Passionate Teaching and Inspired Learning

Written by Eva Yeung, BSD Education

What do you remember most about the teachers you encountered in your school days? There might have been the one joke your philosophy teacher made about Immanuel Kant in Grade 11 that still makes you laugh decades after. Or it might be your English teacher who encouraged your Grade 12 class to get through some tough literature pieces by allowing you to take a chance to connect with it through culturally relevant comparisons. It might have been your Grade 7 science teacher who starts their lesson by engaging the class with a fresh review of the most recent sci-fi movie they saw over the weekend. 

A common trait between these three teachers is that they really care about students’ success in their subject area and saw that it had relevance in enhancing their lives – they want students to genuinely care as well! These teachers are usually the ones you want to listen closely to, because their passion is infectious.

There are many qualities to an effective and memorable teacher: they are keen to spread positivity, and they genuinely enjoy teaching and engaging with students. They are reflective, open to change and always welcome new ideas. But with all these great qualities  there is one common driving force behind – the passion in what they do. 

Robert Fried defines a passionate teacher in his book The Passionate Teacher: A Practical Guide (2001) as “someone in love with a field of knowledge, deeply stirred by issues and ideas that challenge our world, drawn to the dilemmas and potentials of the young people who come into class each day — or captivated by all of these”. 

In Alfred Thompson’s post “Why Passion is Important for Teachers” (2007) he observed how a teacher’s passion is such a powerful driver of student outcome and performance in the class. Thompson observed the progression of a mathematics teacher who had been assigned to teach a computer science class to the same group of students, the teacher was experienced but the lack of enthusiasm in computer science really dampened the learning of the class. Thompson also mentions that passion is not something we can fake. 

Then for all of us who have been assigned to teach something outside of our passion areas or even comfort zone – what can we do? Luckily, passion is something that can be cultivated. Here is a suggestion of 3 tips to get passionate to better engage your students in the upcoming school year:

Just get started – be inspired!

This might be the hardest thing to do, but start with simple things such as doing a simple search on Google about a topic area, you might be surprised and find something you connect with. Another great place to start is to watch some Ted Talk videos or podcasts about the subject area to get inspired. 

Find a community

Talk to teachers who are enthusiastic about the subject you are trying to get passionate about. It is helpful to see the subject through another teacher’s eyes. This technique is powerful, as you will not only find out new approaches to teaching that you can try in your own classroom, but you can try to see how the teacher sees their subject is relevant to the students’ future. You may also find great communities online in Facebook Groups and especially Twitter under #edchat!

Try new approaches in your own professional development

It is not necessary to try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to teaching a new subject that you are unfamiliar with – there are many educators in your local community that shares tried and tested classroom approaches. Through social media or a simple Google search, you can find relevant workshops, events or social gatherings organized for teachers to exchange ideas in new areas of teaching such as Tech and Computer Science.

These are just a few ideas to get you started and hopefully gets you excited about the new challenges that may be ahead this coming academic year!  Another great place to start is to subscribe to Read Something Different, where our team at BSD will share upcoming teacher events, ideas and tips to enhance your classroom. 

If you have any ideas, recommendations,  thoughts or questions, feel free to contact me at ey@bsd.education and I would love to speak more about Passionate Teaching.

BSD at ISTE 2019: Highlights

Written by Mike Dixon, BSD Education

The ISTE conference is a wonderful time of year where educators from around the world gather to discuss the latest trends and technologies impacting education. It’s a time to look forward to the new challenges and opportunities that face students with a positive attitude and an open mind. This year, BSD was fortunate to have the ISTE conference land straight on our doorstep, here in the city of Philadelphia.

During the weekend leading up to the conference, BSD hosted nearly one hundred educators onsite at our office atop the String Theory School in Philadelphia. The teachers in attendance represented states from across the US as well as multiple countries including Nigeria, Singapore, and Brazil. Over the course of the day, teachers shared experiences, built their personal networks and engaged with interactive workshops, lead by the BSD team. Here are some of the highlights!

Why Code? The Student Advantage

To kick off the day, teachers gathered in the assembly hall at String Theory School to learn about the current innovations and future trends that are most impacting the modern workplace. We reflected on how the exponential growth of Big Data has thrust the world from a manufacturing centric economy into the Innovation Economy where information is king. Thinking ahead, we discussed how Artificial Intelligence is poised to challenge the idea of human employment and what it means to add value to society and fulfillment to your life.

As part of the opening remarks, we touched on two major benefits of students learning code: practicing Computational Thinking and Design Thinking. In many ways, Computational Thinking is problem-solving and fits nicely into many existing school subjects. Conversely, Design Thinking is an emerging focus for industry as a process for solving real-world problems for others. Coding can help to bring this aspect of learning into the classroom experience.

During the presentation, several insightful discussions arose from teachers including thoughts about Machine Learning and the future role of the computer as well as the negative consequences of under-represented minority groups in the development of Artificial Intelligence. As one teacher noted “Computer programs are a reflection of the human who coded them.”

Interactive Workshops 

Next, teachers broke up into smaller groups to participate in hands-on workshops where they had the opportunity to experience real world coding using BSD Online. Just as with our students, the experience level amongst teachers ranged from absolute beginner to experienced coding teacher. With the help of BSD Online’s guided projects, everyone was able to take something away from the experience.

The first session revolved around the challenge of incorporating technology into traditionally non-tech subjects. BSD’s platform was able to scaffold teachers to build a website about their chosen subject using real HTML and CSS code.

