Innovation + Leadership = Change

Published on May 8, 2012 in Future Directions, Internet and Learning. 1 Comment

Here’s what I plan to present in my 7 minute presentation at the Adelaide TeachMeet on Thursday afternoon.

TeachMeet Adelaide Presentation Script – “Innovation + Leadership = Change “

Hi, I’m Graham Wegner. I’m currently an Assistant Principal at Woodville Gardens School B-7 with a focus on Learning Technologies and Admin but prior to this appointment, I was the ICT Coordinator at Lockleys North Primary starting in 2003. My current school is fortunate enough to be part of a DECD Innovative Learning Environment project group which is an interesting experience in itself. The schools that are part of this project are all doing things that fall outside the bounds of what other schools think is possible or permissible within our state education system, or in the case of the three PPP (Private Public Partnership) schools or “super schools” as we’ve been dubbed by the media purpose built with a view to doing things differently and encouraging innovation. There are lots of aspects of our school’s physical designs that move teacher thinking away from the isolated classroom approach to education, and we have been set up well with an excellent wireless network but innovation that leads to meaningful change doesn’t just happen because the physical environment suggests it. Another interesting aside is that all three PPP schools in the project (Blair Athol North, Mark Oliphant College and us) all serve complex, lower socio-economic communities so it could be interpreted that there is a realisation that the way school has always been done hasn’t served these communities well and that the magnifying  effects that disadvantage can have on student learning outcomes needs innovative thinking to effect change.

And it is this idea of innovation linked to change that I’d like to discuss in the time I have here this afternoon. In general, throughout the world, innovation drives change, with the goal being that this change is for the better, be it better ways to communicate, better ways to solve crime, to entertain ourselves, to cure or relieve ailments and so on. Education has been labelled, fairly or otherwise, as an institution that is slow to change and is in fact, a very difficult way for innovation to take place and flourish. However, we are at a point in time where the advancement of technology, the product of innovation, is forcing change throughout the world – some of it political as we can see in examples like MySchool and teacher accountability measures, some of it social in examples like Facebook and YouTube – and there is a real societal backlash landing back on schools as a result. And large systems like DECD aren’t well equipped to be nimble and adaptive to external change pressure – and we as educators cop flak about the bad teachers, the worthless SACE subjects, the social media entanglements that our students get involved in, the lack of male teachers and are painted as this conservative bunch who shut the classroom door each day and forget that the outside world exists.

Except that doesn’t really happen. There are plenty of innovative educators out there and it wouldn’t be a stretch for me to generalise that all of us here tonight at this TeachMeet are innovators of sorts, or at least, see ourselves as agents of change. We are the first to try things out at our respective sites. We are the ones who change things for our students – and we find it enormously frustrating that others, sometimes the considerable majority that the media must be referring to when the profession is slammed in the papers, don’t see the urgency or the opportunities that we see as being obvious.

A quick disclaimer then a quick example. When I portray myself as innovative, I know that it is all contextual and relative. Since becoming a networked learner who relies on the internet for self learning opportunities, I know that most of the ideas I’ve trialled in my classrooms have all been done before by other trailblazers scattered around the world. So, I’m referring to innovative in terms of the status quo for South Australian schools not as compared against other innovative ideas from around the world. Anyway, onto the example which has two parts. In 2006, I posted a presentation for the K12Online Conference titled “No Teacher Left Behind: The Urgency of Web 2.0″ – a pretentious title for a pretentious topic. It was a rallying call for progressive educators to get on board with internet based tools and start networking with other educators to become better learners. Well, I could pull up the same presentation five and a half years later, and not a lot seems to have changed in classrooms in this neck of the woods. In 2008, I started student blogging at Lockleys North with my class and last year left a program being run by my immediate colleagues who saw the value in the innovation and made the change in their practice to offer this learning opportunity for their students. But upon my arrival at Woodville Gardens, I found that student blogging was a concept that hadn’t hit classrooms yet and I realised (although I always susupected) that my participation in something innovative in South Australia hasn’t translated to a change across more schools than the one where I first took up the innovation.

So, innovation can push towards change, but there is a missing ingredient that I believe that the collective “we” are responsible for – leadership.

