Janine’s blog

Like all Tasmanian schools we are currently grappling with the new Tasmanian curriculum which is what the Essential Learnings have morphed into. Lyn has put us in touch with the writings of Mike Schmoker who provides some research-based ideas about how to achieve real educational improvement through the setting of small practical goals rather than spending large amounts of time on “strategic planning” and the resultant paperwork.  He proposes an alternative at school level,

…the dumb (if unsexy) certainties of having teams of teachers implement, assess, and adjust instruction in short-term cycles of improvement — not annually, but continuously. http://mikeschmoker.com/tipping-point.html

I have read some of his articles and am now looking forward to reading his latest book,  RESULTS NOW: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning.

Alan Levine visited Hobart as part of his Australian speaking tour. I was lucky enough to join him for dinner with colleagues Jo and Frankie and Jo’s partner Nick. His workshop in Hobart was a sell-out and has received many glowing accolades. His presentation notes are available on the special blog he set up for his Australian tour - cogdogroo.wordpress.com. He cleverly fed this via RSS to his mainstream CogDogBlog site.

Follow the Australian tour.

and specifically…

Hobart workshop and specifically 50 ways to tell a Web 2.0 Story

Last week I attended the National Computing Studies Summit together with 4 other Tasmanians in person and some who attended online. You may recall that the Summit’s purpose wsa to examine sustainable distance learning models for teaching the specialist subject area of Computing Studies (or whatever it is called in each state), given the very small numbers of appropriately qualitied teachers and the reality that many schools have low numbers of enrolments. More on the Summit outcomes later

The opening keynote was Alan Noble - Engineering Site Director of Google Australia and New Zealand (bio at
http://www.acce.edu.au/item.asp?pid=1215) He had some inspiring and optimistic messages about the importance of developing relevant skills in young people from an early age that might lead to an interest and
career in software engineering.

Alan spoke about Google’s 9 notions of innovation

1. Innovation not instant perfection
2. Show everything you can
3. You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
4. A licence to pursue dreams
5. Ideas come from everywhere
6. Don’t politicise - use data
7. Creativity loces restrainst
8. Worry about useage and users, not money
9. Don’t kill projects, morph them

They encourage a “think out loud” culture and operate in a spirit of “it’s OK not to have things fully baked”

A slideshow of this material from the original author is at
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_25/b3989422.htm and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYKFWqVVzg . Googling it leads to some interesting applications of the 9 notions including “How to run ameeting
like Google” which could be interesting!

[as posted to tas-it discussion list on 09-Oct-07]

It’s been a while since I have posted here though I have mentally prepared many little snippets. My excuse/reason is extended time out while getting a new knee sorted out and I am pleased to report that all is going well in that direction.