Wednesday, December 12, 2012
How is Technology Transforming Education?
Listen to a conversation with Sir Ken Robinson on this topic.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Can private schools teach the world?
There is a very interesting debate on the BBC website (read here) about the influence and power that provate school can / should / might have on world education. Here is the first section...
Despite international pledges, there are still millions of pupils around the world without a basic education.
Could the private sector be a more effective way of reaching these millions of pupils who are missing out?
Should donors be supporting low-cost, low-fee private schools, rather than trying to build state education systems?
Or would such schools further deepen the barriers to education for the poorest and most excluded?
A meeting at the House of Commons last week heard strongly opposing views on such private sector involvement. Here are some of the arguments for and against, from Sir Michael Barber and Professor Keith Lewin.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Some excellent lessons
- Not fitting in is a wonderful gift
- ‘Why not?’ and ‘what if?’ are at the heart of pioneering
- The church says it wants pioneers but…
- Pioneers thrive in community
- We’re still only at the start of something
Friday, November 09, 2012
Who will make the most difference?
This past week has seen two very important elections take place. The winners of these elections will both have a massive impact on the world. Both come from very priveleged backgrounds and both live in very weathly countries. Both hold positions of incredible power and people will hang on their every word. Both will be critisized, not matter what decision they make or camp that they support. My question is, who over the next four years, will make a difference in the world? All prayers and blessings for Justin and Barack.
Monday, October 15, 2012
6 highly unusual schools
At TEDGlobal, educator Eddie Obeng highlighted a disconcerting thought — that the answers we learned in school aren’t necessarily true anymore.
“This is what happened to us in the 21st century — someone changed the rules about how our world works,” says Obeng in this energetic talk. “The way to successfully run a business, an organization, even a country has been deleted. Flipped! There’s a completely new set of rules in operation … My simple idea is that the real 21st century around us isn’t so obvious to us, so instead we spend our time responding rationally to a world we understand but which no longer exists.”
In the past 40 years, the world’s population has doubled. Meanwhile, large tracts of people have settled in cities, and the Internet has greatly deepened the density of interaction among us. “The pace of change overtakes the pace of learning,” says Obeng.
And yet, most institutions are horribly unprepared to handle rapid shifts. As Obeng explains, “You have to wait all the way for a cycle to fail before you can say, ‘There’s something wrong’ … We solve last year’s problems without thinking about the future.”
It is this challenge that inspired Obeng to found the virtual business school Pentacle. The school focuses on teaching people how to think and innovate in a world where change is the only constant. The key: what Obeng calls “smart failure.” In other words, rewarding those who trailblaze new approaches — even if they don’t work out — as opposed to those who trod along well-worn paths.
To hear more about Obeng’s philosophy, watch his fascinating talk. (Or see several of Obeng’s lessons on Pentacle’s YouTube channel.) And after the jump, take a look at other five TED speakers who founded schools with bold ideas for how to better prepare individuals for our ever-shifting world.
Gever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkering
Gever Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School, where students are given the materials, tools and guidance to let their creativity run wild. In this talk from TED2009, Tulley shows photos of students building unique boats, bridges and roller coasters in a curriculum that stresses the ability to make things.
Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time
Two million people in Bangalore live in slums, and the majority of children there will never attend school. In this talk from TEDIndia in 2009, Shukla Bose describes her impetus for founding the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit that runs four schools for poor children, giving them chances they might never had had without an education.
John Hardy: My green school dream
In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, John Hardy jokes that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth ruined his life. The documentary inspired him to start the Green School in Bali. While the main school building is open-air and built from bamboo, the curriculum teaches students to build, garden and create.
Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement
Bunker Roy attended a college that was expensive — and elitist. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, Roy describes how spending time in an Indian village, where poverty was rampant, changed the course of his life and led him to found Barefoot College. Unlike a traditional school, Barefoot College is only for the poor, and teaches rural men and women to tap into their innate intelligence and become engineers, doctors or artisans.
Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School
Far too many teenagers are bored with school. And when they finally receive their diploma, employers complain that students often aren’t prepared for success in the workplace. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, social innovator Geoff Mulgan describes a new approach — The Studio School — which focuses on developing student’s creativity by having them work on practical projects rather than simply listening to lectures.
