Learning

This week is a bit of an overload on conference /professional learning events for me. On Monday, it was a whole day event with Dylan William, the Assessment for Learning guru along with the rest of my Woodville Gardens School colleagues. That was pretty good and I have some notes and quotes stored on my laptop.

"Technology is a great servant but a terrible master." Dylan William during his session.

Today I went to an event titled Designing Learning in the Digital Age (twitter hashtag #DLDA) featuring Dr Gerry White as the opening keynote and sessions from Michael Coghlan, Alison Miller and Mike Seyfang. I went along because in my role as a Learning Technologies leader, I wanted to hear from and interact with other Australian elearning leaders and thinkers to help distill and define my own thinking about the directions I intend to push for at my school. It was an excellent day - and it brings home to me that we have local elearning expertise of the highest quality to interact and connect with. Why many educators feel that they are only really getting on board with networked learning if they can attend face to face sessions with an imported expert is a mystery for me. For me, Gerry's keynote was a fascinating and informative meander through the online landscape, tying new trends with snippets from his research background. At times, he was blunt and passionate, but I think I have a much deeper appreciation for what he contributed to Australian elearning in his time as head of educationau, and the contributions he still continues to make. If you have a spare 90 minutes, it is well worth checking out the recording - http://t.co/YzPzP7w6.

"... technology is also about how people communicate and collaborate. It is also about the relationships between people." Gerry White today.

As is usually the case with a day like this where a stack of ICT related topics are explored, there is heaps to consider, ponder and think through. I wrote some notes along the way, I'm re-listening to the opening keynote as I type - and I think I'll pick out some of the ideas to interrogate in a few future blog posts.

Tomorrow, my boss, Frank and I present at an ILE (Innovative Learning Environments) conference that features Dylan William again, about the research project that we've started looking at learning using digital gaming. A few things from today will be resonating in my brain as I explain our project to other interested educators.

A screengrab from Gerry's talk that highlights a great quote.

 

 

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I've just finished reading a blog post by Dean Shareski on being a more regular blogger. Knowing Dean a little bit, I actually thought it may have been about fibre and looking after your bowel. But a section of the post resonated with a gnawing disconnect that I've been experiencing with Twitter as forum for connection.

For others I fear twitter got in the way and now instead of meal sized portions of learning, all we're getting is table scraps and candy.

For me, Twitter is a low hanging fruit for online thinking and learning. I cringe inwardly a little when someone pronounces Twitter as the best PD they've ever had. I wonder how it is that they have had such a barren run throughout their career for this to be true. Maybe because I'm not in with any particular social group but I mainly see people pointing to links of stuff that someone else created, sharing in jokes (which are out jokes to me), fawning over big name edublogger types, shout outs and #hashtag mania. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with all of that, but it is a far cry from sitting down over a blog post and putting your own words, thoughts and ideas out there using as many characters as you want to get the job done. I can respect any one who is prepared to do that because it does seem that some of the more vocal Twitter fans on my twitterstream are reluctant to be bloggers. Deep down, writing in depth is a commitment and a challenge that they shy away from and espousing Twitter as the premier networked learning outlet (often referred to as their PLN) looks like a diversion away from that scenario.

Here in Adelaide at a number of departmental workshops and conferences, organisers announce that the event will "be on Twitter" and educators who don't normally engage with social media (apart from Facebook but that's not for learning, now is it?) sign up for the day and have a go at "tweeting". These accounts are then abandoned as they all return back to their day jobs and bursting email inboxes. And I can't think of any pearls of wisdom from any of these events that have benefitted my learning or triggered further thinking.

But blogging is different for me. I can recall various blog posts that have turned on the virtual light bulb for me with ideas that couldn't possibly be contained within 140 characters. From Christian Long's Future of Learning Manifesto to Leigh Blackall's Teaching Is Dead to Artichoke's Calls for Gendered Group Think about Web2.0 and Claudia Ceraso's Some thoughts on identity -particularly mine - just to name a near-handful. These posts opened up my mind to new persectives, made me reconsider what I was doing in terms of learning for myself and the staff and students with whom I work, and inspired me to strive to write for insightful and challenging purposes. I can't do any of that in a Tweet.

