I am an avid follower of Twitter and read with great interest that a Principal that I follow had not posted for 10 weeks…….I haven’t posted for 3 months. Do I have nothing to share? Sometimes, no. But probably it’s a time factor……leading a school and being a dad and husband mean there are other priorities before blogging.

But here we go……I have found the time.

This is a mix of what is going well for our school and some of my own thoughts of what’s currently happening in today’s educational landscape.

Like so many of us, we are all trying to give the best possible effect to the New Zealand Curriculum and giving full credence to it’s intent in developing the whole child and ALL the learning areas equally. Since the inception of NAG 2A, we have been slightly sidelined with National Standards, but at our school, we are intent on providing the best possible learning experiences in all curriculum areas.

Currently the answer for us is through Modules. This is not a new concept in schools, but we have introduced it into our school and so far so good, we are “as happy as Larry ” with it.  Each of our teachers chooses an areas of focus (eg: science, visual art, te reo, technology), plans a comprehensive unit for it and then delivers it to their class for a week. The teacher then teaches the same programme to all the other classes in their team. For us, this has allowed us to give greater depth, interest, engagement and motivation to the other curriculum areas outside of literacy and numeracy. It has also allowed our staff to interact and build successful, strong relationships with the other children within our school. So far, we have run this over two terms and through review with the staff and children, it has proven successful. Some aspects still require slight tweaking, but we are getting there.

Our HOT Learning model is another success. The general buzz within schools is ‘inquiry’ – we’re all doing ‘inquiry’. I don’t have a problem with developing and building inquisitive learners, I was just tired of the name. We have developed HOT Learning – Higher Order Thinking Learning and we have redeveloped our model to a more simpler, user friendly process. This past term was our first implementation of our HOT Model and the children responded that they enjoyed their learning. They felt that they had greater ownership and voice with their learning – parts of our model that we placed great emphasis on. Again, some aspects still require further thinking, but we are moving well with this.

So, what am I am 6s and 7s with……..National Testing is one. There has been a lot of speculation and ‘talk’ of impending National Testing in NZ schools. This is a very real concern for education and is in complete contrast to our curriculum. In one hand we have NZC espousing creativity, actively involved learners and a strong emphasis on formative practice and the other, we have narrowed learning, prescribed tests and a mandate of ‘thou shalt’. The latter doesn’t sit comfortably with me and it’s why we are intent on our models of HOT Learning and Module Learning.

Another thing is the demise of Teacher Training in Palmerston North. Having gone through Teachers College in Palmerston North a few years ago now, Palmerston could then claim to be one of THE best teacher training providers in the country. They had a comprehensive 3 year programme with a range of curricula learning and practicums. Massey recently announced that this programme will soon cease and make way for only the post-graduate programme. Again, don’t get me wrong, some of our great teachers are post graduates (having only done the one year teacher training), but for building a profession, is this the best way? We would all go and visit a doctor who had only completed 1 year at Med school? From my readings, it would appear that it is to do with revenue, more students can be ‘pumped’ through with the grad programme. This is a crying shame for Massey and our teacher training.

On reflection, some successes and some concerns. Term 4 promises to be absolutely hectic and frantic. RWC has been TREMENDOUS but it has been a bugger for schools with the shorter Term 4. It will be manic, but we will get there.

I was recently asked by a colleague what I thought were the current Challenges facing New Zealand Educators. It didn’t take me too long to think about this. In fact, the answers came quite quickly.

Some relate to the potential demise or intent of our curriculum and some are just what I currently see.

Here is what I see are the current challenges:

Slow eradication of Tomorrow’s Schools. The intent of self-governing schools and designing curriculum reflective of your school community and pedagogy, seems to be slowly drifting away. With the ‘Big Brother’ approach, the Ministry is ever increasingly ‘telling us’ what we have to do. Ever so slowly, the concept of self-governing schools seems to be going.

Since 2007, New Zealand has had the glory of a world leading and much acclaimed Curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum is future focused and has a fantastic vision for learners in our schools. The curriculum allows for each school to plan, design, cerate and implement their own curriculum. reflective of their schools and communities.

