IB Communications - finally!

"We heard you" writes Siva Kumari in the first issue of IB News Update, the new quarterly e-publication that focuses on news of special interest to IB Heads of school.
Siva is the Chief Operating Officer, Schools Division, of the International Baccalaureate Office.
There is a suspicion of side-lining of Heads by the IBO - I have to say it is easy to come to this conclusion - so this is a welcome (closed) publication. Thank you!
But we Heads do have opinions and it would be nice to harness social media (a private Google + community?) so as to try these out and to find solutions to our common problems. The IBO should not fear these types of initiatives - we live in times of active and rapid two-way communications and collegiate approaches to solving problems.
It has taken some time for the IBO to get their communications act together and they now have two (generally available) e-publications: IB Global News and IB in Practice (the latter is in its inaugural issue too).
I do wish that the IBO would reconsider their commercial pricing of their new IB Journal of Teaching Practice. This should be the vehicle for reporting research on the all important Approaches to Teaching and Approaches to Learning, and thus be readily to hand for all IB teachers, not just those who fork out the required dollars.

Previous post on this

Preparing Learners for the 21st Century - what we are working on

How do you prepare learners for the 21st Century?
This is a theme that has preoccupied educators for years. At our school we have been sharing and discussing the latest pronouncements and ideas, trying to see how we can consider the type of changes that are necessary to move us from "factory" education to one which truly empowers our students in all sorts of ways, but without destroying all that we do so well to make our students successful in our present world.
We planned a 3 hour retreat for the School Management Team, in the morning (when we might be at our freshest!).
We are not starting from scratch on this, having been posting resources on our "School fit for the future" site and using Diigo, e-mails and meetings to share. So for this retreat we decided that each of us would have a maximum of five minutes to bring to the table some perspective which would form the basis for discussion. This blog post lists two of these ideas.
[Would you believe it - we had a power-cut for the whole of the session! It was a talking and whiteboard only session but it was none the poorer for that; refreshing, actually!]
Mandy had asked her top 5th graders for their opinions. She brought in a long poster roll with the result, in their own handwriting.
Thanks to the Grade 5 "Think Tank": Jeffrey, Marcelo, Ariana, Andrea and Andrea, and Silvana.

This was, as always when you involve children, enlightening.

My contribution used two sources - one expected and well known, the other from someone working in the digital field. This was a recording made prior to the retreat.

Enter learner to view the video



What are YOUR thoughts about this? What should schools be emphasising, changing, dropping, adding so as to prepare learners for the 21st Century?

All our eggs in one basket - problems with Google Apps

We have had a rogue account on our Google Apps for Education system. One of our student accounts had been taken over and something spam-ish or worse happened.  We got an e-mail from Google to our Administrator about the account with the following information:
The following is an automated security notification from Google about your domain accounts.
It has come to our attention that some of your user accounts might have been compromised and are being used to send spam from your domain: xxx
The following users in your Google Apps domain appear to be affected:
yyy@xxx
We have disabled the users in a way that they can be recovered by the admin. Please follow the actions below before you re-enable these users.
We have taken the action required (reset password, completed the Gmail Security Checklist – all 9 points – and looked at the Google Apps Email Audit API information).
But Blogger has been disabled. Any access to blogger from our GApps domain goes to a repeating Captcha which does not resolve to the blog required – that is any blog on blogger.
What is the answer? How is this resolved? I can POST to Blogger but I can't see it!!!

UPDATE: Blogger now working. What was the problem? Rogue account? Possibly. More likely it is to do with automated queries from our website to blogs. We have a communications page which reproduces just a few lines of each post of some key blogs on a blog integrator space. We have stopped the automatic updates and are working on another solution.
Strange how it all happened at the same time.

Escaping education's Death Valley - how to move schools on

Ken Robinson's "How to escape education's Death Valley" is his latest TED talk on education. As usual, he is entertaining and convincing, but this time much more prescriptive about what is wrong and especially about what to do about it (at least as far as the USA is concerned - he was speaking in Los Angeles).
His main points:
Three aspects about human life:

• We are diverse
• We are curious
• We are creative

Science and mathematics necessary, but not sufficient - the arts, humanities, etc allow the celebration of talents but also provide the diverse nature of talents and interests of our children.
Teachers are the lifeblood of success of schools. Teaching is a CREATIVE profession NOT a DELIVERY SYSTEM. Role of a teacher is to facilitate learning, not having testing be the dominant culture of education; testing should support education.
Education being seen as a mechanistic system when in fact it is inherently a HUMAN SYSTEM.
Describes an alternative education programme in Los Angeles:

• it is personalised
• has strong support for teachers
• close links with the community
• has broad and diverse curriculum
• many involve students outside the school as well as inside the school

This should be the education programme of all schools, says Robinson.
Cultural climate of school is what determines whether it will be successful and is absolutely essential.
Leadership: should not be command and control but one of climate control - creating the climate of possibility.
Robinson provides some general principles on which to base learning in schools and a timely reminder that education is a human system; top down initiatives (eg No child left behind) just do not work - responsibility should be devolved to school level to get the job done.

