I want to break free #twistedpair

My #twistedpair are Nelson Mandela and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Nelson Mandela spent more than 26 years in South African prisons, mainly in squalid and inhumane conditions. He was imprisoned largely as a punishment for his political beliefs and membership of the outlawed African National Congress during Apartheid.

I won't forget the day I visited Robben Island, the penal colony on which Mandela spent the large proportion of his prison sentence. It's a small island in the bay near Cape Town. It is unbearably hot in the fierce summer sun, and is cold and inhospitable in the winter months in the icy Antarctic wind.

I visited the cell in which he spent most of his time, and was appalled at how small and cramped it was. I would have been easy to despair. Yet Mandela didn't give in. He proved that in adversity, when all the odds seem stacked against you, you can still achieve your dream. You need persistence, resilience and a strong belief that what you are doing is right. Mandela had all those qualities. He survived.

Mandela's cell on Robben Island

Eventually he was released as the political climate changed and the influence of Apartheid began to decline, and he was ultimately elected as president of the country that had once rejected him. He studied for a law degree while still in prison, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and became one of the most revered icons of the age.

Jack Sparrow is the fictional character of the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean. Sparrow is a wisecracking rascal of a character, who leads a motley crew that represent freedom from the ruling powers of the British Empire and the East India Company. Sparrow and his crew fight numerous battles with the powers that be, and ultimately using his guile and audacity he triumphs again and again, but always with a cost.

On the face of it, it seems that Jack Sparrow and Nelson Mandela have very little in common, and there is no comparison between a fictional pirate and a real-life hero who freed an entire nation. But there is this: Both fought tyranny and sought freedom. Like Mandela, Sparrow ends up in prison, although it's only for a brief period. Sparrow is freed from prison to rescue an innocent girl from the grasp of a gang of ruthless pirates, while Mandela is released from prison to rescue an entire nation from its hatred and divisions.

There are many prisons in life - some are physical but many more are self imposed, mental prisons. Apartheid was an idealogical prison, created in the minds of racists. It limited millions of people from achieving their full potential. But it was defeated. In education the same principle applies. Mental prisons are those in which we limit ourselves by the way we think. To break free from a mental prison, you will need to change the way you think.

What can we learn from this #twistedpair? Mandela once said: 'Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.' I say: You have to be on the inside if you want to change things. To break free, you need to see beyond the walls and imagine a better world. Be persistent. Be resilient. Believe.

Photo by Stepph on Wikimedia Commons


I want to break free #twistedpair by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Creative education.Education Readings for teachers fighting for what's worth fighting for. Ideas to develop a school vision.

Education Readings

By Allan Alach

14 June  1985- 4th October 2015

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Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t send out a readings list last week.

Sadly this was because Bruce Hammonds’ daughter Kathy, a nurse, lost her life in an accident following a day’s snowboarding on the mountain.

Kathy Hammonds “ impossible to forget”.

If you want to express your condolences to Bruce his email address is bhammonds@clear.net.nz

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I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz

For New Zealand readers:

Peggy Burrows, highly regarded principal of Rangiora High School, has been victimised in what seems to be a Ministry of Education hatchet job. Kelvin Smythe has taken up his keyboard to write the following two articles exposing this travesty. A very active Facebook page has also been set up to fight for justice for Peggy.

Another huge bureaucratic injustice

“It is another case of the education bureaucracy listening to the wrong people; believing them to be the worth listening to because, it seems, they want to believe teaching professionals aren’t. The government and education bureaucrats are doing inhumane things to professional educators as an expression, it is suggested, of a kind of perverted education policy.”

Support Peggy Burrows

http://bit.ly/1NdyRS6

You are urged to sign the petition to support Peggy Burrows, principal, Rangiora High School

“From the response to an earlier posting by two people supporting the intervention two worrying but not uncommon themes made an appearance: anti-women (not capable of handling complex finances) and Peggy being too pro-Maori…”

http://bit.ly/1NI8DKH8

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How to Master the Art of “Effective Surprise” and the 6 Essential Conditions for Creativity

The great Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner had his 100th birthday last week. Here’s a Brainpickings article that discusses his thinking about creativity.

