Notosh LEADERSHIP INTENSIVES Future Skills Post Workshop #1 Resources

THANKS FORPARTICIPATING...It was a pleasure to welcome you to the first NoTosh and ACPSS Leadership Future Skills Intensive and share some of what we’ve been learning around the world with a highly-professional group of school leaders.

We wanted to leave you with some additional resources, reading and links that will help you transfer ideas into your Immersion between now and our next face-to-face time together.

Please take a look at the NoTosh Lab (https://notosh.com/lab) which is packed full with examples of practice,

explanations of why the practice is good, and some suggestions of what you might do next.

If you want briefer things you can be inspired by and borrow for your own classroom, we share stories from our clients on our website: https://notosh.com/

You can also visit our Facebook page, it is an easy way to tap into the adventures of the NoTosh Team: http://www.facebook.com/NoToshLearning.

You’ll find information related to our first session and homework challenges in preparation for your next session. Enjoy!

Key places to learn more from NoTosh:

For how: www.notosh.com/lab

For stories and examples: https://notosh.com/

For books: https://books.notosh.com/

Key dates:

Intensive #2: 1pm, 15th May - Cabra Dominican College

Webinar: 8am, 22nd May - https://zoom.us/j/

803402739

FUTURE SKILLS AUDIT

GENCHI GENBUTSU As part of the Future Skills Intensives, you’ve been tasked to complete a Future Skills audit in your site. How might you best go about this and when might you make the time?

Meaning ‘go and see’, Tai Chi Ohno coined the phrase Genchi Genbutsu at Toyota for when he would take just a short time to go out to a Gemba (real place) each day. In a school, your Gemba might be plural; classrooms, playgrounds, staffrooms, the front office, etc. In short, it’s out of your office.

When you first arrive at the Gemba, take some time to pause and observe. What do you hear? What are people talking about? How are people feeling? What are they doing?

Then, take 5 minutes to interview someone in that space and write down everything they say.

We encourage leaders to schedule a regular time each day to ‘go and see’. Also, the practice of taking your notebook with you everywhere ensures that you don’t miss something important.

Separately, keep an Ideas Wallet - moments of inspiration from your site that you want to amplify. In addition, keep a Bug List - little things that you notice that get in the way of Future Skills development.

Sometimes sketching is the best way to record what you see.

Bring ALL of these notes to our next Intensive session - we will be using them!

We’ve talked about what the problems and issues we’re facing are, from student engagement to specific topic immersion. Diagnosing these problems isn’t easy, so don’t be surprised when we tell you that misdiagnosing it in the first place is a regular occurrence (http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2012/01/collaboration-6-misdiagnosing-the-problem.html)

FUTURE SKILL - FOCUS

Worthy Problems Worth Focusing On “Why are you learning this?” - it’s a tough question to ask youngsters, but invaluable. As part of your audit - ask it to 12 learners this week, then spend some time looking at the research behind coming up with worthy problems.

Start with Galileo education’s research report for the Alberta Government, What did you do in school today? (http://www.galileo.org/cea-2009-wdydist-teaching.pdf )

You might also consider a staff reading of David Perkins’ Making Learning Whole (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Transform/dp/0470633719)

Guy Claxton’s What’s The Point of School (https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Point-School-Rediscovering-Education/dp/1851686037) is another way to explore this issue with the research to hand.

STUDENT CHOICE Why not ask your students and/or staff to generate ideas developing future skills… and actually use some of them?

Push their divergent thinking through creating 100 ideas! https://notosh.com/lab/from-daft-ideas-come-brilliant-solutions

COHERENCE A Project Nest is great way to ensured that connections in learning can be explored. It’s amazing how quickly problems that need solving emerge when you make it visible (see more on this below). https://notosh.com/lab/how-to-build-a-project-nest

STUDENT AGENCY When we’re designing something, we’re always designing for someone. As learning designers, we need to closely consider our students. Use this tool to unpack how students might relate to your learning design. https://notosh.com/lab/don-t-drop-the-pilot

MORE IDEAS FOR DEVELOPING FUTURE SKILLS

KEEP THE UNGOOGLEABLE THINKING VISIBLE AND TO THE FORE In our travels through elementary and high schools we've been struck by one thing: the vast majority of questioning comes

from educators and is based around recall. Yet we know that higher order thinking comes from being asked - and asking - higher order questions: https://notosh.com/lab/higher-order-questions-higher-order-thinking

Scott Belsky calls it a Done Wall, a physical space that is a continual reminder of the work that is going on, what has been completed. The space for your project will help keep ideas bubbling away and will create a point of interest to talk about and refer to. Having one physical space is a vital component in getting all the information from a project's immersion phase into one space, meaning digital resources need to be made physical, too: https://notosh.com/lab/how-to-build-a-project-nest

It is important to be able to build a messy space that is able to display the "guts of the learning" in all of its jumbled glory during immersion and the first phase of a project.

What is also needed is a whole learning space that makes the distinction and purpose of these spaces very clear. You need to be able to explain to visitors the role of the space in your projects. The space in your room should be able to clearly show the process, thinking and the development of connections.

We need to be able to de-clutter our rooms so that we can make good use of messy spaces that help us unpack the real problems worth solving: https://notosh.com/lab/pack-up-your-clutter-to-unpack-your-learning

Digitisation is shaping the Future of Work. (2019). YouTube. Retrieved 3 April 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Ew7N9tPOo

Check out this OECD interview about how digitisation is affecting the future of work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Ew7N9tPOo