Last session for Wednesday at ULearn - counterpoint discussion between John Hattie and Rod Oram, chaired by Karen Sewell - Secretary of Education. My notes and jottings below:

John Hattie began with a comment that “Tomorrow’s Schools is yesterday’s solution” He shared concerns expressed over resources, saying “we supply schools with gas, power and water, but no provision for networks and infrastructure”.

John’s other concern is about the career path for teachers, and the lack of opportunities within the profession after year 4/5.

Rod Oram began with how impressed he is by high achievement in NZ ed system, but expressed concern about the long tail. He also expressed concern about the fact that NZ will always be thinly resourced for money and people etc. thus we need to be constantly  recreating and reinventing far faster than happens in other parts of the world

Rod claims we are poised on the edge of astonishing change in technology, economics, values and systems - far more radical than we’ve ever seen before - this will change the world and we need to be able to engage and adapt to that in innovative ways

He also focused on the increasing sense of community in the world, and how our understandings of this are changing - used to be about geographical proximity - now about remote intimacy - now able to reach out and partner with whoever we need where-ever in the world - profoundly changes the nature of community - need the business and social skills to relate. “education has never been more a part of community in a global context - we need education tools, systems and experiences that enable us to engage meaningfully in such a global education context.”

In response to Karen’s question about what we need to do to support the kids who aren’t achieving - and how might ICTs assist us in doing this, John feels strongly that the problem isn’t at the bottom end - key thing is the gap between where they are and where they could/should be. He also thinks that what we mean by curriculum isn’t serving our kids for the digital age - there is a big need for skills of evaluation, but we’re not good at teaching these. Need a curriculum that is attractive to these kids.

Rod’s response focused on the way technology (eg KAREN network) may contribute to providing access to educational opportunities for those on the “other side”, pointing to the fact that this connection was made possible in this way.

Karen asked, “What qualities will school leavers need to be successful?”

Rod’s responses: “Sense of excitement”, and that they “think differently”

John’s response - “Skills of evaluation - skill that many students grapple with - how to go about evaluating the many competing inputs they are immersed in, particularly in a climate of challenge. Kids thrive in a climate of challenge - and without it they are bored. We have too many bored kids in schools!”

Karen asked: “If we are to be successful, what are the skills we should build on, and what should we stop doing?”

Rod: “Schools currently too ‘hermetically sealed’ - very traditional model, same plant, same people… Perhaps need a different type of experience that opens that up - breaks down walls, and distinction between real and virtual etc. Need to balance emotional intelligence, joy with the physicality of life - over intellectual development.”

John: “Seeing start of a revolution in NZ over past 5 years, putting students at the centre of the curriculum - particularly in secondary since the introduction of NCEA. Need to learn from the success of NCEA.

We can’t continue with the model of one teacher with one group of students - cannot expect all teachers to be successful with all kids.”

Karen: “What might schools look like in the future?”

John: “We don’t need to wait for the future - we can see this already in places like Discovery school in CHCH.”

Rod- strong support for NCEA - two grounds (a) teaching and learning style is a great step forward, (b) NZ-ness and NZ-content. Suggesting schools need to go one stage further in terms of engagement with the wider community. Requires more confidence on the part of teachers, parents, community and students. Suspects parents feel ‘distanced’ from schools - so need to find a way for more interaction between parents-teachers-schools.

Karen: What about school-business links

Rod: “Entrepreneur - someone who is a self-starter and begins something in his/her own field and has confidence and skill to create new opportunities etc. Important to create lots of links between entrepreneurs in the outside world with schools. Not sure about the extent to which businesses should be involved in schools - but they do need to more clearly articulate and stipulate what their expectations are of graduates.”

Karen: “Risks we face in moving forward - opportunities offered by ICT?”

John: “Greatest risk comes from external accountability systems being imposed on our system. We need to be much more open and accountable to our systems. Also need a much better career structure - too few opportunities for teachers after years 4-5.”

Rod: “Need for major investment in national infrastructure and bandwidth

Biggest risk is a lack of realism - while we may tend to become overwhelmed by the barriers we face and lose sight of the things we’ve actually achieved. Our biggest opportunity is the remote intimacy offered by the video conferencing”

To lead change into the future we need to be optimists!

Karen’s final word was a quote from one of her favourite authors; “Simply by sailing in a new direction you may enlarge the world” (Alan Curnow)

The day has come, and the ULearn08 conference is now underway. An opening address by Chris Carter, Minister of Education, identified some key areas of focus for the future, including personalising learning and lifelong learning - and some of the planned government responses for resourcing, including announcements on the following:

• provision for schools to use some of their 5-year maintenance grant money to invest in key ICT infrastructure
• requirement for schools to allocated 1.5% of their recent 5% funding increase to ICT
• provision of PD days for teachers in 2009 - 1 day for primary teachers, and 2 days for secondary teachers.

Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach followed as the first keynote speakers, focusing on the impact of Web2.0 technologies to enable online participation and sharing, and the need to shift from a classroom metaphor to a community metaphor for the way we organise learning in the future. Begins with putting educators within these learning communities to commit together to make change and make education relevant to the 21st Century Learner.

Sheryl shared that “Communities are quite simply, collections of individuals who are bound together by a natural will and a set of shared ideas and ideals.” and then shared some ideas about the evolution and maturity of communities, suggesting that successful and healthy communities are highly participative, have a clear purpose, co-constructed etc.

They shared their perspective of a goal for the future - for each child to create, grow and navigate their own personal learning networks - going on to quote Clay Shirky’s work on a continuum of experience in forming communities - sharing, cooperation, collaboration, collective action - leading to social change or change in our classrooms etc. to illustrate the responsibility we have to incorportate teaching about and with these things in our classroom.

Will noted that our kids are using web2.0 to share - and what they share is very important, and challenged us about the responsibility that we, as educators must accept in developing the right attitudes, understandings and behaviours that our kids will need to use this liberty wisely, noting that  “Our kids will be “google-able” for the rests of their lives!”

A great keynote address covering a wide range of both the opportunities and challenges of working in this collaborative world enabled by online technologies - wonderfully illustrated with personal anecdotes and stories from the web.

Key message for educators: “you can’t just study this, you have to do it!”

Lots more to share from this - but my battery has almost run out so will post this before it does:-)

Seems the Chinese are now in the market for producing low cost laptops that utilise open source software for the operating system and productivity software, with the production of the HiVision MiniNote Linux Laptop - for the princely sum of $98!

The following announcement appeared earlier this month on the Tech Video Blog:

“HiVision makes the worlds cheapest Linux laptop at $98 using a new cheaper MIPS based processor (perhaps the Longsoon or the Ingenic), WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, has 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out, voice-chat, skype, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support and Abiword for word processing. Automatic and secure online software updates. Their current model is running a smooth and pretty snappy Linux user interface. In this video, I got to borrow a review sample of the laptop overnight, and I try to show you all the browser and other software interfaces in this extended video review of this cheap MIPS based laptop. Embedded is the way that I hope that most cheap laptops are going to be based on in the near future, Google will hopefully make a great Chrome browser for this kind of Laptop and hopefully that OLPC soon will announce that they will work to improve Embedded Linux based laptops in the upcoming XO-1.5 and XO-2 designs.”

All goes to reinforce that there is a promising future in the open source world, and the development of inexpensive, cloud-connected devices such as this! Here’s a short clip from Youtube that explains it all…

I’ve just completed another day with the establishment team at Albany Senior High School - this time assisting with the planning of their programme of professional development for the team of new staff they have appointed and who will be coming together in term four to prepare for the first intake of students at the beginning of 2009.

So it was with interest that I read a discussion forum in EdWeek’s Teacher Magazine titled 21st Century High School. The first post asks:

If you could design a 21st century high school, what types of staff development would your offer to your teachers and how would you go about making sure the teachers met your objectives? I am a new Instructional Technology facilitator and want to offer my teachers the best staff development. What staff development has worked best for you and why?

Interesting to read through the advice that is provided by many of the respondents - emphasizing that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” approach, and that the best PD is done over a long period of time (not in one-off sessions). Just one response links the whole issue of professional development with an exploration of the values of the school - and then only as one of the options that staff members may focus on. There is some discussion about what a 21st century school might look like - focusing mostly on assumptions about the role of technology.

The focus of the initial part of the question that starts the post is exactly where the Albany staff are at (viz “If you could design a 21st century high school, what types of staff development would your offer to your teachers…?”) - but the responses in the discussion so far seem to miss the point of what some of the bigger-picture questions are as I see them, eg…

• what are the characteristics of a 21st century school?

• what are the characteristics of a 21st century curriculum?
• what skills/knowledge/competencies will a 21st century student need to learn/develop?
• what do we understand about learning and how this occurs - in the 21st century?
• what will the role of the teacher be in a 21st century school?
• what skills, knowledge and competencies will be required by21st century teachers?
• what will be the role of technology in all of this?

The responses to these sorts of questions should, in my view, form the basis of how we go about designing professional development experiences and opportunities for staff involved in teaching for and in the 21st century.

