Month: June 2013

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Notable quotes and Quotable Notes from Edutech 2013

I was privy to a smorgasbord of simulating delicacies at Edutech Brisbane 2013. The following are quotes and ideas that resonated, disrupted and tantislised.

Now to action…!

Dan Pink
Have fewer conversations about how and more about why things are done.

Can I do one thing tomorrow that is better than today?

Ewan Macintosh

Be curious
Listen to yourself
Humble is cool
Good energy is infectious
Find a way

Problem Finders – curiosity is finding a problem and knowing when it is solved

Why are you doing this?

Googleable and Ungoogleable

Where have I been? Feedback
Where am I now? Assessment
Where and I going?… With my learning

FAIL – First Attempt In Learning

Replace the words “doing” and “work” with learning

Sean Tierney
Cognitive amputation – devolving tasks to technology

Change management is about changing culture.
Change the environment and force teachers to act differently.

Growing staff
Empowering students
Growing parents
Collaboration always
Questioning everything

Invent the future don’t prevent the future.

Mark Harris
If it doesn’t make the world better don’t do it.
Modern student: Connecting, collaborating, interacting, creating, publishing, entrepreneur online out of school.
Where are the modern teachers?

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

Gary Stager

Making things is better than being passive – making good things is even better.

A good prompt is worth 1000 words (curiosity)
A good prompt is a challenge, problem or motivation
Requirements: Materials, Sufficient time, Supportive culture (including expertise)

Building a better Prompt
Brevity
Ambiguity
Immunity to assessment

Look askew – you never know what you’ll learn!

Staying with an idea long enough that they get good at it.

You can’t teach 21st Century learning if you haven’t learnt this century.

Do the impossible.

Less us, more them!

Those who know better need to do better!

Alan November
I hope that this talk is good enough to criticise.

The best learners are desperate.

The more of an expert you become in any field the more difficult it is to understand the struggles of the first time learner.

Simple Flip model
Students prepare outside class
Every student asks questions
Teachers study students’ questions
Students work in class on problems
Students debrief one another
Instruction moves towards personalisation.

More students ask questions online than face to face.

Questions of students must be the starting point and most important information for teachers preparation for the next lesson.
Conversation, debate, defend ideas most powerful way of learning – Socrates

Collaborative assessment promoting learning: After test, the students immediately retake the test but second time the group votes on the answer after debate. Half point if correct the second time. Score is combination of both. No marking for teacher.

Who owns the learning?

Kids learn better from kids.

If you have to teach something, then you have to learn.

How we learn is not how our students learn.

Stephen Heppel
For every British soldier killed in Afghanistan 10 schools could have been open. Guns or learning the better choice?

Sir Ken Robinson
HG Wells – Civilisation is a race between education and oblivion.

What matters is not what happens to us but what we make of it.

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Reflection of Dan Pink’s Edutech 2013 Keynote

Dan Pink on the Science of Motivation

Dan Pink gave the opening keynote at the 2013 Edutech Conference in Brisbane.

What truly motivates? Studies have shown that the higher the pay the greater the performance but only in mechanical skills. When any rudimentary cognitive skill was required, a larger reward led to poorer performance.

If-then reward are great for simple and short term work but not good for complex and long term tasks.

Artist give the world something that they did not know they were missing. ie iPad
A study conducted on artists asked to produce commissioned and non commissioned art works showed that non commissioned were more creative even though both were of equal technical quality.

Most work we do at school is commissioned and has too many constraints.

Money matters as a motivator due to fairness. Pay teachers to show they are valued but rewarding high performing teachers financially is counter-productive. The politicians need to get this message.

Management is a technology to get compliance. Humans don’t engage by being managed and controlled. Management won’t achieve engagement.
Autonomy for self direction is the technology to achieve engagement. High standards and autonomy is the best that leadership can provide.

Examples of autonomy include Google’s 20% time to “Do what you like but share it at the end of the week with everyone else”.
Could “Non Commissioned” days which Pink called “FedEx Days” work for teachers and students? Take one day a fortnight to work on anything that they were educationally passionate about and share it with everyone at the end of the day.
Staff meeting time could be better utilised by following this model with a focus on innovation and excluding things like marking, planning etc. It requires trust all round. Trust is only developed by trusting.

Making progress in meaningful work requires constructive feedback. Pink spoke about DIY Performance Reviews. We already have teachers setting their own goals through Performance Development processes and Step 9 Performance Development Plans. I would be be very interested in exploring teachers providing collegiate feedback and support for Performance Development. Teachers and leaders should be accountable to each other. DIY Report Cards where teachers and students set own goals and grade themselves and each other is something to seriously consider.

Purpose is an essential motivator. Everyone needs to know why something is being done. This reference by Pink echoed Joan Dulton and Dave Anderson’s Parrot of Purpose sitting on one’s should and constantly squawking, “What’s the purpose?”

Have fewer conversations about “how” and more about “why” things are done.

Can I do one thing tomorrow that is better than I did today?

Thank you @danielpink for a motivating and thought provoking keynote to start Edutech 2013.

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One Thing My Mother Taught Me Before She Died

My dear mother died of cancer 35 years ago. It was a tragic story of misdiagnosis by doctors to the point where she was told by her family doctor that she was a hypochondriac. After a year of feeling pain that was “only in her head”, with her thinking she was going mad, Dad made her seek other opinions and cancer was discovered in her bladder.

Mum told me that before her first operation she thought she might die. After surviving she said to me that many people say that one should live each day as if it’s your last. However, she said that one should live each day as if it’s your first. After “returning from the grave” She saw the world as if for the first time, in wonder, as someone blind seeing for the first time; every colour vivid, every flower a marvel, life a gift to be treasured and never taken for granted.

Mum showed me a sketch that she made of a brushfire blackened landscape with a tiny red flower at the base of a burnt out tree. Underneath she had written “Courage”.

Mum’s courage battled through more operations and radio therapy. The doctors blamed the cancer on her father chain smoking when she was a child. Mum blamed the stress brought on by the death of my sister at the age of 11. Either way, she remained positive, courageous and resilient.

My mother desperately wanted to live. The cause of her illness was out of her control. I do get very angry when I see people deliberately poisoning themselves and their children by smoking.

When I catch myself staring at the pavement, feeling sorry for myself, I think of the red flower, I think of refocusing on what I have rather on what I haven’t and I try to look at things through the eyes of one seeing for the first time.

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Corporate Fundraising for Schools

Where do I stand on Corporate Fundraising for Schools? I am a firm believer that education, like health should be free, inclusive and universal so that all students have equal opportunity to reach their potential. As Principal of a school in a disadvantaged southern suburb of Adelaide, I can attest that this is not the case. While many schools charge parents hundreds of dollars in voluntary contributions, my school can only impose the minimum fees on parents and still many can’t pay. An extra $100 from 250 families would give the school an extra $25 000 to spend on learning programs. Our parent fund raising committee has a target of raising $6000. This would probably be less than the amount wealthier schools spend on raffle ticket books! The problem is that parents raise money in their own community. If the community is wealthy, the gains are great. A disadvantaged community has limited resources.

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It is imperative that education is supported by the community. The promotional schemes aimed at schools run by supermarkets at least puts money back into the school community in which the parents shop. It is a win win situation. Schools benefit from supermarket patronage. Obviously the wealthier the community, the more resources go to the school; the less to the less advantaged.

Until Gonski becomes a reality and school funding is put on a equitable, fair and just basis then any support from the community will be welcome. The gap between rich and poor never lessens though.

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