Graduate teachers must read: U…
July 1, 2010 – 1:05 pmGraduate teachers must read: URL=http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/summer10/vol67/num09/The-Relationship-Balance.aspx
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Personalising Learning and Assessment in the 21 Century
July 1, 2010 – 11:34 am
This little clip talks about using technology to personalise learning and record individualised assessments online. Its a timely reminded as we move forward with the Ultranet here in Victoria and the power of technology to personalise learning for students.
Stop Press
- talking about 21st century assessment what about teachers getting feedback using these tools?
I have just read about a teacher using survey monkey to get feedback from her students in 3rd grade: follow the link:
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What are the challenges of working in flexible spaces?
June 29, 2010 – 6:57 pmNew flexible learning environments are being built in schools as rate never seen before [and given the country’s debt probably never again] in this country. The ‘Building the Education Revolution’ Commonwealth Government initiative was part of Australia’s economic recession proofing strategy.
In talking with the builders and the various sub contractors over the past 2 years I can assure you they are quite happy about the initiative.
New facilities are always welcomed with a sense of excitement by their communities and my school is no exception. There is some research around improved student learning in new environments and I think some people may just expect this to occur just by doing the same things except in new buildings.
However I would suggest that the new learning environments will not impact on student learning unless there is a significant cultural change in schools for both teachers, parents and students. The cultural changes required need multi actions to occur at the same time which is a challenge in itself. The multi actions I would suggest include: the organisation of learning into flexible students groupings of different sizes, the use of data to inform differentiated instruction, the design of complex and challenging tasks to meet student needs, the de-privatisation of instruction between teachers and the use of digital tools to guide student learning and inform parents about their child’s journey[the new online learning environment is called the Ultranet in Victoria].
Imagine if you didn’t learn in the same standard size grouping of 25 but had a timetable that had you in groups on 50 for some collaborative work and 5 for some direct instruction in say “sentence construction”. Imagine that you as a student might have some elective workshops that you sign up for when deciding to learn to write in a particular genre and that the curriculum is more customized to your interests. Now you as a student have to develop many more learning relationships [possible up to 70 in year], learn to manage time and resources, be reflective, be prepared to be challenged and be able to substantiate, to take and respond to challenging feedback from different teachers to name a few challenges.
Complex cultural change can unsettling for all involved indeed may theorists like James Nottingham suggest that people need to be challenged and experienced time in the learning pit for real change to occur
There are often may obstacles that will challenge prople involved in working and learning in flexible spaces that include
- Lack of clear goals, theory of action or perceived need to learn new skills or capacities
- Resistance to change for fear of failure
- Lack of tools, resources or systems to meet teacher or student needs
- Perceived public criticism of the new work
- Inappropriate time lines for change
The purpose of this post is to set the scene for a number of articles on the changes so far and the perceived work ahead in using these spaces to improve student learning. We are over the initial honey moon period involved in shifting into new facilities [we found it last somewhere between 6 – 18 months depending upon who you talked to] have had a change of staff in these spaces and are now in that innovative learning pit where some things are tough going.
The following links are snapshots of other community’s journeys into these spaces as well as department resources that some might find useful.
Bentleigh West’s vision for learning spaces
Point Lonsdale’s vision for learning spaces
Pedagogy and Space DEECD Manual
Student Needs, teacher practice and learning spaces brochure
As I conclude this article about the cultural challenge we face I want to build the focus of the next post which will be about the general principles behind learning in these flexible 21stcentury spaces and some of our early discoveries.
I have great faith in teachers capacity to learn to use these spaces well over time.
I’m interested in hearing about some other general principles teachers engage with when working in these spaces. Please share.
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Is there an execution gap between our goals and actions?
June 15, 2010 – 1:03 amI’ve been reflecting lately on our strategic plan which lists a number of worthwhile actions and improvement goals.
I know the goals as the principal as I interact with the plan on a regular basis but I wonder if they are remembered by everyone at school? The goals are not displayed in our work and I’m beginning to wonder if there is as Covey calls it as execution gap.
We have been asking teams to develop their own vision statements based on overall school vision and set goals and norms for their work. Its been 6 months into a 4 year plan and timely for a quick review this week with year level and project team leaders.
I’m going to show the clip which is quite apt with the world cup in progress as an intro to the session and get some feedback. I’ll add some reflections on this work soon.
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Social Media – need a reason to change – here it is!
June 10, 2010 – 7:22 pmThanks to Durff’s Blog in the States I found this clip that is essential viewing for teachers struggling to reason why we need to adapt our practices to embed the use of technology – in Victoria called the Ultranet.
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Cybersafety sessions come to Elsternwick Primary.
June 10, 2010 – 7:00 pm
This week our assistant principal Demos [pictured on the right] in consultation with 3 other local schools coordinated a series of cyberbullying workshops from ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] for staff , students and parents.
The staff session was well attended and the presentation was very informative. Several points resonated with me:
- 40-50% of 12 year olds have 3 to 4 email accounts: two usually set up by parents and the school and the others usually set by students themselves [e.g. hot mail] to manage the ‘real’ communication with friends and subscriptions to other sites that end up sending spam or junk mail. The number of email accounts increases as they get older. The parent and school ones are usually too monitored for their liking and the end result is if stuff is found inappropriate they are usually banned for some time on the medium they like to use – not cool to be out of touch it seems. Note is seems email is also out of favor with most students as its too slow compared to other web 2.0 tools.
