Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Monday, 30 August 2010
Bank Holiday creativity
Haw and hip brandy; haw brandy; sloe, blackberry and elderberry gin; sloe gin; sloe and blackberry gin; hedgerow brandy; Yuletide rowan brandy; 3 jars of Damson Chutney.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Scattered and Superficial Thinker
A few days ago I finally turned to some academic work that I had been putting off for a while. I turned off all my distractions - Tweetdeck, Googlemail, my phone, the tv. Then I sat in a quiet room and did the work using only a PDF of the arthcle I was studying and notepad on my laptop.
I had spent the week leading up to that being in charge of childcare, but nevertheless had grabbed a few minutes here and there to get some work done - planning, preparation, admin and the like. I had also held some really interesting conversations on Twitter, read some interesting blogs and responded to the odd e-mail. You may be wondering exactly how I care for my children, but it's amazing what you can fo with CBeebies on in the room...
Somehow I'd never felt able to focus on the academic stuff with the kids about, and when I came to the study itself, I had also felt the necessity of turning off the online distractions.
I hadn't thought conciously about that decision until today when I read a really good article in the Telegraph called 'How the Internet is making us stupid' by Nicholas Carr.
He has pulled together various bits of research that show how all the distractions we engage reduce the depth at which we think. We are becoming shallow thinkers.
He writes things like: 'people who juggle many tasks are often less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time.'
And: 'People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read words printed on pages.'
He also quotes developmental psychologist, Patricia Greenfeld who says that while 'every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others' there are 'new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes.'
And Roman philosopher Seneca who said: 'To be everywhere is to be nowhere.'
He goes on to quote neuroscientist Michael Merzenich who said that as our brains adapt to this shallow way of thinking, 'the long term effect on the quality of our intellectual lives could be deadly.'
Now I'm not to sure about that. I think we need to be able adapt to different ways of thinking for different purposes, which is what I found the other evening when I successfully engaged in some study. But I do agree with him when he says that 'skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought'. I've been guilty of spending too long in skimming mode recently and that whole way of thinking has stopped me from even being ready to attempt any academic study.
My conclusion
I must be determined not to let 'skimming' be my default mode and schedule myself time to engage in different types of thinking.
Do you agree with Carr's article? Have you read any research that indicates the positive impacts on thinking of using social media?
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Bloomfield's Theorisers
Pavlov began it, thinking he could explain it with dogs.
Thorndike and Skinner experimented further, but it was lost in the Law of Effect and thousands perished in drill and practice.
Then Dewey found it and held it for the desires and motivations of all, while the Gestalt, on the edge of things, encouraged insight and a view of the whole.
Piaget discovered how it worked, but separated it from its core and it was almost lost again.
But then Bruner rescued it and described how it could work, whilst Wood built a tower for it. Then Vygotsky, King of the Tower, opened up the tower for the people to talk and communicate and interact with it. Yet this, his greatest feat, was overlooked by another, the Zone of Proximal Development, which whilst instilled with truth was a distraction from the biggest triumph. And men came and made the most of this distraction, like Von Glasserfeld with his love of the subjective and the internal.
And some, yea, even Bloomfield, were overcome with this distraction and did comment slightly sceptically on the power of social interaction, with words like 'construed' and 'apparent'.
But then Cobb came forward, and Ernest, adding social knowledge to his three worlds, and finally Jaworski with his understanding of story and negotiation
And thus it was that Bloomfield laid aside his slight scepticism and came to declare that knowledge is socially constructed between groups who share meanings.
And so it was that one day all people would understand that knowledge exists neither externally to the individual nor internally; but on the tender wisps of the webs that lie between individuals; on the cusp between the external and the internal; on the expectations and obligations that turn individuals into people.
Divergent decisions
Sometimes the ideal way forward isn't the most time appropriate.
I realised this morning that the best way of enabling my staff to collaborate on Google Calenders to set up the school rotas for the year would be to set up a Google Apps for Education account and do it within there. Then I could have each individual user logging into the school calendars and updating them together in the same session. The steps that led to that realisation included setting up the current school calendars to be shared with the e-mail accounts of each of the staff members (that's the screenshot above). But unfortunately that would include setting up each of those e-mail accounts with an iGoogle account, which is time-consuming and pointless because most staff wouldn't log on to iGoogle if they're not already in the habit of using it. Hence I needed a Google Apps for Education account to tie it altogether. And of course that takes a few weeks to set up, because Google have to check that you're actually an education establishment and not a company looking for a free-ride.
A few week that I didn't have.
