Innovation and collaboration – where to from here?

INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGY

Innovation and collaboration – where to from here?

By Stage 4 English Co-ordinator, Mrs Sree Raniga

This term, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a global research project with partner schools of the Erasmus and Designing and Evaluating Innovative Mobile Pedagogies (DEIMP) project in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Cyprus and educational institutes within Australia such as University of Technology Sydney. This course has been designed to allow educators to further their expertise in designing, evaluating and sharing innovative pedagogical experiences for students through the use of mobile technologies for teaching and learning. So far, what I have found most interesting is how new mobile learning activities allow for greater student engagement and aims to enhance learning within and outside the context of the classroom. As the project progresses, participants will be guided on how to design and share lessons implementing mobile technology. These teaching strategies are proposed to be shared on an app that allows for global collaboration which educators can access across the world.

The research project is undertaken online through the use of Harvard University’s Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). We began our journey by firstly understanding the 21 principles underpinning innovative mobile pedagogies. These key principles are grouped in clusters, drawing an explicit focus on collaboration, authenticity, student choice, mobility and being adaptive to enhance the learning experience of students. The primary intention of designing the app is to allow educators to access lesson strategies that implement innovative technology to enhance students’ autonomy and agency where they become active participants in determining and selecting their own learning experiences. These innovative teaching strategies ideally allow for seamless learning to take place where learning is not bound within the classroom but is accessible in a wider context.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

At present, I have undertaken some research to analyse the needs of students within my classroom space. This research project has allowed me to recognise that as educators, we need to implement innovative lessons in order to engage students within a technologically advancing world. Implementing technology and innovation would also allow for differentiation, whilst extending students beyond the classroom space and aligning their learning with innovative tools familiar to them. I believe this project aligns with our teaching philosophy at Pymble to create an engaging, interactive and personalised learning environment for our students. So far, the project has positioned me to embrace innovative strategies in order to stimulate and nurture agile critical thinkers within my classroom. The next stage will involve collaboration amongst a team of teachers within the College to further experiment and implement mobile technology within the Pymble community.

Stage 4 English Co-ordinator, Mrs Sree Raniga, and colleagues working on the DEIMP project