Term One 2017
“The best teachers don’t give you the answers... They just point the way ... and let you make your own choices.”
ATTENTION TEACHERS O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund
Expressions of interest to make application for a grant from the O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund are invited. Up to $25,000 will be available in total for suitable environmental projects. For application forms and guidelines see our website www.recycleglass.co.nz or contact:
O-I New Zealand Environmental Fund: PO Box 12345 Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone. 09 976 7127 Fax. 09 976 7119
Deadline for expression of interest is 31 March 2017
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Index 3 Your Soapbox 4 Critical thinking in a Post Truth era John Hellner 5 Reawakened Art: An Interview with Educator/Artist Shar Matthew Baganz 8 Decluttering 101 for Educators Elaine Le Sueur 14 Have you Heard About the TeachUps? C M Rubin 18 Kiwi Kids Lacking in Basic Life Skills - Survey 21 Quality Teaching Laurie Loper 22 Engaging Students and Support Staff Wendy Stafford/Nyree Hanna 26 Teaching in Conflict Zones Hanan Al Hroub University of Cambridge 28 Advancing in Your Ideal Career Michelle LaBrosse 30 NZCD to Celebrate 50 years of World Class Training 32 Don’t Mind Me, I’ll Just Be Over Here Quitting Steph Jankowski 34 How Finland’s youngest learners obey the rules William Doyle 36 The Mind Lab by Unitec Unitec 38 Artist Turns Old CDs Into Amazing Sculptures James Gould-Bourn 40 Happy New Year guys! Secret Teacher 48 OfficeMax amps up support for Kiwi kids during holidays OfficeMax/Barnado’s 49 Ugandan girls stay in lessons when helped with periods University of Oxford 50 Stanford researchers say school kids can do safe and simple biological experiments over the internet Andrew Myers 52 Humorous New Contextual Street Sign Interventions Christopher Jobson 54 Teenagers who access mental health services see significant improvements, study shows University of Cambridge 58 Toiapiapi Review 60 Leading Remarkable Learning Conference 61 Brief interventions help online learners persist with coursework... Alex Shashkevich Little Kids And Their Big Dogs James Gould-Bourn Students have trouble judging the credibility of information online Brooke Donald A Critical Thinker Wanting to stay in education ‘NOT main reason University of Oxford Stanton Middle School’s unconventional principal Lee Filas It’s an Unbalanced World Out There Roger’s Rant Front Cover: Back Cover:
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Elevated walkway through the redwood forest in Rotorua, New Zealand Photo: Kelly Hudson Adelaide Zoo... Meditating meercat
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Your Soapbox!
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If you want to have YOUR SAY please email your offering to: info@goodteacher.co.nz
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Critical thinking in a Post Truth era John Hellner Teacher: “On December 4 a man walked into a pizzeria in Washington DC saying he wanted to investigate a claim that the Pizzeria was fronting a child sex ring run by Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. Instead, he opened fire with a gun, probably believing he was doing the world a favour. What are some of the possible issues in this news?” Student 1: “Is it OK to take action when you believe something is illegal or immoral?” Teacher: “Explain to the class how you extracted that from the situation?” Student 2: “The issue might be if the original claim is true or not. Is it ‘fake news’?” Student 3: “And if it isn’t true, does someone have the right to say anything they like, even if it is fake?” Teacher: “Let’s take just one of those issues for the moment – how can we know if the story is true?” Student: “We can check the source. We can look for evidence.” Teacher: “How do we evaluate the reliability of the source? What makes for good evidence in this situation?” Student: “It was the Washington Post – a famous newspaper. The evidence might be some eye witnesses saw something, or maybe a document, or maybe one of the children came forward.” Teacher: “So, does this mean, you believe the claim about the sex ring, which inspired the man to react?” Student: “No, I don’t think a presidential candidate would run a sex ring. It doesn’t make sense.” Teacher: “Why not? Why would someone make such a claim about a candidate?” Teacher: “Here’s another claim made over the holiday period, some of the world’s most prestigious and reputable news outlets carried the heartwarming story of a Santa Claus actor who held a boy in his arms at the hospital before he died, offering him comforting words in the spirit of the Christmas season. Can we believe this?” Back to index
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The ‘Post-Truth’ era
Teenagers most vulnerable
These two examples of ‘fake news’ spread and sometimes originating from social media help create a world in which truth can elude us. Compounding the rise of ‘fake news’, we seem to live in a world in which “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” – the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of ‘post truth’, their 2016 word of the year, based on a spike in its usage in the context of the US election and Britain’s EU referendum. Perhaps we live in an age when it is more important for a thing to feel true, than to actually be true. The Brexit leave and Trump presidential campaigns can provide many examples.
A recent study by Stanford Graduate school of Education found young people are particularly susceptible to fake news: the majority could not tell the difference between fake news and real news.
The burden of uncovering truth The digital world and social media present a bottomless range and amount of information at our immediate access. It is the most efficient distribution network not only for facts and verifiable information, but also for conspiracy theories, hatred, lies, nonsense and subterfuge. Unfortunately, they leave the burden of determining reliability to us. Facebook recognizes a problem exists. After the 2016 American Presidential election, in an effort to combat fake news and suspicious claims, Facebook outsourced the work of reviewing questionable articles to five fact checking organisations — Snopes, PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, ABC News, and the Associated Press — and let them deliver a verdict about their veracity. But Facebook can only assess a fraction of the accessible information.
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Although they may possess the technical skills way beyond many of their adult mentors, enabling them to access and manipulate the digital world, the study suggests they lack the judgemental capacity to evaluate sources (e.g. middle school students unable to tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story; high school students taking at face value a cooked-up chart from the Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee; college students credulously accepting a .org top-level domain name as if it were a Good Housekeeping seal.)
Critical thinking as a tool for evaluating public claims in a post-truth era Part of the solution for our young people living in the post-truth era lay in guiding their thinking to critical evaluate whatever they encounter, yet at the same time keeping a focus on knowledge and the spirit of the subject framework. One pathway could incorporate one or two topical discussion sessions of 20-25 minutes into the weekly teaching programme: not as a tack on to the main course outcomes, but as a means to achieve course outcomes. Choosing a real life situation, an interesting or relevant aspect of the subject content, news item or TV episode of topical interest, teachers can examine the role of reason, emotion, evidence, bias and much more in our decision making about claims barraging us daily.
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This may be unrealistic and too intrusive into the time needed to deliver the core competencies of the subject. Alternatively, subject specialist teachers could capture opportunities to critically consider current news pertinent to their subject areas, perhaps in the first or last few minutes of class. On the one hand teachers would bring authenticity to the subject and at the same time perhaps provide an opportunity to air thinking on a claim the teacher personally finds intriguing.
Questions to foster critical thinking: Any of these, or questions of your own can open a discussion asking students to examine their own thinking about public claims: •
What is the claim being made?
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Do you believe the claim? Can you justify your decision? Why do you think the way you think? How do you know what you know?
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What source did you rely on most to lead you to your thinking?
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Is there any bias or reason for making the claim? Is there bias in your thinking?
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How could your conclusions or the “facts” being presented be flawed or misleading?
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What evidence is offered to support the claim? How or why might this evidence be flawed?
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How could we find out if the claim is true or not? What is the best we can do to determine the truth of a claim within the confines of the classroom?
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What further evidence could make the claim more trustworthy?
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Can you offer another possible interpretation of the evidence?
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Does this claim make sense compared to what you already know?
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Is this claim practical? Is it possible for this to happen?
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What might be the perspective of another group, or from another time or culture?
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What does this whole situation tell us about the nature of evidence?
Critical thinking can provide the ‘tools’ for detecting truthiness, but not the will. This comes from teacher modelling and repetition of the exercise.
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Reawakened Art: An Interview w By studying how students create, educators transform pedagogy. Anne Keeling Say the word ‘classroom’ to a group of random individuals ranging widely in both geography and demographics, and you’ll conjure up an extraordinarily diverse plethora of images and memories. Condescending teachers. Supportive role models. Bullies. Crushes. Achievements. Humiliation. Pencil shavings. Petrified, upside down bubble gum wads. Educational institutions across both hemispheres have moulded and produced the finest artists, scientists and visionaries in the world, yet these same schools have also chewed up and spat out the remains of who could have been, who might have been, and destroyed their potential. How does one capture the unique individuals who make up a classroom and the challenge that this presents to the teacher who tries to reach them all? As a retired educator, Shar knew better than to imagine that the breadth of the school experience could be consolidated, but the devoted artist in her still wanted to honour the single room that has so significantly impacted millions of lives. A Tribute to the World of Education was on display at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield, Wisconsin and is representative of a classroom of individual students. Shar has repurposed these school desks using spray paint, acrylics and a high gloss finish to represent how “If one wants to educate for genuine understanding, then, it is important students shine in their own way. She pays tribute to to identify these early representations, appreciate their power, and the educators of the past and present who try to confront them directly and repeatedly.” inspire students to think, learn and succeed. (Gardner p71) After entering the installation, visitors find themselves standing within the four walls of the desk. educational experience, a classroom. Rows of As visitors walk down the aisles of desks, they can’t painted desks sit silently in line, each one help but reminisce and imagine which desk they representing a different persona, a different might have sat in and who the individuals were that existence. Some are outwardly light-hearted, surrounded them, both the other students and the featuring swirling roses or whimsical unicorns; other teacher at the front of the room. desks are darker and more reserved, hiding secrets inside. The room is eerily silent, but one can quite easily imagine hearing whispers wafting from desk to 8 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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with Educator/Artist Shar Matthew Baganz
I sat down with Shar to find out what they might be saying. So you were a high school English and speech teacher for 25 years. Is it true that the Language department usually consists of the craziest teachers on a school’s faculty? Well, I would not agree with that! I do think that all teachers need to be creative to think of innovative
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ways to present their subject matter and to reach their students. I was proud to be an English, Communication and Speech teacher. I taught from 1970 and retired in 2014, and I still currently teach today, but I do it very part time. I think that English and Communication and Language teachers need to have developed the right side of their brain and be creative, just analysing literature Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 9
and appreciating poetry. I very much enjoyed teaching writing, literature, and communication skills. And then you decided to shift gears and become a guidance counsellor for 19 years after your teaching days. Yes. I was still teaching as well. I was a guidance counsellor with a case load and students would visit my office one on one, but I also did classroom guidance lessons on subjects such as bullying, postsecondary planning, career exploration, etcetera. On the side you’re an artist who experiments in dozens of different materials and techniques. Where did the idea of painting old desks come from? Throughout the years schools will gradually replace old desks with newer designs. When I would see discarded desks at flea markets it made me sad to think they were no longer useful. So that started the idea a little bit. I thought, oh gosh what could I do with this piece of furniture that held possibly… (laughs) a future president, or a future artist, but in any case, an individual who spent time learning in
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that desk. So I started collecting them, and even went to auctions to purchase some of the really old ones that were chiselled and carved into, and I thought that made them really interesting. And then I thought, so what am I going to do with these? And one at a time I gradually began painting them, and what came to mind were real individual students from my past that I either taught or worked with as a guidance counsellor, and their personalities and the challenges with those students began to come out onto the desks as I painted them. And this gave me reason to repurpose these desks then, either for art shows or for use as real desks. Some people buy them and put them in their homes for their kids to use. What kind of feedback have you received from visitors of your various installations? Some people walking among the desks at the Sharon Wilson Center would laugh and point to a certain desk and say “This was me when I was in elementary school,” and then they’d walk to another row and point at a different desk and say “And this was me in
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 11
high school!” So it was nice to see them identify with different chapters of their lives.
much as possible about her students in order to best help them and so on.
Many people want to sit in them, and some people have sat there for a while, and it’s like they’re daydreaming, and I wish I could have captured each one of their daydreams and the school day memories they were reminiscing about.
Every child needs someone to trust in a school building.
Do you find any recurring themes in your desks? Many desks have multiple or even contradicting themes or moods. I’ve used the butterfly a lot to symbolize that every person is always transforming, and you hope as a teacher that a child transforms into a beautiful butterfly. Many of these desks have some happy and some sad images. Life happens to every child. We hope it’s all good, but of course no one’s life is all good. In one seemingly happy desk with a butterfly on it, I included inside a poem called Shhh, which was written in the voice of a small child. It was not a happy poem but told the story about a child living in a family where there was an addiction, and the child was told not to tell anyone about it. Beneath the desk as well was an old doll, shabby and dirty, representing other things that might be on that child’s mind. So it helps every educator to know as
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Is there an overall message you want to send with the Reawakened Art exhibit? The installation itself was called A Tribute to the World of Education to honour and appreciate the challenges that educators face on a daily basis. As you walk into the installation of desks, on the outside they look one way, but underneath the desks you see something else about that student. I hope the installation shows what teachers face on a daily, moment-to-moment basis, and what kind of responsibility the teachers have to encourage and help develop in the best way possible all of these individuals and honour the individual that he or she is. Some people think that teachers have a glorious job with summers off and all these big breaks, but a teacher never ‘breaks’ from the job. It’s such a responsibility, and teachers are working extremely hard, 24/7. You feel you have an impact on tomorrow, and that’s a great responsibility that never leaves your mind. I hope those who view the
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installation are able to recall at least one individual teacher who made them feel special, who made them feel appreciated somewhere along the line. I really hope so, since that’s perhaps the most important part of being a good teacher. For more information about Reawakened Art and educator/artist Shar, visit her website at www. reawakenedart.weebly.com.
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Decluttering 101 for Educators Classroom clutter is anything in the classroom that doesn’t add value to student learning because it no longer belongs there.
Are you a hoarder or a minimalist? Remember your last end of term clean up? Does the memory make you wince? The number one reason for teachers collecting ‘stuff’ is that it might come in useful, even if its use is not contemplated for the immediate future. We are the squirrels of the workforce, preparing for a time when resources are scarce but the need to support student creativity requires a hoard to fall back on. Brain researchers at Yale University have discovered that the loss of possessions lights up the same areas of our brain as are associated with physical pain. Getting rid of clutter can be painful. Clutter such as stuff that has been collected over time can be just as hard to get rid of as possessions that we hold in high regard,
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because of this correlation. A certain amount of clutter is necessary for us to function and inspire students to get their work completed, but the issue of regular decluttering is becoming even more necessary in the developing digital age where the emphasis is on the ability to filter from the increasing wealth of information available to us, along with the necessity for flexibility of thought and action, and the need to free up mental space to promote a strong working memory. The focus of this article is on ideas to help my fellow teaching colleagues to declutter the physical classroom environment by limiting the amount of information coming in at the beginning of the year and setting up routines and good work habits. However… to be honest, it is not easy to practise what one preaches!
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Elaine Le Sueur
1 CREATIVE WAYS TO DECLUTTER YOUR CLASSROOM. 10-10-10 Challenge
Decluttering outdated strategies
Successful strategies
New strategies to try
Second 10 : Use the internet to outsource ideas and make a note of the source for anything that you want to access again easily online. Keep a file of teaching resource ideas Keep this information in a place where you can quickly find it again without having to trawl through clutter. (Pinterest.com is a useful place to find and store ideas and links that you want to refer back to. You need to register but it is free.)
Third 10: Spend some time getting rid of old computer files that are no longer useful in addition to physical resources that have outlasted their usefulness. Repeat 10-10-10 until you are satisfied that you have decluttered as much as you need to ensure the year is off to a good start.