Happy 100th

“There is something antic about creating, although the enterprise be serious. And there is a matching antic spirit that goes with writing about it, for if ever there was a silent process, it is the creative one. Antic and serious and silent. Yet there is good reason to inquire about creativity, a reason beyond practicality, for practicality is not a reason but a justification after the fact. The reason is the ancient search of the humanist for the excellence of man: the next creative act may bring man to a new dignity.”

http://bit.ly/1hf8gsb

Following on, here’s another Brainpickings article:

Happy 100th Birthday, Jerome Bruner: The Pioneering Psychologist on the Act of Discovery and the Key to True Learning

“Discovery … is in its essence a matter of rearranging or transforming evidence in such a way that one is enabled to go beyond the evidence so reassembled to new insights. It may well be that an additional fact or shred of evidence makes this larger transformation possible. But it is often not even dependent on new information.

http://bit.ly/1j4r27y

School Autonomy Is Not The Same as Teacher Autonomy

One for Australians…

“In the debate over school autonomy, what frequently gets lost is that school autonomy is different from teacher autonomy and that it is teacher autonomy that is the more important factor for classroom learning. Teacher autonomy means collective professional autonomy.”

http://bit.ly/1Puc7zO

Why story time is better when dad’s reading the book

“Watching a father read to his child sends a very strong message that he is interested in spending time with his child and engages his child in one of the most rewarding and beneficial activities for children's development.”

http://bit.ly/1RbJQfH

The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland

Haven’t had a Finland story for a while so…

“The word “joy” caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated that the country’s early-childhood education program indeed places a heavy emphasis on “joy,” which along with play is explicitly written into the curriculum as a learning concept.”

http://theatln.tc/1OD9TgJ

Science Shows Something Surprising About People Who Still Read Fiction

Many so-called ‘reformers’ have downgraded fiction and instead set standards for reading non-fiction books, on the basis that these will be more ‘use’ to children as they enter the workforce….

“Researchers calculated emotional transportation by having participants express how a story they read affected them emotionally on a five-point scale — for example, how the main character's success made them feel, and how sorry they felt for the characters. 

In the study, empathy was only apparent in the groups of people who read fiction and who were emotionally transported. Meanwhile, those who were not transported demonstrated a decrease in empathy.”

http://bit.ly/1Llm2lP

Teacher Agency: Educators Moving from a Fixed to a Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck

“Educational psychology has focused on the concepts of learned helplessness and more currently growth-fixed mindsets as a way to explain how and why students give up in the classroom setting.  These ideas can also be applied to educators in this day of forced standardization, testing, scripted curriculum, and school initiatives.”

http://bit.ly/1Lbs7n7

Life-long, life-deep and life-wide learning

“In  a classroom, or within any group of learners, the reality is that each individual has a different learning experience, even while they all are instructed the same way. Fascinating, isn't it? We all bring into the learning situation our own learning history and cultural background, our life-long, life-wide and life-deep understanding what learning is. What we all need is support for our individual development, and empowering learning facilitation that helps us to learn even more.”

http://bit.ly/1jB8V8Q

This week’s contributions from Bruce Hammonds:

The Importance of Recreational Math

“In his final article for Scientific American, in 1998, Mr. Gardner lamented the “glacial” progress resulting from his efforts to have recreational math introduced into school curriculums “as a way to

interest young students in the wonders of mathematics.” Indeed, a paper this year in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics points out that recreational math can be used to awaken mathematics-related “joy,” “satisfaction,” “excitement” and “curiosity” in students, which the educational policies of several countries (including China, India, Finland, Sweden, England, Singapore and Japan) call for in writing.”

http://nyti.ms/1X55eqF

The rural postman ?

Measuring lifelong learning skills

“New jobs are being created all the time. For educators, this means equipping students with the skills they need to learn and adapt to a changing world. Lifelong learning skills are hard to measure, so we have to use proxies.”

http://bit.ly/1NdAb7t

Secret Teacher: brilliant eccentrics are a dying breed in education

At  risk - creative teachers

“Over my 10 years in teaching, I have seen eccentric colleagues pushed, blinking and disorientated, into a new world of lesson observations, targets, data and appraisals. There are undoubtedly those who, as well as being eccentric, are rather lazy and probably not up to the job. But the problem is that many of these mavericks, who wouldn’t recognise a lesson plan if it bit them on the behind and couldn’t care less about student data or targets, are brilliant.”

http://bit.ly/1RbL2zK

Sir Anthony Seldon

'An education in the arts is limited to the economically privileged. It is an unjust waste of national talent’

This is so true.

