'A Day With Steve Collis' at my School in Sydney

Only read this if you live in Sydney or Australia - or are willing to travel!!

This is a guilty pleasure - instead of offering thorough practical training for a particular ICT in education skill, I'm just running a general 'Day with Steve Collis'.

The course is for educators, especially leaders or aspiring leaders.

The day will let me explore a variety of the 'best bits' of what I have to offer.

These 'best bits' will cluster around these core challenges I have faced since becoming a teacher:

1. How can I act effectively and make progress in my projects and ambitions when I am so busy I only get the top 5% of my to do list done and have creativity sapped out of me by relentless interruptions, deadlines, paperwork, etc.

2. Following on from #1 - how can I bring order to the chaotic information systems of my school? In my case, I get 80 emails a day. Many emails imply I should take action - but what action, and how do I remember it, and what if the sender is ambiguous? There is a method for bringing elegant, practical clarity to all this mess. I go home each day with Inbox at zero. We'll look at the method together!

3. Following on from #1 or #2 - how can I reduce cure work anxiety and nurture my energy levels, creativity, and optimism? 

4. How do I create change-momentum in my school? How can I effectively catalyse transformed teacher practice? It is a rare visitor to my school who has not identified this as their number 1 question.

5. Following on from #3... How do I bring out the best in students and colleagues, especially if they are off-side, negative, or are feeding a collective culture of defeatism.

Now, I have not nailed these dilemmas quite yet, but I've made progress with a great deal of them, and I think I have a map for how to navigate the rest.

It's going to be pure indulgence having a full day on this stuff! 

If you're interested, our first date is 1 April 2011 (no this is not a practical joke!). I am sure we will re-run the day in future too. Contact learn@scil.nsw.edu.au for more information and to book.

Our official advertisement and overview is here: http://scil.com.au/workshop/a-day-with-steve-collis

The page includes this ridiculous photo of me: (which nevertheless pretty much sums HappySteve up)

Live webstream from #DEHub Conference

I'm broadcasting a worldclass conference for free via webcam this week. Please spread the news. Focus is Distance Education.

High School / Primary teachers, this is also very relevant to you - scroll way down to read why.

TUNE IN TO BROADCAST BY CLICKING HERE

(if the broadcast isn't live, it will show recent recordings instead)

I suggest you use the twitter hashtag '#dehub'

   Get up to date information from my Twitter feed.

Here is a live chat system: (SCROLL DOWN PAST IT TO GET TO THE PROGRAM SCHEDULE)

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The details:

Have a look at the program here: http://www.dehub.edu.au/summit2011/programme.html

These are the keynote speakers: http://www.dehub.edu.au/summit2011/keynotespeakers.html

 -------- Click the time links below to get your LOCAL TIME for the big keynote sessions ------

Tuesday 15 Feb:

8.30am Opening Ceremony  <--- NO LONGER BEING BROADCAST ---> 

9.15am SUMMIT Opening Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley, Companion of the Order of Australia

9.45am Australian and New Zealand Keynote Panel: What does distance education mean in Australia and New Zealand? What are the issues and challenges? What does the future hold?

11.45am Deputy Vice Chancellors Panel - Helicopter view of distance education

2.00pm Terry Anderson - Emerging technologies for enhancing distance education pedagogies

Wednesday 16 Feb:

9.00am Olaf Zawacki-Richter The geography of distance education research - bibliographic characteristics of a journal network

From 10.00am it's pot-luck as I attend workshops and broadcast as seems practical.

1.30pm Open Educational Resources Panel 

From 3.00pm it's pot-luck as I attend workshops and broadcast as seems practical.

Thursday 17 Feb 

 8.30am Dianne Laurillard The critical role of teachers in optimizing technologies for open learning

From 10.00am it's pot-luck as I attend workshops and broadcast as seems practical.

1.30pm Mohamed Ally: Mobile learning - hype or evidenced impact for higher education applications? - SORRY I HAVE BEEN TOLD I CAN'T BROADCAST THIS ONE.

2.30pm Anticipating the future: Developing leaders, researchers and practitioners of blended and distance learning Panel

From 4pm it's pot-luck as I attend workshops and broadcast as seems practical.

Friday 18 February

9.00am Phil Ice: A story of oxcarts and airplanes: Converging the reality and promise of e-learning

From 10.00am it's pot-luck as I attend workshops and broadcast as seems practical.

1.30pm Grainne Conole Social inclusion or exclusion: What do we already know about the learning patterns of socially excluded groups and what does Web 2.0 offer that is different for the distance learner?

...followed by the closing ceremony and postscripts.

Some thoughts from Steve about the conference:

First, this is very nice that the conference organisers are getting me to give away their best bits for free to anyone in the world.

People are paying $1000 to attend in person, and yet you can enjoy the best bits from your armchair for free.

Second, although the theme is University distance education, this is a highly significant conference for any educator. 

Let me give some reasons why:

- the technologies being discussed have far-reaching implications for any level of schooling. Think: mobile phones, iPads, virtual 3d worlds, creative commons licensing, and much more. In fact, these areas are moving so quickly I literally can't wait to hear what people say.

Let me pause and give you an anecdote from YESTERDAY. I was corrected THREE TIMES by my Year 8 French students who, without me asking them or giving permission, began surreptitiously checking some statistics I was throwing at them, on the internet. I was not the best source of knowledge in the room, and they damn well knew it, and I damn well rewarded them by the way!

- the conference has brought together a brilliant bunch to try to predict where things will go next. Listen to them. Frankly, your job as you know it is at stake.

- the 'distance education' thingy is an elephant, and if you haven't stopped to take it into account, well, you had better, and here's your chance. The classroom teacher will be competing with any other teacher in the whole world who can offer a better product over the web. Do not fret, but get up to speed with what this might mean.

