Attention 2 Detail

After a week of the usual (mostly verbal diahorrea) you look back and think about what really matters. On thursday arvo we had a visitor who was asking about 4min walkthroughs and she asked how do I know they have made a difference. @mumbleboy started with some sort of intelligent answer when i had a penny dropper. So for the very first time in my life I interrupted mumble and splurted out an answer, my show stopper, my thought for the week. The funny thing was that this one liner was ringing loud in my head and it came from the mayor of wheneuapai Tank Herring. One thing about Tank is that he calls a spade a shovel. Tank is a bloody great rugby coach and last year I had the pleasure of working with the old shagger for the whole season, his line was: "attention to detail". It doesn't sound like a show stopper but in rugby coaching with rep teams, or top line players the little things are everything. Attention to detail with highly skilled players makes a massive difference.

You see when the i thought about my teachers who have had the most walkthroughs, they all say that they have improved their own practice, and they have looked at themselves and made small changes.

Small changes for top line rugby players are made through attention to detail.

Top line teachers and leaders are always looking at and paying attention to detail. If you believe in attention to detail, then you will make a difference for yourself, your staff, your class, your parents, your school, your community.

tTake care of the little things and the big problems wont surface. Small changes and small steps lead to improvement, its all in the detail.

Im guilty of brushing over stuff, switching off a bit, and I need a bit of reminding, maybe its a bloke thing, a podgorani thing, or a bullshit filter thing, but whatever the reason, i must do better.

where 2 from here

Ok I have a dilemma a bit like Graham Henry. I want to make changes but i'm not sure what changes, i dont even have the goal posts to aim at because i haven't discovered them yet. It's kind of exciting but on the other hand a little difficult to plan for when you are not sure where you are headed. ERO have packed up their bat and ball and handed the school a clean sheet and said we trust you and your direction, go for it. We don't wait for ERO to give those cards out but sometimes you can think things are great and actually there can be a smug mediocrity and until ERO actually give you the thumbs up, you naturally want to hold off on a random path on the unknown. I'm feeling we are at a point in the cycle where we are ready to ride straight off the cliff. I don't want to do more of the same and don't want to just sharpen the pencil. The post about learning communities has been really awesome for thinking through new ideas. It has allowed me to think of some of the possibilities for our school. I know when this can of worms is opened to staff there will be a set of goal posts on the horizon. I reckon having eyes, ears and opinions from the classrooms will help leadership see things from every perspective, something i think we all have to be careful of as leaders. I am determined to ensure that on this journey of discovery that the staff are going to play a big part in the ideas and ownership.

I see Team Solutions has a visioning facilitator, what a wank fest, or is it? maybe we should give her a bell just to prove that we can do it in spite of some b.s systematic method. Most of the time the GGF (global gut feeling) has seen the right decisions made, but maybe this time a heavily planned visioning process is worth a try and or a laugh.

Should i head off to the library for vision books & dial 0800 vision ? or go with @mumbleboy the ninja and the whole team of mad hatters, @pinksickle included ?

By the way Ted needs some advice. Here is my backline for the next few games mills15 sivi11 ma'a14 conrad13 luke12 dan10 quentin9. Feel free to put your backline down, p.s kahui for conrad as soon as he is available.

Telethon Lemon

While on Pons Rd on Sunday looking for a decent flat white I saw 4 tweenage girls singing three little birds outside a shop. They were raising money for telethon. They were full of life, laughing at the odd wrong word being sung, clicking fingers, singing their hearts out. Miss Podgorani was immediately attracted to the tweenage antics and immediately dug into a pink zipped purse to give her hard earned to the Supremes. The Supremes even had the official lanyards, to say they were fundraising for telethon. I'm picking they had been practicing all week, had talked it through at school and were really looking forward to ticking all the boxes of helping NZers in need. This is heart warming stuff.

I have a friend who is a Principal who has received the All Blacks raincoats, when I saw them in his office I couldn't help but think how much these are a bloody waste of money. It pisses me off that these bullshit charities actually get people like the All Blacks on board. The All Blacks could really make a difference for some of the very very needy charities, but they are sucked into their corporate crap.

They have milked 2 million dollars for RAINCOATS probably stitched together by chinas child labour force.

How would these Ponsonby Intermediate girls be feeling when they grow up to discover this sham. Perhaps as teachers we have a part to play. But why should we be those Kiwi knockers. Why should we rubbish the charity NZers have shown.

