Educating the Dragon

Another successful collaborative project.

Students took the parts of newspaper reporters and illustrators to create a 6 page news paper in 3 hours.

I was delighted with their enthusiasm and desire to meet the deadline.

They worked in pairs to write recounts including the 5 W’s and H. using complex and compound sentences, writing and linking sentences together in short paragraphs…. But shhhhhhhhhhh…. They think they were just designing and creating a newspaper.

Go Ted McCain!!

I have to begin by saying that listening to Roger Schank inspired me too, I even posted about it at the time. It was one of the first podcasts of Wesley’s I heard and he really challenged my thinking, in fact I wonder if I can track back to hearing that podcast and that being the catalyst for the challenges I have faced in the last 18 months as I began to push back?

School improvement, are we really doing what our society requires?

Our schools are so NOT “fine they need tweaking”, there needs to be a fundamental shift in what the curriculum is addressing and what schools are supporting. We in New Zealand are quite blessed with the new curriculum, it is very new and shiny and very 21^st Century perspective, however I wonder how these are being implemented in schools. It makes me wonder what the key pressures are on schools that truly define how the curriculum looks, it is not simply the National Curriculum.

Steven Wyckoff spends quite a bit of time talking about the analogue of learning to drive and someone made the comment that while you’re growing up you spend a long time watching people drive. I heard it said once that while you are learning to drive, driving instructors spend quite a while telling people where they need to look. “Focus on what is immediately in front, look out around parked cars”, etc. People’s closest sensory experience to driving? It’s sitting in the passenger seat. So a new driver has unlearn the passive ‘watching’, for example looking at someone walking over a footbridge for the whole time it takes for the car to pass under it. Drivers then need to learn to be active observers of the environment around them. There are so many things that students are learning that are wasting time… We DO need to spend more time on learning the skills that they are going to need in life.

So what DOES a curriculum look like?

What are the other pressures and issues we need address in school?

What are the school teacher:student ratio look like in New Zealand. Are there the same issues as in Kansas where the system needs to be adjusted to lower the ratio or is there a genuine issue around ratios?

“In order to do what?” Brings the curriculum into sharp focus. Steven links the need to focus education on ‘economic productivity’ for the future. But I want to consider, is there any value in learning for learnings- sake? Does it not do something for the brain development, regardless of purpose?

My next question: Are there quality apprenticeships or study-to-work programmes available in New Zealand that realistically address the issue applying students for the workforce?

As I was listening I was thinking this idea about applied learning and the links made to Ted McCain and the discussion/ presentations made by Ian Jukes in Napier last year.

I was discussing with a high-school principal the other day around the issues of NCEA level1 not meeting the expectations required for courses in NCEA level 2, let alone NCEA level1 OR 2 meeting expectations for the workforce.

So how are we going to measure success for the 21^st Century, what are the skills required and EQUALLY, what is the core knowledge required for the future?

Conferences are great for catching up with old friends and colleagues. I have had many conversations today with many people but there is one that stuck for me. Someone was saying about the focus the staff have this year for professional development:

“For this year is on Inquiry Learning

The focus this year for Literacy is Efeective Literacy Practise.

The focus this year for Maths is consolidating the NUMP programme.

Also we are working on SMS Etap across the school

And those of you with IWB’s have a series of day in the holidays to assist you in embedding this technology into your classroom practise.”

So what is the focus for this year?

Someone should mention to senior management that focus is the singular even though it ends with an ’s’.

How are staff supposed to fully focus on so many areas at once?

Is it just this school or do others have similiar long lists of focus (sic) ?

I have had to remove the content of this post due to issues of privacy…..

Thank you for your words of support.

Finish the saying:

“You can lead a student to…. But you can’t make him….”

 Below is the contents of an emailI recieved today regarding computer collaboration in the workplace:

Listed below are some applications of computer collaboration that I have been involved in.

1.       Remote PC Control – Software Vendor Debugs their program – 1998
 
An engineering application was crashing unexpectedly. After going through all helpdesk options, the problem could not be solved. The software developers got involved to try and understand why the problem was occurring. They had not seen it before. The software developer was in India and had contacted me on a number of occasions to get more information.
 
In the end – a PCAnywhere session was set up so they could take control of the PC with the problem. This took about 5 attempts from my companies IT department to setup my computer with a static IP address inside the corporate network. Once it was set up – I was able to talk to him on the phone and demonstrate the problem so he could see it happening. Then I left him to solve it. When I returned, the problem had been found. It was to do with the NZ time regional setting that was at +13 hours (daylight savings) which was causing an overflow error in the code. We were the only ones in New Zealand using it which is why they had not seen it before. Note: during the time he was on the computer he could have got access to a number of detailed and sensitive IP documents – because the PC was logged on under my account. A certain amount of trust has to be involved. See problems section below.
 
2.       Sharing a PC session – Software Vendor Debugs their program – 2007
 
Again, a software company (in Israel) was struggling to solve/understand a problem we were having. By using LogMeIn a session was created where we could work together to demonstrate and understand the problem. The client companies IT department needed to be involved as well – as security settings were suspected as part of the problem. Three people were able to share the same computer session. I was on a VPN connection using MS RDP in Havelock North, the IT person in Christchurch was on the same computer using DameWare. The software developer was in Israel was also on using LogMeIn. We were able to demonstrate the problem first hand. It eventuated that the feature we were using and having problems with was not widely used and I suspect not properly tested before release of the software. The software developer was now forced to release a new version since it clearly did not work. Because we had all people present at the same time, they could not hide behind a ‘try this, try that’ stalling tactic as is often the case with really tough problems.
 
3.       Sharing a computer session while on the phone.
 
Applications such as DameWare, RealVNC and others can often be used to control the same PC and enhance an otherwise ‘voice only’ telephone conversation.
 
Problems
 
Problems I have encountered using computer collaboration.
 

• Time Zone – difficult with New Zealand in particular

• Firewalls, proxy servers, routers and other network equipment that gets in the way. Setting up a session can take a long time and involve IT departments – which makes it take even longer. Often it takes several attempts to get everything going. Companies are worried about compromising network security.

• Collaboration often leads to poor planning and understanding. People can become overly dependent on other people to solve their problems (i.e. quickly contact person xyz instead of nutting through a problem and learning the hard, but often better, way).

•  For meeting environments (my experience is with standard multi-location video conference) communication style is often different than that for a traditional meeting. Normally paper documents, whiteboards, clear meeting leadership, body language and facial expressions are very important for complex topics and tricky negotiations. Things will no-doubt improve in the future as technology improves and travel becomes less acceptable because of cost and environmental concerns.
• Some breaches to company security policies are often inevitable as the ability to diagnosing a problem under ‘live’ data conditions is often the key to success.

In summary, I have found the best use of collaboration is as in the examples above where little bugs and other particular issues are demonstrated first hand, rather than trying to describe them using traditional emails. They can then often be solved right there and then.