I have had an interesting day today at an OPPA meeting.

We had four speakers but the two I found most interesting were the Minister of Education (Steve Maharey) and Graham Stoop who is the new head of the Education Review Office.
For the first time in my principalship I have been VERY impressed with the things the people in these two positions have had to say. I have summarised my recollections and notes below and my comments in italix.

Steve Maharey:
He had a strong focus on effective pedagogy and PERSONALISED LEARNING.
What impressed me was the depth of knowledge and that he knew his stuff. The content of his talk would come as no great surprise to anyone who has been involved in ICT PD but it is great to hear our Minister articulating it so coherently. It was also the fact that while he had a powerpoint and notes he was able to discuss and elaborate on what he was saying withough simply reading from a script.

There was a strong focus on preparing children for their futures rather than our past - shades of David Warlick, Ian Jukes, Marc Prensky. He referred a number of times to 21st century learners requiring 21st century teaching (and NOT 20th century). Digital natives/immigrants concept came up again (ugh!!) and he proceeded to (inadvertently) make his point by not knowing how to go backwards in his powerpoint. Also made references to the ICP Conference in Auckland and Ken Robinsons keynote.
He talked about the need to extend good practices to the whole system.

He also questioned why more able children would be asked to take 20th century assessments (Cambridge etc) when they are successful 21st century learners - a good point I thought. Commented on how the social and sociological aspect of schooling (eg the so called ‘old boy network, schooling as a way of perpetuating social status over generations, etc - you can tell he is an ex-sociology lecturer)is of increasingly little value as the social networks that are developed at school will not allow you by themselves to ‘make your way in the world’ as in the past. Now it is your skill set that is important not social status (for potential/current employers).

I asked Maharey during question time that (to paraphrase) if the pedagogical understandings and practices he is promoting are so critical; and the fact that teacher professional learning is the single most powerful thing we can do to increase student outcomes - why is it that the programmes like ICT PD and EHSAS are contestable and not entitlements? His response was to say that things are changing in the MOE as systemic learning takes place.
Importantly though I understood from his comments that he sees the model as moving from long term contestable ‘pools’ to pilot programmes and then roll-outs to all schools of things that prove themselves to be successful. This is more like reading recovery of the Numeracy Project model than the ICT PD or EHSAS one.
This is a markedly different model but as a principal who has recently spent about 40-45hrs putting together an ICT PD application with our cluster it is very heartening. If things are important - teacher learning/understandings and pedagogy, ORRS support staff, whatever - I believe they should be entitlements and centrally funded.

Graeme Stoop
Graeme talked at length and discussed with us the thinking he is doing about extending the ‘audit’ practices of ERO into the wider sector and enabling schools to undertake their own reviews to provide focus for ERO reviews. He asked not to be quoted on specifics and I am going to respect that …. as it is his thinking at this point rather than policy. It was really great to be treated with such professional respect and to be able to bounce ideas around with him!!
I took from this that ERO could be functioning more as a cross-check for schools own self review processes to ensure they are rigorous and valid. I like this and it is certainly how the last review at Pine Hill went. We undertook our own review of the areas of interest and focus and gave the review team a two page bulleted list of the areas of strength and development we felt they would find. After three days of review we agreed to disagree on just two bullet points. An affirming and validating process for us and positive for the directions and developments we had been undertaking. Very different from the low-trust model I have previously experienced where the assumption seemed to be we had lots of things we were attempting to hide from the review team and had little knowledge of our children and their learning; and that needed pulling into line with our school and classroom practices.
I certainly felt he was genuinely interested in what we were saying, and our views on the ideas he was floating.

It has been a valuable day and I have felt engaged with and genuinely listened to. Those who know me will know that I have few qualms about offering thoughts and ideas to Ministers, ministry personnel or anyone who genuinely asks the questions because they want to know what I think. Today has been one of those times.

Allanah put me on to this…
A very cool application where you can record a narration for an image and people can leave voice comments as well.
Has a good page about uses in the classroom too. I can see it as a good way to enable (particularly) young children to share and show their understandings about a topic. For example two of our classes are studying what it is like to be a child in India at eh moment … how cool to have a few of key images and have children take turns to record what they show/mean for them. Hmmmm … will have to see what I can do….
A great tutorial too
I feel sorry for our teachers sometimes with a Web2.0 geek as a principal!