Radical ‘Open Space’ Staff Conference

I had my phone handy at our staff conference last week & began taping.

What I captured and have now compiled, below, brings home to me how lucky I am to be on such an optimistic, enthusiastic, open, creative team. 

The format was based on ‘Open Space’ conferencing. We started with a blank canvass – no pre-defined program.

Colleagues then came forward to begin defining areas for discussion – 24 areas. 

People then grouped around the themes that resonated, and were free to stay or flit from group to group (we invoked the concept of cross-pollinating bees).

This grassroots approach means you have authentic perspectives and harness intrinsic passions. It is driven from the bottom up, not the top down.

Some groups were big, some small, but I was struck in every case by a universal sense of engagement.

Finally we asked staff to nominate a short-list of discussions to move toward an action plan.

There were 12 of these final groups. Their resulting road maps  have already been collated and combined into a google doc ready to be supported for action by the school senior exec. I dare say not every road map will survive in the busy-ness of 2011, but one thing is for sure: our community will look mighty different in 6 months from now than it would have had we gone with a series-of-lectures format.

My colleague Anne Knock blogged about the conference too: http://anneknock.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/professional-development-that-gives-voice/

You can follow Anne on Twitter.

If you have a chance to influence what staff workshops happen at your school, even just for a handful of colleagues, give the ‘Open Space’ format a go.

Create a Live, Permanent, Always On Video Conference...

(Quick news first: I was interviewed for the EdTechCrew podcast http://www.edtechcrew.net/2010/11/09/ed-tech-crew-142-innovating-with-steve-collis/ . It went really well - the two guys who run it are just lovely people, Darrel Branson (The ICT Guy) and Tony Richards from itmadesimple.com . My episode is sandwiched between two others that I also recommend, one with Lucy Barrow and another with Dean Groom. In all three, virtual worlds are discussed to some degree.)

AND NOW ON WITH THE SHOW:

"Create a Live, Permanent, Always On Video Conference..."

...by which I mean have a computer in your school that provides a permanent video conference link to another school. This becomes a little window out into the world. Students who walk by can glance at the screen and see who is at the other end. If they want to they can put on a headset and chat!

When I thought we'd give this a go I went first to Judy O'Connell (@heyjudeonline on Twitter). She works as teacher/librarian at St Joseph's College, Riverview. In fact, this is quite close to my school, and in the same city. But the point was, let's just get cracking! Let's see if this can work! Let's see what goes wrong! Let's just get some momentum going.

My initial email to Judy was brief, and she picked up on the idea immediately. We didn't have a meeting, we didn't write a program, we didn't design a policy.

Within a couple of days she had set up the computer at her end, and I had at mine, and we were ready to go.

All we needed to do is boot up the computer, run Skype, and call each other with a video-call. It runs all day. We leave it to serendipity as to who will talk to who, when, and about what.

We've done this two days so far. 

At my end, I needed to quickly adapt the plan as we went. My students need to sign an agreement before sitting at the computer. I have a script of questions that they can ask - "What are you learning at the moment? How is your day going?" and so on. I have emphasised everywhere DO NOT GIVE OUT YOUR SURNAME OR CONTACT DETAILS! 

Two more things have to happen:

- I need to move the location of the computer somewhere a little more discrete (not too discrete - we need to supervise!).

- I want to set a screen recorder up on a loop so we can actually record everything that's happening for monitoring purposes, so I can tell the students 'you are being recorded'! General rule of thumb: students behave differently if they know they are being monitored. 

Once I've sorted that, I want to set up two or three permanent connections, not with local Sydney schools, but with schools in Japan, Russia, and the outback (in all three cases the time zone will be workable)

It's early days in this project, but I love this way of working: Ready, Fire, Aim, or "Act, then think". This method grounds your ideas in practice, making it really obvious really soon what will and won't work, rather than putting energy into planning that can come to nothing through fatigue or impracticality. 

More later, I'm sure!

Just How Easy Print Book Publishing Can Be!

Ok I think I went a little over the top with the capitalisation of the blog post title.

Anyway, you probably already know my school runs an online bookstore, selling real print books authored by our students! See: : http://stores.lulu.com/realaudienceproject

This is an example of how we do it. This example suits Primary projects. I'll cover Secondary in a tick.

1. The students were engaged in imaginative descriptive writing with their teacher, Mrs Julia Harbor. They cared about what they wrote, especially because they saw our bookstore and realised their work was going to be sold and seen.

In this case they wrote about 'My Hiding Place.'

2. After editing and refining, they type up their description onto an A4 page, print it out, and get it proofread.

3. Now they add illustrations. This is what we end up with:

 

4. I scan the pages at 600dpi on a colour scanner. The scanner spits out a 130 mb PDF file at me.

(in case you don't know what a scanner looks like!)

5. I upload the PDF to our account at www.lulu.com 

6. I rescan another A4 page to act as the front cover, and another as the back cover. I scan them as JPEG image files, upload to Lulu.

7. I type in a title, description, and set a price.

8. DONE! It's on the market!

Check out the finished product at: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/my-hiding-place/13854240

By the way, Secondary is even easier. Let's assume your students have written a study guide, a novel, a student-written textbook, a set of poems, or whatever. Let's assume it is basically all text. Throw it into a Word document, upload the Word document to www.lulu.com, add a description, set a price, and bang! It's on the market!

We're going to set up a display where all past titles are available for purchase by visitors to our school. We'll order a few copies of every book in order to get stock running. 

Out of curiosity, I've just checked, and we've sold 80 books so far.

Please let me know if you've tried this idea too at your school.