Week 1 - DIGITAL - Epistemology and the Purpose of Education

IN CLASS TASKS

What is Knowledge?

I encountered some words that were new to my vocabulary...

1. Epistemology - The study of knowledge

2. Ontology - Our ideas about reality

3. Axiology - What is valuable in our world

Source: Audi, R. (gen. ed.) (1995), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Our group (Yin) pooled our ideas...

• Understanding through experience
• Isn't always correct
• Knowing how to share and access knowledge
• Obtained through questioning, investigating, experimenting, observing, making mistakes
• Knowledge has become more accessible
• Evaluating the validity of the knowledge
• Challenges thinking

What is the Purpose of Education?

Source: 

We got together with our (Yang) buddies and developed our version of what is knowledge and the purpose of education

Knowledge is sharing, questioning, magnifying, experimenting, observing, thinking critically and evaluating, 

AND,

the Purpose of Education is to open up the local and global avenues of knowledge.

Group Task
created by Sam, Alex, Paige and I.
mostly Sam, Paige and Alex as I didn't really know what I was doing. 

Knowledge and the Purpose of Education

Reflect on how your understanding of the purpose of education is visible in your classroom. 

What is going on in my classroom? My understanding of the purpose of education.

• Is learning visible? Is learning visible in my class... What is visible? Is it posters, wall stories, charts or is is the conversations had with my children about their learning? 
• Am I controlling the learning? Most definitely - As a NE/Y1 teacher, I can envision the learning pathway for my children. I have to plan for them to make so much progress over the first year at school... there is a Standard that they MUST reach in order to be labelled an achieving child. What will self- directed learning look like for these children? I am on such a mission to input what they need to know that I don't have time to stop and smell the roses and go with their urges.
• Do I give my children the opportunity to lead the learning in my class?  Quite simply NO not really. My questions are Where do I start? What do I do? What will it look like? How do I do this?

Hang on...
So if I apply what my group summarised Knowledge and the Purpose of Education to my classroom, then I think learning is visible in a variety of ways - most importantly orally for my children. 
Yes I am still controlling the learning - however, there are aspects of our day that are definitely opening up the local and global avenues of knowledge. I still direct these at this stage as we do not have 1:1 devices or shared devices in our class, BUT that is about to change in the coming terms ahead.

I want my children to become confident contributors to our class, our school, their whanau, their community and the world. 

I want then to be able to make informed choices in their lives. I want them to want to learn and keep learning throughout their lives.

I want for them a better life. I want for them to be a great as they want to be.

  As a school community we do not specifically teach the Key Competencies... They all are our kaupapa - they way we do things at EHS.
We do not target the Competencies as individual components, but as a whole, all together, all at the same time, all complementary.

Think about also how you would like to record and perhaps share your learning with a wider community?
I think that the best way for me to record and share my learning is on this blog and sharing my blog with peers.