Talking about persuasive writing

 

And, to give perfectly equal limelight, I should mention too that I’m also presenting on persuasive writing techniques for English teachers at a couple of Nelson Secondary sessions. Persuasive writing is pretty important in the Victorian Certificate of Education English course and, of course, is now included in NAPLAN (national testing). So that’s been keeping me busy too.

If you’re in Melbourne and you want to come along, details are here.

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Planning for the Oxford Conference

I blogged about the forthcoming Oxford Conference in Sydney a while ago, but not it’s well and truly coming up and I’ve been thinking more about what to say, and how to get the message across. The key idea is to respond to the Australian Curriculum in English in new and innovative ways. New responses for a new curriculum, that kind of thing.

So, I thought I’d start with an overview of English (real quick) and a link to some of the online curriculum and curriculum resources available, then delve into what teaching (should?) looks like now, and then in to more detail about the kind of (flipped classroom) tools and tips and techniques that might help make that happen. Then, finish with a bit about building your own personal professional learning network online and not relying on school-based old style PD, with an emphasis on Twitter and all that.

Sound reasonable? I like presentations that are specific on tips and strategies I could walk away and try, so that’s the aim. Suggestions welcome! Hope to see you in Sydney. You can learn more about the conference HERE

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So, what have I learned?

I’ve certainly been in a number of sessions over the last three days, many of which I’ve blogged about here, but what have I learned?

It’s been refreshing to immerse myself again in the IB world and its vast labyrinthe infrastructure which only becomes (frighteningly) apparent at times like these. It’s been good to catch up with some familiar colleagues, spend some intensive time with a colleague from my own school and meet some interesting new people. I’ve had an invitation to a primary school in Bangalore, seen a new and interesting looking anti-LMS called ‘teamie’ and have had the new iPad Shakespeare app demo’d for me by a super-keen Cambridge University Press man. I’ve taken the subway to Chinatown (*like every other system in the world the ticketing system is better than Melbournes) gone to the top of the tallest (twin) towers in the world and enjoyed performances from a range of talented students who’ve been featured every morning.

And that’s without mentioning any of the sessions at all, including some great keynotes and a session on leadership lessons from Shakespeare’s Henry V that was entertaining and moving and had some good lessons from the leader’s experience of the ‘dark night’. (Interestingly, the sessions I took notes with the stylus using Penultimate haven’t really featured in the blog; I have to type them up again afresh and that seems an effort at the moment.)

I’ve been to some great workshops and some infuriating ones, have put my hand up to contribute only to be ignored for the keener student with the straighter hand at the front (oh yeah, that’s how that feels), have listened to some teachers and leaders who talk about themselves and their school but never their students and seen others who have made it their life work to change the world one conversation at a time.

Taking up my pet topic of technology I’ve been heartened to see more conversations that ‘get it’, and less that talk about how kids ‘only play games and muck-around with computers’ and only a few outright annoying ‘Google is making us all stupid (except me)’ presentations, warm, nostalgic and comforting to much of the audience as they are, like a nice cup of Ovaltime in your pyjamas in front of the fire.

There are problems with the IB; it’s huge Gormenghastian indifference, the transitional moments, the elitism, the dotpointing and the bureaucracy it serves, creates and fosters.  But, at the heart of it, there’s also some compelling learning that’s possible within the structure, and some passionate people working in it.

I fly home tomorrow, with only four days of the term left until Easter, and then back up this way to Vietnam for a holiday. I’ve been there before and was entranced. I hope to have some new learning there too.

Above and below: some images from a short time in Kuala Lumpur. Photos: Warrick. Below: Green view from the 22nd Floor

Below: Dr Paula Barrett talking about the importance of preventative work in mental health.

Below: Cooling down in Chinatown.

Below: View from the Two Towers

Below: Conference essentials.

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The IB Five Year Review: what’s new

We’re doing an IB Five Year Review this year (though it’s not called that now) so I thought I should go to this session on  what’s involved, and what’s changed, presented by Stephen Keegan, who did a great job, given the nature of this presentation and its emphasis on governance and regulations.

Some of the changes to the process include:

• Centralised documentation
• Emphasis on ongoing development through the school’s action plan
• More detailed explanation of the self-study process
• More focused questions under each standard
• Specific PD requirements to complete during the period.

There are 76 practices listed for schools to cover and they emphasised that they’d thrown the review back on schools, ‘you are evaluating yourself, dynamically, over the full five years’. They argued that the self-study should take around a year and that there is room for celebration as well.

