"The ability to affect change" - Master Class #2 (#eFellows14)

Before I knew it, it was time for our second eFellow master class.  This time we were off to Christchurch, where some well planned learning meetings by John and Louise awaited us!

It was lovely to meet up with everyone again, reconnecting and eating.  After all the gossip and laughs, we headed to our first school visit.

We arrived at Breens Intermediate and were welcomed by the principal, and we learned how it was decided to have some kind of a vehicle to tie their school together.  There was a need to have something to help them to talk to the students about achievement, behaviour and belonging.  They decided to have five concepts to meet the five Key Competencies and this was the beginning of the development of the Breens' values (Brilliant, Brave, Beautiful, Bold, Belonging).

Walking through the school and talking to some students, it was evident that students enjoyed what they are doing, they were engaged and 'flying' in this MLE model. Learning was transparent and students were able to talk about having choice, challenges and their independent learning.

Some things that I took away from Breens Intermediate is the Change management - Apollo 13 approach "We're not going to do our best, we're going to do whatever it takes" and the Servant leadership "This is our pod/team and we serve the students, we don't give up on them."

Our next school visit was to St Andrews Collegiate to hear what they were up to.  

They opted for Moodle as a Learning Management System and incorporate their Developing Positive Relationships (DPR) values (faith, hope, compassion, respect, honesty, generosity and responsibility) into this management system.  The front page of moodle is used to celebrate student success.

It was interesting to learn how they use Office 365 and OneNote for information gathering and multi-user collaboration.  A very informative discussion was also generated around the use of Moodle and OneNote.

Students create ePortfolios with OneNote and Office365

One of the many things I liked was that they did a reflection on how their 1:1 is going by the way of three-way interviews to collect staff, student and parent voice.

I have been thoroughly impressed by the enthusiasm of teachers and eLearning opportunities at this fine school.

'Hosting the CORE Education eFellows of 2014 at St Andrew's College' - A post by Sam McNeill, Director of ICT at St Andrews College.

Our 'Leading from the Middle' session with Pauline Scanlan lead to interesting discussions around leadership and with some interesting questions raised:

"To what degree can you motivate people to change? Do you as a leader really support teachers in what they do? Do you have the ability to talk it through? Why are people at where they're at? Do you think about it from another perspective?

Transforming education is CORE's mission. It's about constant change and improvement. If you want change, you have to transform and improve.  

We were left with the question: "Is your school a jazz group or an orchestra?"

We begin our 'Making a Difference' session with Derek Wenmoth, who provoked our thoughts around 21st Century Teaching and Learning. 

One message that came through was that it is important for a teacher to continue learning and be engaged in a professional learning way.  The consequence of not doing that is that within 3-5 years you would revert to teaching in ways you remembered being taught.

We have to rethink our values.  We see schools improve, but not change. Therefore we really need to understand the concept of transformation, which is about a paradigm shift - a complete major overhaul of our system.

What we have to do is to see ourselves raising the bar continually in a trans-formative way, with improvements.

Derek also discussed CORE's ten trends, which is one of our most powerful penetrating things in education.

We looked into the three markers for change in the 21st century - Ubiquity, Agency & Connectedness and the five dimensions of the eLPF with the focus on Empowering.

And last, but not least, our session with Louise Taylor on 'What does Transformation look like?"

We learned more about transformational data collection and the who and how.

A whole discussion was generated around Transformational Language Ideas in which Agency, Voice, Attitude & Knowledge came to forth.

Main take away -> Transformative work serves the human course.

It was inspiring to listen to everyone talking about their inquiries and a stimulating three days with fellow #eFellows14 Anne, Tim, Vicki, Bec, Ben and Rowan.

Another highlight was meeting past eFellows as well as Michael and Josephine Winter. Missed a huge photo opportunity here big time! :-(

~ The price of change is measured by our will and courage, our persistence, in the face of difficulty.'  - Peter Block Business Philosopher ~