Agile in Education
What can you most use in your teaching?
Something that gives value to the learner.
Using Inquiry - teaching the skills - learner learning what they need based on their interests.
What is the most challenging idea?
we have a curriculum - how do you know you have coverage?
How would you resource it?
The lean enterprise - a school - how do you know that the whole journey is lean? What feeder schools.
Different schools focusing on specific areas of the curriculum. Children book into that particular school to cater for their needs. So maths at one school. Literacy at a different school.
Lean is ...
A number of authors have looked at ways that ideas from agile software development might translate into schools. For example Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. He writes “We talk a lot in education about creating a culture of learning in our schools. But we don’t have reliable ways of creating this culture. Agile does” (Peha, 2011).
Something that gives value to the learner.
Using Inquiry - teaching the skills - learner learning what they need based on their interests.
What is the most challenging idea?
we have a curriculum - how do you know you have coverage?
How would you resource it?
The lean enterprise - a school - how do you know that the whole journey is lean? What feeder schools.
Different schools focusing on specific areas of the curriculum. Children book into that particular school to cater for their needs. So maths at one school. Literacy at a different school.
Lean is ...
A number of authors have looked at ways that ideas from agile software development might translate into schools. For example Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. He writes “We talk a lot in education about creating a culture of learning in our schools. But we don’t have reliable ways of creating this culture. Agile does” (Peha, 2011).
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development (Beck et al., 2001) was created in 2001 by a group of software development experts who had been exploring new ways of exercising their craft in the late 1990s. The manifesto provides four values and twelve principles to guide the agile software developer. The four values are:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Peha (2011) provides some interesting ideas on how the agile manifesto can be reinterpreted to apply to schools, and how agile techniques might be used in the classroom.
An agile/lean glossary . https://docs.google.com/document/d/12HqmiFIbTMRmbpIAZ34Zk2mjsRLZOHAvxHXkqZxZ41o/edit?ts=5bac5d45
There are a lot of terms used this week, so here is a brief glossary of the main ones
- Lean - an approach from the Japanese car industry that emphasises efficiency in workflow
- Agile - approach from software development that emphasises being adaptable to change and communication within teams and with customers
- Kaizan - a process of continuous improvement (from lean manufacturing)
- Kaikaku - a process of radical change/improvement (from lean manufacturing)
- Scrum - an agile software development method that emphasises teamwork
- Stand Up Meeting - a Scrum technique were daily team stand up meetings are held - each team member reports on what they did yesterday, what they will do today, and any obstacles they are facing
- Sprint - a cycle of activity during a Scrum process - each sprint is the same length and must result in a specific outcome.
- Kanban - a story board that tracks progress of story cards from to do, doing and done.
- WIP - 'work in progress' - a limit on how many stories can be in 'doing' on a kanban board at any one time
- Servant Leadership - a leadership theory that is often applied to leading agile teams
- Situational Leadership - a leadership theory that adapts its styles according to the needs of followers
- Kata - a term from martial arts that defines a continually repeated exercise
- Trello - a software tool that allows you to add multiple columns and cards. It can be adapted for many tasks. including creating a kanban board
- Pull and Push - In lean manufacturing, 'pull' is preferred to 'push' - in 'pull' the tasks are pulled by the workers when they are ready, not pushed at them
- Flow - The way that tasks flow through a kanban board when pull and WIP limits are used
Kanban
One of the ideas that has been taken from Lean Production by Agile practitioners is Kanban - which means 'visual card' in Japanese. This enables ‘Pull’ and ‘Flow’ (Anderson, 2010).
For an example of how Kanban boards can be used to help children plan, see Princess Kanban. This is on the agileschool blog, which you may find interesting. More recent materials are now on the Agile Classrooms site.
You can ‘Visualise the workflow’ by having e.g. these four columns on the Kanban board:
| Learning backlog | Things to be learnt next | Things we are learning | Things we have learnt |
These boards can be done digitally or just on the wall with super sticky post-its. They can be individual or shared with a team. We’ll work today with one that is shared with the whole class.
User Stories
In software development and product management user story statements are often written on story cards following the format: As a (role) I want (something) so that (benefit). The idea is to capture what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function. It captures the "who", "what" and "why" of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small piece of paper. However, there is no requirement that all user stories should be written this way. Our 'learning stories' in the sessions will be written in a more unstructured style as they will be more open ended than software requirements.
Stories will be written on the story cards that move across the Kanban board columns. Each one will be a short, simple description of something to be achieved in a short time frame They need to be small and focused enough to be achieved in a short time frame and allow for success to be tested.
Epics
A story that is too big is known as an ‘epic’ and has to be broken down into smaller stories. ‘Introduce BYOD to the school’ is an epic, and ‘Introduce BYOD to one pilot class’ is still too big. However, ‘Send a survey to families from one class asking if they are willing to provide a device for their child to bring to school’ is a smaller, story-sized step
3 C's
User stories have three critical aspects. We can call these Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. The card is the trigger for a deeper conversation between stakeholders about the solution and takes place over time and is mostly verbal. The confirmation is an acceptance test - how we know when the story is done. (Jeffries, 2001). A good story card will likely end up with the back covered with results of the conversation(s) and confirmation tests.
Todays’ story cards for the first 2 sprints are developed from a forthcoming book chapter “Agile Education, Lean Learning" (in this week's media). You can use this or any other sources today when learning and problem solving. We hole these User Stories guide you towards Meaningful Learning on how Agile and Lean Approaches could help you in your practice.
Trello
Trello is one of the tools that can be used to create Kanban style boards online. It is an easy-to-use, free and visual way to manage your projects and organise anything. Naturally, there are other tools too, but this one seems to be the most popular right now, and amongst teachers and their students too.
For this week's session, each location will have its own Kanban board (see below for links)
Monday: Clendon Park l Mangere Bridge I Marton I Rotorua I Nelson
Tuesday: Manurewa I Auckland West I Hamilton I Masterton
Wednesday: Auckland East I Rangiora I Tauranga I Wellington Scots
Thursday: Auckland Central I Al Madinah I Christchurch I Ngatea I Havelock North I Invercargill
Tuesday: Manurewa I Auckland West I Hamilton I Masterton
Wednesday: Auckland East I Rangiora I Tauranga I Wellington Scots
Thursday: Auckland Central I Al Madinah I Christchurch I Ngatea I Havelock North I Invercargill
Scrum Masters
For the main activity in the session, each team will have a scrum master. The scrum master is the team’s servant leader, who needs to:
- make sure that just one or two of your team cards are moved in “Things we are learning” at one time
- write an acceptance test first in the description of the card - so that you know how to justify confirmation and record the outcome of the confirmation to the description before moving the card to “Things we have learnt”
- record the team’s main conversations as comments
- be ready for the stand up meeting on time, to share in 1min:
- What was the Meaningful Learning on How Agile and Lean Approaches Could Help You In Your Practice? (That’s the goal for all team members!)
- Was the learning confirmed (acceptance test)? What (same or new User Stories) are you going to work with on the next scrum? Any obstacles?
References
Anderson, D.J. (2010). Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business. Blue Hole Press.
Beck et al. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Retrieved from http://agilemanifesto.org/
Jeffries, R. (2001). Essential XP: Card, Conversation, Confirmation. Retrieved from http://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/
Peha, S. (2011). Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would). InfoQ. Retrieved from https://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-schools-education
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