How to find real life learning, with an authentic purpose, in a supportive, energetic environment, where collaboration and competition keep momentum, curiosity and drive going?
How to test what I can add to a team of people I don't know, in an unknown setting with an unknown challenge?
I have signed up for Tauranga StartUp Weekend•, a 54hr "learning curve" where up to 80 people from various professional backgrounds (tech, design, marketing, entrepreuneurs...) get together to form/join a team on an idea that is pitched on the first night, build a viable business, convince investors.
This is going to be a little... "uncomfortable"!
So what shall I take with me to "pad the ride?"
- a bit of tech end user experience,
- some facilitation skills
- a burgeoning understanding of the Design Thinking mindset (I'll have to tell you about that as I am putting this in real time practice for ThinkAgency!)
- my ability to generate ideas
- a capacity to look for, find and analyse relevant information
- my "to do" list obsession
- an aptitude to look for "work arounds"
- all that the world of teaching and learning has armed me with: patience, stayability, keeping things simple, working with others, curiosity, solving problems... will all this come handy?
- an open mind, ready to fill the kete!
- my brand new phone (again!) my laptop, my chargers.
And here is what I shall leave behind:
- preconceived ideas
- fear of the unknown
- feeling overwhelmed in front of awesomeness
- worry that I will be out of my depth.
So will I pitch on the night or what? One minute to convince an audience that your idea is worth spending time and energy on? It has got to be done.
• About Startup Weekend: Startup
Weekends are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential
education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs. Beginning with
Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business
plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends
culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations. Participants create
working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with
like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear
talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local
entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and
education. Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a
co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup
Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take
the first steps towards launching your own startup.
Showing posts with label Change (or Die). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Change (or Die). Show all posts
5 September 2013
13 July 2013
So I went to NetHui2013
I spent two and 1/2 days in Wellington at NetHui this week, missing the first part of Monday. I want to understand what internet issues are. I am an internet user. I was surrounding with people who "get the internet" and "make the internet". As someone tweeted (wished I captured!) "if the building was to collapse it would set back New Zealand for years to come!"
InternetNZ organises NetHui. It has been a great opportunity to understand better the role and work of InternetNZ, it above all feels right and it is well beyond worth my humble membership! Jordan Carter's (Internet NZ Chief Executive) Scene Setting Comments for NetHui is a great intro.
My few lines won't make the event justice:
Bill Bennett's Ten Things we learned from NetHui is a sounder analysis!
NetHui brought together all sorts of people from all walks of kiwi life to talk about the internet and how it shapes what they do or rather how they shape it? Who knows...
If you wanted to read up and see the wealth of conversations that took place, head over to Conversation, where all the collaborative note taking is compiled. This has got to be one great thing about the internet, the fact that I have spent the last hour "rewinding" through NetHui! I have learnt soooo much at a frantic pace. And I need to revisit. And the most relevant will rise to the surface faster while much will have given me reasons and impetus to explore further.
There were a few highly clued up edu-peeps, and a few teachers talking Open Internet Networked Learning and Making BYOD work. Wished I had some students to introduce to the youth forum too!
The beauty of these three days is that I spent them out of my depth!
> I am listening to people from "another" world, whose interest in and understanding of the internet reach far beyond mine at first glance and whose activity and/or raison d être have been also deeply turned upside down by the internet (security, journalism, music, health, business, role of the state, open data...)
> I venture a few comments and contributions here and there as the format of each session, with a mic being passed around, manages to invite me to take a bit of a chance: many venture comments, that is what makes the conversation progress...
> I come to realise as the days progress that many an Internet issue actually deeply concerns me: public interest vs national security, copyright, open source, access for all (Rural, disabilities etc), privacy, digital literacies, identity...
What I take home from NetHui is that the internet is about people, faith in people: relationships, partnerships, high trust, it is also about building together, including, it is about voice, it is about choice, it is about being pro active, being free to act, to self regulate, organise... All of those "things" I can see baking in every single child in an NZ school and that in fact apply to all!
Quinn Norton (who has covered extensively Hacktivism and the Occupy movement) gave a breathtaking (literally thanks to the pace of her "tweet" like statements) keynote (I hope the recording becomes available soon and I will edit here with it). She speaks about liminality, refers to the internet as the Network and its disorganised, organic nature, that is throwing doubt to established ways, talks about moving from democracy to do a cracy.
The one concept I related to straight away in her keynote was her mention of Agency:
Agency is the key word that totally underpins all of my thoughts and interest and practice in eportfolio. That is another story, a personal and professional journey, but it is absolutely enabled through experiencing for myself the transformative powers of the Internet.
InternetNZ organises NetHui. It has been a great opportunity to understand better the role and work of InternetNZ, it above all feels right and it is well beyond worth my humble membership! Jordan Carter's (Internet NZ Chief Executive) Scene Setting Comments for NetHui is a great intro.
My few lines won't make the event justice:
Bill Bennett's Ten Things we learned from NetHui is a sounder analysis!