BUT, we are currently living through uncertain educational times. There have been, and continue to be, a myriad of changes and introduced initiatives that jeopardise the intent of our curriculum – National Standards being one of them.

Recently I attended a meeting, where we had Mary Chamberlain as our guest speaker. She indicated that the design of professional learning, offered by the Ministry, will soon be quite different. We know, gone are the days of the old Science Advisors or Art Advisors. All current PLD is focused on Literacy and Numeracy. Mary shared that possibly as soon as next year, Regional Ministry Offices will be responsible for providing the PLD. Assessment data/evidence will be gathered from the regional schools, the Ministry will aggregate the data and then provide professional learning based on the ‘assessment need’. Another indicator that self governing in schools is slowly going as even PLD will be ‘tailor fit’ to data.

Therefore….how do we ensure that we maintain our focus and passion on designing our own curriculum, broadening our teaching and learning experiences of the curriculum and continue to engage with our communities what is important to us?

As the professional leaders of our schools, we must endeavour to bring to life the intent of the curriculum and allow it to flourish in our schools.

Maintaining and sustaining a focus on Teaching As Inquiry. Teaching as Inquiry works – we know this. I feel it is all well and good now, while the curriculum is fresh ‘and everyone is on the band wagon’ but we do not want to lose focus on this. I believe that teachers have become much more reflective and critical of their own practice for the benefit of improvement and student learning and their own teaching. Ensuring we have quality professional learning and visionary leaders to work through this is important.

The infusion and integration of e-learning. There are still schools who this would be a foreign concept for – this is actually disadvantaging their own children. Schools, more than ever, must keep abreast of change. It is rapid change, so also managing this for success ir critical. With this, Govt. must support schools with infrastructure etc to ensure that this isn’t further burdened on Ops Grants. We want our children to be active participants in this world that they know – how do we ensure this is alive?

Doing a few things and doing them well.  There are times when you can be bombarded by every company and PLD provider in the company.  Schools must stay focused on their Charter and beliefs and do a few things and do them well. At my school, we believe in de Bono’s and our own HOT Learning Model – we are not going to pick up Gardiners, Costa, Tony Ryan etc (not saying they are not worthy – simply, we have chosen de Bono’s for our school). We want our children to be conversent in one main area and to use it effectively.  This also goes for all the ‘others’ that crop up, such as the constant maths courses, one day ineffectual workshops in paper making etc!

Really knowing and understanding the involvement of our students with their learning and ‘student voice’. This relates to Formative Practice and really ensuring our children are active participants with the design and creation of their learning and knowing the purpose for learning. How do we really know/have a measure of students being engaged with their learning?

As I mentioned, this is just an ‘off the top of my head’ look at  what is currently challenging our educational leaders. What do you think?

For the past 12 months our school has enjoyed the benefit of having our school email hosted by Google, as part of the Google Apps for Education. For me personally, this enabled our school to have ‘anytime anywhere’ access to email, and a variety of other features that would be beneficial to learning and teaching, such as Google Docs and Presentations.

At the beginning of this year, I was sent an email (as Administrator) of our Google Organisation, informing me that Google Apps Accounts would be transitioning this year to be like fully fledged Google Accounts and enjoy ALL the services of full Google Accounts.

I duly read all the information and watched the accompanying videos. The biggest issue that would face Users was Conflicting Accounts. Again, I read all the information, re-watched the videos and gained further insight and understanding of Conflicting Accounts. Each User would have to be transitioned, and if there was a Conflicting Account, this would have to be changed. As I also have a school to lead, this all became ‘too hard basket’ and I ignored it.

I follow many blogs, one of which is Dorothy Burt’s. Dorothy had blogged about her process in transitioning accounts, so I thought, right….I’ll do it!

Effectively a Conflicting Account is where you have your school email, such as, myname@abc.school.nz and this identical address has also been used in another application that is operated by Google, such as Blogger . The Conflicting Account will now need to be renamed. This is a nuisance as all our staff have Blogger blogs, which are accessed through their school email – they now all have to be transitioned.