The action plan lists objectives, actions, dates, whose responsible, budgetary implications and evidence. He suggested by starting with every practice as an objective, then starting from there. Not all need to be addressed in detail. Philosophy etc. might already have been dealt with, but Curriculum might need more attention. Lots of things are uploaded, especially policies.

There needs to be Professional Development plan, a curriculum review cycle. New requirements here come into play in January 2014.It isn’t necessary to upload evidence in the form of certificates to prove staff went to the PD. Also, only one teacher in each subject (eg Language B) needs to attend the PD; they argued for a reasonable and common-sense approach.

Next year the PD requirements will be stricter with a real emphasis on new teachers coming into a school having access to IB PD.

There was some discussion about gathering evidence,who does it, and what it looks like. Student surveys should be done, he argued. Parent might also be involved, either with a survey or forum. Existing school documentation should be emphasised. Only the overview is submitted to the IBO now. This is an area where providing some more information about the nature of the school might be useful, especially if one review looks very different to the others. The course outline required is a course outline – “it doesn’t need to be Atlas Rubicon up in lights” on registration ,but there is a lot of interpretation around the require, not for “comprehensive” curriculum. They argued that some sample curriculum would help: a unit plan from maths, some formative assessment from History etc. they also suggested that passwords into systems like Atlas would be fine. Also, if you say you exceed the practice, then you should provide evidence.

On another matter: first time I’ve seen PREZI used as a presentation tool too; nice transitions, but a big bunch of text on a slide isn’t really anything radically different from PowerPoint really and it was too small to read from the back of the room, even with my new 1.5 magnifiers!

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Online learning: it’s not Plan B any more

The premise of this panel worried me; that online learning has been characterised as what you do when classrooms aren’t possible (bird-flu!) Really? Okay, let’s be tolerant. It turned out to be an interesting session, if a little narrow definition of online, and I’d like a bit more about blended approaches. EG> Why are we talking off-line and online if they are mutually exclusive.

It was interesting to hear about student and parent anxiety and asking questions like ‘if you could take this course face to face would you prefer that?’ (mostly, yes) and ‘Did you learn something about yourself at yourself as a learner’. (mostly, yes)  Here’s what the panelist said:

Matt Harris –  Head of Learning Resources, German European School, Singapore

Synchronous and asynchronous learning (German and Dutch offered to replace self-taught learning) using video conferencing primarily. What we’ve learned: pedagogy matters.

Edward Lawless – Principal – Pamoja Education

James McDonald – Head of School, Yokohama International School

Giving students access to subjects they can’t offer internally, but the world is changing.

Glenn Odlund – Head of School, Canadian International School, Singapore

Challenging the notion that online courses are for a ‘certain kind of kid’. Thinking of making it mandatory for students to take up 1 course online and hoping that students will engage in an online experience that  was so powerful it would leverage the more conventional bricks and mortars classes. They decided to offer one subject, ‘Economics’ as an online course only (and they had a good teacher on campus) They expected ‘push-back’ from parents and maybe teachers, but some has come from students. He describes the advantage of online: time and distance but also described the fact that MYP students had been circulating a petition asking that the Economics course be taught conventionally.

Denise Perrault – Head of Online Learning Devp, IB

Denise talked about ‘why bother’ and the four stages of online learning – substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition. What is the desired outcome? she asked.

Dennis Stanworth – Head of Academics, Yokohama International School

Dennis made some provocative statements; ‘are schools that don’t offer online courses going to be swept away by those that do?’, should an online subject be compulsory for all students?

Photo: Apple for the teacher, virtual apples? Photo: Warrick

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Why resiliency matters

Where Resiliency Matters

Professor Paula Barrett – Pathways Research Centre, ANU, University of Queensland

‘You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck’

Dr Barrett talked about the stigma of mental health and how severe anxiety and depression was much more common than thought; one in every five people will experience severe anxiety at some time during their life, particularly at transitional times in life.

She argued that, unless people had life skills, anxiety can lead to depression. However, she also argued that there were proven clinical interventions that can now help although very few people actually get help.

She also spoke of the problems some students, especially able ones, have with ‘perfectionism’ and that sometimes these anxious students are very able, thoughtful, aspirational, articulate with good family support.

Her argument was that we should aim for prevention, and equipping young people with the skills through curriculum development and gave examples about skin cancer and dental health program that worked. The same is true for mental health.