“A good education should be a preparation for life. It requires the development of the whole child, not merely their intellect. It necessitates students becoming intrinsic learners with self-discipline and a genuine thirst for knowledge, rather than being goaded or corralled, which is what students may become with a single-minded focus on exam results. The value of arts and culture is important for all students.”

http://bit.ly/1GHLhwE

Process and... art journaling?

There's no better feeling that seeing design concepts and sketches come to life before your eyes.  This is an idea schools could make use of? Real personalised portfolios of students’ideas.

“I believe that the process of a project is just as important as the final product; it shows a journey and a connection between an initial idea and the physical design it ends up becoming. It's a transformation and a visual representation of the ability to do none other than create. The design process is a beautiful thing, and it's always been something that I've prided myself on in my work.”

http://bit.ly/1KakWaM

From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:

The power of visiting other schools

“Focused school visits are a powerful means to gain professional development and, in particular, to gain insights in to what other schools/teachers feel important. This is all the more necessary as schools are increasingly under pressure to distort their teaching programmes by the need to respond to the reactionary and politically inspired introduction of National Standards.”

Vision gives ditection

http://bit.ly/1LuEr3b

A process to develop a School Vision

“The following is a simple but powerful process to 'tap the wisdom' of all involved but one that demands shared leadership, particularly by key people in the school – and of course total commitment by the principal. All involved must see the benefit of developing such a vision and be determined to see that it is reflected in the: values the school believes in (as seen by behaviours of students, teachers and parents); and the agreed teaching beliefs of the school.”

http://bit.ly/1LbsXQP

Balloons released at end of Kathy's service

Is education broken?

During the EDEN Conference in Barcelona this summer I had the pleasure to interview several keynote speakers. One was Audrey Watters, who has been in evidence recently at a number of high profile events such as ALT-C 2014 and ICDE 2015. Formerly a university academic and now a freelance writer, Audrey has courted her fair share of controversy and opposition, not least due to her forthright views on education, technology and a host of related topics. As a self styled 'expert on political pie throwing', rabble rouser and 'Ed Tech's Cassandra', Audrey Watters is not shy of making her views public on her blog Hack Education and she makes for interesting conversation. This interview was recorded for the EDEN YouTube channel, featuring questions such as: Is education broken beyond repair? Is Google the largest surveillance network in the world? Does the web constitute a new form of cultural hegemony? Is the web really open?



Video courtesy of the European Distance and E-learning Network


Is education broken? by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Lessons to be learnt

I was asked a very thoughtful question by one of my first year education students earlier today. The group had been tasked to consider strategies about how they might embed a new technology into their primary school lessons. This is not a simple task, because schools are notoriously conservative organisations, and new ideas are not always welcomed with open arms. The question from the student was 'what can we learn from the introduction of previous technologies in history?'

The poet Steve Turner once wrote 'History repeats itself. It has to, because no-one ever listens.' Yet there are some great lessons to be learnt from history if we know where to look.

I immediately thought of failed technologies, and in particular, the Sinclair C5 electric car (actually a tricycle). In a 2013 poll it was voted the worst innovation disaster in modern history. The C5 was an invention that was very much ahead of its time. It was so futuristic that no-one was really prepared for it, not many could see an immediate need, and very few were prepared to invest their cash in purchasing one. But that wasn't the only reason the Sinclair C5 failed to capture the public imagination.  It was a great idea, but it was not fully conceived. It was difficult to drive, had a top speed of only 15 miles per hour, and required more battery power than it was capable of delivering. It was low on the ground and flimsy, and there were fears that its low visibility might result in a number of fatal accidents. Yet the most important factor that contributed to its failure was neither technological nor conceptual. On the day the C5 was launched to the press and media there was a cold spell, and there was snow on the ground (as can be seen in a quick Google image search). The open cockpit of the electric car was not conducive to comfort at the best of times. On a cold, icy day, it was a disaster. Bad press reports from the launch were the final nails in the coffin for the C5, and ultimately its production was halted.

From this sad tale, we can glean several principles that might aid us when we try to embed new technologies or ideas into conservative environments.

1) Relevance: Make sure the technology is relevant to the needs of your community
2) Design: Ensure that technology is easy to understand and use
3) Model: Provide a conducive environment within which to showcase the new technology
4) Protect: Closely manage anything that has the potential to go wrong

Photo by Alan Gold on Flickr


Lessons to be learnt by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

EdCamp Harmony - That's a Wrap!