NetHui brought together all sorts of people from all walks of kiwi life to talk about the internet and how it shapes what they do or rather how they shape it? Who knows...
If you wanted to read up and see the wealth of conversations that took place, head over to Conversation, where all the collaborative note taking is compiled. This has got to be one great thing about the internet, the fact that I have spent the last hour "rewinding" through NetHui! I have learnt soooo much at a frantic pace. And I need to revisit. And the most relevant will rise to the surface faster while much will have given me reasons and impetus to explore further.
There were a few highly clued up edu-peeps, and a few teachers talking Open Internet Networked Learning and Making BYOD work. Wished I had some students to introduce to the youth forum too!
The beauty of these three days is that I spent them out of my depth!
> I am listening to people from "another" world, whose interest in and understanding of the internet reach far beyond mine at first glance and whose activity and/or raison d être have been also deeply turned upside down by the internet (security, journalism, music, health, business, role of the state, open data...)
> I venture a few comments and contributions here and there as the format of each session, with a mic being passed around, manages to invite me to take a bit of a chance: many venture comments, that is what makes the conversation progress...
> I come to realise as the days progress that many an Internet issue actually deeply concerns me: public interest vs national security, copyright, open source, access for all (Rural, disabilities etc), privacy, digital literacies, identity...
What I take home from NetHui is that the internet is about people, faith in people: relationships, partnerships, high trust, it is also about building together, including, it is about voice, it is about choice, it is about being pro active, being free to act, to self regulate, organise... All of those "things" I can see baking in every single child in an NZ school and that in fact apply to all!
Quinn Norton (who has covered extensively Hacktivism and the Occupy movement) gave a breathtaking (literally thanks to the pace of her "tweet" like statements) keynote (I hope the recording becomes available soon and I will edit here with it). She speaks about liminality, refers to the internet as the Network and its disorganised, organic nature, that is throwing doubt to established ways, talks about moving from democracy to do a cracy.
The one concept I related to straight away in her keynote was her mention of Agency:
26 May 2013
Google here Google there
My week appears to have been dominated by all things Google! Me and million others!
More this week than any other? I did receive lots of messages about googledoc use and discussed them at the NZALT meeting where I presented the NZQA info about online submissions for moderation.
And this level of "Google activity" got me thinking...
Every day several times a day I typically search, email, use calendars, create and share docs, presentations, forms, upload images, follow and participate in groups, watch Youtube clips, use Maps as GPS... I have used googlesites to document or communicate information. I embed elements from my Drive in other online spaces. My Android phone is surgically attached to my hand, the Android tablet is central to our living area. I have even started to use Chrome and added a range of apps, including Lucidchart, Pocket. Still my default browser is Firefox, firmly, but who knows? I own a macbook air which has virtually no storage place as most of my stuff is cloud based, mostly in Drive and some in Dropbox.
And that is only my personal use..
The teaching and learning world is taken by storm by GoogleApps for Education: docs, control panel, apps... Excellent teachers are selected to attend the Google Academy, forward thinking and successful schools showcase how the Apps combined with Teacher Dashboard transform teaching and learning, amazing stories of implementation to develop a digital age approach to learning for all students are widely disseminated, whole countries like Malaysia not only adapt the cloud services but also the hardware, Chromebooks are featured prominently, GAFECommunity conferences worldwide are extremely well attended by innovative teachers looking to empower their students to own their learning. Resources to get started, presentations to implement, tips from any of these events are shared widely through social media.
And that is only what I am aware off...
I have actually not set out to learn about Google stuff, it just has grown as part of my daily routine,
it feels as whenever I need to do something there is a Google way, and that it makes my many aspects of my daily life easier:
- googledrive for all NZAFT business
- collaboration on documents with colleagues
- eportfolio publishing
- blog posts
- googledrive to share and organise shared documents
- hangout to allow for those online meetings and record them
- presentations with speakernotes shared
- everything viewable and editable at my fingertips anywhere anytime on phone
Google is omnipresent in my online activities. I can't quite trace back how this has come to be. It all started with a Gmail address and playing with the tabs in iGoogle I think.
What surprises me is that some people I work with can't access googledocs from their place of work: no need sharing a doc with them at their institution address, no need asking them to quickly join a hangout. Others are still under the impression that if you don't send a form or document on paper or attachment to an email, then it won't be replied to, that the link to the form or the doco won't be followed. That only if you have a google account you can fill in a form! And others can't quite get what it means that it is on the cloud.
I can't say I am a Google enthusiast any more than I am a car enthusiast:
- both equally take me from A to B when I need (although I admit that going from A to B with google is far less of a straight road, as often one thing leads to another! ;-))
- both I drive with caution but also with the comfort associated with familiarity and a good dose of safety ( I have googled my name on a range of browsers and devices and different locations and I am yet to see in the first 10 pages of the search any of the documents I have published to the web from Drive),
- both I enjoy the reliability of and the feeling of ownership derived from a certain element of mastery Oh that feeling of freedom when the tool does exactly what you want (eg: I don't think about "How" I drive to B) and that frees you to concentrate on the next step!