And three hours that I'd spent effectively wasting my time.
Each decision I'd made had led to at least two problems needing to be answered. Two more decision to be made. It was a network of ever-increasing complexity that, if I'd have the time, might have worked well, but the thing is that this particular opportunity will have lots its effectiveness if I don't have it ready by Wednesday 1st September. I needed to get something sorted.
So I took a step back and looked at the best way to make my choices converge to a solution that would work. The ideal solution would have had staff working collaboratively to create the rotas in a way that will be continued throughout the year. The time appropriate solution is to cut-out the ideal methods of collaboration and just get the rotas done.
So I now have two gmail accounts - one called paganelschool@gmail.com and the other paganelteacher@gmail.com. The first holds the calendars, the second is what all the teachers will log on with to adjust the calenders. It's not ideal because I'd prefer each teacher to log on with their own account - but as I've explained that isn't possible yet. Maybe later on the year, I'll be able to tie these things together with a Google Apps for Education solution and get closer to my ideal solution.
Next I will post the video I made to explain to the teachers how to add things to Google Calendar.
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Creating Rotas Collaboratively
I've been experimenting with Google Calendar to make our systems more efficient. This term I'm turning to the school rotas.
Why Rotas?
It sounds a boring task, and it is, but getting the rotas right at the start of the year is essential to having and efficient year. It saves all those pointless conversations where people have to negotiate room usage and avoids all those embarrassing situations where two people, each with a class of 30 children, turn up at the Hall only to have their expectations and lesson plan dashed. getting rotas right means the administrators in the office, who bear much of the difficult conversations in school can work confidently within the frameworks given to them. As these people often have the dual role of also being first contact for visitors it helps them stay positive and happy. The visitors also pick up on this mood and the school's reputation improves.
Everything gets better with good rotas.
Tools
I love Google Calendar. I love the way it syncs so well with my phone and with so much other stuff. I also love the way you can collaborate with Google Spreadsheets - 50 people + on the new version it's pretty impressive. So my initial idea was to generate the rotas by sitting together with the staff and a room full of laptops, type into events into a Google spreadsheet, and then import the data via a .csv file into Calendar. After some initial research and some sterling advice from fellow GCTs Danny Silva and Nic Finelli I soon dismissed this idea. I realised that getting the staff to accurately put their activities into a precise format onto Google Spreadsheets when some off them have had no prior experience of any kind of spreadsheet might be asking too much. It may be a challenge for the future. If you're interested, the Google help page with the right format for importing into calendar is here.
Solution
So instead I've set up several calendars that describe everything we do in school. I'm intending to open up the calendars to the staff so they can edit them during the first week, set up the rotas, then I'll take away their access rights so they can only see the calendars and they'll be set. I'll then transfer over the admin rights to the actual staff, so if any changes need to be made in the future they can be made through the staff in the admin office.
The rotas I need doing are:
- Hall Timetable (mainly for PE)
- Small hall Timetable (mainly for eating, but some PE)
- ICT Table (for using our ICT suite)
- Laptop timetable (for accessing our bank of 16 laptops)
- Playground Timetable (for agreeing who's going to be out on the playground over the course of the week)
In addition I created 3 separate calendars.
- KS1 Timetable
- KS2 Timetable
- Assemblies
I still need a 4th Calendar to finish the jigsaw - the Foundation Stage Calendar - but I'm not sure what their calendar looks like and won't get the details until next Tuesday. I need to have got the bulk of this sorted by then.
The Calendar Menu looks like this - several calendars that I can turn off and on and make available to different people.
The KS1 Calendar looks like this:
And with the KS2 Calendar and Assembly calender looks like this:
What next?
I need to plan how I'm going to explain to the staff how to put their events up. Each member of staff will have a certain number of events to fill in for each timetable, for example 2 for the Hall Timetable, 2 or 3 for the ICT suite. I'll probably use a video to record that - I quite like Smart boards screen capture video software - it's simple but effective. I'll need to remember to invite each staff member to fill in the appropriate calendars too.
Over the next few days I'll post my explanation video and after the training has been given, show some of the results of what happened.
Doing the Right Things Right
There is a saying about leadership:
Administration is 'Doing Things'Management is 'Doing Things Right'Leadership is 'Doing the Right Things'
I learnt it on a leadership course called 'Leadership Pathways' course a couple of years ago. The saying is meant to indicate how without good leadership, management and administration is pointless, because you can earnestly be doing things and even doing things right, but they may be the wrong things. So therefore we need good leaders who can do the right things.