About all I can manage to do in a Tweet is get people offside. My attempts at conferences to be provocative have been interpreted by others as sounding snarky and negative.

So, some people can feast reasonably well from the ground level branches of networked learning or wait for those who take the time and effort to climb that metaphorical tree of learning to drop them down a tasty morsel or two - or they can plant their own tree, watch it grow and then climb up high to where the most nutritious fruit is and trade them with others who've planted their virtual learning tree nearby.

OK, I'll stop now. The metaphor is starting to get a bit stretched and thin now.

Like my efforts on Twitter.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3059349393/4160529617/

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Here in South Australia, we have a pedagogical guide known as TfEL (Teaching for Effective Learning) which is the how that backs onto the what of the Australian Curriculum.

From the Guide:

What is the SA TfEL Framework?
Just as a compass guides navigation, the SA TfEL Framework provides an ‘internal compass’ for guiding our designs for learning  and decision making about our practice. It gives us confidence that  our professional practice incorporates the most recent evidence and  understandings about learning and teaching that maximise student engagement and achievement.

My school has a TfEL specialist teacher who has provided professional learning for our staff, conducted research and supported teachers in their familiarisation and implementation of the TfEL Framework. She has been incredible but like all good things, her tenure is drawing to a conclusion at the end of 2012 as the department re-prioritises some of its expenditure. As part of the project completion, all staff have been asked to write a short "most significant impact story" that tells of the Framework's impact on their pedagogy. As a new leader and someone coming in six months later than everyone else in the new school, I wasn't sure what to write. Only one of these stories will be chosen to tell a perspective from our school. So the likelihood of mine making any further than my desktop and the specialist teacher's eyes  are slim. I personally would want a story from a classroom to represent our school any way because that is the important place I would want TfEL to be making the most positive difference.

But for posterity and my own learning, I will post up my story for others to read and query.

Personalisation of Staff PD

Story of Significant Impact by Graham Wegner, Assistant Principal (Learning Technologies & Admin), Woodville Gardens School B-7

a.

My role includes the provision of Professional Development in the early of Learning Technologies for my colleagues. I have attended a lot of this PD during my career and delivered a significant amount of technology focussed training and Professional Learning sessions over the last ten years. It has always been ironic that as a classroom teacher, I would design learning that catered for individuals with multiple entry and exit points but teacher focussed PD still seemed to be a one-size-fits-all model where everyone received the same information or worked through the same activities using the same tools.

Earlier this term, I had a staff Professional Learning time allocated for eLearning which was focussed on having the staff explore the use of PBWorks as a wiki based tool which could be used as a linking off point of entry to the internet for their students. In the past, I would have designed a lock step process to lead the whole group paced so that no one got left behind. But this model, as with students, has problems with providing the right balance between support for the less experienced and freedom to move ahead for the more confident and savvy. So this year, I have moved to making staff PD closer to the way I would approach a group of younger learners. I have made conscious efforts to design the learning using tools like Understanding by Design in a manner similar to designing an inquiry unit.

I attended a PLC session earlier in the day focussed on Learning Intentions and Success Criteria run by our TEFL specialist, Louise Barker. As we discussed what these looked like in the classroom, it became clear to me that I needed the same thing for my staff PD session. As the PLC continued, I started to re-design my approach for later that day, rewriting the Learning Intention into a WALT “create links in an online space”. I added a second part to show the value of what I wanted the staff to engage with by using TIB (This Is Because) “we can then create and develop an online space for your students to easily access a wide range of digital resources.” Finally, I added in WILF (What I’m Looking For) otherwise known as the Success Criteria – (i) you can create and edit your own space  (ii) you can add hyperlinks to important digital resources & (iii) you develop and use a strategy for find, add and review links in your space.

