Tuesday 7 July 2015

Keynote Speech - Valerie Hannon

Valerie addressed the question, "What are organised learning systems for?" Learners these days - she pointed out - are not like we were as learners, so how do we teach them most effectively?




To start, she gave us the research on our learners....

Who are the millennials?

  • Greater sense of entitlement and narcissism 
  • Obesity on the rise
  • Always connected socially (hyper-connected? connected yet lonely?)
  • Media savvy
  • Entrepreneurial 
  • Facing greater inequality
  • Living in greater diversity (immigration, multiculturalism)
  • Exposure to online pornography

Next, she shared challenging findings on what the future holds for them...

"The scale of the disruptions that will happen in our lifetimes will result in human beings needing to reset their intuitions, retake what we believe is common sense. We are hard wired to believe the future will be like the immediate past." - No Ordinary Disruption (Dobbs, Manyika, Woetzel)

"We have only just begun the process of discovering and inventing new organizational forms that will inhabit the 21st century. We need the courage to let go of the old world, to relinquish most of what we have cherished, to abandon our interpretations of what does and doesn't work." - Margaret Wheaton

Six key drivers of change: 
The Future (Gore)
  1. A more globalized economy (must return back to culture and identity)
  2. Planet-wide electronic communications and developments in robotics
  3. A new political economy in which influence and initative is shifting from west to east
  4. Unsustainable population growth and resource depletion (move from 7-9 billion)
  5. Advances in biological, biochemical and material sciences that enable human beings to reshape the fabric of life (changes the direction of our own evolution - what kind of humans can live in that society and make wise choices?)
  6. Radically unstable relationship between human civilisation and the earth's ecological system (if every country in the world lived up to their promise to reduce carbon emissions, we would still not be able to reduce the earth's temperature)

*Educators can't look the other way, and thus, neither can the systems. We must address these issues. We must ask, "What is learning for?" Consider where we are headed. Watch this.*


Finally she suggested Four Levels of Learning Challenges that need to be addressed in education for a successful future. Children must learn how to:

1. Global
  • live within the earth's renewable resources - infinite growth is an impossibility
  • live alongside other cultures respectfully

2. National/Local
  • reinvent democracies that are participative and authentic
  • acquire creative, collaborative, entrepreneurial and metacognitive skills to 'learn a living' (earning and learning will become symbiotic - must become independent and develop soft skills: leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability, loving to learn and re-learn)
  • adapt to, and shape, automated working environments with co-workers who are robots (see "Robots will steal your job but that's ok" by Pistono, "The Second Machine Age" by Brynjolfsson & McAfee or Google, 'Nao' in Japan)

3. Interpersonal (with others)
  • acquire empathy, insight and respect in diverse and digitized societies
  • develop sexual identities that do no harm, but enhance and humanise
  • care for and nurture others beyond the family
  • lead, collaborate and follow

4. Intrapersonal (you alone)
  • cope with increasing levels of technological enhancement (how will we cope?)
  • take responsibility for personal health and fitness over a long life (self-induced disease through ignorance)
  • apprehend and create beauty
  • acquire self-knowledge (counter cultural idea - being hyper connected almost removes the capacity to be alone, silent and OK with that)

Does this connect with the emerging trends? Will they take us where we need to go? Perhaps a few more ideas need to be added:
  1. Personalised Learning: develop intention and interiority
  2. Connected Learning: think global, and act local. 
  3. Integrated Learning: develop empathy, compassion and wisdom.

"When an old culture is dying the new culture is born from a few people who are not afraid to be insecure." -  Rudolf Bahro

What is your next step? Are you facing the future?



Future Focus Session

What an amazing time of brainstorming, sharing and challenging discussion! There are so many fabulous things already going on in New Zealand schools, and the ambitions we have for the future of teaching will certainly make us world class. Keep thinking, keep talking and keep growing. It's the way forward for both yours, and your students' success.





To view all the posters, click here.


Emergent Trends in Global Education

Valerie Hannon shares with us about current trends in education. Do you need to learn to let go? Are your students REAL (Rigorous, Engaged, Authentic, Learning)?


  1. Learning is personalised.
    • Learners' passions and engagement (important starting point)
    • Co-creation and agency (develop relationships)
    • Mastery and depth (enables people to experience powerful results)
  2. Learners are connected.
    • Real-world issues and problems (looking at the 'here and now' within the community)
    • Tech-enabled PLNs; mobile (creating possibilities to learn through social networking, via technology, liberating you beyond the bounds of geography, but still making extraordinary connections)
    • Internships; community action (gaining a meaningful, deep understanding of work environments)
  3. Learning is integrated.
    • Multi-disciplinary PBL; inquiry (rigorous learning)
    • Flipped, blended, online/practical, ramified (bring in a range of pieces, and integrate into environments that are shifting)
    • Heart/head/hand ("We've been living in our heads and losing the sense of importance to make things with our hands... Another under explored principle amongst the OECD is the emotional side of learning.")

"If you're in the innovation space, then you need to go beyond the research findings. It will shift you from being a consumer into a creator - exactly what we want from our students."

  • Daniel Pink's video can be found here
  • Visit High Tech High to learn more about Project Based Learning.
  • Find out about Valerie's book, Learning a Living, by clicking here.

Akoranga O Naenae

Thanks Kelly, Clare and Natasha for sharing with us! Are you ready to go into the unknown? If you'd like to revisit their notes, the presentation is posted to the right. To see their blog, click here.






Monday 6 July 2015

Science is fun!

What can you do with a nappy? Use it to absorb water in your potting mix of course! Click here for the visual 'how to'!

Stick a stick in a balloon without popping it!

Super hydrophobic sand - Great water repellant!

Magnetic field spikes in a cup!


Waiting for Nano Girl


Show me, don't tell me!

What a brilliant session we had with Roz and Katherine! Thanks for sharing an exciting way for approaching any and all topics!