However there is a hidden emotional agenda that new leaders can take away from the saying. It's that somehow leaders are at the top of the pile - everything will fall into place with good leaders. I blogged about that in my recent post: the lie of the leadership pyramid. There is a possibility that leaders can devalue their managers and their administrators because they have been convinced that their role as leader is exponentially more important than the role of anyone else.
The fact is that some leaders can choose the right things, but do them wrong. And worse, some leaders can talk about the right things but not actually do them.
I want to work in a school where the administrators, managers and leaders are all valued and empowered to carry out their equally valuable roles. Where we have people who get things done, where there are others who can help and guide those people-who-are-'doing' to do things right and where through good leadership everyone is engaged in doing the right things.
I want to work in a school where we do the right things right.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Using words for the first time
I used the phrase 'paradigm shift' in my post 'The lie of the leadership pyramid.' It was the first time I had ever used the phrase in writing and I caught myself wondering if I really knew what it meant. I used it to mean a complete 180 change of perspective. I think that's right but as I right this I'm off the grid in North Devon and have no way to check.
I think this happens quite often. I'm pretty sure that I understand something and so I go ahead and talk about it as if I'm 100% sure. As a teacher you get used to speaking with authority about stuff. It's an authority I can get used to, rely upon or even become downright lazy with. But when it is challenged, I find myself in an interesting predicament. How do you explain what you're not quite sure about?
Worse if no-one challenges you and you continue making the mistake that you first made.
It reminds me of the story of 'hirsute' man - which I'm not sure is urban myth or fact.
Apparently there was this bloke who used the word 'hirsute' to mean 'therefore'. He would say things like "Hirsute, we can solve the problem by..." and "I am becoming rather thirsty, hirsute I will need another cup of coffee."
Unfortunately 'hirsute' doesn't mean 'therefore'.
'Hirsute' means 'hairy'.
When, he found this out, the man who was in his 40s was so mortified by his years of erroneous word-use he promptly killed himself.
A tragic tale, but one with a salient point for those of us who are prone to a high degree of barely accurate verbosity.
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What film inspired your teaching?
Why Tampopo makes me a better teacher.
For those who don't know, Tampopo is a Japanese film about a single mother who runs a Noodle bar and has to overcome many trials and tribulations to become the best bar in town. I think of it as a cross between the Food and Drink Show and Monty Python, with a hint of Western and 'The A Team' thrown in. Although I am sure that there are many better ways of describing it.
Anyway, here's why it makes me a better teacher:
1. It links between food and transcendant experiences with ease - I think being able to rapidly ascend and descend Maslow's heirarchy is a key to engaging children in education.
2. Not only do the bullies lose, but they make friends with the lonely child. That's hope on a stick.
3. It demonstrates you can learn things from unlikely people.
4. The experts in it are young, old, male, female, rich and poor - the heart of the unconference.
5. It shows that the links between people are as important as the actual knowledge they hold.
So what film inspires you?
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The lie that we can't learn new attitudes.
Old dogs, new tricks
'You can't teach an old dog new tricks' is the old line, but there's a consensus that it isn't actually true. The actual statement may still stand, but I'm no dog trainer so couldn't say for sure.
In humans though, it has been shown that a very high percentage of the brain's ability to learn new things remains far into old age. We refer to adults as life-long learners. We have silver surfers and tweeters (or twits) in their 90s (the oldest died recently aged 104).
Old dogs, old attitudes
Learning is three things - knowledge, skills and attitudes. OK that's a pretty broad statement, but I think those three words cover most of what we try to do in UK schools. I think we're happy that new knowledge can be learnt at any age, and the 'old dogs' disproval would indicate that we're also happy that new skills can be learnt at any age. However I think we're not so assured about attitudes. In other words, old dogs are stuck with their old attitudes.
Unsure about attitudes
In fact if you check your own experience of school, I'm not too sure that we're really sure how to change. influence or teach attitudes at all. What do we do? - we have a school ethos with some rules attached to it. We punish non-compliance and reward compliance. We may have other strategies such as circle time, but what proportion of the timetable do we really allocate to attitude shifting?
And what attitudes are we really teaching. It seems to me that for the most part, we rely on the educator in front of the children.
And at what age are children most likely to learn positive attitudes to life and learning? And at what age do they stop?
My teaching experience goes up to the age of 11, and I've certainly seen attitude change there. This year, a girl who had very little confidence in maths (yet high ability in English) turned it round to become a brilliant problem solver. The change was more down to a change in attitude rather than new skills she learned. I'm sure secondary colleagues also have stories where they have seen students' attitudes completely change around.