2 HAVE A CLEAR TEACHER’S SPACE RULE THE 10-10-10 CHALLENGE First 10: Spend ten minutes thinking about making use of things that have worked for you before. There is no point in reinventing the wheel if the wheel is already working perfectly well. Determine what you will need to set up in order for this to have maximum impact on your classroom environment in the coming year. Think about the routines/ habits to establish with your students for each segment of the school day and how you will build in time allowances for constant repetition in the beginning to ensure the routines become habit forming for your students. Have routine reminder cards on display. Don’t be disheartened if the routines take time to become embeded. The time you give over to this at the beginning of the year is worth it in the long run.
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Clear space leaves room for the magic to happen. Have NOTHING on the teacher’s space that is not in current use. Set aside 5 minutes at the end of each day to visit any items there just ONCE. Don’t put anything back into the pile that you haven’t dealt with. •
Mark and return to its designated place in the classroom
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File it. (Have an effective filing system that includes extra folders and labels in case you need to make a new one)
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Write an action reminder note for the next day and be sure to follow it up then bin the reminder note.
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3 HAVE A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING and EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE (AKA taking advice from a saying from the 1600s!) Pick a curriculum area to focus on and establish homes for everything in connection with that area.
4 CLEAR YOUR DESK DRAWER “You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk” – Louise Smith
Designate a spot for all equipment and resources relating to that area and ensure that resources are clearly labelled. Do this for all your classroom resources one step at a time. Include clearly labelled places for students to find their exercise books and essential supplies and teach them where everything belongs. Keep things in the same place and resist the urge to move things around frequently in the classroom so that they can take responsibility for themselves and each other. Schedule a routine time of the day for putting things away and involve the whole class so that the next morning is a fresh start. Some ideas to start them off… •
Put away something beginning with …
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Return all the ……. (curriculum related item) to its designated spot
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Put away something relating to a colour
In your initial declutter… take everything out of the drawer and make three piles.
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Pick a number and put away that number of items
Stuff that needs to be there.
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Have a ‘Tidy box’ in the room for things that need putting away and then have a time for students to sort and return to its rightful place.
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Are you a good role model for your students?
Stuff that belongs elsewhere and needs to be relocated and put away Stuff to get rid of.
Clear everything off the class shared resource space except essential supplies.
Then… take a deep breath and declutter!
Choose a word as the focus and find things to put away beginning with each of the letters. This is a useful group challenge with each person in the group being responsible for one letter. Words chosen reflect the number of students in the group. I.e. For a group of five students choose a five letter word.
Done.
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There. Doesn’t that feel better?
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5 KEEP A ‘ PERHAPS’ BOX HANDY
7 USE PHOTOGRAPHS
A ‘perhaps’ box is for the resources that you are not currently using. Store it at home or in the teacher space. At the end of the year, take a look to see if you have used anything from it. If not, get rid of it because you didn’t need it. If you can’t cope with the thought of the resources being lost to education altogether, then donate what you don’t use to another teacher. Put the box in the staffroom with a note ‘Free to a good home’. Throw what is left away after a day or two.
Get into the habit of regularly photographing quality student work and displaying the photos around the room if there is limited space for sharing the actual products or if the student wants to take it home. Photos are useful additions to student learning portfolios.
Put quality, but rarely used resources in the school resource room/ cupboard for others to share.
Aim to photograph something from each of your students at regular intervals so that they can see progress too.
6 MAKE A LIST
And a final useful tip for the clutter- challenged teacher…
Don’t buy new stuff for your classroom unless it is essential to support the student’s learning. You will find yourself saving money if you create a list and then wait a while before purchasing the items on it because it gives you reflection time and stops impulse buying. Your students will remember the way you made them feel about themselves rather that the way you decorated the classroom, so bear that in mind when purchasing new resources or adding to the existing clutter!
Becoming a teacher does not predestine you to work permanently in a messy, cluttered classroom space because everyone has the ability to become organised with a bit of thought. Taking regular photos of your classroom (clutter and all) can provide you with the impetus for the organisational change you are after. How to reduce an unmanageable amount of anything? Do as the sparrows do… keep pecking at it! My blog is http://made2share.blogspot.co.nz/ My classroom resources can be found at https:// www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/ Thinking-Challenges
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The Global Search for Education: “With TeachUps, educators will fully reap the benefits of the 21st century’s most touted model of instruction, ‘blended learning’, and seamlessly navigate offline and online learning for themselves as well as their students.” — Niccolina Clements Mangroo
Technology is quickly and forever changing. The moment teachers master one new piece of ed tech, there may be something newer they need to know more about. So you’re a teacher and you want to stay on top of your digital knowledge, plus expand your local community of fellow educators and collaborate with ed tech experts on how to improve student outcomes. Maybe you’re looking for a way to learn new things in an environment that’s slightly less structured than a formal training session? Consider hosting or joining a teacher meet-up. Or, as Edmodo likes to call it – a TeachUp!
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Have you H
With Edmodo’s support, teachers from all over the world are meeting up with other teachers in their local communities to talk about ways they can improve their teaching with technology. These informal gatherings – TeachUps – are face-to-face get-togethers initiated by Edmodo-using educators. A TeachUp is usually hosted and organized by one teacher. It’s a “mini-classroom” in which teachers can network, exchange ideas on best practices and also share resources. Response to date from teachers hosting TeachUps has been so positive that Edmodo is now working with educators to expand and enhance this professional learning initiative and encourage collaboration amongst TeachUp hosts. For example, Poland-based educator, Joanna Waszkowska, recently held several TeachUps to brainstorm for Global Education Week. The resources she gathered and shared with the TeachUp hosts community on Edmodo inspired several teachers in Mexico to host a TeachUp to introduce similar resources in their community. Joining me in The Global Search for Education to talk about how TeachUps got started and what’s in store in the future are teachers Keith George, Joanna Waszkowska and Sheryl Place, along with Edmodo’s
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Heard About the TeachUps? C. M. Rubin Senior Manager of Programs, Niccolina Clements Mangroo.
Niccolina, would you talk a little about Edmodo’s goal with TeachUps? Our initial goal with the TeachUps was to understand how and if Edmodo could foster local communities of educators as powerful and collaborative as our global network. We’ve seen the concept of the “lone nut” play out in Edmodo’s global communities online, where somewhat isolated and ed tech-nutty teachers can connect and encourage each other through the trials and tribulations of teaching in a blended learning environment. With the introduction of TeachUps, we wanted to see what this concept could look like locally: what would happen if one lone nut teacher initiated a TeachUp that then inspired other lone nuts in the community to come together as a powerful community of educators learning from and inspiring one another? In our first phase of TeachUps, we offered hosts suggestions and ongoing support for their events, but held back from dictating too much of the format, structure or required content.
Keith, Sheryl, Joanna: You’ve hosted TeachUps – what’s been your experience? Keith: Teachers are truly interested and eager to receive quality professional development that will improve their practice. The TeachUp model allows an Edmodo-using educator to design a professional development experience that is tailored to the teachers that will be attending. The variety of approaches that this allows is endless. Teachers may learn more about formative assessment, and how Edmodo can make that easier. They might learn how to incorporate collaborative writing into a science classroom, and how Edmodo could be used to manage that. The point is that a TeachUp is about good teaching. Sheryl: It’s VERY important to make the participants feel welcome and that no question or request is too big or too small. If you feel in the mood to share, get another ed tech expert to help you. ALSO, bring extra devices, surge protectors, mice – anything that you think someone might forget. Joanna: With TeachUps, I’ve found that I can train teachers willing to get involved in projects that are Back to index
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jointly moderated. I feel that I can draw positive energy from the audience and get feedback when my ideas are important to them.
So I’m a teacher and I want to host a TeachUp. How do I get started? Keith: Edmodo has prepared a very helpful guide and website to assist teachers in the planning of a TeachUp. But once I realized that what was expected was an informal gathering of teachers to talk about how to improve their teaching, I focused on keeping the event informal and encouraging all participants to share their successes. This made for a great event! Sheryl: I contacted the local Starbucks to ask if they would allow me to host a TeachUp (during their off hours). Because I am a regular customer, they were more than happy to help AND they even provided some give-aways to help me get the fun going. I made sure I had a lot of signage for everyone (from the parking lot to the back of the store where we were meeting!). Everyone got a fun nametag and was able to jump in and get started. We didn’t really have a set agenda, because we wanted to meet people at their comfort level.
Niccolina, you’ve gathered feedback from over 100 TeachUps around the world – what else have you learned and what’s next for TeachUps? Teachers around the world are enthusiastic to meet and learn from other educators in their local communities. So yes, Edmodo can indeed help catalyze local communities of educators. We’ve found the most meaningful conversations derive from good content and a diverse range of participant views and experiences. And, while the requirements for timing and location of TeachUps must remain flexible, clear guidelines and calls to action are necessary for hosts to know what a successful TeachUp looks like. With these key learnings in mind, we’re adding into this next phase of TeachUps more inspiring themes and content to prompt debate, and more structured guidelines for hosts in terms of attendance, types of discussions, devices used and follow-up steps. For example, the weeks leading up to World Read Aloud Day in February are an excellent time for TeachUps to discuss how to encourage a culture of reading aloud and sharing stories. That’s just one of many ideas. Over time, we’ll iterate on this program, similar to the way in which a teacher continuously evolves his or her curriculum. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 19
So what do you see as the main benefits for teachers involved in the TeachUps program?
And looking forward, what do you see this professional learning initiative becoming?
It goes without saying that teachers can benefit from a local support system. As TeachUps continue to take place in local communities, these support systems will grow stronger. In addition, TeachUp participants will benefit from the exchange of ideas regarding new classroom technologies and, even more importantly, discussions around pedagogy and the best approaches to improving student outcomes.
Ideally, we would like to see every teacher on Edmodo take part in a TeachUp. If you imagine each TeachUp as a mini-classroom of local educators based on collaboration and mutual respect, it’s easy to see how a TeachUp so perfectly complements Edmodo’s online global network of educators. With TeachUps, educators will fully reap the benefits of the 21st century’s most touted model of instruction, “blended learning”, and seamlessly navigate offline and online learning for themselves as well as their students. This will have lasting effects for teachers and students alike.
Beyond the support system, TeachUps also offer teachers a unique opportunity to experience firsthand the power of blended learning – that is, learning that takes place both online and offline. While TeachUps take place offline, we also require an online group for each TeachUp to keep the conversation going when people aren’t meeting face-to-face. With such a model, teachers become the beneficiaries of blended learning, rather than just the implementers of it.
Edmodo has a large international audience. What are your plans to roll out TeachUps globally? We’ve seen huge enthusiasm for TeachUps internationally. While meet-ups and professional learning networks for educators in the US have become quite popular in recent years, they’re still relatively novel concepts for many international educators. That’s why we’re taking special note of our international communities and allocating resources to appropriately coach and support them. We’re also paying close attention to international trends and themes to be sure the additional content we provide to hosts is relevant and appropriate.
Joanna, are you planning to engage your TeachUp group going forward? Of course. A lot of the ideas I use to develop a plan of action I draw from the experiences of other Edmodo ed tech experts. The experiences I get working alongside my Edmodo colleagues are of the utmost value to me; I like to learn from their practical experiences and share worked-out solutions. It’s important to all of us that we engage in our profession with a level of joy and enthusiasm equal to the task of looking at the world through the eyes of a child. For more information on TeachUps. C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is the publisher of CMRubinWorld, and is a Disruptor Foundation Fellow. Follow C. M. Rubin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cmrubinworld
Top Row: C. M. Rubin, Niccolina Clements Mangroo
(Photos are courtesy of Edmodo)
Bottom Row: Joanna Waszkowska, Keith George, Sheryl Place
20 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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Kiwi Kids Lacking in Basic Life Skills - Survey Young Kiwi kids can use a cellphone or remote control but lack the basic life skills necessary for making their bed, breakfast or lunch, according to new research. The results are concerning according to Sara Chatwin a psychologist who says these tasks are important in teaching children resilience, independence and basic problem solving. The Sanitarium Weet-Bix Better Brekkie survey showed that more than 44% of parents with children aged 5-15 years made their children’s breakfasts because they either; don’t want the mess to clean up, are always in a hurry in the mornings, or simply haven’t taught them how to make their breakfast yet. A further third (30%) of parents said they were concerned if they did not make their child’s breakfast the children would skip it or choose something unhealthy. The survey found eight in ten (78%) children aged 5-7 years could operate a cell phone and a further nine in ten (89%) have mastered a TV remote, but less than a third (29%) of this age group make their own lunch. Making breakfast and their beds was also more of a challenge than technology for around two thirds of young children. Interestingly, 99% of the parent respondents agree that being able to make your own meals is an important life skill that we all need to be taught. Kiwi parents were also keen to step in when their children had failed to manage other areas of their life, according to the research. Almost six in 10 (58%) of parents with children aged between 5 and 15 years have dropped off sports gear, clothing, homework or other items that their child has forgotten to take with them. Sara Chatwin says there is a growing concern among her colleagues on our children’s ability to cope when things don’t go their way. She says this was recently identified in the popular parenting guide The Gift of Failure, by Jessica Lahey, where Lahey outlines the significance of common household tasks and why they are essential to children’s development. Chatwin, a mother of four, says as a parent there is a temptation to step in and problem solve for children because we are often time poor, especially in the mornings, when a great deal of the household tasks are conducted. “Children these days are so invested in social media and the advances in technology, they’ve forgotten how to do the simple things. Similarly parents have forgotten to teach them! By allowing children to take part and get involved with the simple things like
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cooking, do some chores and preparing small meals, you’re ensuring that your children have some of the basic skills. It’s all very well taking over (as a parent) to get the job done quickly and well, but this detracts from children’s simple skill knowledge and learning. “We need to be careful we are helping to grow wellrounded children - not dependants” She says by allowing and encouraging our kids to do these simple tasks, we enable them to get active and take part; “to be contributors instead of mindless consumers with the attitude that ‘someone else’ will be there to pick up the pieces!” Chatwin says common household tasks are easy to implement and show kids that everyone in the family can chip in to achieve a common goal. “I’m a firm believer that children need to have a competency in the simple tasks to understand the dynamics of harder tasks. “Just because the world has become more social media savvy and seemingly complicated that does not mean that parents have to blindly accept these advances and changes to the detriment of making beds, stacking dishwashers and being capable of making a meal for oneself! There are still so many contexts and situations that require people to know about the simple things in life and to know how,” she says. The survey also showed that less than half (49%) of children usually have a nutritious breakfast seven days a week. Only a third of children aged 13 to 15 years ate a nutritious breakfast every day. While the majority of children have breakfast at home seven days a week, a sixth (16%) of those aged 5-7 years eat away from home at least once a week. The likelihood of eating breakfast at home decreased with age, with more than half (52%) of those aged 13-15 years eating breakfast away from home at least once a week. The survey also found that half of 13 to 15-year-olds and seven per cent of those aged 5-7 years skip breakfast once a week. The research was carried out by Sanitarium in conjunction with the company’s Better Brekkie programme and was designed to investigate Kiwi attitudes to breakfast, according to the company’s spokesperson Jessica Manihera. Survey methodology: The Sanitarium Weet-Bix Better Brekkie survey was commissioned by Sanitarium and conducted online among 1000 New Zealanders. Screening criteria was applied for this report and only the 340 respondents with children aged 5 to 15 years have been included in this analysis. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 21
Quality Teaching In discussions about raising achievement outcomes in schools, how often do you hear quality teaching given as the answer? Implied in such an answer is that quality teachers are necessary to deliver quality teaching. Quality teaching is, of course, something that you’d expect of quality teachers... But did you ever hear of quality teaching being tied to a universally accepted pedagogy, one known to produce more or less even achievement across the entire student body and across all of the student diversity that entails? No, of course not. No surprise there, for there isn’t a strong belief anywhere that would accept that such an approach might be possible, and until quite recently, no such pedagogy existed. Sure, there have been claims about the efficacy of particular approaches, but the best that can be said of any of them, is that they are an amalgam of the best of best practice as it is currently understood, often coupled with some personality factors of an inspiring nature that some teachers are fortunate to possess. Therein lies the rub; such is the ignorance about what it is that best promotes learning, the efficacy of all pedagogies in general use has to be called into question.
