Forget Hollywood, or Bollywood for that matter, now there is EdTalksWood – featured on the hills above Wellington. Coming up on March 26th at Te Papa is a one-day “EDtalks Symposium – Leading Minds, Creating Futures”. This symposium features sixteen 20 minute presentations focusing on current trends in learning enabled through the smart use of technologies, and the related interface between education and business.

There’s a great list of presenters, thought leaders can ignite imaginations, stimulate fresh approaches, and challenge assumptions. The organisers have assembled a wide-ranging line up of presenters drawing on the university and schooling sector, business entrepreneurs, and telecommunication representatives, who will each provide a powerful idea, challenge or trend.

The day will be divided into four themed sessions, with four presenters and a short plenary for each theme. Each speaker gives a 20 minute presentation, and presenter details are published on the Symposium website.

All presentations will be accessible on the EdTalks website following the symposium.

I had the privilege of speaking to the staff at Lindisfarne College at their teacher only day yesterday as they were working to prepare for the return of their students next week. While I was there they were also hosting the NZ Secondary School’s Choir, who provided some entertainment for us over lunch outdoors (see photo) – what an inspiring and talented group of young people!

Really enjoyed my day with this group of staff. The school has based a lot of its pedagogical approach on the work of Art Costa and his Habits of Mind, which provided the perfect context for a couple of workshops I took during the day on the use of ICT tools that support the development of thinking skills. Great to see a secondary school that has such a strong pedagogical focus, and staff within it enthusiastically embracing the intent of the NZ Curriculum and the key competencies.

More than 20 years ago I taught on the West Coast were I was told a yarn about a tree-feller who had an inenviable record for the number of trees he could fell in a day with his axe. A salesman came to town selling chainsaws, and was able to persuade the tree-feller that he could increase the number of trees he cut down by using a chainsaw. The a tree-feller duly bought a chainsaw and headed off into the bush. At the end of the first day he returned to town where the salesman inquired how things had gone. The tree-feller reported that he’d managed to cut down about the same number of trees as he had with an axe, but that he expected to do better the next day.

The following day he returned with reports that he’d only managed to cut down half the number of trees he normally would have, and on the third day this had fallen to around a quarter. The salesman, keen to ensure his reputation wasn’t tarnished, offered to help the tree-feller perfect his technique with the chainsaw. Taking the chainsaw in both hands he dragged on the starter rope and pulled, and BBRRRRRrrrr – the chainsaw roared into life. At which point the tree-feller leapt back in amazement – “what’s that noise?” he gasped.

An oldie, but a goodie The point of this parable – nothing changes by simply inserting a new piece of technology!

I thought of this story when I read a news item this morning from the UK, where Government Minister Vernon Coaker, on opening the BETT education show, used his speech to trumpet the Government’s plans to provide 270,000 free laptops to low-income families, which were announced earlier this week. In his speech he claims that having access to a laptop in the home can boost children’s GCSE scores by two grades.

Now if this is the case I’d certainly be interested in seeing the evidence. Don’t get me wrong, I am a BIG supporter of students having access to a personal digital device that can enable them to connect to the internet and express themselves digitally – it’s just that I’ve been around long enough to see the claims and counter claims that are made for (or against) the introduction of new technologies in education.

I can recall my first job as a lecturer was to get my students to survey the number of OHPs in the schools they were about to begin a practicum. The responses were the same – every school had been provided with OHPs by the (the) Department of Education, but these students found the majority unused in back rooms, or covered in books and papers in the front (or back) of classrooms. Similar reports exist where there has been a roll-out of interactive whiteboards and computer labs.

My (recurring) theme here is the need to consider professional development in all of this. And I’m not talking about short sessions to teach people where the buttons are and how to save and edit etc. I’m talking about professional development that is connected to practice; focuses on the teaching and learning of specific academic content; and helps locate the technology use within the teacher’s context, and is connected to other school initiatives.

The problem is, PD is expensive, and you can’t measure it in terms of the number of “widgets” that are purchased – which is why, it appears, in governments all over the world, we see investment in things, not people. We need to see a change in priorities.

Mr Coaker may well have evidence to support his claim – if so, we need to see it, and when we do I’ll wager that the actual laptops were only a (albeit important) part of the picture that led to the rise in achievement.

I’ve  been reviewing some of the material I’ve gathered over recent years as I prepare for some of the staff development days I’ve been invited to contribute to at the end of the month when schools are about to begin, and came across this report that was released about this time last year. Titled professional learning in the learning profession, it examines what research has revealed about professional learning that improves teachers’ practice and student learning.

The problem of how to maintain a highly skilled and effective workforce in our schools is a complex issue, and there no easy answers. this report provides some useful insights, however, of the key principles that should underpin any approches to professional development in our schools or at a regional or national level.

