Long haired, bearded, open necked shirt and wearing sandals-thus was introduced Clive Lawton, our guest keynote speaker. A former head teacher and depute director of education in Liverpool, and now a magistrate and contributor to Thought For Today, Clive Lawton who spoke, without powerpoint presentation, in a resonant and compelling voice about “values in education”. Clive challenged some basic ideas and examoned the rules that govern schools, and why we think they are important. He shared his early approach to teaching and learning by describing how we would give (encorage) his pupils the option of doing no work. If they read a comic, fine; if they did nothing, fine. He felt it far more important that pupils believed they were working for themselves. It was a risky strategy; some pupils barely worked at all, others only worked at the last minute, at which point they were desparate for help. It was only then that the learning began.
He asked us to think about the values of our school, and how we transmit these. Do we treat pupils with respect? Do we say one thing and do another? Do we contradict ourselves by our actions? What other values might we consider important in our school- our groups came up with examples such as community, cooperation, service.
Web 2.0 – No one owns it
Originally uploaded by Paul Watson
Thought provoking slogan from Flickr which can set off a train of questions-
who owned web 1.0
who, for that matter owned knowledge before the world wide web?
Does no one really own web 2.0 or does everyone own it?!!
This is the title of an excellent blog i have recently started to read. Written by Dave Gray of St Louis,Missouri, it provides some very useful ideas and stimulating visuals on how to improve the art of communication. there is a really helpful flow chart on today’s post which identifies which method of communication is the most important for any given situation, eg when to use wikis, when to use e-mail, etc. I like his reasons why we don’t always communicate effectivelyor use faulty judgement at times-eg habit, poor physical space which inhibits face to face communication and,
“Unavailability: Some organizations refuse to allow IM, blogs, wikis or free collaboration tools or ‘free’ tools that need to be downloaded to each PC, for security or centralized management reasons. Obviously, if the tools aren’t available, less appropriate tools have to be used.”
After Hurricane Dean
Originally uploaded by virekuk
The aftermath of Hurricane Dean, taken on 18th August. A great example of how a photoshare site like Flickr allows people to engage with world events in an immediate and personal way.
Endless resources for Intermediate Geography can be linked to this one photo.
Specialist or generalist?
Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane
I saw this diagram on the Communication Nation blog. This is a great blog for seeing stimulating ideas about how we communicate. As a geographer, I like the way the author uses a good old block diagram to show the difference between specialists and generalists. I am definitely one of the latter. Or, using a more classical approach the philosopher Isaiah Berlin quotes the Greek poet Archilochus who contrasts the fox who knows many things and the hedgehog who knows “one big thing”. i think every school needs a good combination of foxes and hedghogs, generalists and specialists.
I have added my name to the growing list of contributors for this year’s Teach Meet. I have not attended Teach Meet before and consider myself a rookie when it comes to blogging and other web 2.0 developments. I am therefore excited about the prospect of meeting up with many of the folk whose writings I read almostdaily, and I am sure I’ll come away from the meeting with lots of new ideas. I intend to use my seven minutes of fame to give a progress report on my project to build up a spatial data base of school based blog sites in Scotland. I started this over the holidays, really out of interest, to plot the location of blogs I regularly read. I had a hunch there would be clusters of bloggers, perhaps reflecting local variations in approach by authorities and schools. I am aware that such clusters may be more apparent than real as they only reflect the blogs which i have either read or come across. I have had some feedback, eg Stuart Meldrum, who posted a comment on creating Google Maps from Google spreadsheets.and who has devised his own map of Scottish schools. I look forward to discussing this at Teach Meet.
One of the sites that I have on my Google home page is for Slow Leadership. which is dedicated to “returning humanity to the workplace”. I like their tagline:
Real leadership isn’t an instant activity any more than a healthy diet is a hamburger, fries and a large soda
Their blog today highlights the forthcoming Blog Action Day on 15th October. The purpose of Blog Action Day is for bloggers around the web to unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind. In its inaugural year, Blog Action Day will be co-ordinating bloggers to tackle the issue of the environment.
To take part in Blog Action day, all you have to do is publish a post on your blog which relates to the environment. I can imagine a hundred ways in which educators could blog about the environment on any day of the year, so I am sure there will be plenty of ideas for the 15th October-an ideal opportunity to raise the profile of blogging among colleagues and pupils, too.
Ideas for resources and charities to support are found here.
This is from the HMIe’s recent paper “Leadership for Learning” As I get ready to start a new job as Depute Rector I intend to keep these 10 statements at the forefront this session and review my progress on each one. I need to begin by understanding what each statement actually means in detail, then I have to consider what I actually need to do in order to realise each aim. I have to translate words into actions. Only once I start the process of doing, will I be able to begin asssessing my progress. This is something I will return to once I get started and engage with my new colleagues.
“PERSONAL REFLECTION
Give myself a mark out of ten for each statement
1. I have a clear vision of the future in terms of what I am trying to achieve as a leader
2. My strategic efforts taken into account the political context we work in
3. People around me know that when they make a positive difference they will be recognised for this
4. The way I work makes it clear to others what is really important in our school
5. I help people to describe what we are trying to do and where we have reached in our improvement journey
6. I am prepared to defend the values I hold dear
7. I model a commitment to improvement
8. I am prepared to challenge aspects of our culture which are blocks to improvement
9. I listen to a variety of viewpoints and opinions before making up my mind on the direction to pursue
10. I have created a strong sense of identity and cohesiveness in my school
Out of interest, I’ve started to make up a Google map of where in Scotland the education bloggers I read come from-details and a link is on the Geography page of this blog. It’s not (yet) a representative sample, but the distribution pattern is already looking quite interesting, with an epicentre in Haddington and Musselburgh-the 1st blog I read was Ollie Bray’s from which I then got a large number of subsequent links, notably through Exc-el. I follow many other blogs, but I am only locating the ones that originate in Scotland. What interests me is who is doing the blogging, and where. Is there a core and periphery model of blog locations? What does the map pattern tell us about the take up in Scotland? Each blog is located according to the place of work, as far as I can establish, of of its author (eg school, Council HQ, etc) and I have colour coded the map pins by key job types, eg teacher, lecturer, directorate, etc. My initial sample shows two main clusters, one focused in East Lothian, which has been at the forefront of developing blogging, through Exc-el,and a second in the Glasgow area. There’s a significant minority from rural areas like Galashiels, Islay, and Huntly, but I am sure I am underrepresenting certain areas..and types of educator. It’s an ongoing project and it will be interesting to see how the map fills out over time. It will be fascinating to record position students who are blogging, too-does their pattern correlate to teacher blog locations? In economics and geography we talk about diffusion models, by which ideas transmit outwards from a central place. Of course, I am not sure we can apply standard spatial analysis to entities which have no physical locus other than a computer screen, but I am working on the assumption that there is a clear geographical dimension to the blogosphere as represented by the “home base” of each blogger.
i saw this post on Tom Peters’ blog on the Five books that every CEO should read. Among the five were two in particular that caught my attention.
1. “Execution” by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck -this book focuses on how to put ideas into action. In summary the authors state that identifying and developing leadership talent lies at the core with the goal not to evaluate people for what they are doing today, but for the positions they will hold tomorrow. Leaders then lay out clear goals everyone in the organization can understand, follow-through to clear internal obstacles, and reward the doers who are producing results. Finally, organizations that understand execution inject a healthy dose of realism into their culture through open, informal dialogue to eliminate false consensus and by making needed changes today rather than waiting for tomorrow for things to get better.
2. “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman: The authors found that the most effective organizations were those that recognized the irrationality of the humans that inhabited them. Those companies were clear about their beliefs and created a strong value system that acted as a compass for organizational decision-making. Inside (these) companies small, passionate teams accomplishing big, game-changing feats and meetings taking place in hallways as executives exercised management by walking around.
I was also interested to read Sir Cyril Taylor’s 2005 address to the Headmasters Conference (of which my school is a member) on what makes a great school In a very forward looking, progressive and wide ranging speech, Sir Cyril identied 10 key points:
1. A good leadership team of the headteacher, heads of department and governing body;
2. Their ability to attract and retain good teachers;
3. A focus on the basics such as literacy and numeracy;
4. The setting of targets for each student and use of data to monitor progress;
5. Discipline and order;
6. Curriculum innovation, which may include vocational awards and/or the International Baccalaureate;
7. Extensive use of Information Communications Technology including wireless linked laptops and whiteboards;
8. A longer school day and non-traditional term dates;
9. A focus on individual learning to create an ethos of achievement for all;
10. Seeking the support of parents and using older students as mentors.
plus the observation that, “Great independent schools also teach their students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, to care for others who are less advantaged.”
The talk was based on the book Excellence in Education, the Making of Great Schools” and can be read in whole here.