A different view
I came across these designs by jim le page on his site, jim le page's word bible designs (thanks to Jonny Baker - link)
Jim creates a design/image riffing on a verse or theme of a book of the bible. He also has a set on flickr. They get you thinking and wondering and give a different persepctive on things that I have read and see hundreds of times before. Thank you, Jim.
Monday, October 08, 2012
A lesson for all teachers - Nobel prize won by Briton written off in his teens by a science teacher
Sir John Gurdon shares the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine with Shinya Yamanaka, for reprogramming adult cells
A British researcher whose schoolboy ambition to become a scientist was dismissed as "quite ridiculous" by his Eton schoolmaster has won a Nobel prize for work that proved adult cells can be reprogramed and grown into different tissues in the body.
Sir John Gurdon, 79, of Cambridge University, shares the prize in physiology or medicine - and 8m Swedish kronor (£744,000) cash - with the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, 50, who holds academic posts at the Universities of Kyoto and San Francisco.
The groundbreaking work has given scientists fresh insights into how cells and organisms develop, and may pave the way for radical advances in medicine that allow damaged or diseased tissues to be regenerated in the lab, or even inside patients' bodies.
Gurdon heard he might have won science's highest honour from a journalist on an Italian newspaper who called his lab at 7.30am on Monday morning, before the announcement had been made. An hour later, he received the official call from Stockholm.
Speaking to reporters in London, he said it was "very gratifying" to be recognised for what has been his life's work. "I hope it encourages others around to feel that science is a good thing to do. There's a danger of some of the best people saying 'I don't want a career in science'," he said.
Prior to the duo's research, many scientists believed adult cells were committed irreversibly to their specialist role, for example, as skin, brain or beating heart cells. Gurdon showed that essentially all cells contained the same genes, and so held all the information needed to make any tissue.
Building on Gurdon's work, Yamanaka developed a chemical cocktail to reprogram adult cells into more youthful states, from which they could grow into many other tissue types.
In a statement, the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said the scientists had "revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop".
According to his Eton schoolmaster, the 15-year-old Gurdon did not stand out as a potential scientist. Writing in 2006, Gurdon quoted a school report as saying: "I believe Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous; if he can't learn simple biological facts, he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who would have to teach him."
That year, Gurdon scored the lowest mark for biology in his year at Eton. "Out of 250 people, to come bottom of the bottom form is quite something, and in a way the most remarkable achievement I could have been said to make," he said.
read the rest here
Friday, September 14, 2012
Why School? TED ebook author rethinks education when information is everywhere.
The Internet has delivered an explosion of learning opportunities for today’s students, creating an abundance of information, knowledge, and teachers as well as a starkly different landscape from the one in which our ideas about school were born. Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on critical thinking skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom. Yet the national dialogue on education reform focuses on using technology to update the traditional education model, failing to reassess the fundamental model on which it is built.
In Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere, educator, parent and blogger Will Richardson challenges traditional thinking about education— questioning whether it still holds value in its current form. How can schools adjust to this new age? Or students? Or parents? In this provocative read, Richardson provides an in-depth look at how connected educators are beginning to change their classroom practice. Ultimately, Why School? serves as a starting point for the important conversations around real school reforms that must ensue, offering a bold plan for rethinking how we teach our kids, and the consequences if we don’t.
Why must schools change how they teach? What’s at stake?
Schools were built upon the fundamental that teachers and knowledge and information were scarce. That is no longer the reality. Now, as so many more of us gain faster and broader access to the Web, all of those things are suddenly abundant. That means that the traditional role of school, to deliver an education, is quickly becoming less and less relevant. If we continue to see schools as the place where our children go to master a narrow list of content, knowledge and skills that were originally defined almost 150 years ago, we risk putting those kids out into the world with little idea of how to take advantage of the explosion of learning opportunities that now exist. The problem, however, is that most “reform” efforts are aimed at simply doing what we’ve been doing better, almost exclusively in the form of raising test scores. But doing “better” on measures that don’t account for this huge shift we’re in the midst of is the absolute wrong emphasis. Instead, we need to think very differently about the experiences, outcomes, skills and literacies we desire for our kids when they come to school.
Every generation seems to think its students are different. How are today’s youth different in terms of how they gather and absorb information?
