| I’m all through in New Zealand. Yesterday’s workshop went well, though I have very little recollection of it — I am so jet-lagged. From the blog entries I’ve read so far, it seems to have gotten some people thinking. Greg Carroll organized the event, and he will be driving me back to the airport this afternoon. I hope that he will consent to a podcast interview on the road. I am just so bad at recognizing the great podcast opportunities at the right time. |  |
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| Last night, I went to a rugby match with his family. I do not entirely understand the rules, but it was a lot like our football, except without the huddles and without the shoulder pads and helmets.
I still don’t know how they got the governor of California to play a highlander, the Dunedin team’s mascot. |
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| Here is an all too typical picture of me, taken by Dragonsinger. It’s me not able to hear 😉 I have to look at you to hear you. Don’t know why. I don’t read lips. But what I hear is so garbled from not having an ear drum and all those boney things in my right ear, that I have to get clues from facial and body gestures. Not a problem. It’s just communicating.
You know, a lot of Kiwis use dragon in the names of their blogs. |
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| “Conference Over.” Dragonsinger. 25 Feb 2007. 24 Feb 2007 <http://dragonsinger.edublogs.org/2007/02/23/conference-over/>.
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 Finally, I have just moved into my computer, the photos that I took of Dr. Russell Bishop’s closing keynote address at the Learning@School conference. It was a very interesting address, that resonated with me from my U.S. point of view, regarding equity in education. His specialty is Maori education and the enequities that they are trying desperately to address. They have gone to heroic efforts to recognize and even identify with Maori culture as a nation, but native children continue to do very poorly in their schools. To the right is a slide that he included — quadrant regions for nations based on the quality of their education and the equity of their education. He includes references in the bottom of the slide, but I am not familiar with it — where the data comes from.
Doesn’t look very flat to me. |
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actually David, it’d nice to see i’m not the only one who does the ear thing – i do it all the time in my classroom …
A good workshop David …. lots of very positive feedback from the people I spoke to at the end of the day. It is always going to be difficult to get people working well and challenging their thinking when it is the 6th and last day of their working week (being a Saturday seminar).
I know the staff from our school I spoke to at the end of the day all had something that they could ‘do on Monday’, a tool for the classroom or their own learning, ideas challenged or clarified, etc.
Glad you enjoyed our slice of kiwi culture down here in the south.
safe travels … Greg.
Hi Dave,
The graph from Russell Bishop is probably derived from the PISA data (http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/datafiles.asp). This data compares achievement of different countries and is often referred to by educational leaders/ researchers in New Zealand. New Zealand tends to do well in the student achievement but has a long tail of underachievement. The underachievement is across schools (whereas other countries it tends to be between schools), Maori and Pacific nations students are over represented (especially boys). This data and other achievement data is the basis for programmes and initiatives to try to reduce the long tail.
(too much information??)