Michael Laws has started the attack and TVNZ will be all over this like a rash and we will have a week of telethon bashing, a bit like the Dean Lonergans fight for life stuff.

You have to read Michael Laws article, see link above.

Maybe the Supremes from Ponsonby Intermediate could take their songs to the street and hand the cash over at the food bank. Its not so glamourous, and the CEO of Kids Can might not get their big six figure salary, but at least the money would go directly to those who need it.

Building a Learning Community

Its now time for you observers of the Podgorani to stop passing by without contributing, I'm calling you all to attention. I need a discussion or contribution on this post.

We have an opportunity at school to go beyond the assessment and routine of school and really do something special. I want to talk about building a learning community, what ideas do you have that gets them in the door, that builds communication, that builds families together with the school, that opens the door all the way from high maintenance mums to the working dad, the Maori and polynesian community, the masses of ethnicities, send in your ideas. I have listed a few below that seem insignificant but done properly they can be powerful.

Road Crossing Duty - great dialogue to be had here.

Values Postcards - sending something in the mail is awesome and so simple.

Twitter - get some followers and keep it current.

Interactive School Website - parents and your community must feel welcome and make it easy.

Parent Information Days/evenings - literacy numeracy and just plain old fun.

Big school events: cross country/athletics/art shows etc - make them the best they have ever been, food, and fun.

Morning Coffee Days - one principal has a local coffee shop and publishes the times she will be there (once a week) which gives parents the opportunity to join them informally.

Home Visits - you have to knock on doors to get to know people, invite them to events personally.

Assemblies - these are not freemasons meetings, invite your community.

Magic Key - I heard of a principal who sent keys out to the community and had a prize for the person with the key that opened some box, he had heaps attend.

Race Night/Quiz Night - which double as fundraising and social activities.

Term Booklets - send home a booklet of achievement each term.

Meet the Teacher - before the year started.

Principals Forum - Informal discussions (2 per term) with any parents not specifically about your own kid, but ideas, discussion and questions about education.

Homework - Neil has the whole family medal thing working with his hwk challenges.

I know that writing an idea in one sentence can seem naff and can sound shallow and in a lot of ways a blog doesn't even start to scratch the way we open our door to learning and engagement but so what. Keep it short and flick them in the pot and we will assume any idea you have is actually done really well. This is your opportunity to sound good without having to back it up.

Test for Creativity

Had a great conversation with the mac center of Warkworth about testing. He really got me thinking about a National test for every kid. What you say ! Podgorani wants a national test - YES I DO. @macninz suggests we should national test every kid in the arts, dance, drama, music, and sports. Reality says a test wont work but it begs the question how schools would go if there was.

I would love to see the decile ranking spun on its arse, the 10s would find out very quickly what its like to be at the bottom. The declie 1's would be on fire with their depth of talent. On a more humorous note the south island (cant dance, white gene, wakefield company, andrew merhtons lookalikes) would be struggling. This would be brilliant.

Sure take this posting with a grain of salt, but consider Ken Robinson, are you part of killing creativity in your school? So have a reality check - look at the arts and ask yourself if you are putting the equal amount of effort into them as you are reading writing and maths.

For all you southeners who are feeling sad Merts says it all.

You want cheese with that ?

So the holiday has well and truly disappeared and Im back to face ERO on the first monday back. Seems a quick way to come down to earth from the high life in the US. The truth really is that although the weather is crap and the All Blacks are persisting with Steven Donald, we really are a lucky country.

According to an OECD study it says we are only the third most obese country behind mexico and america. Given my recently trip to california I would say we are way way behind in third place. given the huge diversity of people in NZ it doesnt surprise me that we are higher in ranking than other OECD countries who have the mono ethnic mix.

Still america is heading for fat explosions, they have cheese with everything, and its that yellow crap. At a baseball game mini-podgorani wanted chips, for an extra 99c you can get cheese melted on your fries - why would ya? seems everyone esle round us was saying :" why wouldnt ya !"

Back to ERO, kind of not sure what to think these days, the days of sweating and worrying arent really there for me any more, I am kind of looking forward to getting them in, hoping they see all those little things that really matter. You cant really show HOW you do things, or HOW you have done things, in such a short timeframe. Yet we all know that how is way more important than what. I know the ERO office have matured since the days of rubbish bins not being clean, and sick bay registers recording every plaster issued.

I think there are two sets of eyes that ERO needs, fresh ones and ones that see where a school has been, its our job to show them where we have been and usually it didnt happen overnight.