I was intrigued by the the opening paragraph in the introduction that sets the scene for much of what is reported (emphasis mine):

“Decades of standards-based school reform have helped identify what students need to know and be able to do… But educators and policymakers are recognizing that it is time for Standards-Based Reform 2.0. We need to place a greater priority on strengthening the capacity of educators and building learning communities to deliver higher standards for every child. Enabling educational systems to achieve on a wide scale the kind of teaching that has a substantial impact on student learning requires much more intensive and effective professional learning than has traditionally been available. If we want all young people to possess the higher-order thinking skills they need to succeed in the 21st century, we need educators who possess higher-order teaching skills and deep content knowledge.”

So here are a couple of important messages for everyone from leaders in schools through to our national policy makers :

1. we can’t skimp on professional development in our budgets
2. what we do must be strategic, future focused and measurable in terms of impact on student achievement

Key findings from the research include:

• Sustained and intensive professional development for teachers is related to student achievement gains.
• Collaborative approaches to professional learning can promote school change that extends beyond individual classrooms.
• Effective professional development is intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice; focuses on the teaching and learning of specific academic content; is connected to other school initiatives; and builds strong working relationships among teachers.

The report also notes that over 90% of U.S. teachers have participated in professional learning consisting primarily of short-term conferences or workshops. While teachers typically need substantial professional development in a given area (close to 50 hours) to improve their skills and their students’ learning, most professional development opportunities in the U.S. are much shorter. It also states that U.S. teachers report little professional collaboration in designing curriculum and sharing practices, and the collaboration that occurs tends to be weak and not focused on strengthening teaching and learning.

Similar concerns are expressed in other international studies, including New Zealand’s own INSTEP research and programmes. As educational leaders we must take note of what the research is telling us. Cutting back on investment in PD simply because it is an easy target, and not “mission critical” is a very unwise move. Similarly, PD that is ‘hit and miss’, and not strategically linked to the goals of the organisation is also a waste of investment.

The organisation I work for is committing significant resource this year to designing and providing the sorts of programmes that will effectively support schools in their strategic approach to PD. In doing so we’ve had to include some short-term workshops and seminars to meet the immediate needs as expressed by teachers and principals, but the real value lies in the longer term engagements. It will be interesting to see how widely these are adopted.

following on from my post of a couple of days ago abut the impact of digital technologies on learning, this e-book from project RED provides some useful insights into what is working in schools that are using technology effectively. A piece in the introduction puts this in context:

There is a tremendous gulf between schools that are committed to preparing students for success in the 21st century with help from digital technology and those who are still taking a “wait and see” attitude about the role of technology in the classroom. In response, project RED has conducted a survey of technology transformed schools across the country to find out what’s working for them and to show how technology can save money when properly implemented.

What will it take for technology to transform learning and schools, just as it has transformed homes and offices in almost every other segment of our society? In this eBook, Project RED — a national research and advocacy effort — shares preliminary results from a survey of technology-rich schools and takes a look at what past research and current observation tells us about the keys to successful technology implementation.

I found the section on Dynamic Leadership of particular interest, especially this quote on pages 11-121:

“In summarizing several years of research on the impact of Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), Dr David Silvernail, director of research for the Maine International Centre for Digital Learning at the University of Southern Maine shares findings about effective leadership:

1. There must be a clear strategic vision and plan
2. Teachers must receive strong, meaningful and sustained professional development and support
3. Technology must be appropriate to the task and focused
4. The technology must be used as a learning tool
5. Assessments must match learning with technology
6. There needs to be clear evaluation and research plans developed early in the initiative.
7. It is important to articulate and manage expectations

Nothing particularly new in this list – pretty much mirrors the findings of the research that has been carried out in the NZ context – but these are lessons we should review and be reminded of regularly, in order that we don’t simply revert to taking the “wait and see” attitude referred to in the introduction.

In particular, I would STRONGLY endorse the second bullet point above – the need for strong, meaningful and sustained professional development and support for teachers. At a time when we face financial constraints and cuts are being made, it is easy to “pick off” PD activity as an easily identifiable area to save money – but the impact of this can be devastating, not simply in terms of the effect on individual teachers and their professional growth, but also on our schools as environments within which we nuture young minds and talent.

The beginning of the school year is a great time for refreshing our thoughts about school vision and giving expression to what we want to achieve in the year ahead. I find I’m always busy at this time of year, participating in teacher-only days before students return to begin their studies. These days are generally times where school leaders are keen to spend time thinking about the ‘bigger picture’ of education, before descending into the ‘valley’ where the more immediate issues and concerns become a priority.

