Reading Writing Responding

It was a sad day last Wednesday as the  Melton Network 21st Century Learning Team  met for the last time under the tutelage of +Alf Galea . Although Alf suggested that the network meetings may continue next year, it can be guaranteed, that with all the cuts that have taken place, it will not be to the same level and with the same sense of support. It subsequently left me reflecting on the opportunities that were gained from being a part of the group and how the implementation of various 21st century initiatives has evolved in the past five years. A New Way of Being I started working with Alf about five years ago as a part of the roll-out of the Ultranet. I had been asked to be a Lead User with Alf being the Melton Ultranet Coach, while after that Alf worked as the 21st Century Thinking and Learning Coach for the Melton Network. Although the Ultranet failed to achieve what it promised and will move into private hands at the end of the year, ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blacksnob/2229230806/ I have recently been posting a bit about the ideas of right and wrong , and how it really comes down to a question of choice and consequences. After a few discussions with some friends, it got me thinking that maybe it is choice, but also something else as well as. Focusing on choice allows us to come to some understanding of the situation, but it does not necessarily explain how we got to that particular situation and why some choices win out over others. I was recently given some inadvertent feedback which made me come back to this topic. Some of my students wrote a scathing review of my subject from first semester for their school yearbook. Although I had sought their feedback and suggestions at the time, the review that they provided, for whatever reason, was different to the information that they had provided at the time. Clearly, there are many ways of interpreting this situation. Maybe they wrote this because they thoug...

Over the past few years there seems to have been a push from some in education to make everyone a leader. There has been an effort to give power to a wider range of people, spreading leadership across the board. A part of this movement is a move from a top-down to a bottoms-up model. (See for example, such programs as Leading Teams  and Restorative Justice , both of which focus on relationships as a way changing culture.)   The two questions that come out of all these changes is 'what is leadership?' and 'can everyone really be a leader?' So, what is leadership?  Dictorary.com defines leadership as: the position or function of a leader , a person who guides or directs a group Thinking about this, there are two things that need to be addressed. Firstly, what does it mean to 'guide and direct', and secondly, what does it mean to be in a 'group'. In regards to first question, there are many ways to 'guide and direct'. Sometimes it migh...

Often when we talk about education, the term ' hidden curriculum ' is used in reference to all those elements that are not necessarily accounted for or made explicit, those elements that are between the lines, inferred. I think that much the same can be said about professional development. Often there is a hidden professional development that happens, often when we least expect it. In a recent blog +Ian Guest  spoke about the differences between professional development from the 'personal' to the 'organisational'. On the one hand, professional development can be self directed and based on the needs of a teacher. This is learning that can be classified as 'googleable'. On the other end of the scale is the learning that is often dictated by somebody else. Maybe it is a whole-school approach or nation wide program. Below is a table that Ian created to represent this continuum of sorts. This is a fantastic description of the different ...

There has been a lot shared lately as a part of Connected Educator Month about the benefits of connecting online. In many respects, I agree with +George Couros  that ' isolation is now a choice educators make '. However, something overlooked in many of the discussions and debates are some of the taboos associated with being a connected educator. Some of the reasons why teachers do make the choice to stay isolated. Teacher-Student-Friend? In a recent post , Peter Dewitt spoke about how he saw a photo come up in his feeds from an ex-student, whom he had taught in Year 1. She was photographed finishing her last teaching round. It got me thinking, when is it ok to connect with students (and ex-students) online? Another similar example that comes to mind is from +Adam Bellow 's inspiring keynote from ISTE2013 where he invited people to 'change the world'. A part of this is utilising the power of social media to connect with students through such mediums as ...

In a recent blog , +Vicki Davis  shared about the idea of having an 'App of the Week', where she has a focus each week on a particular application. As she suggests: I want my students to be productive geniuses. They are a human being not a human doing but they carry around a full blown secretary in their pockets, if they’ll learn how to hire it. If you are a BYOD school, you should do everything in your power to help students really “Bring it” using their mobile device and an app of the week is just one way to do it. Using Dragon Dictation as her example, she shows how she introduces a new program and gets the students using it in five short minutes. This is a great example of how to manage 1-to-1 programs. One of the biggest challenges I have had in being a part of the group implementing a 1-to-1 program is how to get the most out of the devices. I have found one of two things happen, either the devices are rarely used, only when they fit a particular need in t...

My wife and I sat and watched Argo   the other day. We had both read the hype and were dully rewarded, on the edge of  the couch to the very end. The question that it left me with though was how many other such stories exist through history of extreme risk that have failed and why are they not the stories that we are told? Having completed my rudimentary study of Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces , I understand that there is a predetermined nature in all of us that wishes to succeed, a staple of the Hollywood film industry. However, how does this match up with the notion of failure? A part of me thinks that even a hero fails somewhere along the way, often this is making of their success. You don't have to look very hard on the Internet to find a discussion of some of the health benefits of failing every know and then. For example, Seth Godin states that, 'All of us fail. Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from tha...

Whenever I go to ICT conferences there are always companies offering the opportunity to gain complete control over student computers, complete control over their activities, seemingly complete control over their lives. Maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it does beg the question, when does the responsibility to create a safe and meaningful learning environment crossover to being a situation of control and domination? I have taught in many schools and been privy to many systems of control, from using software to hijack a student's screen at any one time, to having open access to the student's network drives, to using knowledge of passwords to monitor emails, to doing random spot checks of student laptops. Each method comes back to one thing, the notion that we can be watched anywhere, anytime. It reminds me of Michel Foucault's metaphor of the panoptican in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison to describe modern society. As Paul Oliver descr...