The bonus at the end though, is that Blogger will be able to be accessed from within the Google Apps Domain (under our school email address) but how to do that……..it was a bit confusing!

Before, I could open multiple Browsers and log in to all these services with the same address (such as Google Apps Mail, Blogger, Picasa etc). Each application would have it’s own cookies that would allow multiple access. Now with the merger, all these services would be cookied together, effectively coming under one umbrella – causing a clash and conflicting accounts.

So…..to begin the process……

I started with one of our Users who I knew used no other services – they transitioned no problem. When you go to transition a User, you select who you want to transition, Google sends them a service email to say their account is being transitioned to ensure they are informed, and after a period of time…..done!

On Friday I chose a User who I knew had a Blogger address that used her school email address. Come today, she came to see me to say that when she went to log into Blogger, she was greeted with a Transition message and that she now had conflicting accounts….what to do??!! Pass it on to the Administrator – me!

This is where I relied on the expert blog and video tutorials of Dorothy Burt to guide me on the way!  I wish to thank Dorothy for her excellent advice and videos which assisted greatly to my process.

I will now attempt to write a step by step guide of what I did:

1. On the screen of the Conflicting Account (in this case, Blogger), you are informed that they are now Conflicting. Your school/domain email will stay the same (as this is administered and ‘owned’ by your organization/school) and that you need to change the Blogger address.

2. Click the option that says you want to create a new Google Email to administer the Blog.

3. Set up a new Google Account to administer the Blog.  (No information is lost on any of the accounts). This could be classed as a ‘holding account’.

4. Log into your Blog with the new email to check that it works! Yippee, it works!

5. At this point in time, you now have your school email, myname@abc.school.nz and a DIFFERENT Google email to access the Blogger Blog.  So how do I then get the Blog under my school email or Google Apps Domain?????

6. Log into your Blogger Blog.

7. Go to Settings – Permissions – Add Authors. It is here, that you type in your school email, myname@abc.school.nz, to invite yourself/the User

8. Open your  school email. You will notice that you have been sent an email and a link from the Blog Administrator, asking you if you would like to accept the invitation.  Click on the link.

9. When you have clicked on the link, you will be taken into the Blog – click on Accept here – DO NOT CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT.

10. Depending on what comes next, I experienced two different windows. You will either be granted access to the blog straight away, or you will need to set up your screen name. If you are prompted to do this, enter a screen name and go to Continue. On the next screen, DO NOT CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT, click Accept/Sign in.

11. You will now be able to access the Blog, and at the top, your school email should be shown as the User logged in.

12. When you now enter your school email (myname@abc.school.nz), Click on More, Click on Blogger and you will be taken straight to your Blog!!!!

13. Successful transition of Blogger to Google Apps.

I hope this reads as helpful and useful, should you need to transition Users. If any of this post sounds confusing, apologies. My own confusion was paramount at the start of the whole process, but now that I have made a successful transition, and UNDERSTAND the process – it’s as clear as crystal.

Good luck with your own transitioning!

There is a shift and emphasis within our curriculum to ensure we allow children’s creativity to be maximised and encouraged – to ensure we don’t lose the ‘big picture’ holistic approach to our curriculum with the implementation of the 3 R’s Standards.

As a staff we have talked and discussed in length creativity and viewed and listened to the thoughts of Sir Ken Robinson. With all this in mind, I thought I would challenge the staff to see how we prohibit children’s creativity, and then with this understanding, how we could improve.

I posed a question to the staff, “How in our classes, do we restrict children’s creativity?’. There was much discussion and debate and I was awaiting the feedback. The feedback that was shared surprised me. The staff replied that we restrict children’s creativity all the time…….not what I was wanting to hear!  But then the staff elaborated, their interpretation was, that we restrict their creativity by; timetables, bells, routine, core learning areas (literacy, numeracy) learning intentions, success criteria, set concepts.

A lot of these things, I had never considered – timetables, routine, core learning areas. Through these, we do potentially restrict creativity. As a strong advocate of formative practice, I was unnerved by the learning intention and success criteria comment – are these really restricting creativity?

