Tag Archives: design thinking

Creativity as Disobedient Thought

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Today we were lucky enough to have Professor Welby Ings speak to us as an end of year inspiration. This post will try to (briefly) cover the hour and a half master class on Creativity that we were treated to. (For an 18 minute version see Welby Ings’ TedxAuckland Talk here).

Learning outside school is not within traditional houses of thought (subjects) that schools put in place. For example when learning to drive we are not taught completely separate aspects of this without thought to the connections that exist. The hierarchies of disciplines that exist in schools are bollocks but unfortunately embedded in people’s minds.

Too often in schools we require students to Continue reading →

A More Powerful Inquiry

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One of my core educational values is Curiosity. Yet, in the past I have fallen into the trap of Inquiry = Research instead of a more open curious discovery process. One of the biggest pedagogical changes I have made was when I shifted to an inquiry approach that was about allowing students more time to dwell, think and discuss their questions on whatever the topic of study was at that time.

A lot of this had been intuitive practice so I was stoked when I first came across the Galileo Educational Network website and their intro to Inquiry (thanks Karen for the link!):

Intro to What is Inquiry from Galileo Education Network

Intro to What is Inquiry from Galileo Education Network

Prior to this I had usually thought of inquiry more as the information literacy type of inquiry where you are purposely following a series of steps in your investigation. Two of the best versions I had seen of this that had influenced my practice were: Continue reading →

HPSS Discovery Day

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Yesterday our staff had a day out provoking minds before we plan our modules for next year. We started off at the National Library building in Auckland where we undertook some cross-curricular Guerrilla Geography (or Place Hacking) before moving inside to do some Design Thinking workshops. Lunch was at the Mind Lab in Newmarket before an afternoon Robotics challenge.

It was an awesome day out and will hopefully help everyone hit the planning next week with an adventurous mindset!

For more details on our day – here’s a Storify of tweets sent during our day:
 

[View the story “HPSS Discovery Day” on Storify]

Designing and Causing Learning

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Wednesday morning as a staff we focused on what the learning will look like at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

I shared a blog post by Grant Wiggins entitled Beyond teacher egocentrism: design thinking which is absolutely brilliant and provokes teachers to think of themselves as just one element that influences learning. This had really struck a chord for me and so I was rapt to see the rest of our staff enjoying the reading as well.

There are lots of good points in this blog but one line that sticks out for me and was mentioned by others in our discussions was:

we are in the business of designing and causing learning instead of merely in the business of teaching

Our activity focused on what Grant sees as the conditions necessary for optimal engagement and active learning to occur. Staff were broken into pairs or 3s to think about what that condition will look like for our specific context of HPSS. Below are the conditions and what we believe they look like for us: Continue reading →

Enabling Constraints

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Snip20131031_3Seeing your Principal send a tweet like this is so incredibly affirming and validating of the work you have been undertaking. Especially when it comes on a day where your team is sharing the outcome of weeks of work putting together the structures for learning to take place in your school.

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The time spent on the vision, values etc. last term was the foundation for the structures coming into place over the past 2 weeks. All our decisions in putting these in place are well grounded in the school vision and values. Then in one day this week we introduced the staff to all the structures supporting the delivery of our curriculum: Continue reading →

NZC and Design Thinking Part 2

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While last week was about deconstruction and reconstruction of the New Zealand Curriculum, this week has been about gaining clarity in our process. The state of the table over the past 2 weeks in our “Curriculum Hacking Cave” shows this quite nicely.

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Continue reading →

Mapping, Hacking & Designing

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I haven’t posted in the last week due to being deeply involved in mapping the New Zealand Curriculum to enable us to hack it into a better design for learning. This is still an ongoing process so I will blog about it in depth later on but here’s a few photos that may give you an idea of what us Specialised Learning leaders have been up to:

A New Design?

A New Design?

Continue reading →

Moving from the Big Picture to Teaching and Learning Practices

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This week has seen us continuing our big picture thinking but also now starting to focus in on what that will look like in the classroom.

On Monday we had a team trip into town for a mystery day out. The ferry ride through the rising fog was a good metaphor for what we would be going through over the rest of the day.

After breakfast together we were split into 2 teams and given a map of checkpoints and clues to decipher. Basically it was a 2 hour adventure race around town finding the checkpoints and taking interpretive photos to represent what we found. The checkpoints all turned out to be pieces of art around town and afterwards we found out that it was actually the Auckland Waterfront Sculpture Tour. Our team then made this video to represent our interpretations of the sculptures:

After a quick bite to eat we then headed to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for a Design Thinking workshop with Peter Harrison from the Better by Design team. Walking onto their floor we got a hint at what was coming by the large poster on the wall giving tips for creative conversations:

Tips for Creative Conversations

Tips for Creative Conversations

This was an awesome 2 hour workshop introducing us to the ideas of Design Thinking. Continue reading →

A Mindset for Learning

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“If you haven’t failed in the classroom lately, you probably aren’t pushing the envelope enough. You are being too safe.” Dave Burgess

This blogpost is all about the word “mindset”. I know this has been around for a while but I first consciously came across the word Mindset at ICOT this year. It seems to have really grown on the world and in my consciousness this year and I see it everywhere now. There are many people out there selling tool kits or strategies that will make you a more effective teacher but I fundamentally believe there is no 1 correct answer for education. By having an open mindset we can make more of a difference.

My teaching mindset at the moment is heavily influenced by the following mindsets that I believe really complement each other to help me approach teaching with the enthusiasm (and hopefully effectiveness) that I do:

– Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset
– Design Thinking
– Teach Like a PIRATE
– Exploration mindset (heavily influenced here by Dan Raven-Ellison)

Continue reading →