Claire Amos

Every time you have a meeting imagine a student in one of the seats. Every decision you make, every thing you discuss must be in that student's best interest.  Classical teaching is timeless and timely.  Pedagogy: - Antiquated (what to cut) - Classical (what to keep) - Contemporary (what to create) Our learners need classical and contemporary teaching.  Cultivating "right now" personalized learning experiences.  "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Allan Kay Four Program Structures:  - Time - physical and virtual  - Space  - Grouping learners - Personnel configurations  How can we move this along.  An aside - I think Heidi Hayes Jacobs needs to come visit HPSS and out awesome SLLs.  We don't need reform, we need new form. We teach to the time we have. We need to consider time as currency. What's a good use of 20, 40 or 60 mins of time.  Why does end ...

Source:  http://ericsheninger.com/esheninger?sid=28 He's quite shouty, which coming from me is really saying something. What is truly possible in education? There is always excuses to not move forward. We need to stop making excuses and make a difference and make changes.  Leadership is action, not a position. This brings to mind what we tried to achieve with #hackyrclass Every teacher can be a change agent, regardless of what's happening in the wider school. Check out the Hack Your Class project here:  http://www.teachingandelearning.com/2014/04/hpss-bloggers.html?m=1 Are we seeing the fundamental shifts in schools that we are seeing beyond school. As an aside - how long do we need to keep talking about this before we get a critical mass doing it?? What does school really teach students? Sheninger shared how he was a Principal doing what he thought he had to do - focusing on control and compliance. March 2009 Sheninger got in T...

David Price is the author of the fabulous book Open and Larry Rosenstock is the director of High a Tech High. Autonomy is the new mantra. Price spoke about the fact that the need for change is escalating, referring to examples such as global warning as an issue showing the need to address wider world issue before it's too late.  2020 50% of all jobs will be freelance.  2030 47% of all jobs will be automated. How are we preparing our students of today for this very real and close future?  Education Change Deniers!   I love this term. The term to describe those that want to sell future focused education as a needless left-wing conspiracy - I know of a few of this in NZ! What we need is OPEN learning.  Open learning is: 1. Outward facing  2. Highly creative  3. Done with not to students  4. Driven by purpose If you haven't already, make sure you read David Price's book - OPEN   Larry Rosentock shared a clip from Most Likely to Succeed . A docum...

Super Awesome Sylvia certainly lives up to her name - she is certainly is awesome. An awesome role model for our learners and an important reminder to educators as to how students are capable of not only leading their learning, but also teaching others.  Check out her website:  http://sylviashow.com/ It would be great to see this happening in class rather than just at home. A great argument for all classes to not only be maker spaces publishing suites.  I also like this website she mentioned:  https://diy.org/  where kids can teach other kids. Encouraging them to not only make but to also share, learn and teach!  Sylvia also demoed her WaterColourBot  http://watercolorbot.com/   demonstrating an awesome intersect of art, Maths, robotics and computing. Man I hope HPSS produces legions of young people like Sylvia!! I also loved that she was brave enough to do live demos, rolling with the hiccups and being an awesome example of why she should take ri...

Eric Mazur is a physicist and educator from Harvard University Mazur kicked off with an anecdote about meeting a woman on a plane who developed flash cards...for phones. It was clear from the outset that this man doesn't value memorisation and rote learning - I think we are going to get on. He was quick to point out that memorisation is only about passing the test. After a few days only 35% of that information. Today he is arguing something I feel passionate about - our assessment practices are outmoded and outdated. Really only designed for ranking students. What is the purpose of assessment?  He gave us 90 seconds to list purposes of assessment...I got: Checking understanding Monitoring progress Needs for future learning Others might value: Ranking students Personally really only value assessment FOR learning.  His list: Will post when I have better wifi! He identifies a key issue. It is often inauthentic problem solving. Couldn't agree more! This is my problem with external...

Don't get me wrong. There is no question that educational research is useful and that understanding what has worked in the past can and should inform our decisions about which pedagogical interventions we use day to day. However if we limit ourselves to what is formally researched and published in peer reviewed papers we are going to continue to fail a good portion of our young people. To get a change in outcomes we must change our practice. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” - Henry Ford It concerns me that there is still a tendency (for some) in education to dismiss new approaches, new strategies, new ideas, patronisingly belittling new ways of doing things as fads and passing fancies, simply because there is yet to be a lofty body of evidence that proves it works across the board. Sitting around and waiting for the evidence to be served up on a silver platter before you are willing to try new interventions and strategies ...

Warning - this is long! This is an essay I wrote about Authentic Leadership for my Ed Perspectives Paper at Waikato University. Introduction The Oxford Dictionary defines authentic as “of undisputed origin and not a copy; genuine” and leadership as “the action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do this”. Therefore we may surmise that ‘authentic leadership’ is simply the ability to lead a group of people whilst being genuine. In this paper I consider a range of perspectives and definitions for the concept of authentic leadership: authentic leadership as self awareness, authentic leadership as exemplified by authentic behaviours driven by a moral purpose and authentic leadership as a broader metaphor for effective leadership . I also consider the strengths and limitations of authentic leadership and consider how authentic leadership is manifest in my practice and consider how the concept of authentic leadership may also influence future actions. Li...