This morning, our student edcamp, EdCamp Harmony, took place. We planned this out pretty well last week, recruiting and encouraging students to conduct learning sessions and getting the schedule ready for today. To see more of the preparation, click this link. Late last week, one of our colleagues, Vinnie Raimondo (@coachraimondo), asked if his kids could also be involved. What? That was awesome! We shared our planning with him so he could present it to his kids and also shared the Google Hangout invitation with him so that his kids could also watch Hadley Ferguson (@hadleyjf), the executive director of the Edcamp Foundation, welcome the kids to the world of edcamps.

Hadley kicked things off beautifully. She talked to the kids about the edcamp movement, why it started and why people want to learn from each other. She also congratulated them on their own quest to learn from each other. After answering a few questions, she wished us well and we were on to our morning of learning.

Kids moved seamlessly to their first session. We had some great session choices and they were all well-attended.

Of course, the topics kids want to teach and learn about are a bit different from the topics that we present in class on a daily basis but that is what makes this learning so relevant. Not one student said, "Oh, I don't want to go to any of the sessions. They don't look very good." All of the kids were excited to go to some sessions and some were torn between two or more sessions at each time slot. Noah taught how to make a YouTube channel, Bryce taught some finer points of drawing while Emma taught kids about an App Store app that helps kids draw on an iPad or iPhone. RJ taught some kids about football and Mason had a session on HTML coding. Celia and Linsey held two sessions on how to use our 3D Printer and Colin showed kids how to work the 3D Doodle Pen. There were plenty of other sessions as well and the kids seemed very excited about this morning of learning. 

As Melissa, Vinnie and I roamed the rooms, we saw highly engaged students having fun with their learning. The kids were in those sessions because they wanted to be there, not because they had to be there. In the coming days, we will survey the kids to see what their thoughts were. In talking to the kids immediately after the sessions, it was clear that we would be repeating this event in the near future. The kids are hungry for this type of learning and sharing. Finally, some kids were given the platform to show others what really makes them tick. Here are some photos of our student edcamp.

I blog therefore I'm spammed

Some of the spam comments posted to my blog are amusing. Others are simply baffling. They aren't quite as pathetic as the son of a Nigerian former finance minister who has millions of dollars to deposit into your bank account, and requests your banking details, but I think they're amusing enough to be given a wider audience. They are almost always posted by 'Anonymous' which seems quite a common name for those sad individuals who spend their time trying to promote their lacklustre or spurious website links on the back of someone else's success.

Maybe Anonymous is one person. If so, he is incredibly industrious, because I receive at least a dozen spam comments every day from him. I'm glad I decided to moderate all comments so they don't just automatically appear on my blog. Anonymous invariably posts inept and unintentionally funny comments (around a hidden website address) in the hope that I will believe that Anonymous is a genuine reader, and will then be convinced to allow them through the net. Here's one of Anonymous's recent offerings that would give Lewis Carroll's nonsense writing a run for its money:

Truly no matter if someone doesn't know then its up to other viewers that they will help, so here it takes place. 

Er... yeah, right. Fathom that one out. Other spam comments from Anonymous offer fake flattery in the hope that you think they are commenting positively on your blog post. One or two turn out to be quite ironic:

I do believe all of the ideas you have offered for your post. They are very convincing and can certainly work. Nonetheless, the posts are too brief for novices. May just you please extend them a bit from next time? Thank you for the post. 

That from someone trying to tout a website selling diet pills. Reductio ad absurdum. The next one also offers some cheap flattery, but falls very wide of the mark:

Hurrah, that's what I was seeking for, what a information! present here at this weblog, thanks admin of this sight. 

This spammer is trying to get me to post their website selling customised T-Shirts. Hopefully, the spelling and grammar they print on their shirts is a little less error strewn. Oh boy, can it get any better? It certainly can... with this obscure beauty:

What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious know-how on the topic of unexpected feelings. 

I think that was a compliment, but whatever the sentiments his website is not being published on my blog. Thank you Anonymous for your entertaining and, at times, baffling comments. I laughed until I stopped.

Photo by Freezelight on Flickr


I blog therefore I'm spammed by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Bad Idea Factory

We are off and running with 20% Time!  We introduced the "Bad Idea Factory" today and this is the best start so far!  I probably say this every year but I do feel like this was an AWESOME start.  I am so re-energized when we begin this journey every year, breaking down the wall (perception) of the idea generation process. The idea generation process is gross and messy..........but we have to throw all ideas out on the table and weed through the good, the bad and the ugly to narrow down to the best ideas.  Good ideas come from bad ideas!!!!!