Learning Live - Orchard Project

Our Orchard Group were invited to attend the FOBISSEA Leadership Conference in Penang at the weekend to run a Learning Live session. They rose to the challenge of sharing their views and ideas with the leaders of some of the top international schools across SE Asia. They impressed a very difficult audience with their passion and subject knowledge, and engaged the delegates in important conversations about their learning. Check out the video to see what happened.

Tales of the Unexpected

Sometimes kids surprise us. They often demonstrate the ability to see tasks from a different perspective or they have ideas that we as adults/teachers had not considered. This especially so when it comes to technology.

An example of this happen just happened in a library lesson. The students were in small groups and had been given the task of reading the same book. They then had to summarise the story in the form of a Rap. Our Teacher Librarian expected a set of lyrics that would hopefully be performed with a few finger-click or hand-claps as accompaniment. The result was somewhat different. As the lyrics were being written, many students turned to their iPads for inspiration, and the phrase "There's an app for that" proved itself to be true once again. In the week that Apple announced that there are over 1 million apps available for iPad, it's not surprising really that there are a whole host of useful apps for Rap writers & performers.

The student's creativity shone through, with the support of the right technology to improve the whole process. I can't wait to see what results they come up with next week.

Orchards Project

Get up early on a Sunday morning, come in to school & spend the day working hard with fellow students from across three year groups. Who would do that? A very enthusiastic and dedicated bunch of students, that's who.

Or maybe they are less 'Student' and more "Learner'. This was one of the concepts we explored as we began the first steps on our new & innovative Orchard Project. The team who are driving this exciting project are: Naomi, Nicolai, Daniel, Farah, Manett, Kelvin, Josh, Mei, Han-Yi, Shunna, Irene, Megan, & Melissa. 

Learner or Student?

The Orchards Project is an innovation being implemented by Apple Distinguished Educators in 3 countries - Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The students involved 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 Orchards Project aims to create frameworks which will help schools to effectively engage learners and teacher-learners in an exploration of how technology tools can personalise learning, and how to better design learning experiences and spaces which connect to the lives young people live. This may include:

- working with ADEs within their country to create and publish examples of participatory, production-centred 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 KL Orchard Group

There is hope that some members of the Orchard group in each of the three countries will showcase their learning in a live studio at regional conferences this term. For the Singapore Orchard Group this means participating in Learning 2.013; for the Malaysia Orchard Group this involves participating in the FOBISSEA Leadership Conference; and the Thailand Orchard Group will take part in the EARCOS Leadership Conference.