Interesting..

Today we had a day out of class to be part of a professional development  about Enterprise Education.  It was interesting, it threw together a bunch of teachers who aren't normally in a meeting together (alone); the Year 8 and 9 Form teachers.  That was the best part about the day - seeing these teachers and how they react when they get a little bit out of their comfort zone.

I think we were attending the sessions so that we could learn more about facilitating our school's Student Leadership Program - essentially a student directed project based learning activity, (it's more than that). I was looking forward to the day because I thought I might get the chance to get ideas from my colleagues about my current project and how I could deliver it from the Enterprise platform.


Overall it was a strange day where we watched TED talks, discussed the validity of integrating ICTs (again), touched on augmented reality and tried not to get bogged down by our own, (and others) cynicism.

In reagards to tranformational learning and such, sometimes I think it would be an interesting exercise for a few people to make a decision to have a positive attitude before they walk in the door.  They should be brave, do something differently - have an opposites day where they say the opposite of what they're thinking, and see what comes of it. 

One of the TED talks we watched today was the Ken Robinson Clip where he discusses; schools killing creativity. He makes a strong case and I tend to agree with him, and I'd add that the same is true for some teachers; the institution of schools kills thier creativity. I saw a great Youtube video last week - Adrian Greig showed it at the 1-1 Master Class - I think it's a great conversation starter.
When I become a teacher... Youtube video


Anyway, I did get the following tips from today:

• Size doesn’t matter when it comes to enterprise.
• Who is going to value this project?
• Project loses value if you don’t do a decent reflect and review – keep a video diary!
• Keep review and reflection separate.
• Review – technical questions, what worked, what didn’t etc..
• Then extend on that and think so what? (Reflect)
• We were also shown some great cooperative learning techniques that I will be trying

I really like the part of the day where  we got to think about an aspect of our own practice that we were having trouble with.  My group chose SLP as their area that needed work and we got to discuss it in depth and then share through a cooperative learning activity with the rest of the groups.  One of my colleagues took our notes to type up properly because we got some really good ideas and suggestions from everyone.

I wish we could have got everyone's head together right at the beginning of the day and worked on a unit or a subject or SLP and the facilitator could have worked with us on making it better.  I think I've been spoilt by ITSC - but having brilliant people put a different perspective on what you're trying to do is invaluable.

As I heard everywhere recently in my travels, it's not the WHY we have to start teaching differently, it's past that, we should get on with the HOW we're going to do it.