So I know what Google enables me to do. I know it now as it is born of need. I know some know heaps more and use much more Google things and make it work for them and their institutions, schools etc. so I continue looking as something will resonate and it ll get used. (Like the DocStory builder!)
I felt I needed to look at some of these applications in a school context, with learning outcomes firmly in mind, with students experience at the heart, to see what they look like in a context where the freedom of use can be restricted due to the constraints (age limitations, digital competence, infrastructure, access, data ownership etc.) and to see what users make of them (like this or that!), where they can embed, how they can communicate with parents, communities... What makes GoogleApps different so that they seem to be so widely implemented (if not widely and judiciously used)? Is it because their use, contrarily to LMS for instance, revolves around a personal user ID, namely an email address and a user owned product such as a doc? Hum...
Upon receiving info about the GoogleTools for Learning course coming up, I suggested to the NZAFT exec ATeam that we went on a learning outing together: I have been doing "the Google evangelist" with the team for over a year now, but I'm limited by my own experience. And I am ready to listen to expert advice in the education field. Our team has steadily grown their use and started to see some massive changes in the way we work and relate to others for planning and communication purposes. This is timely for all of us, and the opportunity to work together to share experience and freshly acquired knowledge to our community of practice at the upcoming Fransème is too good to miss!
So I am going back on my word: I am going to a "how to" workshop! LOL! I' ll soon write what I got out of it!
More this week than any other? I did receive lots of messages about googledoc use and discussed them at the NZALT meeting where I presented the NZQA info about online submissions for moderation.
And this level of "Google activity" got me thinking...
Every day several times a day I typically search, email, use calendars, create and share docs, presentations, forms, upload images, follow and participate in groups, watch Youtube clips, use Maps as GPS... I have used googlesites to document or communicate information. I embed elements from my Drive in other online spaces. My Android phone is surgically attached to my hand, the Android tablet is central to our living area. I have even started to use Chrome and added a range of apps, including Lucidchart, Pocket. Still my default browser is Firefox, firmly, but who knows? I own a macbook air which has virtually no storage place as most of my stuff is cloud based, mostly in Drive and some in Dropbox.
And that is only my personal use..
 |
| http://mashable.com/2011/08/03/google-doodles/ |
The teaching and learning world is taken by storm by GoogleApps for Education: docs, control panel, apps... Excellent teachers are selected to attend the Google Academy, forward thinking and successful schools showcase how the Apps combined with Teacher Dashboard transform teaching and learning, amazing stories of implementation to develop a digital age approach to learning for all students are widely disseminated, whole countries like Malaysia not only adapt the cloud services but also the hardware, Chromebooks are featured prominently, GAFECommunity conferences worldwide are extremely well attended by innovative teachers looking to empower their students to own their learning. Resources to get started, presentations to implement, tips from any of these events are shared widely through social media.
And that is only what I am aware off...
I have actually not set out to learn about Google stuff, it just has grown as part of my daily routine,
it feels as whenever I need to do something there is a Google way, and that it makes my many aspects of my daily life easier:
- googledrive for all NZAFT business
- collaboration on documents with colleagues
- eportfolio publishing
- blog posts
- googledrive to share and organise shared documents
- hangout to allow for those online meetings and record them
- presentations with speakernotes shared
- everything viewable and editable at my fingertips anywhere anytime on phone
Google is omnipresent in my online activities. I can't quite trace back how this has come to be. It all started with a Gmail address and playing with the tabs in iGoogle I think.
What surprises me is that some people I work with can't access googledocs from their place of work: no need sharing a doc with them at their institution address, no need asking them to quickly join a hangout. Others are still under the impression that if you don't send a form or document on paper or attachment to an email, then it won't be replied to, that the link to the form or the doco won't be followed. That only if you have a google account you can fill in a form! And others can't quite get what it means that it is on the cloud.
I can't say I am a Google enthusiast any more than I am a car enthusiast:
- both equally take me from A to B when I need (although I admit that going from A to B with google is far less of a straight road, as often one thing leads to another! ;-))
- both I drive with caution but also with the comfort associated with familiarity and a good dose of safety ( I have googled my name on a range of browsers and devices and different locations and I am yet to see in the first 10 pages of the search any of the documents I have published to the web from Drive),
- both I enjoy the reliability of and the feeling of ownership derived from a certain element of mastery Oh that feeling of freedom when the tool does exactly what you want (eg: I don't think about "How" I drive to B) and that frees you to concentrate on the next step!
So I know what Google enables me to do. I know it now as it is born of need. I know some know heaps more and use much more Google things and make it work for them and their institutions, schools etc. so I continue looking as something will resonate and it ll get used. (Like the DocStory builder!)
I felt I needed to look at some of these applications in a school context, with learning outcomes firmly in mind, with students experience at the heart, to see what they look like in a context where the freedom of use can be restricted due to the constraints (age limitations, digital competence, infrastructure, access, data ownership etc.) and to see what users make of them (like this or that!), where they can embed, how they can communicate with parents, communities... What makes GoogleApps different so that they seem to be so widely implemented (if not widely and judiciously used)? Is it because their use, contrarily to LMS for instance, revolves around a personal user ID, namely an email address and a user owned product such as a doc? Hum...
