merry christmas

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP: ACEL CONFERENCE

“TEACHING IS A PROFESSION

OF HOPE”

I just got back from Darwin having attended the ACEL conference: Tipping Points-Courageous Actions Powerful Stories. ACEL organises annual conferences on educational leadership. This one was particularly good. The highlight of the conference was by far the keynote speakers, in particular Alma Harris, Viviane Robinson and Ben Levin, Patrick Duignan, Frank Crowther and the inimitable Andy Hargraves.

Some key points that stood out for me:

Alma Harris
Pro-Director (Leadership), Institute of Education,London; and Chair in Educational Leadership, London Centre for Leadership in Learning, England, UK

Leadership matters – but what type of leadership?
The quality of leadership is a key determinant of all highly effective and improving organisations (Townsend 2007)
Leadership is second only to classroom instruction as among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school and their learning outcomes.

"the strategies that got you the improvement are different from the strategies that sustain the improvement"

Patrick Duignan

“No relationship no influence. No influence no relationship”

Most effective learning environments will have these characteristics:
· Customised learning
· Availability of diverse knowledge sources
· Collaborative group learning
· Assessment for deep understanding

“Do we value what we measure because we cannot really measure what we value?”

We can intellectualise it but we cannot do it. We can argue it and say we do it but often we can’t do it.

Viviane Robinson
Professor in the Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Ben Levin
Professor and Canada Research Chair at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

Viviane and Ben participated in the conference debate. They challenged some of the current ideas that dominate policy and practice in educational leadership and discussed the issues that they see as critical to building leadership capacity.

Viviane Robinson

"instructional leadership is 3-4 times more powerful and effective than transformational leadership"

Distributed leadership must have links to improved student outcomes.
The more leaders focus their relationships, their work and their learning on the core business of teaching and learning, the greater their influence on student outcomes.
Key: High quality conversations about quality teaching and learning in a collaborative problem solving process

Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
· need to identify the qualities that make these effective
· alone they are of not much value
· must have student outcomes focus

Five dimensions of effective school leadership.
1. Establishing goals and expectations 0.42
2. Resourcing strategically 0.31
3. Planning, coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum 0.42
4. Promoting and participating in teacher learning and development 0.84
5. Ensuring an orderly environment 0.27

The most important/impact – no.4

Three capabilities for engaging in these leadership dimensions:
1. Integrate pedagogical knowledge
Learning goal →pedagogical shift required→administrative shift required
2. Analyse and solve complex problems
Complex problem solving involves discerning relevant constraints and modifying and integrating them in ways that enable a solution to be reached.
Expert principals ...carefully plan a collaborative problem solving process....openly disclose

own views and encourage others to do the same....overtly manager meetings and summarise and synthesis ideas....do not express negative emotions
3. Build relational trust
interpersonally respectful....personal regard for others....competent in the role....have personal integrity....
Consequences of high relational trust for teachers and schools:
positive attitude to innovation and risk-taking....more outreach to parents....enhanced commitment....enhanced professional community
Consequences of high relational trust for students:
· Improved academic outcomes
· Higher likelihood of positive social outcomes


Ben Levin
Key: absolute endless persistent pursuit and focus on student outcomes – vision, direction, optimism
Doesn’t like the term ‘distributed leadership’ – thinks it should be banned

"Slow down the change in order to speed up the improvement"

VISION WITHOUT ACTION IS A DREAM
ACTION WITHOUT VISION IS A WASTE OF ENERGY
BUT A VISION WITH ACTION CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS
Lao-Tze

Andy Hargraves
Thomas More Brennan, Chair in Education, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Presented 4 cycles of directions in education from the 1960’s to present day and the future using his own biography as a metaphor. He was brilliant and very inspirational.

Standardised testing by census (e.g. NAPLAN) has been abandoned (or does not exist) by most other English-speaking developed countries in the world
. . . Canada, Finland, New Zealand . . .

However, that is not to say that we do not need accountability.
For accountability purposes, Australia could....
· Test by sample (not census)
This would eliminate the notion of teaching to tests, narrowing of the curriculum and bringing in intervention teams to ‘fix’ low performing students.
· Test by cycles (e.g. Israel)
Again, it avoids the notion of teaching to tests.

