maandag 5 december 2016

How do we want to learn?


How do we want to learn? - From the EDU-INNOVATION-Team in the Netherlands


Rick, Sofia, Bart, Amber, Noah, Julia and Paulien, all 17 years old, form the EDU-INNOVATION- Team at Ashram College in Alpen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands. You might recognize Sofia, Bart, Amber, Paulien and Noah from the eduScrum-Keynote we saw at the Scrum Day 2016 in Stuttgart.
The students asked their classmates and themselves the question: How do we actually want to learn?From the answers, their own experiences and with a little bit of coaching by Willy Wijnands from eduScrum they developed an emergent book. This is a short impression of it:


„Do you remember? Sitting in always the same lessons, having to listen for hours and almost falling asleep? There has to be a different kind of lesson! There are so many ways to change education.

At the moment, the teacher determines the What (which is ok) but also how we are supposed to learn. This has to be different.
What if we switched the roles and students would be in charge of preparing and giving classes?
We want to decide how we would like to learn!

The seven of us, Rick, Sofia, Bart, Amber, Noah, Julia and Paulien wrote down together how students want to learn. We would actually like to learn in a different manner. That the teacher gives us a nice and interesting assignment that has something to do with the subject and that we can choose how to work on that assignment. We want a different kind of lesson. A more innovative and creative type of class.

We think that this is the best base for students to imagine and also build even more creative, innovative and better and more beautiful products. At the end of the day we hope that we can contribute to a lot of creative, fancy and innovative classes for both, students and teachers.

To give more body to our concern, we did a survey among about 250 of Willys students.
We asked ourselves and the others the question: How do we want to learn, and what do we need to learn differently?“

Some of the answers are collected right here:


HOW DO YOU WANT TO LEARN AND WHAT DO YOU NEED FOR THAT?

      I prefer to learn in groups.
      Flexibility in my planning and what concerns homework.
      Only short blocks of teaching, not all of the theory at a time.
      More practical examples.
      It is good to have a goal to achieve and points that you have to finish on your journey, so that you can plan for yourself with the group you are sitting in.
      To work freely with the support and incentive of somebody to keep you busy in a good manner.
      Explanation at a point when you really need it.
      I want to choose by myself what I want to learn instead of having to do things I already know. That bores me.
      Time to work on my own during class.
      To be allowed to use the internet during the lessons to look up some things.
      Learning by doing a practical assignment that does make sense to me.
      I would like to get good assignments instead of being bored with always the same tasks.
      To work together in a group, so that I can ask my group questions if I don't understand things.
      To actually work with a book so that I can really write things down.


      10-15 mins of teaching, the rest of the time we want to work quietly and on our own, the teacher has to take care of that.


Three of the answers sum up what the students think:

„Is is not so hard to make better education. We want to see the benefit of our work, we want to know why we have to learn certain things. The How we want to determine by ourselves. What we have to do we want to hear from the teacher and maybe talk with him or her if something is not clear.
Students want to know why they have to learn something. Of the teacher they expect to make clear
what there is to learn. When both is transparent we want to decide how to do it.
Give us a clear assignment and let us try in our own way within the borders of your demands. Be there for us if we need explanation. Give us more room and freedom!“

vrijdag 9 september 2016

Scrum-Revolution at University


Scrum in education helps students from 18 to 68 to study more successfully. The eduScrum Team Germany meets Professor James "Jim" Hannon, inventor of "ScrumThink", in Boston.


This august we flew to Boston to visit Scrum Inc. Scrum Inc. is the company of Scrum inventor Jeff Sutherland. Patrick Roach, one of the Product Owners of Scrum Inc., introduced us to Jim Hannon.

Jim uses Scrum for his courses with the main emphasis on management and finances at Cambridge College, at Boston University and Northeastern University.
Like Willy Wijnands, eduScrum inventor from the Netherlands, Jim saw that learners could only be a passive and consumptive part of up-front education. Jim tells us about his students, a big part of them are late learners or career changers: "I had a father with tree kids, one was just born. He came into my class - and fell asleep. Every time. I recognized, that I had to make these students part of the learning process, that I had to activate and excite them."

