BLC11: Alan November - Leadership Change Management

Information Global Communication Technology ...

Not just about the technology, it's what flows through the technology that's important ... the change process that enables that flow.

Parental engagement ... Alan asking how we can improve this and engage parents in children's learning.

Alan cites a primary school in NE England ... teachers give parents instruction on DVD on how to help their child read .. this is in a very deprived area where parents are mostly on the dole. Most parents will have a dvd player etc ... no extra technology ... they don't even need a computer. (Alan was unable to identify the school but the Charles Dickens School also does something similar - http://bit.ly/rpzEhU .)

Shift of control required ... teacher releasing control of what occurs in the classroom to now allowing and enabling parents to assist in that child's learning ...

Charles Handy ... the Age of Unreason - http://amzn.to/oCVHEC

Zuboff - http://bit.ly/qSiefB ... 'automating' ... with all that money, improvement only slowly incremental ... waste of money. Informating has 3 levels - do right people have the right information at right time ... do parents have this? ... teachers? students? Do you have right relationships ... do you have right levels of freedom or self empowerment.

Wolfram Alpha - http://www.wolframalpha.com/ - this website not shown to students at the beginning of the school year!! Type in your equation but include the word 'solution' and then you can see the steps in the solution! What is the role of the teacher in this situation?

Can students cope without a teacher? Is the teacher needed to manage learning? Teachers need to build robust learning environment where if they were absent, the students would continue to learn

Should staff development day include student representation? Students are empowered to use tools even if teacher cannot use them ...

Data, information, knowledge - application of information to solve problems, wisdom - have info, have applied it, but now need information that we didn't have before ... need to gain information ... system change

Real revolution is teaching critical thinking around the information that students can access on the internet

Eli Pariser TED video ... Beware online 'filter bubbles' - http://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s - leaders all need a discussion around this Eli Pariser video - what is the role of the teacher when everyone has their own Google filter bubble (algorithmic filtering]? Beware Google ... serves up search results based on your previous history of interests

Train teachers to create assignments that give people many different points of view

Science fair projects ... site:sg award winning science fair projects

1:1 not a very sophisticated name ... wrong message, wrong vision .. need 'teach less learn more' ... will be reinforced .. see Singapore's Ministry of Education home page http://bit.ly/oLFtEl

Google maps - can have a map of student's work in the form of images, videos, audiocasts etc ... see this video on how to get started ... http://bit.ly/qp9gmM

People with purpose do better work .... if it's just the teachers' work or assignment .. no interest. Leaders should ask their teachers how much of the work they give students has purpose. See http://bit.ly/qvMC6d How much purpose can we put into the curriculum??

Mathtrain TV - http://bit.ly/n7uwC5

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com - find out top thinkers in the world for various topics/subjects ... follow them in Twitter and follow who they follow!

EPGY programme - http://epgy.stamford.edu

Are schools contributing to digital divide cos they are not ensuring they get access to right information at right time??

Leadership: Managing the Transition (shared Google document) ... http://bit.ly/blc11lead

Promethean's Visionary Leadership Conference

Alan November's introductory keynote began with a question to the audience about where they think the mass of a tree comes from! His audience used voting handsets to make their choice of answer from four options ... A) Sun B) Water C) Air D) Soil

The correct answer [option C] was chosen by only a small number within the audience ... reflecting a common misconception that is shared by many, including fresh new biology graduates from Harvard University!

This led Alan into a riveting presentation about how the current model of learning and teaching may well be fostering student misconceptions. Students are capable of memorising information and regurgitating it for tests and examinations etc, but not truly understanding basic concepts. Indeed, it's only by giving students a means to feedback in class regularly, even allowing students to formulate their own questions [part of a re-engineering process to learning] that student understanding improves.

Alan directed his audience towards the work of Professor Eric Mazur, an optical physicist from Harvard University. Upon realising that students in his introductory Physics class were passing exams without understanding fundamental concepts, he developed a variety of interlinking interactive techniques to help rectify this. He required his students to read, think and reflect before their lecture, and then via the course website, to submit questions anonymously, around which he would shape his next lecture.

Some questions where students had little grasp of the reading were inevitably rendered 'useless' ... but others deemed 'brilliant' were those he displayed during the lecture and used as the basis of discussion and debate in the classroom, with the effect that the students helped each other to learn.

Alan finished his session by challenging his audience to participate in action research that would help change practice based on this and similar models, thereby helping misconceptions in learning to avoid going unchecked.

Some useful links:

Introduction to Mazur's work
Presentation: Confessions of a converted lecturer
Follow Eric Mazur on Twitter