About benpaddlejones

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Leadership is not about making friends or creating followers

Posted on March 7, 2012 by benpaddlejones

Today I had to make a decision not because I had to do the right thing, but because it was the right thing to do.

I believe leadership is not about making friends or growing my follower count, leadership sometimes means you have to make the tough decision.

Any who follows me knows I’m not motivated by popularity. I know it’s easy to say “that’s nice” in the face of mediocrity or to say “I will” because everyone wants you too, but thats not leadership.

I know today’s decision won’t be popular, but I made the right decision and its the learners who will benefit.

Follow me if you dare…

Transcending the collaboration rhetoric

Posted on March 4, 2012 by benpaddlejones

This term I have designed my own action learning project (Kolb, 1984) around the question “What can effective collaboration look like in education”. My reflective observations are that in education we like to talk about collaboration but due to poor modelling and a lack of soft skills, network awareness and metacognitive tool sets we are in collaboration terms ‘functionally illiterate’.

I spent 3 weeks coding behaviors surrounding the use of the word “collaboration”, I coded educators webpages, documents, blogs, tweets, emails, spoken word & other social networks.

Here is what I observed

Total use of the word (spoken, written or implied) = 89
Behaviors observed:

“working together to realize shared goals” = 0/89
Telling others what to do = 18/89
Sharing basic information/facts/knowledge/content = 75/89
Engaging others in the creation of a vision = 0/89
Telling others what the vision is = 5/89
Asking for feedback = 0/89
Positively accepting feedback = 0/89
Negatively accepting feedback = 3/89
Making connections for personal/professional gain = 12/89
Use of the word in a vacuum of any behaviors i.e. “I collaborate” = 10/89

My abstract conceptualisations are:

Educators don’t conceptually understand collaboration, so we will chunk it down for them and facilitate them through a process of actual collaboration.
Educators lack experience with structures and processes that enable collaboration, so we have timetabled 2 days a term for each faculty to collaborate and we will help structure further collaboration into their routines.
Educators are rarely engaged in the visioning process, so we will start by designing a shared vision, then build the collaboration from there.

Let the active experimentation begin…

Empirical research finds text on an iPad has a 0.2 greater effect size than text in a book

Posted on January 20, 2012 by benpaddlejones

Is a somnambulistic textbook uploaded to an iPad more engaging?

Is a didactic lecture uploaded to iTunesU more interactive?

If Microsoft gave exactly the same presentation would you be as excited?

I am amazed at the number of self-proclaimed “21st Century” educators who are suddenly singing for joy at what they have previously deconstructed as epitome of a 19th Century education (lectures and textbooks) just because it’s by Apple?

Is this creating a 2 teir education system? How many schools/students can really afford an iPad, a Mac Book (iBook Author is Mac only) and the books/apps? The real winner is the textbook companies not only have they circumvented the bulk/discount purchasing power of schools and gone direct to the student. But the real irony is they now have 21st Century educators doing their marketing for them direct to their customers.

Tell me iBook2 can be read in a HTML5 browser and iBooks Author is device agnostic then I’ll get a little bit excited. Don’t forget the open web built on HTML5 was a dream of Steve Jobs. I guess it got forgotten in the profit seeking of Apple and Pearsons?

I wonder how many followed a tweet of this blog post title here and now feel deflated that it isn’t empirical research and didn’t validate their hopes and dreams? I was going to call it “Would iTurd2 smell prettier than Turd” but didn’t think I’d get as many readers!

If you think this is a win for students or education please think before you tweet, this is a win for Apple & Pearsons and a massive loss for students, education, developing nations, low socio-economic communities and open education.

My 5 predictions for 2012

Posted on January 3, 2012 by benpaddlejones

If you’re expecting some leadership pearls of wisdom or a list of cool gadgets, bests to stop reading now as this is a bit of a reality check to start the year. Oh yeah, I only put a number in the heading as apparently that makes blog posts a bit cooler these days…

[sigh]

1. The 21st century will remain illusive

Most will continue to talk about the 21st century as though it’s a distant unachievable goal. Meanwhile those of us who live in the various spaces of the metaverse will continue to feel frustration, #pencilchat was just the beginning.