Stuck with adults
I'm sure you've heard adults say things like "I can't draw" or "I'm no good at maths."
Somewhere along the way, we must get the idea that we're stuck. We can't improve our attitudes. We believe things like our intellience is fixed and we've reached our limits, or we can't learn a new language because we just don't think that way. It's about the difference with being fixed and being flexible.
And if, as teachers, we pass on a fixed way of thinking to our children then they you will become stuck at some point in the future.
Our behaviour isn't fixed. We can learn new attitudes.
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The lie of the leadership pyramid.
So many people use the word 'up' when they talk about leadership. It is so much part of our language that even people who understand what leadership really is, still use the word 'up'. I still use it, so this post is as much to me as anyone else.
Metaphors like 'career ladder' and 'rat race' don't help. They indicate being ahead of other people - higher up than others.
So what do people mean when they say 'I moved up into leadership'? Is it helpful to refer to leaders with expressions like 'the great and the good'?
Of course there are some real 'ups' in leadership. Pay for one. There is a real financial pyramid - a few people earning incredible amounts at the top of the pyramid with progressively more earning less and less until you reach the bottom of the pyramid where most people earn less than the national average. I'll write about this more in the lie of averages.
Money, I suspect, is a big factor in why we use the word 'up' so much in leadership. It leads us to the pyramid image. In most organisations there are one or two leaders at the top, maybe a few middle managers and then the 'workers'. But is that the ideal way to be? The pyramid model is limited because a pyramid can't grow any bigger unless you de- construct it and start again. That can be a lot of hard work, especially if you're starting with a particularly large pyramid. Even in small pyramids, like my primary school for example, the pyramid can be hard to change if the people who make it up have a fixed concept of how everyone fits together. Change can feel painful, because it feels as though the pyramid is being torn apart and rebuilt each time something new is brought in.
However a paradigm shift can ease the pain.
What if we turn the pyramid upside down? Then it's kind of like a bucket. Admittedly it's a rather square cornered impractical bucket, and not one that would be very useful in my garden, but one that will serve as a metaphor for this paradigm shift I'm talking about.
Now we've got an upside down pyramid we can make it bigger. We can add a new layer to the top of it and presto it can hold more stuff. We can build capacity with ease just because we can think about it differently. I blogged about practical ways of building capacity here.
The job of the leader is key now. She/he is at the bottom of the upside-down pyramid - at the bottom of the bucket if you like. This leader has to hold all the links together. Foster a supportive network, encourage and motivate, spot the potential for new links, develop new leaders or 'bucket builders'.
If anyone has any better metaphors for describing this 'bucket', please do leg me know.
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The lie that you shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
"There's no need to reinvent the wheel." Have you ever said that? Or heard it said? While I agree with the sentiment behind it, I'm going to argue that to learn stuff, you do need to reinvent the wheel. Or at least refine it considerably.
The sentiment
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. What people mean when they say "there's no need to reinvent the wheel" is "there's no point in working harder than you need to." The wheel analogy is the wrong one for this sentiment
The actual wheel
The wheel itself, in its primative form of logs rolling canoes down go the river, or indeed the giant stone monoliths to places like Stonehenge, was invented and reinvented at different times and different place across the globe.
It has been reinvented many times since: for chariots, carts, carriages, cars; as cogs, gears, cams, brakes, measuring devices, energy storage, recording media; it's a symbol of life in Buddhism; it's even a military manouevre.
The metaphorical wheel
The most frequent occasion that I hear the line 'there's no need to reinvent the wheel' is in reference to planning. Planning is the lifeblood of good teaching, but teachers are desperate not to have to work too hard at it. I think there's a whole raft of reasons for this, not least that nobody should have to work too hard at anything. Working too hard is the enemy of productivity. It is demotivating. There are other reasons too, such as the culture behind the planning - does it just tick boxes and ensure coverage, or does it serve the needs of the children and the teachers?
While planning should not be onerous or time-consuming to produce, it does need to be reinvented. This is because in order to take ownership over the planning, we need to re-categorise it into ways that make it meaningful for us. My planning will take on a different from from anyone reading this post, because we all think differently. Even if you are continuing the same classes, you'll still need to reinvent parts, to make it more relevant, to keep up to date with new technology or merely to stop it from becoming tedious.
This is not to say we have to start from scratch - it is good to build on previous successes - and it is good to reinvent. It helps us innovate, create and develop.
So the next time I have a huge amount of planning to do, I will say to myself: "It is good to reinvent the wheel."
