teaching and learning

Eagle-eyed blog readers will have noticed that I just changed the header of the blog. The new one is a shot I took of the Yarra Valley in May 2007 when I had a magical weekend up that way.

It’s actually two ore three images stitched together with Auto-Stitch, a great little program for stitching together images and part of my personal list of ESSENTIAL SOFTWARE 

You can see the full size version of the pic HERE

It had to happen of course; that the new spirit of national cooperation and cooperative revolution would get stickier and trickier when it got down to the details. Like the NAPLAN (National Asessment of  Literacy and Numeracy) benchmarks and where they might be placed.

Last week the Herald-Sun gave some glimpse of that behind the scenes wrangling when it reported that high performing states (Victoria) were jostling with low performing states (WA, NT, TAS) over where to place the literacy and numeracy benchmarks: too high and the low performing states will look like basket cases, and too low and the results in Victoria will be absurdly high.

The paper said: 

But the poor results in Tasmania, WA and the Northern Territory have sparked a political row between the states over where benchmarks should be set.

And the row has put the broader concept of the national curriculum – hailed by educators and politicians as a necessary step forward – at risk.

A Victorian education source told the Sunday Herald Sun state departments were squabbling over where the benchmarks should be set and the Naplan literacy and numeracy standards were set “embarrassingly low so the results don’t look too bad in some areas of the country”.

“If they had set the minimum standards any lower, Victoria would have scored 100 per cent and if they had set them any higher, the NT would have been diabolical,” the source said.

And this is only the beginning. This will only get murkier as the national curriculum moves from zealous ideology to actual curriculum.

With the annual Curriculum Corporation COnference circus in town last week, there was a lot of talk about national curriculum, at briefings I attended, and on the mainstream radio. Including this discussion on the Radio National program Life Matters.

Guests

Professor Barry McGaw
Head of the National Curriculum Board and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute

Valerie Hannon
Director of Strategy for the UK Innovation Unit

Chris Wardlaw
Former Deputy Secretary of Education in Hong Kong

You can listen to the conversation HERE

I’ve blogged about OneNote before a few times; probably the ONE tool that I’d really miss if I ever moved over to the Mac platform and left the Windows side behind. It’s a part of MS Office, and a really flexible, functional tool for gathering notes. I’ve set up my students with it over the last two years and it’s been a great success with almost all of them.

This week I found a Toolkit for Educators in OneNote format, which is a handy download if you’re just getting into this program, or to help staff who are. A good resource if you’re encouraging staff to use this tool, as we are.

It’s great to see that ACER’s fetish with all things FINLAND continues, as illustrated nicely in today’s Education Age article by Caroline Milburn (not online yet)

I agree with the basic premise of the article, that it’s a focus on quality TEACHING, not TESTING that is likely to lead to improved student learning and that ‘nations with the best student performances have focused on developing a highly trained teacher workforce rather than publicising school results’.

The article talks about Professor Brian Caldwell’s co-authoring of a new study Why Not the Best Schools? and the findings that teacher training is the key to improved outcomes for students.

Which is all a bit ironic as the short article mentions Finland four or five times as being the best performing system in international testing at the same time asserting that Finland isn’t into testing. Maybe just international testing? 

Caldwell’s conclusion nicely blends the Finnish with the American rhetoric: ‘We should be insisting that every teacher be very well trained to at least a master’s level and not allow any child to fall behind’.

Finland may well do well in international testing but I retain serious doubts as to how tranferrable the education results of that small northern European country are to Australia. Maybe Caldwell is just into skiiing?

[Finland photo from elanores on Flickr]

I’m a bit of a fan of Will Richardson’s work, though I do think he’s a bit hard on teachers at times and not always recognising the good things that are happening. I guess that’s the stance you have take when you’re advocating wholesale reform of systems.

His most recent  article, Footprints in the Digital Age, is a free download from Educational Leadership and argues that in the new world self-directed learners must be adept at building and sustaining networks.

He also includes some simple tips for teachers wanting to get started in this networked world themselves.

I liked this bit especially, since we’ve been talking about digital footprints a lot, in trying to develop student understanding of the concept, and how they might begin to actively shape your online presence:

Your personal footprint—and to some extent your school’s—is most likely being written without you, thanks to the billions of us worldwide who now have our own printing presses and can publish what we want when we want to.

On the surface, that’s an unsettling thought—but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, if we are willing to embrace the moment rather than recoil from it, we may find opportunities to empower students to learn deeply and continually in ways that we could scarcely have imagined just a decade ago.