Future Learning Blog

Where is external assessment going, and who are we thinking of when we are deciding the future of assessment beyond 2020.   This picture is the actual view I was confronted with, walking into our local community college gym, aged 16.  A place where we had played volleyball, netball and cricket was now being used to measure how much we knew about the things we had spent our school lives practically doing inside this hall, to see if I could pass GCSE PE.  It is now clearly ironic the amount of time that we spent actively exerting ourselves and demonstrating competency in the ‘doing’ of the skill was now going to be measured by writing down everything we knew about it in 2hrs to double check we knew what we were supposed to know.  The previous 24hrs before this vista had seen me cramming the information written on tiny ‘flash cards’ into my short term memory, even up to the walk down the corridor to find my seat I was memorising the diagrams I had drawn about ...

Here are some of my personal reflections of the response to our findings in a recent piece of work.  This research originally examined if and how collaboration has disrupted practice.  It was submitted to the CORE Education Research and Inquiry Symposium at ULearn 2016.   Lynley Schofield and myself are postgrad facilitators at The Mind Lab by Unitec and were intrigued by the disruptive potential of cross sector collaboration.   The Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative learning) is a disruptive enabler, designed to bring teachers together to take part in constructive discourse and tangible collaboration through applied assessments.  As we have developed and refined the course over 2 years and with 1700 educators we have enabled more collaborative assessments and discussion time, and heard less deficit theorising with educators blaming other teachers for their perceived shortcomings in learners from other schools. ...

Some excellent news which was recently in The Gisborne Herald... The Mind Lab by Unitec in Gisborne has been successful in applying for the Curious Minds funding from MBIE - The Lab was awarded $26,000 to engage more young people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The funding will be used to create and support Te Wānanga Whakawhānui at The Mind Lab, young people between the ages of 7-18 will be able to apply to be a part of the academy which will be developing the bright young minds in Tairāwhiti.  When learners are part of the academy they will attend afterschool and weekend workshops at The Mind Lab for a gold coin koha - usually these workshops range between $130-$150 for 5-6 sessions, this cost has been subsidised by the funding.  The workshops will be in computer coding, electronics with Arduino, web-design, app development, 3D printing and design.   The Mind Lab already has financial subsidies from The Eastland Community Trust and ...

Graduates of our March 2015 intake Last week was a special week for The Mind Lab by Unitec in Gisborne, not only did we discover that we had been successful in our application for funding from the MBIE to support further equitable access to The Mind Lab , but we also had the chance to celebrate the success of our first 32 graduates on our local Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice of Digital and Collaborative learning . This cohort was an extremely courageous group of early adopters and innovators who dove headfirst into the unknown, these were the first teachers in Gisborne to gain this achievement and they have paved the way for many educators to follow in their footsteps.  They made many sacrifices along the way to gaining the qualification, and in order for them to do this they had tremendous support from whanau and loved ones, as well as their schools and students.  I know all of them stepped out of their comfort zones to make a difference to the learne...

Image from  Geof Wilson This  is a recent opinion piece that I wrote in the Gisborne Herald, although some of the points are 'sensationalised' I am aiming to mobilise community support to consider how important education is and how everyone should be involved in reimagining this in Gisborne.  The children we have here are amazing, we only have to help them prove it.

Several years ago I adopted a flipped approach to learning in PE as we were short on devices and technology in our classroom, we were known as a 1:1 iPad school, one iPad in one school!  As a class we were aiming to move to a more digital environment but didn’t have the equipment, so the obvious choice was to move to a flipped model.  I was happy to find out that most (65 out of 70) students had access to computers and the internet at home.  Special arrangements were made for the learners who did not have access like loan devices, and access to school devices during and after school. Several years on and educators are still talking about flipping the classroom and it was our topic at The Mind Lab this week, there was some great discussion around the concept and different ways it could be implemented effectively - so I thought I would re-visit again.  The idea behind a flipped model of education is that much of the content is covered outside of the classroom thr...