically-Primary/259841817.html

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Inquiring, not telling!

The questions are:

On the ‘teller’/Inquiry spectrum I am …

To be successful Inquiry needs to be ...

What are the stages of Inquiry in the Australian Curriculum: HASS?

What are the advantages for learning of the Inquiry approach?

What are some of the issues to keep in mind when planning an inquiry approach?

How can it be said that there is far too much emphasis on inquiry approaches in the classroom?

Does Inquiry significantly improve learning?

Why can it be said that Inquiry has the potential to be abused in the classroom?

Why would a teacher not use inquiry methodology?

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Teacher support for inquiry

In viewing numerous classroom scenarios on inquiry, we see the principle of inductive reasoning at the center of the teacher’s approach. Students begin with a source – a cup or a dress and their thinking and reasoning is guided to begin firstly with the particular and then branching out to the more general.

Inductive reasoning means restricting oneself to sources and then formulating statements based on them. Sources are used as a starting point to inquiry, - further research will hopefully result from this activity. The kind of research the students will be carrying out will be inductive as they will be establishing facts directly referred to by the sources and they will be making inferences from the sources they are working with and researching further.

Principle number 1. Start with the particular, move out to the general. Otherwise the opposite of this is deductive reasoning which consists in passing from the ‘the universal’ to ‘the particular’. It is less likely that a primary school student will know how to draw conclusions from certain general truths.

The second principle that underpins this type of inquiry is active, student centred learning – but well supported and scaffolded by the teacher. It’s what Webster calls “light assistance”. Pedagogically speaking the approach is robust – it sits very much within a context of social constructivism. The interaction between you and the student is crucial even though you may think this approach is all about handing over responsibility for learning to the student. Yes, that’s partly true. Good inquiry methodology results in the interaction between adult and student guiding student thinking (From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side). Teachers have a vital role to play developing effective inquiry learning which includes initiating good questions to research and to analyse and to come up with reasoned meaningful conclusions. By promoting active learning – that is not just doing but thinking-- in classrooms the learning outcomes are more likely to become intellectually embedded says Hutchings, “what we discover, we retain”

The third principle underpinning inquiry learning is the use of open ended questioning, resulting in deep levels of engagement with problems that are likely to be multifaceted and complex. Its nature is exploratory (Hutchings, 2007). Hutchings says that the core of inquiry is the question and it is in the formulation and ‘or the analysis of that question that the important initial intellectual activity takes place. Philosophically it is a Socratic based activity - Socratic perception that our knowledge is formed by questions.

Students participate in acts of discovery, grappling with different ways of looking at ideas and issues and thinking creatively about problems that do not necessarily have simple answers.

The 'Instructional Strategies online' site succinctly sums up inquiry methodology when it says:

Using inquiry, students become actively involved in the learning process as they:

* act upon their curiosity and interests;
* develop questions;
* think their way through controversies or dilemmas;
* look at problems analytically;
* inquire into their preconceptions and what they already know;
* develop, clarify, and test hypotheses; and,
* draw inferences and generate possible solutions.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Population and migration

Image above: The age-sex structure for Australia and New Zealand.

Related sites to HumsRus blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia

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Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@unisa.edu.au

To support Module 1 work

Hi all
Great to meet you all at Mawson Lakes and Magill during out tutes. As mentioned, here is the posting to support our discussions on migration. Have a good look at these sites and I am sure you will be informed and even surprised by what they tell you about migration and population around the world.

Remember to do the readings, double entry journal and activities as outlined on the Uni SA site for Module 1.

* Here is the link to the Australian National Maritime Museum migration stories (link did not work on Uni SA site).

** Assignment 1 instructions/guide presentation

*** Tutorial presentation on history

Some sites on population to check out

* Migration flows
This interactive migration map allows you to see for every country in the world either the top ten providing countries of lifetime migrants or the top ten receiving countries of lifetime migrants. On top of that, when you let your mouse hover over a country, you can see the total population, the GDP per capita, the HIV and Tuberculosis prevalence and the death rate of children under five.

