Martin Pluss

Hi all,

Each year I give myself a little project to write about.

In 2006 it was Communities of Practice, in 2007 it was social bookmarking and in 2008 it was Twitter – the products can be seen in the sidebar of the blog.

This year I have set aside my research for Cloud Computing. I have been collecting and in some cases printing articles for 6 months. Prior to this I wanted to set the scene of what to research so I summarised the contents of all the Horizon Reports I could get my hands on to see where cloud computing fitted in.

Just recently I have been reading more carefully the Annual founder’s Letter from Google – usually with things I come across I just tweet it and the delicious it and come back to it later.

One section jumped out at me and has got me motivated again:

The benefits of web-based services, also known as cloud computing, are clear. There is no installation. All data is stored safely in a data center (no worries if your hard drive crashes). It can be accessed anytime, anywhere there is a working web browser and Internet connection (and sometimes even if there is not one — see below).

Perhaps even more importantly, new forms of communication and collaboration become possible. I am writing this letter using Google Docs. There are several other people helping me edit it simultaneously. Moments ago I stepped away and worked on it on a laptop. Without having to hit save or manage any synchronization all the changes appeared in seconds on the desktop that I am back to using now. In fact, today I have worked on this document using three different operating systems and two different web browsers, all without any special software or complex logistics.

So I am motivated again. It will be interesting to see what I come up with

cheers Martin

Hi all,

Last year I was following a conference on Twitter and the messages were flying all over the place and everything was so interesting. I made a comment and 6 months later a friend in Facebook came across it in another context – and he sent the link to the picture to me.

Here is the original source – Mark Pesce (@mpesce) is in the photo and has a thought provoking blog.

Thanks for the mention @mpesce.

cheers Martin

Hi all,

When do you realise you are part of a movement? When your are smart enough at the time to realise it or with age – wisdom reveals you were part of it. I have no recollection of the significance of the Punk era.

I am watching Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. A documentary about the life of Joe Strummer – I have never heard of him, I have heard of The Clash and definitely remember some of the music.

I just heard a guy say that that he did not read newspapers and it was Joe Strummer who highlighted for him the injustices in the world for him. And another line was

“The audience are your friends”.

As a teenager in this era I fell into the category of not being smart enough to understand the movement that was happening around me. Though I do remember being in a play in the Sydney University Drama Society where one of the theme songs was by The Clash and it was a punk style play.

Come forward to now – I feel I am part of a movement with the web which is inflitrating all aspects of my life, running and work.

I wonder what the documentary will be like that I will watch in 30 years time about the effect of the “web movement” on our culture and who with be the players like Joe Strummer.

cheers Martin

Update: LOL just heard Joe ran the Paris Marathon one time when he went AWOL.

Session 2
A Presence Audit

The quality of who you are as a person and the authenticity of your relationships with others and the conditions of their life and their work.

The key elements of presence are:
• Affirming
• Critiquing
• Enabling

We broke into groups and addressed these 5 questions.

1. Name ways in which you are present for your professional colleagues
2. Name ways you are fully present for your students
3. Name a person(s) who is fully present for you. How do they do this?
4. How could you be more fully present to the challenges inherent in authentic/inauthentic learning?
5. How can you as a leader be more fully present to the people you work with and the conditions of their work?

We only had to report back on question 5 and these were the responses for each of the 15 groups.
• Love and believe in what you do
• Be an active listener
• Self cultivation – empty the clutter
• Heart for other people’s needs
• Respond to people you listen to
• Know where people are coming from- treat with respect with dignity and affirmation
• Balancing time – view as opportunities
• How you communicate with people
• Validating- present in the moment
• Every morning make a decision about how I am going to actively engage
• Use the Appraisal Process
• Fair and equitable expectations of others
• Less email – active listening – compromises
• Dialogue
• Passion – sharing wisdom.

cheers MArtin

Session 3
Authentic Educative Leaders strongly influence the quality of student outcomes.

I

Here we apply the ideas of the first session to the learning environment – deep learning environments.

1. Authentic educative leaders

They promote moral purpose of schooling, create deep learning environments and are reflective, learner focussed and transforming. In the context of the National Curriculum he does not see this sort of leadership.

2. Authentic teachers and teaching

Connects to student’s lives – the trajectory of their life as they move forward.
In today’s age and knowledge of education Patrick believes “inauthentic learning is unethical”.

3. Teachers plant the golden seed. Patrick quotes students for the National Education Awards:

“Thanks for giving me the strong belief in who I am as a person”
“Thank you for giving me the confidence to go out and into a challenging world.”

As Patrick was thinking of this he came across two ideas by Charles Handy in “Myself” – self belief and confidence.

II
Research

Typical research findings are on

1. Teaching and Student’s Achievements
2. Leadership and Learning

Leading researchers ( John Hattie, Ken Leithwood, Vivian Robinson) look at results from a range of research from test results for a 50 year period. They talk about the “effect size” as the measure of the impact. Effect size is the standard mean difference between the outcomes of one approach and another BUT it does not point to the future.

Patrick outlines some of the research findings and indicates the weaknesses. In part it is not the teachers but the excellence in teaching that makes a difference. The results are based on previous test scores, it examines a narrow range of performance only maths science and English and it is a linear measure of influence.

“do we value what we measure because we cannot measure what we value”

OECD Research 2008

Patrick was relieved that the OECD research was making the same analysis of the research. I must admit to struggling to process all this at this stage even though I found it really interesting.
I will claim some ignorance at this point which is more a reflection of me researching everything on the web rather than from the more formal study I used to do. I did not know the significance of the PISA results which are based on testing of student achievement in countries and then comparisons can be made between countries.

So it does make sense that the government will pay attention to such test results and also pay close attention to OECD research in educational decision making in Australia – eg National Curriculum. In fact he says that Kevin Rudd wrote the Digital Education Revolution Policy by himself with no consultation. This may be true but for me I read in his biography one of his major influencing figures in his thinking is Dietrich Bonhoeffer – I am not sure if there is any direct link to any policy his has formulated.

Anyway the OECD does not like “Standard Model of Teaching” and is trying to shift the nature of the testing. Too many students are not prepared for the knowledge society – now also referred to as the creative society. Patrick claims we need school s with deep rich learning environments.

“Provide learning prior to experience is storing learning in a mental warehouse… warehouse learning decays very rapidly.”

Learning Science Resaerch

Started around 1993 taking into account observational research. Martin Westwood the neuro scientist claims we cannot get more neurons but we can improve the connections between neurons. That is we can increase brain density – Patrick stated we can do this by relationships- learning with each other. In fact, he claims preferred learning styles and left right hand brain thinking are myths. If a student is a visual learner why teach that way when they already can do it.

So if you take these views into account the results include

1. Customised learning
2. Diverse knowledge sources
3. Collaborative group learning
4. Assessment for deeper understanding

Teacher and Student centred learning

Patrick now argues that the subject should be at the centre of attention. Subject matter is very important as it provides people the tools for life. What is important is how the students engage with the subject. He did say it has taken him a while to come to this conclusion. He is happy to negotiate the terms but

“the subject is the glue that makes sense of the learning relationship.”

A model

He made a list of 17 indicators of educative leaders influence and with another researcher he refined them into 4 categories.

1. People
2. Purposes
3. Processes
4. Paradigms

However he refined it to say that there are three people, purposes and processes which can be applied differently depending on the paradigm one uses.

Martin Pluss
martinpluss@gmail.com