While there is a questionable moral imperative for the implementation on the National Standards from our government, I must share a gem of an attitude shared with us during the Michael Fullan seminars from early November.

National Standards are to be exploited, not implemented.

This brings in to question our real moral imperative.  I believe our moral imperative as educators is now to use the standards to make a difference to our kids.  If the policy makers make this difficult, we need to stick to our guns.

While I commend all of the work being done by our academic educational experts. it is now time to accept that this is being done whether we like it or not, for better or for worse until cabinet reshuffle do us part…

‘ve been thinking a little about this over recent months and it didn’t hurt a bit!  In a learning culture where thinking is the norm, this doesn’t have to be ’something else’ to add on to an already very busy curriculum… it can very ably run alongside it.  The thinking curriculum also must be based on a solid pedagogical imperative, we are doing this because our kids need it and it will benefit them now and in their future.  While I like the concepts put forward by Howard Gardner, with his theories on multiple intelligence and also his 5 Minds for the Future – their translation into a classroom setting, or even schoolwide, is complex and at times sporadic and I contend not really in tune with the intent of the theory.  What schools need is a simple and easy to implement process around thinking that has impact and allows for learners to KNOW that they are thinking.  This is a mindset change and is not just about the teacher saying we are a thinking classroom, because there are pretty thinking posters on the wall… but clear evidence that all students KNOW that they are thinking, can articulate this and think about what is the appropriate tool for them to use to illustrate their thinking.  Yes this is still complex, but I have seen 5 year old who can do this in the right ‘thinking environment’.

When the opportunity came up for us to look at adding a classroom and providing for a much needed upgrade of our most dated buildings, the first place I looked was the New Zealand Curriculum.  One of the discussions I have been leading, and certainly an area I am reflecting on a great deal at the moment, is the concept of learning communities and how we can establish and build on learning communities in the School.  I particularly like the simple explanation in Facilitating shared learning under the Effective Pedagogy area of the document:

Teachers encourage this process by cultivating the class as a learning community.  In such a community, everyone, including the teacher, is a learner;  learning conversations and learning partnerships are encouraged; and challenge, support, and feedback are always available. As they engage in reflective discourse with others, students build the language that they need to take their learning further.  (NZC – p34)

Our wonderful staff are taking steps to make this happen… (that’s another blog entry!).  So how could we design our building upgrade to support this?  I had a chat to our Board, reviewed the strategic vision for property in the School to reflect the curriculum and then we engaged an architect to support us to enable this to happen.  I spoke about openness, shared spaces, as a leadership team we have had dialogue about communities of learners and how the physical environment could support this (wider than just our own classrooms).  People are on board.

The result, while only a preliminary 3D sketch and design is outstanding and very exciting… don’t you agree?

(I may post a photo of what it looks like now just as a comparison!!)

I am so pleased to be able to bring some wonderful educators to Nelson on the 22nd and 23rd of September for our cluster’s curriculum seminars.  This is going to be an exciting time for us all.  While we are all doing a variety of things in terms of implementing the curriculum in our own schools, it is fair to say that we are not quite ready to implement our own school’s curriculum… actually, it is not even in its design stage yet, but that is cool – because we are getting ourselves into a position to do this, and do it well!  :-)

Over this next month there will be an incredible amount of development and professional learning around curriculum and curriculum designs for schools in our region.  This is going to help our team and provide us with some much needed ‘digestion’ and ‘reflection’ time to enable us to review our plans and assert what it is we are going to do.  What’s more is that it is collaborative and will lead to some projects and developments across schools too!

This leads me to the reason for this entry… What would you ask schools and school leaders who are well down the track of implementation of the NZC and development of their own curriculum?  Please add these questions as comments below.  I would love your feedback!

Many thanks.

I have read two blog posts this week which came to me through Twitter. Both posts talk about the impact that technology is currently having on education and the possible future of education that now that we have such amazing tools at our disposal.  Including the question: ’if every student had a computer’ (can’t find tweet and lost the link – but it was a very good read).  Plus the ever-present impact that social media is having on education.  Both have potentially far reaching and deeply profound impacts on learning and as such, have piqued my interest.