She talked about ‘human capital investment’ – that, ‘the best investment every government can make is the implementation of evidence-based social and emotional skills programs in the school curriculum’ (James Heckman – Professor of Economics, Nobel Prize winner, 2000)

She argued for the positive psychology approach about resilience – ‘the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity’ and of building on strengths, not just compensating for weaknesses.

Her approach is for schools to deliver social and emotional resilience skills in an engaging way.

She spoke of risk factors and protective factors.

I was a bit worried at the lack of interesting slides; she talked a lot, without helping the audience much, but the content was strong enough to sustain it, and she spoke without notes and with good detail about some of the key factors that she had obviously researched for years.

One interesting thing was the link between physiological evidence and anxiety. One in five babies are a lot more sensitive to things like noise and light, and get distressed quickly and stay distressed for longer. She seemed to be arguing that these were the same children who were prone to anxiety although there are protective factors that are at work here too.

She then moved to the protective factors and why they were important, and how easy they were to implement in schools. ‘Attachment is the most powerful protective factor in life’ (Barrett)

Another important protective factor was ‘attention style’ or what’s sometimes called ‘Mindfulness’. This did resonate with me (it’s a bit like meditation) and it’s an approach that some schools (like mine) have begun to take up, for every student, more purposefully.

The three most important health factors she talked about were: sleep, diet and staying active every day; move for an hour every day.

Finally, she spoke about the future resiliency model she saw that all schools would be offering in twenty years time, if not now.

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Face to face or online learning? The case for blended learning?

ABSTRACT: What is the picture of a student’s intellectual future? How is online learning transforming learners and the ways in which learner’s learn? There is no turning back, to the pre-internet world of learning and inquiry. Our minds are changing as we interact with the tools of learning, and as the structure of our brain changes, so do our thoughts and experiences.  What do we stand to lose by constant connectivity, instant and unlimited information? For a talent lost or diminished there will be another one that is gained. As educators continue to nurture student’s minds, they need to tread carefully and perhaps adopt the evolving ‘ Blended learning’ model of education, the combination of traditional bricks and mortar and online delivery. This presentation will cover the impact of the Internet and its tools on learners, the different approaches and models of Blended learning, how the IB is leaning towards a blended learning environment and practical insights into what makes it work

This session opened with a disturbing metaphor: ‘the internet the invading our world’.  It didn’t improve much when we then went into the ‘what is the internet doing to our brains’ and then showed a whole lot of pictures of young people texting. However, she twisted the narrative by then showing a picture of the conference from the day before; a whole lot of educators on their ipads and computers (and iPads are everywhere here)

Unfortunately, it was then back to neuroscientists and ‘What the internet is doing to our brains’ and the Nicholas Carr book, ‘The Shallows’. Our brains are changing apparently, being constantly rewired and neural pathways and synapses are working all the time. We used to call this ‘learning’ by the way.

This presentation argued that there is no turning back, but then went back to what we might lose by constant connectivity. So far, so negative. It was nice to see some of the participants questioning back: ‘how is this different from the way the brain is rewired when you learn French?’ Yuzzah. You go you. The session threatened to get feisty when one man said that the way he had to deal with 150 emails a day and didn’t read the same anymore, and that was because of this (gesturing at the screen with the word ‘internet’) And there was a bit of back and forth. Nice to see.

But then it was back to us losing the skills of ‘concentration, contemplation and reflection’. And (no irony at all) an argument that we should go back to the blackboard. I’m not joking.

We eventually got on to ‘blended learning’  - ‘a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through online delivery of content and instruction with some element of student control over time, place, pace etc.’ For schools, surely this is the future I think; the mix of ‘brick and mortar’ and online learning model. She argued for a ‘self-blend’ model for IB where students take an online course in their regular school schedule and students work with a site based coordinator.

Blended learning provides a nice convergence of online and face to face. She gave some good tips including the importance of the dedicated site coordinator, sharing student weekly progress using Google Docs, setting up collaborative student teams, making tutorial or help sessions available, student counselling in and out of the program, limit of one subject per student, the importance of educating parents and students, providing hard copy text books and doing regular surveys of student opinions and interests.

On the other hand this was pretty much the only session I’d seen so far where the presenter demonstrated good design skills with some good images, and very little text. And she handled what I would probably have regarded as challenges, really well.

Below, a key diagram from the presentation, which argued for the self-blend model.