- There is a general shift away for MSN and other social networking sites as they move onto Face book. It’s cool to have lots friends [500 - 1,000 in secondary schools is not uncommon - definition of friend is that I can see their image so I know them] and often used in the popularity or exclusion stakes.
- Online gaming is very popular with boys – usually violent X rated games like “Call of Duty” with games lasting 2-3 hrs. No wonder the arguments in the middle of games at tea time – letting your ‘friends’ down in the middle of a game is one way to get unpopular – real quick. Some youth [12 - 20 year olds] who have online games in bedrooms are late to sleep or early risers to catch the good online gamers in Europe who start around 5 am our time.
- Many youth have 2 or 3 mobile phones so when they are caught the unconnected cheap $5 phone is handed in – little loss. Lots of girls have disrupted sleep as they received and text back messages in the middle of nights – mobile phone in bedrooms can be a big issue.
- ‘Sexting’ for some young girls starting from 8 or 9 year old is becoming an issue as people troll through images looking for targets.
- 61% of young people do not report being cyber bullied as they don’t want the technology taken away from them by parents or teachers
- Employers are increasing using the Internet to develop an online profile of candidates in the selection process – so that picture of you drinking to excess could hurt you 10 years later.
The good news is that we can learn to protect ourselves by using the privacy buttons on sites [friends only on Face book] and report inappropriate images or words.
Schools do have a role in educating our youth and parents have a role to become informed and monitor their children. This session was a bit of a wake up call and follows on from my previous session this year with students from Years 3-6.
I do hope parents took the opportunity to attend the evening session as it takes about 18 months to book these sessions.
Blog post on immersive gaming worth reading bu Ollie Bray
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Teachers not getting quality feedback and recognition
June 1, 2010 – 9:04 pmI have just finished hearing a report on the state of teacher performance reviews in Australia completed by the Grattan Institute.
Its a fairly controversial report as reported in the
- education review,
- ABC in South Australia,
- Australia ‘fails in teacher evaluation’ in the Sydney Morning Herald
- Australia ‘fails in teacher evaluation’ on Channel 7 TV
The full Report is linked here.
Here in Victoria we went through a performance and development accreditation process which has been recently update. The individual performance review process is linked here. The process is about getting multiple data sets to inform and reflect upon your practice as a teacher.
The whole process is one about plotting future learning and development as a teacher – building instructional and professional capacity. Under performance should be related back to data on student learning.
I’m trying to reflect on my practices as a principal here. Over the past few years I divided the performance and development workload between the assistant principal and myself. We received varied feedback on mixed standard or expectations and so we conjointly did them.
Recently I received some further feedback from an outside parent consultant in the HR area that really one person cannot review more than 7-8 people effectively. Effectively meaning knowing the quality of performance having set individual goals aligned with school priorities, observed, provided feedback and discussed potential learning over a 12 month period.
I think this might call for a different implementation model to be discussed with staff. I welcome others feedback on this issue as the report is quite damming.
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Support in schools arguments
June 1, 2010 – 1:22 amThis is the second post on the issue of support for teachers. In the previous post “What constitutes support for a teacher?” I set the scene that we have been re conceiving our workforce plan with the loss of 50% of our substantive leaders in the school over the last 5 weeks. Add to that context over 45% of teachers are in the first few years of teaching and we some some important issues to discuss around sustainability and improvement.
I have been putting forward a workforce plan that has two assistant principals and 3 leading teachers [the 3rd leading teacher being advertised in 2011].
I have arguing that we need resident coaches [2 assistant principals facilitate coaching themselves or release others - leading teachers - which equals 40% of their allotment] for new teachers and those practicing new instructional strategies as part of the improvement agenda.
Others on the consultative committee have different views so the defining strategy for our next meeting is to establish two main agruments and then debate the positive and negative reasoning and supportive facts around these:
Argument 1
The best supportive structure for classroom teachers is low class sizes.
Argment 2
Teachers need a range of flexible support structures for direct or indirect intervention for students and coaching for teachers best serviced by a resident leadership profile.
The crux of the argment is that by reducing all Years 3-6 classes by 3 students each and doing away with the flexible more hands on [coaching] support structures we would be better able to reach our improvement targets and sustain our current innovations.
Its an interesting set of arguments to put forward and an important one that will define the leadership roles yet to be advertised for the next 5 years.
I feel more postings to come on the issue.
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Celtics off to the championship!
May 30, 2010 – 8:58 pmCannot help but feel awed at the Boston Celtics charge towards the finals. As a fan of the Celtics my son, Mitchell and I have been following the games on the Sports Channel here in Melbourne. Written off by many at the start finals its just goes to show effort and experience can count. The big challenge in now against the Lakers.
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Marzano makes a point about the use of his protocol in observing instruction in classrooms
May 30, 2010 – 7:56 pmJust a short clip on the use of protocols when observing instruction. here Marzano talks about the use of his protocol and not to be confused with other techniques. It’s a timely reminder as we here in Victoria embarked on the use of Instructional Rounds.
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