The US (on which Julia Guillard is basing her goals) is failing and is ranked low in the world particularly NYC (Klein). When Ben Levin was asked what is good or positive about the education system in the states he replied, “Nothing comes to mind.”
We are over-targetted. Schools need to have their own targets and better indicators – not imposed targets

Apryll Parata
Deputy Secretary Maori Education, Ministry of Education, New Zealand
Three key principles
· Maori potential
· Tribal cultural distinctiveness
· Individuals’ inherent capability
Identity – language – culture are essential ingredients for learner success

Every NZ school will endeavour to incorporate aspects of Maori culture and thinking into its pedagogical practices

Frank Crowther
Final keynote speaker.
He summed up the messages from all the keynote addresses.
Suggested letter to Julia Guillard:

Dear Julia,
We, the participants of the 2009 ACEL: Tipping Points Conference love what you are doing but..........
1. We think you have the balance between excellent pedagogy and standardised assessment a bit wrong
2. There are better ways of reporting to the public than prejudicing disadvantaged schools in simplistic league tables
3. We know how to make our schools better and here’s how . . . .
4. Our national indigenous challenge is every Australian’s challenge. Let’s find ways to all contribute
5. If excellent pedagogy is the goal of our work, then let’s recognise and reward it
6. We probably need an organisation like the Law Society or the Medical Colleges. ACEL can help with that, with specialist teacher agencies . . .

still on MODULE 4: what teachers make

proud to be a teacher
because teachers make a difference

still on MODULE 4: teachers and technology

I found a very interesting article on the blog 2c worth. David Warlick has been running two polls over the past few days —
His first poll question asked us to consider whether a teacher could be a good teacher without using technology. The second question, “Is that teacher, who is not using technology, doing his or her job?” Have a look at his post to see the results. Interesting!

He articulates that today students must become information artisans - able to learn, work, play, contribute, and prosper in a new and constantly changing and enriching information environment, and do so in a way that conserves the planet — rather than consume it. He argues that we cannot do this by scratching and printing on pulp-based paper. Teaching and learning must be digital. If you don’t want to do technology, if you’re not good at technology, then find another calling.

What do you think?

MODULE 4: Flickr

Love flickr and picnik too. (Picnik's more about making your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames. It's fast, easy, and fun.)

Anyway, back to flickr - I uploaded some pics of Dudley (for those of you that don't know - he's my gorgeous cocker spaniel) and made a badge -(that's just one of the myriad flickr applications and tools). I embedded it as a gadget on this blog (scroll down and have a look on the right hand side - under 'about me').

I'll upload some photos on my next post.

MODULE 3: Google Docs

I've finally moved away from Module 2!

I enjoyed exploring Google Docs. I did use a couple of the templates provided. I used the document template for a paper I wrote on Instructional Leadership and I played around with some of the templates in Albums and Flipbooks. I liked this one:

It could be used with a class to review the year that was. Students could add their memories throughout the year by uploading pics and text to the album and then publish the finished product for a variety of audiences. Nice!

Still on MODULE 2

You have to watch this!!!

Mmmmmmmm . . . . . . a digital immigrant or a digital tourist or . . . .

poor love!

I can relate!

Still on MODULE 2 - Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

I’ve been doing a bit more thinking about the digital divide and have done some internet research on the topic which then led me to a whole ‘new’ area to think about - that of digital natives and digital immigrants.

So, What Are You: A Digital Native Or A Digital Immigrant?

And what exactly, is a digital native?

Well, they look like normal people. They’re the kids in our classrooms. They’re probably aged between 0 and 20. You can tell who they are by their mode of communication(s). “Got ur text” “Saw your post on Facebook.” “Hey! zat a new phone? Got any pix?” “Yeah – it’s on my blog.” “Downloaded it last night.” They were born to do YouTube, I-Tube, What’s new Tube? They aren’t quite as impressed with the new stuff as maybe two years ago. They’ve already viewed it, bought it, borrowed it or seen it on their iPhone.

I came across an eye-opening article by Marc Prensky (2001) "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". He says that the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century has ensured that today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. As a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.

Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet. Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are digital immigrants.

The importance of the distinction is this: As digital immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. Today’s older folk were socialised differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain. The single biggest problem facing education today is that our digital immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.So what do we as teachers need to do in order to bridge the digital divide in education? Prensky suggests that teachers must learn to communicate in the native language and style of their students and change the instructional style accordingly. This includes using more multimedia-based learning objects and also providing opportunities for multi-tasking, networking and interactivity.

Another article, "Part II: Do They Really Think Differently" looks at the socialisation affects on the brain and examines if young people today actually think differently due to their digital upbringing.

And finally, I came across this blog - http://www.committedsardine.com/blog.cfm

It's definitely worth a look!