Students in the K-12 system have never known a world without the Internet. No question, some kids have had more access than others, and that digital divide is something that we must address with more focus. But for the vast majority who have access, information and answers are a Google search away. They expect to use their technology to get their answers…except in school. In school, we ask them all sorts of questions that they could answer with their phones or laptops, but we don’t let them. So, I think the biggest difference is that our children are connected to people and to knowledge in ways that no other generation before them has been. We have not fully realized all of the ramifications of that, and in large measure, those who oversee our education systems have not yet begun to understand that this is a much different time for learning.
With so much information out there, it seems that finding information is easy but assessing it is tricky. How important are critical thinking skills?
Critical thinking skills around information have never been more important. For all of the value that comes with individuals being able to publish freely and widely to the Web, the huge potential downside is that we haven’t developed the literacies that are required to make sense of all that unedited content that’s out there now. In the scarce world, almost everything we consumed was edited or checked by someone else. Now, each one of us has to have the dispositions and skills to edit the world as it comes to us. Again, this is a huge problem for school systems that were designed for a different time, and it’s an even greater challenge since few if any assessments that we give kids ask them to make sense of an abundance of unedited media and information.
What can schools do to implement some of your ideas?
It’s a difficult moment for schools and the administrators and teachers who in large measure care deeply about kids but haven’t fully understood or acclimated to this moment of abundance we find ourselves in. Most policy makers and businesspeople are focused on finding more and more efficiencies in the system, and they see technology as a way to “deliver” that traditional education to get “better” results needing fewer and fewer teachers while making greater and greater profits in the process. The next 10 years are going to be exceedingly difficult for schools to navigate the gap between maintaining the traditional curriculum that reformers want and providing the learning opportunities and literacies that kids desperately need today, opportunities that few outside of education are asking for. I think the first step is that educators have to reexamine their own learning practice and move toward becoming more networked and connected themselves. It’s hard to have meaningful conversations around change in a 21st Century sense if you’re coming at it from a 20th (or even 19th) Century lens.
The educational process is pretty slow-moving and sclerotic. Do you have hope that they changes will be made?
I have hope because I see more and more individual classrooms that are beginning to understand what abundance means, places where teachers and kids are getting connected, doing real, meaningful, beautiful work for real audiences that help students become true modern learners in the process. I have hope because every one of us knows that amazing relationships and amazing learning happens in those real life places we call school, that they are an important part of our communities and histories. And I have hope because, at the end of the day, just as we’ve seen with many other institutions, old thinking simply cannot prevail. This isn’t optional. The fact is that schools are not going to go away in the near term for a host of reasons. But what we do in schools, the way we answer the “Why School?” question will change. It has to. The more that each one of us begins to get involved in the process of answering that question, the sooner and more effectively we’ll make the changes our kids are waiting for us to make.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Something to think about...
I watched this clip this morning and enjoyed it. Maybe you will as well...
Sunday, September 09, 2012
9 talks on the wonderful world of water
I read this on the TED blog and thought it was worth repeating here. Water is so much part of what I enjoy and hence my enjoyment of these..
From the driest deserts to the deepest seas, the flow of water shapes our world. Cool off from the summer heat with these nine talks that explore our intimate relationship with water.
Romulus Whitaker: The real danger lurking in the water
Romulus Whitaker shares his fascination with the remarkable reptiles that populate the rivers of India, and tells us why we should insist on cleaner water for them and for us.
Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable
Most people wouldn’t drink water scooped from a tank of pond scum and sewage — but Michael Pritchard does, because his portable Lifesaver filter can turn even the dirtiest water drinkable.
Roz Savage: Why I’m rowing across the Pacific
Roz Savage rows her boat gently across … the Pacific Ocean. In this inspiring talk, she tells how one woman can take on the vast forces of nature.
Damian Palin: Mining minerals from seawater
When we desalinate seawater for drinking, what do we leave behind? That salty brine is full of useful minerals, says Damian Palin, and we can use them to create a mining industry that’s in harmony with the Earth.
Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting
Newer methods aren’t always better methods. Anupam Mishra reveals how the people of India’s Golden Desert have been harvesting water for centuries, expertly conserving every drop.
Reviving New York’s rivers — with oysters!
Kate Orff introduces the heroic little oyster, an unlikely way to repair the ecosystem of New York’s canals and harbors. She encourages us to rethink the spaces around us and to get excited for ‘flupsification.’
Lewis Pugh swims the North Pole
Swimming through arctic waters that once were impassable sea ice, Lewis Pugh weathers extreme conditions to make himself heard. Combining environmental awareness and astonishing athleticism, he leaves no doubt that climate change is rapid and real.