Lousie had also used a road metaphor that categorised learners by comfort level and confidence which I seconded for the session. This way, the confident could move ahead without feeling constrained but the less confident could seek more structured and incremental help. These elements created clarity around the purpose of the session, and empowered the staff to find their own comfort level in engaging with the learning, and the purpose behind that learning. I received very positive feedback from many colleagues about the value of the learning and how it enabled them to be successful without feeling pressured. Other leaders complimented me on the session as a solid example of how to cater for a wide range of adult learners, and act as a template for other staff running their own PD sessions.

b.

I can see great value in carrying over these key ideas (Learning Intentions and Success Criteria) which we want to be integral in our students’ learning and applying it to the staff PD to show that these concepts don’t just apply to students but to any learners.

 

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Following on from yesterday's post:

This idea stems from a common problem in primary school yards - dropped litter. Buckets that encourage social responsibility with a touch of fun - and bin "monsters" that are inviting to use - a problem that seems to be challenging to address in terms of altering behaviour. Lecturing and emu parades are just temporary bandaids and really only prompt action from already responsible students. Could this work or has it already been done?

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I'm not alone when I cite Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid as one of my favourite cartoonists on the web. I also really like Alex Noriega, Jessica Hagy, Doug Savage but my all time favourite cartoonist (whose work pre-dates the internet easily) is Michael Leunig. A well drawn cartoon can capture an idea or an emotion in ways that words cannot. So, the other day, Hugh's blog pointed to a slidedeck that he has created outlining how his work is enacting change in the business world. He refers to his cartoons as social objects, explaining the concept further in a page on GapingVoid.

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the rea­son two peo­ple are tal­king to each other, as oppo­sed to tal­king to some­body else. Human beings are social ani­mals. We like to socia­lize. But if you think about it, there needs to be a rea­son for it to hap­pen in the first place. That rea­son, that “node” in the social net­work, is what we call the Social Object.

It has got me wondering if the idea can be remixed for learning. I mean, education has had learning objects peddled for quite a while now so why not social objects? I think that they already exist anyway in our schools and professional associations, and definitely in learning networks on the web but without the formal identification of such a label. But if I understand Hugh correctly, a well designed social object creates conversation and  draws people to a particular concept or idea. This could be very powerful in places like schools in order to open up fresh thinking, introduce preferred models of practice and to help co-create positive outcomes and learning / social dispositions.

I really like the ideas in Slides 10, 13, 14, 15 and 22. Hugh produces social objects for companies to improve their outcomes. My next step is to see if I can create a cartoon that is a social object for learning. Maybe you might know of one that already fits the bill.

More to come ...

At our Tuesday staff PD session, we had the privilege of hearing from one of DECD's African Community Liaison Officers (CLO for short) who had worked briefly at my school earlier in 2012 as a Bi-Lingual School Support Officer (BSSO for short) before being snapped for a much broader role. His name was Abdullahi Ahmed and he gave us an informative presentation that highlighted some of the issues that characterise a large number of students from an African background who are currently in South Australian schools. He spoke passionately and was hugely insightful in showing us what we need to know as educators. We have about 80 students of African background here at my school, and that is a broad stroke in itself because they represent a broad range of cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs and experiences that led to their arrival in Australia. There is no typical African kid but using the acronym CALD (students from a Culturally And Linguistically Diverse background)  he explained that the majority of students and families that are supported by his role have a refugee background, and that is what he unpacked for us. [My questions as they occurred in bracketed italics.]

He described to us the two different scenarios between an African village where there might be one water pump for the whole village, and at the same time that South Australians are getting their kids ready for school, children would be with their parents helping to fetch the water for the day. [What do we need to think about as educators about these students and the way they make a start to the day? What might we need to consider about the responsibilities older children might have in helping with chores and running the household before they get ready for a day in our school?] Now we know that many people in Africa live in larger towns and cities but Abdullahi pointed out that is typically vulnerable people who became refugees and many of these came from a rural village setting. When fighting or civil war broke out, many people walked very long distances to escape persecution and killing. Males were often targetted for this, so families separated in order to escape. It is not uncommon for a mother and children to be here settled in Australia while a husband or older male family members may be missing - and not necessarily dead, but just unaccounted for and impossible to trace.