Upon receiving info about the GoogleTools for Learning course coming up, I suggested to the NZAFT exec ATeam that we went on a learning outing together: I have been doing "the Google evangelist" with the team for over a year now, but I'm limited by my own experience. And I am ready to listen to expert advice in the education field. Our team has steadily grown their use and started to see some massive changes in the way we work and relate to others for planning and communication purposes. This is timely for all of us, and the opportunity to work together to share experience and freshly acquired knowledge to our community of practice at the upcoming Fransème is too good to miss!
So I am going back on my word: I am going to a "how to" workshop! LOL! I' ll soon write what I got out of it!
20 April 2013
Conversation matters
What follows is a mix of thoughts arising from reading from different altruistic online sharers and talking with a range of people dedicated to French language and culture.
The latter I met at the Alliance Française AGM held in Christchurch where I was invited to attend as representative of the NZAFT. It was a timely reminder, considering where my thoughts were at earlier in the week (as vented in my comments) that Languages must be, ought to be, have to be celebrated as a main dish on the Smörgåsbord on offer to learners in New Zealand schools. And tonight, thanks to the company I kept recently, I am even almost ready to say French rather than the generic Languages ;-)!
My presentation at this meeting allowed me to focus on what most teachers of French do very well: they love French! Not just French the Language but also all things French. Conveying the love to dwindling numbers, through complex pedagogies which need to be given more time than seems available to internalise them, with the perceived end goal limited to striving for a credit count is at times a tall order.
Compare that to the situation of our Alliance Française colleagues whose role (apparently!) consists of teaching students who come through their doors with a self motivation, a need, a reason to learn French, free of any formal assessments, one would have reasons to be thoroughly jealous of these conditions!
Last November I had the opportunity to work alongside some of the young "volontaires internationaux" at the AF in Wellington as we were training to be DELF examiners. I realised I had much to learn from their take on the Approche Actionnelle as well as their approach to evaluation. To my pleasure they too expressed a vivid interest in understanding more about French in NZ schools. It thus indicated that there are grounds on which to build a rapprochement in order to learn from each other. Yesterday's meeting reminded me of this and it was an opportunity to formalise a wish in public for it to actually happen. What shape it takes is yet to be devised and as NZAFT decide things at committee level, it certainly is not entirely up to me.
But just now I think I know how it could possibly be put to good use for the greater good!
And this is born of several other things happening this week:
- talking about New Zealand school teachers of French lead to talk about NZ schools, in particular the recently opened primary and secondary schools with their modern learning environment, open plan spaces and collaborative teaching aiming to have students direct their learning. It is indeed here to stay with many existing schools embracing this approach and embarking on the journey of innovation. This was news to the French Embassy Education attaché who was very interested in knowing more. All I know is names of schools, a few teachers who I follow on Twitter and have occasionally met, but enough to understand that this is working on transforming education right here and now. What I also seem to pick from these new schools is that Learning Languages doesn't seem to feature much. It was a shame he thought and why he asked. I suggested, unsure: Teachers not ready for the leap of pedagogical faith, new principals not ready to give it full attention while either the Correspondence school or the VLN can somehow attempt to fill that gap, not enough parents pushing to have a language taught, teaching teams fully focused on literacy and key competencies and forgetting that the cultural competence of our NZC is intrinsically linked the intercultural competence developed through language learning? Who knows?
- exchanging with you here along our last posts and comments, you describe your attempt at weaving in your new classes a pedagogy which invite students to direct their own learning is meeting with resistance at this stage. As we discussed I am surprised to read that students are so change adverse. This could indicate that it is such a departure from the usual expectations they have grown used to in the environment they are learning in, that it will take time and continuous effort on your and their part to start to see the long term benefits of the approach.
So from this one could jump to a very quick (and certainly wrong) conclusion:
- new learning environment, self directed learning=not conducive to language learning
- traditional learning environment, Sage on the Stage teaching= conducive to language learning
- upon talking new NZ schools with the young AF teacher her eyes just lit up and it all seemed to make sense to her: open space where furniture is arranged to support interaction, nooks and crannies for practice in solo or pairs, breakout spaces for recordings or rehearsing, devices for listening and research, students looking for what they need to make meaning in their own term, decent time allocation to allow for continuity, having her course and resources online for students to access whenever wherever, doing on the spot tutorials when the need arise, offering specific breakouts at specific times, planning with teachers from other learning areas to incorporate language and culture where and when necessary, ... she pictured it all there and then! She got it. Which told me:French Languages can be integrated in this way if you have the teaching and the attitude right. And thus be a fully fledged item on the buffet for the curious and imaginative and risk taking learner, not just a Learning Area in the NZC!
Where am I going with all that I hear you say?
There is a need to investigate, demonstrate and reflect on how French can be incorporated in a student self directed curriculum in order for language learning to fully contribute to make learners connected to the world they live in, confident to meet others and being able to walk in their shoes in full knowledge of who they are, as well as gaining an awareness that learning is a life long journey and that languages can pop in anytime in their lives.