Sonaar Luthra: Meet the Water Canary
Inspired by the simple utility of the coalmine canary, Sonaar Luthra has designed a device to test and map sources of clean drinking water. With his Water Canary, he shows us how to stop a cholera outbreak before it begins.
Rob Harmon: How the market can keep streams flowing
Outdated laws in many U.S. states create a disincentive for farmers to conserve water, and Rob Harmon thinks it’s time for a change. Bringing brewing companies together with the local farmers, he shifts the current of a broken system and puts the water back in the streams.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Videos to help you rethink education, learning, & school
Seth Godin on Education
In this short interview, Seth Godin sums up the essence of the problem.
Seth Godin on how schools teach kids to aim low
In this short clip Seth Godin says something concerning the "lizard brain" and our fear of taking risks that reminded me of the world of live stand-up presentations in work or academia. Seth said:
There are some people, if you give them a mile, they're going to take an inch." — Seth Godin
This gets at part of the problem a boss or a teacher or a conference organizer will ask you to make a presentation, and while doing something different and creative - and effective - should be welcomed by all, we retreat to doing only what is expected (less downside that way) rather than doing something creative, different, and engaging. After all, doing what is expected is pretty easy, but surpassing expectations and doing something remarkable with impact is both harder (usually) and comes with an increased risk of failure. Even when we give people a mile and encourage creativity and nonconformity, it still seems like too many play it safe and take only an inch. I can't help but think that the habits learned in formal schools across the world at least in part contribute to this cautious approach to doing things differently.
RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms
This is an RSA animation of Sir Ken Robinson's second talk at TED. This echoes my sentiments exactly. You can see the live version of this TED talk here.
Born to learn
I love the simple animation and flow to this presentation on learning. We are indeed "born to learn" and we are naturally curious creatures. But does your school stimulate that curiosity and light the sparks in students. My favorite teachers did when I was a kid. Although my secondary school experience was a bit of a blurry bore, I remember the good teachers I had who helped me and inspired me in spite of the imprefect system.
Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning (or "why school sucks")
I love this presention by American physicist Dr. Tae. In the presentation Dr. Tae touches on the depersonalized nature of the large lecture hall with the "tiny professor somewhere down there" in front going through the material but without engagement or connection with the students. If one of the goals of education is to "have a lively exchange of ideas," the depersonalized one-way lecture seems to be an outdated method for stimulating this exchange.
Shawn Cornally — The Future of Education Without Coercion
Shawn Cornally is a young, passionate teacher who shares his perspective and experiences in this TEDx talk.
Finland's education success
Here's a short clip from the BBC reporting on Finland's success with schools. They enjoy great success, but do not have a test-driven environment. While no place is perfect, we could learn a lot by examining what Finland is doing in their schools.
Japanese documentary: Children Full of Life (part 1/5)
I like a lot of what I see in elementary schools in Japan (although I am much less excited about public junior and senior high schools). Here is part one of five from a wonderful documentary which gives you an evocative look inside one 4th-grade class. You can't helped but be moved. You can see all the clips in this post from last year.
A word from my favorite astrophysicist: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Here's a fantastic audio interview on science literacy with one of my modern day heros, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not just for science teachers, however. This is interesting stuff for all reasonable humans. I agree with Dr. Tyson. Inspiring stuff. Listen to the whole thing here. Here's a slide featuring a quote from his interview:
"The flaw in the educational system, as far as I see it, is that you live your life – the teacher and student – in quest of A’s. Yet later in life, the A is irrelevant. So then what is the point of the school system? It’s missing something. It is not identifying the people who actually succeed in life, because they’re not showing up as the straight A’s. So somewhere in there, the educational system needs to reflect on what it takes to succeed in life, and get some of that back into the classroom." — Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Why can't I have a number of these in my classroom?
going into many school and universities.
Pouring creativity
Mitchel Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed the ideas and technologies underlying the LEGO Mindstorms robotic kits and the Scratch programming software used by millions of young people around the world. With these technologies, young people learn to design, create, experiment, and invent with new technologies, not merely browse, chat, and interact. Mitch’s ideas and work are now at the centre of the debate about the curriculum for ICT in schools. Should children simply learn to use standard applications and games, or should they also have the opportunity to become creators?
Mitchel Resnick made the interesting observation that rather than trying to make Kindergarten (early years) more like school and college, we should be trying to make school and college more like early years.