2. Creative curriculum and design thinking will be the buzz words of the year

Two very powerful concepts that could trully “revolutionise” education will be bastardised and subverted to just messages on a slide. The realities of such concepts require a total redesign of schooling, not a pretty powerpoint.

3. The LMS & eTextbook virus will continue to spread

The LMS and eTextbook will continue to be seen as the preferred simple solution to a complex problem. The eTextbook will however become liberated from it’s PDF shackles and include “new and exciting interactive content” so we can all get excited about that.

4. Tablets will become daily learning tools in the classroom

In a “post PC era” we will all just mindlessly flip through applets to learn, because a hardware manufacturer told us it was the “future”. Meaningful design and creativity will be ignored and if we need to type more than a few sentences they have a solution for that too, a bulky and expensive external keyboard!

5. Conferences will maintain the status quo

The 1 to many conference will remain the key expense for schools in providing high cost, low value professional learning all while ignoring any messages of creativity or design thinking from the podium. Meanwhile Unconferences and teachmeets will continue to expand but attract the attention of brand builders and self promoters.

[\sigh]

Sorry to start the year off with such a bleak post, maybe I’m just trying some reverse psychology and hoping to be proved wrong.

A fear of feedback and mediocrity make good bedfellows

Posted on November 28, 2011 by benpaddlejones

This afternoon I had the pleasure of listening to a group of teachers share their learning design for a new year 7 integrated curriculum at Merrylands High School. These teachers are designing learning under a conceptually integrated model well out of their “certified” boundaries & “siloed KLA” classroom experience. This was high stakes stuff, not only did they put their heart and soul on the table in the form of the unique work they had created but they had also taken a massive risk and stepped beyond their “qualification” & position (certainly not cultural norms in education). What really stood out for me in the process was the organic way they provided, absorbed, processed and acted on feedback.

I assume you all know the power of feedback.

For those who choose mediocrity:

Reject the feedback by rejecting the source: “They’re not an expert”, “They’re a competitor”, “They don’t have ‘our’ vision”, etc…
Punish feedback: “Why did you say…”, “Please ‘look’ at what… said”, “Who are you to…”, etc…
Publish before feedback: “Look what I just uploaded”, “It’s ready for publishing”, “I have finished it”, etc…
Focus on aesthetics over rigor: “Don’t you like the typeset”, “The pictures give it a nice theme”, “I made the background myself”, “I made the logo match the background”, etc…
Internalise feedback: “But that is my best work”, “I made that”, “I couldn’t have done it better”, etc…
Build a team culture that fears feedback: ”I hear what you say but [insert negative response]” , “We like feedback” (but don’t actually act on it), “Why didn’t you say that when we had time to do something about it”, etc…
Make superficial feedback: “That’s nice”, “I like that”, “Wow”, That’s awesome”
Pay lip service to feedback: “We only do great work here” (no you don’t), “That is excellent” (everyone knows it’s not), “Isn’t that a nice typeset” (but the ideas are low order), “Yes I read it, it was good” (no you didn’t read it), etc…

For those who choose the long path to excellence:

Make feedback a public and collaborative process: “Everyone must give 1 wow and 1 wonder…”, “Have you thought of…”, “What if you..”, “I wonder what it would look like if…”, etc…
Make your acceptance of feedback as a leader public: “When Mrs Y said… it caused me to…”, “This is my first draft, I would value your feedback on…”, “This… wouldn’t be as good without your input”, etc…
After a successful feedback loop give teachers time and support to process the feedback, then allow them to celebrate what they gained from the feedback: “Next week present a summary of what you have changed following this feedback session”, etc…
Separate aesthetics from value: “now we have a really polished concept, lets focus on making it a publishable quality”, etc…
Embrace your teams broader skills: “I can see how your industry experience has…”, “It’s really cool how you have used your English teaching background to explore numeracy differently…”, etc…
Follow up on feedback: “When the team said… how have you integrated it into…”, “After last weeks feedback session, I can’t wait to see how your… has evolved…”, etc…
Make feedback explicit: “That’s nice, I like how you have…”, “I like that, can you show us how you…”, “That’s awesome, the way you…”, etc…
Keep the relentless focus on the end goal of excellence: “I can really see how the feedback enabled you to… now we need to…”, “I know it;s lots to process, but our next goal is…”, etc…
Encourage introspection: “What did you…”, “If you could… how would…”, etc

Because this team actively engages, seeks and acts on feedback they still might not be perfect (few are), but they certainly won’t be mediocre…

What your “Total cost of ownership” and why it’s important to know!