I had never considered bells and timetables to restrict creativity – interesting…

As discussion ensued, one teacher asked, ‘Exactly, what is creativity?’ A great question – what is it really? She said, that with learning intentions and success criteria, then we will always restrict creativity as we have already pre-determined what is to be learnt. She also relayed that Success Criteria eliminates the freedom for children to ‘do as they please’ and be creative.

For me, to summarise for the staff, and bring the meeting together, enabled me to form my own interpretation, judgment and deeper understanding of creativity and exactly what it meant for me. This feedback had deepened my own understanding.

I now believe there are two aspects to creativity within the classroom.

Firstly is the ‘loosest’ of definitions. Creativity can be like ‘free range chooks’ – children allowed to do as they please to complete the learning. ‘Create a piece of artwork’ – and let the children do as they please to arrive at the conclusion. For me, this would be a challenge for children to meet as there is no purpose or meaning.

Secondly, and more profoundly for me, is what I am going to call, Scaffolded Creativity. Again, as an advocate of Formative Assessment, I strongly believe learning intentions and success criteria have a place in class. We know, and research tells us (especially Nuthall 2007, Clarke 2003) that children must be aware of the PURPOSE for their learning. Without purpose, why do it? Having a purpose for learning makes it meaningful and relevant. Learning Intentions should be clear and unambiguous and related to the SKILL that children are getting better at. Therefore, with a SKILL based learning intention, children are then able to meet that learning intention HOW they want to and HOW they interpret it. This allows for their OWN creativity – to meet the learning to their unique experience. Similarly, success criteria can be broad enough to allow this.  Success Criteria can be both product and process criteria – it is the process criteria that allows children to be creative. Co-constructing criteria that allows scope for individual interpretation, while still meeting the intended learning, will allow for each child’s creativity.

So….scaffolded creativity is what I have come to. We want our children to be creative, but ultimately, there must be a purpose to the learning. However children chose to meet the intended learning, is their interpretation and creativity – allowing them the ‘freedom’ to get there as they choose.

Term 1 has drawn to a close and it is time to reflect on the term that was and to vision and be excited about the impending term.

At the conclusion of Term 1 I informed staff that it would be timely to look at their Appraisals, the aligned Registered Teacher Criteria and to record some reflections of the term and how they thought they had gone towards their goals. As Leaders,  and as BES: Student Leadership and School Outcomes informs us, the largest effect size and good practice for leaders is to promote and participate in learning development, including reflection. So…time to reflect on my goals and the term.

On the last day of term we received our Confirmed ERO Report – this was exciting. Particularly as an area that myself and ERO had debated over, and came to no agreement with, had been changed (for the better) in the final report. This was excellent and worth celebration. Overall, our school can be very proud of the ERO Report and take credence from the areas of success. As ERO indicated, our school had experienced a new Board, some new staff and a new Principal – and ultimately, the whole time, our focus has been on learning and achievement and providing the best for our kids. It was great to have the work we have done on building our own curriculum acknowledged as we are very proud of our Koputaroa Curriculum.

During the term I have been involved with a Principals PLG, facilitated by Carol Lynch. Carol is an excellent and highly regarded facilitator, who explores topical educational issues and challenges, provides relevant, meaningful and sometimes controversial readings and allows us as a group, ‘to chew the fat’ over what’s on top. The benefit of our group is that we are all from rural schools and it’s always good to share current pedagogy with like minded people. Much has been taken from this group and I look forward to it’s continuation throughout the year.

Leading the staff through their Teaching as Inquiry for this year has been a positive challenge. Last year we looked into our writing practice. This was easier as we had achievement data to begin with, which allowed staff to find the ‘gap’ or ‘deficit’ from which to move and inquire. This year, our focus is on E-learning and how it can be used to support and enhance student learning. Data for this wasn’t as easy to come by. So…I developed a survey for the children to conduct to identify how engaged and motivated they felt about their learning and whether their learning was enhance by IT. While the survey had some variables, it did allow a platform from which to inquire. Currently, staff are working on their plans ready for implementation and I look forward to how this will go. I had a quick chat with one of my teachers yesterday about her inquiry as she was finding it tricky to differentiate between the Craft and Research Knowledge. A five minute chat and it was all clear – it’s these quality snap shots of dialogue that I love.

