Comments for Simon Breakspear

Comment on EDUpreneurship – my keynote from ULearn conference, NZ by renee lighton

renee lighton — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:09:52 +0000

absolutely fabulous! thank you…Come play in South Africa! We need you!

Comment on Ignite their Leadership Journey by Rhea DSouza

Rhea DSouza — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:44:28 +0000

Look forward to seeing you in action in Mumbai.Am an educator at Lilavatibai Podar (ISC) at the moment.Am a second career educator, completely in line with your thoughts on educational transformation through leadership

Comment on Leveraging incredible teachers through technology by Avnita Bir

Avnita Bir — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:13:36 +0000

I agree totally with Simon that a strong and deep relationship between the teacher and taught is built more during the informal conversations outside of the classrooms than during ‘direct instructional learning’ in class. I have always made a better connect with my students and felt their pulse while interacting with them over an event or a discussion or a collaborative task rather than while lecturing on different market forms and pricing for example.
Recently one of our very good teachers got relocated and not wanting our students to miss out on her expertise, we trained her on the use of Skype and now she takes Skype classes with her students. It has meant breaking mental stereotypes through this out-of-the box solution.

Comment on Personalisation, designing learning & the future of schools by Simon

Simon — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:47:51 +0000

Thanks Lorraine. Keep prototyping new ideas. Start in beta with lots of experimenting. Once you have ‘cracked’ the model – scale it up!

Comment on Personalisation, designing learning & the future of schools by lorraine evans

lorraine evans — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 03:20:25 +0000

nice short conversation starter- loved the little bet and the Failure Party!
we are having a go at the little bet with using ICT more – very much about being a learner and going put of comfort zone. Will go back and add in the failure party! Corks will pop in the NT.

Comment on Leveraging incredible teachers through technology by Aaron Tait

Aaron Tait — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:05:33 +0000

Hi Simon,

Spoke alongside Nathan Murphy at a conference yesterday. Amazing guy – a twenty year old who was homeless and went through Oasis Refuge in Sydney. Has emerged with a great idea that fits nicely into what you were blogging about.

http://audiohighschool.com.au/

Keep up the great work.

Aaron Tait

Comment on Global Emerging Educational Leaders Summit 2010 by Rachel McNae

Rachel McNae — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 01:47:29 +0000

Simon, what a wonderful opportunity to be involved in! The GEEL Summit was a special environment which you created with your engaging and innovative beliefs about leadership. The refreshing shift from traditional professional development approaches [un]related to leadership, to a more future focused and relevant view was exciting. It was also heart warming to work alongside other leaders like myself and hear their stories, discuss their challenges and celebrate their accomplishments. Looking forward to catching up in New Zealand later this month.

Comment on Leveraging incredible teachers through technology by Simon

Simon — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 07:54:37 +0000

Thanks for your comment Peter. I could not agree more of the importance of building strong relationships. The question becomes – how do we create more time for teachers to engage with small groups and individual students in order to build deeper relationships? Teachers are very stretched and spend a great deal of their time either preparing lessons, or teaching through ‘direct instruction’ to get through the curriculum. Neither is conducive to building strong relationships with students inside or outside the classroom.

By recording the best lessons from the around the world for ‘direct instruction’ – students would be able to do much of their ‘direct instruction learning’ outside of the classroom. This would allow teachers to spend more time working through questions, supporting weaknesses and working collaboratively to explore the implications and applications of these concepts to the real world. I hold that this would provide substantial opportunity for the development of student/teacher relationships.

Comment on Leveraging incredible teachers through technology by Peter Monteith

Peter Monteith — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:31:02 +0000

We in New Zealand are finding that the relationship between teacher/child and family is crucial to how students learn.How does this in this brave new e-world you postulate these relationships be built?

Comment on Identify Talent Early by Aaron Tait

Aaron Tait — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 03:52:22 +0000

Hi Simon,

This is great. I particularly love the comment ‘don’t be fooled by the fallacy that emerging talent equates to a charismatic personality’.

Working with budding humanitarian workers in Kenya, the leaders that rose up from within a group never failed to surprise me. I repeatedly made assumptions based on the strength of someone’s CV, or what they said in their first chat with me. But ultimately it was those individuals who did, rather than just talked about doing that really made an impact.

Keep the ideas flowing!

Aaron