Leadership can look like many things. It can be a formal role like the one I have now. But we all know that formal roles don’t automatically translate to change either. I’m sure you all know of principals who believe that their job is to keep things running exactly as is – unless the department tells them otherwise. And it is no fun trying to be the innovative teacher in one of those schools either. But in a formal role, I have a better shot at influencing more educators compared to when I was the classroom teacher and could only influence the teachers next door to me. As a coordinator I could make inroads into a team or targetted group but those of us who are or have been coordinators know the difficult task that role can be. But as an Assistant Principal, I have the authority to determine school directions that can turn innovative ideas and programs into progressive more commonplace practice.

But not everyone wants an official leadership role. So leadership opportunities can be found elsewhere – and the most innovative space to do so is online. There are countless examples o f people who started an online presence from their classroom who wield enormous amounts of influence because they put their practices, their innovation in a place where anyone or everyone could find them. Try throwing these names into Google and see what you find – Brian Crosby, who works out of a classroom in Nevada who ended up presenting to international school educators in a major conference in China, international school leader Kim Cofino who posted about that 2006 presentation of mine pondering my advice and now is someone who I aspire to be like in terms of vision and getting real learning change happening. Try Dan Meyer, who was a young high school Maths teacher who started a blog for fun, is now doing a PhD and has worked for Google and Pearson, but still sees his blog as the best personal professional growth he could ever have – and for one closer to home, New South Wales high school teacher, Bianca Hewes, whose innovation in using Project Based Learning combined with student social networking tool Edmodo got her a trip of a lifetime to ISTE last year as Edmodo’s featured blogger!

So, in closing, the problem with being innovative is that while you are always looking to improve things, it is hard to move on knowing that your initial innovations have not become commonplace. As I tweeted last year at one of the ILE conferences:

You can’t have everyone being innovative ‘cos it can’t be innovation if everyone is doing it! #DECD_SA

So, my challenge to you all is to find your leadership niche so that your innovation can become positive, meaningful change. Thanks for listening.

A Real Life Lifelong Learner

Published on April 27, 2012 in Learning. 0 Comments

Recently, I’ve become interested in Japanese anime again and as is the case with any interest, the internet is the perfect place to immerse oneself in that interest. I now know what otaku means, about the concept of mecha and many of the tropes associated with anime, manga and other aspects of Japanese culture.

One of the coolest and most enjoyable sites that I have subscribed is Culture Japan, created by Danny Choo. His personal story is a great example of lifelong learning that isn’t a buzzphrase – I highly recommend reading his How Discovering Japan Changed My Life blog post even if you have no interest in the rest of his varied content.

If you have a passing interest, or a burning passion, connecting to the web (and consequently other people) is the best way to take control of your own learning.

http://www.theinfamouslife.com/2010/04/site-of-the-day-www-dannychoo-com/

The One Teacher Who Sparked Learning For Me

Published on April 14, 2012 in Personal Reflections. 6 Comments

I don’t know if it was my own education that got me to this point in life, or whether my ability to make sense of things is in spite of it.

One of my pet dislikes (and it happens often enough) is being asked about an influential teacher who was important in my learning. The assumption is that every articulate, independent thinking person with some measure of success must have had someone who lit the fire, who made the learning in school come alive. And most people in education can name at least one such person. Many will cite that person as being the reason for taking up teaching as a career.

But not me. I can’t name one teacher who I would put above the crowd. Some were better than average, and a lot struggled to even remember who I was. I suppose I like to think that my teaching style and methodology is based on what that fictional teacher would have been like. But that does not automatically translate that I’ve become the “one teacher” for anyone else. Well, no one has told me that. A few ex-students have told me that they have fond memories of being in my class, but that’s about it. Yet I like to believe that I’ve been a successful teacher, and that I now have something worthwhile to bring to the table as a leader.

So, there is a bit of an unwritten assumption that as a student moves through the education system, they will invariably encounter their own “one teacher” who will flip the switch and light the pathway to educational success. There is also an assumption that following that educational pathway also equals learning. I read plenty of smart people who believe that the system as it currently exists is broken and needs radical re-thinking, that it can’t be fixed from within and that tinkering around the edges doesn’t really help the disengaged and disadvantaged. Technology really does challenge how learning can occur – but maybe the system limits those possibilities to just digitising age old pedagogies.

I don’t know. There are plenty of times when I’m not sure what to believe when it comes to learning within the paradigm of education.