"If you are not learning about how to solve problems, what will you do when you are out of school?"

"If you are not learning about how to solve problems, what will you do when you are out of school?"
This was Liva Pierce's conclusion after doing "Expeditions" in science and technology whilst in 8th grade in King Middle School, Portland, Maine.
Following on from my previous post on We know where we are, but where are we going?, here is an example that ticked ALL the boxes in the lists that I made:

21st Century Learning Skills: 

• Creativity and Innovation (Entrepreneurship in Yong Zhao's language?) ✔
• Collaboration and Communication - complex communication, oral and written ✔
• Digital and Quantitative Literacy ✔
• Global Thinking, International Mindedness ✔
• Inquiry, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving ✔
• Integrity and Ethical Decision-making ✔
• Adaptability, Initiative and Risk-taking ✔
• Leadership and Teamwork, Responsibility ✔

21st Century Learning Approaches and Environments:

• Authentic Learning - Project Based Learning ✔
• Experiential Learning ✔
• Open Learning ✔
• Technology Infusion ✔
• Social and Emotional Learning ✔

It is possible to open up learning to incorporate these ideas in ordinary school settings. Clearly an insightful and coordinated set of teachers at King Middle School planned and delivered an excellent example of what can be achieved. Thanks for showing us one powerful model.

Here is the report from PBS:

 

We know where we are, but where are we going?

There is much debate about schools and where they are failing. Schools are being seen as products of the industrial age and reflect this by their narrow pedagogy, factory style classrooms and content based curricula.
Where should schools be going? What are the skills that we should be developing in our students so that they are ready to be productive individuals and citizens in the 21st century?
I found the job description from the International School of Beijing for a Futures Academy Facilitator really interesting and a commendable approach to planning for the future.
It is not the only list of skills and approaches, so I combined these with others that we have been working on for some time at our school. The concepts do not divide neatly and there is some overlap, but would welcome other suggestions too.

21st Century Learning Skills: 

• Creativity and Innovation (Entrepreneurship in Yong Zhao's language?)
• Collaboration and Communication - complex communication, oral and written
• Digital and Quantitative Literacy
• Global Thinking, International Mindedness
• Inquiry, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Integrity and Ethical Decision-making
• Adaptability, Initiative and Risk-taking
• Leadership and Teamwork, Responsibility

21st Century Learning Approaches and Environments:

• Authentic Learning - Project Based Learning
• Experiential Learning
• Open Learning
• Technology Infusion
• Social and Emotional Learning 

Creativity is the big thing at the moment. In the UK, according to the Times Educational Supplement (19th April 2013 TESpro edition, editorial by Jo Knowsley), the new national curriculum planned for 2014 will encourage greater creativity in the classroom. There is some skepticism as to whether the reforms will achieve this, but the TES has published a supporting article "Let creativity fly in the classroom - through careful planning, make the most of the greater freedom promised under the new curriculum".
But is this really where we are going? Is it enough? Are we tinkering around the edges?
David Garner thinks so. It is good to see an international educator getting into this arena and giving a very powerful yet understated presentation.
"Our brains are superbly equipped for learning, if only our schools would engage us! Today's students are growing up in a global society and have more information available in a day than earlier generations could access in years. To transform information into learning, students need critical thinking skills; to succeed in tomorrow's economy they will need to collaborate across cultures. But our schools were designed for yesterday when knowledge was scarce and learning was an individual pursuit. Our schools are still teacher-centered, with too much emphasis on lecturing. It's time to throw out the sage on the stage."

Maintenance of systems and equipment - an example from this school

Maintenance of systems and equipment is essential. Maintaining what we have got, extending its useful life and adapting to our ever changing needs is expensive but necessary. We try to work with a $36,000 budget per year and here you can see where we spend it. The translation below refers to the list in order.

• Keyboards, mouses, memory and various parts
• Licenses, renewal and subscriptions
• Switches
• Taxes
• Network installations, fiber optics and protection for the server farm
• Maintenance of printers and digital projectors
• Consumables
• Overtime
• Software and applications
• Various including uniform, chairs, radios