He talked about the perception of race and impact of racism on CALD families. In the African experience, many people born after the 1950's were born in the era of many modern African states gaining independence. Therefore, people from other cultures that they would experience from a day to day basis were from outside agencies helping to get things running in the newly independent state - aid workers, planners, developers - and these outsiders were viewed by many Africans as "helpers", with much of the hatred that fuels the violence and civil war in the hotspots of the African continent coming from tribal hostilities. Therefore, Abdullahi pointed that CALD families generally have a positive attitude towards other races, but newly encountered and quite unexpected racism from non-African kids in the Australian school settings can quickly alter this positive attitude.

Another complicating factor for many kids who have spent time in refugee camps is the form of education they receive there is geared towards repatriation. Schools there have very little to no technology, overcrowded classrooms in very basic structures. Housing in refugee camps is in the form of tents, which is very different to the housing left behind in their home village or town and also very different to the housing now in their country of resettlement. He pointed out the countries that Australia has received refugees from - at my school they include but not limited to Liberia, Somalia, Burundi, Togo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Ethiopia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. If you encounter students from countries like Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana or Mozambique, they are likely to be the children of scholarship holders here to study, and not from a refugee background. In many parts of Africa, physical punishment is still part of the school experience so in Australia, so some students find a situation where poor behaviour only leads to discussion with counsellors and maybe a suspension [a few days off from school, hooray!] to be nothing to fear.

Abdullahi used some social research terminology to tie a lot of his talk together, and this was used in his description of the disparity between neighbourhood settings here and in the family's country of origin. There is a big difference between a village setting where everyone know each other by name and where kids were free to mix and spend time unsupervised together, compared to the Australian suburban experience where one can live for years next door to neighbours who are unknown and not part of their social fabric. He talked about the need for "social capital", the connections to people of similar backgrounds or interests (Fukuyama, 1997) and the building of a social network [not the digital kind] of support to strengthen those connections. Other issues that hindered students' progress within our schools include the high illiteracy rate among refugee parents who may speak a first language but not necessarily be literate in it. Add English as the new language and the propensity of schools to communicate a lot through text based mediums, and you have a lot of newsletters and notices lying around the house that are not able to be read. Using an interpreter is not always the best answer as the education system has its own sub-language of code words and acronyms that need someone trained, like a BSSO or CLO, in order for communication to be effective at times like parent teacher interviews. The illiteracy of some parents causes another side problem insofar that seeing their own child become proficient in English for communication has them feeling that their child has surpassed them educationally and that therefore their child is viewed as more knowledgeable than the parent, leading to an inability to set proper boundaries for their children at home. Educators therefore need to work hard to open lines of communication with these families so that they see the need to be in control of their child's routines and expectations, that mastering English is not a guarantee of success in Australia and that a lot of hard work is required to get through to Year 12, and possibly tertiary or VET in order to secure a future of meaningful life choices. A perception of "School does everything" for many parents hinders their direct involvement in their child's learning, and educators must work hard to show the importance of engagement in their child's learning. Simple things like showing an interest in a family's cultural background during interviews or conversations can go a long way towards making them feel welcome and less threatened by the school environment. Reaching out to families to build a partnership will mean that CALD students have a greater chance of being successful within our education system, and going on to making meaningful and important contributions to our society - or if they ever wish to do so, be able to return back to their home country one day and contribute there.

Abdullahi's talk held everyone's attention for the entire hour, and in conversation with many of my colleagues afterwards, they were constantly mentally referring to students under their care and making connections about why these kids act the way they do, and how things might be tackled differently now that our own awareness has been raised. I hope that my reflections here are accurate, do not read as patronising in any way, and can be useful for anyone else who might even only have one CALD student in their classroom.

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At this moment in time, there are multiple options for anyone in the learning game. In my case:

I could be writing a blog post (obviously).

I could be tweeting other people's links out to other people.

I could be having a go at being part of a large, loosely connected group in a MOOC.

I could be commenting on other people's writing - either to pat them on the back, to say "hear, hear", to divert their ideas onto a new pathway or to challenge their words with my own.