What he seemed to mean by this was that in early years children learn by thinking, invention and creativity. Whereas when they get older we think of them more as vessels that we pour content into.
Of course there are lots of teachers out there who do use thinking, invention and creativity. Likewise there are lots of teachers out there that fall back on worksheets and talking at the learners; pouring content into them.
The key question and I am not sure how we can answer this, is what proportion of each kind are there? Are they that distinct, or can a teacher be creative one day and fall back on passive transference on the next. I am pretty sure most people enter the teaching profession because they want to be help young people and to support learning and not pour content into learners.
I agree with Mitchel that technology offers a range of opportunities and possibilities to enable learners to be creative. The key question is how do teachers who weren’t at the conference find out about the possibilities of invention and creativity? How do they “change”?
Why are some teachers already using these strategies and why are some not? It can’t just be about time, staff development and resources. How can some teachers be innovative and some not?
Why aren’t teachers using these strategies in the classroom already? What are the barriers that are stopping teachers? Are they real barriers or just perceptions? How do we overcome these barriers? How do we identify the barriers? How do we ensure that we identify the real barriers to change and not just those that we assume to be the barriers?
Change is challenging, partly as people don’t like to change. Change also implies we know where we are and where we need to go.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Do you remember film?
I then tried to remember when last I used film and had some developed. Can you remember?
Monday, January 30, 2012
Some get tips for preaching in schools...
Often I am asked to preach in Chapel for school services. David Campbell, Chaplain at Fettes College, added these tips to his website [LINK], which I think are helpful and true...
Here are ten of Campbell’s handy tips:
- Long-windedness, in this context, as perhaps everywhere, is invariably a disaster.
- Knowing what you want to say and going for it without anything written down is usually best.
- Eye contact is everything.
- Having just one central theological point and reinforcing it with a cheerful or challenging illustration always makes sense.
- Humour is grand, but never for the sake of it – the troops remember the jokes and not the underlying message.
- Using too many biblical or even classical allusions is rarely successful – the troops just don’t know them and get it.
- Christian clichés such as ‘salvation’ and ‘redemption’ or other advanced technical terms are also best avoided in such a short homily.
- So is trying to be something that you are not – and so is patronising.
- If you’re middle-aged and greying (as I happily am now) please don’t pretend to be cool and trendy – it is, as the kids say, “awkward” or worse than this in the scale of teenage crimes, “cringe.”
- Be sincere.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
I Believe...
A Death Certificate shows that we died
Pictures show that we live!
I Believe…
That just because two people argue,
It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
And just because they don’t argue,
It doesn’t mean they do love each other.
I Believe…
That we don’t have to change friends if
We understand that friends change.
I Believe…
That no matter how good a friend is,
they’re going to hurt you,
every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.
I Believe…..
That true friendship continues to grow,
even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.
I Believe…
That you can do something in an instant
That will give you heartache for life.
I Believe…
That it’s taking me a long time
To become the person I want to be.
I Believe…
That you should always leave loved ones with Loving words.
It may be the last time you see them.
I Believe….
That you can keep going long after you think you can’t.
I Believe…
That we are responsible for what
We do, no matter how we feel.
I Believe…
That either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I Believe…
That heroes are the people
who do what has to be done
when it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.
I Believe….
That my best friend and I can do anything or nothing
and have the best time.
I Believe…
That sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you’re
down will be the ones to help you get back up.
I Believe…
That sometimes when I’m angry
I have the right to be angry, but that
doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.
I Believe…
That maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you’ve had
And what you’ve learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you’ve celebrated.
I Believe…
That it isn’t always enough,
to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes, you have to learn
to forgive yourself.
I Believe…
That no matter how bad
your heart is broken,
the world doesn’t stop for your grief.
I Believe…
That our background and circumstances
may have influenced who we are, but,
we are responsible for who we become.
I Believe…
That you shouldn’t be
so eager to find out a secret.
It could change your life forever.
I Believe….
Two people can look at the exact same
Thing and see something totally different.
I Believe…
That your life can be changed
in a matter of hours
by people who don’t even know you.
I Believe…
That even when you think
you have no more to give,
When a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help.
I Believe…
That credentials on the wall
do not make you a decent human being.
I Believe…
That the people you care about
most in life are taken from you too soon.
I Believe…
The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything;
They just make the most of everything they have.
