An Afternoon in Auckland & NECC Reflections

Enjoying a Cappuccino While it Rained Outside

I’ve started my afternoon of walking in Auckland, New Zealand.  Check out was 11:00 – graciously extended to 14:00.  But my flight isn’t until 19:30.  So I headed over to the Auckland Museum, only to be caught in the rain.  I’ve sought sanctuary through a near endless choice of coffee shops, skipping all of the Starbucks for a local establishment with modern decor and lots of patrons.  I ordered a cappuccino — also a bit out of character for me.

I’m usually fairly energized by a new and exotic place, but right now I just want to go home.  Brenda’s trying to find a way to get me home sooner, and it may work out.  Right now, I fly to San Francisco, then on the Washington, where I spend the night.  Then the return train trip back down to Raleigh.  That would be OK, since I do not have any gigs for a few days.  But home is home and it’s where I want to be.

I spent some time on Twitter this morning, scanning the NECC blogs and all of the post-conference reflection posts.  No conclusions for me, especially since I left early, Even thought I do not feel any closure, I still feel that it was a successful experience for me.  I had many opportunities to talk with people who are smarter than me — though the the reprise that constantly rang through my head was, “This is the place of unfinished conversations.”

The bloggers’ cafe was the hot spot of the conference.  I’m not sure why I was not drawn to the spot last year.  There seemed to be a contentiousness there while the cafe was entirely friendly, jovial, and everyone was looking for help or to help.

Although the the EduBloggerCon was a huge hit and hugely helpful, I think that the high point for me was the Leadership Symposium.  It was a highly structured gathering, designed to generate some ideas for the development of a new National Technology Plan.  It wasn’t easy.  At my table, there were officials from state education agencies and outspoken independents, like me.  There was a lot of tug-of-war, and the time constraints for our various tasks were extremely frustrating.  If asked, I would suggest that next time, our tasks be fewer and simpler, so that we have time to delve more deeply into eachother’s ideas and perspectives.

One of the things that frustrates me about these quick conversations is the need to rely on buzz terms.  We all know what they mean and mostly agree with their direction.  But what is needed right now is a richer description of exactly what project-based learning, student-centered instruction, and authentic assessment look like.  It frustrates me because I feel that the time has come to move forward.  But we will only be able to move with clearly described vision, not mutually agreed-upon neologisms.

Some of the most powerful ideas I came away with from the presenters and the conversation:

  • Leaning today must be more than conceptual.  Textbooks and lectures are conceptual.  Students must work their knowledge using literacy skills as tools.
  • Professional development must involved “doing.”
  • Teachers/educators need time to keep up.  It needs to be part of the workday.
  • Students may not want to use the technology the way we want them to — and this may not be a bad thing.
  • Teachers need permission and encouragement to take risks.

Someone at our table reminded us of the little picture puzzles that, as I recall, use to show up in Cracker Jack boxes.  You had to arrange the tiles so that they made a single picture, but there was only room to move one of two tiles into a single empty position at a time.  Nothing else could move until this last tile moved first.

As we discussed the various barriers to retooling education, it seemed that the steps that needed to be taken were always blocked by some other tile.  What’s the one barrier that needs to move first, before we can address the others?  I would suggest that it is assessment.  Nearly everything else comes down to assessment.  How we hold ourselves (how the government holds us) accountable is the giant stone in the way of change.  It all comes down to, “but its the tests that drive what we teach and how we teach it.”

My group was assigned to look for ways to make learning more engaging.  So what would engaging assessment look like.  What kind of accountability scheme might we grow into, that is fun to participate in, both for students and for teachers?  How might we make assessment and accountability an integral part of the formal learning process — a learning process that comprises fun and engaging hard work?

I’m looking forward to the NECC where the big new thing, the new buzz, is a style of portfolio assessment that integrates into the teaching, learning, classroom, school, and community cultures.

5 thoughts on “An Afternoon in Auckland & NECC Reflections”

  1. Regarding your engaged classrooms — After over 30 years in the classroom, I’m convinced (and have been for a long time)that we tend to leave the students out of the process too much.