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Developing an effective pedagogy such that diverse (all) learners learn more or less as well as each other has been a fraught experience from the very outset. The first notion to be overcome is that it would not be possible to invent such a way of teaching. The discoveries made by the Canterbury University researchers, Nuthall and Alton-Lee, are relevant here. They found that business-as-usual (bau) teaching to be heavily imbedded in myths and unsubstantiated beliefs. This belief-based system was so ingrained in teaching the mere thought that that there might be a way that would ensure all could learn as well as each other was not considered possible. Predictably, those who want to see better progress in the achievement of diverse (all) students than is currently possible, will not realise they have fallen into a hole of their own making. Across the country, getting out of that hole will require a realisation by the entire body of teachers and everybody else concerned with education that the things they have always taken for granted about how teaching is done are the very cause of the problem. Researchers like the two already quoted had discovered teaching, as we have come to know it, is by its very nature nature “inherently inefficient” at promoting learning. What is being talked about here is the fact that the pedagogy all teachers have traditionally relied upon has never been up to the job. No matter how you cut and dice it, it would be foolish to expect appreciable increases in achievement by all students by using approaches that ought to have been replaced long since. Teachers who give their all for their students ought to be regarded as being the shining beacons in any education system. Recognising their worth and keeping them engaged and growing as teachers has to be the paramount end goal. But for them to be giving of their best, the evidence is that their development has to be achieved by each one of them
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Laurie Loper Psychologist undergoing a reinvention of their teaching. This can be said with certainty because there are now a number of teachers who have already undergone such a transformation.
– some previously failing primary students have demonstrated that they might make as much progress in one school year as they would have made in 4 – 5 years of bau teaching.
What each reinvented teacher can be expected to undergo is a three-year period of supported change in practice. This is no walk in the park sort of change; individuals can expect it to be the hardest period of professional reorientation any professional group might ever undertake.
Moreover all students improve. The evidence is that students from schools that have had traditionally enjoyed high levels of success also improved their achievement above teacher expectation, and in one instance, the improvement was enough to win a national teaching award for the school concerned.
What might they expect in return? In a word, much; provided they can stay the course in the process of becoming reinvented. More specifically, they can expect much better across-the-board student progress than was being obtained under bau teaching. The demeanors of the learners change, they respond in ways that teachers often describe when they say they know students have learnt or ‘got’ something; eyes light up, smiles bedeck faces, and confidence levels rise dramatically. Students start asking to have the programme made available more often, they carry their enthusiasm for it home, their parents contact the teacher and ask questions about it. Parents report the changes they see in their child. As a result teachers also change as they learn new skills and embrace the new reinvented learning context provided. These changes being spoken about here are but a sample; there is much, much more going on.
The sort of reinvented teaching approach being spoken about here has already shown it can cause transfer effects right across the curriculum. That is, what in this instance started off as a maths project, has spread by its own volition throughout the curriculum. Speculatively, there would be several reasons why this might have happened but it is surely proof that the skills that were learnt possess a universal utility that can’t be ignored. Other acrosssubject benefits being experienced include an accelerated proficiency in oral language use, and the development of the five key curriculum competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum. Such developments are in line with “and give effect to the values of both the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga (the national Maori Curriculum).”
Generalising from research that has already been done on the sort of reinvented approach to teaching, known popularly as Bobbie Maths, such approaches can be expected to have multiple beneficial impacts. Their use can be expected to build subject knowledge in both teachers and students. Students acquire a range of what might be called ‘talking together’ skills. Teachers find the success students obtain to be very compelling. The magnitude of that success can, in some instances, be quite spectacular
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A lot gets said these days about bullying in schools, its impact on student progress, and it’s long-term effects on victims. If teachers had access to all of the communication, (both verbal and non verbal) that passes between students that they are unaware of, largely because their attention is on other things, both its nature and frequency would give them much concern. Because of the context in which bau teaching takes place often has teachers casting themselves in the role of being a manager of classroom learning, that context causes teachers to be exceptionally busy so ensures a ‘space’ in which bullying can intrude. No matter how eagle-eyed any
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 23
teacher may be, or super sensitive of hearing, it’s a near certainty there will be bullying taking place in any classroom wherein bau learning is going on. If teaching is to make an impact on bullying, as evidence is showing, modifying the classroom context such that proper regard is being paid to ensure what’s been termed “productive collaboration” is being employed. Under that kaupapa, all the inherent talents, skills and experiences of each individual student are valued and made use of. Also required is the deliberate teaching of relevant pro-social skills, like ‘friendly arguing’. As evidence is showing, once these conditions are met, bullying will lessen, if not disappear. Having significantly altered the actual context of teaching in the way just indicated, the use of this reinvented teaching approach convincingly demonstrates it provides a safety-to- learn situation “in a curriculum area long-associated with subjectspecific anxiety through to adulthood.” But it does more than just allay performance fears in Maths for students, no mean feat in itself. The new pedagogy has already demonstrated that when the confidence students acquire is combined with the ’rules of talk’ (which includes friendly arguing) that’s enough for even quite young students to begin using the new technology right across the full curriculum and in their daily lives. Using such a re-invented pedagogy offers “a way to build teacher and leadership capacity to be responsive to the identities, cultures, lives and values of Māori and Pasifika students in particular, and to the diversity of learners in New Zealand classrooms”. Evidence shows this to be a major factor in significantly upping the buy-in to learning of minority group students; they count non-recognition of who and what they are as the biggest turn-off factor of all. Teacher personal growth builds as a consequence of engaging with such issues while leadership opportunities abound due to the amount of recasting of curriculum content and lesson planning that’s required. Teachers might also aspire to be mentors. Taking on that responsibility adds a layer of experience valuable to them, both personally and professionally.
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The sort of reinvented pedagogy under discussion here takes “a strengths-based approach to drawing upon family and community funds of knowledge and forges educationally powerful connections with the families, communities and iwi of the learners in the school community”. This provides a vehicle for connecting schools, especially what goes on in them learning wise, to all of the diversity of homes and communities, contributing mightily to a sense of ‘we count’. Taking the Bobbie Maths data as an example, by placing the maths content squarely within the everyday realities of living as it is done in diverse communities, evidence shows the resultant connection that’s forged, benefits student engagement and parental support in multiple ways. In an era when there is so much intermingling of peoples that it’s not uncommon to have 40 ethnicities in one school, “the mana and significance of the languages of learners” poses learning and communication difficulties. A re-invented learning approach seeks to employ a multi language strategy to normalise the use of the languages involved. As well, in the Shirley Primary School implementation of the Bobbie Maths programme, work has begun on developing a Te Reo Maori version of the programme. Inclusiveness for the diversity of students being catered for these days is a focus that can’t be minimised. The evidence available indicates a reinvented pedagogy can successfully “forge a highly inclusive and respectful learning culture with reciprocal benefits for all students – especially students with special needs – through building teacher capability to effectively use mixed ability groups”. The use of mixed ability groups certainly does turn upside down a significant teacher belief system about learning but the evidence is that they work very successfully nonetheless. The subject of poverty and its effect on school success is a topic heavily imbedded in myth and misunderstanding. While nobody in his or her right mind would recommend that any child be born into poverty, the condition itself has copped a lot of unnecessary flak where its influence on learning is concerned. Poor children can and do learn as well as
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other learners, though having full bellies obviously help. Expecting poor students not to learn is likely to be more damaging to student achievement than say, if teachers didn’t know which of their students were poor and so treated them all the same. In terms of advancing life chances, schools need to expect all of their poor students to learn. The reinvented learning approach hasn’t been in existence long enough to have examples of poor students who have ‘made it’ in post-school life but such an outcome is highly likely in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, some secondary schools are beginning to notice there is something distinctive about certain students they are enrolling, the ones coming from schools where Bobbie Maths is being run bringing with them a style of learning that’s sufficient to mark them out. Evidence is available showing a reinvented teaching approach of the type being discussed “to be adaptive and future-focused through addressing ‘big picture’ learning (otherwise known as deep learning) but it is not just about digital learning”. With digital learning having such a high profile in recent times, creating a slot for it is a necessity but those who find it hard to adapt to the demands of digital learning ought nevertheless to be pleased to see it positioned as a technology to be made use of as circumstances dictate. The evidence is that ‘big picture’ learning is occurring which is something some secondary schools are already noticing as students with reinvented -learning skill sets move through the school system. The final attribute of this reinvented pedagogy for which there is evidence concerns the recognition of the transformative nature of the changes being wrought. To gage the importance and scale of the changes taking place, one needs only to sit on the sideline and watch. What becomes self-evident is the change in demeanour and actions of both teachers and students. Fortunately, those involved have recognised the potential for this sort of evidence to go unnoticed. Courtesy of the very skilled work of David Copeland, a number of excellent videos have been produced, making sure vital visual data is part of the evidence collected. Such videos are proof of the old adage, ‘seeing is believing’ and ensures the
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many revealing telltale moments are being caught, the import of which mere description might well labour to convey. Because of the multiplicity of attributes around which evidence is gathering, this description of the reinvented learning approach can only be a onceover-lightly account of Bobbie Maths. Incredulity is going to be a major factor to overcome in selling such a reinvented teaching process to the uninitiated but the results being obtained from the use of the only example we have of such a technology cannot be denied. The efficacy of this technology doesn’t rest on one identified attribute, it is solidly based around multiple attributes and the evidence collected on each couldn’t be more solid, especially as all of it is trending in the same direction. The challenge is that education gets squarely in behind it or otherwise the children of tomorrow will be denied of its obvious benefits. (Acknowledgement: This article has been informed by private communications with Dr Adrienne Alton-Lee.)
For anyone seeking further information on Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities, otherwise known as Bobbie Maths, less commonly Pasifika Maths – the 15 video feature with the analysis of ‘evidence in action’ and supporting references provide great background. http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/topics/BES/developing-mathematical-inquiry/ introduction
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Engaging Students and Support Sta Future-Focused Pedagogy and Com Toward the end of 2015, Kaitao Middle School [KMS] entered into partnership with NgÄ PĹŤmanawa e Waru [NPeW], a backbone organisation which aims to build, with teachers, a connected and collaborative learning environment that promotes and supports student engagement and achievement. In establishing KMS’s eLearning Strategic Plan for 2016 it became apparent that there was a high need for a change in pedagogy - a need for future focused learning and the use of digital technologies to support learner engagement and achievement. NPeW offered a 1:1 Device Learning Experience that KMS embraced. A class set of devices (iPads) arrived, along with a Facilitator of Learning (an eLearning Specialist) who provided teacher coaching in relation to future focused learning and how to use the devices to bring about learner agency for the students. The Facilitator of Learning, Wendy Stafford, not only specialised in future focused learning pedagogy and the advanced use of digital technologies in education, but also had extensive knowledge and a passion for learners with special abilities.
Following the success of the classroom 1:1 Device Learning Experience, KMS requested that Wendy work with teacher aides and their students (with additional learning needs) using their own (Ministry funded) devices to also bring about higher engagement and achievement for these students. A professional learning programme was developed that involved the SENCO (Special Needs Coordinator) and Senior Management. The teacher aides were provided release to attend two group workshops prior to Wendy working with them and their students during normal classroom programmes. The first workshop provided an opportunity to review current state and learner IEPs. Appropriate apps were presented and those that met desired learning purposes were downloaded onto the iPads ready for the next workshop. General iPad use and navigation was also covered at this time. The second (hands-on) workshop provided the support staff the opportunity to explore the previously downloaded apps and to unpack how these apps could be used to bring about higher levels of engagement and learner agency for their students. Prior to working with Wendy, many of these students were reluctant writers and the mobile learning devices were underutilised. The introduction of apps and in particular Prisma, Book Creator and Story Creator, engaged the students and writing became an enjoyable task. Students were able to produce work that would previously have been unattainable. The work presented in this article was developed by a highly reluctant learner with behavioural problems resulting from learning frustrations. With the use of a mobile device, appropriate apps, the support and understanding of both his classroom teacher and support teacher he was able to develop a piece of written work that aligned with the classroom programme, requiring him to research online and gather appropriate resources to report on the New Zealand Wars. With a higher level of engagement and the freedom to set his own goals, he produced a graphic article that not only was he proud of, but that his peers and teachers also celebrated.
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aff Through mpetencies A major part of the success of the initiative was the buy-in from the teacher aides and that the facilitator of learning was not only an eLearning specialist and Future Focused Learning leader, but also a special needs educator who understood the learning needs of the children and was able to communicate with the support staff in relation to relevant learning goals and IEPs. The teacher aides were very reflective and always looking for ways to incorporate the new learning into the classroom programme. Their high level of motivation transferred to the students. The success of this trial project at Kaitao Middle School was largely due to the active involvement of senior management, SENCO and the support staff with Wendy throughout the planning, implementation and reflection processes. The project was tracked and critically reflected on, which has led to the development of a full programme for other schools and support staff to use.
