African Education Week 2013

THOUGHTS ON AFRICAN EDUCATION WEEK DAY ONE- FIRST SESSION.

This was my first time at African Education Week. This conference is southern Africa's biggest annual education showcase, featuring keynote speakers, workshops, panel debates, and trade exhibitors.  I arrived in Johannesburg of an early morning flight from Cape Town, taking the brand new 'Gautrain' shuttle (built for the Football world cup in 2010) to the Sandton Convention Centre and making it just in time to hear the first speaker, Dr Mamphela Ramphele open the conference. 

Now, Dr Ramphele is a long time critic of the current ANC-led South African Government and she wasted no time setting about them. Her assertion that "textbooks are the money laundering tool for the politically connected- that's why schools don't have textbooks"  caused a ripple of applause around the conference hall.  As did her assertion that the Education portfolio in government always seems to be encumbered with the weakest of the political elite in Africa.

She then criticised the current state of South African Education, particularly it's lack of technology, poor standard of teaching and professional development, and reliance on printed textbooks, promising a whole raft of improvements in the manifesto of her political party, Agang, at the elections in 2014. You can read her speech here

 Dr Ramphele is a controversial figure in South African Politics and she certainly lived up to her reputation in her speech. I'd put in a note of caution to Dr Ramphele here- education is a big conversation. You can't just announce policy, you must first join the conversation.  Particularly with regard to testing and assessment. It's not enough just to talk in raw scores and the raising of so-called pass mark levels..

I have to admit the next speaker left me a bit cold. Businessman and 'motivator' Kelly Ritchie appeared to spend his twenty five minutes shouting and taking his clothes off, even managing to forget his mic clip in the process. I'm still not sure what his message to the conference was really all about. I think others around me shared that view, judging from their bemused expressions.

 Luckily, Louise Van Rhyn rescued the morning with a thoughtful presentation echoing her Cape Town TED talk earlier this year. The message of school improvement by the community and business is similar to the ABCD approach developed by Cormac Russell . I'm not sure I agree with her thoughts on the quality of educational leadership though...I believe there is tremendous capacity to lead in our education system with talented people keen to step up and realise their potential. I know from my own management experience in industry that the skills required to lead in business are not always the same as in education and style can definitely be very different. Whilst business leaders can bring much to the table, what is really needed in order for South African Education to better realise leadership potential is good quality targeted professional development in education leadership and management.

Gavin Keller was brilliant, for me, the star of the morning. A real example of South African Educational leadership talent in action. Inspiring and culturally relevant, he held the conference hall in the palm of his hand- one educator to a hall full of others. A great presentation on responsibility and leadership with a nod to neurobiology. Change is too slow because teachers don't feel 'worthy' . Confidence is a key factor in effective leadership. I agree. I'm pretty sure he's a fan of Andy Hargreaves too... The take home message for me is that we need to nurture the emotional capacity of our educators in schools if we want to encourage change and success.

Johannes Cronje spoke next about leading change in a digital age. In a fantastically engaging presentation with much of it off the cuff, he took the audience on a journey of how he's kept up with the changing digital landscape. Making the point that with SMS and WhatsApp, as well as twitter and Facebook, our students probably read more than they ever did before.  His talk covered some of his experiences with his own students and you can see his presentation here.

Interestingly, both Johannes and Gavin took pot- shots at the humble pencil. I'm not sure I agree with this, indeed I think the demise of the pencil has been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase the famous quote. I do agree with the thrust of both these speakers and Dr Ramphele in reinforcing the tablet agenda. Anything which gets rid of the annual text-book beano has to be welcomed, however, I'd strike a note of caution here as the eBook publishing vultures hover poised to push their wares onto unsuspecting schools flush with their shiny new tablets. Think before you buy- the age of Open Education Resources is well and truly upon us, and materials for learning and teaching are available....for free. 

                                                 (The lights are on but there's nobody home )

A pretty good first session. Some interesting thoughts on leadership and school improvement, however, whilst Louise's project moves one school at a time onto the agenda as one way forward, as ever, the practical application of the words and presentations needs sound and thoughtful political leadership as well. It would have been good to hear from the Government  minister responsible for South African Education,  however, the lack of any representation from this quarter was particularly notable this morning.

One big gripe though...there was no free wifi available to delegates. Quite frankly, in this day and age for an international conference  not to have a free wifi facility is nothing short of appalling!. Perhaps there would have been higher level of outward engagement through social media if this had been the case, because out of over a hundred delegates in the hall, less than ten percent were using their own 3G for live tweeting. 

 If African Education Week wants to take it's place amongst the leading education conferences of the world, this glaring omission really must be rectified for next year's event.