Still on MODULE 2 - The Digital Divide

Do you get a whole lot of ‘junk’ email in your inbox? Some of it you look at, some you download and some – well, you just press the delete button. I recently opened up an email entitled: SCHOOL BUS. The pictures attached took me aback.

school bus in Japan

school bus in Pakistan

The sheer juxtaposition of a school bus in Japan and a school bus in Pakistan got me thinking about the digital divide and how this affects education. The term digital divide has been coined to describe the division between those that have access to technology and those that do not. In March 2009, an estimated 1.5 billion people, some 23.8% of the world's population (6.7 billion), had Internet access (Nielson Online). It is sobering to reflect that the majority of the world’s population does not have access to the technology that promises to make learning opportunities more widely available than ever before. The vast majority is effectively excluded.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Surveys of internet use, points to the digital divide as an increasingly important feature of the growing economic and political gaps within and across 'developed' and 'developing' countries.There are various arguments regarding the impacts digital divide have on society and economy. DiBello (2005) addressed the implications of the digital divide and categorised concerns into four main themes:
Educational and Employment Advantages: Some believe that students who are technologically savvy have significant advantages over their peers. They are ahead of the learning curve, and can focus more on the objective issues. Those on the other side of the divide, however will need to focus on technological issues, such as how to create a table in Word, how to use the mouse, how to use a search engine, etc. This in turn will affect their job prospects as employers prefers workers who are technologically competent and are willing to pay more for their services compared to those without.
Economic Growth: Some think that not having access to digital resources might hinder the opportunity that people in undeveloped countries have for economic growth. With much of the world economy currently driven by information and communication technology sectors, countries that are not part of this sector are disadvantaged.
Opportunities for Social and Civic Involvement: Some believe that people who regularly use the Internet are better aware informed about national issues and developmental matters. Therefore, they are given a voice to participate, whether it is in civic activities or on a global scale.
Equity and Civil Rights Issues: Some think that access to technology is often readily available for those in a higher socioeconomic group, while leaving behind those in the lower socioeconomic groups, resulting in equity and civil rights issues.

Do you have any ideas, thoughts, viable solutions to the digital divide? What are some implications for us as teachers? for students? for international education? I welcome your comments to this blog.

Cool Websites

Ok, I pretty much finished Module 2 and have given some thought to starting Module 3 and finding out more about GoogleDocs. But again, I got sidetracked. While further exploring a range of web 2.0 tools and related websites, I came across 21st Century School Teacher. This site has great resources for teachers and lists recommended websites for teachers and students. I had a peep at a few of the suggested sites and I really liked ToonDoo. This site allows you to create your own comic strips. Then you can publish them, share them through emails or even embed them in your blogs or wikis.

This is my first attempt!

Another interesting site is Tikatok™. This is where kids can channel their imagination into stories – and publish those stories into books to share with others. Students simply type in their story, scan and upload their images and add personal touches such as a custom cover, photo and author biography! There is no software to download or install. They can then purchase a hardcopy of their own book.

Now, onto Module 3!

MODULE 2: Exploring the use of blogs in K -12 learning spaces {Glogs}

Module 1 - Today I had a bit of a play and had a look at some web 2.0 tools at the new tools workshop wiki. But what was really interesting was the way they were presented - in a glog:

So, what is a glog? Basically it's an online poster. A glog can have text, hyperlinks, images, audio, and video. It's a techie way for students to create and share virtual posters. Glogster is a free website where teachers and students can create glogs and it doesn't require any paper, markers, or glue. Glogs and can be shared with the world because they are published online. Unlike physical posters, glogs can include audio and video. Glogs can be easily edited and changed at anytime and it has an embed code so it can be used as a widget on your website, blog, or wiki.

Recently, Glogster added an educational component at Glogster.com/edu. There are lots of ideas for teachers to use with students.

This glog tells some of the basics about using glogs in education.

To tell you the truth, I started this blog as part of a Web 2.0 0nline course that I am participating in with a group of teachers in Sydney. The course was created by Helen Christou and Diane Brook at Sydney CEO Leichhardt in 2009. It provides a scaffold for learning and a basic introduction to the potential of working in the world of Web 2.0 for all teachers and interested staff. It's a dynamic course in that we get to engage in our own time and at our own pace. To ensure we use lots of web tools, we're expected to create our own blog and participate in the wetpaint wiki for the course learning community. We also need to consider the potential of Web 2.0 tools to enhance student learning outcomes in physical and virtual learning spaces.

Now, I already have a blog {sue-in-sydney} which is pretty eclectic to say the least. I posted a bit about education and then I got a bit sidetracked and blogged about my dog (my gorgeous cocker spaniel named Dudley, who was recently hit by a car - but that's another story!), my recent trip to Bali, things that I like and am hooked on, interior design . . . . you get the idea. Anyway, I think having a blog exclusively on education, will ensure I focus on education and not get railroaded by other musings.

Now, how did you get here, Dudley???!!!