Connected Blog

Four months ago I began holding lunchtime sessions based around the world famous TED Talks. These Inspiration Sessions had a simple format with a complex aim: empower anyone in the organisation to change the organisation. Here, I share the format, the resources, the questions and hope that it can be used in your school, your department or your Local Authority, to challenge current ways of thinking and empower everyone to make small, powerful changes.

The sessions themselves lasted no more than 90 minutes: 20 minutes of video, a different one each month, discussion about the clip, how it relates to our work or education in general, and then breaking out into reflection online. The advantage of using the cips as a stimulus is that the age-old reason for not sharing online – “my stuff isn’t good enough” – doesn’t figure here. It’s an opportunity to share something that’s not our own, and opportunity to rethink what we and our colleagues do, pubicly. It also presents a chance to discover a new technology that allows us to share, allowing for a natural extension and progression for the conversation stimulated by the monthly films.

At LTS we found the most popular ways of sharing were delicious social bookmarking, which allows simple things such as the talk itself or literature around the talk to be shared, without the individual feeling that they may contravene our self-publishing guidelines or that they don’t have the skill to write an engaging blog post. By using a Friendfeed room we’ve been able to connect our Research team with others around the organisation over a period of a few months, and an effective information-sharing group has begun to thrive.

Others found that crafting a blog post was the best way forward. Existing high quality examples of LTS blogging were joined by new blogs. Others are taking up much more internal blogging as a way to communicate better across teams.

Above all, the opportunity for a diverse group of colleagues to get together in a ’safe’ environment and self- and peer-assess what we do every day has helped show the way in several of our largest projects, finding room for improvement and gaps where innovation is required in the future. As they say, watch this space…

Here is a six-month outline of the talks we chose to use and some of the activities that we have designed around them. If you have other suggestions, leave them in the comments and they will be added over time. Let us know, too, how you get on should you plan your own Inspiration Sessions.

Month One:
Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Links from the first session

• Creativity in the workplace: do we have any? where is it? what’s lost?
• Kids take chances – can we? What are the barriers to taking a chance? Are we prepared to be wrong? What have our biggest ‘wrongs’ been?
• We squander tremendous talents; what are the tremendous talents in LTS? how can we stop this happening?
• We have no idea what is going to happen in the future; how do we teach kids (and guide their teachers) when we don’t know how?
• Hierarchies and their role in decision-making, workflows, coverage, time, attention
• University professors: does LTS live in its head? How can we make sure that what we do is more ‘real’? Is the ‘real’ the same in the minds of teachers, learners, Government? What is ‘real’

Month Two:
Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce
Links from the second session.

• How do we know that what we are doing is going to be good? Are focus groups, samples etc any good? Is there another way? Another type of person? Role of learners in helping us choose material for the online service.
• What’s the role of the niche?
• Are we LTS or a group of LTSes? How would this work?
• Teaching as mustard – there are only different kinds of mustard. Technology needs the same kind of democratisation.

Month Three:
David Pogue: When it comes to technology, simplicity sells
Links from the third session
Learning aim: Use internal blogs to talk about how we could simplify things, use external blogs to ask users what they would do. Examine Glow, Curriculum Design and documents (e.g. Building the Curriculum 3). Are we a simple as we can be without being simplistic? What would we change in our approach and systems to guarantee simplicity? How can individuals effect this kind of change?

Additional video:
Richard St John: Secrets of Success in 8 Words and 3 Minutes
How can we get these messages across?

Month Four:
Hans Rosling: Debunking Third World Myths With The Best Statistics You’ve Ever Seen
Links from the fourth session
Workshop on making better presentations, in time for Scottish Learning Festival.

Month Five:
Barry Schwartz: Paradox of Choice
Learning aim: how to track so much information, maybe based on this. Compare and contrast with the previous sessions on simplicity and the power of the niche. Where is the balance to be struck between catering for all and doing well for all? What’s the role for involving more ‘users’ of a service, students or parents, in taking on more of the workload?

Month Six:
David Eggers: Homework drop-in centres
An example of civic innovation in practice. What role is there for organisations to kick-start this kind of initiative, extend the potential of learning beyond school?

Want to be a better teacher? Want to know what’s really going on? Then you’d better be prepared to share…

Dean Shareski has just posted a really interesting presentation about the importance of sharing on Slideshare. As well as giving a great insight into why he shares as much as he does (and it’s a lot!), he also makes a compelling point about professional responsibility. As he says in his excellent voice-over, we are there “…to do more than just teach our own students…”. In the past — and with apologies to any music instrument teachers reading — this might have created nightmare inducing visions of peripatetic teachers being carted from school to school in order to deliver their latest series of lessons. Not any more.

Connected learning means that we can all learn from each other, and more importantly, share with each other. As part of my own drive forward, I’m intending to post most of my lessons online over the next year. I’m hoping that this will force me to be a better teacher, but also it is intended to start a discussion about actual lessons and the mechanics of what I do in my English classroom. The reason for this is simple: I want to make the learning experience for my pupils better and that means asking for advice and help and hints and tips — not doing the typical ‘closing-the-door-and-getting-on-with-it-because-
I’m-an-expert-and-have-nothing- new-to-learn’ that we have all seen…

It’s no secret that lots of teachers don’t share with their colleagues because they feel that the materials aren’t good enough… I’ve felt it often enough myself, but as so many people have said, we have to be prepared to fail if we are going to move forward…

It goes back to another of Shareski’s points. As teachers, we stress the importance of sharing with our pupils and students. What is group work if not sharing of ideas? If we truly believe that there is value in sharing of ideas and knowledge, then it is up to us to model this behaviour by sharing our amongst ourselves.