Gladwell made a very interesting speech to NECC about success and creativity. basically everyone who has ever achieved has put in thousands of hours of hard work. bands like the beatles played for 2 years every night is a nude bar in germany before cracking anything (excuse the pun). fleetwood mac released 14 albums before making a hit. Think about those at the very top - Tiger Woods, hard work and dedication. Lance armstrong, might have clocked up a few miles in those legs, Steven Price those looks dont make the tackles.

Schools dont get to where they are without the depth of hard work, failure, success and more hard work. What you see is the result of hard work by everyone.

Then of course when all else fails look for luck, I know most times I have fallen in a dunnie there is usually a gold watch so long may it continue.

NECC ISTE conference 09

Now six days into my US tour.
No news here about education. It is ridiculously clear that we are light years ahead of the american system. wedontknowhowluckyweare. I wont even try to explain the US elementary school system, why go there. What we need to do is treasure what we have cause its world class stuff. Yip, we currently have Nat Standards on the table and some see the erosion of what we have as catastrophic. What I’d now call it is a pimple that will soon pass, if you address it properly.
Where we are light years behind is broadband, we are on a par with the crappiest third world countries. Telecom and Vodaphone are just rubbish, ADSL3 which is coming soon to a school near you, (in the next 9 months for us) is old defunct backward technology here in the states. Go figure- we are keenly waiting for a product that is already phased out of every school over here. Yes it will be quick by our standards but pathetic by world standards. Many people don’t really know the benefits of fast broadband but there are tonnes.
We are also about 5 years behind in cell phone usage, sure I was at a technology conference but it’s an iphone (watch this) or blackberry or get out of the way. Nokia has a market in NZ, people think they are cool, but NZers in general are cell phone users, Americans are mobile web users. Every dude I see with a phone was using the web, forget the games. Telecoms 3g network might be ok for maybe a year, but will need upgrading, but because the habits of NZ cell phone users is low tech then they will get away with it for 5 years. Vodaphone... miles behind with data.
Twitter has been a great tool, at times I feel a little stink tweeting with a hash # tag to a conference thread when you have a bunch of followers who maybe aren’t following the conference you are at. This is part of the limitations I suppose of twitter or perhaps I am a poor user who doesn’t know a way round that. It has been interesting to see that the general tweeter at the conference took a commentary type attitude and tweeted what people were saying rather than giving opinion. When I tweeted opinion I was replied too “it’s not about opinion”. Interesting cause as I know at uLearn last year the keynote got rubbished by opinion on twitter. Maybe there is etiquette, or the yanks are too polite, or wont criticise publically (fear of being sued) or NZers are naive, not getting the whole public forum thing. Its a whole new discussion, but interesting.
Gadgets: got a livescribe, it won’t do OCR recognition yet, but the beta for mac is ready to be released in the next two weeks. I will post a link to some notes later this week.
Got a kodak Zi6, the picture quality is staggering, awesome, and it has an SD, takes stills, and can record in HD30fps, HD60fps, XGA for quick youtube. At the price point it has flip licked and it uses AA batteries (my preferred option).
Document cameras are quite big in the trade stands, and i see plenty of use as a classroom tool, the peddlers are loving this! However, buy a digital camera, run it from the ac charging plug, leave it on auto focus, use RCA to usb and tape it to some sort of lamp shade and you have one for $200, worth a crack! here are some from the net - seems easy.
Touch boards! ha! man is this big business, the dudes at the stands give away so much stuff and the sweet smelling, tidy looking chickies, and those tight shirted blokes with the stubble are just the shit. They have it down pat with their slick presentations and giveaways, you can see the huge margins these dudes are on. lets face it they are a fat waste of money, they are not smart or interactive, "the kids love them and they are engaged", but the work you are doing is not powerful, just powerful looking. I’m still amazed at what the boards look like with all the movement, but its movement is not pedagogy. Engagement is not learning, my kids engage with the simpsons and futurama every night!

Hyperstudio has been out now in NZ for 6 months and I am restricted by the price. But it is by far the best piece of software out there for mac schools, if you read this and brush over the comment and do nothing about it, then shame on you. Its more powerful than imovie, kid pix, and possibly keynote- big call I know but there you go! Roger Wagner is a very talented man. I did have a crack at the head of pricing and sales and he promises me a school site lisense, we wait- but don't wait for long.

Malcolm Gladwell was an excellent keynote speaker, so was Erin Gruwell who has a movie made about her. The ideas are running wild at present.

Holiday time now, back to normal now the conference issues are done.

gadget time.

have a good break one and all.