Building disruptive capacity - the challenge for tablet use

The increasing use of tablet devices in our schools brings with it many advantages. Better access, up to date applications, and student engagement to name but a few. Overseas, the Scottish Government national procurement framework and other bulk purchase schemes will undoubtedly expedite the provision of these devices to their classrooms, but I’d sound just a tiny note of caution, because with any education technology, it’s really about how the tech is used, and what, if any, transformative impact it will have on learning.

I guess the real success of tablet device use will be measured in the way it increases creativity, rather than consumption. And this will depend on weather the tablets are treated as just the ‘evolution’ of technology use; the latest version of Internet access, or on how much they are treated as a truly disruptive technology

Evolutionary technology usually tends to reiterate the status quo. Disruptive technology, on the other hand, tends to move the agenda on towards doing things differently or doing new things all together. During numerous school visits last year, I saw a mix of both. And this is bound to happen in any education ecosystem, where some folks will be more confident or ahead of the curve with technology use than others.

The key, in my view, is to build ‘disruptive capacity’ so that new technology adoption quickly moves away from the evolution state into the disruptive landscape. To do this, those of us who would consider ourselves as innovators need to move out of the echo chamber and make much more effort to communicate with those a bit further behind on the curve. ThePedagoo movement in Scotland and the UK is doing a fantastic job in this respect, and other on line communities are trying to do the same in other parts of the world.

This activity will help educators and schools to use tablets, and indeed, any new technology, as disruptive rather than evolutionary. For creativity rather than consumption. Like the kids I saw in an Edinburgh primary school who were collaborating on writing and publishing their own iBooks using their class iPads for example. This sort of creativity moves the use of technology on leaps and bounds to a situation where you couldn't do the new things without the new tools, creating capacity not only in creativity, but in skills too- real disruptive capacity building in action.

(Image from ScoopIt.it )

A back to basics idea for Teachmeet...

This is a post I wrote for EdchatSA site. Check it  out when you can - there are loads of great things over there...I've cross posted it here to kick things off. 

The teachmeet concept, which started in a pub in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2005 has spread pretty much around the world in only a few short years. The first teachmeet (I wasn't at that one…but I was at the second and subsequent ones) consisted of four or five colleagues sharing ideas, and quickly developed into the format we know today from the ‘official’ wiki.

• 7-minute presentations on classroom experience or tools used
• 3-minute nano-presentations on brief ideas or useful websites/tools
• Round table discussions on agreed subjects recorded and published in some way
• No sales pitches (apart from a nod to the sponsors and maybe a very short spot)
• Absolutely NO PowerPoint presentations.
• Amusing and witty MC not afraid to stop folks who've reached their time limit.

Now the venue was always less important than the ‘unconference’ ethos. Teachmeet was an antidote in many ways, to the sterile and un-engaging CPD delivered to teachers rather than involving them. Teach-meets usually (and preferably) take place away from schools, colleges or other formal institutions. This was a deliberate attempt to separate from establishment or organised CPD ).

And, it worked. Sponsors quickly saw the value of associating with the concept and therefore a venue was usually found, equipment sourced from participants, and drinks and nibbles purchased. The events were usually followed by an even less formal Teach-eat in a local restaurant or pub where the discussions continued far into the night…The concept quickly spread out across the UK from its birthplace in Scotland, and then was exported worldwide. It probably reached its zenith at the now-legendary Islay unconference in 2009. You can read about this event, Education 2020 here and here.

However, recently, there’s been a shift away from some of these guiding principles. Some teach-meets are now scheduled as in-school activities at the end of the school day, and in school itself. The original idea of 7 minute presentations has been axed in favour of shorter 3 minute shots. I think this in itself is a bad move as the 7 minute slot allowed you to cover a something in a little detail. 3 minutes leads to some shallowness at times. There needs to be a balance of sound bites and deeper experience re-telling.

The shift to using teach-meet as a formalised CPD offering held in a school in my view defeats the original ethos of independence and disestablishmentarianism.(!).

Whilst it’s great to see the format changed and adapted, I'm uncomfortable with this shift towards incorporation into something which is delivered to teachers, instead of being crowdsourced *from* them. Even if it’s only five folks in a pub using a laptop to share ideas, it is in my view, better than a shift to adoption by a hierarchy, and subsumation into that hierarchy.

Could we get back to the original idea, and replicate it in SA? I live in Cape Town, and would love to attend a teachmeet like this somewhere in the area. Is there the appetite from Mother City teachers and educators (and the surrounding environs, of course) for a back to basics teachmeet?

(Image from http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/)