I could just be doing some good old fashioned web surfing, clicking my way from one interesting node to another. (YouTube is great for this and can soak up hours in an unproductive but highly satisfying way.)

I could be focussing in small, working out what I need to do in my current job at my current school for my current crop of colleagues and students. Or I could be wide open, solving all of the world's learning needs, re-imagining an education system that wipes all of the ills that we currently have.

But ...

I have to decide what is actually worth doing. I have to weigh up if anyone even reads what I write and whether it has ever changed anything for anyone else. I have to consider if yet another person tweeting out links, hashtags and retweets adds to learning or merely just adds more digital noise. Do I have time to commit to a MOOC? How can I expect anyone to leave a comment for me if I'm not prepared to put aside to do that for others? And does my online time have to be learning or education focussed all the time? Is it OK to goof off occasionally and watch anime, music videos or laugh at Rebecca Black memes?

At work, at home and in the spaces in between, I want to be doing something worthwhile. Not just follow-the-crowd and be-up-with-the-latest-from-my-PLN type but in a world with seemingly limitless options but seemingly decreasing limited time (I'm resisting like hell to avoid using the buzzphrase "time poor"), I'd like to think that purpose and meaning can be derived from online connections to others. At times to others , this comes across as negativity on my part but being critical of what others write, say, tweet, point to, reference, worship is an integral part of the whole deal.

Sparked by this.

On Sunday night, John Evans tweeted out this query:

I replied saying that I would get back to him with some insight as it was just as I was about to go to sleep. Then ....

... I realised this evening that I hadn't done anything about it!

So, in South Australian schools, the Premier's Reading Challenge (known more commonly in schools as the acronym PRC) is an initiative championed by the State Premier to get kids reading more. There is a website, plenty of posters and other materials that school libraries can use to raise awareness. Actually, each state has their version - more information here at Wikipedia. The Challenge was first started nine years here in SA by the then Premier Mike Rann. "Media Mike" as he was known pushed this concept as his major contribution to boosting literacy levels, as outlined in this article from 2004:

Rann sets students new reading challenge

Posted January 14, 2004 21:22:00

South Australian Premier Mike Rann has set young students a challenge for the new school year: to read more books.

Mr Rann has released a catalogue of more than 1,800 titles for the Premier's Reading Challenge.

It is spread over four years with the task being for students from early primary school up to year nine to read at least 12 books a year.

Mr Rann wants to excite children into reading and they will get medals for their achievements.

"But we've really got to encourage our children to spend less time in front of the television, less time in front of computer games and more time exploring and discovering the enjoyment and pleasure of reading," he said.

I was teaching Year Six and Sevens at the time, and I recall that the most avid readers in the class boycotted the Challenge because they saw the curated list as being too limited, and taking the joy out of free reading. There was also frantic activity in school libraries as they developed a fluorescent sticker system to easily identify the books on the Challenge list. Not all teachers were enthused either. I heard about one teacher who read books from the list to his class of junior primary students, and recorded the books down for all of his students on their record sheets, subverting the free choice component of the PRC. Students also became creative in filling out their record sheets, faking parent signatures and in one case, writing in bogus titles and authors hoping to slip past the eagle eyes of our teacher-librarian. (One sheet featured titles from a Lady Gaga album!) But like all new initiatives (like NAPLaN) as time went by, the PRC became part of the school landscape where assemblies would announce the latest students who had achieved the PRC, read out comparative totals from classes across the school and library purchase orders were heavily influenced by the recommended lists.

My two sons have participated in the Challenge throughout their primary school years so far. My oldest has every medal since the first year, and even he has a disability, has been supported by us (and the school) to complete each PRC. As parents, we have downloaded the list PDFs, scoured bookstores for books from the list and set aside time to quietly read at home. I'm not sure that the Challenge has raised either of their literacy standards but generally they have both enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that completion brings. My youngest probably sees reading in book form as a chore at the best of times, so the purpose has helped him to stay the distance.

What are other Australian educators' experiences with the PRC?

