About:

This week we meet James Anderson, facilitator, Growth Mindset trainer and a leading authority on Habits of Mind. He works with teachers and school leaders to bring about systemic change in the way they support student mindset. Today James takes the big ideas about Growth Mindset and breaks them down into chunks that can powerfully change classroom practice. We caught up at the Learning Network office in West Auckland.

Key Points:

• Growth mindset reduced to a single word

• Shifting from content to process and growth

• How to behave intelligently

• Explicit teaching of skills and dispositions

• How to fail well - disposition as a leveller

• Changing how we see more successful peers

Other resources and Links Mentioned:

• http://habitsofmind.org/

• https://mindfulbydesign.com/

• Habits of Mind facebook group

• James’ youtube channel

About:

This week we meet Stephen Gordon,  syndicate leader and teacher at Sunnybrae School in Auckland. Stephen has helped implement google apps for education at Sunnybrae, and today he talks about how that went, and some of the problems they overcame to manage that change smoothly. When we think about implementing new technologies in our schools, we often talk about big ideas like 'collaboration' without acknowledging the nuts, bolts and pitfalls of what happens when we make significant change. Today we hear what happens when passwords are displayed on the classroom wall, when students know more about online collaboration than their parents and when students need to respond to big changes in teacher practice. Even better, halfway through, we will hear from Stephen's students themselves! Kids always tell it like it is and it was so great to get some student voice for this podcast. 

Key Points:

• Drop in sessions for parents to help them see how things are done
• Inviting parents to be a part of the learning online
• Making the chat window meaningful
• Resolving online tension through face to face discussion
• Dealing with the truth of young people on Facebook
• Problems as learning opportunities - using the transparency of Teacher Dashboard
• Student access as a growing issues that affects home, school and the local library
• Student voice
  • How students self organise with collaborative software
  • Does spell check promote learning?

Other resources and Links Mentioned

Sunnybrae GAFE Parent Information Sheet

Parent Workshop Poster

Sunnybrae e-Learning newsletter

Sunnybrae Digital Citizenship poster

About:

Previously Chief Researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Jane is a professor at AUT University's School of Education in Auckland where she teaches Educational Futures and runs the Edge Work - Educational Futures Network.

Jane is presenting with Danielle Myburgh on the future of schooling at the U-learn conference in Auckland this week, but today she shares some of her thinking around change and how to prepare students for a future we can’t imagine.   

Key Points:

• How teaching has changed in the last few decades
• What’s the point of school?
• Should schools be responding to wider society, or leading the way?
• How do we manage competition with fewer resources in the future?
• Which comes first, social change or educational change?
• Using complexity theory to better understand the Education system
• Creating disruption to probe and prompt change
• Creating conversations that make change
• The politics of teachers and teaching 

Other resources and Links Mentioned:

Complexity theory

Jane’s AUT profile

Jane on twitter

Edge Work site

Edge work on Twitter

Idealog article with Jane, on teaching for a future we can’t imagine

About:

Albany Senior High is a school that fought for its existence, and Barbara was up for that challenge. She moved from Te Awamutu College to Auckland's North Shore to take on building a school from scratch. With its flexible learning spaces, tutorial sessions and one day a week set aside for community based impact projects it's a school that challenges conventional schooling on several fronts.

Today Barbara tells us how she came to be at Albany Senior High, and how students and Albany Senior have the chance to make connection to their learning by participating in their community in meaningful ways.

Key Points:

• You don’t know as much as you think
• Challenge as an opportunity to build community
• It’s not if you are bright, it’s how you are bright
• Tutorial times to let teachers be mentors
• Talking parents through how school has changed
• How impact projects engage students directly with the community
• How technology changes expectations
• How does the environment change our behaviour?
• Belonging uncertainty impacts

Other Resources and Links Mentioned:

Impact Projects

Leadership Mindsets: Innovation and Learning in the Transformation of Schools. Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert.

The ASHS timetable

Emily Pearson Books (image)

ULearn conference

Connected Educator Month

About:

Carla is a year 5 / 6 teacher at Churton School in Whanganui. She has a passion for the Arts and Literacy, and in this episode Carla tells her story of how she’s created opportunity for connection and change in her school by listening to her colleagues, and finding ways to make movement that get people involved from the start. In education there are so many bright ideas that grab our attention and get us thinking that change is easy. It’s not, and we need to hear how people have made things work in their own settings.

