Ithaca When you set out for Ithaka ask that your way be long, full of adventure, full of instruction. The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon - do not fear them: such as these you will never find as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare emotion touch your spirit and your body. The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon - you will not meet them unless you carry them in your soul, unless your soul raise them up before you. ...
Buried in the final paragraphs of this article in the NZ Herald on charter schools, is an interesting admission. For her part, Isaac expresses a faint hope that charter schools won’t be seen as “an assault on teachers” “I would be the last person to trash public schools,” she says. “We’ve got wonderful schools and wonderful teachers.” But there are children coming out of some schools whose lives are ruined before they even start, she says. “Some overcome a bad education but many don’t. This is a small initiative that may be effective for children currently failing.” ...
The thrill of sport comes from the pursuit of the unknown and the impossible. Whether or not we actually achieve the impossible - the beauty of sport is in the pursuit. Moneyball captures that beauty. The beauty in the numbers. The beauty in the potential of people. The beauty of the next chance. What is fantastic about this story, is that it is about sport, but goes to the heart of what is sport. That is people. ...
Technology drives South Korean ‘smart’ schools. Not much mention of learning in this video. Instead it’s all about the technology. Because that’s what makes a school “smart”. Apparently. I know it’s the job of the media to focus on the shiny. I’m not even that bothered about the hints of ‘Big Brother", or the counting of calories in school lunches. But I was a little worried. Because if you look closely and pay attention to the model of learning, and imagine that the shiny tablets are just a normal tablet made out of paper, and that the large MS Windows powered touchscreen is just a black board, it demonstrates the model of learning that exists in behind all of the hi-tech, ‘smart’ shiny on display. A model that’s largely untouched over the last 100 years. In which a person stands up the front and tells a bunch of other folk what’s important. ...
This image annoys me. To me it shows a real deficit thinking model that exists in our teaching profession. And it falls into the trap of accepting the common perception of what’s actually important in education. I get the aim of the exercise. Let’s talk to the ones doing the teaching, and find out what they think is the most important thing they need. Which is fine. But asking teachers to tell us what they need is only going to tell us what they believe they need as individuals. We can tally up all those responses and make statistically sounding conclusions, but it’s still basically what a bunch teachers want. ...
Our focus this term in literacy is transactional writing. So we’re looking at writing recounts, reports, instructions and explanations. All as part of an integrated science unit, in which students are selecting, designing, testing and creating science fair projects. Today we looked at explanations. After about 20 minutes of writing, recording some structural and language features, I showed a number of videos - asking students to identify the key features of an explanation. ...
This evening I read Derek Wenmoth’s latest blog post, which highlights the McKinsey report titled: Breaking the habit of ineffective professional development for teachers I’ve not had the chance to read the report in full, and it’s only 12 pages long, so I will get around to reading it. But in summary, the report identifies these promising ideas: Base the PD program on a vision of effective teaching; Segment teachers and deliver PD strategically; Make coaching the centerpiece of PD; Move from “push” to “pull,” so that teachers get what they want, when they want it; and Only offer PD with demonstrated impact. As said, I’ve not read the report in full, but here are my initial reactions/thoughts to this summary. At first glance it seems to see teachers as working in isolation - professionals that can upgraded and who then maintain those skills indefinitely by virtue of having a patch applied. It seems to ignore the collaborative and highly personal nature of the profession. ...
There’s been coverage in the press recently about the Teach First NZ (TfNZ) programme, in the Herald, as well as morning TV. There’s also been some chatter on twitter, and Stephanie has written up a comprehensive post over on her blog. She covers a lot of ground, and there’s some interesting discussion in the comments. UPDATE: Stuart Middleton’s post on this says some of what I say below, but far more succinctly and effectively. ...
For my writing I do most of my edits using Notational Velocity, which is a great little OSS plain text editor for OSX. It’s a really simple application and allows me to quickly manage dozens of short and long files. Coming back from the holiday break, it opened up to the last edit I made. It’s some comments I made for a post to a student teacher on Stephanie’s blog. At least I think it was, November and December of 2011 just kind of ran into one. ...
