Educating the Dragon

Well I have to say I have begun to share longer written pieces under Articles in the sidebar. I’d just like to note that I realise that ‘Articles’ is a plural even though there is but one available for your view. My first piece begins:

"In January 2006, Peterhead School became part of the ‘Champion Schools Programme’ fostered by Sitech Systems. As part of this initiative the author was given an assortment of technology; an interactive whiteboard, a sound system, and the classroom response system called PRS. Professional development sessions focused the author’s attention on the use of PRS to address the Key Competency, Thinking Skills. This paper will critically discuss the potential of a classroom response system (CRS) to develop children’s thinking skills, and in particular higher order thinking."

Read on…

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 don’t know how I’m going to do it. Not being attached to a school at present let alone and ICTPD cluster but I have got to get to Ulearn ’08.

I was flicking through the Education Gazette at lunch today and came across the advert.

Christchurch Convention Centre

8-10 October 2008

www.Ulearn.org.nz

I’m always up for doing a presentation or two, you know me. And it’s always great to meet at the blogger café and get some F2F time with folk. But there are 3 main reasons for attending.

Will Richardson- The Don of the Edublogosphere himself.

Steven Carden – He whose book inspired me to action with my “Did you Know?… NZ” presentation at Learning@Schools08 (I’m kinda hoping it’ll be ready of ULearn!)

And Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com/)who I missed at TUANZ that time and am desperate to see.

Any and all ideas about getting there gratefully received.

I’m not so flash up the front, especially when I have very little to say and what can be said needs to be done carefully. My last day at Peterhead School arrived yesterday and although I spent much of the week ferrying my stuff home it did not feel real until I sat in the staffroom desperately scribbling keywords on my hand trying to think of something to say.

Here is what I wanted to say…

I want to begin by thanking Jenny, who works in the next class and is the polar opposite of me, being ultra-organised. I must have driven her crazy with my last minute questions.

I wanted to thank Martin Genet, Principal, firstly for employing me in the first place and secondly for giving me the IWB which has led to so many developments in my professional life, most of which can be tracked through my blog archive.

I was somewhat disappointed with Amazon.com whose tracking system failed to deliver David Warlick’s book, Redefining Literacy for the 21^st century, a book I was gifting to the school.
I wanted to emphasise that it was not that I couldn’t deliver the curriculum in the ‘Peterhead Way’ it was more to the point that I didn’t want to. I believe that there are elements within the ‘Peterhead Way’ that are right for the 21^st century, for the community in which we serve yet there is an element within that philosophy that is resistant to change. I realise that change needs to incremental within any institution but I felt saddened to think that individuals who wish see the school community grow are not given the flexibility to try things out. As I identified in my recent podcast there is no excuse more burying our heads in the sand and ignoring implications of technology on the education system we are providing for the next generation.

My heart goes out to my principal, a true visionary and leader who is handcuffed to staff who are pillars of the school. I wish in some ways that I could have stayed, the school and the wider Flaxmere community is on the cusp of a wave of change…. I wonder if they will paddle hard and catch the wave or allow it to flow beneath them and allow the tide to drift them further into the ocean.

I am nervous of the future. Not having a job and relying on relief teaching, but I guess that change is good. You have to embrace it. As Steven Carden says: “Without hope driving our aspirations we become captive to whatever is happening in the present.”

This is a comment Bronwyn  made on my blog post “Ewan message rocks” - I’m publishing it not because I totally agree with what she said but because it is an important conversation that I believe we should have and I didn’t want it to get lost in my ‘comments from last week’ – never to be viewed again.

“Sorry but I’m with Paul. There’s real confusion between  entertainment and education here. I certainly found Ewan’s presentation entertaining and – thank God – he actually had some understanding of the realities of the classroom which is more than you can say for most IT presenters/consultants who are miles away from large classes, excessive workloads/ indifferent resourcing, tired and and sometime drugged teenagers… I was really taken by the clip of the undersea French discussion made by the kids but it’s not hugely different from the past when kids did the same thing with tape recorders or by acting in a play. The important thing is that they were demonstrating that they could use a foreign language. That’s the real learning – not the mode of presentation. I’ve been to loads of ICT conferences this year and once you cut through the hype what you see are good teachers using ICT as a tool to support learning BUT we are constantly urged to admire the product rather than asking the tough questions like when they had all that fun did they learn anything? What? How do we know? Was it what we meant them to learn? Can they transfer that learning to other contexts? Too often we are asked to assume that because the kids appear to be having fun they are learning. This does not necessarily follow.
If you read the cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker (How the Brain Works; The Blank Slate) you’ll note that he argues that much human learning is intrinsic because we have evolved innate brain strucutres that make some things easy for us eg language, basic number, some psychology, physics as related to movement … BUT beyond that we don’t have innate abilities so we have to press into service other brain structures and that’s hard – things like reading and algebra require effort.

We have proven this to some extent in New Zealand because we damaged a cohort of youngsters with the assumption that all kids would “catch” reading if they surrounded with enough written language. NO! It worked with middle class kids who were getting constant “teaching” from their parents but a generation of working class kids who didn’t come from language-rich homes missed out. The Literacy Project is about teaching reading much more deliberately. Similarly, when we get all excited about the digital age when students will choose their projects of work we should remember that one of the big problems NCEA has thrown up is that given a free choice, teenagers are inclined to do as little as possible (80 credits and that’s it!). Sure there are some students who will find something that interests them and work single-mindedly on that but it would be a triumph of hope over experience to design an education system for Einstein.
The worst thing about this is that most kids will never know what they are really capable of because learning pedagogies are being replaced with a new vision that has the teachers as entertainers and the kids’ best friends not as a grown-up who is responsible for ensuring kids learn and who may not be an expert on Youtube but actually know a hellava lot more about life and learning than a 14 year old does. The uncomfortable thing is that teachers are jettisoning this, not because it’s better for kids’ learning (there’s no evidence whatsoever of that – it’s a classic example of the Goebbels technique )but because they want to be liked and valued and the people who produce and sell ICT hardware and software and the consultants who support the industry are telling them this is how they can become revered public figures. Who wouldn’t want that? We’re selling kids short if we continue to promise them that they will never have to struggle and sweat to get up the mountain because we are going to helicopter them to the top. The view is just as good so that’s all that matters, doesn’t it?”