PLANE is in need of sixty NSW primary and secondary teachers to put their hand up and take part in our Highly Accomplished ICT Educator program. 

Details on how to start your application can be found here.

Entries close 28th of May 2012, and a PLANE Professional Learning Leader will contact succesful applicants by 29th of May 2012.

A Google doc was used to collaboratively conceptualise what a virtual peer coaching space might look like and Coach Away Island was constructed by PLANE’s 4 gaming interns.

The trial included a virtual bootcamp for participants to customise their avatar and learn to walk, fly, teleport and navigate the virtual world. Another session was held on Bootcamp Island where we explored the use of QR codes, AR codes and building prims (objects in the virtual world) in the prim playground. We trialled coaching conversations in custom designed “pods”(an elevated room) and gathered requirements for interactive functionality required in these rooms.

A master class was held in the virtual convention centre with a talk by Dr Les Foltos from Peer-Ed. Les talked about the coaching skill of moving from “nice” to innovation. Master class attendees discussed strategies coaches could use to challenge collaborating teachers to move forward in their teaching practice, whilst maintaining a relationship of trust. The virtual master class provided the opportunity for educators from various locations in Sydney, various regional areas of NSW and Seattle USA, to meet in a cost effective way (in fact without leaving their desktop computer) to engage in professional learning together. One attendee reported “I was amazed at how immersed I was in the environment, and how I had blocked out the shared office space around me” and that the 3D world had “incredible potential for professional learning”.

This trial pushed the limits of our hardware and software and we experienced a new model of professional learning. Participants reported that despite the necessary learning curve to operate confidently in the virtual environment, it provides great potential to collaborate and connect educators regardless of geographic location and a fun way to engage in professional development.

Team Leornian

We currently have 3 students from Quantm College and 1 from Enmore TAFE Design Centre working on the PLANE project. In their courses they are studying a mix of game design, game programming and 3D design.

They are Philip, Jason, Lachlan and Anna – PLANE’s Justice League of Awesomeness!

Officially known as Team Leornian.

They have been working on,

• implementing the user feedback from trials of the PLANE virtual world Bootcamp
• designing and building the Coach Away Island, (virtual world Peer Coaching)
• providing input to Leornian, our 3D game about Games Based Learning

They bring to PLANE their own brand of youthful energy and add to the creativity of the team.

It’s also a good opportunity for PLANE to connect and put back into the local education space and mentor up and coming local talent of the gaming and digital media industries.

They've been amazingly productive and here's a few snapshots of them.

Team Leornian

Team Leornian

Team Leornian

We are engaging the services of exemplar NSW primary teachers and secondary teachers of maths, science, English and history to form a group who will create learning experiences for the Australian Curriculum.

PLANE will provide appropriate casual relief to cover the time commitment involved.

When: 1/3/12, 15/3/12 and 29/3/12
Where: Parramatta, New South Wales
What: Over a series of one day workshops groups of exemplar teachers will create maths, science, English, and history learning experiences for the Australian Curriculum. The learning experiences will be based on powerful stimulus material in a prompt, stimulus, response model. Teachers will be required to create or source quality stimulus material and write "prompt" questions related to the Australian curriculum. PLANE will provide guidelines and support to assist in this process.
Who: We welcome interest from exemplar NSW primary teachers and secondary teachers of maths, science, English and history
How: Please click this link and fill out the registration form: Exemplar teachers register here

Could you please forward this opportunity to any NSW teachers of primary, mathematics, science, English or history that you think may be interested? Many thanks! 

If you can't take part in this opportunity, but would like to be involved in PLANE at some point, then register here to be contacted as further opportunities arise.

Please help us to build PLANE!

We are conducting user-experience testing to gain feedback about how to make PLANE as easy as possible for teachers to use. We need teachers, like you, to volunteer to take part in this user-experience testing. 

And don't worry: we are the ones being tested, not you

Casual relief and catering will be provided, as will our eternal gratitude. 

When: Monday 27/02/2012, OR Tuesday 28/02/2012 (your pick)
Where: Bridge St, Sydney CBD, New South Wales
Who:  We welcome interest from all teachers!

We are particularly hoping to include some teachers who rarely or never use technology in their classroom, and also some teachers who are usually hesitant to engage in professional development. If you know of any teachers in these categories could you please share this information with them? Sometimes these teachers are reluctant to come forward but their input would be especially valuable to us.

Deadline: Please register asap, and we will get back to you by Thursday 23/2

How: Please click this link and fill out the registration form: Register for PLANE User Experience Testing http://bit.ly/AzyqYG .
 

If you can't take part on either of the above days or location, but would like to be involved in PLANE at some point, then register here to be contacted as further opportunities arise.

Many thanks for your help!

In an earlier post  we outlined the beginnings of our journey. A lot has happened, and changed, since then. To detail everything would require a lot of space, and your patience in reading it all, so we’ll outline the steps we have taken so far and expand on them in subsequent posts.