Today my students have been reflecting on their Barclass experience. These are the reflection questions that I gave them. Answers are currently going intodraft writing books, but will be posted to their classroom wiki. Please feel free to comment or query. All of you have designed and taken part in several lessons during our Barclass. I would like you to take some time to reflect sensibly and honestly on your learning over the past few days. ...
Today was the first day running a Barclass. Based on the Barcamp concept, and led by Mark Osborne’s Ignite talk - I had set about trying to replicate some of that powerful spirit of learning in my room. I was also inspired by attending Kiwifoo in Feb of this year, as well as some twitter taunting from @taratj. Tara is also rolling Barclass/camp in her room - make sure you check out her reflections here and here. ...
On the weekend we went for a walk on the waterfront. It was a gorgeous day. One of those blue-sky, still-bound, crystal-sun days that on occasion bless Wellington. A day that fills you with a sense of being alive, and gently punches you in the head to remind you that life isn’t something to be sniffed at. We wandered through Waitangi Park, around Te Papa, down beside the lagoon and along to Frank Kitts Park. We stopped there and Boo played on the climbing frames, the see-saw and the swing. ...
This weeks mass hysteria from the NZ Herald has been brought to you by Orewa College’s decision to add digital devices to their stationery list for Y9 students. Their preference is for an iPad2, which is, as I understand it, based on the battery life. It’s this expressing of the preference that has caused the brouhaha in talkback-land. Talk of “haves” and “have-nots”. Talk of bullies beating up nerds for their iPads. Talk of “well, back in my day…” ...
Have just watched this fantastic video from the Gel Conference. David Harris is a former Top Gun instructor, and he describes the management and training practices that the fabled institution is based on. He never actually refers to the movie by name - and explains at the end how it’s a $25 fine if any instructor even refers to it. Key points: Invest heavily in students AND teachers. Institutionalize change. Group ownership of results - the successes and failures. He talks of the process of their learning, the 3:1 instructor to student ratio, the planning and debriefing that takes place. ...
I had to change the school ISP this week, after 3 weeks of send email failure, blacklisted emails and just intermittent headaches for all of the users on our domain. The biggest issue wasn’t actually the technical, it was trying to actually talk to someone at our ISP. It was almost impossible. I shot out a frustrated tweet, and actually got a reply back. That began a brief exchange of emails, and raised my hopes some progress might be made - but which ultimately proved to be futile. Last I heard from them was May 5th. And we moved ISP’s on May 12th. ...
Just wanted to announce EduCampWelly is taking place on May 21st, here in what will then probably be bleak and yet bracing Wellington. The venue is Wellington College - a big thank you to them for their generosity. To quote the blurb: EducampNZ is a user-generated ‘unconference’ focused on e-learning and education.We’re all about growing our learning, networking, and, of course, having fun! Everyone is invited to participate in some way… ...
Challenge #3 - add some muscle with some pages on your blog. I decided to spring clean and update my “About” page. My original page was purposely brief, blunt, and as I look it now, quite hipster-dick. Which is to say, trying to be too clever. So I updated and added a bit more of a history about myself, and where I’ve come from, and what I enjoy about this teaching malarkey. I hope it makes more sense to readers. ...
My stab at carefully considering how to write better blog posts. Step 1: Write. I think this is my greatest challenge. Actually sitting down and writing posts that are personal yet pertinent. That don’t disengage my audience. That aren’t written only for me. That say something. But that aren’t too sanctimonious and insipid. In this era of tweeting, and sms-based conversations, and threaded ‘conversations via email’ sometimes trying to be a blog entry can be too much! Sometimes a blog post should be short and sweet and say something right then and there. Sometimes it should be a lengthy rant or an ongoing rumination with updates as one discovers more. ...
As with any January, there’s always lots of challenge and new ideas and hopes rolling around the place. One of the nice things about teaching in the Southern Hemisphere is that we can recover from Christmas and NYE celebrations, and still have 3-4 weeks before school starts again to mull over what the goals for the year will be. We get to sit in our deck chairs and dream of being ambitious…. ...
This made me laugh a lot. At this time of year, that’s important.