Keynote Speaker - Day 2 EdTech Team - Sydney Summit

My take on Keynote speaker - Lindsay Wesner- Once upon a time

In order for our students to feel OK with failing, we need to show our students how we

ourselves fail. We need to do this by normalising it as part of what we call innovation, and

also by doing it on a regular basis so they see that it is just apart of everyone's learning

journey.

In order to do this well we need to ...

BE BRAVE - even if your not … Be the goldfish with the shark fin on!

By doing this we force ourselves to go outside our comfort zone.  When we do go outside our

comfort zone we go to where the magic in education happens.  Not just for ourselves but also

for our students and their whanau.

Lindsay also talked about the intersection of education, technology and passion, and how in

the middle is the sweet spot - and how its where things become more personal as well.  This

also links into Jesse’s Keynote about finding the superhero in our students and that to do

this we need to find the passion and ignite/foster this passion.

What is INNOVATION - and what does it mean.

• Innovation is things that are not necessarily new, but that unlock new value - e.g. what is the new value, what is the point of it. This links to David Andersons “parrot of purpose” and also John Hatties “Know thy impact” type ideas.
• Change is hard - it creates conflict, and challenges our thinking/standard practice. Some change works some does not. For me it's knowing which changes to persevere with and which ones are not.   This comes back to the they key idea above of knowing your impact or the impact (or possible impact) this change will make.
• As a teacher we are or have been at a point of conflict for others in their educational journey- if we navigate the conflict we determine what the conclusion/climax are.  This relates both to ourselves, other educational professionals and also to our students.
• When we challenge students but support them to navigate these challenges their learning and experiences propel them forwards.  

A key point for me in this process is capturing these moments and experiences and ensuring that these are shared. I am fantastic at capturing pictures of children succeeding but not so good at capturing them struggling.  A NEW GOAL.

This leads onto 2 questions Lindsays' challenges us with;

• Students are wanting to digitally document - tell their story. - How do we harness this?
• What would the world look like if we gave our students the opportunities to tell their stories?

The next ideas she shared challenge us personally as educational professionals;

• If you look at how many pictures you take in a day - how many do you share?
• When you scroll through social media threads you can’t see the difference between ours and people in other professionals.
• What is the picture that others have of education/teaching? The stories we tell as educators will shape the perception that others have of education.
• We all share the good stuff - not the nitty gritty bits that actually make up life. - We have an awesome story to tell.
• Tell the stories of students getting hooked, stories of students engaging with the changing world, stories of their light-bulb moments, stories of their challenges/struggles/successes.
• Use buzz words like - unpack, stem, future focused, growth mindset, coding, computational thinking

It's about finding the things that our students want to solve. - if we do that then we will have good stories to tell, and so will our students.

We have the power to create change within our classrooms, within our communities and within the wider world.

“Yes BUTTTTT…”

These types of comments are the enemies of our stories …

Lindsay then discussed …  

The Enemies

Time	you develop way to get time back students can do lots when you invest time you create that development/progress	I can make time
Curriculum	Our responsibility is not to cover the curriculum but to engage students within curriculum	The curriculum needs to be the catalyst
Fear	Reminder of shark fin When you feel like you can’t... strap on the shark fin and pretend you can.	Change is hard and messy.

Our Weapons

Vision	Develop the vision of what we want it to be like
Community	We have each other Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world.
Our stories	Never underestimate the power of our stories and the stories of our students.

We have the power to make education in any country GREAT.  To make it bigger than the landmarks that are iconic for different countries and nations.  

But…

It is about sharing our stories.

It is up to us to do this.

So … MY CHALLENGE/TAKEAWAY

Share more, share the hard bits, share the successes - making sure to show that challenges that have been encountered along the way.