Wendy Stafford Facilitator of Learning Nga Pumanawa e Waru
Nyree Hanna Acting Principal Kaitao Middle School
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 27
Teaching in Conflict Zones At a lecture organised by the University of Cambridge’s REAL Centre, Hanan Al Hroub the winner of the 2016 Global Teacher Prize emphasises the importance of education in conflict zones 79% of refugee children have experienced a death in the family; 45% display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Hanan Al Hroub
“The role of education for refugee children is not only to teach them to read and write,” said Hanan Al Hroub, “but also to help them deal with what they have experienced”. Speaking recently at Hughes Hall, part of the University of Cambridge, Ms Al Hroub, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, remembered an early role-model: “In 1979, when I was a student in Grade 2, our new teacher introduced herself by saying: ‘My name is Julia, I am from Bethlehem, what is your name?’ As we introduced ourselves she explained the meaning of our names in a way that made us feel very special.” “She won our hearts. I could not wait to see her the next morning. She was the source of my inspiration. Every time I looked at her I said to myself: I will
become like her one day.” “Many years later when I became a teacher and set foot in a classroom for the very first time I also introduced myself by saying: ‘My name is Hanan, which means affection’. I then explained the meaning of all the children’s names. I hope it made them feel very special too.” Explaining how she became a teacher, Ms Al Hroub said: “The spark that set me on the road to becoming a teacher was when my own children developed trauma after witnessing a horrific incident on the way back from school. They became withdrawn, very afraid to go back to school, and very aggressive towards each other. Their academic work also suffered, and there was no professional help available.” “Feeling very alone, I researched in libraries and bookshops and taught my children at home. A corner of our house became their new classroom. I started playing with my children to help them open up. We used balloons, puppets and role play –anything—to bring out their inner child. Eventually they got over their trauma, and returned to school. From then on I made it my purpose in life to help traumatised children in Palestinian public schools.” Ms Al Hroub, who teaches primary school pupils at the Samiha Khalil School, outside Ramallah, described the impact of daily conflict on children: “Here children witness violence first hand, or are exposed to it through news reports and social media. This suffering gets into the classroom and leads to frustration. The atmosphere is not normal. We see the suffering in our students’ eyes every day.” Her experience of educating her own children at home led her to develop a method of education through play: “I decided that teachers, like artists, must create an environment that frees the child and their imagination from their daily trauma, and helps them shape them shape it in a loving and beautiful way.” The constraints, she added, are severe:
Hanan Al Hroub 28 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
“Due to a lack of funding I need to be creative to bring my lessons to life. I have built reading corners in the classroom, and chairs for the students from discarded vegetable boxes. I design games from my
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Hanan Al Hroub
sister’s neglected Lego pieces. Mathematics lessons are done with the aid of plastic cups, plates and clothespins. I made a puppet theatre out of a former clotheshorse, and an orchard in the classroom from artificial grass. The only limit is your imagination.” The outcome, she said, had been very positive. The Ministry of Education in Palestine was now encouraging other schools to follow the same principles. “It should be the first priority to provide a safe, attractive and fun educational environment.” These lessons, she added, are relevant for the UK too: “Hundreds of refugee children have landed on these shores. We must remember that these children are scared, alone, and traumatised. The UK government must ensure that these children have a safe, secure and loving environment.” She reminded the audience that “79% of refugee children have experienced a death in the family, while 45% display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Around the world, she concluded, teaching is not as valued as other professions. “But teachers are the real power of the world. It is teachers that light the spark of curiosity. And it is teachers that point and guide the way. It is teachers who take the next generation in their hands and shape it.” Ms Al Hroub complimented the work carried out by the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and the REAL Centre: “The University of Cambridge is helping to shine a light on teachers –something the world needs more than ever before.”
emergencies is about. There’s a question of why do children who have fled their countries need to read and write. The thought is that surely that’s not the most important thing in their lives. This doesn’t take into account the impact that education can have on children in terms of restoring that sense of normality, giving them a place of peace, to recover, to grow and make sense of what has happened to them. The Malala Fund is calling governments to realise that education is essential for building peace.” The Global Teacher Prize is a US $1 million award presented annually to an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession. Awarded by the Varkey Foundation under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister, and Emir of Dubai, the prize serves to underline the importance of educators, celebrate their efforts and recognise their impact. A shortlist of 50 teachers has recently been announced for the 2017 prize. The winner will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum taking place in Dubai on 18-19 March 2017. www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/real One in three children in conflict zones does not go to school
This view was echoed by Philippa Lei, Director of Programmes of the Malala Fund, who in responding to Ms Al Hroub’s lecture said: “Pauline Rose and the REAL Centre have done some important work showing how girls fall further behind in their education when they are in situations of conflict. The world is not making sure that girls and boys are getting a good quality education when it comes to conflict and emergencies.” “A large part of that is because people misunderstand what education in
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 29
Advancing in Your Ideal Career Jane is an amazing photographer, but after her family’s holiday party she was offered a job in her sister-in-law Kerry’s company calling clients to collect on invoices. No one in Jane’s family feels her photography skills are going to help her earn a living for herself. After several months of Jane working at Kerry’s company, both Jane and Kerry have had enough of each other. Jane once again feels like a total failure. And Kerry has an even bigger problem than before with clients not paying on time.
In this column, we explain three ways Jane could find a more fulfilling and lucrative career by using her innate strengths. 1. Leverage your innate strengths
Even if those closest to you have no appreciation for who you are (which is more often than not the case). Every single one of us has unique strengths that, when used correctly, help us create more success, fulfillment, and happiness in life.
The more you know how to build off your strengths, the more value you create for both yourself and others.
What are some lessons to learn from this scenario? There are of course the standard cautionary tales about hiring your family. But more importantly, this scenario shows the consequences of failing to draw from your innate strengths in choosing your career path.
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By Michelle LaBrosse,CCPM, PMP®, PMI-ACP, RYT, and Founder of Cheetah Learning
2. Use your innate strengths to better learn, get things done, and build off others’ innate strengths.
Who you are, when used in targeted and focused ways, can enable you to succeed in ways that are unique to only you. Success means something different for each of us, but what is universal about “success” is that it is the expression of how well we are using our innate talents. Don’t just use the closest and most available person to take on your biggest challenges (like Kerry did). Jane needs to seek out those opportunities where she can develop the skills required to make it as a professional photographer. While learning how to collect on delinquent accounts is a valuable skill if you don’t set up your business correctly, it’s not the best use of an aspiring photographer’s talents.
3. Find and create better opportunities based on your innate strengths.
Jane here is the one at the family party who stages some amazing group photographs. But her family generally thinks she needs to just give up on it and get a “real” job.
Think about the “ugly swan” metaphor here - when you work in alignment with your innate strengths, you are able to seek out opportunities that better fit who you really are.
This takes some inside information about who you are and how to make who you are create value for others.
Can you imagine a career that is aligned with the best of who you are, the people you prefer to be around, the work you prefer to do, when and where you prefer to do this work, and in which you achieve results you know you are capable of achieving if only you had the necessary support? This can be your reality. With the right insights into your innate strengths, along with skills to best use your strengths in coordination with the development and implementation of a feasible plan that works for you, you can succeed in a career best-suited to who you are.
About the Author: Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is an entrepreneurial powerhouse with a penchant for making success easy, fun, and fast. She is the founder of Cheetah Learning, the author of the Cheetah Success Series, and a prolific blogger whose mission is to bring Project Management to the masses. Cheetah Learning is a virtual company with 100 employees, contractors, and licensees worldwide. To date, more than 50,000 people have become “Cheetahs” using Cheetah Learning’s innovative Project Management and
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accelerated learning techniques. Honored by the Project Management Institute (PMI®), Cheetah Learning was named Professional Development Provider of the Year at the 2008 PMI® Global Congress. A dynamic keynote speaker and industry thought leader, Michelle is recognized by PMI as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the world. Michelle also developed the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) program based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality profiling to help students master how to use their unique strengths for learn is recognized by PMI as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the world. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 31
New Zealand School of Dance to Celebra On March 6th 1967 The New Zealand School of Dance (NZSD), then known as the National School of Ballet, welcomed its first group of aspiring young dancers. In the 50 years since it has continued to attract and inspire young dancers from home and abroad to receive the training and support they need to thrive in the world of professional dance. In that time NZSD has become one of the Southern Hemisphere’s leading dance institutions and now operates with an international reach, not only attracting world class tutors but also sending students to companies in Europe, Asia, USA and Australia. The programme offered at NZSD is one of consummate excellence and offers a unique balance of classical and contemporary dance training. To mark the School’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2017 the NZSD has planned a number of special events. These include performances with the Royal New Zealand Ballet and the commissioning of new works by contemporary dance graduates. The NZSD is
publishing a stunning collector’s book of highlights, honouring alumni, choreographers and teachers who have passed through the School and played a significant role in shaping this country’s dance culture. The book launch will be timed to coincide with the anniversary week on 5 March 2017. Striking images by renowned photographer Stephen A’Court illustrate the book which is being designed by award winning Neil Pardington and written by Turid Revfeim. Graduate Turid, a former soloist with the Royal New Zealand Ballet and Ballet Mistress has a unique insight into the school. ‘The training I received prepared me for a career dancing in Europe, as well as here with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, performing in both contemporary and classical works.’ Turid Revfeim The School has many alumni who have led successful dance careers. Amongst an esteemed group of graduates currently making their mark are classical
New Zealand School of Dance students in 1967 32 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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ate 50 years of World Class Training graduate Harrison James who has risen to success as Principal Dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, Raewyn Hill as Artistic Director with Co:3 dance company in Perth, Shona McCullagh is Chief Executive/Artistic Director of The New Zealand Dance Company, and Laura Saxon Jones who is with the Royal New Zealand Ballet. NZSD graduates can be seen dancing with companies such as Australian Dance Theatre, Black Grace, English National Ballet,
New Zealand Dance Company, Queensland Ballet and Singapore Dance Theatre just to name a few. A year of celebrations will conclude with the 50th Anniversary Graduation Season at the St James Theatre in Wellington 24-25 November 2017. Performances will feature the New Zealand School of Dance students alongside dancers from the Royal New Zealand Ballet. This programme of ballet and contemporary dance honours the school’s rich heritage and looks forward to a vibrant future.
Photographed by Stephen A’Court.
Tickets are now on sale at ticketek.co.nz
New Zealand School of Dance students in 2017
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 33
Don’t Mind Me, I’ll Just Be In third grade, my teacher recommended I be tested for the school’s Gifted Program. I had begged my parents not to make me different, to not give people a reason to expect things of me–things I wasn’t sure I could deliver. They ignored me, so I took matters into my own hands. How many in a dozen, Stephanie? 14. How would you solve this equation, Stephanie? With a calculator. Yep. Sure did throw the whole test. Today as a parent, I would be livid if my kids were embarrassed by their intelligence. I wish I could go back to 1989 and kick my own ass. Shortly after pretending to be a moron, I got really good at gymnastics. I placed first in every event at a big meet despite accidentally bending my knee during a back walkover. After the meet, my competitor and her mother parted the sea of kind faces that had gathered to congratulate me and said only: “Nice back walkover.” I understood that to mean: “We’ll be watching you, waiting for another mistake.” More people expecting more things of me? Nope. I quickly decided gymnastics wasn’t for me, and although my parents didn’t understand how fizzling passion could coincide with such a milestone, they let me trade my leotard for a glove and cleats. It was his first game under the lights. If he asked once, he asked 30 times that afternoon if the game would be 34 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
canceled because of the rain. He was so excited! At least I initially interpreted his questioning as excitement… Those who know my current disdain and self-prescribed disability with numbers will be shocked to learn I was once a kick ass math tutor. Stop laughing. That is, until the year I had the teacher who was notorious for embarrassing her students. Picture the in-crowd picking on you, and now picture their ringleader as the adult you were supposed to trust. Intimidating stuff. One day as I stretched during a test, my teacher saw an opportunity; she pierced the silent room with a screeching, “Is that really necessary?!” Unbeknownst to me, a half an inch of my belly had been exposed mid-stretch, and thanks to her calling attention to it, all eyes turned from test papers to me. Leftover gymnast abs be damned, my face burned hot with insecurities and something else: hatred. I grew to hate that teacher and that class. My days as a tutor were over; I was so busy keeping my guard up that I could barely keep my own Algebra grade up, let alone other students’. As the game began, family members and I scanned the field for him. He wasn’t there. Instead of taking his position, he was walking toward me, slumped over in a dramatic gesture. His stomach hurt, he was going to throw up. Between several uneventful trips to the bathroom and Mother’s Intuition kicking in, I tried
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Over Here Quitting explaining the brain-belly connection and how when we’re nervous or scared, our brains can trick our bellies into feeling sick. I tried tough love (you’re letting your team down); I tried inspiration (you’ve got this! you’re a great player!). I pulled out all my tricks, but none of them mattered. His mind was made up: he was not playing in that game. Softball was going well. I wasn’t the best, but I was good. I had a strong arm and usually one of the highest batting averages. When a summer league coach chose me for the All-star team, he followed up with, “You’re a good player, you just need to believe in yourself.” I didn’t admit it wasn’t a matter of confidence; it was a matter of wanting to fly under the radar, fewer expectations under there. Since that is not how die hard athletes roll, I feigned heart break over big losses and kept suggestions for post-game ice cream to myself. I played well up through high school, until intensifying competition revealed me. There is no ice cream in varsity ball. Eventually, Coach saw my insides; she knew I wasn’t made of the stuff of real athletes. When she told me I’d have to earn what had been my starting position as catcher, I was all indignant, like, “So I have to try? No thanks,” and I quit the team my senior year. Without realizing it, I had become a quitter, a quitter who was afraid to fail. A quitter who couldn’t handle the self-imposed pressure of perfection. Not until today, as a
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35-year-old mother of three, did I understand the far reaching impact of that pressure. On the way home, my 7-year-old son burst into tears. It had been difficult to see the ball under the lights, it was raining, there were mud puddles on the field. He didn’t have the words to name it, but I knew he was feeling it: that self-imposed pressure of perfection. Circumstances weren’t what he had hoped, expectations were high, so he quit before had a chance to fail. Never even trying Refusing to work to our full potential Fearing what’s outside our comfort zone Allowing a handful of naysayers to direct our path I’ve been so busy agonizing over my son’s inability to handle pressure and manage his emotions that I hadn’t noticed he is me. The very traits I see and fear in my child are quite simply extensions of my own. I didn’t know what to do about them as a kid, and I’m not so sure I know what to do about them as a Mother. And that’s a huge gut-punch.
Hey there, I’m Steph! English teacher by trade, smack-talker by nature, and mother of three who lives by the mantra: Life is too short, laugh! I hope you’ll stick around and check out my stuff. And by stuff I mean my writing. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 35
How Finland’s youngest learne — by fooling around in school It is lunch time at the University of Eastern Finland’s teacher training lab school in North Karelia, a lush forest and lake district on the Russian border. Fourth-grade children race to the cafeteria in their stockinged feet, laughing, hugging, practicing dance steps and cavorting as they head for the cafeteria. One girl does a full handstand in the hallway. A distinguished-looking professor beams at the procession and doles out high-fives to the children. He is Heikki Happonen, head of the school and a career childhood educator. As chief of Finland’s association of eight national university teacher training schools, he is, in effect, the Master Teacher of Finland, the country which still has, despite many challenges and a recent slide in global test scores, the No. 1 best primary school system in the world, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017.
Children’s brains work better when they are moving, the master teacher explains. Not only do they concentrate better in class, but they are more successful at “negotiating, socializing, building teams and friendships together.” Finland leads the world in its discovery that play is the most fundamental engine and efficiency-booster of children’s learning. The nation’s children learn through play until age 7, and then are given guaranteed 15-minute outdoor play breaks every hour of every single school day (regardless of the weather) until high school. Another crucial secret: the learning environment, both physical and emotional.
“Children must feel like their school is a home for them, it belongs to them,” says Happonen. “They are very clever, they feel and appreciate an atmosphere of trust. We offer them an environment where they understand, ‘This is a place where I am highly respected. I feel safe and comfortable here. I am a According to Happonen, the hallway scene reveals very important person.’ My job is to protect that one of the secrets of Finland’s historic success in environment for children. That’s why I come to work childhood education. every day.” Children in Eastern Finland in what is considered one of the Happonen designed much of the most important activities of the day: recess. Nordic-modern school building Photo: William Doyle
himself, a network of traditional classrooms linked by spacious hallways, cinematic soft lighting and warm colors, a palatial (by American standards) teachers lounge for coffee and collaboration (complete with a sauna for teachers), and comfortable scattered nooks, crannies and couches for children to relax and curl up in with a buddy or a book. Connecting all the pieces, flanked by the high-tech science lab, a fireplace and plush sofas, is a modular, wide-open library of books and magazines for children to enjoy. It is the focal point of the school. On a recent visit, a teacher from Spain was nearly speechless after a few minutes inside the school.
