When it rains, it pours for PL in Tauranga. This is the second session this week put on by CORE education. Hosted at Tahatai Coast School, we started being welcomed at a brief powhiri by a group of students (I managed to remember most of the words to ‘Te Aroha‘ in response…). The Principal gave a short greeting and was being followed around by a student who looked like he was being Principal for a day.

I met Teresa from Tarawera College in the morning and along with Jason from Greenpark and Andre from Tahatai Coast, had some productive conversations during the day.

Link to workshop presentation.

The first task was to look at Change leadership. Sometimes, this is like herding cats:

Started off by looking as aspects of Tu Rangatira with a short matching activity which splits up leadership into the following aspects:

1. He Kaitiaki  – Guardian
2. He Kaiwhakarite – Manager
3. He Kanohi Matara – Visionary
4. He Kaiako – Teacher/Learner
5. He Kaimahi – Worker
6. He Kaikōtuitui – Networker
7. He Kaiarataki – Advocate

So driving change is hard. This quote from Michael Fullan provides some guidance:

‘The only way to close the achievement gap for all students is to drive change at all schools. No exceptions. But change is such a huge idea – where do you start?

The three critical imperatives:

• create great leaders
• stop boring students
• drive change from the middle out rather than the top down.’

To investigate change further, each group did a jigsaw activity based on four models of change leadership – Fullan, Cynefin, Kotter, and Tu Rangatira. I had Kotter’s 8 steps to investigate and present.

So, a bit similar to this idea of the three carriages for leading innovation. I had a crack at making a quick Powtoon to feedback this model to my group.

Here’s a link to the padlet where each groups shared their presentations.

So then, how to lead change? Well, don’t underestimate the power of the first follower.

Now having an understanding about leading change and collaboration, we move to linking in with digital tools. A good place to start was to think about inviting people to a party. How do we get people to come?

• Send invites
• What is the purpose of the party?
• Welcome people at the door
• Recognise every individual
• Engage in conversation

Moving to the digital tool, think of a Black box. If we want digital tools to support this collaboration, what are the features that will support collaboration? Here’s a link to my template which was a useful way of helping think of suitable tools.

Some new tools to try:

• Flipgrid: student responses by video
• Yammer: communication tool similar to Slack
• Wix: Easily create great looking websites
• Weebly: another tool for free websites
• Flask: Simple to do lists you can share.
• Today’s meet: Online discussion tool
• Bubbl.us: brainstorming/mind mapping
• Draw Toast: Problem solving activity with resources.
• Game storming: an approach to developing innovative ideas.

CORE Eduction were hosting a free day with a focus on the draft Digital Technology curriculum. Hosted at the new ACG Tauranga, the day began with a keynote by Mike Walmsley of Code Avengers. Mike again reinforced the potential of the IT industry in NZ for creating jobs for our students in the near future and how important being exposed to digital experiences is throughout the education.

https://twitter.com/NatJBaker/status/896842227090993153

Here’s a link to the day’s collaborative notes with some additional take outs for me below.

Breakout 1 – Design Thinking with Nicki Tempero

Design thinking #coredigitech pic.twitter.com/9Vf50OWFMS

— Nicki Tempero (@nickitempero) August 13, 2017

Have blogged about this before and this session presented the 5 steps in a slightly different fashion.

• Link to the presentation
• Filtering the ideas: Safe bet, Long shot, Darling
• Feedback on the pitch: Rose (Positive), Bud (Opportunity), Thorn (Challenge)

Image: https://stevemouldey.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/agency-and-ownership/

Breakout 2: Coding and Robotics

• Link to presentation
• Coding with Osmo
• Robot – Dash and Dot
• Robot – Sphero the rolling robot
• Virtual reality including Google Expeditions
• Importance of Mindset

Final breakout was a walkthrough of Code avengers – a site initially designed to support on line learning for NCEA Digital Technology curriculum.

Made a connection with Tessa Gray  and joined up to CORE’s Edspace, and a couple of VLN groups. On one of the posts, found this video which resonated with me about the challenge for schooling in the 21st Century.

Thinking of coming along? Just fill in a couple of brief  details and you’ll get a link to my presentation. Three parts to this workshop:

1. Listen – I’ll share some background and use of tools in my experience as an Across CoL teacher
2. Discuss – share some thoughts with others about how to best evaluate digital tools
3. Do – have a play with all the tools mentioned then we’ll crowdsource an evaluation of some common platforms.