Posting a response on David Warlicks blog just now got me thinking.

What questions would you ask teachers applying for a job if you were the principal of a school?

Some I really like are:
* What is it about you that makes you interesting to children?
I believe the most interesting people make the best teachers. What makes you interesting? Why would kids be interested in you? How would you be able to engage with them?

* How would others describe your management style?
… not what you think you are like, but forcing people to think about others perspective prompts some interesting responses

* Tell me about a time you have had to deal with a conflict. What did you do to resolve it?
Again an open ended enough question to be very interesting in what people choose to talk about. Some people have blown the interview completely (thank goodness!!) at this point by describing conflicts that show they have a personality that makes them difficult to get along with.

what questions would you add? Put them in the comments…

As David Pogue says:

Last week, Apple released a new version of its iLife suite???its $80 package containing iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb and GarageBand. The suite also comes preinstalled on every new Mac.

The enhancements in iPhoto, iWeb and GarageBand are great. But iMovie ???08 is an utter bafflement.

Most people are used to a product cycle that goes like this: Release a new version every year or two, each more capable than the last. Ensure that it???s backward-compatible with your existing documents.

IMovie ???08, on the other hand, has been totally misnamed. It???s not iMovie at all. In fact, it???s nothing like its predecessor and contains none of the same code or design. It???s designed for an utterly different task, and a lot of people are screaming bloody murder.

The new iMovie was, as Apple admits, designed primarily for throwing together movies quickly. It lets you scan through a clip to see what???s in it, isolate the good parts, and rapidly drop them into a sequence.

But iMovie 6 was just as good at those tasks; you could scrub through, chop and drag its clips just as easily. Meanwhile, iMovie ???08 is incapable of the more sophisticated editing that the old iMovie made so enjoyable. The old iMovie offered the essential tools of professional programs like Final Cut Pro without the cost or complexity.

iPhoto is great and the changes are certainly an improvement. I would love to have seen the ability to import only SOME of the images from a camera, card etc. It is a real pain having to dump all images and movies and then delete the ones not needed. A pain at school when all I want is the last image taken on a class camera and there are 50 or so already there from the trip yesterday! I had this AGAIN yesterday. mmmmmm.

iMovie is a different piece of software. It looks different and works differently! the only positive thing is that installing the ‘08 version leaves your old version intact. Why didn’t they just call it something different??

Apple is usually very good with its design but they have missed the mark with this one!

from Gary Stager:

Here’s a cute little wrinkle in the Wikipedia story. CIA, FBI Computers Used for Wikipedia Edits. Apparently, the FBI and CIA are “fixing” the history of the Iraq War and the US prison in Guantanemo Bay before the history is even written. The Bush Administration has never hesitated from changing online press conference transcripts or “tinkering” with the ERIC and What Works databases. These folks sure are through!

How will you explain this to your computer literacy students?

This is fun…
check out the contents of peoples bags - HERE
ther is everything from bluetack to 9mm handguns!

If you have time link your photo into the comments.

The initial idea is on Lifehacker blog - here are their instructions:

If you’re interested in submitting your go bag for this Thursday’s Show Us Your Go Bag screenshot tour, here’s what you need to do:

1. Take a picture of your go bag contents and go bag: Empty out the contents of your go bag and lay everything out on a table next to your go bag and take a photograph. We only want one picture per go bag, so please get everything you want to show off in one shot.
2. Write up a description of the contents of your go bag: The more detail you provide, the better. Let us know what your tools are, where you got your great go bag, etc.
3. Send your picture and description to us: Compose an email to tips at lifehacker.com with the subject title Show us Your Go Bag, attach your photograph, and enter your description in the body of the email.

http://www.freemacware.com/translateit/“>This is a cool translator …. handy for anyone learning languages

Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are ???the smart kids.??? Thomas???s one of them, and he likes belonging.

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they???d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck???s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The ???smart??? kids took the cop-out.

posted in full from HERE

The power of even the small things we say to kids. Managing and mastering our language is important. Joan Dalton and David Anderson have been saying this for years!!