Google Teacher Academy, moonshot thinking...and assessment

Tuesday morning this week I am lucky enough to be flying away to Sydney to join 49 other educators at the Google Teacher Academy. Below is the video I submitted as part of my application to be considered as one of the GTA Ambassadors for Change.

So why did I apply for the academy?
Whilst I am actually an advocate for educators to be as device and brand agnostic as possible, I have to admit, I do really like Google Apps for Educators. The reason GAFE appeals is simple. GAFE is a suite of tools that supports the pedagogical approach I value - co-constructed, sharing, transparent and supports student agency.


The other reason I applied was the company who was taking over the GTA. This GTA is the first academy to be run by NoTosh an international education consultancy "which challenges the status quo in schools, public services and creative companies. We work together with clients to improve the way people learn, the results of the organisation and the spaces in which people work, learn and play. Everything we do has learning at its heart." The fact that they were taking the academy marked an important change (at least it did to me), signaling a shift of focus from 'tools in education' to 'change in education'. This very much aligns with my values. Over the last 5 years as I have built up my profile as an e-learning/ICT in ed type leader-y person in NZ I have actually become less interested in e-learning and ICT in and of itself. Instead I am finding myself increasingly interested in leading change in education, albeit change at least partly facilitated by technology.

This is where the concept of moonshot thinking comes in as well. As Astro Teller in the Wired article  Google X Head on Moonshots: 10X Is Easier Than 10 Percent states "...when you’re working to make things 10 percent better, you inevitably focus on the existing tools and assumptions, and on building on top of an existing solution that many people have already spent a lot of time thinking about. Such incremental progress is driven by extra effort, extra money, and extra resources. It’s tempting to feel improving things this way means we’re being good soldiers, with the grit and perseverance to continue where others may have failed — but most of the time we find ourselves stuck in the same old slog.

But when you aim for a 10x gain, you lean instead on bravery and creativity — the kind that, literally and metaphorically, can put a man on the moon."

Put this in to an educational context and you have an interesting concept. What if we thought less about how to improve education through small a series of small incremental changes and thought more about how we might re-vision education from the ground up. This is moonshot thinking - terrifying, liberating, paralysing and awesome all at the same time.


However, I am not just a dreamer or part-time visionary, I am a pragmatist. Whilst I believe we do need to re-vision and think big and blue-sky, we also need to consider how we might achieve change in the interim. This is where assessment comes in. Aside from being a foundation Deputy Principal at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, I am also involved in several national groups that are exploring how we might lead future-focused change across NZ. In the 21st Century Education Reference Group put together by Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye we have made a number of recommendations in the Future-Focused Learning in Connected Communities report. I stand by each of the recommendations, all necessary and if we are honest, should have been implemented yesterday! Another group I work with is the NZQA Future State reference group put together by Steve Bargh. It is this group that is making me think more seriously about how national assessment change might actually be the way for leading pedagogical change - particularly as it is the mighty tail that wags the curriculum design dog...even if we don't like to admit it.

So I suspect my moonshot(ish) thinking may head in this direction - how would national assessment need to change, to change education...in the way we think it needs to change?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The National, Act and NZ First Coalition and what it means for education

Image
Photo Source Yesterday saw the announcement of a new government which came with a raft of new policies and ministerial appointments. The Minister of Education, as was expected, is National MP Erica Stanford. More interestingly was the number of policies and priorities two parties who only collectively gained 15.5% of the votes managed to get across the line.  The common threads across both Act and NZ First included some good old-fashioned back-to-basics, a focus on compulsory attendance and cracking down on truancy, increased focus on academic achievement and shifting the fees-free policy from the first of uni to the last. To be fair, none of these represent much of a departure from what National was touting anyway.  The interesting and, at times, worrying changes suggest Luxon was willing to let both Act and NZ First foist their ideologies on innocent schools and students for the sake of a "strong and stable" government.  Unsurprisingly Act got Partnership Schools across the
Read more

National, Act and the age of standardisation in education

Image
Chris and David discussing the joy of testing. Whilst we are still awaiting the outcome of special votes, it is pretty safe to assume that we are staring down the barrel of a National / Act Party government that will be bringing a very distinct flavour to the education landscape. Below is an outline of what each party promised for education.  Front and centre is a focus on "back to basics" and what looks like a whole lot more standardisation (from both National and Act) and testing to ensure we are all "teaching the basics brilliantly". Those of us in schools know that standardisation isn't necessarily the answer and testing didn't seem to turn the dial in the past either. That is the trouble when policies are designed to satisfy parent voters who just want their kids back in school and succeeding.  In their 100-day plan, National is promising to do the following in the education space: Require primary and intermediate schools to teach one hour a day each of
Read more

Assessment in the Age of AI - Claire Amos

Image
Below are the slides I shared at NZQA's 'Assessment in the Age of AI' symposium.   This is my brief overview of how we are approaching AI at Albany Senior High School and some of the concerns and some of thoughts I have about the topic.  In short, I am worried we are so damn busy we aren't giving it the attention it needs. I also worry that leaders will try and ignore and/or attempt to ban and that this ignores the fact that Pandora's Box is well and truly opened and this thing is developing faster than we can imagine and is increasingly woven into platforms and tools we already use. We are sitting at a fork in the path where both options lead to a world fundamentally altered by AI and we need to choose whether to work with it or stick our heads in the sand. That decision is going to have a tangible impact on how well our young people are going to be equipped to thrive in the future.  We need to embrace AI, and approach it with curiosity, criticality and care.  One
Read more