Population pyramids

This interactive site enables you to see the age-sex pyramids for every country in the world. A great resource for comparison across the globe and awareness of diversity in age-sex structures between countries. The pyramids raise many question as to why they are the shape they are. The pyramids also go back in time and project forward - fascinating.

* World population clock

* The Poodwaddle clock

* World population data interactive map from the Population Reference Bureau. This site provides excellent data updates in tabular form, as well as a user friendly interactive data map for every region and country in the world.

Monday, February 29, 2016

Australian Curriculum and HaSS

Image above: Cultural differences.

Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia

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http://strawpoll.me/6943470

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Email contact:
malcolm.mcinerney@unisa.edu.au

Uni SA website and course details

Tutorial presentation

You think what?

"A curriculum is not value-free, as values and attitudes cannot be divorced from content."

The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Geography January 2011

HASS subjects and their teaching is not value free. It is almost impossible not to be political in some way when discussing HASS topics.

As Robert Butler was quoted as saying in the Economist in 2010:

“It is getting harder and harder in conversation to raise one or other of the most basic subjects in geography—agriculture, glaciation, rivers and population—without a flicker of panic crossing the other person’s face. You are no longer talking about a neutral subject.”

HASS has the potential to be relevant, dynamic and challenging for students in the classroom through providing the opportunity to develop a political frame around what is taught. How can we teach about water, population, migration and climate change for example without challenging students to place the discussion in a political context – that is, what do you believe is right and what are the justice and ethical beliefs that guide ones opinion on an issue.

Here are two excellent classroom polling tools to have a look at and use to get discussion started.

* Straw Poll

What are your responses to the following following questions re: HASS

Click on the URL's below and select your response.

What subject of HASS do you like best?

http://strawpoll.me/6943450

Did you like Society and Environment at school?

https://strawpoll.me/6943458

Are you looking forward to teaching HASS?
http://strawpoll.me/6943465

Do you enjoy discussing issues?

* Poll everywhere

A digital tool that is a wonderful way to get students involved (all students, not just the vocal and uninhibited) in discussion of a contestable nature is Poll Everywhere. The brilliant aspect of this program is that it is easy to use, is anonymous and inclusive of all, can be used and developed in real time in the classroom and provides instant feedback (graphs, word walls etc). The program gives all students a voice so that they can express their opinion without ridicule or embarrassment. The resulting graphs and graphics provide data for class research and discussion and can be archived for comparison over time presentations. As a tool it is a great interactive way to involve the geography class in some high order thinking and discussion.
The brief video on the Poll Everywhere Home page gives an introduction to this free digital tool which can be used not only in the geography classroom but also with teachers in their professional learning in geography. Here is a Poll Everywhere document I recently used with a group of teachers working on the concepts in history and geography. All they had to do was type the URL http://www.pollev.com and start submitting their response to the questions in the document by using the codes (each code is unique and can be used only once specifically for the question - called a poll) generated by the teacher/facilitator of the question. Poll Everywhere is a great way to get discussion started in any gathering. It is certainly worth the 30 minutes to get acquainted with the tool and make the learning more interactive for participants and create some inclusive and comprehensive data for contestable discussions.

PollEverywhere responses

Go to PollEv.com/mal2013

or Text MAL2013 to +61 429 883 481

Why do we study HASS?

Can you list some HASS issues?

Is there any one issue that really interests/enthuses you?

Do you have any concerns about this class and how you may proceed/succeed?

Do you have any questions re: HASS before we continue?

TodaysMeet

Check this tool out and think about how you could use it in the classrtoom and
how we could use it in our tutorial. If you have already used it, be prepated to share yot thoughts.

Why is Humaniites so important?

How does a Humanities education help us to make sense of these two images?

Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia

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