- of the bloggers who have contributed to this thinking is Claire Amos, a New Zealand educator whose excellent online presence I have followed for some years now and whose work has gone a long way in explaining and convincing me of the role of Teaching as Inquiry. The lady is a sharer of good stuff. I can't say I know her but I can say she sure has the most awesome eportfolio I know of. Anyway Claire in her current position is undertaking with a team of NZ teachers an edutour of self directed schools in the US and Canada. I have been reading with interest her accounts, which prompted me to google the schools that they are visiting . Through visiting these schools' websites I could see that Languages featured fully. Sure Canada has a different relation to learning languages that NZ has but that sure indicates that it can be done.
- which got me to contact, Jacques Cool a French Speaking Canadian whose tweets both in French and English I value highly for state of the art information. Hence I DMed Jacques this am to ask him if he knew of any English speaking Canadian self directed learning school where languages were fully a part of the curriculum. He was interested by my question and has sent it on to an expert in this field! WOW there are experts in this field! I now am truly excitingly waiting to hear back.
And then what? A little dream situation: advice from an expert + model schools to learn from + language teaching clued up AF teacher + keen to learn and inquire NZ French teacher(s) + new schools environment in NZ + Learning Language integration+ networking = being proactive in ensuring French (Languages!) is an integral part of a varied rich modern curriculum.
Now where do I start to make this happen?
The latter I met at the Alliance Française AGM held in Christchurch where I was invited to attend as representative of the NZAFT. It was a timely reminder, considering where my thoughts were at earlier in the week (as vented in my comments) that Languages must be, ought to be, have to be celebrated as a main dish on the Smörgåsbord on offer to learners in New Zealand schools. And tonight, thanks to the company I kept recently, I am even almost ready to say French rather than the generic Languages ;-)!
 |
| You are here flickrcc |
My presentation at this meeting allowed me to focus on what most teachers of French do very well: they love French! Not just French the Language but also all things French. Conveying the love to dwindling numbers, through complex pedagogies which need to be given more time than seems available to internalise them, with the perceived end goal limited to striving for a credit count is at times a tall order.
Compare that to the situation of our Alliance Française colleagues whose role (apparently!) consists of teaching students who come through their doors with a self motivation, a need, a reason to learn French, free of any formal assessments, one would have reasons to be thoroughly jealous of these conditions!
Last November I had the opportunity to work alongside some of the young "volontaires internationaux" at the AF in Wellington as we were training to be DELF examiners. I realised I had much to learn from their take on the Approche Actionnelle as well as their approach to evaluation. To my pleasure they too expressed a vivid interest in understanding more about French in NZ schools. It thus indicated that there are grounds on which to build a rapprochement in order to learn from each other. Yesterday's meeting reminded me of this and it was an opportunity to formalise a wish in public for it to actually happen. What shape it takes is yet to be devised and as NZAFT decide things at committee level, it certainly is not entirely up to me.
But just now I think I know how it could possibly be put to good use for the greater good!
And this is born of several other things happening this week:
- talking about New Zealand school teachers of French lead to talk about NZ schools, in particular the recently opened primary and secondary schools with their modern learning environment, open plan spaces and collaborative teaching aiming to have students direct their learning. It is indeed here to stay with many existing schools embracing this approach and embarking on the journey of innovation. This was news to the French Embassy Education attaché who was very interested in knowing more. All I know is names of schools, a few teachers who I follow on Twitter and have occasionally met, but enough to understand that this is working on transforming education right here and now. What I also seem to pick from these new schools is that Learning Languages doesn't seem to feature much. It was a shame he thought and why he asked. I suggested, unsure: Teachers not ready for the leap of pedagogical faith, new principals not ready to give it full attention while either the Correspondence school or the VLN can somehow attempt to fill that gap, not enough parents pushing to have a language taught, teaching teams fully focused on literacy and key competencies and forgetting that the cultural competence of our NZC is intrinsically linked the intercultural competence developed through language learning? Who knows?
- exchanging with you here along our last posts and comments, you describe your attempt at weaving in your new classes a pedagogy which invite students to direct their own learning is meeting with resistance at this stage. As we discussed I am surprised to read that students are so change adverse. This could indicate that it is such a departure from the usual expectations they have grown used to in the environment they are learning in, that it will take time and continuous effort on your and their part to start to see the long term benefits of the approach.
So from this one could jump to a very quick (and certainly wrong) conclusion:
- new learning environment, self directed learning=not conducive to language learning
- traditional learning environment, Sage on the Stage teaching= conducive to language learning
- upon talking new NZ schools with the young AF teacher her eyes just lit up and it all seemed to make sense to her: open space where furniture is arranged to support interaction, nooks and crannies for practice in solo or pairs, breakout spaces for recordings or rehearsing, devices for listening and research, students looking for what they need to make meaning in their own term, decent time allocation to allow for continuity, having her course and resources online for students to access whenever wherever, doing on the spot tutorials when the need arise, offering specific breakouts at specific times, planning with teachers from other learning areas to incorporate language and culture where and when necessary, ... she pictured it all there and then! She got it. Which told me:
Where am I going with all that I hear you say?