I believe that learning is very much a socially constructed activity which is strongly centered around the way the individual responds to the stimulus and learns from and with others – I could extend that to ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds.  I also believe, that for the teaching profession to survive these incredible developments we must adapt our own learning and the learning of others with the support of these incredible ‘virtual’ tools.  We are not at a ‘teaching’ crossroads… we are reaching a ’societal’ cataclysm, a series of events and developments within our control which could be disastrous if we do not: a) move with it, understand it and use it effectively; and b) make some serious ethical decisions regarding how to use this in a way which progresses humanity and doesn’t see us become a world of people locked in isolated rooms interacting with avatars at screens.  Many of us may have seen the future for humanity predicted in Wall-E?  For the record however, Hollywood has a horribly poor record of getting things anywhere close to accurate when it attempts to predict the future!

The point I am getting to is the ethical decision that e-learning must be balanced, I am sure we all understand that it is equally important that our learners learn to interact with each other in the real world! I would have grave concerns if our vision is that all children had a laptop in front of them (the only difference between the classrooms of the 19th and 20th Centuries is that in the 21st Century there is now a laptops on every desk and an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room!).  This has significant impact on the environment, our health and our future as society.  My assumptions are based on a belief that if you are engaged with a community on the computer, you are often disengaged with the others physically in your presence.

This post is not about being ‘anti’ social networks and eLearning (please don’t read that as anti-social!), as I am a proponent of both… it is about ensuring a balance to protect our future and understanding that our vision for our children’s future should not be one of ‘virtual connectedness’ and ‘real-world isolation’.  I am sure we all realise this, but I just wanted to say it because, as educators, we have a moral responsibility to ensure ‘real-world connectedness’ maintains its importance.  :-)

This may be a little deep, but I’ll give it a crack. I have been thinking a lot about the link between learning and growth.

Isn’t learning one of the most incredible gifts of, and for, humanity? What amazes me and continues to build on my fascination of this topic, is how closely linked ‘learning’ is with growth. When I say growth, I do mean physical growth, but also growth as a person in a cognitive, emotional, social and ethical way (there are many others, but I have not thought at length about categories for this as yet… but this still fascinates me). I am of the view, that one cannot grow with out the strength, resolve, willingness and ability to learn.

I grow through my fascination with the world and what happens in it, I grow with my fascination about my place in this world and how this world affects me and others, and how and what I contribute to this world. As we learn – we grow, as we grow- we learn… these two things are inextricably linked. I believe that this is much the same of our children (although we don’t think like this when we are younger). The way into the future for our children is built on their fascination with the world and their place in this world, and how they interact with it.

These are important lessons to me as I explore how we shape learning and curriculum and how we shape learning growth with ourselves and in our classrooms and make learning authentic and related to the most natural ways to learn.

I heard the most wonderful analogy today defining the difference between ICT-PD and e-Learning.  We had the absolute privilege of having Dorothy Burt share her knowledge and understandingof e-Learning with our whole cluster (yesterday) and our principals and lead teachers today.

Dorothy shared the old chinese proverb ‘…give a man a fish and you can feed him for day, teach him how to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime…’ and used it to illustrate the difference between the use of the terms ICT and e-Learning.  The comparison was deliciously simple, the essence being that the giving of the fish is the ICT element, and the teaching how to fish is related to the e-learning component.

What a wonderful and easy way to understand this concept!  I totally agreed with Dorothy, ‘Why do we call this development an ICT-PD Cluster, when essentially it is all about e-Learning?’.  This obvious question has helped us make some simple wording changes to our project (and soon our vision statement).  Let’s not forget, this development is all about the learning.

Thanks so much Dorothy, you clearly are an amazing teacher!

It appears that I have found an app that allows me to blog on the iPhone! I am very excited about this as it now opens up a new world for me and will allow me to post to my journal from anywhere and at anytime. In fact I am so pleased with this app that I may have to get the full version. For those interested the app is called BlogWriter Lite. The only downside of the lite version is the inability to upload images… Apart from that, it is all good!

I’ll find the URL for the app and post it later.

As you can see – I have lots of questions at the moment, and very few answers!

Is the purpose of education, and by association, schooling: 

“…to prepare learners for the unknown future, or to prepare learners for a life of growth, learning and moral fulfillment in the unknown future…”?  

Why am I looking at this as a dichotomy?  Clearly it is deeper and more complex than this synopsis.  Why do we have Schools?  Why do we educate our children at such institutions?  What do we expect from these institutions as a society?

Maybe the purpose is simply just to teach kids how to read, write and do maths?

I’ll update my thoughts here I work through a process at the School I am privileged to work in.