uLearn 2015

I was very lucky that our school staff was encouraged to go to ULearn 2015 in Auckland.

On the first morning a guest speaker that stood out to me was Grant-Lichtman. He had great ideas and shared his personal journey around school. He wanted to find out what the 'best teachers' were doing. He went to schools and said-"show me innovation, show me a teacher that you want every teacher to be like".  Along his journey he found many creative ideas.

Simple ideas such as Make it Monday and Tear it up Tuesday these were some of the ways teacher were encouraging students to be creative and curious.

Some other interesting thoughts he shared:

• At the end of the road- Dewey
• "Great learning is based on experience, which leads to passion which leads to learning"
• Cognitosphere- the evolving neuro network, what flows through this network is knowledge-transfer, sharing.....want to be part of this system.
• What holds us back from this change- fear, always looking at the downside, am I going to take risks?
• Risk doesn't mean danger/harm....you have to take risks to be innovative!
• We think we have to make a decision between experience, passion, risk and achievement
• Change is hard??!?!?! Changing schools is uncomfortable not hard.
• Educator-leader, we do not look to a leader to tell us what to do, we lead from where we are, teacher co-learner, co-teacher,
• Education is freedom- what are the skills we want students to have in the next century?
• words that are timeless-college students made this list in 9minutes: persistence, resilient,  confidence, patience, openness etc. Some school spend all their time finding words!
• Stop worrying about what the list looks like and just do it!!
• What if---questions 70% into same areas: 1.stop teaching the way the world doesn't work 2. student ownership 3.student assessment 4. daily schedule 5. differentiated  6. professional development 7. annual calendar 8.role of teacher.

Something that I found really interesting was his ideas around change and taking risks. I think that with all the changes in education we are waiting for some new book for how we teach maths, or project based learning or inquiry etc instead of taken the risk to be that person who creates the "new way" of teaching. As teachers I believe we are natural problem solvers. If there is a problem at school we aim to fix it, if something doesn't work change it improve it. I think its also important to remember that all children are different and that just because something worked really well last year doesn't mean it can't be changed/adapted/innovated?? I believe there is learning in everything-try something, fail, reflect, learn.