Beyond 20th Century Education

Voicethread is a really useful web 2.0 tool. One of the voicethreads I came across today was a provocative question posed by Professor Stephen Heppell - "It simply isn't the 20th Century Any More, Is It? So Why Would We Teach As Though It Was?" The three questions posed in this voicethread are answered by educators from a number of different countries. It is worth listening to their comments and reading their thoughts.
Voicethread is a useful tool to use in all fields - business and education.

Leaders for Future Schooling

The ULearn conference highlighted the need for our schools to change and showcased many schools and clusters that are using information communication technologies to progress this.The following short video describes how school leaders need to develop the adult learners in their communities. This is the challenge for 21st century leaders. How can we be effective leaders of change through others rather than as the expert in all things...



This video is one of many appearing on EdTalks - a new site featuring short video clips for educators. Check it out at http://edtalks.org/ You can subscribe to these via itunes too!

Leadership for the Future

This week is the ULearn conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. I will be presenting a spotlight called "You're a leader -lead!" We need strong leaders in education - ones who have to courage to move forward while still having the wisdom to take others with them, and indeed develop collective intelligence. Leaders need to understand themselves as learners and to think about the impact they have on other people. They also need to relate to others - leadership is not an individual pursuit! Below this post you have the opportunity to undertake a short survey on Relating to Others. The survey has been developed in Google Docs and is based on the 'Relating to Others' key competency from the NZ Curriculum. If we are serious about the need for students to develop in each of the five key competencies (Managing Self; Relating to Others; Participating and Contributing; Thinking; and Using Language, Symbols & Texts) don't we have to lead by example? More than ever, ethical and moral leadership are critical to growing humanity. Yet we seem to be struggling to develop alignment between our espoused values and what we actually do in practice. Take time to reflect on yourself as a leader and who you are as a person.

The 21st century learner

Today I came across this wiki. It provides a good example of resources that are being shared across an ICT cluster in the North Island of New Zealand. There are a number of movies embedded on this site. It is definitely worth monitoring for those of you who are trying to push education forward for the future.

I am currently writing a newsletter for educators on the the topic of student self management. I remain convinced that educators need to let go, to involve students in their own learning. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter go to Think Beyond and subscribe to receive the newsletter. It should be available in the next fortnight.

Portfolio Careers

In the last week I have had the opportunity to work with some wonderful educational leaders, to listen to some experienced speakers, to read words of wisdom from some of the worlds greatest leaders, and to interview prospective applicants for a CEO position. My life is diverse and full on - I have a portfolio of interests and jobs and it is simply splendid.

I reflected on this as I read the latest Leader to Leader newsletter, where Charles Handy talked about his life, and questioned of "the viability and the desirability of the lifetime contracts then offered by most large corporations and, ultimately, to my advocacy of what I was to call portfolio or spliced careers." In the future many will be mixing and matching aspects of their lives, weaving in and out of opportunities; considering profit with social justice; and balancing business with recreation.

Amongst other competencies, a portfolio career requires flexibility in thinking, and the ability to take risks. What a shame that teaching professions around the world are often so risk averse. In New Zealand the latest move is to give teachers more 'units', payments to encourage them to stay in teaching and provide a career path. Will this preserve status quo thinking? What about the opportunity for teachers to have portfolio careers? Do all those who work with students need to be teachers? How can we reward teachers to take risks and think outside the square? What about the opportunity for teachers to be self employed, contracting their skills to schools? What about the opportunity for principals to job share - for this to be easy rather than virtually impossible? Let's start thinking creatively.

Portfolio careers are on the rise. As one who has such a career all I can say is...I'm loving it.