Of course, as someone who spends quite a bit of time thinking about the bigger picture issues, I’m more than happy to be a part of these days – because unless we spend at least a little time with our eyes on the horizon we’re likely to stay in the ‘rut’ of our current existence, unable to address some of the things that really do need addressing in how our schools are organised and operate.

For some time now I’ve followed the work of the the Beyond Current Horizons (BCH) project in the UK, which has been looking at the future of education beyond 2025 , After two years of hard research this project has drawn to a close, but the research has culminated in the creation of the new FREE web resource Vision Mapper containing six future scenarios of how the world may look in 15 years time.

The resource has been designed to be used as a pratical toolkit for long-term planning, supporting people to think systematically about the future to inform actions needed now. It’s well worth a browse, as there is material there to support a range of activities that could be incorporated into a “beginning the school year TOD”, everything from a series of activities to help you with your vision exploration, to a full-on school redesign pack with step-by-step outline of a process inspire your educational vision and help you get started with your planning.

If you haven’t already planned what you’re going to do on your TOD, or if you’re looking for something that might add a little more direction and engagement, you may well find something worthwhile in this resource.

The end of the year is always a good time for reflection and thinking ahead. I often find the period over the Christmas and New Year break a time to do a bit of reading of inspirational and thought provoking material, so today I was pleased to discover a free e-book online titled “What Matters Now” that contains contributions from more than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers, including some of today’s most popular authors, speakers, entrepreneurs and bloggers.

It’s designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year’s resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team. Each of the author’s has contributed a page of thought, some in bullet points, some in prose.

Download the complete ebook here (PDF download)

Must confess, the page that captured my imagination and has me pondering is the contribution titled “Momentum” from Dave Ramsey illustrated below. It captures three essential ideas for me when thinking about the future and what matters – 1. it’s all about focus, hard work and commitment, 2. we must be prepared to devote time to what matters, and 3 – there’s more to it all than just us and our finite ideas and resources!.

Ulearn is over for another year, and apart from spending most of the weekend resting to recover, I’ve been pondering a lot on the usefulness of this event in the lives of the nearly 2000 educators from around NZ and other parts of the world who attended. I’d wanted to publish my reflections yesterday – but it looks like Tony Ryan has beaten me to it with many of the things he’s reflected on in his very masterfully written blog entry.

So I thought I’d simply confine myself to a single thought that has come up repeatedly for me over the period leading up to, during and after the conference, and that is, what is the value of a conference as a professional development activity?

Here are some of the things that come to mind when I think of what I gain from attending a conference..

• you gain exposure to ideas
• you get to meet and greet people you may have “talked to” online.
• sometimes, you’ll meet people who have shaped or influenced your use of technology.
• you can make alliances with people who share similar interests, or find the opportunity to explore new and evolving interests.
• you have the opportunity to find out about initiatives that are not always shared either online or in print.
• you may get the idea to present your own work, which means you are becoming a thought leader.
• you develop new friendships that can last and make important links for you.
• you most certainly leave better equipped to shape the future of what is happening in your class, your school or the education system more broadly.

While all of these things are certainly big motivators for attending a conference, they are principally focused on change and development at the individual level. But what about from a whole school, or even whole of (education) system point of view?? With the focus on whole school review and development now being emphasised more, what is the role of conferences in this? Our own Ministry of Education is struggling with this issue also it seems. Recent communications suggest that, from a policy point of view, investment in conferences is not regarded as an effective way of building capability in the sector – which probably explains why only three people from the MoE’s ICT unit were allowed to attend.

I do have some sympathy with this view. I have attended conferences in the past that were regarded by those who attended as a ‘junket’ – an excuse to take a trip away, listen to some speakers and spend the rest of the time playing golf. This style of conference certainly does little to develop the capability of the professionals attending (apart from their golf perhaps )

But as I think more about it, ULearn isn’t, and never has been, anything like this. Nor has it been a conference that simply focuses on individual P.D. As I had an opportunity to speak to a number of principals and senior staff I know from around the country who were attending the conference, I got the distinct impression that, far from being an isolated event in the calendar that just a few got to attend, many schools are now regarding ULearn (and I suspect other conferences in the education space as well) as more than one-off events. They see them as a significant part of their school’s annual professional development plan.

