#HiveSummit Day Eight - Joe Sanfelippo & Hacking Leadership

I'm slowly getting to the end of the Hive Summit and I'm continuing to be inspired by the amazing people and amazing topics being discussed. The penultimate video has Joe Sanfelippo discussing ideas around Hacking Leadership, or how to be an effective leader. This topic is (like many of the other topics) near and dear to me. I am taking up one of my first official leadership positions very shortly so I'm looking for ways to help build something amazing.

In a very enthusiastic way (gung ho might be a better word to describe it), Joe tells us about three things that are important for leaders to do: Be intentional, open doors and build staff. 

Being intentional is something that leaders, whether you're leading a classroom, team, school or district need to think about. It means that you do things for reasons; that there's always a why to your actions and that why has to do with the results you want to achieve. A lot of this revolves around role modelling, but also includes making choices in when and how you do things. An example he gave was that in Wisconsin, many people would be watching Green Bay Packer games on Sundays. If you want to share on social media, some people would be sharing things at the same time commercials were on for the games - that way when people went to their social media feeds theirs would be the top stories. I think that example is the best because it just shows the cause and effect relationships between actions and desired outcomes. As a leader you need to think like this in order to help accomplish what you want. Be VERY mindful of how to achieve your lofty goals.

Opening doors is the idea that you need to share what you're doing and put yourself out there. This doesn't mean necessarily sharing what an individual is doing, but what the collective team is doing. It's never really about me, or I. It's about we and us. Letting the world know the things that are going on in your school is important to starting and continuing a dialogue.

This can be a very scary idea for many. There is a lot of judgement that occurs, but in order to accelerate our progress we need to share what we've done and what we're doing. There are many different ways to share, and not one is better than the other, though it does change your audience slightly. The point isn't which platform you should share on, but that you should share. Make things visible and transparent.

Building staff is very important. As Joe said in his talk, you need to make people feel like they are a apart of something bigger than themselves, like they are not isolated and like they have control of the direction of whatever organization they are a part of. There's nothing worse if you just go to work (or school) and someone tells you what to do and doesn't let you grow. Joe spoke of something that my new school is in the process of doing, and that's Passion Projects for staff. I can't push that idea any more. It's absolutely brilliant. I've been facilitating projects like this with students for years now, and it only makes sense to allow educators to do the same - but authentically, not based on someone else's ideas.

While watching this, I couldn't help but notice a huge link to the Project Culture Shift ideas that I've been learning about lately as well. The four main areas for that are: Collaboration, Agency, Risk Taking and Curiosity. I think the ideas that Joe spoke about in his talk align completely with this, and since I'm going to be a part of that, his ideas have helped me with some really good ideas and insights.

This was yet another amazing Hive Summit talk. There's only a few more days left to watch the videos so I urge you to do so if you haven't yet. And you're reading this and it's too late, look these people up, read their books, see what they're doing. There's tons of amazing ideas in this!

Passion Project Sharing!

Today, after two attempts at Passion Projects and much reflection, my class had our first real celebration of our learning. And it was amazing! We had invited parents and some other staff members to come in for about an hour to find out what my learners had been doing all term. Last time we shared, we had each group or individual go up and talk to the class. This time, after thinking about it, I decided to try doing a fair of sorts. We had one learner who wanted to go up and present (see the video) and the rest took turns at sharing their work at tables throughout the room.

We had about 10 parents join us today and they were all amazing. They went around to each of the tables, talked to all of the children and asked lots of questions. It was such a positive and inspiring day and though I know I did do things to support my learners, this came almost completely from them. They were super confident and I was so proud of every single one of them. See below for pictures of the day.

How might I do more and better HTML coding?

Why do diet coke and mentos react?

Why do scientists invent so many things that are a waste?

How might I encourage people to like school?

What can we learn about nocturnal animals?

How might we make home-made jewelry?

Binoculars

How can I learn to code a website?

There was a buzz in the air?

How can I make a model of a wolf?

How can we make a house?

Passion Projects: A-learning We Will Go!

Last term my class started Passion Projects after having tried it last year at my last school. I had meant to write an update as to how the finished products went, but never found the time in a busy schedule straddling the last holidays. The presentations students shared (with myself, the class, our Principal and one Deputy Principal) were a good start. There was some nervousness. The students had mostly put a lot of effort and thought into their projects and it was great to see them share what they learned. But there were many things that could be improved - a lot of which fell on me. Preparing the students better was a priority of mine. Exposing them to better and more interesting ways of sharing what they've learned was another. We had a big reflection after the first round and then again when we started the second time. Students had a better idea of what was expected and way less time was wasted getting started.

This term I have stood back much more than I did last term (at least after the initial reflections) and have let my students explore their questions and take them in their directions. I probed when necessary and helped out when asked. But it was this week that the changes that had been brewing silently finally came bursting out in full view.

