#EdBlogNZ Leap Day Challenge 29th February

It comes around only once every 4 years. On February 29 an bonus EdBlogNZ challenge has been set. It's time to take a LEAP. It's time to stretch yourself and create an audio or video post about a passion of yours. You can upload a video to YouTube (or similar) or create an audio post using SoundCloud (or similar) and embed it into a blog post. Take the extra step of adding a transcription of the audio/video to make it more accessible.

Monday 29th February 2016

9:30am - 10:30am

Social Skills / PB4L and Game Design

I like...

I wonder...

What if...

Every Monday the class has an hour of Social Skills / PB4L and Game Design. 

We are currently working on a  Road Safety Game Idea it is part of a Game Design Competition, run by @NZTAeducation. 

I caught this conversation as I walked past a group of students today.

Thinking is not optional.

Why title a blog post 'thinking is not optional?'
I mean, many of us are educators and we get paid to think. Don't we? Do we?

I attended #educampwelly  yesterday. 

Yesterday  I had the absolute pleasure of being in conversations with educators from around Wellington. We were talking about Game Based Learning.  There was agreement amongst some teachers, that it is the school time table that stops them from being able to engage with Game Design in the classroom.

I've been thinking a lot about this. 

I know it's a reality - many of us in classrooms are shadowed by an internal voice that whispers "so little time - so much to do". 

However, I realise I'm tired of this response.

Our role as educators is to think. This is not optional.

In New Zealand we are working with an outstanding future focussed curriculum document. 

Are we actually reading this document?

Game Based Learning, Game Design is simply another vehicle for us to think, do and act differently in our classrooms. 

It is our task to think and to think hard.

Future focussed teaching is about thinking - perhaps working with another teachers recipe, but not using exact quantities. - We are not cooks. We are chefs.

We are going for a slow cook. Ideas take time. Thinking 'how' with our time table takes time. However it is possible.

 We must think and we must think together.

I am reminded of Robert Kegan's work. He talks about the process required regarding  that which we are subject to - we need to make object.

 Is it possible this is a key skill towards developing conditions for change?

“Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.” 
― Robert Kegan

“At the simplest level, any particular expression of the immunity to change provides us a picture of how we are systematically working against the very goal we genuinely want to achieve.” 
― Robert Kegan, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

Simple Habits for Complex Times

Written by  Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston

I have mentioned this book previously on this blog. 

I'm going to re read this book over the next couple of months. I'm going to do a slow read. The kind of read where you really sit with the flavours and wait in between chapters. I'm hoping to notice a deeper flavour.

I'm finding my self rethinking  the importance of asking different questions and the role different questions play in shaping feed back. I'm thinking this is more potent that I first thought. 

I am wondering how the ideas in this book can inform my teaching Inquiry during 2016. At first glance things like 'teaching Inquiries'  are treated as complicated. Almost as if they were a puzzle that with the right amount of knowledge and skills we will be able to solve. However, my thinking has shifted. Teaching Inquiries are complex. 

Over the next few weeks, as I re read,  I will add my thinking to this blog post.

See link below:

Dr Jennifer Garvey Berger and Dr Keith Johnston - Simple Habits for Complex Times

Chapter 1 - Leading the possible

Chapter 2 - Engage with complexity, but keep it simple

Chapter 3 - Say What you Think, Listen to the Ways You Might Be Wrong 
The title of this chapter in itself is a reason to read this book!

Chapter 4 - 

Chapter 5 - 

Chapter 6 - 

Chapter 7 - 

Chapter 8 -