Tag Archives: education

Ready, Set, Go!

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After all that time deschooling, deconstructing and designing we have finally crossed the start line this week. Monday was our official opening day as Hobsonville Point Secondary School became a real school!

Most of the first 2 days has been spent with my Learning Hub of 9 students (for a great description of Learning Hubs and how they operate see Megan’s post). These are the students for whom I will act as academic and pastoral mentor for the next 5 years and I am rapt to have such an awesome bunch.

My Learning Hub, now known as Reweti

My Learning Hub, now known as Reweti

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Curiosity and Inspiration

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Last night I bought, downloaded and read Can Computers Keep Secrets? How a Six-Year-Old’s Curiosity Could Change the World by Tom Barrett. Stemmed by all the questions his 6 year old son asks, Tom then delves into how we could maintain this natural curiosity that is with all youngsters but seems to disappear as we grow up.

I have long wondered at which point do we stop questioning the world like a 6 year old? When do we start to have more anxiety than curiosity?

Loc 176 of 489 on kindle Edition

These questions struck me as both an educator and a parent. Continue reading →

Bias Towards Action

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Elements of a Design Thinking Mindset from dSchool K12 Wiki

Elements of a Design Thinking Mindset from dSchool K12 Wiki

A bias towards action is the element of a design thinking mindset that resonates with me the most and what I see as really making this such a powerful pedagogical approach. Yet, the bias towards action is bizarrely an aspect that has seen some teachers question the appropriateness of design thinking as an approach for all learning areas. For me, the bias towards action is what makes this an authentic inquiry process rather than just another project producing a poster. Continue reading →

A Culture of Prototyping

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I have been thinking a lot lately about the diagram below which covers the elements of a Design Thinking Mindset. This is the first post in a series I hope to publish over the next fortnight covering how I see these developing at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

Elements of a Design Thinking Mindset from dSchool K12 Wiki

Elements of a Design Thinking Mindset from dSchool K12 Wiki

A Culture of Prototyping can be quite scary for teachers (and particularly school leaders) to start developing. This is because it requires all members of the staff to have no fear of failure. 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 →

Bringing Discovery Back

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On Friday I was invited/gatecrashed a visit by our Deputy Principals to see the Mind Lab in Newmarket. It is an incredible space that really empowers people to discover science, technology and engineering. We are having a large MakerSpace built in our new school so were looking forward to seeing some ideas for how it could be set up and used plus work out what the Mind Lab could offer above what we could do in future.

Chris Clay met us and showed us around the amazing space while explaining what each area is used for: film special effects, 3D animation, robotics, coding, science…it was incredible as you can see from the photos below:

What a Science Lab can look like

What a Science Lab can look like

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The Coding Room and Corridor down to Robotics

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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 →

The Tribe Grows

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This week we welcomed 9 more staff to the HPSS team. This means that apart from some part time language and music teachers we now have our full teaching staff for 2014 onboard. This first week was all about getting them up to speed with our vision and values and showing them the way we work.

Our introductions helped them get on board with our ways as we welcomed them with our ukeleles then gave 3 minute brutally honest accounts of ourselves. Later in the week,
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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?

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Ensuring Values Endure

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Yesterday was a day where thoughts of making our educational values endure was in the forefront of our minds. We had Mark Osborne visit as one of Hobsonville Point’s critical friends. All the Leaders of Learning (LoLs!!) introduced ourselves to him and welcomed him with our ukuleles before we got stuck into the big thinking.

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