What was most startling was the variety of things students were doing this term. Many were using our classroom's Makerspace to create something. Some were coding. But it was apparent, the students were all enjoying what they were doing and were fully engrossed in their projects.

I think the biggest issue during the first go around of Passion Projects was that students were actually a bit tentative when it came to making choices about what they wanted to learn. They were a bit afraid of the choice and choose ways of sharing that were known, and thus easier. Now that they've had a chance to try it, they have begun to try new ways of displaying their information. And no doubt, my understanding and increased comfort level with the chaos has helped. 

As a teacher, the idea of letting go was not one that was difficult to come to grips with. I want my students to have choice and control over their education and learning. On a practical side, that isn't always the case. I'm constantly afraid someone will get hurt (hot glue gun, box cutters, kids being kids) or a massive mess (paint, glitter), Legos being lost or sucked up by the vacuum after school, or just things generally being broken or wasted. This does happen occasionally (usually not the getting hurt though) but it's just something I need to get over. Trusting the children is key and they will often surprise you if you give them real trust to learn their own way.

The students have become proud of their work as well, though they have been a bit hesitant to share their work. When they do, everyone has been extremely supportive of each other. It's not just the fact that students are choosing what they learn and are engaged - they have also become a supportive learning community. This has been key in their transformation.

I borrowed a Ricoh Theta this past week to make another video and tested it out by taking this 360 degree video of the class during Passion Project time. I really enjoyed this day (and the whole week) as we have been doing real learning, not just the kind where I stand up in front of (or sit with) a group of children. It was an extremely liberating feeling for me to be able to give my students a voice. I hope that these lessons stay with them for life.

Passion Projects v2.0

What is it?
Passion Projects (also know as Genius Hour or 20% Time) is a concept where students (or employees at a company) are given a sizeable chunk of their time to explore ideas and learn about things that interest them. Many tech companies do this and some amazing innovations have come out of this. Schools have also been doing this a lot lately, allowing students more choice in what they learn (which, if you haven't figured out by now, is one of main themes driving the transformation of my teaching practice). Most are underpinned by three main rules, or ideas: 1) Everything must be driven by a question or questions, 2) Research must be involved and 3) Results must be shared.

My F(irst)A(ttempt)I(n)L(earning)ure
Last year, after seeing a lot of people discuss and share how Genius Hour worked in their classroom while at ISTE, I decided that I would try this with my year 2 students. I took a lot of the advice from the teachers that I heard and found a lot of resources. We made an attempt. My students came up with some topics that they wanted to learn about and then they chose groups to be in. We thought about what we already knew about those things and then tried to find out new things. But the enthusiasm died out. The children didn't seem to get anywhere and due to lots of other things going on, the projects were all forgotten and abandoned. I didn't give up, but at the time, I was unsure of how to move forward.

GAFE Summit
At the GAFE summit in Auckland this year, one of the first presentations was about Genius Hour, or 20% Time. Seeing as I had tried this before I thought I should go along. I'm glad I did. It helped me see some of the mistakes I made in my first iteration: not properly setting up driving questions, overly planning things, allowing students to be less accountable/responsible for their learning. So I made some changes before I tried it the second time.

Version 2.0
This time around, we discussed questions a lot more in depth. We didn't start with a topic, but rather, I had students ask lots and lots of questions. We worked on phrasing these as open ended questions. I also stole may ideas from Simon Ashby's presentation at GAFE: having children display their questions in class, on their blog, etc, having students fill out a slide to keep track of their weekly progress and the aforementioned time spent on what he called ideation. I have also been trying to not give templates or much direction to students beyond telling them they need to record what they do and keep track of what they learn. A further addition from the presentation was that a fourth thing was needed for all of the projects: A purpose. So why are the students wanting to answer this question.

So far, I have had a lot of success with the initial stages for my students. They have spent a good amount of time making questions that are big and that need to be researched. Here are some of their driving questions:

There is already quite a lot of buy in and the students all seem genuinely excited. I've had some interesting conversations with some students and it has actually led to real-world applications of things they need to learn (for example, one group wants to test which car shape is the best and that has led to a discussion of what a fair test is, and no doubt, we will be discussing whether or not their test was fair as they progress). So I'm quite pleased. This has also opened up the door for some other types of learning (for example, some students will be contacting some experts and I will work with them on their letter writing skills).

More Information
I'm obviously not the only one advocating for student choice. I've done some very quick digging and found some other articles online that discuss the benefits and give some advice. There are many more and I'll share them as I share how this process goes. Try these for starters, but if you know any others, please share).

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/14/how-giving-students-choice-during-the-day-can-create-unstoppable-learning/

http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/genius-hour-design-cycle-process-planning/