    I have 9th grade U.S. History with 22-27 students per class. We work in small groups of 3-4 for brainstorming (face to face or with Web 2.0 tools like Google Docs). Each student is responsible for selecting one of over thirty “products” to demonstrate what they have learned in each unit. They also must tie their choice of product to one of our seven themes (like change, power, diversity — very broad). Here’s the link to the Products page.

    http://rothamelm.cedar-falls.iowapages.org/id52.html (these products allow students to match learning styles — artists, writers, computer generated etc.)

    Students learn quickly that their collaborators can be of great help with generating ideas for products and themes — they see the value of collaboration and learn to think rather than spit back information. Products usually get much better as the year goes on.

    During a unit, students are still reading mostly from Joy Hakim’s series on U.S. History) and viewing video clips, breaking down primary sources etc. However, while doing these things, they are making decisions as to the product they will be responsible for completing.

    The students may choose the same topic, but select a different product and totally different theme to show what they’ve learned. They enjoy it, I’m not reading the same thing time after time, and parents seem very supportive of this approach — even in a university city (where usually all students must take notes and pass tests).

    Assessment is done with rubrics that students help develop. We don’t know it all. I think the more we involve the students in the curriculum (especially how it’s delivered with technology that they understand), the better off we may all be.

  2. David,

    I need clarification on a few points, if you don’t mind. Please don’t think of me as being contrarian here (like some of your more famous commenters who seem to want to do just that), I’m trying to be a colearner here…

    First, you say that:

    Leaning today must be more than conceptual. Textbooks and lectures are conceptual. Students must work their knowledge using literacy skills as tools.

    If that is so, I need you to help me understand how I have “worked” my newfound knowledge that learning is more than conceptual right now. If I just learned that, how have I worked it?

    Second:

    I was not at NECC, as you know, but it seems like even the conversations were just that, conversations. I am sure they were rich and valuable, etc, but if we consider NECC professional development, and you say:

    Professional development must involved “doing.”

    Where is the doing at NECC? I am sure it was there, just hidden from my distant view. It seemed like you all just talked a lot. Not saying that’s a bad thing, just wondering.

    I agree with your other points, just want some clarification on the other points.

    Thanks..

    Chris Craft

  3. Back at the end of April I was asked to be part of a panel discussion at the Canadian Association of Independent School’s Best Practices conference in Montreal. I suggested schools needed to do three things: because web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call it) resists–even subverts–institutionalization, administrations need to get merging technologies into the hands of their teachers as that’s where the innovation will occur; teachers need to be as fearless as children and feel free to play with the technologies and that will require them to rethink ideas of control and authority. I said a little more on this in a blog post in early April, Put Your $$ Where Your Teachers Are So far this is more or less what seems to have come out of NECC.

    But my third suggestion was that schools need to led, coach and educate families, not just students. Emerging technologies, especially social networking tools, dissolve the brick-and-mortar of schools; and when that happens, families must be involved as it changes the unwritten contract. In the old model, so to speak, students are dropped off at school and interact only with those people in the school building or occasionally with someone from outside when they go on a field trip or have a guest speaker. But in every case, the school controls who interacts with the students. In the emerging model, where students are encouraged to build a so-called personal learning network, students may interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. (There’s a discussion around permissions etc., but here’s not the place.) That’s a significant restructuring of the social contract between schools and families.

    I wasn’t at NECC09 and had to follow along as best I could on Twitter and blogs; but what struck me was that the discussions, at least as they were reported, did not offer anything substantially new. Perhaps it was a time of consolidation; as someone reported, we need more people in the choir and fewer on the bleeding edge. But, as I was saying, at NECC I didn’t see the teaching profession reaching out to anyone but itself, which strikes me as a bit ironic. Maybe that was acknowledged but left unreported? Now, there’s nothing wrong with holding a closed door meeting. But my overall impression is that we haven’t really broken out of old habits yet.

  4. You don’t know me, but I read your blog from time to time. This one is truly strange. I was in Auckland with my family, and at the Auckland museum, on July 5th in NZ (the 4th in the U.S.), and flew home to the San Francisco area on Air New Zealand flight #8 at 7:30 p.m. – all of which may or may not interest you or anyone else, but I love those types of coincidences.

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