Videos and more photos from Orchard Project Thailand - November 2013

Before I start, I want to thank Vanessa, Asia, and Xin, students from NIST International School, for being responsible for taking all the footage and shots that you will see in the following videos. They used two HDR-CX430V NTSC video camera recorders and one CANON EOS Rebel XZ camera.

This video, created in iMovie shows a more detailed account of what students went through during their presentations. I've tried to squeeze everything in the video and considering that we started at 10 AM and ended at 12:45 PM, a 17:53 minute video tour will feel like nothing.



This following iPhoto slideshows have pictures from behind the scenes as well as the interactions between the students and their audience. One is 2:30 min and the other under a minute.

Slideshow 1:



Slideshow 2:



Enjoy!

Apple Orchard Thailand - November 1, 2013

 

This Friday, November 1st 2013, the Orchard Project Thailand group presented at the EARCOS Leadership Conference in Bangkok during the “Looking in on Learning: Live” session organised by Apple Education Development in South Asia. A total of 36 students from ISB, NIST, and Harrow worked together for five weeks to share their passions and the way in which they like to learn. The spaces were divided up and participants went around to watch student presentations and asked questions on the ways in which students want to learn. Sessions were based on digital video, video coaching, animation, digital photography, Minecraft, coding and programming. This isn’t technology for them, this is normal life. As educators, as people responsible for learning, it’s important that we understand what students are asking for.

The EARCOS Leadership Conference site presented Abdul Chohan’s Looking In On Learning: Live workshop 1 session on Friday (Apple presentations) with the following short description:

"What constitutes engaging, enabling and empowering learning spaces for both teacher-learners and learners? How do we untether, reposition and restructure perceptions about what authentic learning might look like? Engage with students and teachers in a technology-enabled learning ecosystem to better understand how we can move up the SAMR ladder from substitution to redefinition through "customised" (personalised) learning. Opportunities to discuss the impact of such learning spaces - from inception to implementation and population - with the following guests will be encouraged. Think different. Participants will leave Looking In On Learning: Live, with ideas and resources to help their schools remix a new vision for what technology-enabled learning should include and could look like." 

During his introductory presentation, before handing it over to the Orchard Project students, Abdul Chohan focused on the following aspects of personalization:  

"In education we’ve always talked about personalisation in a lot of detail. We’ve rarely been able to achieve that. Personalization is really right down to the individual, recognising that if you have 20 or 30 students in your class, each one is very different. We need to have the ability to meet their needs and provide a pathway to learn. Teachers can do that by allowing students to work at their own pace able to access content.

It’s not just about what are the great apps for science or what are the great apps for art and design. It’s a more holistic approach. It’s got to be cultural, sustainable, and we’ve got to build accountability into what we do. These are really core things, otherwise it just becomes just another technology project. It needs to have learning at it’s core.

Take something beyond just the teacher walking around and speaking to all of the students. This is where technology allows us to do something that wasn’t possible before. And it’s not simple translation. It’s not about a worksheet, and now that the same worksheet is on PowerPoint, and because it is coming through a projector, we call it using technology. We are talking about transformation where technology allows us to do things that simply were just not possible before.

So being able to Skype from a classroom to another classroom at a different part of the world. Being able to engage with people that actually live in Spain and speak Spanish, that’s transformational and technology allows that to happen. In the same way personalisation can be achieved. Teachers can create content, students can create content and be very personalised.

Finally, explore iTunesU as a platform for developing personalised learning. Certainly for schools it’s such a powerful environment. It removes the pain of LMSs, Virtual Learning Environments, usernames and passwords, and backend servers and all the other sort of things that make it really difficult. This really simplifies the pathway of learning from the teacher directly to the students and viceversa as well.  For schools that are looking at one to one deployment, schools that are looking at iPads, and are looking at how content can be created and shared, this is a really powerful platform that certainly can be shared. We talk about the use of technology and one of our big issues is teachers adopting technology. There is an inherent fear amongst teachers because we’ve always given them stuff that’s not simple and it’s not been reliable. These two ingredients are essential.” 

I have to congratulate all the students who took part in this project. They worked really hard to prepare themselves for this moment. They engaged their audience, spoke with a credible voice and managed to share their experiences in a natural way. In their own way. A huge thanks to all the leaders from NIST and Harrow who put up extra hours of work to make this happen. Finally, huge thanks to the Apple Team for their vision, guidance, and support. We know this is just the beginning and can grow to become a model for other schools to adopt.