What is required of our school principals to effectively lead learning in their schools in the digital age? This was the focus of some presentations I gave at the First Time Principals gathering in Auckland today, where some 200 new principals were attending the final three day face-to-face meeting as part of their introduction to the role of principal.

Mark Treadwell set the scene for what I shared in his initial keynote in which he drew from ideas in in his recently published book “Whatever!” - The Conceptual Era and the Revolution. Central to much of what he presented were his thoughts about the “Upper Limit Hypothesis“, a concept originally proposed by Robert Branson of Florida State University (download his original paper here - PDF). Branston’s hypothesis is that somewhere between 1950 and 1960 education reached its upper limit of its potential capability, and that this is the reason that schools are incapable of achieving any real improvement in performance.

To make significant progress in education, Branston claims, will require three major changes:

• Fundamental redesign in schooling from the predominant teaching-centered model to a learning-centered model. Current school organization was established long before there was a science of learning and motivation.

• Major investment in the research and development of products and processes for schooling to make capable systems available. This research should be conducted by research institutes at the state level, much like the infrastructure for agricultural research or medical research.
• Cultural change within education to create demand for new products and processes based on R&D.

Treadwell extends this thinking to illustrate what he describes as the difference between the “book-based paradigm” and the “internet paradigm” in which the potential of education to achieve far greater levels of performance and potential is significantly increased.

In my session on leading learning in the digital age I focused more narrowly on the adoption of ICTs by schools and by young people - using the findings of the 2008 Horizon Report (PDF Download) as a basis for emphasising the role of principals as leaders of learning in the digital age. Key findings from that report include:

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking, combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization, is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of teaching/learning and scholarship

• The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases
• Access to, and portability of, content is increasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced.
• The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty/teachers continues to widen

it is the final point in that list that poses significant challenges for us as educational leaders. It is not simply a case of finding ways to include the use of more ICTs in our classrooms in the hope that students will somehow find that more engaging. Instead, our practice as educators needs to be more informed by our personal use and modelling of these technologies in every aspect of how schools are organised and managed. It is simply no longer acceptable for any of us to be heard saying “the students know how to use it all - I don’t need to, I simply let them show each other!”

Educational leaders in the digital age must be technologically literate, they must model this on a regular basis to their staff, students and community, and they must promote a similar disposition among all those with whom they work. Failure to do so will mean that we are not “Leading Learning” at all, but simply “following” it and, if we’re lucky, contributing to it in some way.

Here’s a document that will be of interest to those who enjoy thinking about the “bigger picture” of the impact of the internet on society.

Over thirty Ministers (including NZ’s David Cunliffe, Minister for Health, Minister for Communications and Information Technology) met on 17-18 June 2008 in Seoul to consider social, economic and technological trends shaping the development of the Internet Economy. They forged broad principles that can provide an enabling policy environment for the Internet Economy that are recorded in this publication.

The group express their… “common desire to promote the Internet Economy and stimulate sustainable economic growth and prosperity by means of policy and regulatory environments that support innovation, investment, and competition in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector,” and their intention… “to work together to promote ubiquitous access to ICT networks and services enabling widespread participation in the Internet Economy.”

A read through this document provides a good understanding of the underpinning principles and philosophy behind the investment of many governments in the infrastructure required for this to occur. Let’s hope we see the current impetus in New Zealand continue in line with these principles and statements of intent!

Here’s an idea that some of my colleagues at CORE have been contemplating for a while now - so it’s not surprising to see italki.com emerge! italki.com is where you can find everything you need to learn a language. Essentially it is a social network and an online resource for learning foreign languages. italki has a new version - featuring italki Knowledge, a source of free language learning textbooks. Now users can work together on creating an open source textbook using videos, pictures, sound and text. According to the press release, italki now has over 200,000 members and is growing rapidly. The site has also been translated into 14 languages and we plan to add more soon. italki.com also has has many other features including Finding a language partner, italki Answers (where users can ask questions), and groups.

In an increasingly globalised world where the ability to converse in a range of languages is becoming important, this site provides a useful resource for those wanting to learn a foreign language, but, more significantly from my point of view, it provides a useful insight into how the traditional approach to distance education may be changing - from the paradigm of teacher (expert) delivering to students (learners) to members of the community teaching and supporting each other, with the resources being developed using a collaborative wiki where all users are a part of the editing community. Certainly a long way from the days of traditional correspondence education where the resources were developed by the experts and delivered to those wanting to learn.