There is a need to investigate, demonstrate and reflect on how French can be incorporated in a student self directed curriculum in order for language learning to fully contribute to make learners connected to the world they live in, confident to meet others and being able to walk in their shoes in full knowledge of who they are, as well as gaining an awareness that learning is a life long journey and that languages can pop in anytime in their lives.
- of the bloggers who have contributed to this thinking is Claire Amos, a New Zealand educator whose excellent online presence I have followed for some years now and whose work has gone a long way in explaining and convincing me of the role of Teaching as Inquiry. The lady is a sharer of good stuff. I can't say I know her but I can say she sure has the most awesome eportfolio I know of. Anyway Claire in her current position is undertaking with a team of NZ teachers an edutour of self directed schools in the US and Canada. I have been reading with interest her accounts, which prompted me to google the schools that they are visiting . Through visiting these schools' websites I could see that Languages featured fully. Sure Canada has a different relation to learning languages that NZ has but that sure indicates that it can be done.
And then what? A little dream situation: advice from an expert + model schools to learn from + language teaching clued up AF teacher + keen to learn and inquire NZ French teacher(s) + new schools environment in NZ + Learning Language integration+ networking = being proactive in ensuring French (Languages!) is an integral part of a varied rich modern curriculum.
Now where do I start to make this happen?
17 February 2013
Responding to your latest ICOT musings
Bonté divine, Pascale,
That ICOT conference has certainly generated a lot of reflection and analysis on your part! In a way it vindicates what you question the worth of in your latest post. 'Conference or Not?' I know there's evidence out there to show that this 'magistral' model isn't the most effective way of shifting thinking and leading to change but I'm still a fan, as long as what those speakers have to say is really mind-shifting or expanding. Conversation with colleagues is all very well but it has to have a catalyst and I think that could well be the presentations. What would be best, perhaps, is to follow each presentation with an opportunity for discussion. My problem with wave upon wave of presentations is that there isn't enough time to digest them before rushing off to the next one, the result being overload and loss of concentration. So maybe a judicious combination of presentations and time to wrestle a bit with the ideas immediately afterwards would be the best model. The evidence points to the fact that effective professional learning is an iterative process, offering multiple opportunities to revisit and develop ideas in a supported environment. I think this is a good argument for school-wide PD as the revisiting can be on-going and more or less scheduled as well as informal. However I think that subject teachers also need to get together between schools to adapt generic ideas to the particular constraints of their subject.
If I consider my shifts in thinking, and there have been a number, as you know, I have to admit that most of them occurred as a direct result of having listened to an inspirational expert at a conference or teacher-only day. What I'm not sure of is how my shifts in thinking > practice have been taken into account in research into what constitutes effective PD. Have I been left out of the equation?? (Boo hoo!) The trouble with such research is that it looks for fairly immediate results and a clear sign of cause and effect whereas with me, and I'm sure many other teachers, an idea is sown, it may sit around for yonks in the soil of my mind waiting for the right time to germinate and lead to a definite mind-shift and resultant evolution of practice. Sometimes the link is hard to make as the process tends to be a long one. There is necessarily an element of sychronicity about it too. The idea may reappear in a different context and generate the connections necessary to get that idea back into your mental 'in tray'. Good ideas have a habit of popping up in a timely fashion when you're most receptive to them and also when you have time to process them and adapt them to your particular situation. Like you, I'm a great convert to the power of the internet to disseminate new and exciting ways of bringing education into harmony with change taking place in the wider world. I'm also heartened by the democratisation of knowledge sharing. In our newly-created on-line professional communities (our PLNs) we can be invigorated both by acknowledged experts and each other. When we could and do watch/hear these experts on video, is there any real need to see them present in person? Is ICOT an anachronism? It certainly costs 'la peau des fesses' to attend, but fortunately non-attenders can follow on Twitter, through blog posts and YouTube clips. As far as you and I are concerned, will this blog conversation equal our face-to-face discussions? It won't be the same as there's more time for 'recul' between posts but it will leave more of a footprint that we can return to.
Now for a response to your other items:
Change or Die.
As you know, I've always favoured a wider picture approach and tend to apply the broad brush to things, trusting that if I've got the vision sussed then the details of how to move towards it will fall into place. This reminds me of SMART goals which were all the rage a few years ago. Personally I could barely contain my indifference to them. I've forgotten exactly what SMART stood for but it was all about dissecting ones goals into do-able, measurable, achievable segments so that we could tick them off as we achieved them. How systematic!! How bean-counting!! YAWN!! As I have said, iconoclastically, since when did a SMART goal have what it takes to make you leap out of bed in eager anticipation? (Actually, I think I might have plundered that from some other thinker but I can't remember who) If there's no associated vision, which is too often the case, the overall purpose can be lost sight of. I'm very interested in this contrast between management and leadership. For those firmly entrenched in the management camp I can't see 'influencing people's beliefs' as high on their agenda. It's more about making sure everything is tickety-boo and that students are being acquiescent in their correctly-worn uniforms. Numbers of Schols and NCEA results seem to be a major preoccupation and there is little questioning as to whether those results represent anything worthwhile in terms of equipping students for life after formal education. The NZC gives schools a mandate to consider the bigger societal picture and ERO should be making sure that this is at the core of the school culture.