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ers obey the rules l
Master teacher reveals secrets of the world’s best education system
William Doyle
“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “In Spain, our schools feel like prisons. But this – this is like a dream.” Happonen points to a colorful assortment of hand-carved wooden boats mounted on his office wall, featuring different shapes, sizes and types of vessels. “I saw those boats in a shop,” he recalls. “They were so beautiful. I decided I had to buy them, but I didn’t know why. I put them up on my office wall so I could see them all day.” ”My job is to protect that environment for children. That’s why I come to work every day.” “Then I realized what they are,” he continued. “They are children. They represent the fact that all children are different, they start from different destinations and travel on different journeys. Our job as teachers is to help children navigate their journeys through storms and adventures, so they move safely and successfully into society and the world.” Some aspects of Finland’s primary schools may be culture-specific and non-transferrable to other nations. But many other features may in fact be minimum “global best practices” for childhood education systems in Harlem, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Los Angeles, Dubai, Mexico City, South Africa and elsewhere. These practices include early learning through play, equitable school funding, highly professionalized teacher training, a research-based and whole-child approach to school management, warmth and respect for children and teachers, learning environments of low stress and high challenge, strong special education, and treating all children as gifted and cherished individuals without sacrificing their childhoods to overwork or cram schools. Why would any of our children, especially those from high-poverty backgrounds, deserve any less? In the United States, decades of botched attempts at education reform have led to little or no improvement in our schools. As one of the founding fathers of the education reform movement, Chester
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“Master teacher” Heikki Happonen Photo: Hannu Koskela Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, recently declared, “If you look over the past 25 years at all the reforming we’ve been doing and all the spending we’ve been doing and still see flat [achievement] and slow slog as the main outcome, it’s pretty discouraging.” For any parent, teacher or policymaker looking instead for inspiration on how we can work together to actually improve our children’s education, they can start by coming to Finland’s dream school in the forest. This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. William Doyle William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar, New York Times bestselling author from New York City 2017 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Fellow, on the faculty of the University of Eastern Finland, and father of an eight year old who attends a Finnish public school. January 8, 2017 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 37
The Mind Lab by Unitec Mind Lab – an award winning specialist learning lab dedicated to increasing knowledge and understanding of modern technology.
The Mind Lab by Unitec •
The Mind Lab by Unitec is an award winning specialist learning lab dedicated to increasing knowledge and understanding of modern technology
The Mind Lab’s Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital & Collaborative Learning) for teachers is the largest postgraduate programme in New Zealand.
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The Mind Lab is transforming the education ecosystem in New Zealand from its current legacy model to become a contemporary sector that embraces the very best in technology, new thinking, research and new knowledge in order to prepare the next generation of New Zealanders for their future success
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The Mind Lab by Unitec’s multi-disciplinary, specialist labs (Auckland, Wellington, Gisborne and Christchurch) offer integrated workshops across a broad spectrum of creative and scientific technologies including; coding, 3D modelling and printing, robotics, game development, electronics, film effects and animation. These are delivered via a range of school class visits and holiday programmes, and teacher professional development is also available
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In 2014, The Mind Lab entered into a partnership with Unitec, which allowed it to expand its offer beyond school students via a Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital & Collaborative Learning). In doing so, The Mind Lab now works closely with teachers throughout New Zealand to help meet the needs of those many teachers who are faced with a generation of students who they aren’t adequately trained to teach
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The Mind Lab has become the largest education facility in New Zealand in three years of operation. We have had over 2,200 educators who have completed, or are currently completing, the postgraduate programme
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It offers teachers the chance to learn practical strategies for bringing technology to life in the classroom – assisting them to improve engagement with learners, increase student achievement, and ultimately enabling teachers to respond to the needs of their students in our rapidly advancing digital world. The programme is currently available across more than 20 locations in New Zealand, and the NEXT Foundation has come to the party offering 1350 scholarships of $2000 to fund New Zealand teachers through the 32-week parttime NZQA-accredited qualification. The Mind Lab by Unitec is once again recruiting for teachers to enrol in the programme for its March 2017 intake – and wanting to get teachers thinking now about how they can take their teaching practice to the next level in 2017 and not be left behind in the digital world.
the next five years, as new sites are established, The Mind Lab has the goal of teaching 10,000 teachers and over 180,000 school students.
Current Mind Lab student managing to fit study in with a fulltime senior management position: “Listening to staff, hearing the enthusiasm in their voices and seeing the motivation was enough to convince me that I should enrol in the next round of Mindlab (Graduate Diploma in Applied Practice). Being in management I felt it was important to fully understand what they were learning and wanting to try in their classrooms. 38 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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Postgraduate programme overview: •
The Mind Lab by Unitec’s Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital & Collaborative Learning) is redefining professional development for teachers through the offering of a hands-on, progressive and blended qualification
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This qualification is changing the teaching practices of educators across the country as they build knowledge and understanding of new ways to teach. And importantly, the programme raises confidence in the delivery of collaborative methodologies that support digital literacy and capability
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Thanks to the generous support from NEXT Foundation, 2150 scholarships where provided in 2015 & 2016 with additional scholarships available for 2017. These $2000 + GST NEXT Generation Teacher scholarships are available for registered teachers of public schools
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The programme is designed for educators at all levels from early childhood through to tertiary. It is a 32-week part time NZQA-accredited qualification, delivered in two innovative blended learning stages, each of 16 weeks The course is currently available across multiple locations in New Zealand. The launch of new locations is driven by the Where To Next Programme – an online platform giving educators in postgrad-less towns across New Zealand the opportunity to crowd-source a lab of their own (a minimum of 40 expressions of interest per location is needed). It is important to note that locations are not guaranteed from intake to intake – this is conditional on enrolment numbers for each intake.
Having completed the first nine weeks I have to say that I have not been disappointed. For me the best part about Mindlab is the discussions we have each session and networking with other teachers. The discussions challenge and extend my thinking, provide new ideas and certainly take me out of my comfort zone at times. My fear of the introduction of digital technologies
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Qualification highlights •
Gain new theoretical and practical knowledge within the field of teaching and education supported by research, observation and applied practice
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Build knowledge of 21st Century education practices and learn how to integrate relevant technologies and methodologies
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Develop a more student-centred and personalised approach to learning
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Evaluate personal teaching environments (class, school or community-wide) and learn how to identify development and advancement opportunities.
being ‘gimmicky’ was totally unfounded. The way that they are introduced with very sound pedagogy behind them offers teachers a variety of ways of engaging students. If you are looking for a way to not only incorporate new technologies into your teaching but to develop your leadership and challenge your pedagogy Mindlab is for you.” Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 39
Artist Turns Old CDs Into Amazing Sculptures A broken CD isn’t much good to anyone. Unless you’re Sean Avery that is. Because while most of us would just throw them in the trash, the South Africa-born, Australia-based artist turns them into various dazzling animal sculptures. He makes them by gluing CD shards to wire mesh frames shaped like different animals, and as you can see from his iridescent animal kingdom, there seems to be no limit to the types of creatures he can create. “My sculptures are all constructed with recycled materials — old CDs, computer hard drives etc, so I classify my work as “sustainable art,”” says the artist. “They’re a lot of fun to make, but they take an extremely long time to finish, so I don’t do a lot of them.”
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s Instead Of Throwing Them Away James Gould-Bourn
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Happy New Year guys!
Has everyone had a well deserved break? Hope “I forgot…” “I can’t remember…” so! “I don’t know…” How has the first day back gone? (For those What! they couldn’t wait to tell me when they of you that are back to school that is, I know first came in! some lucky Devils have got another week yet Then one little girl explains, in great detail, :-/ ) about her lovely new kitchen she got, with a I must admit (and I’m sure you’ll all agree) real microwave and an oven door and pots getting out of bed this morning was TOUGH. and pans to go with it…then the next girl got a Like REALLLLLLY tough. Like contemplating lovely new kitchen, with a real microwave and phoning in sick, or giving yourself food an oven door and pots and pans….then the poisoning on purpose sort of tough. And next boy got a lovey new kitchen… (you get the when the Mr on the radio this morning said picture) today is supposedly the most depressing day Ah dear! of the year, I could totally relate. I was very surprised when one of my darlings But I have to be honest with you, I have told me she got a ‘pregnant Barbie’ – actually had a really good day back, the kids seriously, this is actually a real thing (I just have been great and it has been quite nice to had to come home and Google it – unless you get back to a little bit of normality…I think. want nightmares for weeks, I wouldn’t. Those Although I had forgot about a teacher’s need things are WEIRD. Seriously creepy) to have expert bladder control, and realised Then another told me she got an ‘Elsa cloak around 10:30, with another hour and half that blows up your bottom’. until lunch time, that 3rd cup of coffee was “Blows up your bottom?” I asked, just to make NOT a good idea. sure I’d heard correctly. After falling about laughing for a few The children were super giddy when they minutes, the children and my TA kindly told came in this morning, excited to tell me all me its an Elsa cloak that glows up at the about their holidays and what Santa had bottom! brought them for Christmas, so I thought it would be nice to start off with a circle time to let them share with their peers.
I gave up on circle time after that, I couldn’t cope!
Did the register, sat in a circle, got my teddy to Have any of your children pass to the first boy in the circle… had any ‘unusual’ gifts this “So what was your favourite present from year?? Santa?” 48 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
Secret Teacher xx
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OfficeMax amps up support for Kiwi kids during holidays This festive season most families will be busy spending time with loved ones, but across New Zealand there are many children who find the holidays one of the toughest times of the year. It’s when issues around family relationships, abuse and neglect can affect young people the most. To help ease what can be a tough time for many children, leading stationery and office supplier OfficeMax has joined up with children’s charity Barnardos to raise funds for Barnardos kids’ free helpline called ‘0800 What’s Up’. Just in time for Term 1, OfficeMax has designed a do-it-yourself colour-me-in bag, with $5 from each sale donated to the helpline during what is its busiest time. OfficeMax Australia and New Zealand’s Managing Director Kevin Obern said they are pleased to help such a worthy cause, providing support for Kiwi kids this summer. “We love working with Barnardos and having the opportunity to give a helping hand to children across New Zealand,” he said.
Throughout 2016 Barnardos counsellors answered more than 35,000 calls – traditionally receiving the bulk from children during holidays. Barnardos Fundraising Manager Jacqui Ritchie said every $5 donated helps answer another call. “Every bit counts when it comes to providing support and doing more for kids across the nation,” she said. “We are so appreciative of the support from OfficeMax and its investment in caring for Kiwi kids.” OfficeMax brand ambassador April Ieremia said she is looking forward to the colouring challenge, and the opportunity to give back to kids in a meaningful way. “It’ll be fun to see how we can jazz this bag up – especially as my colouring skills have gone rusty since primary school,” she said. The colour-me-in bag is available now for $9.99 in all OfficeMax stores nationwide and online, until stocks last. Every purchase will see $5 donated to Barnardos children’s helpline 0800What’s Up.
“Purchasing the colour-me-in bag for your child is not only great for back to school, but also provides a valuable lesson on the importance of helping others less fortunate.”
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 49
Robust evidence showing Ugandan with periods Oxford University researchers say they have the first robust findings from a large-scale trial on the effects of giving puberty lessons and free sanitary products to girls in African countries. They have found that both the interventions are equally effective in improving girls’ attendance levels at schools. The results are significant given the amount of resources that governments, international organisations and local charities invest in these interventions for girls in developing countries. The paper, published in the journal, PLOS ONE, shows that there is now good evidence to back up such efforts to improve the education of girls and women, thereby raising their self-esteem and job prospects. The trial carried out by Oxford University involved 1,000 girls at eight schools in Uganda. Researchers found that in the two schools where sanitary pads or puberty education were not provided, over 18 months levels of absenteeism among girls were 17% higher, on average, compared with schools where girls received pads, education, or a combination of both. This amounts to the equivalent of nearly three and a half days of school a month, says the paper.
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The paper led by Professor Paul Montgomery, from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, focuses on how puberty can have negative effects on a girl’s education they are given help on how to manage periods and the bodily changes. Researchers used a randomised trial to see whether absenteeism levels improved if girls were given reusable pads, puberty classes, or combinations of both and compared this approach with one where they had no intervention at all. All the schools were in the Kamuli district, one of the poorest, rural areas of Uganda, which is reported to have high dropout rates, and some of the highest illiteracy and fertility rates in the world. It is a district where, according to official government data, only 54% of girls at the local secondary schools are able to read, compared with 69% of boys. The findings of this study which show the positive effects of such interventions echo an earlier pilot study in Ghana, also carried out by Oxford University researchers. Previous studies have already found that menstruation is viewed widely in developing countries as ‘embarrassing’, ‘shameful’ and ‘dirty’; being unable to stay clean is one of the main reasons why girls stay away from their lessons. The paper describes how most of the women and girls in Uganda rely on absorbent cloth during their periods, but it is sometimes difficult for them to source enough clean material for this use. The girls also often find the cloth is not sufficiently absorbent and difficult to secure in underwear, or to change and clean, adds the paper. Professor Paul Montgomery, from the University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, said: ‘Many girls don’t know about periods before they encounter their first one. They are totally unprepared because they receive no information or training on how to manage them. Just by giving girls lessons in puberty
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girls stay in lessons when helped or a purpose-built sanitary pad means they were more likely to stay at school during their periods, minimising the risk of disruption to their schooling. Simple interventions like these can have major long-term economic implications for women in low and middle income countries, which socially empowers them.’ The paper says there have been ‘considerable improvements’ across the globe in driving up school enrolment levels, particularly at primary level. According to UNESCO, by the end of 2015, nearly three quarters (70%) of countries with data show as many girls as boys in primary schools. Differences emerge, however, once pupils reach their teens. In Uganda, only 22% of girls were enrolled in secondary schools compared with 91% of girls in primary schools, with those living in rural areas being the least likely group to go to school, according to latest official figures. Co-author Julie Hennegan, also from the University of Oxford, said: ‘Our trial does not examine whether there are potential harms in exposing those girls who are menstruating at any given time. In developing countries, it is particularly important to be sensitive to the girls’ social norms as we need to avoid stigmatising girls through singling them out for pads. There is therefore an urgent need to carry out further research examining this feature of possible intervention programmes.’
Notes The PLOS ONE article, ‘Menstruation and the cycle of poverty: a cluster quasi-randomised control trial of sanitary pad and puberty education provision in Uganda’, http:// journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. pone.0166122 The research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the project, ‘Menstruation and the Cycle of Poverty’, in collaboration with SOAS. The study examines how puberty intersects with girls’ educational futures in Kamuli District, Uganda. The study builds on the findings of a pilot study (conducted in Ghana in 2008/9), in which the circumstances of menarche appeared to catalyse a sequence of negative events for girls, with implications for their health, safety, learning, fertility, community involvement, and economic autonomy. Building on the inferences drawn from the pilot, the study conducted a randomised trial that demonstrated the effects of puberty education and sanitary pads on school attendance, completion and retention, and investigated its effect on absenteeism that goes otherwise unchecked is articulated through poor performance, discouragement, and drop out. For more information about the project, go to: https://www.spi.ox.ac.uk/research/details/menstruationand-the-cycle-of-poverty.html The Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University conducts world-leading research to address urgent social problems. Researchers look at what works in social and psychosocial programmes, and are experts in conducting high-quality randomised trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses. See: http://www.cebi.ox.ac. uk/home.html Paul Montgomery is Professor of Psycho-Social Intervention whose academic work spans a range of issues, and integrates the use of several high-quality methodological approaches, many of which have not been traditionally applied in the social sciences. He sits on the CrossWhitehall Trial Advice Panel, through which he advises the UK Cabinet Office on the design and conduct of randomised trials in social policy. Previously, he has served as an advisor to the UK Government’s Centre for Excellence in Outcomes, and sits on a World Health Organization guideline development panel related to evidence synthesis in complex interventions.
