check out this link to find out which super-hero you are ….
Happy Holidays

I have been thinking a lot about change today. I am in my last couple of days with CORE Ed in this National Facilitation role before I head off on annual leave for the holidays (then back for a team meeting in January for three days and that is it!).

I have been in a QLC/PPLC group with 4 of my colleagues for a number of years now and one of the things we looked at early on was metaphors. One of the metaphors we played with for quite some time was that principalship and school leadership was like being in a rowing skiff - an oarsman:
* you were looking to where you have been to see evidence of progress, the wake I guess. But think assessment, annual reporting cycles, etc.
*Fitting with this is the fact you are facing backwards and only occasionally get a chance to look out front to where you want to be and ensure you are still heading in the right direction.
*and further … the harder it gets to pull on those oars, the more difficult it is to get a chance to turn around at all.
* you can be hit by something coming from the side because those suckers take a long time to turn around.
*one mistake and you are in the drink. Especially if the going is a bit rough.
*it is dam hard work and you need to be fit!
the list could go on and on …

I have been thinking however that another kind of craft is more desirable
I think we need to be helmsmen in a yacht:
*we are looking forward with our heads up. We know where we are wanting to go and have our eyes fixed on the horizon.
*We do however, have time to look closer to home and deal with the small stuff as it comes up without tipping ourselves in.
*we are riding the winds (of change - …. OK a bit corny!!) In fact though the wind (change) is what powers us along!
*turbulence is not an issue
*you are responsive and can change direction to avoid obstacles, accommodate short term needs like debris in the water, etc, all very easily
again the list goes on ….

I would hope that our schools can be more like yachts than skiffs, our school leaders and teachers more like helmsmen than oarsmen.
That would be my challenge to you for the new year … take the time to turn around from needing to see a wake to prove you are moving forward. Trust that you will know it is happening by the small (but significant) things that prove it …. the waves on the bow, the rise and fall as you move over the sea. Check these things are happening (assess ’smart’ and well) but lets focus on the big goals, the things that make the real difference, those that may be in the distance - and go for it.

Enjoy the last of the school year…

I really like this blog from Kathy Sierra called Creating Passionate Users. She has a lot of stuff about marketing and sales but the general concepts are OFTEN very relevant to us in schooling/education.

This post from today is about how often conference t-shirts are not made for the female form. The idea being - find out about what people REALLY want and need …. and meet these needs and wants.

What a concept for schools …. what do our children ( and their parents) REALLY want and NEED from us. I get the impression some in education ‘do it to’ the kids and parents. All with the best of intentions and well meaning, but how often do we ask the necessary questions to find out what our communities, parents, children etc really think are important?
It is all about engagement again … lets GENUINELY ask the questions, and because we are interested in the answers, not because we feel we have to.
Your thoughts?

It has been bugging me for ages that the “add” option in my spell-checker in word has been greyed out. Frustrating when Word doesn’t know words like wiki, or podcast, blog, and so on. You can imagine how often I use them and the novelty of ‘ignore all’ has worn off.
I asked the question of the team at CORE today and Derek has come through with a solution that WORKS!! …

not sure of the logic of what I did, but I had the same problem in Word and went through the process in the help menu for “Add, delete, or edit words in a custom dictionary”

Add, delete, or edit words in a custom dictionary
1. On the Word menu, click Preferences, and then click Spelling and Grammar.
2. Click Dictionaries.
3. Select the dictionary you want to edit. Make sure you do not clear its check box.
4. Click Edit.
5. Add, delete, or edit the words in the custom dictionary.
If you’re typing words, press RETURN after each word to put it on a separate lin6. When you finish editing, click Save on the Standard toolbar.
7. On the File menu, click Close.
Note When you edit a custom dictionary, Microsoft Word turns off automatic spell checking. After you close the dictionary file, you can turn on automatic spell checking again.

