JABET

I recently had the good fortune to visit the Discovery 1 school in my home town, Christchurch, New Zealand. It is an experimental primary level school, which leads into an experimental secondary school called Unlimited. It really was an inspirational tour, as they have changed so many of the tried and true tennants of public education, but always for the better.

From 5 years old, the children learn about what they are interested in so the focus is on them being taught to discover their own knowledge. In addittion, they are also taught the associated skills that support this: choosing educatonal goals, planning how to acheive these goals (so essentially creating their own lesson plans), managing their time,  recognising ‘blind spots’ in their knowledge and resolving them, and at the end of the topic, creating an output that will fairly represent the knowledge they have gained (their equivalent of assessment). The essentials are still taught in more structured sessions, but the majority of time is self directed. The result is that they may now know as many facts, but that they can readily get up to speed on any given topic with no external assistance. I think this is such a valuable technique in the modern world, when your facts can be out of date in six months. Another huge benefit is that students stay modivated, because they are constantly doing what they enjoy, to the extent that while a lunch break is available, most students just stop long enough to eat their food, then get with back to ‘work’, which is probably more like focused ‘play’ to them.

Many things have been changed in interesting ways, often directly opposite to traditional techniques. The school is in the central city, on the third floor, above the central bus station – fitness is done in the town square and they have converted a balcony into a playground. Parents are not only allowed, but encouraged to come to school with the children for extended periods, and help them – they receive training in how to help, and many eventually start helping other students too. There are no distinct classrooms – it is like an open plan school, with different clusters of children. No students have their own desks – they all work on share larger desks, computer tables, beanbags or the floor – wherever they feel comfortable.

The teachers certinly have some interesting stories to tell – they have had over 4000 visitors tour through the school in the last 5 years it has been open, but sadly, they say they have had more visitors from Taiwan than they have from New Zealand’s ministry of education. Having said that the MOE does fund the school like any other (they get no special privilidges) and is interested in leaning from the initiative.
You can find a little more information at www.discovery1.school.nz.

In my typical ‘blocking‘ style, I have been going through a few of the 21st Century Learning podcasts, and was I should comment again – this time on Episode 10: SLA, Education Bridges, Info Literacy.
I thought it was interesting that almost three times in this episode, the guys mentioned doing things that they had specifically told their students should not be done.

The first was travelling on a train to meet a guy he had ‘met’ on the internet. The second was peer pressure – “me pressuring you into doing this podcast”. In the third case, the presenter almost mentioned where he lives, but caught himself and instead mentioned the general area.

I’m not shocked and outraged or anything, I just think it is a funny/interesting situation. The guys were aware of it, and if anything, it stressed how easy it can be to do these things. One of them mentioned “adult social pressure is better than teenage social pressure though”, which I can understand – (some) adults understand the deeper implications and risks of what they are doing and manager those.

However, it does pose a problem for teaching younger people these things, especially if you prefer to ‘lead by example’. On the other hand, maybe it just shows that we can’t be simply teaching children by rote (to always do x and never do y), otherwise they may never find their lifelong partner on the internet (probbaly not the most solid example I’ve ever given, but never mind). I guess this leads into “don’t teach a child facts, teach them how to learn”, which was a very clear message from a tour I recently had, and will cover in the next blog entry (Discovery 1).

I suspect episode 8 of 21st Century Learning (”Getting Things Done“) would be a very valuable listen to what would seem to be a large, and growing segment of the population – people with too much to do and too little time.

I won’t get into the details, but I thought that I would point it out – doing my part to help the ‘cream bubble to the top’ as I heard Stephen Downes say. It has an educational bend as it is a podcast for teachers, and I’m sure there is no shortage of teachers that are keen to get help with making the most of precious time.