Overall, it has been a rewarding experience. We definitely see great value and potential in documenting the Orchard Project process and have students tell their stories. This is on the radar and will start to become a reality in the first months of 2014.

Kudos to everyone who helped make this possible!

Preparing for the Apple Orchard Thailand presentation at the Leadership EARCOS Conference in Bangkok - Thailand

The following 15 MS students from ISB will be absent from school on Friday, November 1st 2013 as they will be presenting at the EARCOS Leadership Conference at the Shangri-La Hotel. They are part of the Apple Orchard Project in Thailand, technology advocates who will be showcasing, modelling and speaking out with a credible voice to school leaders on creating and articulating a vision for connected, personalised learning.

These students have spent two Saturdays working hard from 9 - 4 PM (Sep 28th and Oct 19th) to prepare for this week's conference. If you see them, please commend their hard work and wish them the best when facing school leaders from top schools in East Asia this Friday. Other students will also be representing NIST and Harrow International School.

Participants:

1. Kaizad WADIA
2. Hokeun CHOI
3. Xuanfan LOO
4. Sarah GERBER
5. Ashka ABRARRIADI
6. Matthew ALDEA
7. Podsawee LIMSUWANNAROT
8. Chacriya SEREEYOTHIN
9. Chawin VORAKULSATHIEN
10. Ghazy AZIZ
11. Taratit YENSUANG
12. Thantham MADAN
13. Jatearoon BOONDICHARERN
14. Michael MCKEEN
15. Grayson HEATH

Thanks for your hard work!

In preparation for the Apple Orchard Thailand presentation at the Leadership EARCOS Conference in Bangkok, I'm still looking for some answers to the following questions:

• Will Apple be providing the transportation to the Hotel and back to school?
• Will there be dongles for students that will be taking their MacBook Pros (from ISB)?
• Is it okay to assume that kids can leave the hotel to go back to school by 1:30 PM? FYI, there is a party for MS kids at ISB at 3 PM.

About the groups and presentations, I believe your idea can work. However, I feel that we could have done a better job with those 4 groups that you referred to as weak. Some groups did not get the timely expert guidance that they were told they would get. Yes, I know they are kids and they dream things and think that everything is easy.

There were two groups of boys that I feel were left with little direction. Fortunately one ended up mixing with the Minecraft group of girls. The other group of boys that is doing programming have not taken off yet. I'll try to see them this week and see what we can do together.

Thanks Jane and Apple team for supporting. Thanks to my fellow colleagues from NIST and Harrow for their excellent coaching.

I look forward to seeing you all on Friday. We only have 4 days to go.

Apple Orchards Project in Thailand: Session 1 - Sep 28th 2013

The Horizon Report 2013 states, "In order for students to get a well-rounded education with real world experience, they must also engage in more informal in-class activities as well as experience learning outside the classroom."
And goes on to suggest that too often it is education’s own practices that limit broader uptake of new technologies. The demand for personalised learning is not adequately supported by current technology or practices.  
The why of the Orchards Project is to build a network of student groups across Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia who will become advocates - showcasing, modeling and speaking out with a credible voice - to help schools create and articulate a vision for connected, personalised learning.
The what of the Orchards Project is to create frameworks which will help schools to effectively engage learners and teacher-learners in an exploration of how technology tools can personalize learning, and how to better design learning experiences and spaces which connect to the lives young people live. This will include: 

• working with ADEs to create and publish examples of participatory, production-centered learning
• helping teachers to design learning experiences and spaces which connect to the lives young people live helping teachers to understand how technology tools can personalise learning
• working with schools to test the infrastructure requirements necessary to support connected and personalised learning models (network access, appropriate productivity apps, appropriate communication & storage environments, etc)

The how of the Orchards Project is to recruit 10 learners from ISB in Middle School and identify how they are using tech tools in their own lives so that we can better connect with their interests, curiosity, creativity and passions. We will then encourage learners to cluster-up around these areas of interest and introduce them to consultant mentors who will take the groups on a curated journey to raise the level of collective skill and understanding through just-in-time upskilling. These consultant mentors will all be experts in their respective fields and be available throughout the pre- conference events. The project will be lead and managed by a team of ADEs (Apple Distinguished Educators) from across the region and the ADE responsible for the Orchard group from ISB is Mr. Miguel Zambrano.

