Towards the end of 2012 I took a large part of the New Years leadership team to hear Michael Fullan speak on the use of technology in his change theory for schools. He has published a new book called Stratosphere (integrating technology, pedagogy, change knowledge).
He challenged us to raise life chances for all which creates more equal societies. He briefly put the business case for this making sense. This is consistent with the work of Dr George Otero who we are working with on buildings relationships as the basis for learning.
Michael introduced the idea of “motion leadership” – savvy with change theory – promoting action skinny plans that turned the core things for the better. He emphasised that learning is the work (not the driver of change) and that we must piggy back off the high social capital (often present in schools) and use things like (e.g. Job descriptions) to back it up. This might cause a rethink on our production of our job descriptions manual during the January holidays (previous practice) to one completed during February as teachers and all staff connect to the processes and actions to raise life chances for all students.
Michael saw technology as the accelerator of pedagogy (using the example of technology improving boys writing by up to 80%.
He concluded that good data is diagnostic presented well and not overwhelming enabling teachers to put the faces of students on the data. This is consistent with the Data Wise process we are using at Elsternwick Primary.