Key Points:

• When not to aim for BYOD
• Asking ‘why’ before change even begins
• The process of change through dialogue
• Empowering teachers to take risks
• Leading ICT in a responsive way
• Making time to have robust conversations
• Collaborating with other schools on moderation
• Growth mindsets - the power of self assessment
• Nurturing leadership across the school

About:

Abdul Chohan is a director at the ESSA Academy in Bolton, UK, where he has led the digital learning strategy since it began.

He also runs thinksimple ltd, a consultancy that supports schools and businesses to find better ways of working.

You can find Abdul on twitter, and instagram .

Key Points:

• Should schools bend to fit national exams?
• How to go beyond testing requirements through good leadership
• How devices change where learning happens
• Designing learning for different devices  
• Giving students ownership of their data beyond the school gates
• Creating belief rather than nurturing interest
• Doing the work of making things simple and reliable

About Vicki

Vicki is a full time teacher who lives in the town of Camilla, Georgia, in the USA but she’s been a huge influence on teachers worldwide.

She has written ebooks on Reinventing Writing and Flattening Classrooms and runs a regular podcast called Every Classroom Matters .

You can find Vicki on twitter, and Linkedin, and you can find her great resources, blog posts and other social networks through her site coolcatteacher.com.

Key Points:

• Relating with a huge audience

• How to be an influencer by being able to help

• How the growth mindset shows in great teachers

• Improving like a tortoise

• How to be a great teacher when you want to quit

• How to scale your influence inside your school and beyond

• Gossip in the workplace

• Why you don't want life to be easy

• Changing things from the heart, out

• How can we build respect for the teaching profession  

   

Other resources and Links Mentioned

Kerry Patterson book The Influencer

Starr Sackstein http://starrsackstein.com/

Dave Ramsey http://www.daveramsey.com/home/

Dave Burgess http://daveburgess.com/

About Mark

Mark is a facilitator for Core Education. He’s passionate about modern learning environments,  eLearning and leadership. Mark founded Emerging Leaders Aotearoa, runs Edu-Ignite evenings and the annual two day ‘Ignition’ unconference. 

You can find Mark on Twitter.

Key Points:

• What makes a Knowledge Building Organisation different, and how can we bring our schools around?
• The world doesn’t care what you know, the world cares about what you can DO with what you know
• Collective Knowledge with collective responsibility - using communities of practice and teaching as inquiry and celebrating learning through baked-in systems
• The value of leadership to create a distributed locus of control
• The ethics of sharing our knowledge to create transformative change
• How to build your team, to create openness the change as a critical precursor
• Modelling change as a leader
• The power of a public fail to create trust
• Growth Mindset and how we can change modes of belief
• The culture of risk, and revisiting our innate curiosity
• How are decisions made in schools, and can students take their learning and apply it in action to build knowledge?
• Where does change most need to happen, and what would that look like?  

Other resources and Links Mentioned

Knowledge Building Organisations - Mark Osborne

Knowledge building. Jan van Aalst, Faculty of Education

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology, 97–118

About Sonya

Sonya is a force of nature among her peers. A teacher at Newmarket Primary School in Auckland . She had the chance to further develop her ideas with a TeachNZ Sabbatical . She published a Collaborative book with 10 other New Zealand educators  and is also a part of a Flat Connections project ‘A Week in the Life’ providing primary school aged children the opportunity to share cultural experiences with other children around the globe.

You can find Sonya in Pond, on twitter, and through her website.

Key Points

• Debunking myths such as ‘Modern Learning Environments’ and ‘Future Focussed Century Pedagogy’

• TeachmeetNZ , best described as a professional learning community that encourages New Zealand teachers to connect and share their work

• Using constraints to focus learning and sharing

• Leading a trusted online community

• How to build relationships with fellow educators that feed the community

• What is the frontier of learning?

• Moving the ethos of transparent digital communities to the local communities of their members

• How can we bring younger students into online communities

• How to get colleagues ‘over the line’ sharing their work in an open digital space

• The difference between consuming and creating for teachers