The development of a new appraisal system that incorporated the Registered Teacher Criteria, was invaluable. I feel our appraisal clearly aligns the Professional Standards and RTC so that they dovetail and can be used formatively and for professional growth. Look forward to the Mid-Term Appraisals to see how it looks.

I am incredibly proud of our school website. Over the past 10 months it has continued to evolve and grow. It is serving the purpose of being a primary ‘go to’ place for our community, for information, recent learning, up coming events, newsletters etc. It’s great that we have our own place within the on-line environment to celebrate our wonderful children and school.

As for visioning and looking ahead to Term 2 – can’t wait! We have two new initiatives being developed this term and it’s really exciting.  Last year, we as Leadership, visited two schools in Palmerston North. One school in particular, Winchester School, really appealed and we liked what they had developed and worked on and the ideas and vision of their Principal. From this visit, we spent the next 8 months working through how what we saw could work for us here at Koputaroa. You can’t just visit a school and ‘take’ their ideas. I believe you have to work through the idea, how it relates to your own school, what the implications are and what spin you can put on it – ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day…’ Hence why we took about 8 months to ‘get it right’, and then we will still review how it went.

Anyway, we have completely reviewed, revisited and revamped our Inquiry Learning Model. As a school, we were tired of the word ‘Inquiry’, we wanted something unique for us, so we came up with HOT Learning (Higher Order Thinking Learning). We have developed our own 2 stage/cyclical HOT Model which allows children to be active participants of the learning process. Incorporated into our HOT Model is the use of de Bono’s Hats, as we found this tool works best for us, and can be easily adapted to most curriculum areas. This term all classes will be delving into HOT Learning and I can’t wait to see how it goes.

Secondly this term, we are introducing Module Learning. This is not a new concept in teaching and learning, but one that we want to explore. Beginning this term, classes within their Teams, will each explore a different area of the curriculum. Each teacher will plan and teach a module for 4 days to one class, and then classes will rotate from teacher to teacher. Why are we doing this? We are aiming to ensure we can provide our children with as much exposure to our fantastic curriculum as possible. We know children enjoy being engaged by a variety of experiences and we aim to provide our children with a host of different experiences to broaden their understanding and involvement. We know, and the NAGS tell us, that Literacy and Numeracy are important foundation skills, but it’s also important to be explorers in science, discovers of social sciences and to be creators in the Arts. Modules for this term include: Clay Creations (Visual Art), Jam Making (Science) and Kitchen Chemistry (Science). Will be great to see the kids involved with these.

On Reflection, a great term and can’t wait for the start of Term 2.

(The Kereru is our school symbol)

I am aware that I haven’t blogged for a while…two months in fact! Not that there hasn’t been anything happening, or I haven’t engaged with any deep thinking, just busy! But a recent Blog by Podgorani prompted me to actively reflect and ponder on the past two months – have I been ‘busy’ with the Vision and Big Picture of our school, or have I been pondering and sweating the small stuff?

In hindsight and thinking back, most of the time has been engaged with the Vision and Direction of our school. Time utilised to ensure the best for our kids and supporting and coaching staff with practice and pedagogy that is synonymous with today’s learning.

Here is a snapshot of my reflections and ponderings of the past two months….

Leading our staff retreat at the beginning of the year. This was an outstanding opportunity for our staff to be together engaging in professional learning and some time to unwind and relax together – the Gully Golf was great! The value of attending a retreat together cannot be under-estimated.

Finalising and approving (as a Board) our Charter. This was incredibly exciting as our Charter is reflective of months 0f consultation, collaboration, community engagement and vision of what we want for Koputaroa School.

Surviving and Leading my first ERO visit as a Principal. This was both an exciting and intense process. Our school was in good shape and we were very well prepared. The review went well and we have received our ‘unconfirmed’ report. More to come on this later…!