Jim asked himself the following questions:

How do we reengage students in a meaningful way?
How do we create a great student experience?
How do we make students accountable for the learning process?
How do we give students the tools that they need to succeed?
How do we help instructors share their insight and knowledge effectively?

How does Scrum in Jims lectures work?

Jim teaches his students in 14-16 week blocks with a 2-3 hour lecture once a week. His sprints are week sprints in which his students work in teams of four to deliver a learning increment. To achieve their goal they even meet outside the "classroom" to do Stand-Ups e.g. via Google Hangouts.
Unlike in eduScrum, Jim prepares the learning stories, the students do the rest. Individual as well as group achievements are graded. Due to the weekly delivery of an increment of knowledge and the retrospectives on teamwork, Scrum in university is a feedback machine. Learners learn, improve, grow.

As side effect, Jims students can have Agile Working added to their certificates, which they appreciate. "Students can choose from over 500 courses. Of course they like to pick these courses working with agile."

Jims Students can't wait to come to his next seminar

To use Scrum in his lectures had unexpected impact on learning process as well as learning happiness of his students. "I have a couple of adults in my classes who work beside their studies, who have difficult backgrounds. They have a lot to do, but still they can't wait to come to class next week. They love it. They have fun!"
And Jim knows, that he offers tools to his students that are not only good for learning, but good for life.

What's next?

eduScrum from the Netherlands, eduScrum Germany and Agile in Education build up their collaboration from september on.

You can find Jim Hannons Website here: http://www.scrumthink.info/

Alisa Stolze und Peter Fischbach

donderdag 28 april 2016

Agile in Education Global Scrum Gathering


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APRIL 28, 2016 
Last week I spent four days in Orlando, FL collaborating with a dozen other folks who are working with Agile practices in Education at the Scrum Alliance Global Scrum Gathering. Most of us met for the first time on Sunday morning, then the group almost doubled in size on Monday, adding even more new faces to the mix.

We accomplished a lot in 3 days. We were able to:
    meet
    get acquainted
    share some of the work we’re doing in our respective projects
    analyze our individual and collective strengths in the collaborative process
    explore common values and principles threaded through our work
    write a collective manifesto for what Agile in Education represents
    evolve said Manifesto into an ‘Agile Education Compass’ (better metaphor)
    design a visual representation of said Compass
    compose a succinct introduction the content of our Compass
    present and share the whole thing at the Open Space
    inspire others around the conversation of Agile in the education space

We all left feeling really good about what we created together, but more importantly we left feeling connected to each other — and, to the larger change that we are working to bring about in the world.
Some of the people I worked with had met each other briefly or worked together in some capacity, but most of us were strangers when we began. For me, this all started by seeing and eventually connecting with John Miller on Twitter, who was doing work with public schools under his brand — Agile Schools. John connected a bunch of human dots and last September set up a call for us to all meet. It’s pretty prevalent for folks in the Agile community to be really excited about the concepts they’re working with, because they’ve probably directly experienced some level of personal or social transformation from engaging with them. In our group, it felt like there was even more excited anticipation, as we all recognize the big problems in Education and the really savvy solutions that Agile can provide.

After our call in September we made some action steps. John really liked the idea of getting us together to see what an Agile Education Manifesto would look like and how it could advance our common goals. Not too much longer we landed on meeting in Orlando in April after John was able to get Scrum Alliance on board with supporting us. We have felt a lot of gratitude for John and the way he held this intention throughout the year and did what needed to be done to bring us together. Thanks, John!!

I did have some reservations — or cautiousness — about this event and what it would produce. I was definitely excited for it and really interested to get to know everyone, but I was a little uneasy about whether or not we would find alignment around what Agile really means in the education space. For one thing, I was representing the radical end of the spectrum here — ALCs are designing outside of the current system, which fully removes us from any curriculum or cultural constraint that the industrial education model may otherwise impose.