For more information, contact the University of Oxford News Office
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Stanford researchers say school kid biological experiments over the int A remote-controlled system enables teachers and students to design and observe experiments involving single-celled organisms. For as long as biology has been a cornerstone of scientific education, laboratory instruction for students has begun with an introduction to the wonders of one-celled creatures under a microscope. The students learn the form and function of the various cell parts – the flagella, the organelles, the membranes, etc. – and dutifully catalog what they see. They observe passively, never interacting with the cells. Now, researchers at Stanford University have brought together bioengineers and educators to develop an Internet-enabled biological laboratory that allows students to truly interact with living cells in real-time, potentially reshaping how students learn about biology.
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This interactive Biology Cloud Lab, as the researchers have dubbed their prototype, could one day empower millions of students to learn in new and more imaginative ways. The team, led by Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and Paulo Blikstein, assistant professor of education, published its work in Nature Biotechnology. “What has been missing from early biological lab experiences has been that last bit of basic science – the ability to truly interact and experiment with living cells so that students experience first-hand how cells behave in reaction to external stimuli,” RiedelKruse said. “Labs in most schools are stuck in the 19th century, with cookbook-style experiments,” Blikstein said, adding, “Biology Cloud Labs could democratize real scientific investigation and change how kids learn science.”
How it works The Biology Cloud Lab gives students and teachers remote control software to operate what the researchers call biotic processing units (BPUs). Each BPU includes a microfluidic chip containing communities of microorganisms. Around each chip,
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ds can do safe and simple ternet
By Andrew Myers
four user-controlled LEDs allow students to apply different types of light stimuli. A webcam microscope livestreams the chip’s content.
makes it easy for students to analyze and visualize the data, test hypotheses and program the system to run hundreds of experiments automatically.
The authors used a common single-celled organism called Euglena. Euglena seek out light to turn it into energy, but they are also repelled when the light grows too intense. It is this behavioral contrast that forces students to hypothesize why Euglena behave as they do, providing a deeper understanding of the scientific process that is the very point of early lab work.
The team tested its prototype, located on the Stanford campus, with a group of ten self-paced university students working from their homes in a college-level biophysics class. A second test with middle-school cohorts involved live, in-classroom experiments. These were projected on a wall where one student controlled the light stimuli through a joystick as the class discussed results and suggested various experimental variations.
Students can control the lab from any internetenabled computer, tablet or smartphone. Today they can issue commands to shine the LEDS this way or that and observe how the Euglena behave. The researchers plan to add other microorganisms and stimuli; the concept of remotely controlled, interactive learning would also apply to physics, chemistry and other fields. Even with this prototype the researchers are thinking big. They believe that 250 of their biotic processing units, installed in a single 100-square-meter room and networked with a one-gigabit-per-second Internet connection, could serve a million students each year. At that scale, each experiment would cost just one cent. “We have optimized the technology to keep the cells stable and responsive over weeks. This makes the Biology Cloud Lab low-cost and scalable for basic education,” Riedel-Kruse said. “And we also implemented interfaces for experiment automation, data analysis and modeling to enable deep inquiry.”
Science at scale Several states are starting to follow the Next Generation Science Standards, the new guidelines for K-12 science education in the United States. Many other countries are reforming their science standards due to the increasing need for scientific literacy in the 21st century. “Many of these international standards have proven hard to implement in real-world classrooms due to logistical and cost factors, especially for life sciences,” Blikstein said. “The Biology Cloud Lab will put many of the most sophisticated NGSS practices within reach of students for the first time.” The researchers explained that the system includes software that
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“The technical challenges were considerable,” said Zahid Hossain, first-author and doctoral candidate in computer science who designed the hardware and cloud architecture. “To make the biotic processing units work we had to develop new algorithms so that many, many users can run experiments over an extended time.”
Learning outcomes Engin Bumbacher, a graduate student at the Graduate School of Education and a co-author on the paper, remarked on the learning outcomes. “The students visibly enjoyed the interactive experiments, noting behaviors and trying many light sequences,” Brumbacher said. “They engaged in rich discussions, analysis and modeling, all in a single online lesson.“ In a third trial the Stanford researchers collaborated with Professor Kemi Jona at Northeastern University to integrate the Biology Cloud Lab into an educational content management system that allows teachers to personalize their lesson plans. Then students from a Chicago middle school successfully ran their experiments. “We are doing to biology what Seymour Papert did to computer programming in the 1970s with the Logo language,” Blikstein said. “The Biology Cloud Lab makes previously impossible activities easy and accessible to kids – and maybe also to professional scientists in the future.” This research was supported by two National Science Foundation Cyberlearning grants, two Stanford Graduate Fellowships, and the Lemann Center at Stanford University. Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 53
Humorous New Contextual Street Sign Interventions by Michael Pederson Christopher Jobson Look close, or you’ll miss it. Camouflaged like legitimate street signs in public spaces around Sydney you’ll find these fun urban interventions by artist Michael Pederson (aka Miguel Marquez Outside). A park solitude rating guide, oversized emergency panic buttons, or personal space preference cards, all completely ludicrous and yet it’s hard not to think these might be useful in certain situations. We’ve mentioned Pederson here previously, and you can see more of Pederson’s work on Instagram.
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Teenagers who access mental healt improvements, study shows Young people with mental health problems who have contact with mental health services are significantly less likely to suffer from clinical depression later in their adolescence than those with equivalent difficulties who do not receive treatment, according to new research from the University of Cambridge. This comes as Prime Minister Theresa May announced measures to improve mental health support at every stage of a person’s life, with an emphasis on early intervention for children and young people. If we intervene at an early stage, we can see potentially dramatic improvements in adolescents’ symptoms of depression and reduce the risk that they go on to develop severe depressive illness Sharon Neufeld
The study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, found that 14-year-old adolescents who had contact with mental health services had a greater decrease in depressive symptoms than those with similar difficulties but without contact.
Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry recruited 1,238 14-year-old adolescents and their primary caregivers from secondary schools in Cambridgeshire, and followed them up at the age of 17. Their mental state and behaviour was assessed by trained researchers, while the teenagers selfreported their depressive symptoms. Of the participants, 126 (11%) had a current mental illness at start of the study – and only 48 (38%) of these had had contact with mental health services in the year prior to recruitment. Contact with mental health services appeared to be of such value that after three years the levels of depressive symptoms of service users with a mental disorder were similar to those of 996 unaffected individuals. “Mental illness can be a terrible burden on individuals, but our study shows clearly that if we intervene at an early stage, we can see potentially dramatic improvements in adolescents’ symptoms of depression and reduce the risk that they go on to develop severe depressive illness,” says Sharon
By the age of 17, the odds of reporting clinical depression were more than seven times higher in individuals without contact than in service users who had been similarly depressed at baseline.
Photo: Seth Dickens 58 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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th services see significant Neufeld, first author of the study and a research associate at in the Department of Psychiatry.
an increase in severe cases that require longer stays in inpatient facilities.
The Cambridge study is believed to be the first study in adolescents to support the role of contact with mental health services in improving mental health by late adolescence. Previous studies have reported that mental health service use has provided little or no benefit to adolescents, but the researchers argue that this may be because the design of those studies did not consider whether service users had a mental disorder or not. The approach taken on this new study enabled it to compare as closely as possible to present study statistically-balanced treated versus untreated individuals with a mental disorder a randomised control trial.
On 9 January this year, the Prime Minister announced plans to transform the way we deal with mental illness in the UK at every stage of a person’s life – not just in our hospitals, but in our classrooms, at work and in our communities – adding: “This starts with ensuring that children and young people get the help and support they need and deserve – because we know that mental illness too often starts in childhood and that when left untreated, can blight lives, and become entrenched.”
The researchers say their study highlights the need to improve access to mental health services for children and adolescents. Figures published in 2015 show that NHS spending on children’s mental health services in the UK has fallen by 5.4% in real terms since 2010 to £41 million, despite an increase in demand. This has led to an increase in referrals and waiting times and
Professor Ian Goodyer, who led the study, has cautiously welcomed the commitment from the Prime Minister and her Government. “The emphasis going forward should be on early detection and intervention to help mentally-ill teens in schools, where there is now an evidence base for psychosocial intervention,” he says. “We need to ensure, however, that there is a clear pathway for training and supervision of school-based psychological workers and strong connections to NHS child and adolescent mental health services for those teens who will need additional help. “As always, the devil is in the detail. The funding of services and how the effectiveness of intervention is monitored will be critical if we are to reduce mental illness risks over the adolescent years. With the right measures and school-based community infrastructure, I believe this can be achieved.” The research was funded by Wellcome and the National Institute for Health Research. Reference: Neufeld, S et al. Reduction in adolescent depression after contact with mental health services: a longitudinal cohort study in the UK. Lancet Psychiatry; 10 Jan 2017; DOI: 10.1016/ S2215-0366(17)30002-0
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Toiapiapi By Hirini Melbourne Shearwaters ISBN: 9780908864287 RRP $34.95 First released in 1991 this 25th Anniversry Edition has new materal and an introduction by Hirini’s colleague and collaborator Richard Nunns All schools should have a copy of this significant collection of songs and instruments. (‘Maori Musical treasures’) 60 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
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REGISTER NOW TO SECURE YOUR EARLY BIRD TICKET
A N O U T S TA N D I N G L E A R N I N G O P P O R T U N I T Y P R E S E N T I N G S U G ATA M I T R A A N D S I R J O H N J O N E S F O R T H E F I R S T T I M E I N N E W Z E A L A N D. F R A N C E S VA L I N T I N E A N D M O R E.
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SELF-ORGANISED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS. SCHOOLS IN T
Sugata Mitra
Sir John Jones
Educational researcher Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize. Chief Researcher of “Hole in the Wall� Experiment. His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another.
Sir John Jones is a worldrenowned educational leader and researcher and the only person ever to be knighted for his services to education. A highly motivating, enthusiastic and humorous presenter.
Frances Valintine
Mark Osborne
Frances Valintine is an Education Futurist and the founder of The Mind Lab by Unitec and Tech Futures Lab. In 2016 Frances was recognised as one of the Top 50 EdTech Educators in the world by EdTech International in the UK.
Mark is Senior Advisor in Future-Focused Education at CORE Education, working mostly in the areas of innovative learning environments, change leadership and teaching as inquiry.
Gordon Poad
MC Andrew Patterson
As Regional Principal of OneSchool Europe, Gordon Poad has taken the road less travelled into educational leadership. His inspirational thoughts on education are as much informed by his experience as a theatre director as his many years as a leadership and learning consultant.
While not an educator, Andrew Patterson might very well be classed as one. With a passion for education, he is a confident, energetic MC who will lead us through this exciting event.
BOOK NOW leadingremarkablelearning.co.nz 2 March 2017
Auckland Conference
Full day conference comprised of congress style speakers and sofa chats from all presenters.
3 March 2017
Auckland Masterclass
One full day Masterclass with one presenter (3 choices).
6 March 2017
Christchurch Conference
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Full day conference comprised of congress style speakers and sofa chats from all presenters.
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T H E C LO U D. O N L I N E L E A R N I N G . T EC H N O LO GY. L E A D E R S H I P
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME TIME
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
SESSION
You should attend if you are:
Official Conference Opening Morning
»
Sir John Jones
understand how to shape your curriculum and culture
Sugata Mitra
Late Morning/Early Afternoon
In a position of responsibility in a school, needing to for the future.
Frances Valintine
»
An innovative teaching professional, needing inspiration.
Panel Session with Sugata Mitra, Sir John Jones, Mark Osborne, Frances Valintine and Gordon Poad, facilitated by Andrew Patterson
»
Policymakers and academics, needing to gain insights to transform learning systems.
Your role may be: Sir John Jones Afternoon
Late Afternoon 5.30pm – 8.00pm
Education leaders: Principals, Leadership Team Members,
Gordon Poad Mark Osborne
Heads of Department, Subject Heads, Managers.
Sugata Mitra
Practitioners: Senior Teachers, Lead Teachers, e-Learning
Closing Remarks
Co-ordinators, Subject Teachers.
Networking Function, hosted by Sugata Mitra
Decision-makers and decision influencers: Policymakers,
*THIS IS A HIGH-LEVEL OUTLINE OF THE PROGRAMME AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
ministry schools liaison, review officers, academics.
WORKSHOPS
A U C K L A N D O N LY Self-Directed, Self-Organising Learning With Sugata Mitra
Magic Weaving With Sir John Jones
The school of the future is a self-organised learning environment where students learn collaboratively using technology and the internet. Their natural curiosity can determine the questions, and they can find their own truth. The role of the teacher is simply to help them bring out the learning – “out-doctrination” rather than indoctrination. Sugata Mitra calls it “minimally invasive education”. It’s not so much an experiment as a revolution, in which children will become navigators of their own learning journey.
The future of learning is cast and we know it as well as we can, given that it is ever-changing, uncertain, immeasurable and an adventure. Drawing on neuro-linguistic science and a supreme art in storytelling, Sir John Jones inspires us to become emotionally brilliant in our response to this new world. As we strive to adapt, Sir John will offer ways to develop as leaders and rediscover our calling as teachers.
CONFERENCE PRICING
CONFERENCE + WORKSHOP
Early Bird Ticket Pricing – Limited Seats. Pricing includes a full day pass to the LRL Conference comprised of congress style speeches and sofa chats from Sugata Mitra, Sir John Jones, Frances Valintine and more.
Early Bird Ticket Pricing – Limited Seats. Pricing includes a two-day package consisting of a full day pass to the LRL Conference and a full-day workshop with a presenter of your choice the following day.
AUCKLAND & CHRISTCHURCH
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595 EA
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$
895 EA
1-2 attendees
$
795 EA
3-5 attendees
$
695 EA
6+ attendees
Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 63
Auckland
Christchurch
Conference and Masterclass 2-3 March 2017 Registrations from 7.30 am 9.00 am to 5.00 pm @Vodafone Events Centre
Conference Only 6 March 2017 Registrations from 7.30 am 9.00 am to 5.00 pm @Horncastle Arena
MORE ACCOMMODATION AND TRAVEL INFO ONLINE
MORE ACCOMMODATION AND TRAVEL INFO ONLINE
Join us for a Networking Function with Sugata Mitra after the conference
BOOK NOW leadingremarkablelearning.co.nz Phone: + 64 9 214 7440 Email: info@leadingremarkablelearning.co.nz
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Brief interventions help online lear Stanford research finding New research shows people in underdeveloped parts of the world are not as likely to complete massive open online courses, or MOOCs. But small psychological activities could help motivate them, closing the global achievement gap. Millions of people have taken free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which have been touted as democratizing access to educational opportunities around the world. But whether learners are likely to succeed in a MOOC largely depends on where they live, according to new Stanford-led research.
Image: L.A. Cicero
Stanford researchers show in a new study how affirmation activities help students persevere in online courses despite low development in their home countries. A study, published in the Jan. 20 issue of Science, found that people in less-developed countries are completing MOOCs at a lower rate than those in the more developed parts of the world. But, the researchers found, brief psychological interventions that affirm class takers’ sense that they belong can help close the global achievement gap. “MOOCs have expanded access to education but this doesn’t guarantee equal opportunities for people around the world,” said René Kizilcec, the lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication. “Providing access to the Internet and courseware is not enough. People need to feel welcome in online-learning environments to reach their potential.”