Pre Concept Phase
To help shape our work, we have drawn inspiration from many of the big thinkers in the field of learning (games based and otherwise), including Jason Fox, Mary Jo Dondlinger, James Paul Gee, Wiiliam B. Rouse, Constance Steinkuehler, Seymour Papert, Alan Gershenfeld, Dean Groom, Adrian Cam, Marc Prensky, Mitchel Resnick, Jane McGonigal and Mary Jane Irwin. The purpose of this post isn’t to explain the philosophy of games and the opportunity for learning (as all of these scholars do very well), but rather to describe our efforts in creating a unique gaming experience for teachers.

As a framing point, it can’t be stressed too much how the process of building something like a game is intensely iterative  That means that the cycles of planning, design, testing and evaluation, then restarting at planning, are continual and constant.

The concept of agile development is especially true of the process.

Mindstorming
The Paleozoic (for want of a better image) team, including Ben Jones, met  to draw a roadmap of what the game should do and what features it needed to accommodate. Central to a game of this type was the need for a strong narrative. Tied to that was the need for a purpose and goal for the player. The overarching purpose is to understand GBL, as a result of using GBL mechanisms and techniques. These techniques and mechanisms included things like  (in no particular order) gathering, building, reading, reporting, reflecting, branching logic, player v environment, min games, collaboration and problem solving.

We also determined that a learning taxonomy would help guide our planning of the learning experience, and we adopted a modified version of the Biggs SOLO model to arrange the increasingly complex order of learning for the player.

We then approached two crucial people in the conceptualisation phase of the project.

• Alan Baxter was given the brief to create the “Story Bible’ – the entire narrative vision for the game, with detail where he was able to imagine it. This document has given our imaginations a chance to see what the game world will look like. Alan gave us our working title for the game  - "Leornian". We like it. A lot.
• Dr Bron Stuckey has more gold in the area of community of practice and gaming pedagogy than you can poke a stick at, and we were keen to have her on the team to make the learning experience in the game meaningful and pedagogically beneficial. Dr Stuckey has worked on transforming the way that people learn into a series of engaging missions.  Dr Stuckey has also refined the “essence of games” idea to become a set of powerful pedagogical influences found not only in games, but in any classroom today.

Platform choice and developer
By this time Stanley Yip had joined the guild and had quickly assumed the role of our Virtual Worlds wizard. Our need to build was growing and we our quest was to find the platform that we wanted Leornian to exist in. We have OpenSim experiences in PLANE already, but we quickly realised that the gameful mechanics we had in mind may not be best served there. We realised Unity3D was our most likely choice, and a search for a developer to build the world began.
To give you some visuals, these spaces shaped our thinking:

5 reasons to rush to Unity3D

Unity3D v Open Sim/Second Life  (Warning! – Geeky)

Here's a sample of what a Unity3D sandbox looks like

Walkthroughs
We also realised that for the developer to be able to build the game (largely from scratch, most likely) we had to provide them with as much detail about the what, where, when, how and why of the game experience.

Here the team now concentrated on developing a game design document, with “walkthroughs” (almost exactly the same as walkthroughs gamers read to negotiate the game that they play) and technical specifications we thought were integral in the game structure.

To give too many game details here would be a spoiler, but there are a few points that I can share about the construction of walkthroughs. Too much walkthrough detail is never enough. You need to consider key features like:

• what the environment looks like
• what the player has to do
• what non playing characters (NPC) do and how they interact with the player. Non playing characters are like the support cast in a movie. Good ones look good, don't fluff their lines and help the main characters along.
• the dialogue between players and NPCs
• the flow of the game play

The more you can visualise and describe these features, the better.

Addressing these requirements in detail will make it easier for your developer to see your vision and start to build it.

In addition to walkthroughs, we have developed floor plans of buildings, world maps to help develop the Leornian environment pivotal for game play, and a list of sounds, cinematics, music score elements and other enhancements to maximise the playing experience. No spoilers here…sorry!

So now we are at the development phase, with the game being built as we speak. We have some testing planned over the next few months. That testing will include user groups that have gamer knowledge, along with user groups that have little experience with games. Both groups will be crucial in continuing the iterative process of readying the game for deployment.

Our Quest is underway, we have leveled up but still have many achievements to unlock. We can’t wait for you to play it!

One question we at PLANE have been trying to nut out for some time is the 'play' vs 'professionalism' debate.  PLANE is being developed for educator professional development. Serious stuff: accredited courses, networking, peer coaching, resources, education and learning. In the education and professional development space we want to be taken seriously, respected, and known for our quality.

At the same time, the learnings in PLANE are focused on new, innovative, cutting edge concepts and technologies including game-based-learning, the flipped classroom, collaboration, social media, crowdsourcing, open source, 21st Century strategies… which brings not only new 'knowledge' but also recommends a different attitude to education.  

Herein lies the problem: we recommend making learning fun for students, knowing they learn better this way (when the 'fun' is embedded alongside solid learning principles); however educators may not take PLANE seriously if we embed fun and playfulness into their professional development experience.