But I do know this. Those of us who connect, put out our still-green ideas in blogs, tweets and comments, who have taken the time to explore and play in the many spaces of the web have an immense advantage over those who do not. The challenge is how do we move the spark of learning away from being dependent on one person provided by an institution, to being self provided. Learning how to learn has become a huge buzz phrase – and I sense many educators are a bit afraid of the concept of self motivated learners because in some ways it threatens the age old concept of teacher. But on the internet I get “taught” every day by people who freely offer opinions, advice and experiences of their own. They don’t have me as their “student”, and they don’t have the responsibility of “assessing” my learning, but I learn from them at my own pace as time permits and as my interest deepens.

So, what does that look like to kids at the primary school level?

All I can say is that I envy those of you who have strong beliefs about what exactly should be happening to education in this country, because there are times when I feel like I have no idea. Like the cliche says, the more I learn about anything, the more I realise how little I really know.

 

 

Today’s Quote That Makes Perfect Sense

Published on April 9, 2012 in Blogging and Resources. 1 Comment

Whenever I set aside time to check through my blog feeds, I will invariably find a sentence or paragraph that really resonates and has me thinking, “I wish I had written that.” But I suppose the good thing about finding these succinctly written pearls of wisdom is that my colleagues are more likely to take the message on board if the quote comes from someone other than me!

So, here’s today’s quote that I’m earmarking for future reference. Source – Kate Nowak:

But when people talk to me about the technology I have to constantly Reframe the Issue and explain how I’m not all pro any technology for its own sake. You don’t go, “Oh here’s this cool technology let me shoehorn it into my classroom.” Instead you go, “I think I have thought of the best way to teach this, and it would be impossible in an analog world, but I know enough about the technologies to realize this idea.” You don’t go to a twenty-minute inservice about xyz.com and go “I’m going to make an xyz.com lesson.” You use xyz.com for your own purposes, or you suspect its utility and put it in your back pocket, until your awesome instruction idea needs xyz.com in order to exist. Your lesson is the fuel and xyz.com is the oxygen.

I suppose the only rider on this one is that this idea only works effectively on the premise that the average teacher will read and browse enough online in order to develop a deep enough back pocket to call upon.

Parallel Universes

Published on March 29, 2012 in Personal Reflections. 0 Comments

Went out to MOC this morning with my principal for a meeting with a DECD group on Innovative Learning that my school is part of. Like Woodville Gardens, MOC is one of the State Government’s new “super schools”. For me, this is the third super school that I’ve visited (including my own) and it is a weird feeling to walk around a school that has some many architectural and design similarities but has a different student population and the purposing of the learning spaces always has a unique twist. For some walking around today, everything looks brand new but for super school leaders, the feeling of walking through a parallel universe is impossible to shake. There are in jokes about the company that services the grounds and buildings to share and it does seem that each super school has attracted a leadership team with innovation and progressive practice in mind, and are harnessing the majority of their staff member’s expertise with their vision on board. So it is weird for me to see how each unique school is endeavouring to break the mould in facilities that are variations on the same architectural theme. But it is cool to see disadvantaged communities having new state of the art facilities provided for them – and a focus on rethinking and doing this thing called education a little differently.

Just to show the architectural similarities, here are two shots of both schools. Don’t panic about the smoke in the background of the WGS pic – that was from a waste oil factory a few suburbs away!

 

Another Example Why Critical Literacy Isn’t Just For The Kids

Published on March 11, 2012 in Information Literacy and Internet. 0 Comments

So I finally sat down and watched the KONY 2012 video tonight. A colleague had pointed me towards it earlier in the week just as it was starting to go viral but my urgency to check it out was tempered by a post on ShortFormBlog that hinted that it might be wise not to take the video as pure fact.

I’m not the only one intrigued by the clever use of social media to tell this story. KerryJ reacted in a similar fashion to a number of my work colleagues while Daniel Stucke mirrored many of my personal reactions to the whole KONY2012 issue. How we bite on a well crafted, emotional message either shows our own feelings of compassion, levels of cynicism or the very human need to feel like we can make a difference in or to the world. It is also a measure of our digital literacy skills – the skills that we are (supposedly) teaching to our students.