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Discovering the global gap Online education gained momentum in 2011, when institutions and entrepreneurs began developing different MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX. The higher-education landscape shifted and online course delivery became a viable option to extend learning opportunities to a global audience. But learning data made available by the courses themselves revealed that while many people enrolled in free, online courses, far fewer completed them. Kizilcec began researching MOOCs at the onset. Together with an interdisciplinary group of graduate students, he co-founded Stanford’s Lytics Lab in the fall of 2012. Over the past five years, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning and the Graduate School of Education, the lab has focused on studying the experiences of people who take MOOCs to advance the science of learning and instruction. Kizilcec said his previous research showed that achievement rates in online courses varied based on gender and education level of the learners. But the biggest gap was geographical. The geographic gap was quantified and visualized in the new study with data on completion rates of about 1.8 million people who have enrolled in Stanford’s MOOCs between 2012 and 2015 and with the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which measures the countries’ level of human development based on factors such as life expectancy, education and standard of living. The lower the development index was for the country associated with a learner’s IP address, the less likely the learner was to complete the course. “Though many had inklings that the gap was there, being able to identify it consistently across so many courses and learners was profound and provided us the foundation to dig deeper and explore interventions that could address this gap at such a scale,” said Andrew Saltarelli, a co-author of the research and a senior director of teaching design and practice in the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. René Kizilcec, doctoral candidate in Stanford’s Department of Communication, is lead author of a study showing how affirmation activities encourage MOOC completion in underdeveloped nations. Back to index
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rners persist with coursework... Alex Shashkevich
Psychological interventions While limited Internet access and low English proficiency may contribute to the global achievement gap, there may be more to it, according to researchers. “It’s not the average person in less-developed countries who is taking online courses,” Kizilcec said. “These learners tend to be well educated and highly motivated. So, instead of focusing on structural barriers that are complex and expensive to overcome, we tested a psychological explanation.” Kizilcec and others theorize that a psychological barrier contributes to the global gap in MOOCs, namely social identity threat, which is a fear of being seen as less competent because of a social identity. Research has demonstrated that social identity threat can impair a person’s working memory and academic performance. But Graduate School of Education and psychology Professor Geoffrey Cohen, who is a co-author on the study, showed in his previous work that simple interventions that encourage people to feel like they belong in the group helped reduce the effects of the social identity threat. “Psychology matters even in a diverse worldwide population over the Internet, and a little gesture of inclusion can have a big effect on learning outcomes,” Cohen said. Successful interventions Cohen used in face-to-face experiments were adapted for the online environment and implemented into the design of two MOOCs researched as part of the new study. In both classes, learners were asked to complete an online activity before starting the MOOC. Some learners were randomly assigned a social belonging activity, which had them read and summarize testimonials from previous students about how they worried about belonging in the course at first but felt more comfortable with time. Others were assigned to an affirmation activity, which had them write about how taking the course reflects and serves their most important values. The first experiment, which was conducted in a computer science MOOC offered by Stanford, collected data on 2,286 learners, of whom 16 percent were in less developed countries. The
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experiment was replicated in a public policy MOOC offered by Harvard with 1,165 learners. The results showed that both types of interventions had a large effect on the performance of learners in less-developed countries, doubling their persistence and essentially eliminating the global achievement gap. The affirmation intervention even reversed the gap by raising completion rates for learners in lessdeveloped countries from 17 percent to 41 percent. “It is an impressive result which suggests that social identity threat can be a barrier to performance in international learning contexts, even in online environments with little social interaction,” Kizilcec said. “It goes to show that a small change to the online experience can have profound and lasting effects if it influences people’s perceptions of an environment.” In one of the classes, the affirmation intervention, which helped those in less-developed countries the most, slightly reduced the completion rates of those in developed parts of the world. More research needs to be done to understand why, but some studies have shown that affirmation can cause people who aren’t under a psychological threat to disengage. Improving the online environment Using this new information about interventions, the next step for educators is to design exercises that target the right groups of people. “Our hope is that through encouraging learners to bring a healthy frame of mind to our courses, we can increase persistence and success and reduce gaps in opportunities between students from different backgrounds,” said Justin Reich, a co-author on the study and a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over time, researchers believe that online courses at Stanford and other institutions will evolve as more studies from the Lytics Lab shine light on how best to approach teaching and learning in virtual environments. “Many of us at Stanford believe that education is a public good,” Saltarelli said. “If there are groups of people who can’t be successful in learning experiences because of certain barriers, we have a responsibility to identify and remove the barriers.”
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Little Kids And Their Big Dogs James Gould-Bourn
“Little Kids and Their Big Dogs” is a heartwarming photography project by Andy Seliverstoff that focuses on the unbreakable bond between little children and their supersized dogs. The photographer, Andy Seliverstoff, 58, spent four months taking thousands of pictures in St Petersburg before compiling a book from the hundred best images. Andy has been a photographer for years but he’s only recently started to take it seriously. He has a particular fondness for dogs, Great Danes especially, although his canine subjects also include Briads, Newfoundlands, and Black Russian Terriers. “I always take plenty of time with the dog who’s in front of my camera so I get to know the personality of my dog model the best I can,” write the photographer on his website. “The personality and the character is unique for every individual dog. The human aspects we often recognize in our dogs are, among other things, what makes us feel so close to them. And it is this aspect I try to express in my photography.”
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More info: Andy Seliverstoff | Instagram | Facebook
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Stanford researchers find students judging the credibility of informatio Education scholars say youth are duped by sponsored content and don’t always recognize political bias of social messages.
The researchers began their work in January 2015, well before the most recent debates over fake news and its influence on the presidential election.
When it comes to evaluating information that flows across social channels or pops up in a Google search, young and otherwise digitalsavvy students can easily be duped, finds a new report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education.
The scholars tackled the question of “civic online reasoning” because there were few ways to assess how students evaluate online information and to identify approaches to teach the skills necessary to distinguish credible sources from unreliable ones.
The report, released this week by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), shows a dismaying inability by students to reason about information they see on the Internet, the authors said. Students, for example, had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles or identifying where information came from. “Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there,” said Professor Sam Wineburg, the lead author of the report and founder of SHEG. “Our work shows the opposite to be true.”
The authors worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish. “Many of the materials on web credibility were state-of-the-art in 1999. So much has changed but many schools are stuck in the past,” said Joel Breakstone, the director of SHEG, which has designed social studies curriculum that teaches students how to evaluate primary sources. That curriculum has been downloaded 3.5 million times, and is used by several school districts. The new report covered news literacy, as well as students’ ability to judge Facebook and Twitter feeds, comments left in readers’ forums on news sites, blog posts, photographs and other digital messages that shape public opinion. The assessments reflected key understandings the students should possess such as being able to find out who wrote a story and whether that source is credible. The authors drew on the expertise of teachers, university researchers, librarians and news experts to come up with 15 age-appropriate tests -- five each for middle school, high school and college levels. “In every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation,” the authors wrote. In middle school they tested basic skills, such as the trustworthiness of different tweets or articles.
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One assessment required
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have trouble on online
Brooke Donald
middle schoolers to explain why they might not trust an article on financial planning that was written by a bank executive and sponsored by a bank. The researchers found that many students did not cite authorship or article sponsorship as key reasons for not believing the article. Another assessment had middle school students look at the homepage of Slate. They were asked to identify certain bits of content as either news stories or advertisements. The students were able to identify a traditional ad -- one with a coupon code -- from a news story pretty easily. But of the 203 students surveyed, more than 80 percent believed a native ad, identified with the words “sponsored content,” was a real news story. At the high school level, one assessment tested whether students were familiar with key social media conventions, including the blue checkmark that indicates an account was verified as legitimate by Twitter and Facebook. Students were asked to evaluate two Facebook posts announcing Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. One was from the verified Fox News account and the other was from an account that looked like Fox News. Only a quarter of the students recognized and explained the significance of the blue checkmark. And over 30 percent of students argued that the fake account was more trustworthy because of some key graphic elements that it included. “This finding indicates that students may focus more on the content of social media posts than on their sources,” the authors wrote. “Despite their fluency with social media, many students are unaware of basic conventions for indicating verified digital information.” The assessments at the college level focused on more complex reasoning. Researchers required students to evaluate information they received from Google searches, contending that open Internet searches turn up contradictory results that routinely mix fact with falsehood. For one task, students had to determine whether Discovering lots ofthe cool thinngs Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, believed in state-sponsored euthanasia. A typical Google search shows dozens of websites addressing the topic from opposite angles.
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“Making sense of search results is even more challenging with politically charged topics,” the researchers said. “A digitally literate student has the knowledge and skill to wade through mixed results to find reliable and accurate information.” In another assessment, college students had to evaluate website credibility. The researchers found that high production values, links to reputable news organizations and polished “About” pages had the ability to sway students into believing without very much skepticism the contents of the site. The assessments were administered to students across 12 states. In total, the researchers collected and analyzed 7,804 student responses. Field-testing included under-resourced schools in Los Angeles and well-resourced schools in the Minneapolis suburbs. College assessments were administered at six different universities. Wineburg says the next steps to this research include helping educators use these tasks to track student understanding and to adjust instruction. He also envisions developing curriculum for teachers, and the Stanford History Education Group has already begun to pilot lesson plans in local high schools. Finally, the researchers hope to produce videos showing the depth of the problem and demonstrating the link between digital literacy and informed citizenship. “As recent headlines demonstrate, this work is more important now than ever,” Wineburg said. “In the coming months, we look forward to sharing our assessments and working with educators to create materials that will help young people navigate the sea of disinformation they encounter online.” The research was funded by a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Besides Breakstone and Wineburg, co-authors included Stanford researchers Sarah McGrew and Teresa Ortega. Executive summary of the report follows Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 75
Over the last year and a half, the Stanford History Education Group has prototyped, field tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tap civic online reasoning—the ability to judge the credibility of information that floods young people’s smartphones, tablets, and computers. Between January 2015 and June 2016, we administered 56 tasks to students across 12 states. In total, we collected and analyzed 7,804 student responses. Our sites for fieldtesting included under-resourced, inner-city schools in Los Angeles and well-resourced schools in suburbs outside of Minneapolis. Our college assessments, which focused on open web searches, were administered online at six different universities that ranged from Stanford, an institution that rejects 94% of its applicants, to large state universities that admit the majority of students who apply. In what follows, we provide an overview of what we learned and sketch paths our future work might take. We end by providing samples of our assessments of civic online reasoning.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning November 22, 2016
THE BIG PICTURE When thousands of students respond to dozens of tasks there are endless variations. That was certainly the case in our experience. However, at each level—middle school, high school, and college—these variations paled in comparison to a stunning and dismaying consistency. Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak. Our “digital natives” may be able to flit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped. We did not design our exercises to shake out a grade or make hairsplitting distinctions between a “good” and a “better” answer. Rather, we sought to establish a reasonable bar, a level of performance we hoped was within reach of most middle school, high school, and college students. For example, we
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would hope that middle school students could distinguish an ad from a news story. By high school, we would hope that students reading about gun laws would notice that a chart came from a gun owners’ political action committee. And, in 2016, we would hope college students, who spend hours each day online, would look beyond a .org URL and ask who’s behind a site that presents only one side of a contentious issue. But in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation. For every challenge facing this nation, there are scores of websites pretending to be something they are not. Ordinary people once relied on publishers, editors, and subject matter experts to vet the information they consumed. But on the unregulated Internet, all bets are off. Michael Lynch, a philosopher who studies technological change, observed that the Internet is “both the world’s best factchecker and the world’s best bias confirmer—
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often at the same time.”1 Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish.
SEQUENCE OF ACTIVITIES Our work went through three phases during the 18 months of this project. Prototyping assessments. Our development process borrows elements of “design thinking” from the world of product design, in which a new idea follows a sequence of prototyping, user testing, and revision in a cycle of continuous improvement.2 For assessment development, this process is crucial, as it is impossible to know whether an exercise designed by adults will be interpreted similarly by a group of 13-year-olds. In designing our assessments, we directly measured what students could and could not do. For example, one of our tasks sent high school and college students to MinimumWage.com, ostensibly a fair broker for information on the relationship between minimum wage policy and employment rates. The site links to reputable sources like the New York Times and calls itself a project of the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as sponsoring nonpartisan research. In open web searches, only nine percent of high school students in an Advanced Placement history course were able to see through MinimumWage.com’s language to determine that it was a front group for a D.C. lobbyist, or as Salon’s headline put it, “Industry PR
STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP
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Firm Poses as Think Tank.”3 Among college students the results were actually worse: Ninety-three percent of students were snared. The simple act of Googling “Employment Policies Institute” and the word “funding” turns up the Salon article along with a host of other exposés. Most students never moved beyond the site itself.4 Validation. To ensure that our exercises tapped what they were supposed to (rather than measuring reading level or test taking ability), we engaged in extensive piloting, sometimes tweaking and revising our exercises up to a half-dozen times. Furthermore, we asked groups of students to verbalize their thinking as they completed our tasks. This allowed us to consider what is known as cognitive validity, the relationship between what an assessment seeks to measure and what it actually does.5 Field Testing. We drew on our extensive teacher networks for field-testing. The Stanford History Education Group’s online Reading Like a Historian curriculum6 is used all over the country and has been adopted by Los Angeles Unified School District,7 the second largest school district in the U.S. With help from teachers in L.A. and elsewhere, we collected thousands of responses and consulted with teachers about the appropriateness of the exercises. Together with the findings from the cognitive validity interviews, we are confident that our assessments reflect key competencies that students should possess.
OVERVIEW OF THE EXERCISES We designed, piloted, and validated fifteen assessments, five each at middle school, high school, and college levels. At the middle school level, where online assessment is in its infancy, we designed paper-and-pencil
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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measures using digital content. We used screen shots of Slate’s landing page to assess students’ ability to distinguish between a news item and an ad. Similarly, we used screen shots of tweets, Facebook posts, and a reproduction of CNN’s website in crafting other exercises. We are mindful of the criticism of using paper-and-pencil measures to assess students’ ability to judge online sources. At the same time, there is evidence from the OECD that important abilities for evaluating online sources can be measured offline.8 Even more crucial in our decision, however, was the hope that our assessments would be used in underresourced schools where online assessment often remains a remote possibility. Our middle school assessments provide easy-to-use measures that teachers and others can use to gauge students’ basic skills. At the high school level, we designed more complex tasks that asked students to reason about multiple sources; at the college level, the exercises were administered online. When students are working at advanced levels, there is nothing to prevent the high school exercises from being used with middle school students, or the college exercises from being used with high school students. Summaries of each of our exercises are below. The exercises in bold appear in the following pages.
4) News Search: Students distinguish between a news article and an opinion column. 5) Home Page Analysis: Students identify advertisements on a news website. High School 1) Argument Analysis: Students compare and evaluate two posts from a newspaper’s comment section. 2) News on Facebook: Students identify the blue checkmark that distinguishes a verified Facebook account from a fake one. 3) Facebook Argument: Students consider the relative strength of evidence that two users present in a Facebook exchange. 4) Evaluating Evidence: Students decide whether to trust a photograph posted on a photo-sharing website. 5) Comparing Articles: Students determine whether a news story or a sponsored post is more reliable. College 1) Article Evaluation: In an open web search, students decide if a website can be trusted.
Middle School
2) Research a Claim: Students search online to verify a claim about a controversial topic.
