Priority One hosted a local screen of the EdDocumentary, Most likely to succeed at Mount Mauganui College on Thursday night. There were about 150 others there to watch this much talked about movie. The NZ debut had been at the ULearn ’15 conference and I had seen a couple of reviews.

The film starts with a description of the challenges that education faces. There was a nice piece on the rapid development of technology and how that is a key influencer for change in our education system.  It started with how ‘Deep Blue’ beat Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997, then described how the ‘Watson’ computer had won the game show of Jeopardy against past champions in 2011. The point is we now have computers being able replace not only simple mechanical tasks that we once had to do, like making cars, but also now intellectual tasks. There are now applications, such as Narrative Science, that have replace human jobs such as report writing.

The story then looked at the roots of the modern education system which occurred in Prussia reportedly as a response to a defeat in a war. This model is largely unchanged over the last century. We were then introduced to High Tech High, which was suggested as a model that education should adopt. In this school, teachers are employed on a one year contract and don’t have to follow a prescribed curriculum or teach to a test. This gave enormous freedom to what they planned for their students. Much emphasis was place on self directed learning in authentic contexts and the students were ‘assessed’ at an end of year exhibition night.

One key message I got was the analogy of a teacher like a gardener. This was made by a short interview piece with Sir Ken Robinson (of the TED talk – ‘Do schools kill creativity?‘ fame).

“Nobody else can make anybody else learn anything. You cannot make them. Anymore than if you are a gardener you can make flowers grow, you don’t make the flowers grow. You don’t sit there and stick the petals on and put the leaves on and paint it. You don’t so that. The flower grows itself. Your job if you are any good at it is to provide the optimum conditions for it to do that, to allow it to grow itself.” – Source

All in all, a good flick that prompted some thinking about some possible changes to my own teaching practice.

The ULearn conference takes place annually and was this year hosted in Auckland. I attended ULearn 11 in Rotorua (for which I made a series of posts starting with this one ) but since it’s been difficult to attend with my basketball commitments always falling in the  October holidays. Similar to the GAFE summit this year (see previous post), I thought I’d again lurk on the social media channels. Always a great source of ideas and resources that you would not normally come across – this year I was not alone with even Twitter trending a hastag – #notatulearn15. Here’s some stuff I found useful:

1. Agency and Ownership – An overview post from Cargill’s Classroom that includes a question grid that gives guidance on how students can improve their question.

Some thoughts on 'Agency: the why and the how' by @GeoMouldey https://t.co/Ke1YaXww34 #ulearn15

— Jerome Cargill (@chicargill) October 7, 2015

This was taken from a presentation by @geomouldey.

Two slides focused on getting student feedback – Rose/Bud/Thorn & HAKRS

https://twitter.com/zacmills/status/651581744362188800

One slide had a continuum of ‘shared construction’ – this was the topic of a presentation I gave to staff earlier in the year and this provides a more detailed range than my one.

Student Codesign #ulearn15 #agency pic.twitter.com/NVAra6Mzby

— Nathan Janes (@NathanJanes23) October 7, 2015

2. Breaking the Moulds – a quick 6 min video on how we seem to be in mould of education where the desire for constant improvement overrides the ability to be different.

3. Use of iPads with examples! – often you see app reviews of what you could do but this post has links to the actual products that students made.

4. Using Twitter for teachers – a useful, succinct resource on taking the leap into twitter.

Need some help sorting out your Twitter acc? Cheat Sheet: https://t.co/rutAe8USAT
Presentation: https://t.co/MSzefbwZaa #ULearn15

— Alex Le Long (@ariaporo22) October 7, 2015

5. Keynote by Grant Licthman – this keynote generate quite a bit of twitterness and re sharing of notes and resources (see this post for an example). One idea from him is that we should reject this notion of being a ‘guide on the side’ – teachers are right in the middle of the learning in a classroom. Here’s a summary of his view on 21C learning from a TEDx talk:

Here's the graphic artist images from @GrantLichtman #ulearn15 keynote pic.twitter.com/kGHMVctNnp

— uLearn (@ULearnNZ) October 12, 2015

6. Most Likely to Succeed – this edu-documentary had it’s NZ premier at ULearn. Check out the trailer – would be worth a look.

7. Cool stuff  – Gotta love this production:

8. Maker – have been getting more into this in my teaching this year with making some bio-fuel powered steam boats and trying to teach electronics with students making something electronic (using a 3D printer). Link to CORE Educations list of resource. Some useful kits are Brainbox, Littlebits,

9. Kids write their teachers job description – would be interesting to see what would happen if we asked secondary school students.

Children writing their teacher’s job description as part of the Kaikohekohe Cluster #CENZ15 #ulearn15 https://t.co/O23hUKiAu4

— Tara Fagan (@Taranz1) October 7, 2015

10. Why guide to 21C learning – a great visual summary by ‘iPad’ Wells.

12. Failure – I’ve become more aware of the importance of failure in learning. The acronym – First Attempt At Learning.

Risk and Failure #ulearn15 pic.twitter.com/BJoAMCrhiU

— Mark Riley (@NZRILEY) October 7, 2015

13. Implementing Technology into learning – I’ve experience both ends of schools doing it well and doing it poorly. It is a current and constant challenge. Steve Wheeler has some good advice on developing a digital strategy and making sure that learning comes before technology. “Pedagogy is driver. Technology is the accelerator”

14. HPSS – since it started in 2014 with a Year 9 cohort, I’ve always been interested in this school to see if an Inquiry style learning programme can be upscaled for a whole school, rather than just one class of selected students like at TBC. This presentation gives a great overview of how they operate with thematic Learning Modules, have Learning Hubs with comprising of 15 students and one Learning coach, and make strong connections to a student’s interest and the community they live in.

Fourteen things has to be good value for a couple of hours on Twitter – and who says PD has to only happen at 8am on Tuesday mornings.