I simply checked the custom dictionary check box, but didn’t actually go through with setting one up
then I went back to Preferences, clicked on Spelling and Grammar, and re-checked “Check spelling and grammar as you type” - and voila - the ‘add’ feature works!

Something to try anyway
Derek

so for anyone with the same issue - here is how to solve it.
sad that this is a highlight of my day really …. back to some more reports ….

Howard Pettigrew has created some really good resources over his time as a facilitator in the Waimakariri cluster. He has very generously put some of them up on his .Mac site for others to share.
What bothers me though is that I recently heard of people using his stuff (presumably downloaded from his site) in courses they were then charging people to come to. All this with no acknowledgment of Howard’s work, let alone sharing the income based on his intellectual property.
He is too nice to make a fuss, but to quote the kids “I think it sucks!!”
I am sure Howard would be rapt to think teachers were using ‘his stuff’ in their classrooms to make things better for kids and their teachers. After all that is his passion. I think commercial gain is another thing entirely, especially when he is now earning his living based on his expertise in this field.
We live in an profession based on sharing and collegiality, it is a shame to think some people would take advantage of it!

This link from another blog post post led me to this blog from a principal in the States.
Some interesting reflections on the role, the challenges and school management.

Check out this great class podcast site from Nelson.
Such a great way to share the learning happening in a class with parents and the whole world!
They have been experimenting with skypecasting and lots of other things.

I like this post from Will Richardson:

Dave Warlick points to a study that shows that more teachers are starting to use technology in their teaching. Ironically, not once in the article are the words ???learn??? or ???learning??? mentioned in the context of teachers or students. Why?

What difference, really, does the infusion of technology into the classroom have if the teachers who use it don???t have a context for learning with it? My guess is that most of what???s happening in schools right now is what Alan November calls ???automating,??? taking the stuff we used to do on paper and digitizing it in some way without any real change in the pedagogy or in the understanding of what the learning potentials are. I mean, take PowerPoint as an example. If you use PowerPoint, technically you???re using technology. But most of the uses of PowerPoint that I???ve seen in schools have nothing to do with learning. Nothing. In fact I still have a hard time believing how much of what is presented at the technology conferences I go to has nothing to do with helping those in the room become more effective, lifelong learners. It???s all about doing.

At least three-fourths of teachers surveyed recognized the importance of computer technology in teacher-related functions such as attendance-taking and record-keeping (86 percent), communication (83 percent), research and planning (79 percent), and classroom instruction (77 percent).

That doesn???t really get to it, does it? We have to stop focusing on what teachers are doing with technology and start focusing on how they are learning with it.

I am reminded of Jamie McKenzies (??) “power pointlesness”
This is a challenge for us in the ICT PD programme too as the research shows teacher confidence and use grows markedly over the duration of the programme but the direct application in the classroom does not necessarily increase to the same extent.

There are also times where a non-technical solution is perfectly OK. It is about the appropriateness of the tool for the PURPOSE. There is nothing inherently good (or bad for that matter) about technology - it is about what we DO with the technology to enhance learning. Technology has the power to enable us to do things differently, not just digitally.

if you have a blog click on the ‘D’ list icon in the post below to enter the URL for your blog to find out which list you are on ….

One of the most basic and important steps we need to take in moving from a 20th/19th/18th century paradigm of education to a 21st century paradigm is to move beyond “seat time” as our primary method of assessing learning. Rather than become even more test/summative assessment focused, I think we need to embrace “messier” means of assessment which more authentically reflect whether or not learning has taken place as a result of instruction and instructional interactions.

source:

This is where the ICT’s come in isn’t it?!
Our worst nightmare now is for the new curriculum document to be used as an accountability tool to prescribe curriculum and impose an assessment framework; rather than as a way to free-up classrooms to allow learning to be meaningful and have a REAL purpose.

There is also an Act coming before parliament sponsored by Bill English looking to prescribe ‘national standards’ for literacy and numeracy. Small leaps in thinking have this scenario triggering ‘not-so-helpful’ outcomes for learning in our schools. Watch this space I suppose …..