Establishing and engaging staff with this years professional learning and teaching as inquiry focus – the development of e-learning. Our school is in it’s infancy with this and I have been spending a lot of time researching and reading to prepare for our community information evening. The purpose of this meeting is to inform our community how education has dramatically changed and how the increase of technology and Web 2.0 can greatly support and enhance student learning. I will also be sharing the ‘how’ we aim to achieve this (through blogs, Google Apps, movie etc).

Managing the coordination of a community hangi. Really looking forward to this as our school hasn’t had one for about 5-6 years.

Continually reviewing our Reporting to Parents structure and the on-going discussions/deliberations/confusion/wonderings/ with regards to National Standards. We have two new initiatives for Reporting to Parents this term and I look forward to the feedback with how they went. On National Standards, I attended our regional NZPF Meeting today and there was some “interesting” information shared about the future of National Standards and future direction of education and PLD in NZ….mmm.

Reviewing our school curriculum and working with Leadership to map out some new initiatives, such as Module Learning, Team Review Structure, our Conceptual Curriculum.

Reflecting back, the vast majority of time has been involved with Big Picture thinking and leadership. But along the way, there have been moments of sweating the small stuff and worrying – maybe that’s just looking at the picture from all sides?

I have always been one to jump on the latest ‘band wagon’ to see what is new.  It intrigues me how fast technology is evolving and the pace of change that we are living in. Thank goodness for Twitter where I can learn and keep abreast of all these changes.

As my blog title suggest, this one really is about Keeping Up With the Play. Jeff Utecht in his latest posting (click here to read) has suggested that QR Codes will be the big buzz of 2011.

What are QR Codes? A QR Code (Quick Response Code) is similar to a barcode on a product, it has encoded information. The information it contains may be the link to a site, additional information about an item, a message, and even some airlines are using QR Codes for boarding passes.

QR Codes are matrix, 2-dimensional codes containing the information. The purpose being that the code holds additional information that is read and used. By ‘scanning’ the QR Code, eliminates the need to type in a URL address – scanning the code takes you straight to the website. Rather than having to write down information or visiting it later, ‘scanning’ the code stores it into your phone.

So…how do you read a QR Code? These codes are gaining popularity thanks to the increase in use of Smartphones (such as iPhone and Android). Through using your phones camera, and with the correct app installed, your camera phone reads the code and informs you of the information or directs you to straight the URL link through your mobile web (without typing in the address). As mentioned, airlines are using this technology where passengers use the QR code to scan their boarding pass.

With the correct application, Desktops can also read QR codes (provided they have an in built camera).

To download the necessary app for iPhone, try i-nigma

To download the necessary app for Android, try QuickMark

Once you’ve installed the app, try it on this QR Code.

Last night the Board and I met with the community to gauge their ideas and feedback with regards to shaping and building our new Charter.

Below is the presentation I made for the evening.

Some musings that I have been contemplating lately about our current educational/political landscape. I do wonder where it is all headed. When I first started teaching in the mid 90s, we had sound Advisory services, school support at every corner, teacher resource places (eg: Kanuka Grove) etc.

Now, as the song goes, ‘times, they are a changing’.

Some things that have me thinking and contemplating often – the landscape is changing beneath our feet…

- National Standards. Where do I start this one? There have been other postings in this blog on this HUGE policy.
- Near abolition of the Advisory Service. Goodbye Science, The Arts, PE, you are no longer important.
- NEMP – gone. It has become contestable.
- New NZTC Teacher Registration – is there any similarity here to performance pay etc?
- The Education Workforce Advisory Group – performance pay, bulk funding, Ministry appointed principals…
- Overhaul of the MOE Regional Departments and ‘vagueness’ of guidance.
- Narrowness of pending contracts available for schools for Professional Learning.

All of these make me question what is going on, but one thing I am 100% positive and certain on is The New Zealand Curriculum. Last night we had a Community Consultation Meeting at school to shape our new Charter. The more I spoke and shared about the Curriculum, the more passionate I became about this document. It is truly visionary and encapsulates exactly what we need to do to shape and guide our 21st Century Learners.

As long as this is our guiding document, we as school leaders, can deliver a robust, varied, balanced and engaging curriculum within our schools.

Thank Goodness for NZC.

This is my trial using fotobabble.