John Medina - ISTE 2011

I haven't blogged for a while. I've had plenty to say and my thoughts on MOC have constantly swirled inside however perhaps I needed a break.

Back into the swing of Term 3 Week 4 now and I've finally worked out how to use a Digital Multimeter - I'm teaching electronics for the first time so it has definitely been a '1 min ahead' of the students situation. Slowly but surely a course is starting to take shape and I have to admire the students for putting up with the program in its current form. By the time it looks like the real deal these students I'm currently teaching will be in Year 12 and on the way out of HS.

The reason for my blog post is really to showcase some of John Medina's speech at ISTE this year. Much of what he says I agree with and as I try and help build MOC over the next few years I will use people like Medina to reinforce my own beliefs that, 'we need to do things differently!'

This week we realised just how popular we were becoming - huge numbers of students are expected for 2012.But with this mass increase in students can we afford to run larger number classes with the one teacher approach? Is it time we start really discussing two teachers plus SSO per student block of 40-50?

To that end, myself with another tech teacher are looking to run a team-teaching subject next year. One that focuses on small scale projects the students complete to end up with a air-hockey table. A lot of the planning is still in its infancy but we're hopeful that, one we'll have the numbers to mount a case to actually run the subject and two, the outcomes and results at the end of the semester warrant further work to increase and develop a different looking high school environment to that of the one we currently have.

I was interested to read this article on students spending less time at school.

"Mr Mader said senior students' curriculum was now about personalised learning and schools had to create ways to cater for that."

Interesting quote and one that made me want to shout just a little. Yes the senior student curriculum is personalised however you often have the case of Years 8-10 being very UNpersonalised (coincidently these years we know are all about the teenager WANTING personalisation and ownership) and then you throw the now soul destroyed student into Years 11 and 12 and go 'right, you've got hours of free time so go study'.

I remember being that same student in Years 11/12 and having absolutely no idea HOW to properly study. Sure there were courses that the school ran on how best to memorise facts and figures but at the end of the day memorisation wasn't learning and cramming facts and figures wasn't going to help me understand how to properly apply that obscure algebraic equation.

Now onto the highlight of this blog. The following video is edited from the full keynote which you can find here. My next blog will probably expand on what Medina has to say so watch away and we'll talk soon!

Cheers,

Emil