I’ll be using a separate blog or more wikely, a wiki, for the purpose. Stay tuned for the URL and my first batch of lessons… and while you’re waiting, go and check out Dean Shareski’s entertaining rationale for sharing!

Cross-posted to Mr W’s Blog

Since launching earlier this week the Student 2.0 blog has really pulled in the crowds. Sean is one of the eight highly readable and thought-provoking students having his say on education, and he’s from Perth, Scotland! Until now he had been publishing his thoughts on his own blog, but is now getting an even greater audience on Students 2.0. It’s great to see Scotland representing one of the continents on this experiment in really giving students their own very global voice.

Some days you think you’ve nothing to say and then you chance upon an idea and off you go. I read with interest a new blog by a former depute whom I knew at Knox. Now at Liberton High School, Donald McDonald has launched Head’s Blog.

I was struck in this post by the idea that classroom management can be learned but not taught. This intrigued me and before long my comment had assumed the proportions of a complete post.

The comment awaits moderation but I feel sure that Donald, who specifically invites comment, won’t mind if I pre-empt his acceptance here:

Hi Donald:

Nice to catch up – if only virtually. I came across your blog today (thanks to Ollie) and enjoyed reading your interesting posts. I’m intrigued by the notion of something that can be learned but not taught (classroom management being the example given in your latest post).

I suppose whether one resonates with that view depends on what is meant by taught. Taught in the sense of someone telling you things? Taught in the sense of observation followed by analysis and discussion? Taught through role play? I’m particularly interested in this being an instrumental instructor as hardly any of us underwent teacher training of any sort and learned on the job. Sadly, for some pupils, part of this must have been through our mistakes. I’d say there is a place for some sort of preparation before beginning our particular job – even if it only amounted to a short observation/mentoring programme before beginning. There are many skills to pick up and I’ve seen people unnecessarily drowning in a torrent of unfamiliar administrative and procedural matters – and that’s before the teaching even begins!

More than anything, though, I’d say language is the key. I’ve sat in the classrooms of some great (class) music teachers, eavesdropping from the PC printer, and the unambiguous simplicity with which they give instructions, offer explanations, pose questions lifts a veil from the ears. I’d say that some of this could be taught.

Here’s a daft but, hopefully illuminating example from my own practice. I like to finish lessons with some sort of aural games. A favourite is to play short phrases which pupils then play by ear on their guitars – using any new notes featured in that lesson. They’re told the starting note and asked to look away, as it’s a game for the ears and not the eyes. When I first began using this game, I noticed that some pupils, although they had faithfully looked in the other direction for previous examples, were staring directly at my guitar in advance of the forthcoming one. At first I thought that they’d simply forgotten that little detail or perhaps imagined that I wouldn’t notice. Then it struck me that I’d announced the next example by saying, “OK, what about this one?” Using the word, “this” was effectively a direct invitation (almost an instruction) to look. That phrase has since been replaced by “Right, here’s another one – look away.”

That was a bit of a ramble – but I hope it made sense. I’ll look in again soon to see if you have any comments.

Cheers

Alan (http://edubuzz.org/blogs/alancoady)

Interviews with lecturer David Muir from Jordanhill teacher training insitute at the University of Glasgow and with a group of student teachers from University of Paisley about they have seen at the Scottish Learning Festival and what has proved inspirational for them.

See more about this podcast or listen to other shows on Connected Live’s podcast page. Or, you can listen by clicking the play button below.

“If they came into my class motivated to learn then I could do anything with them” – Secondary Teacher

The quote implies that the teacher’s job is to motivate so how can we change to create motivatited pupils.

Consider the pupil experience. Following the pupils is like visiting a series of foreign countries… and the pupils cope very well. Would we?

Consider how motivating a teacher you are… and think about which stage of the day you might be at your most motivating! Remember, you can’t do motivation to someone… but you can encourage motivation with them!

If there is a characteristic feature of the motivational teacher, they ‘go high’… they set high expectations, they set the bar high, and then as people begin to perform at that level, they start to remove the scaffolding. This builds nicely into the requirements of Assessment is for Learning. We can allow the children to learn that they can do something. The achievement becomes the motivation.

It is very important to look at changing behaviour if we are to effect change. There are lots of people saying what is wrong, or what needs to be changed, but where are the solutions?

We cannot come up with simple solutions that will work in every situation, so we need to act smarter.

Behaviour Strategy
By focussing on our own behaviour and what we can change, we can help pupils focus on their behaviour and what they can change. This suggests that we should be re-assessing the importance of Social Education and its place in the school… though my more cynical side would argue that better quality lessons being delivered in Social Education would ameliorate the need to raise its importance in the curriculum.

Let’s take some of Guy Claxton’s thoughts.

How pupils avoid learning in school:

1 – become invisible

2 – be disruptive

3 – go stupid

4 – avoid trying

5 – refuse to engage

The key thing is not to take these behaviours personally. Instead, we need to devise strategies for encouraging the pupils to think about motivating themselves. Fortunately we have a handout with 100 ideas to consider. I’ll get to them later and cherry-pick a few for discussing!