Evaluate the outcomes of a digital and collaborative innovation in your practice from an educational research perspective
“The digital curriculum is about teaching children how to design their own digital solutions and become creators of, not just users of, digital technologies, to prepare them for the modern workforce."
Digital and Collaborative Learning Innovation:
Goal 4 for the United Nations Sustainable Development, “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNESCO, n.d.) Whether they are via an online tool or physically in front, this is just one piece in a puzzle of options.
Expect Student Outcome: [Kanban] a resource that students and staff find suit the purpose of learning outcomes and success as learners
According to Garcia (2021), Kanban Boards are “a method for assigning, coordinating and tracking your children’s tasks in a visually, participative and funny way.” The Kanban boards provided students with a clear direction towards task completion. The goal was independence and for some learners, this was successful. The user stories/tasks took some time to set up and the teachers noted that if the user stories or tasks were not clearly written, learners would continually ask questions. For the learners this related to, the teacher knew that the requirements of providing more scaffolds would give more success towards completion of the task.
On reflection of these thoughts, a change is needed to be made to the Kanban boards (figure 1). Just as providing more scaffolds in the user stories (To Do Column) is important, so too making alterations to the done columns. To be more specific in giving success, learners would benefit from an exemplar of what done looks like. This gives the learners a clear picture of what ‘done’ means, hence a positive learning experience and outcome.
Formative assessment is strengthened by the knowledge of what the learners outcomes are - learning intentions and success criteria are key elements of this practice. Lipenvich et al provide evidence to support “presenting students with both rubrics and exemplars may allow them not only to know the assessment criteria for a writing task but also to know what a finished piece of writing looks like at the different levels.” By providing the appropriate strategies, successful learners have positive experiences.
Expected Outcome: Some students moving from tangible boards to the use of a digital tool such as Trelloⓒ
The ultimate goal was for the students to move to the use of the Trelloⓒ board, a digital tool to better support the idea of a Kanban board. Trelloⓒ allows for a number of options and additions to ensure this visual online tool can provide the full experience with options such as due dates, reminders, pictures and links (Joiner, 2021).
The early adopters were keen to try this concept however, felt that the learners would benefit from beginning with a tangible board - laminated Kanban board. In doing this first, the learners were able to understand the concept of tracking their learning and the application of the kanban board in relation to their tasks.
This concept can be applied to other more able learners within the school with success and be able to collaborate with learning tasks alongside peers.
Collaboration
The use of the tangible Kanban boards within the classroom is not specifically collaborative. For the purpose of this innovation, the idea was to introduce the concept to the classroom and the teachers to show how we can best support learners at an individual and independent level. I can say, collaboration was evident in my leadership with the teachers, working together to have a successful implementation of Kanban boards and strengthen my working relationships with them. When we begin to utilise the digital tool, Trelloⓒ, we will begin to see how the collaboration among both learners and teachers have a positive impact.
Leadership
Throughout my learning, at The Mind Lab, I have been able to better understand my leadership and its application to my role within the school. My leadership weaves together both transformational and servant style whereby I am wanting a positive change and will support where needed to ensure we can have success. According to Spears (2010), this type of leader “seeks to involve others in decision making, is strongly based in ethical and caring behaviour, and enhances the growth of workers'' (page 1). This was evident throughout the digital and collaborative learning innovation.
My leadership is based around relationships with teachers and learners and gives me a stronger sense of achievement and work ethic. Spending time working with learners and teachers on improving practice gives me a sense of pride in my leadership role. Change for improvement is key to wanting this and other projects to work successfully for all stakeholders.
Next Steps:
Further research into Kaizen, Lean and Agile and how this can positively impact the classroom and also the educators in their practice
Include learners and whanau more in my change innovative, problem-solving around learner outcomes - stakeholders working together - Mahi tahi
References
Garcia, R. (2021). “Do You Kanban Kids?” Productive! Magazine,productivemag.com/23/do-you-kanban-kids. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
Joiner, B. (2021). “Educate From Anywhere: How To Use Trello As A Teacher.” A Blog for Teams by
Trello, 7 Apr. 2021, blog.trello.com/how-teachers-use-trello.
Lipnevich, A. A., McCallen, L. N., Miles, K. P., & Smith, J. K. (2014). Mind the gap! Students’ use of exemplars and detailed rubrics as formative assessment. Instructional Science, 42(4), 539-559.
Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30.
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