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Where is the IB heading?

I thought I should take the opportunity to acquaint myself with current IB strategic directions and how the organisation saw itself, so I got into a session at IBAC2013 on this topic Here’s what I found out:

Where is the IB heading?

The IB is three years into a five year strategy, looking ahead to new directions especially regarding digital technologies. We were given a break-down of the kinds of new directions that the IB is looking at currently. I haven’t included notes here on the MYP or PYP programs specifically.

IB Alumni Network

The IB now has nearly 30000 students in an Alumni Network, helping with university recognition and research participation.

myIB – Promoting IB Success

A promotion to personalise the impact of IB for personal stories

World Student Conferences

Global learning opportunities to bring students together. In 2012, 561 students from 49 countries attended a conference in Segovia, Spain. There will be four more in 2013: Hong Kong, Canada and in the UK. (more at www.ibo.org/wsc)

MyIB Digital Toolkit for IB World Schools

Advertising and communication tools to inform (and persuade) parents and students

IB Continuum

More linking of the program contexts

Revised IB Learner Profile

Will stay as 10 attributes with revised descriptors and clarifying relation to international mindedness.

Approaches to teaching and learning across DP

Trying to make the Diploma teaching more focus and coherent, featuring best-practice pedagogy. New Global Politics subject.

Online diploma courses for students

Over 1000 students, 260 schools already involved, expected to double. The idea of ‘open world schools’ for external students

IB Career Related Certificate (IBCC)

A new program providing multiple pathways

University Performance

Increasing data showing higher results, completion etc in university for IB graduates.

e-Assessment

Moving from paper to digital. May 2013, 97% of scripts e-marked, with quality assurance through pre-marked random ‘seeding’.

Photo: Twin towers at night by Warrick

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Shaping Innovative Futures

This was the first keynote at the IBAC Conference

Shaping innovative futures
Sohail Inayatullah 
http://www.meta-future.org

This session opened with the affirming, ‘If you try to predict the future you get it wrong; the answer is that you need to promote resiliency and adaptability.

‘The future is an asset, a resource and a narrative to be used with intelligence and wisdom’ See things from different perspectives.

He showed how change actually happened, including examples:

The change of doctors from recommending ‘Camels’ to recommending complementary medicine and meditation.
The growth of geo-medicine
Young single women earn 8% more than their male peers in large American cities.
Asia-Pacific leads the world in female participation in leadership.

In a message that would recur later, in other presentations: How we imagine the future is critical, to that future.

Stop “othering”, nations are constructs, what IB learning does is open that thinking up. 
But
Old behaviours dies hard – the used future (the old future that others have already and challenge the notion of who’s in charge. He argued for a move from reactive to proactive – towards prevention 
“If you have too much history, you often can’t innovate “
European universities blesses and burdened by 1000 years of history 

Why do so many projects fail? – “culture eats strategy for breakfast”

One key message: we need a compelling narrative – new metaphors to overturn the weight of the factory model on the imagination of the school of the future 

His Waves of change 

(I heard threads from Al Gore’s new book in some of these)

Climate
Peer to peer – from Britannica to Wikipedia (flatter)
Artificial intelligence leaving the web (everything is hyperlinked)
Transparent and flexible brain (meditation)
Smart, green cities (emotional maps)
Demographic shift
Rise of Chindia
Long GFC

It was a  nice way to start the conference; playing with alternate futures.

Collage from Malaysian Tourist Commission promotion.

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Learning and innovating at the IBAC

I haven’t been to the IB Asia Pacific Conference since I went to Invacargill in NZ in 2004. It was the bleakest, flattest, coldest place in the world; we walked the black ice to the conference in the morning and walked back in the dark at the end of the day. 

Besides the cold weather and the warm welcome of the locals I remember two things from that conference very strongly: the wooden dinghy in the hotel foyer filled with icy NZ beer, and the enthusiasm of the teachers for the IB curriculum.  I’d only been to VCE conferences before, and they were characterised more by teeth-gnashing and more or less outright hostility than the (almost) universal positivity I encountered in NZ.

But it wasn’t the cold that’s kept me away all these years. I don’t personally teach in the IB program and my role is around the teacher development, aligning the teaching and learning approaches to our VCE teaching, and having an understanding of where it’s all heading. Which leads me here this week,to Kuala Lumpur, a place that couldn’t be any more different to Invacargill if it tried. It should be an interesting few days, and I’ll be posting some of my session notes later on.

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