What was really amazing for me, was that my concerns wound up being completely dissolved by the second day. Of course, there was, at times, creative tension among us in the group — but never did I feel like, “Oh man, these people just don’t get it”. In fact, the opposite was true. While there are significant differences is the degrees of creative autonomy the students may have in our schools, it was clear to me that everyone I worked with really understood what kids are truly capable of, what they really need, and how an ideal educational experience would be fully self-directed and self-organized.

It felt great to show up as my authentic self and hold the pieces of this work that I believe to be so important and to have others who not only recognized and appreciated my convictions, but passionately embodied their own.

While ALC is committed to showing “another world is possible” as we create in our open sandbox, I absolutely understand how essential it is for others to be bringing these ideas directly into the system that we all want to replace. I believe for major change to occur in Education, the people need to see effective solutions happening all around them. Elements of those solutions need to brought into the current system to create more spaciousness for students and teacher – – to allow them to really access their agency for the first time. Simultaneously, we can be building ALCs and other innovative schools from a foundation of complete composability and creativity.

Ultimately, I believe in a world without “school”. I believe we can have living learning communities in our towns and cities that are self-directed and self organized — completely tapped into the resources that exist all round us and within us. To get something like that we have to pry back the blinders — we have to give people access to themselves and to different language that is inherently co-creative.
I was so happy to meet and work with these brilliant, big-hearted people who believe in giving students (and adults!) the trust that we all need to start creating the world we want to live in.

*Gratitude bow* to you all:
    Arno Delhij
    Guido van Dijk
    Mark French
    Erin Horn
    Marmy Kondras
    John Miller
    Martin Peters
    Robert Rodenbaugh
    Krissyn Sumare
    Mike Vizdos (facilitator)
    Marian Willeke
    Willy Wijnands

 

by Tomis

eduScrum in Orlando Scrum Alliance April 18-20 2016


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Willy Wijnands and Arno Delhij the eduScrum team invited by Scrum Alliance.org to come to Orlando along with other schools.
The coming together on this Scrum Alliance Gathering 2016 16 to April 22 organized by
John Miller Agile Classrooms.

Our being together, a total of 13 people from
seven different organizations and approaches, aimed to establish a "Agile in Education 'manifesto.

            


We have worked together intensively and hard to come to a manifesto.
It's just become a manifesto but a compass. An umbrella under which we can cooperate with each other and others to share information in order to learn with and from each other.

Why do we come together? Together we wanted to share experiences in order to achieve a common objective: How can we apply an Agile way of learning in education.

How do we do that? Through our own experiences and to share with the others together and come to a commitment. This was done, inter alia, by prioritizing and voting. In groups apart go, elaborate themes come together, receive feedback and process and continue on to the final product.



        

What we have brought together? Products that let us make a journey from where we are now and where we can go.

An overarching compass that each in his own way within the frameworks can give its interpretation. So everyone has their own compass!

Furthermore set up a website
Agile in Education to continue to share our experiences and knowledge. Similarly via #agileedu on twitter you can find information (text, photos, videos, .......)

John Miller
explains in brief the compass.

We have as Agile in Education 'team may present in an Open Space for 1,100 participants. Then we held a workshop on Agile Learning in education.


Watch and listen to Krissyn, one of our team members who presents us agile in Education Compass.


                                                                                  In the middle Manny Gonzalez, CEO Scrum Alliance, which has made possible our meeting.

The Agile in Education 'now meets monthly online together to share our experiences with each other. The information we process in our training so eduScrum as agent in Agile in Education 'continues to innovate and develop dynamically.
All in all it has been a great experience and great to be joined here.

                 
                  Willy Wijnands    -    John Miller    -   Arno Delhij
               
eduScrum team        -      Agileschools     -   eduScrum team

Willy Wijnands,

Chemistry teacher at the Ashram College
Founder of
eduScrum