Simon Breakspear

Personalisation, designing learning & the future of schools

Simon — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:16:43 +0000

I had an incredible time hanging out with New Zealand educators at ULearn conference in October. On the first day I was asked to have a brief conversation with a few of CORE’s team about personalisation and the future of schools. I thought I would share it with you all.

Education in the Arab world

Simon — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:05:17 +0000

Too often we become stuck in thinking through the educational challenges in our own school, system or country. To explore new paradigms of organised learning it is often helpful to study other systems that are trying to respond to challenges of an entirely different level of magnitude. The Arab region is definitely one such region:

- 40% of the Arab population are 18 years or younger.

- High youth unemployment e.g. 43% of 18-24 year olds in Saudi Arabia are unemployed

- The OECD PISA rankings of participating Arab States/ economies show them performing at the lowest end of the international distribution.

The design question becomes – How do you make rapid progress on improving learning and life outcomes in the Arab region within a generation?

Clearly the institutional models of schooling developed in the Western world will not be sufficient for the required scale and pace of change. These are the design challenges that push us to explore new paradigms of organised learning.

Click this link for a recent dialogue on Arab education from the WISE summit in Qatar.

Everyone is talking about the Flipped classroom

Simon — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:23:49 +0000

Everyone is talking about the flipped classroom. Sal Khan and his Khan Academy have become a household name in educational innovation. In brief the Khan Academy provides short video lectures on a range of school curriculum topics from maths and science to history. As with most disruptive innovators, Sal didn’t set out to change the way school systems function. Rather, he was simply trying to tutor his younger cousin at a distance through making youtube clips – and the idea took off. The free lessons have now been watched over 82 million times, and are starting to be embedded within learning sequences in a few pilot schools in the USA. On friday it was announced that he has earned another 5 million in funding to scale up the operation.

The fundmental hope is that the school/homework division of learning might be FLIPPED. With lectures being watched by students at home, and student completing applied learning and exercises at school under the guidance of the teacher and with classmates.

There are plenty of challenges to this model. I have heard many pedagogical thought leaders argue that the point is not to move lectures from the classroom to the home. BUT rather to get rid of them as a standard pedagogical practice entirely.

To find out more about the Khan Academy and make your own mind up see the following video:

An overview of what PISA tells us about education systems

Simon — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:16:08 +0000

As many of you know my international research on education system reform centres on the impact of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) which in 2009 involved over 65 systems world-wide. Last week I was in Israel attending the PISA Governing Board meeting and sharing my initial findings on the policy impact of PISA on national education systems.

Are you interested in what PISA measures and what the evidence is telling us about the best performing systems? In this clip, Andreas Schleicher provides a fantastic overview.

EDUpreneurship – my keynote from ULearn conference, NZ

Simon — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:47:41 +0000

I have just arrived back in Cambridge after 5 energising weeks working with educational leaders and speaking with policy makers across Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

The incredible team at CORE in NZ have made my closing keynote from the ULearn conference available here. I look forward to hearing more about the disruptive innovations that you are leading in your context.

Leveraging incredible teachers through technology

Simon — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:47:01 +0000

I am convinced we need to find ways new ways to ensure that more students can access the unique genius and abilities of our best teachers. No longer do students need to ‘be in the places’ that the best teachers teach. Rather they simply need access to high quality video of these lessons online.

itune U has allowed us to access some of the best lectures in the world for free on our ipods for a couple of years now. But what about high school students?

Dream Teachers is a great new initiative in the UK which aims to identify and capture how great teachers can make complicated ideas clear and engaging. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/dreamteachers

Another one of my favourites is the Khan Academy – now backed by the Gates Foundation Sal Khan is ensuring quality lessons are available to all students with a team of just a few people. http://www.khanacademy.org/

We need to innovate and find new, cost effective ways to deliver effective and engaging learning to every student. How can you leverage what you are creating to better serve all students looking to learn?

What makes an incredible teacher? New research

Simon — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:39:35 +0000

There is some increasingly interesting research coming out of the States which is seeking to investigate the ‘block box’ of successful schools – what do effective teachers do?

Harvard’s Tom Kane backed by Gates Foundation funding is conducting one of the most remarkable projects yet. Launched in the fall of 2009, the Measures of Effective Teaching Project is the largest effort of its kind to collect video, student perceptions, and assessments of student achievement and teacher knowledge. The project’s goal is to learn what effective teaching looks like.

Check it out at http://www.metproject.org/

21st Century Pedagogy

Simon — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:01:13 +0000

Greg Whitby on 21st Century Pedagogy

Changing Educational Paradigms

Simon — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:57:31 +0000

Sir Ken Robinson is a true Thought Leader on 21st Century Education. In this RSA animate, you will gain an insightful summary of the challenges to over-turning the industrial model of education.

SKR Changing Educational Paradigms

Ignite their Leadership Journey

Simon — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 08:46:54 +0000

Many emerging and aspiring leaders are waiting to be invited into leadership. The ‘do your time’ culture of many schools results in many aspiring leaders stagnating in their own leadership development. They shrink back from leadership in formal and informal ways – whether applying for positions or sharing their own innovative ideas. It is time to ‘tap them on the shoulder’ and ignite their leadership journey

Have a conversation. There is nothing quite as powerful as one leader recognising the leadership potential in another. We need talented emerging leaders across the country to be instilled with a vision for their careers: educational transformation through leadership.

Introduce them to the field of educational leadership. This could involve photocopying an article on leadership, purchasing a few educational leadership books or passing on copies of the ‘Educational Leader’ once you have finished. Put it in their pigeon hole or on their desk with a brief note. Begin to resource them with the tools they need to begin their own leadership journey. Then encourage them to take responsibility for their own growth.