Tau16

Stepping outside the bubble these holidays has been one of interest and learning. I was luckily enough to make time to attend an unconference held at Albany senior high school. This has been one of the first opportunities I have had to go in and visit the school since one of the first gafe summits that were held in New Zealand.

I must say that I went in initially looking at the use of space, but I realized soon on that this is not what I should be looking at. 

It is about the learning,

Day one looked at big picture ideas, sharing experiences from our schools, I wanted to find out about the journey thy Albany senior has gone through, they were  interested in the journey that Hobsonville point is going through. 

One thing hit me has I spent the two days there, what was the learning design model? 

Another thing that hit me was the amount of push on assessment. Talking to the teachers and looking at the data, it was a surprise to see that there seemed to be the "get as many credits as possible approach", I may have missed something, but the data was showing a level one course that looked around 120-150 credits.

Talking about the impact projects as well as learning advisory were two things that I was most interested in. As these are big changes for me in what I am engaged with at Hobsonville Point. I realize that I need to be providing better support in the impact projects, getting students to show evidence of planning and attachment to their work. Some of the ideas that I have come away with may allow for this.

Learning advisory is similar to our learning hub, sustaining the fire http://www.ashs.school.nz/assets/Uploads/PDFs/Tutorials-to-sustain-the-Fire.pdf provides some of the big picture thinking around this. This is something that we are still developing through our hub curriculum with the focus on dispositions.

Getting to talk about the experiences has been rich learning, as you realize and understand that you have a good grasp on the learning thy has gone into this within the school.

As always, people were keen to learn about the way Hobsonville is looking at its qualification pathway. 

It was a great unconference and and changed as it progressed. I found the small chat sessions informative and challenging. This is something that I sometimes wonder if it would happen under a larger group situation? Would all the voices be heard. I know when I sat in the first session I was very quiet and it wasn't until I was asked what my opinion was about smashing SILO's and what Hobsonville Point was doing was it that I found my voice.