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Off the Grid
I've been writing many posts recently 'off the grid'. Disconnected from both wifi and mobile signal at Lee Abbey in Devon. Apparently, if I walked to the top of the hill I could pick up a faint signal, but it would be a lot of effort for not much gain.* There seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to this.
Advantages
There is a certain clarity of thought gained through being here. And I think that is partly down to cutting down distractions - such as not being able to access e-mail, Twitter, text and the like. Since becoming a GCT, my e-mails have rocketed and even though many of them aren't relevant to me, it still takes a certain amount of effort to process the information.
Another reason for the clarity of thought is the place itself. It is beautiful. The curves of the tree lines on the hills, the slope down to the bay and the arc of the bay itself. I'm sure there's something on Maslow's heirarchy about that.
Disadvantages
I am used to checking things that I'm not too sure of, and my favourite method is Google. For example, when I referred to Maslow's Heirarchy in the previous paragraph, I would have liked to check that my guess was correct and maybe provide some helpful image to explain what I meant. But Maslow's Heirarchy is one of those things that I'm not completely sure about.
Another downside is being disconnected from my PLN. My PLN, particularly on Twitter, has become increasingly inspiring over recent months - not because of any radical changes to personnel, but more because I've become a better listener. Posts and tweets from my PLN have inspired me to think new thoughts and write new stuff. Probably 75% of what I blog about is inspired directly by other people's posts.
Impact
How will I post this post? It's written now. Will I hit the e-mail button so if gets posted as soon as I get back in range? Or will I wait until I get home, check out the Maslow's heirarchy thing, add a few appropriate images of the bay I talked about? What's more important to me, the process or the product? How many times should I re-draft a blog post?
*that's a joke for electrical engineers.
Off the Grid
I've been writing many posts recently 'off the grid'. Disconnected from both wifi and mobile signal at Lee Abbey in Devon. Apparently, if I walked to the top of the hill I could pick up a faint signal, but it would be a lot of effort for not much gain.* There seem to be both advantages and disadvantages to this.
Advantages
There is a certain clarity of thought gained through being here. And I think that is partly down to cutting down distractions - such as not being able to access e-mail, Twitter, text and the like. Since becoming a GCT, my e-mails have rocketed and even though many of them aren't relevant to me, it still takes a certain amount of effort to process the information.
Another reason for the clarity of thought is the place itself. It is beautiful. The curves of the tree lines on the hills, the slope down to the bay and the arc of the bay itself. I'm sure there's something on Maslow's heirarchy about that.
Disadvantages
I am used to checking things that I'm not too sure of, and my favourite method is Google. For example, when I referred to Maslow's Heirarchy in the previous paragraph, I would have liked to check that my guess was correct and maybe provide some helpful image to explain what I meant. But Maslow's Heirarchy is one of those things that I'm not completely sure about.
Another downside is being disconnected from my PLN. My PLN, particularly on Twitter, has become increasingly inspiring over recent months - not because of any radical changes to personnel, but more because I've become a better listener. Posts and tweets from my PLN have inspired me to think new thoughts and write new stuff. Probably 75% of what I blog about is inspired directly by other people's posts.
Impact
How will I post this post? It's written now. Will I hit the e-mail button so if gets posted as soon as I get back in range? Or will I wait until I get home, check out the Maslow's heirarchy thing, add a few appropriate images of the bay I talked about? What's more important to me, the process or the product? How many times should I re-draft a blog post?
*that's a joke for electrical engineers.
Luke Skywalker and the Rebel pilots.
There's that scene in Star Wars, A New Hope when Luke Skywalker and the other Rebel pilots are being briefed in the plans for attacking the Death Star. It looks like an impossible task. The Death Star is as big as a small moon and is bristling with defences. The Rebel pilots have tiny x-wing fighters, a bit like attacking a rhinocerous with butterflies.
To make matters worse, when the Rebel pilots have evaded the enemy tie fighters and the Death Star's defences, they must fly into a narrow trench and hit a 2m wide target.
One of them points out that it is impossible.
But Luke Skywalker isn't locked into the spiral of negative thought. He remembers his own abilities and experiences, declaring; "it's no bigger than hitting a womp rat back home." his confidence changes the mood and inspires hope. And guess what - they do it, they destroy the Death Star. Someone should make a film about it.
So the next time you're weighed down by negativity and overwhelmed by the cynicism of others, when the task seems impossible and it looks like everyone is about to give in, remember your abilities and experience and be the one that speaks hope into the situation. You never know, you may just change something.
They may even make a film about it.
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