Posted on November 22, 2011 by benpaddlejones

Disclaimer: reading this post may lead to depression, please read at your own risk.

The advent of technology in schools has forced an interchange of IT language with Education language, a term many of us may have encountered is “total cost of ownership” (TCO). TCO is essentially the sum of all costs in owning a piece of hardware for its total life. I wonder how it will change your thinking if you knew “your” total cost of ownership?

So what is your total cost of ownership:

Start with your yearly gross salary
Add leave loading (Gross salary divide 13 and multiply by 0.175)
Add 13% for superannuation
Add 20% for human resource management
Add the total expense of your yearly professional learning (cost of conferences, consultants & travel)
Add casual relief costs (total absent days from school requiring a casual multiplied by $300)
This final figure is your total cost of ownership to your school/system
Convert it to an hourly rate: divide by 52 then divide by 35

So what?

Create a list all the jobs you performed in the past two weeks that didn’t directly benefit student learning. Next to each job record approximately how many hours you spent on the job multiplied by your hourly rate. This is what it cost to get that job done, I hope it was worth it….

Now what?

The reality of schools (shhh don’t tell the Keynote) is that the school teachers role is extremely complex and multifaceted. I’m under no delusion that many of those jobs are ‘optional’. So what should we do with this information? Here are a few of my ideas of how leaders and schools teachers could benefit from this knowledge:

Outsource manual and error prone tasks (ie. data entry to a cheaper & efficient professional)
Map workflows (every step of a process) of common tasks and look for how the human resource demand can be reduced by a digital workflow
Use this process as a catalyst for faculty/ team discussion on effective use of time and refocus on learning
Use this process for personal reflection and decision making support for when and what to delegate
Auditing role statements are the jobs aligned to the individuals skills and capabilities (rather than just being a function of the job title)
Can a new role be created that supports school teachers to focus on teaching and learning

How will you use this knowledge to improve the focus on teaching and learning?

End of an era… (for me)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by benpaddlejones

The last three years of my life has been in the services of the NSW Digital Education Revolution. Dragged from the obscurity of a Health and Physical Education Teacher doing wacky things with Wiimotes, Laptops, Mobile phones, GPS and any tech I could get my mittens on, into head office to co-led a $28 million dollar professional learning project as part of the NSWDEC delivery of the state wide 1:1 laptop iniative. The program is now at a point of being operationalised and moved to business as usual, something we dreamed we could achieve within 18 months but the reality of education made that timeline a little ambitious. The revolution will go on, where it always belonged in classrooms, faculties, schools and regions. I now get to return to my true passion student learning, as a Head Teacher, Teaching and Learning at Merrylands High School.

What have I learnt?

Change is a marathon, not a sprint
Culture trumps everything, usually starting with vision
In creating equity there is inequity, but without the attempt to provide equity, the inequity has and will continue to be far greater
Everyone has “the answer” but rarely do they have “the question”
Leadership is not about me, but about them
Talking about change is easy, effecting change takes a whole different skill set
There is amazing stuff happening in so many places, it may not be broadcast live on twitter, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening

What am I looking forward too?

Working with a discrete team on achieving a singular vision of student learning
Working under (another) visionary leader
Working directly with students
Applying what I have learnt working at the state/system level to working within a school community
Continuing to blog, just with a new focus
Finally: Being the change I want to see in the world

So…

BYOU: Bring your own Unicorn

Posted on November 5, 2011 by benpaddlejones

What do the following have in common:

Bring your own device
Personal leaning networks
Games based learning
Project based learning
Constructivist theory
1 to 1 learning
Differenited curriculum
Personalised learning
Social learning
Virtual world learning
Flipped classroom

I contend that the common theme in all these learning philosophies is ‘the learner owning their learning’. How much control do the learners at a conference have on their learning experience? How are presenters possibly able to allow participants to own the learning. Rather we see an endless list of populist comments and assumptions about every teacher having archaic classrooms, content laden pedagogies and teacher centric instruction. Now isn’t that ironic?