'I have changed'. You sure have!! When I first met you in 2001 at the first NCEA jumbo day at Hamilton Girls High, I have to admit to having found you somewhat dogmatic in your approach. While I admired your confidence and obvious skill in helping your students to become good writers, I was surprised at your fairly strongly-expressed distaste for teaching literature, which I loved teaching. I might have even said to myself that Pascale and I could never be on the same wave length. How wrong I was. Over the years, and particularly during our collaboration I've watched you undergo a 'sea change' (fortunately not into 'something rich and strange' like 'thy father' in Shakespeare's 'Full Fathom Five.....'!) so that now you are a veritable sponge and vector for new ways of looking at education. Your growing uncertainty has been ultimately enriching, both to you, me and your colleagues, as it has led you to challenge the status quo. I think I've always been uncertain, and I certainly am at the moment as I prepare to return to the classroom. What is interesting is that in many ways I don't think I've changed a great deal (which may seem to contradict what I said before about my mind-shifts but I'll come back to this in another post). The recent exposure to the good ideas of Ken Robinson, Guy Claxton, Ewan McIntosh, John de Mado to name but a few, have served to vindicate what I've been feeling all along but was perhaps too reticent to articulate. Listening to them has given rise to a succession of 'eureka' moments when I've come to realise that I wasn't really out on a limb. Strange to say, although I may not have succeeded in changing many people's minds when I was teaching prior to 2006, I did feel reasonably supported in my iconoclasm. I remember saying to my principal 'If I had a scheme it would be a piece of fiction' as no planning document could predict, much less dictate, what would take place in my classroom. If I'm teaching in a diagnostic way I'll be responding to the needs of the learners and how can those be factored into a programme before they've arisen? It would have to be very skeletal. The other thing that I was bold enough to say was that 'Bad' documentation didn't equal bad teaching and 'good' (read 'compliant') documentation was certainly no guarantee of good teaching. He had to agree.
Getting back to your change - should you systematise your approach? If you think it will help you in some way, go for it. As you know, I'm not systematic and I've passively resisted system mongers during my whole career and will continue to do so. A modicum of method in ones approach is no doubt necessary for coherence but I've had it with systems for which I can't see the justification. But I know that's not what you mean. You mean marshalling your thoughts. Collating all these wonderful ideas into some sort of synthesis that makes sense to you and deciding what how you're going to use them. The Extended Abstract phase - which brings me to.......
SOLO Taxonomy
This is a neat way of classifying learning stages that I will certainly be trying to incorporate into my teaching. I loved the lego analogy and will be showing this wee video to students to illustrate the idea. I think it would be relatively simple to use as a yardstick for students to understand where they are and identify the next steps. I'll be pondering on that one and adding it into the mix.
It would be good to talk to Fiona Bamford to see how far she's got with matching it up with her French teaching. Craig Perry and Fiona are right when they say that finding a common vision/ language/purpose doesn't happen overnight and that there may be hurdles. Guy Claxton would say 'so much the better if there are' as they create opportunities to hone the Magnificent 8 qualities. Maybe for NZ we should christen them the Magnificent No8 Qualities! Isn't that what we're trying to do - help students to develop their No8 débrouillardise (along with lots of other dispositions of course!)?
Well, that about wraps it up for this Sunday night. I've got so many things I'd like to talk about but 'y a pas le feu!'
A très bientôt
^. .^
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 |
| SOLO - Is this Relational or Extended Abstract? |
If I consider my shifts in thinking, and there have been a number, as you know, I have to admit that most of them occurred as a direct result of having listened to an inspirational expert at a conference or teacher-only day. What I'm not sure of is how my shifts in thinking > practice have been taken into account in research into what constitutes effective PD. Have I been left out of the equation?? (Boo hoo!) The trouble with such research is that it looks for fairly immediate results and a clear sign of cause and effect whereas with me, and I'm sure many other teachers, an idea is sown, it may sit around for yonks in the soil of my mind waiting for the right time to germinate and lead to a definite mind-shift and resultant evolution of practice. Sometimes the link is hard to make as the process tends to be a long one. There is necessarily an element of sychronicity about it too. The idea may reappear in a different context and generate the connections necessary to get that idea back into your mental 'in tray'. Good ideas have a habit of popping up in a timely fashion when you're most receptive to them and also when you have time to process them and adapt them to your particular situation. Like you, I'm a great convert to the power of the internet to disseminate new and exciting ways of bringing education into harmony with change taking place in the wider world. I'm also heartened by the democratisation of knowledge sharing. In our newly-created on-line professional communities (our PLNs) we can be invigorated both by acknowledged experts and each other. When we could and do watch/hear these experts on video, is there any real need to see them present in person? Is ICOT an anachronism? It certainly costs 'la peau des fesses' to attend, but fortunately non-attenders can follow on Twitter, through blog posts and YouTube clips. As far as you and I are concerned, will this blog conversation equal our face-to-face discussions? It won't be the same as there's more time for 'recul' between posts but it will leave more of a footprint that we can return to.
