Stephen Heppell visits MGGS

Last night to finish the 2012 professional learning series we were very fortunate to have Stephen Heppell join us. In what was a career highlight for me, it gave me the opportunity to hear one of the worlds greatest educators speak and to publicly commend our school on what we have achieved in the past five years and assure us that we are heading towards truly amazing outcomes.

Personally the best tip that I received from Stephen yesterday, in relation to my role of change agent and leader, was that, "If the parents aren't pushing back against the changes you are making in the school around technology and education then you're not pushing the boundaries at all. If you are not scared then you are not doing enough". He explained that if we are making changes to fulfill our students needs, then of course you can't expect to meet the parents needs as well. What an encouraging thought to keep in my mind when responding to parent enquiries!

To highlight this generational gap at the end of the presentation a 30 year old said to a few of us, "Whilst I'm not starting a family just yet, I've had the conversation with my fiancee around having kids and the important thing to me is that they'll have access to all technology in our home and there's no way I'll be blocking anything!" Another person in the group, in her mid 40's exclaimed, "Wow! In my generation the first thing we negotiated was in which religion would our children be raised." 

The other gems I noted last night were:

•  "You can only build better learning with children, not for children" 
• "Teachers should be co-developers and co-creators"
• We need to ask students, "How can I make your learning better?"
• "Bring your own browser programs (e.g.BYOD as it is called here) brings about diversity and personalisation in education"

and some more gems that I've saved from previous presentations I've attended:

• Curriculum has been built around us not having computer access in classrooms whereas it should now be full of things you can only do on a computer!
• Good mathematics graduates head to either software/gaming development companies or banks where everything they do is on computer but at school the argument is that it all has to be completed on paper.
• How about the personalisation of institutions too? Look at the Free school kit example available to anyone in Britain to start up a school...visit the website http://fsk.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/
• Choice within the school rather than just choosing one school for life. This is being led by innovative teachers...innovating with their students. Must be with children, not for them!
• In HKG: Kenneth Chen says “Learning to learn is the cornerstone of reform in Hong Kong”
• Students must be ready to cope with the unexpected. The world is full of surprises and most surprises come from technology.
• The world has recently become.obsessed with people learning: learning to sing (The Voice),cook (Masterchef),dance (Dancing with the Stars).
• In the U.K. they have released the creative industries report focusing on next generation skills. http://www.nesta.org.uk/events/assets/fatures/next_gen   
• Curriculum for ICT needs to be open source
• Writing has changed, students need to be taught how to write page turning sentences...how do we teach kids to write for this?
• Postappropriation technology.....moving past class sets of calculators, cameras, voice recorders etc  
• Can you think of an industry that isn’t creative? ICT curriculum needs to be more creative. Learning to use your device...choosing apps etc that will suit your need.
• Our education structures need to be about learning not organsing. Control vs innovation
• Cloudearn.net project has info on protocols and policies around Mobile device use in the  class room. Many classrooms allow them as long as they are face-up so teachers can see them.
• “You don’t need new policies and protocols for every new technology, as cyber-bullying is still just bullying!” Keep it to a simple set of rules and the more generic the more they will cover.
• One of the most important sense to be developed, that can start at a very young age is a “Sense of other”..It can be developed by asking a toddler: “I wonder what it would be like to be......”  Stephen’s theory is that people with a sense of other, produce better people, better leaders and better students
• In setting up a BYO environment you need to allow for 3-5 IP addresses per child – in simple language it means that we can expect them want to connect a minimum of 3 devices in our case it might be: their notebook, their smartphone and then either a eReader or tablet device.

For more you can track down Stephen on the web via:
http://pinterest.com/stephenheppell/
http://www.heppell.net/
or Twitter: @stephenheppell
He also recommends the Tweets of  @julietteheppell  and @LamptonCitizens