I have no doubt that a traditional conference format has value but…

A tradional conference can inspire, but… we need the ability to turn that inspiration to action
A tradional conference can create cognitive dissonance, but… unless we can close the gap it’s just creating learned helplessness
A tradional conference can connect, but… usually this favours the already connected further issolating those with lesser connections

What we need is the ‘how to’ turn inspiration, cognitive dissonance and connections into meaningful change in our classrooms, faculties or schools. How can a traditional conference provide the necessary networks, support, structures and resources to turn a Unicorn into reality, for every participant?

At the 1 to 1 Learning Unconference before we designed anything we only made two assumptions: everyone is a learner and everyone is a leader. We then surveyed participants to find out what they wanted to learn, how they learned best and what skills/knowledge/understanding they had to support others learning. From this data we designed the learning spaces and experiences. The focus was on connecting teachers, exploring ideas, learning new skills and creating action plans that participants could turn into relality.

I leave the participant survey to speak for itself:

I hope one day the default conference experience is bring your own Unicorn. Teachers solution dream what change they want to see, based on their context, do some basic planning and research before the conference. Then attend the conference with the explicit aim to collaborate with their peers to turn their Unicorn into reality.

I expect many will refute my thinking, it’s only human nature to reject inconsistent ideas, but I’m OK with that…

Enough with the false prophets of change!

Posted on October 4, 2011 by benpaddlejones

Education is not perfect at the moment, we all get that but our classrooms are far from broken. Meanwhile a massive multimillion dollar cottage industry has formed in the last few years peddling change based on the premise they are broken. This industry however, is predicated upon not actually changing a thing, because if they did, they wouldn’t have an industry. As we would have changed after their first keynote or blog entry on what we are “apparently” doing wrong. Just read their blog or attend a keynote they actually have a really simple formula:

Show some images of your child playing with an iPad/iPhone while talking about Social Media/Games

Make a simplistic analogy of education and the prison system or industrial age

Blame the educational boogieman (aka Funding, Policy, Leadership, System, Government, et al)

Avoid providing any real solution grounded in reality or with the ability to be implemented

NO REAL CHANGE

How much longer do we have to sit through these keynotes (whilst paying exorbitant amounts) or read their repetitive blog posts about education is broken before we stop punishing ourselves? They always seem to (conveniently) forget the role of community in schools. If you don’t understand the role of your school community, go to your next P&C Meeting and table an idea like “not teaching the HSC anymore”, see how well it goes down. You’ll find much of what these keynotes blame on the “educational boogieman” is actually supported and championed by your school community. If we as educators want change we need to start with our communities, if every parent in NSW emailed the minister saying they don’t want their child to sit the HSC anymore, you will have your change.

Here is my formula for change, I won’t get $10,000 to stand behind a lectern at your next conference but I do believe this will actually change something in your school:

Step 1: Go to school a few minutes early and just walk around the school, purely to seek visual stimulus

Step 2: Write a list of 5 things you have the time, permission, power, ability, finances and support to change in your school (you may need to start inside your classroom)

Step 3: List them in order of effect on student learning

Step 4: Pick the top 2

Step 5: Find a mentor or coach, workshop the ideas and pick the best one for your conext

Step 6: Make an action plan

Step 7: Put your plan into action

Step 8: Celebrate the success of your plan

Step 9: Go back to step 1

It won’t get you in a Sydney Morning Herald article with Greg Whitby about the future of schools or an invite for a TED talk on learning, but you will make more change in education than any of the keynotes talking about change ever have. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue to advocate for change at the political/systemic level, I’m just saying we should be more selective on where we focus our efforts and energy.

Oh yeah, should we tell the keynotes? No, don’t worry about telling them, they are busy taking a picture of their child with an iPad2 to make their lukewarm and congealed presentation on whatever it is they talk about, look more innovative…

Inter.Connect.Ed

reflections on teaching and learning through technology

Author Archives: benpaddlejones