Now for a response to your other items:
Change or Die.
As you know, I've always favoured a wider picture approach and tend to apply the broad brush to things, trusting that if I've got the vision sussed then the details of how to move towards it will fall into place. This reminds me of SMART goals which were all the rage a few years ago. Personally I could barely contain my indifference to them. I've forgotten exactly what SMART stood for but it was all about dissecting ones goals into do-able, measurable, achievable segments so that we could tick them off as we achieved them. How systematic!! How bean-counting!! YAWN!! As I have said, iconoclastically, since when did a SMART goal have what it takes to make you leap out of bed in eager anticipation? (Actually, I think I might have plundered that from some other thinker but I can't remember who) If there's no associated vision, which is too often the case, the overall purpose can be lost sight of. I'm very interested in this contrast between management and leadership. For those firmly entrenched in the management camp I can't see 'influencing people's beliefs' as high on their agenda. It's more about making sure everything is tickety-boo and that students are being acquiescent in their correctly-worn uniforms. Numbers of Schols and NCEA results seem to be a major preoccupation and there is little questioning as to whether those results represent anything worthwhile in terms of equipping students for life after formal education. The NZC gives schools a mandate to consider the bigger societal picture and ERO should be making sure that this is at the core of the school culture.
'I have changed'. You sure have!! When I first met you in 2001 at the first NCEA jumbo day at Hamilton Girls High, I have to admit to having found you somewhat dogmatic in your approach. While I admired your confidence and obvious skill in helping your students to become good writers, I was surprised at your fairly strongly-expressed distaste for teaching literature, which I loved teaching. I might have even said to myself that Pascale and I could never be on the same wave length. How wrong I was. Over the years, and particularly during our collaboration I've watched you undergo a 'sea change' (fortunately not into 'something rich and strange' like 'thy father' in Shakespeare's 'Full Fathom Five.....'!) so that now you are a veritable sponge and vector for new ways of looking at education. Your growing uncertainty has been ultimately enriching, both to you, me and your colleagues, as it has led you to challenge the status quo. I think I've always been uncertain, and I certainly am at the moment as I prepare to return to the classroom. What is interesting is that in many ways I don't think I've changed a great deal (which may seem to contradict what I said before about my mind-shifts but I'll come back to this in another post). The recent exposure to the good ideas of Ken Robinson, Guy Claxton, Ewan McIntosh, John de Mado to name but a few, have served to vindicate what I've been feeling all along but was perhaps too reticent to articulate. Listening to them has given rise to a succession of 'eureka' moments when I've come to realise that I wasn't really out on a limb. Strange to say, although I may not have succeeded in changing many people's minds when I was teaching prior to 2006, I did feel reasonably supported in my iconoclasm. I remember saying to my principal 'If I had a scheme it would be a piece of fiction' as no planning document could predict, much less dictate, what would take place in my classroom. If I'm teaching in a diagnostic way I'll be responding to the needs of the learners and how can those be factored into a programme before they've arisen? It would have to be very skeletal. The other thing that I was bold enough to say was that 'Bad' documentation didn't equal bad teaching and 'good' (read 'compliant') documentation was certainly no guarantee of good teaching. He had to agree.
Getting back to your change - should you systematise your approach? If you think it will help you in some way, go for it. As you know, I'm not systematic and I've passively resisted system mongers during my whole career and will continue to do so. A modicum of method in ones approach is no doubt necessary for coherence but I've had it with systems for which I can't see the justification. But I know that's not what you mean. You mean marshalling your thoughts. Collating all these wonderful ideas into some sort of synthesis that makes sense to you and deciding what how you're going to use them. The Extended Abstract phase - which brings me to.......
SOLO Taxonomy
This is a neat way of classifying learning stages that I will certainly be trying to incorporate into my teaching. I loved the lego analogy and will be showing this wee video to students to illustrate the idea. I think it would be relatively simple to use as a yardstick for students to understand where they are and identify the next steps. I'll be pondering on that one and adding it into the mix.
It would be good to talk to Fiona Bamford to see how far she's got with matching it up with her French teaching. Craig Perry and Fiona are right when they say that finding a common vision/ language/purpose doesn't happen overnight and that there may be hurdles. Guy Claxton would say 'so much the better if there are' as they create opportunities to hone the Magnificent 8 qualities. Maybe for NZ we should christen them the Magnificent No8 Qualities! Isn't that what we're trying to do - help students to develop their No8 débrouillardise (along with lots of other dispositions of course!)?
Well, that about wraps it up for this Sunday night. I've got so many things I'd like to talk about but 'y a pas le feu!'
A très bientôt
^. .^
=+=
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