Archive for the 'Learning' Category

Innovation + Leadership = Change

Published on May 8, 2012 in Future Directions, Internet and Learning. 3 Comments

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/

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 Concept Of The Virtual Schoolbag

Published on September 28, 2011 in Learning. 1 Comment

As part of the journey of establishing  and implementing our school improvement plan as a brand new school, we have a school closure day planned for this Friday. We’ll be discussing this article as part of the day to help with getting teachers into a common “headspace” about our diverse and complex student population.

In summary, the article makes the point that all kids bring a virtual schoolbag of knowledge, skills and experiences from their home life – but that not all of it has a valued place in our educational system or fits with our preconceived ideas of what is necessary to be a successful learner.

Some children are able to open their school bags when they get to school and make use of what is in there – such as knowledge of the English alphabet, book language, computer experience, and family genealogy. Other children may find that there is little or no way that they can make use of their knowledge and experience – bilingualism, non-English folk music, family small business, sibling care and kitchen duties…

…There are, of course, many possible virtual school bags and many possible educational trajectories as Thomson points out. The problem occurs when some children’s capacities, interests, knowledges and experiences count for little or nothing at school, in comparison to their peers.

This is an important challenge for all teachers but impossible to overlook in a Category One school. If we are serious about personalisation and relevance for students, then working out how to leverage what the student already brings in through the door has to be a priority. That almost always begins with building a positive relationship with the students in one’s own classroom. In my new role, that is a much more difficult proposition but I try as much as I can to strike up conversations with students in the yard, on the bus heading off to an excursion, when helping a kid borrow a book in the library or when working side by side with them on their learning. Any snippet that I can notice and enquire about can build that relationship. I’ve noticed that because I’ve only been at the school for a term and because I have an official leadership title, kids are surprised if I greet them by name and respond very positively if I can ask a question or make a comment that shows I know more than that. Whether it is an interest in Transformers that I notice, a sibling from another building that I ask about or even enquiring about the ingredients in many of our students’ lunchtime Vietnamese rolls, I gaining valuable insight about their “virtual schoolbags”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/codefin/129456093/

Link to the full Virtual Schoolbag article.