By mid-week, the backlash against the video started to show in mainstream sites. The Atlantic was particularly harsh:

Kony 2012 is so seductive for precisely the same reasons that make it so dangerous. The half-hour video, now viewed 40 million times, sets viewers up for a message so gratifying and fulfilling that it is almost impossible to resist: there is a terrible problem in the world, you are the solution, and all you have to do is pass along this video.

I find it interesting that it seems to be mainstream news media outlets that are leading the pushback. Effective digital literacy would include questioning their motives as well as the Invisible Children organisation who produced and posted the video. Could it be that they has been caught napping on a very important issue? Could it be that this video treads into what traditional news media might see as their turf?

The only other thing that I would add as an average citizen of a privileged country is this. Before Monday, I had never heard of Joseph Kony or the LRA. The sheer momentum that this video has produced has raised my and the millions of viewers worldwide’s collective consciousness. Whether we support or dismiss the goals and actions of the KONY2012 movement, or the target of their campaign, one thing is certain.

Now we all know.

NB: Seth Godin analyses the video from a social media perspective here. And I highly recommend the ShortFormBlog’s even handed coverage of the unfolding events. And as a final bonus, check out the graph below from Wikipedia edits on the Joseph Kony page as people jump on board to rewrite the definitive article on the central figure in the whole saga.

Luckily, Not My Reality

Published on March 3, 2012 in Future Directions. 0 Comments

Australian schools are not without their problems.

And there are tendencies from our political masters to adopt the worst practice of other countries in the name of education reform.

But I’m still trying to wrap my head around this post.

I occupy education every time my interns ask, “Why is education like it is today with all of the restrictions including pacing  guides?”

I occupy education by telling these interns that some people do not believe that teachers can make their own decisions about how to pace curriculum.

I occupy education every time interns ask, “Why do teachers go on when they know children can not learn fractions in 2 days or one week?”

I occupy education when I tell my interns to always do what is best for the children and that includes learning well, not fast.

I occupy education every time an intern asks me why children can not talk at lunch or have to walk down the hall with military precision.

I occupy education when I tell my interns that I can not excuse a teacher who warns a child once about talking at lunch and then the second time that child talks, his or her lunch is thrown out and their nose is pressed against the wall for the rest of lunch.

I occupy education when I tell my interns that I do not understand why children have to walk down the halls with their cheeks popped out so they can not talk and their hands are rigidly by their sides like soldiers when they are 5 or 10 years old.

I mean, does this really happen?

I’ve never ever seen a pacing guide. I know I would have irate parents on my door step if I implemented the last two strategies, and have no system support for my actions.

But is this us in two, five, ten years time? Could the Aussie “she’ll be right” attitude let this all in? How do we keep what is great about Australian schools without aping the extremism warned about in the Lonni Gill post?

 

More Than One Way To Win

Published on February 19, 2012 in Personal Reflections. 2 Comments

In reply to Kelly Christopherson’s recent post:

My youngest son has nearly finished his first season of under 10 basketball in a team much like your first few seasons – they have only managed one win against a team in a similar spot to them. They are mainly beginners and even at this age group have come up against very accomplished teams who have had it over them in terms of skill. But we’ve seen two types of coaching – the first from a few teams who smashed our team by scores like 70 – 0. Their coaches had their team playing intimidation basketball, pressuring them at all opportunities and went all out to amass the hugest score – at the expense of any confidence my son’s team may have had. Our coach is very patient and said that he didn’t expect anything in terms of results from the boys for at least half the season as he would be teaching a lot of foundation skills and concepts. But those big losses took a lot of joy out of the team. I’m not too sure what the coaches in charge got out of those wins either.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47611288@N00/3222971810/

The last two games we’ve played have been against other teams near the top of the ladder. But their coaches were very different. After every score, they had their team retreat back to their defensive half so that our team had the chance to bring the ball back down the court. They weren’t playing the intimidation game – they could see from the first few minutes that they had our measure – so they concentrated on specific plays, specific formations in defence. And for a change, my son’s team felt like they could breathe, that they could work some things out for themselves without a gun player from the opposition swooping in and making them pay.

When they scored for the first time in the first of these two games, the opposition parents even cheered and applauded! Even they lost easily, they walked off the court feeling a lot better about themselves, felt like they had showed improvement and felt that the opposition hadn’t smashed them, and had shown them some respect even though they are a team of learners. The winners still got their win, got to improve by working on specific plays and left everyone feeling like the game was fun.

