Premier's Xstrata Coal

Rural and Remote Education scholarship 2013Tim Gorrod

Who am I?

• a teachero Ardlethan Central Schoolo Katoomba High Schoolo Forster High Schoolo Great Lakes Collegeo Bulahdelah Central School

• a Learning Designero Centre for Learning Innovation

• a Stage 6 advisero Curriculum and Learning Innovation Centre

• a Learning Designer• Learning Systems

• and latterly, an evaluatoro Business Systems

Why rural and remote education?

Issues that need to be addressed include the need for:• equality of opportunity for all Australian children• rural teachers to be able to exercise their skills and talents• Australians to become engineers, scientists, programmers.

What did I hope to achieve?

• Investigate the way in which ICT can be used to advantage those living in rural and remote communities.

• Provide a report thato synthesises ideas on successful practice and researcho provides advice to school leaders and teachers who want to increase

engagement and participation• Disseminate findings in a toolkit that includes

o research findingso ideaso practical advice including exampleso contacts and links.

• Publish online, in personal presentations, Scan, Side by Side, other professional publications.

The tourLondon I

• British Educational Training and Technology conference (BETT)

Professor Sugata Mitra(Google Sugata Mitra Ted)

Presenters included Bill Liao, Ian Livingstone, Brian Cox, Dylan Jordan.

Other presenters:Bill Liao, Ian Livingstone, Brian Cox, Dylan Jordan

Big ideas:Essential skills for modern learners – everyone has an opinionCommon themes include the ability to think for yourself – entrepreneurship

The tourLondon II

• BETT gadgets

Happy snap

The eye

• Glow is the world’s first national online community for education. It is SharePoint-based and contains a quite complete set of tools. There has been a considerable settling in period. Like the realignment, people may get used to it just after it’s replaced.

The tourGlow

• Students from some of the most isolated parts of the UK use Glow to access the big picture while retaining their desired lifestyle. Bernera provides an example of students who are fully engaged with the world. One of the classes is conducted in Gaelic.

• Project-based learning is a common factor.

The tourBernera

Happy snap

The loch at ClunieBeach on Lewis

These schools have a remarkable record in communities of all kinds, including rural and remote in:• engagement• retention• graduation and post-school success.

Big Picture characteristics include:• 9-12 cohort• accept anyone who wants to enrol• one adviser per group of students (15-20) for four years• students regularly present and defend their work in public

– the exhibition• Relationships, Relevance, Rigour is a mantra• internship for all students, generally one day per week• regular pick-me-up (or kick-me out) activities• very high graduation and college acceptance rates• strong support from the superintendent

BP schools exist in Australia

The tourBig Picture schools, USA

The tourLafayette Big Picture school

The tourNewark Ironbound Big Picture school

Happy snap

Out the train window

The tourThe Met Big Picture school

The original BP school

Yong Zhao is Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon.

The conversation covered:• How can we come to trust students as members of a

community rather than merely as consumers of information, especially remotely? A platform is available and evolving. It has these components:

• a space for storage and development – which could be an e-portfolio

• a space for connecting and social networking• a Moodle-based learning management system.

• Do the short term efficiencies of a rigid system of testing come at the expense of curiosity? Research says that there is a cost.

• PISA scores are negatively correlated with interest.• entrepreneurship refers to a person's ability to turn

ideas into action.

The tourProfessor Yong Zhao, University of Oregon, USA

Happy snap

Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum

The American Association for School Administrators is largely made up of district superintendents, and some school principals.

Presenters:• Deb Delisle, Assistant Secretary of State for Education.• Mark Edwards, who turned around a large school district

with a ‘digital conversion’.• Sue Szachowitz, the principal of Brockton High in

Massachusetts. This school has turned itself from a self-described cesspool into one of the most successful schools in the US – on tests – by concentrating on a very specific literacy program.

• Linda Darling Hammond, a leading researcher.• Yong Zhao.• Gretchen Shipley, an education lawyer who presented

on digital citizenship.

One of the big issues for American education is the introduction of the ‘Common core’ across 45 of the states. Discussion: What do we want from our education system? How does measurement impact on learning?

The tourAASA conference

It was fascinating to see powerful players in education robustly discussing these issues.

Happy snaps

Los Angeles

In New South Wales, excellent work is already being done in this area.

I toured schools, interviewed teachers, leaders and the school community in:o the xsel virtual selective school, based

in Dubbo, but distributed across 35 sites

o E2, a shared classroom environment for low candidature senior subjects that operates at five Western region schools - Blayney High School, Molong Central School, Canobolas Rural Technology High School, Orange High School and Anson Street School (SSP)

The tourWestern NSW

Success factors

In my opinion, success factors include:• high quality leadership, planning and support • staff chosen on their willingness to try new things

and enthusiasm for the project • the platform – xsel uses Adobe Connect,

which contains the tools you need • the hardware – most students use the same

computers issued under the NSW Digital Education Revolution program

• connectivity – at school, students have access to wired and wireless broadband.

Success factors

Common factors

• Self learning is best• Wanting to learn is best• Personalised learning is best• Relationships rule – “The relationship of the teacher and the student in the

presence of content must be at the center of efforts to improve performance (Elmore)”

• Teachers need to pose, big, interesting questions• This can work in the cloud

Challenging ideas

• Education is designed to produce a global computer, made of humans (Mitra)

• High school students should have one lead teacher, who is part of a team that provides subject expertise when needed (Big Picture, Sizer)

• Knowing is obsolete (Mitra)• The Common Core Standards Initiative in the U.S.

are not only futile but also harmful to preparing our children for the future (Zhao)

• The classroom can really flip – Khan Academy and Veritasium are just the start

2:33

Thought provokers

(3:00)

References

• Theodore Sizer: Horace’s Compromise• Mark Edwards: Every Child, Every Day Future scholarship holders – visit this school!

• Yong Zhao: World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

• Richard Elmore: Usable knowledge• Derek Muller: Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education