1) News on Twitter: Students consider tweets and determine which is the most trustworthy.
3) Website Reliability: Students determine whether a partisan site is trustworthy.
2) Article Analysis: Students read a sponsored post and explain why it might not be reliable. 3) Comment Section: Students examine a post from a newspaper comment section and explain whether they would use it in a research report.
STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP
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4) Social Media Video: Students watch an online video and identify its strengths and weaknesses. 5) Claims on Social Media: Students read a tweet and explain why it might or might not be a useful source of information.
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NEXT STEPS We envision several next steps that build on what we have accomplished. These include:
demonstrate the link between digital literacy and citizenship. By drawing attention to this connection, a series of videos could help to mobilize educators, policymakers, and others to address this threat to democracy.
Assessment for Learning. Although our tasks could be used in a variety of ways, we think they are powerful tools for classroom instruction. Rather than simply serving as assessments of learning, they can also be assessments for learning, or what are known as “formative assessments.” Teachers can use our tasks to track student understanding and to adjust instruction accordingly. Similarly, teachers can use these exercises as the basis for broader lessons about the skills these tasks measure. We also hope to create accompanying materials that help teachers incorporate these tasks into the flow of classroom instruction. Curriculum development. Teachers also need curriculum focused on developing students’ civic online reasoning. Drawing on our experience in developing the Reading Like a Historian curriculum, we have begun to pilot lesson plans that can be used in conjunction with our assessments. In the coming months, we will be working closely with teachers to refine these materials and to implement them in classrooms. Awareness of the Problem. When we began our work we had little sense of the depth of the problem. We even found ourselves rejecting ideas for tasks because we thought they would be too easy. Our first round of piloting shocked us into reality. Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there. Our work shows the opposite. We hope to produce a series of high-quality web videos to showcase the depth of the problem revealed by students’ performance on our tasks and
STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP
For more information and the pdf go to:
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1 Michael P. Lynch, “Googling is Believing: Trumping the Informed Citizen,” New York Times, March 9, 2016. Retrieved from http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/googling-is-believingtrumping-the-informed-citizen/ 2 Tim Brown, “Design Thinking,” Harvard Business Review 86, no. 6 (2008): 84-95. 3 Lisa Graves, “Corporate America’s New Scam: Industry P.R. Firm Poses as Think Tank!” Salon, November 2013. Retrieved from http:// www.salon.com/2013/11/13/corporate_americas_new_scam_ industry_p_r_firm_poses_as_think_tank/ 4 We recommended that students spend about ten minutes on this task, but there was nothing that prevented them from spending more, as the exercise was self-administered. We can say with some assurance that the issue here was not one of running out of time. 5 James W. Pellegrino, Naomi Chudowsky, and Robert Glaser, eds., Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment. (Washington: National Academies Press, 2001).
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http://sheg.stanford.edu
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achieve.lausd.net/page/5965
8 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2015).
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https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanfordresearchers-find-students-have-trouble-judgingcredibility-information-online
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Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 81
Wanting to stay in education ‘NOT main re Studies have suggested that over recent decades, UK women have postponed motherhood largely because they want to go onto college or university to gain qualifications or fulfil educational aspirations before starting a family. New research from the University of Oxford in the UK and the Universities of Groningen and Wageningen in the Netherlands sheds new light on this theory, however, showing that the role of education is much smaller in delaying motherhood than previously believed. The researchers found that in the UK, a woman’s family background was the major factor rather than education. The full findings are published in the journal, Demography.
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The average age of first-time mothers increased by as many as four to five years at the end of the 20th century throughout Europe and the United States, as compared with the end of the Second World War. Educational attainment for women also increased over the same period, says the paper. The researchers used nationally representative data from the Office of National Statistics for cohorts of women born in the UK between 1944 and 1967 to track patterns of educational enrolment to see how they influence reproductive behaviour. The researchers also compared the fertility histories of more than 2,700 female twins from the largest adult twin register in the United Kingdom (set up in 1992), which acts as a controlled trial because this isolates the effects of different levels of education between siblings in pairs of twins who share so many other characteristics.
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eason why women delay having children’ Significantly, their model calculates that for every extra year of educational enrolment after the age of 12, a woman delayed motherhood by an average of six months. However, strikingly, they also find that the main influence on whether a woman postpones having children is largely associated with her family background. The paper concludes that family environment, a combination of a woman’s social, economic and genetic factors, is significant, with education alone contributing to only 1.5 months of the total six-month delay. Lead author Dr Felix Tropf, from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘Our research casts doubt on previous studies that claim a strong link between educational expansion for women and the postponement of motherhood. We find that both education and a woman’s fertility choices seem to be mostly influenced by her family background, instead of education influencing fertility behaviour directly. For example, families provide social and financial support, and pass on genes affecting reproductive behaviour. A large part of the observed association between education and age at first birth in other studies can actually be explained by the family environment. In isolation, education has a much smaller effect. We hope this important finding that a large part of the link between educational enrolment and fertility postponement is not causal but spurious may inform those forecasting future fertility trends or shaping family policy.’ The paper highlights that the average age of women when they left education rose steadily throughout the 20th century, however, the age of first-time mothers did not follow the same pattern but formed a U-shape instead. New mothers were still relatively young after World War Two during the so-called ‘baby boom’ but were also generally becoming more highly educated, says the paper. Only from the 1960s did women start to delay motherhood; this development coincided with the introduction of the contraceptive Pill, notes the research. Cohorts born after the 1960s postponed motherhood by around 2.7 years, on average, compared with women born at the end of the Second World War, but longer educational enrolment only accounts for 6% of this delay, says the research.
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Notes: The paper, Education, Fertility Postponement and Causality, published in the journal, Demography. The researchers tested trends identified in the Twins UK register by examining fertility histories in a sample of the general population (from birth cohorts recorded in the General Household Survey rounds from 2000 to 2006, and additional observations from ONS data from 2013). The paper is part of the Sociogenome research project located at the University of Oxford and Nuffield College, funded by the European Research Council and led by Professor Melinda Mills. The project is a comprehensive study of the role of genes and gene-environment (GxE) interaction on reproductive behaviour. Until now, social science research has focussed on socio-environmental explanations, largely neglecting the role of genes. Drawing from recent unprecedented advances in molecular genetics, it examines whether there is a genetic component to reproductive outcomes, including age at first birth, number of children and infertility and their interaction with the social environment. See http://www.sociogenome.com/
For more information, contact the University of Oxford email: news.office@admin.ox.ac.uk Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 83
Stanton Middle School’s unc we are working on that. But my first job is to make sure kids are safe and ready to learn. And if there’s something I can do to help that, I’ll do it.” That includes kissing the back side of a pig, being duct taped to a wall, and standing on a street corner while dressed as a princess waving as school buses drive past -- all things he’s done to celebrate successful “Day of Service” PTO fundraising events he’s hosted at the school. “He keeps his promises,” said Alexis Smith, an eighthgrader at Stanton. “He’s goofy, kind, funny, and helps you out. He’s a really good principal.”
Jeff Sefcik admits he isn’t your prototypical middle school principal. Sefcik, 49, never wears a suit, and his shoes have definitely seen better days. “I’m not comfortable in a suit,” he said. “Probably because I’d ruin it cleaning up after a kid who throws up in the hallway.” As if on cue, the phone rings on his desk and he answers it in a flash. He nods a few times, then is off to chase down a snack for a child who told a teacher he didn’t eat breakfast that morning. “My main philosophy is, ‘Never take yourself too seriously,’” he says as he quickly moves through the hallways, making jokes with students as he darts past. “Everyone in this building is as important as the next. All of us working together is what makes this school great.” That’s why Sefcik can be seen some mornings outside shoveling the walkway, or putting out orange cones to direct the buses. “There is no job in this school that I won’t do,” he said. “Sure, I would love our test scores to go up, and
Because of his love for the job, the way he deals with students, staff and the community, and the appreciation he gets for his methods, Sefcik is featured by the Daily Herald as a top suburban principal. “I have been working alongside Jeff for 11 years and it’s undoubtedly his unconventional ways that make him an exceptional school administrator,” said administrative assistant Jill Becmer. “He is the heart and soul of Stanton School. He takes great pride in each one of his students and staff members, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do to help a family or colleague.” Sefcik’s path to Stanton is as unorthodox as the Wauconda resident is as a school principal. Despite having a mother for a teacher, Sefcik admittedly focused on baseball more than school work during his high school and college years. “I wanted to be a professional baseball player,” he said. “But I wasn’t in the 1 percent of kids who make that dream happen.” Sefcik was good enough to play baseball at Coastal Carolina University, but his baseball career ended when he was three credits short of earning a degree. After he left college, a professor urged him to write a 50-page research paper to earn the final credits he needed. From there, he signed on as baseball coach and psychology and physical education teacher at Driscoll Catholic High School in Addison. But, it was a student teaching assignment in the Chicago Public School system that, he said, shaped him into the administrator he is today. “That experience really taught me to connect with students,” he said. “Those students aren’t paying to be there like Catholic school kids. I had to find a way to connect with them.”
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conventional principal
Humor and humility was the way, he said. “We developed a game where, every day, they would walk in and put a term they used a lot on the board, and I would put a term on the board I used at dinner parties,” he said. “It was a great way to connect with those students, and a really cool experience for both sides.” Sefcik remained as varsity baseball coach at Driscoll for a decade, winning two state titles and playing in the state final four tournament five times. But, he left the school in order to “be more involved with my kids,” he said.
Gilbert R. Boucher II Photographer
He took a job as a social studies teacher at Wauconda Middle School, and worked to obtain a master’s degree at Aurora University in its educational leadership program. After completing the degree, he was hired by Fox Lake Elementary District 114 Superintendent John Donnellan as assistant principal at Stanton. “Jeff is definitely on the unconventional side of school administration, but it’s because he is so comfortable in his own skin and extremely confident in leading his staff and school,” said Donnellan, who named Sefcik principal at Stanton in 2008. “There isn’t, and never will be, two sets of rules for Jeff Sefcik. He’s self aware, knows his strengths and weaknesses and holds himself to the same standards he holds for everyone else. That is excellence.”
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By Lee Filas
Donnellan said Sefcik has also trained himself to be an expert in the common core curriculum used at Stanton. He’s spent hours with curriculum administrators at Grant High School, and has developed teacher assessments for the curriculum instituted when the district switched from ISAT testing to common core. “His hard work shows when eighth-grade students routinely are placed higher as ninth-graders when entering high school,” Donnellan said. “It shows Fox Lake Elementary students are prepared to take on the next level.” But it’s his personality that garners the respect of colleagues, students and community members alike. “The mayor called me up and said, ‘Jeff, I have something you can’t say no to,’” he said of being told he was picked as grand marshal of the Village of Fox Lake Holiday Illuminated Parade. “I was honored. I brought some students with me and we had a blast.” Not bad for a guy who claims to have “undiagnosed ADHD (attention deficit disorder).” “If I have one fault, it’s that I focus a lot on the kids and don’t do enough to praise the teachers and staff,” he said. “I expect a lot out of them, and they do a lot and work real hard. I need to give them more credit.” http://www.dailyherald.com/ Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017 85
It’s an Unbalanced World O
Doctored News Love...
or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Dom, Stuff, The Herald and CNN I found the following (and more) online: “He’s been divorced and remarried. He can’t commit to anything.” “He’s dangerously ignorant about international affairs. The Russian leaders will walk all over him.” “He has no filter – doesn’t think before he speaks.” “That can’t be his real hair!” “He’s a loose cannon. No one wants HIS finger on the nuclear button.” “His opponent has the experience and political savvy to be president. He does not.” “He’s just not presidential.” “His temperament disqualifies him from ever being Commander-In-Chief.” “He’s proven himself to be mentally unstable.” “He says ‘(Let’s) Make America Great Again’. How dare he say we aren’t still great?!?!” “90 percent of Republican state chairmen judge him guilty of ‘simplistic approaches,’ with ‘no depth in federal government administration’ and no experience in foreign affairs.’” “After all his gaffes, he doubles down on them instead of admitting he made a mistake.” “He’s threatening to upend our treaties and relationships with our allies by demanding that they pay for their own defense!” 86 Good Teacher Magazine Term 1 2017
“Because of his gross factual errors, he might take rash action and needlessly lead this country into open warfare!” “He’s racist, xenophobic, and fuels the fires of hatred!” “You shouldn’t take him seriously. He has a penchant for offering simplistic solutions to hideously complex problems and a stubborn insistence that he is always right in every argument.” *If you know the subject of these comments found on ‘Grouchy old Cripple’, well-done. If not, check out his identity at the bottom. I bet you all got it right.
I guess I am pretty slow on the uptake. I tend to do/get/realise things a decade or so after most people. The exception is that, in the middle fifties, I was one of the first to own a hula hoop. I had been tardy in coming to the realisation that our ‘news’ services are in the manipulation business. I used to be fascinated with the Machiavellian propaganda of Josef Goebbels, reading about how he mastered the black art of propaganda but I always assumed that our ‘free press’ were disinterested, did not partake in partisan politics and were solely concerned with disseminating facts. The six p..m news was obligatory. I devoured the national newspapers. I was a believer. All was truth. Then came enlightenment. With the tabloidisation of our news outlets has come more not so subtle digs at those whom the editorial staff don’t like. Hardly a day goes by without some negative
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Out There headline about Trump, for instance. If it’s not about the new president, then it’s about Israel.. The bias may not be obvious-a headline here and there, a negative comment from some celebrity, or the failure to report events which conflict with editorial agenda. Sometimes the dissembling is mindboggling. Consider the following headlines: Berlin Christmas market: 12 dead, 48 injured in truck crash - CNN.com Truck ploughs into Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people | Stuff … Truck crash? If I were the type who skimmed headlines without bothering to read further, could I be forgiven for thinking that there had been a calamitous traffic crash in Berlin, rather than a barbaric terrorist attack? Looking at alternative news sites (and reader comments) it appears that there is a lot of misreporting of crimes committed by immigrants in Europe. Rather than risking being labelled racist, news outlets are downplaying such events. Can’t we handle the truth? Imagine the next mass-shooting headlineGun Kills Dozens I’m not saying Trump and Israel are pure as unleavened bread but it would be nice if there were some balance. Mainstream media gave large coverage to the recent Orlando shooting but I struggled to find anything about the latest deadly Hamas attack on Israelis.
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So prevalent are the biases, people can be forgiven for having an unbalanced and limited world-view. After all, we can’t have too many villains at one time. I found the following on a Middle-Eastern site: ‘.... authorities have begun constructing an isolation wall... a wall of “racist segregation” that is planned to be four to five meters high ... The security measures are also said to include watchtowers...in order to keep the Palestinian refugees under constant surveillance... Part of the security wall will be built a mere three meters away from the homes of some of the camp’s inhabitants, causing anger and frustration amongst Palestinians…’ Whoa, hold your horses Green MPs and Rentacrowd. No need to charge up the loudhailers just yet, no need to use your Israeli-softwared smartphones to rally the troops unless you plan to boycott, sanction and divest Lebanon, where the wall is allegedly being constructed. Perhaps the media could push for a U.N. resolution. Sorry, seems all those seem to be reserved for a close neighbour. I bet Tibetans and an ever-decreasing number of South African farmers would like a bit of righteous media attention at times. Wouldn’t hurt to spread the load, you know. Or would that upset a few plans? *Ronald Reagan
Roger
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“The best teachers don’t give you the answers... They just point the way ... and let you make your own choices.”
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