Thanks for looking in! I often get too absorbed in reading what people are writing about to remember to post anything myself!
What is the project that you are working on?

Best wishes, Nigel

I remember the DIY education (Craigmount High) - although there was also stuff at the opposite end of the spectrum.
One interesting task we had was to work out the petrol consumption for a car driven in each of its gears. We had our technology teachers car on the rugby field with a large titration tube connected by rubber hose to the carburettor. Needed to keep the bonnet up as we took it in turns to drive it around the field! No idea what the teacher was up to - he just left us to it!! PS we found that driving in 1st gear used least petrol - but that was at a constant speed for all gears so don’t think it was really a fair test.

Welcome to winter in the southern hemisphere

Thanks for this plethora of links on edupunk. It must be my age, or perhaps some other disadvantage, but I can’t help getting a measure of deja vu.

I began my teaching way back in ‘69. They’d just put men on the Moon. Science was abuzz having enjoyed bumper years from the 50’s of BBC TV slots when Raymond Baxter, Carl Sagan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore and other enthusiastic exponents of the ‘modern’ scientific age were given prime time. Books were to be lauded. New books were it.

I’d had an experiential secondary education where my teachers encouraged me and my classmates to pick things to pieces - good old Scottish education but with a ‘modern’ pitch.

We would dismantle television sets and automobile engines, clocks, electric motors, reed organs, anything material that held a mystery. I got my degree from the university of life doing all of that and more.

Those were the days when boys knew the contents of a golf-ball like they did their fingernails, when students were encouraged to aim for the Moon or further. Models were built out of anything we could lay our hands on and used to give insight to what might be, not what’s supposed to be.

I feel at home with edupunk. There’s a grubbiness about it that smacks of the fundamental. Gone are the days of deliberating on the ‘black box’ lesson. Let’s not hang about. Where’s the can opener!

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

What I do know is that the beliefs, realisations, understandings happenings, events of the ideals of edupunk can be important in the same way that Dada and surrealism were important, that Ike Turner and Elvis Presley were important, that Thomas Paine and Abie Hoffman were important and that Hutton and Darwin were important. These are not trivial names to be raising - that is because education is such an important thing for life, for freedom, for happiness that it can’t be taken lightly.

Awesome, and to make it something even remotely akin to any of these we have to create from it, and not worry about being part any group, or even the term. But creatively fashion our values about something I wholeheartedly agree with about the importance of, education.

Thanks for this, you give it context that makes my spine tingle

However, in your post you also mentioned that you love “serendipity. Here’s a link to a post by Ethan Zuckerman on serendipity and a few other interesting ideas. You might find his blog worth a look.

Ka kite

Thanks for the comments. Going through your points I think that I am probably in agreement with them all. I was interested in your statement that school education in NZ is assessment driven. Having just arrived from the UK, this seems surprising, in that we have been used to an environment full of school league tables, formal testing from age 7 and lots of stress associated with assessment. Teachers are judged to a (greater) extent on the results of their students. My perception so far was that this was limited in extent here although of course I have limited exposure so far.

I believe that, in general, assessment should be for learning and not for creating score sheets. In the tertiary sector, formative assessment is woefully underused and the current paradigm encourages strategic learning rather than deep engagement with a subject.

I like your comparison with medics although perhaps you might find that society would then demand much more rigorous assessment of trainee teachers!

If education truly moves into the realm of the learner as seeker and constructor, as journeyman in their own learning, then you are quite correct about the change required by society to enable teachers, educationalists, to operate successfully. I fear that there may be some backlashes before that state of affairs comes about …

Leith! I lived in Easter Road for a while in the 70’s. Taught briefly at Leith Academy when I first started teaching. Then at James Gillespie’s High School for a few years before coming to Wellington to teach at Rongotai.

But the Yorkshire Dales will hold memories for you no doubt.

But more about your post - I have empathy when you talk about “people stuck at contributing to an empty discussion board”.

Your question about “nudging institutions into changing assessment practice to evaluate learning without removing that process from the learner” intrigues me. I hope you will bear with me while I draft a few thoughts for you:

Assessment can cause what I call collateral damage: the knocks perceived as failure. But it can also provide support for those who wish to learn. Self-assessment is extremely useful for providing this. The online environment has the potential to do this splendidly provided the learner is comfortable with that method.

In New Zealand, the assessment in the senior secondary school is geared to qualifications. One of the original principles in unit standard assessment was centred around the teacher as the professional assessor. Moderation, which was quick to move into the assessment arena, limited that professionalism to a great extent.

For a while, the holistic approach enjoyed some moment in discussion but was seen as too vague to be of any use and eventually was more or less thrown out. Pity.

If we compare the professional teacher with the professional medical practitioner for one moment – the doctor has to make what may well be life and death decisions in assessment. I have no doubt that the job of the doctor is at least as complex and difficult as that of the teacher when it comes to their respective assessment roles.

Society and its authorities tend to permit this sort of assessment decision from a doctor. When it comes to the teacher assessing what the student has learnt, Society appears to be less trusting.

There is a need for a paradigm shift in thinking about who the teacher is in Society and the new roles of the teacher. This has to happen before any move can be made to confer trust in a qualified teacher to assess a student’s learning without the need for formal assessment/examination procedure.

Ka kite

I’ve no regrets so far about moving here, although I know that emotionally it’s not a simple as walking from one room to another and closing the door!

My parents moved to Wellington when I was 2 and then returned to Scotland just before I turned 8. Leith could have been the moon for all I knew at the time. Certainly all the kids at school seemed like aliens - unintelligible and not exactly friendly. Meanwhile various relatives moved to NZ and are still here so I have an extended whanau here. I’ve been living in the Yorkshire Dales for nigh on 20 years which I also love. Moving back to the first land that I truly have memories of isn’t something that we have done lightly. It must have a pretty good pull if it has taken me away from other parts of the world that I also belong to!

Only 4 months in and I know that I will have lots of adjustments to come to terms with. Your link to Karen was great but so was the language project one. Far too long to go into here but I think that there are great discussions to be had about the place of national identity in a shrinking world in travel and communication terms.

Great to meet up and thanks for the wise take on this transfer.
Cheers, Nigel

You’ve got it bad lad! I have to admit to you that when I first came to New Zealand I made a pledge to the land. Though I love Scotland, I also love New Zealand. Having chosen to stay here for over 30 years I have to concede to where my true loyalties lie.

Now this does not detract from my heritage. Nothing can do that. But in New Zealand I have children - my family, or whanau. Even since some of these have left these shores to seek their fortune in far off lands, Ireland and England, I still feel the loyalty to what I now call Middle-earth.

There is a part of me that’s British: my heritage. Not a “(w)ee sleekit courin’ beastie,” but “a traveller from an antique land”.

Ka kite