What makes me say this? Well, here are some of the things I gleaned from the conversations…

• One school principal I spoke with had brought his whole staff to the conferences – it was their choice to spend their PD money in this way in order to experience the event together and to then be able to return to their school to ‘unpack’ and implement what they had learned
• Several staff from another school who attended had met with their whole staff prior to coming and had strategically planned what workshops they’d be attending so they could focus specifically on the things that were a part of their school’s development plan – so that, on their return they could feed this into the school development process with their colleagues.
• I met several principals who have strategically planned to make sure their whole staff have had the experience of attending the ULearn conference over successive years, telling me that “it helped develop a culture of a shared experience that becomes a point of reflection in ongoing school development.
• Several workshop presenters at ULearn were there as the culmination of many months of mentoring and preparation in their own school or cluster, with peer support and encouragement to grow professionally as they shared the results of their own investigations and work with learners with a wider audience.
• A large number of teachers who follow each other on Twitter used ULearn as an opportunity to meet face-to-face, arranging to link up for a meal and also sharing several times together during the conference to build the sense of professional community that was started online. Many of these people are already or are becoming leaders in their professional learning networks in their schools and/or nationally.

These are just a few of the examples that come to mind – but each serves to illustrate that ULearn, with the sense of ongoing purpose it provides, can play a significant role in the professional learning of teachers in our schools/centres, and in the ongoing development of schools/centres as a part of the ongoing, strategically planned cycle of professional development in schools and centres.

Truth is that attending a conference does cost – in terms of money and time, and this sort of investment must be measured against the outcomes at both a personal and organisational level. To dismiss conferences as a ‘low yield’ opportunity is to miss the considerable amount of strategic planning and thinking that goes into leveraging the benefits of attendance back in each school or early childhood centres. Large conferences such as ULearn do indeed provide opportunities for growth that simply don’t exist in other settings – but they must be seen as a part of an overall personal/school development strategy and not just a ‘one-off’.

In browsing through some of my RSS feeds this weekend I came across a couple of sites with lists of useful online resources for educators.

The first is a list of 25 Incredible TED Talks for Educators, compiled by the team at Bachelor’s Degree Online. For those who are regular watchers of the TED Talks online videos many of these will be very familiar, but for those who aren’t this list provides a useful link to many of the videos that will be of particular interest to educators.

Some of my favourites that are on this list include:

• Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
• Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning
• Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
• Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas
• Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child

That’s not to say that these are the only interesting ones, just that they’re among those I’ve seen in the past and been inspired by. Something that is interesting about this list is the number of videos on the list that deal with education in Africa – certainly an area to keep an eye on!

The second list is from a group called Ace Online Schools titled 25 Awesome Virtual Learning Experiences Online and contains links to 25 websites that feature virtual learning experiences, exposing online visitors to everything from history to geography, astronomy to anatomy, literature to government. The majority of links are to US-based experiences, but serve to illustrate just what sorts of things can be done in the online world to provide a virtual experience for those unable to attend or participate in the real thing.

Teaching is a complex and demanding profession. Teachers require high quality support and training throughout their careers to ensure they have the strategies and skills to meet the needs of learners. Professional learning and development (PLD) is central to maintaining and improving teacher quality.

Page 1, Overview, ERO report.

I’ve just downloaded and begun to read my way through the two ERO reports on Managing Professional Learning and Development (available online from ERO site) after hearing Graham Stoop speaking on National Radio yesterday morning and reading the article in this morning’s Press.

The reports have been described as a “wake-up call for schools” by Graham Stoop, Chief Review Officer for schools, with each report containing details of how well schools plan for PLD; how well they build a culture in which teachers learn and develop; and how well schools monitor the effectiveness of teachers’ learning and development.

In carrying out their review, ERO used a consistent set of indicators based largely on the Teacher Professional Learning and Development: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration, and schools grouped into three categories of effectiveness:

For me there are no real surprises here. As someone who has worked extensively in schools over the past 20 years in professional learning and development I have come to understand that what works best (as illustrated in the BES studies) in the engagement of teachers in in-depth, sustained participation in PLD activities that are linked to the strategic goals of the school, and are anchored in the culture, vision and values of the school and its community. Sadly there are still too many instances of short term, one-off PLD events, and too many programmes that are based on formulaic, ‘out-of-the-box’ designs that fail to reflect the needs of either the teachers or the schools involved. Further, lack of time, resources and the general malaise of ‘too much to try and cover’ are all too often used as excuses to doing anything at all.

I am pleased to read that these reports conclude that there is a link between quality professional development and imporovement in student outcomes, and that they promote and support the notion of self-review as a critical element in determining the effectiveness of school and teacher practice in PLD.

The timing of these reports couldn’t be better in my opinion, as schools confront the task of implementing the NZ Curriculum amid a multitude of other challenges, and when the government’s budget for PLD has been cut by more than $30M.

I hope these reports and the responses that will inevitably follow will stimulate a critical review of what is happening in schools by principals and school leaders, and the adoption of a more strategic approach to PLD activity that will be both cost effective and effective in terms of long term, sustainable growth and development.

Download Secondary Report (PDF – 344Kb)

Download Primary Report (PDF – 346Kb)

(PS – has anyone else noticed the faux pas in the foreword of each of the reports?