Going to a CEGSA conference is always a weird experience for me. It's run by my local professional association on which I spent two years as a committee member  (where I don't think that I contributed a great deal) so I know most of the people behind the scenes who work damn hard to put together a conference of quality. It isn't easy in South Australia, which is somewhat isolated from the more populated eastern seaboard, to afford to attract big name educators who will attract interest from the wider education community. There is a nice, grassrooots feeling about CEGSA's annual conference as it depends mostly on local educators putting their hands up to share what they are doing. But I think I am a naturally skeptical and hard-to-enthuse type of person and I want to be challenged in my thinking on the level that I can get at any time from networked learning. I found myself feeling a common connection with Biance Hewes' post about ISTE where she describes herself as having "moodiness and cynicism" and becoming a "grinch". I completely get that. (Even if she might not appreciate my out of context comparison. Seriously though, she is one of the best Aussie edubloggers going around.)

So, I always look forward to this conference with a bit of excitement. It is cool to catch up with ex-colleagues and network with educators in similar roles - but I do want presenters to give me something new for my brain to chew on.

So Day One's keynote speakers were George Couros and Tony Bryant. George is the younger brother of Alec Couros, a higher education blogger who I have reading for a few years. George is newer on the scene, a Canadian divisional principal, and I must admit I only recently subscribed to his blog to start reading his work. No problem, he only really heard of me today for the first time. But he has become highly influential in a relatively short period of time and his savviness in social media is evident. So, his keynote was enjoyable and focussed on the need for educators to become more informed around social media and continue to learn about the connected world that our students live in. Nothing that I haven't heard before or written or presented about myself in the past - but he has a much bigger platform to spread his ideas from. I then went to his workshop on Digital Footprints which went through how to take control of and use tools to connect on the web. A point of interest was one educator there (from an elite private school here in Adelaide no less) who wanted to pick a bone with George about the "evidence" behind a video he showed during the presentation where an American college student takes institutional education to task over its lack of relevance. George responded well, saying that it was imperative that we addressed disengagement by ensuring that our disadvantaged students gained access to the skills and tools that could engage and make their learning relevant. I've heard criticisms similar to this before - all from educators involved in schools where they have been successful in a traditional academic sense with their students and the whole "change or be irrelevant" message is one they don't see, or from private schools where they can show the disengaged students the door and make them the state school's problem. I think that George was spot on in this regard.

He also spoke about and discussed the Facebook issue for students where past indiscretions could came back to haunt them. I'm still not so sure that things will pan out that way. I see quite a lot of kids in that space who create multiple personal accounts and identities all with a mix of fact and fiction, easily jettisoned if the need arises - and certainly almost impossible for a potential employer to definitively use as an accurate past digital history. Time will tell - and Facebook is no certainty to be around when the current group of upper primary kids start looking for jobs. So, George was an engaging personality and reinforced a lot of what I already know. But it is definitely an Australian thing to need an overseas expert to tell us what we should be doing.

Tony Bryant was the second keynote and he is the principal of Silverton Primary School in Melbourne, Victoria. I have had the privilege of hearing him speak on his own turf, during a Microsoft Innovative Schools visit early last year, and much of what he said today was similar in nature. His talk is very informative for me in my role as leader in working out what is important in defining the way forward at my school. He suggested a lot of commonsense innovation, and I went to his next presentation on Personalised Learning where he battled a fading voice to describe what it looks like at Silverton. He also pointed out that meaningful change isn't a fast process, and that it requires patience and being a "committed sardine"!

So, my plan was to concentrate on the "big names" to get value from my day. I am still stewing on what I heard and saw - and tomorrow I have my own presentation to give. I've dusted off the presentation that never got to be after the Judy O'Connell headlining event for CEGSA and SLASA was canned, put it back together and we will see if anyone wants to hear about "Digital Literacy" in the last session of the conference. After my declining cohort experience at the ITL Masterclass, I am not confident that anyone will be interested in a small timer's big picture perspective. After all, it probably isn't anything that Will Richardson hasn't already said in his blog and recorded presentations all over the web. But I am a local and I am free. Maybe I'll push the slideshow up to the web and record the talk for others to check out.

George speaks during his keynote - CEGSA2012.

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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.