In addition we will also leverage members of the ADE community to act as learning facilitators and connect them to clusters as and when appropriate. Each cluster will explore the Big Idea of Learning Space Design with the challenge of building a mini-Challenge Based Learning project to connect these digital fluencies being informally developed outside of school, to the more formal learning happening inside schools with technology tools.

Projects will be documented with the ultimate aim of publishing a range of iBooks which teachers can use as a guide to building informal learning projects which are technology driven. There is an expectation that the Orchard group in each of the three countries will showcase their learning in a live studio at regional conferences this coming Fall. For the Thailand Orchard Group this means participating in the EARCOS Leadership Conference. 

Nitty-Gritty Logistics

The project will run from September until November; learners would be expected to commit to participating until the first week of November. During this time there will be at least one major, public-facing event, as indicated above, which may involve learners missing a day of school.
 
To prepare the group for the live learning studios at the respective conferences, two Saturday events have been scheduled; attendance at these two Saturday events will be a high priority for all Orchard members. The first gathering would be to help groups form, provide them with opportunities to upskill with the consultant mentors and prepare the groups to design their projects. The second event would be to check-in with project progress, provide any just-in-time troubleshooting/mentoring and ensure groups were ready to showcase/present their work to a live audience of educators.
 
Confirmed Pre-conference Events:
Thailand Orchard Group - Saturday 28th September and Saturday 19th October (date to be confirmed with the TH ADE team) Each event will run from 9am - 4:30pm and location details will be sent out shortly. Full conference details will be sent out at the first Saturday event for each Orchard Group.
 
Confirmed Conference Event: Thailand Orchard Group @ EARCOS Leadership Conference - Friday 1st November
 
Other possible advocacy activities involving the Orchard Groups would be scheduled to minimize disruption: advance notice would be given to everyone involved and approval first sought from parents and school leaders before participation was agreed. We hope this overview helps to frame the context of the Orchards Project and please do not hesitate to contact the following teacher ADEs leading this initiative:

Participate in Apple's Orchard Project

Apple Distinguished Educator Institute 2013 - Asia Pacific in Bali, Indonesia

In a couple of days, I'll be travelling to "The Island of the Gods" to participate in the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Institute in Bali - Indonesia between March 23 - 29 of 2013.  The event will take place at the Pan Pacific Nirwana Bali Resort. This will be the second time that I participate in this event. This time I am going as a Member of the Advisory Board - South East Asia 2013. The first one was in Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam between April 8 - 13 at the Hotel Intercontinental Asiana Saigon, when I graduated as part of the ADE Class 2011. I remember travelling back to Bangkok at the start of the Songkran festival. The following is a compilation of information about this event.

There are now more than 2,000 ADEs worldwide, from the United States to China, New Zealand to Turkey and even one from Peru. And we gather every year at ADE Institutes and education events around the world as well as online in the ADE community to collaborate on solutions to the global education challenges of today and tomorrow.

Attending an ADE Institute is an important ongoing collaboration for me as an alumni member. As part of the Advisory Board my role is to reach out to my fellow ADEs in my country and also network with other Advisory Board members. We come together as a team twice a year to discuss and map out collaborative projects and ideas that will benefit the learning community. We anchor the community when it comes to being an Advisor, Ambassador, Advocate and Author. Other events may be PD sessions such as iOS development, Final Cut, Challenge Based Learning and others that we may suggest.

ADEs are part of a global community of education leaders recognized for doing amazing things with Apple technology in and out of the classroom. They explore new ideas, seek new paths, and embrace new opportunities. That includes working with each other and with Apple to bring the freshest, most innovative ideas to students everywhere. ADEs advise Apple on integrating technology into learning environments and share their expertise with other educators and policy makers. They author original content about their work. They advocate the use of Apple products that help engage students in new ways. And they are ambassadors of innovation, participating in and presenting at education events around the world.

The Institute agenda is designed to ensure and enhance the professional development of ADEs. Have as much time as possible to network with each other, attend in-depth professional development workshops focused on the development of educational content for use with students upon returning home, and acquiring new skills through participation in a variety of breakout sessions. Additionally, the informal networking and collaboration that occurs in the evenings as ADEs interact with each other about the new content and strategies for engaging students is one of the most beneficial aspects of the Institute.   Being part of the ADE community is much more than an honor it’s an opportunity to make a difference. I'm glad I have the opportunity to attend and be one of the 8 ADEs in Thailand. The next ADE Institute will take place in 2015.

Photo by Miguel Zambrano

Click here if you are interested in becoming an ADE.