I’ve just finished presenting a keynote talk to around 120 teachers in Palmerston North at the Manawatu ICT Cluster mini-conference. In the break until my next session I managed to get around and visit the various workshops being held by teachers from within the cluster, each sharing some of the great things they are doing with their classes (see photos to the left!)

Among the things I’ve seen are some tremendous examples of using the Bluescreen capability within Keynote with five year olds - all with a focus on the development of literacy skills through story telling etc. There were also some great examples of stop-motion video making, working with graphics within word processing packages, and some excellent science-based activities using small cameras with LEDs and macro capabilities.

The things that impress me most about this conference are the very things that I believe are so essential to powerful professional learning, including:

• teachers sharing ideas and experiences with other teachers

• plenty of opportunity for reflection and discussion
• lots of deliberate hands-on, direct experience
• examples of practical activities with direct classroom application, but linked to theory and pedagogical understandings
• a very welcoming and stimulating environment where teachers are valued and given recognition for the great things they are doing

I imagine students in many classrooms in this cluster are going to be experiencing something a little different in the coming term

I’ve been playing around some more with the XO computer that Jim has loaned me (having trouble getting it away from my son who likes to explore the e-Toys application!). One aspect that I’m intrigued by is the fact that it converts to an e-Book reader (see video from YouTube above in which Steve Cisler, a veteran librarian, interviews the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle about the e-book potential of the OLPC XO laptop. What doesn’t come through in the video is the quality of the screen resolution of the XO which means the e-Book content is very readable.

In thinking about the potential of e-Books I’ve also been looking at what is available - and the list seems to have grown considerably since I last had a look around (around the time I blogged about the Kindle). Here are just a few…

• A Australian list of free e-books, that includes some New Zealand collections

• Books-Online - a collection of over 32,000 completely free online books - searchable by title, author etc
• The Open Directory Project - with a large list of links to further e-book collections
• Project Gutenberg - reputedly the Internet’s oldest producer of FREE electronic books (eBooks or eTexts).
• Great books index - An Index to Online Great Books in English Translation
• UK Directory of free online books

And on the topic of e-books - I was given a link to Rockfords Rock Opera via Twitter a couple of days ago. Rockford’s Rock Opera is actually an audiobook for children and adults - great to listen to on computer, ipod or burnt onto CD. The website has links to a teaching resources about the story. Certainly worth a browse!

Still mesmerised by by my two new grandsons, and thinking more about their future, I’ve been interested to read the discussion stimulated by Will Richardson in his post, “What do we know about our kids future? Really?” He ponders his response to a question he was asked;

“Even though we can’t be certain about what the future looks like in terms of preparing our kids for it, what, generally speaking, do we know? What general characteristics can we assume in terms of rethinking our curriculum and our practice?”

He begins a list of the sorts of things he thinks our kids’ futures will require them to be. The list complements nicely the sorts of things I listed in my previous post, and points to a more holistic view of the competencies and capabilities that we envisage will be required, rather than narrow sets of skills or knowledge.

Will’s post has prompted a number of responses, each adding more ideas to the list. included is a response from Mike Maloy that points to the 2020 vision of the Brighton Central School District in Rochester, New York which lists a number of interesting documents and video clips to illustrate what they see as important for our kids in the future.

As a result, Miguel Guhlin has started a wiki listing the skills students’ futures require them to have that are emerging from these discussions, and Rodd Lucier has started a wiki of 21st Century Skills for Educators and another for students in his Let’s Ban Chalk series which list particular skills he sees emerging from these discussions.

It’s great to see these discussions going on, and more particularly, to note the common ideas and directions that are emerging - about learning to learn, culturally aware, a focus on inter and intra personal skills, and the need for a broad spectrum of literacies. This is particularly encouraging as it parallels the nearly two and a half years of a ‘co-constructivist’ approach to developing the current curriculum that has recently been launched here in New Zealand.

My hope is that now we can find ways, at a systemic level, of turning this talk and visioning into action! In addition to these lists what we now need is an exchange of ideas that will allow these ideas to be put into practice, taking into account a system that still has a strangle-hold on things like assessment practices, timetables, compulsory attendance, classes defined by age and room size etc etc. Unless we challenge (and change) these characteristics of the system itself we have little hope of fully realising the competencies that are emerging in these lists and discussions because the system itself is not designed to accommodate them.

Just to add another perspective, Bill Farren, a technology integration facilitator in the Dominican Republic, has created a response to Karl Fisch’s Did you know? slides that I included in my last post. Farren explores the future of the current paradigm of competition, productivity and economic growth, and asks, should people support the economy, or should the economy support people? Definitely worth a look: