Monthly Archives: July 2016

EDUgridlock

Are We at a Saturation Point

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Edu Gridlock Part 3:

I enjoyed recent interactions with students around participation in strategic planning  I thought the students participated well in the sessions and  raised some good points from my view.

Much of the conversation focused around important issues such as the importance of an inclusive school culture and flexible programming to meet a variety of important needs – all good.

The one element that stuck with me though was this notion of “too many rules”. The students gave several examples of bringing ideas forward to foster positive school  culture but were met with a “no, because …” .  This reasons were many and varied — in essence I would say inked in rules — provincial, local, too risky, we have to follow nutrition regulations … you get the idea.  Yet, many of the ideas were reasonable, and certainly would have been entertained a decade ago.

I am not at all thinking that we should be operating in education without a good working framework, but the conversation sure left me wondering if we have actually reached a point of “rule saturation”.  Perhaps there is a middle ground where things can be achieved in different, more flexible ways rather than being so mired in regulations and rules.

How can we promote thinking more out of the box, but with the framework box?  Thoughts?  Please share. 

~Mark
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EDUgridlock, Leadership Perspective

Blogging from the Start – part 2

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Edu Gridlock Part 2:

In Blogging from the Start I wrote about an innovative pre-service teacher program where blogging played a key role in the personal development of these teachers.

Fast forward to May 2016 where I had a chance to team up with Helen DeWaard (@hj_dewaard) and Donna Fry (@fryed) to hosting a discussion forum at the Faculties of Education,  Learning and Teaching for Tomorrow event.

FoEDforum

The session context was provided by Helen based on the work she has been doing with her pre-service students through blogging. During the “round room”  discussion, the notions of growth, shift and personal journey were explored by digging into some key questions:

1. What would it take for students to shift from blogging as a course assignment to blogging as a way of professional life?

2. How do we, as a collective, come to grips wiht sharing what you learn vs people/audiences judging what you don’t know or what you learn?

3. What does it really take to personally commit to a culture of open & visible learning and sharing?

4. What is the intrinsic value – why do bloggers keep blogging?

I invite you to listen to the podcast file from the event:

Intros and context > 0-18:40,
Main discussion 18:40 > end (1:05:00)

Blog!

How would you respond to the guiding questions?  I invite your comments or connect on twitter ( @markwcarbone ).

Additional Resources:
Follow Helen on Twitter: @hj_dewaard
Read Helen’s Professional Blog at: Igniting Teaching and Learning
Related Blog Post: Just Make It Public
Creative Commons Photo Credit (blog graphic) to Flickr user  ginaballerina
~Mark
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EDUgridlock, Leadership Perspective

Blogging from the Start

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Edu Gridlock Part 1:

I enjoyed hearing Seán Ó Grádaigh’s (@SeanOGraTek) presentation at the 2016 uLead conference.  In his presentation, Sean shares the journey of preparing pre service teachers for experiences in schools with 1:1 iPad programs.

Throughout the journey, information was gathered about individual technology skills (quite varied), attitudes towards using technology with students, building skills and capacity to use the technology more effectively and changes within these areas. Evidence collected showed significant growth in each of these area.

The interesting twist in the story was the shift to extending the use of the technology to something transformative – tools to capture and document their own (pre service teacher) lessons, experiences and reflections.  With intentional development of new ideas, the students used a variety of tools including facetime, audio (GarageBand), video (iMovie) and writing tools to capture their learnings and reflections in different formats.  iTunes U was used as a platform to share and comment within the class group.

In follow up correspondence, Seán has shared these 2 books which outline  practice:

Digital Reflection on iPad by Seán Ó Grádaigh
MGO ITE Programme by Seán Ó Grádaigh

along with this resource:  The Story of 1916 by Seán Ó Grádaigh
https://itun.es/ie/erY1bb.n

I was impressed that the journey ended with improved skills in using technology to enable better teaching and learning, that attitudes changed and that personal, and professional reflective practice was established in this manner.

In reflection, I note that the use of the Apple environment allows for seamless flow in the process of learning, documenting and sharing.  The notion of using a system that is easy to use, reliable, and has high compatibility is an important consideration in the planning and that there are other ‘device agnostic’ platforms that could accomplish this.

I wonder, what would education look like if this happened in all preservice teacher programs?  Would you change your practice and help move the mountain?

mountainview

~Mark
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EDUgridlock, Leadership Perspective, ProfessionalLearning

Exploring K12 Gridlock

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One of the interesting elements of this past school year for me was weaving together the thoughts, observations and ideas from the many conversations I enjoyed across Ontario via my PLN, both virtually and face to face.

The more I reflect on the conversations, and mull them over, I centre my thinking on the idea of educational grid lock. In many ways, it seems to me that we are in a state of increasing grid lock. There are so many opposing forces and change complexities in the K12 space, to me, many things seem, well, stuck.

gridlock-SamuelLeo-flickr

This summer I have decided to write a series of posts exploring this idea of edu gridlock, along with some questions and ideas on moving forward.

Photo credit: Flickr user samuel-leo for this creative commons licensed photo.

EduGridlock – up next: career long professional learning.

~Mark
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