While I'd love PLANE to be playful AND professional, there are of course people who believe these are mutually exclusive values, and we must make some choices about where to draw the line. On PLANE there are areas that clearly have "play" at work, such as our game Leornian about game-based-learning, however it's not so clear what to do in other areas of the site, for example the digital portfolio and professional learning courses, as well as marketing and communication to express to teachers what PLANE is about.

Here are some of the responses our team came up with when exploring the concept of 'play' in PLANE and what we thought different stakeholders might think about the two different approaches.

What are your thoughts? Will educators be happy to embrace a playful approach to professional development, or is it best to keep the tone of professional development  strictly 'professional'?

Below is an animation adapted from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award, explaining why there is a need to change how we teach children.

The need for reform in education has been further fuelled by the fast pace of changing technology, and the momentous impact ITC has had on society, study, work, and play in recent decades.

"The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing." Horizon Report 2011

Below is a video featuring Mark Treadwell, author of "The Perfect Storm,"  explaining the challenges that new technologies  present for modern teaching and learning.

In a world where we can’t predict what will come next, people need to become life-long learners – and teachers need to make changes in the classroom to prepare their students for this.

However, most educators are struggling to keep up with this change.
Common complaints include:  inadequate professional development and learning opportunities for educators; not enough support for struggling and isolated teachers; weak ICT skills and difficulty integrating ICT into lessons; and a resulting high quit rate of new teachers.

Nearly two-thirds of Australian teachers are considering quitting their jobs for a new career – with 51% blaming a lack of support or sense of school community, and feelings of isolation. [ Centre for Marketing Schools Survey , Sydney Morning Herald: "Rookie Teachers Quitting", The Age: "More Teachers but Fewer Staying the Course" ]

As if teachers didn't already have a difficult and stressful enough job  – now they have a steep learning curve to aquire and embed new ICT and pedagogy skills! Most feel ill-equipped to deal with new technology, and particularly how to incorporate it into the National Curriculum.

Educators can't do it alone.

For education reform to occur – as it clearly must -  we have to support teachers as they acquire and deploy new skills, knowledge, and resources, and empower them with the freedom to create 21st Century Classrooms in their schools.

I am pleased to say we have been hearing about outstanding schools, teachers, and initiatives that are breaking new ground in this area – and we will share more about them on this blog. And of course, PLANE is also being developed precisely to address these issues and support teachers on a number of levels.

If you'd like to know more about PLANE and the features that will support teachers, please have a look around this blog, and also share your ideas with us – as it is you we're wanting to help.

After reading a blog post today titled "New Paradigm for Professional Development" by Mark Brumley it made me realise we at PLANE have not yet blogged about a whole heap of stuff about the methodology and philosophy of our project that people out there are obviously interested in and will find useful.

Mark Brumley's post discusses how he introduces teachers on a Professional Development path to social media through a non-threatening process that builds their confidence through several steps (Consume, Curate, Create) till they become comfortable tweeting, blogging and able to establish  their own school social networks (using Ning, Yammer, wall.fm, etc). It's a good post, and worth the read.

Phillipa Cordingly comments on Mark's blog that in addition to the above process Collaborate is another crucial element within Professional Development – and indeed that is how we feel at PLANE.

Our own approach to the professional learning design embedded within PLANE has been informed by research and analysis of what has and hasn't worked in the online learning space, and is most influenced by the  approach outlined by Helen Timperley, Aaron Wilson, Heather Barrar, and Irene Fung in their paper Teacher Professional Learning and Development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (2007).

Timperley et all identified that the best professional learning and development involved:

• Learning over an extended time
• Access to external experts
• Engaging teachers in learning
• Challenging ideas about learning
• Teachers talking to other teachers about teaching
• Leadership support

This has resulted in a learning design for PLANE that responds directly to the needs of the educators it serves. PLANE is an acronym for "Pathways for Learning Anywhere, anytime; a Network for Educators" – albeit it's a mouthful, and not an exact acronym, however we are clearly addressing the points identified as best practices for educator professional learning and development.

Teachers will be able to access PLANE anytime that suits them; that's access to experts, resources and courses; innovative techniques like gamification and multiple pathways engage people in learning; we're challenging the old ideas of learning on every level; including social features for teachers to talk to each other; peer coaching; and opportunities for leadership.

PLANE Learning Design

Educators will work through the different steps of professional learning and development - interacting with content and one another - at their own pace and comfort level.

This design is applicable to any learning, and we hope that teachers will implement a similar design to their own classrooms. Feel free to use this and share it!

1. The arrival of new technologies and a shift to the internet.
2. Changes to how we learn.
3. Ability for people to use their own creativity to do their own learning.

In a world where we can’t predict what what will come next, people need to become life long learners – and teachers need to make changes in the classroom to prepare their students for this.

This video is published under Creative Commons. Please use it and share it with others!

How are you and your school transforming your practices to cater for these changes?