I really like our coach and he is great with the boys. But if we were looking to join one of the other teams in the competition, I know where I’d be taking my son. Thanks for sharing your story, Kelly.

If You Have Limited Access To A Laptop, Then Is Mathletics Your Top Priority?

Published on February 19, 2012 in Internet, Learning and School websites. 2 Comments

I pose the above question because I am seeing a rise in popularity for teachers using sites like Mathletics, StudyLadder, MangaHigh and others as part of their learning program for their students. Now I have no axe to grind with these sites as many students do find them engaging and a way to improve their mathematical facts recall but I am concerned that in some cases, these sites are being used as “the maths programme” for the class and/or being used to address the use of technology in the classroom.

I’d love the opinion of a progressive maths educator as to the relative value of a site like Mathletics. My own personal experience with my eldest son is that the activities are easily gamed. My son is lousy at maths but has an excellent memory. He can do a multiple choice activity by trial and error, remembering the correct answer after multiple tries and just keeps restarting the activity until he gets a clear run and a memorised sequence of answers in his head. Now that might be a feat in itself but it does nothing for his understanding – and just cements all the problems that students get when trying to operate in digital abstraction when their needs are still in the physical concrete. But from his teacher’s point of view, he is getting 20/20 in the set activities and looks like he has achieved mastery. I have a feeling that many of these sites have the same problem. They present mathematical learning as a correct answer scenario and can only use that data to measure progress. So, a teacher blindly substituting Mathletics (and I keep picking on this site because it is the one I am most familiar with and the one most South Australian schools are prepared to fork over precious dollars to but every education sector in the world would have its equivalents) cannot possibly know if the student is truly demonstrating mathematical learning.

The first part of my question is also part of my issue. Unless you are part of a 1 to 1 laptop school (and that is a privileged minority in the primary school sector) then you have to share fleets of laptops or computing suites with other classes within the school. Technology access is an issue that all schools have to wrestle with – using timetables, rotations and pods to make sure that the available technology is frequently and flexibly used. As we are living in a era where technology gives our students the opportunity to create, construct and reflect, then it makes sense that the majority of the technology access for our students should be devoted to that goal. These sites, in my opinion, don’t fit the bill.

Am I the only one who has a problem with these sites? Is part of my problem my inability to communicate to others what the alternative – a research based comparison of city temperatures utilising web data and Excel created by my tandem partner last year with my class springs to mind – might look like?

The Essentiality Of A Good School Technician

Published on February 9, 2012 in Personal Reflections. 0 Comments

Ever tried to keep on top of a school Network without a technician to call on. I am at the moment and every minute I spend creating Active Directory profiles or fixing an uncooperative wireless keyboard, I am appreciating their worth more and more. Even knowing the process for logging a warranty issue on a faulty laptop or restarting the server after a power outage is something that I normally can rely on to be technician’s business so that I can focus on the bigger picture of improving learning outcomes for the students.

I was lucky to work with two really talented technicians over the course of 2011. The first is still back at my old site (as well as my own kid’s primary school where he has helped agitate for some of the changes I’ve pushed for as a parent) but of course, I left there for a new opportunity at Woodville Gardens. There I was lucky enough to work with the second who did the leaving this time for an enticing position at another school (in an ironic twist). Between the two of them, I have seen the best traits of this crucial role in Australian schools.

A good technician is someone who says, “Tell me what you want to do, and I’ll do my best to make it happen. I’ll explain your best options but always allow your knowledge of learning priorities right of way.”

A good technician knows how to translate technical jargon and processes into something that most educators can understand. A good technician is flexible and strives to minimise downtime in the classroom. A good techie knows how to self prioritise, to give suggestions and inside knowledge to the coordinator or AP, savvily stretch the finite budget and find the balance between troubleshooting and setting up stuff for the near and longer term future.

Unfortunately, we don’t pay school based technicians much and many move on to more lucrative opportunities in private enterprise. In primary school, we ask them to be generalists and know a bit of everything but in contrast to much of the private sector, school technicians enjoy greater autonomy and less pressure from more understanding clients (the teachers!). Although as I juggle my AP responsibilities and the very basics of technical troubleshooting and early year network maintenance, I feel quite pressured!

So, if you’re a technician in the Adelaide metro area looking for a challenge at a great school, let me know. I can’t hold down this role forever. And you know you will be valued.