The second session examined the benefits and limitations of block-based coding platforms such as Scratch and Tynker. We concluded that they serve an important role in getting young students, K-3, engaged with computational thinking but suffer when students try to apply their skills beyond games. Teachers experienced how BSD Online’s guided projects make the learning of JavaScript programming accessible, even for early readers.

Key Takeaways

The full day workshop was a powerful experience, not only for the teachers who participated but for BSD as well. We exchanged insights and experiences with teachers from around the world, received an inside view of the concerns and struggles that teachers face in an ever-changing world, and built relationships that will grow to impact students around the world!

If you are a teacher or school administrator and would like to learn more about using technology in the classroom, please reach out to us! We can help you prepare your students for the ever–changing challenges of tomorrow and help them gain digital skills that will follow them into their future ambitions.

Connecting Classrooms to the Real World: Teachers Meet Businesses

Written by Charlotte Brearley, BSD Education

Last month, we ran the first event in our new series: Teachers Meet Businesses!  

Globally, people speak about the need for schools to prepare students for the workplace but all too often there can be a disconnect between what’s happening in the classroom and what’s happening in businesses. Our quarterly events aim to break this disconnect by bringing teachers to different companies to learn first-hand how technology has disrupted Industries and ways of doing business.

During each event, a representative from the business speaks about their experience of technology in the workplace and a teacher shares their experience of how they are integrating technology in the classroom. Through this, we are able to give teachers the context and inspiration to further connect learning to the real world – to see exactly how digital skills will benefit their students’ future careers.

Our first event was hosted by Macquarie Group in Hong Kong. Fiona Yu, expert in Machine Learning, Distributed Data and Blockchain Trading spoke about the impact of machine learning in today’s trading activities. Fiona works on the “Blocks Desk”, which was created in 2018, and leads a team that uses a proprietary model that ranks potential buyers and sellers. Her team uses big data and artificial intelligence to make recommendations about what clients should buy and sell. Imagine when you search Amazon for a book and Amazon makes recommendations for you based on what you search – Fiona’s team does the same with stock recommendations. The model Fiona’s team uses has been trained to combine big data about stock’s characteristics and similar fund managers’ choices and stock screening to make these recommendations to clients.

Fiona spends 90% of her time cleaning data for the model. When asked what skills students should work on to help them in the future, Fiona unsurprisingly focused on data and data visualization. She spoke about the importance of being able to plot distribution and understand characteristics and how helpful the coding language JavaScript can be for data visualization. She suggested students should make websites to show their data visualization skills and highlighted that learning to code had helped improve her pattern-recognition.

After Fiona’s presentation, Iain Williamson spoke about the many initiatives he has introduced at South Island School in Hong Kong to give students more authentic learning experiences. One of the key things he has introduced is the AFP media course that has replaced the Media iGCSE, which was seen as out of date. A big part of this course is the client commissions that students have to do. They work directly with external companies to meet a brief and work to deadlines and expectations as they would in a real workplace. This experience not only tests students’ technical skills but also gives them the opportunity to demonstrate ‘softer’ skills employers would expect to see and helps them learn in a truly authentic way, like communication and time-management. The result of introducing a course that has real-world application and relevance has led to higher enrollment and more engaged students.

The first event was a truly insightful evening and gave a clear picture of how important integrating real-world relevant digital skills in school really is in preparing students for the future. As is clear from Iain’s experience, this sort of learning not only prepares students but also makes them more engaged and enthusiastic in the classroom.

Want to learn more about our Teachers Meet Businesses events? Click here or contact me at cb@bsd.education.

5 Things We Found Out from Providing Technology Education PD

Written by Rachel Brujis, BSD Education

Did you know that 79% of teachers that use BSD have no experience with coding or teaching technology? We design our programmes specifically for these teachers to get technology into the classroom so kids’ tech exposure is not just confined to an hour a day in a tech or computer science class (don’t get us wrong though, we LOVE these types of classes!). This way, it’s more similar to real-world where technology is entwined into every part of our daily life.

We also believe that every teacher is capable of teaching students the basics of technology and coding, at the very least. So how does it work in practice? Based on our experience, here are five key take-aways on designing a PD programme that works.

  1. It is on-going.  Rather than a one-off workshop, we work with schools to embed regular professional development in teachers’ schedules throughout the term.  This allows for spacing, and creates opportunities for application, reflection and improvement.
  2. It is differentiated.  We work with schools that range from private schools in Hong Kong to public schools in Philadelphia so we have a lot of experience working with teachers with different backgrounds, cultures, languages and experiences.  We tailor our PD to make it relevant in terms of context, while still emphasising the core skills that span borders.
  3. It uses innovative technologies. Just like students, teachers want an opportunity to use the latest technologies and tools.  We always aim to bring in the latest technologies whether in software or hardware so that teachers can see what is possible, even while we build up their basic underlying technical skills.
  4. It focuses on the big skills. We know that technology will change, so in addition to the core coding skills, we also focus on the overarching computational and design thinking approaches we want students to learn.  This way, even as the underlying technology changes, the objectives and many of the teaching techniques stay relevant. Our goal in every project is for students to use an approach that includes inquiry, planning, teamwork, iteration, empathy and design; and in this context, be able to figure out what technology is required to accomplish their goals.
  5. It builds a community of practice. We know that we can’t teach everything in one (or even many) professional development sessions so also actively work to build a community and get  We work with a small group of interested early adopters, and focus on training and nurturing them to build their confidence. This helps them become internal experts and champions that push each other to try new things and act as informal mentors to new teachers that want to get involved.

Ultimately we want classrooms to be forward looking and interesting, so our teacher training has to live up to the same bar and we are always pushing ourselves to do better.