Can we create a Co-Constructed Community Art Studio?

This semester I am currently working with a small group of students, who we are calling Young Artpreneurs, to see if we can establish an Artist In Residence (AIR) program at our school. We have looked at the Room13 model (see http://room13international.org/) and this has been a huge inspiration. Our program would run a little differently in that the Artist in Residence would run a shared community artspace or studio (i.e. our Visual Arts building see pictures below) during the evening, once or twice per week, where our community members would pay a small fee for using the space per night, recieve help or take specific workshops run by the resident Artist, and this money could be used to help fund the AIR program going forward.

Once the community studio space is running we might be able to expand it to provide services for the firing of ceramic works or pottery. Or to expand the range of Studio spaces e.g. we have a lighting studio for Photography. The aim right now though is to start small and see it the idea is viable.

So here is what we have discussed so far:

The name - Originally the concept was 'Studio 23' but students have found out that name has been taken. We are currently contemplating running a 'naming' competition to promote the concept of the studio and come up with a name. Currently looking at sourcing prizes etc. students running competition on Social Media.

Money - crowd funding has been suggested, so has creating a Facebook Page for promotion etc. At this stage we will be holding a market day where artworks can be sold and students are thinking about how the whole project may fit together e.g. will there be street art competitions where works could be sold after the event, and what sponsorship or community support could they arrange etc.

All ideas are in there infancy and are part of the Semester 2 Community Projects that all students at Gungahlin complete as part of their school assessment. The students would love your ideas and suggestions if you would like to contribute.

Change School: Creating our own 'How to guide'

"We keep doing things the way they have always been done and expect different outcomes. If the current climate suggests that we aren't getting the results we want, obviously there is a need for a fundamental shift in the way we do things.

 

We know that learning takes place when it is tailored; tailored to the diverse needs of our students. Why then do we continue to educate in environments that lack any real flexibility, with bell times and physical environments designed to ensure structure and protect the standardisation of learning?"

Year 11 - 12 teacher, Independent school QLD, published online in 'Case for change', AITSL 2013.

In 2013 AITSL and the Learning Frontiers initiative asked some pertinent questions about student engagement to the Australian educational community. These 'big' questions I'm sure, were designed to provoke a new wave of action amongst educators, and many of these already understand clearly why 'schooling' must change, adapt to cater for the 21st learner and engage all students.





From Learning Frontiers Insights and Ideas Issue 1



 

It all started with a conversation, as many things do, on Twitter, email and the web, and this was a vital first step in co-constructing what I will call the guide to leading innovative change in education, from your current school. This is where I got involved, curious about the potential to provoke meaningful change, boost student engagement and educational attainment at the school in which I work. The question of 'why change' was already answered; as meaningful engagement in learning has a positive lifelong impact on individuals(1). I wanted to know 'how' this could be accomplished.







From Learning Frontiers Insights and Ideas Issue 1



 

So I put in an expression of interest for our school, Gungahlin College in the ACT, and hoped for the best. We were very pleased to find out this year that ourselves and Amaroo School would become the lab sites for the ACT/Regional Design hub. It has been fantastic learning experience ever since. Our two lab site teams travelled to the AITSL offices in Melbourne, we met up with other teams from the Melbourne and Brisbane hubs for a two day intensive workshop. It was a fantastic and challenging two days with the passionate Learning Frontiers team from AITSL, Valerie Hannon and David Price. During the two days we were tasked  with developing four exploratory questions which addressed each of the Learning Frontiers high level design principles for engaging learning.

 

 

 

After much deliberation our two Lab site teams agreed on the following questions for the wider ACT/Regional hub which includes our two schools:

• How does completely open and shared learning lead to engagement of all stakeholders? (Co-created)

• How do we empower students to become active agents in their learning? (Personalised)

• How can student learning result in valuable products and services? (Connected)

• How can we harness the power student’s social contexts to deeply engage them in learning? (Integrated)

 Of course after the formulation of these four ambitious questions our collective minds jump to how our ambitions may be realised. This is where the Design Hub comes into play. A Design Hub is essentially a group of like minded schools/organisations/individuals who want to initiate innovative change to improve student engagement, and give every Australian child an education worth having.

It was at the first Design Hub meeting in Canberra for the ACT/Regional hub that I felt the collective power of the hub. The meeting consisted of teams of teachers, school leaders,  parent and student representatives , both government and non-government from Albury, Snowy Mountains, Wagga and Canberra. It was becoming clear that we would be working together to co-construct change for ourselves and our students in their respective contexts. The four design Principles and the four questions that explore them are like chapters in our own 'how to guide 'to changing school for the better. The process of 'hubbing' (now a verb) also becomes a 'Change School' in itself as our respective school communities work together to fill in the detail of each chapter in the 'how to guide' going forward.

If you are interested in becoming involved in this exciting initiative please visit the Learning Frontiers website for more information.

 

 

References:

 

1. Fredericks, et al. (2004); Hattie (2009) cited in the Background paper: Engagement in Australian schools

 

 

How a 10 week challege helped me create a great PLN

I am not sure about you but I tend to learn best when I do things (make, create, go through a process, discuss etc.). For a long time I had been listening to the benefits of Social Media from other Educators but really wasn't using it very much. I joined Twitter in 2012 when our College was involved in the Microsoft Innovative Schools program. It was during that time that I met John Goh, Principal of Merrylands East Primary School, who was a big Twitter advocate.  Despite his enthusiasm for the communication medium, I was a 'slow' adopter. It wasn't until late Term 3 2013 when John visited our College and other schools in the ACT, posting photos on Twitter during his visits, that I decided I really wanted to do more and learn more about the Social Media platform.

After some consideration I though it could be possible to accomplish the following in one term:

• stay in touch with the latest educational discussions
• learn about learning technology quickly and easily
• Build a Professional Learning Network (PLN) in your school system and beyond

So in order to learn more I decided to 'dive in' be setting some goals and posted it on this blog (My 10 Week Challenge) to keep me honest. To help me achieve my objectives I attempted to maintain the following behaviours:

1. Tweet at least once a day about our school
2. Participate in a Twitter chat(s)
3. Create a blog and post at least ten times during the term
4. Connect with people outside of my school, build a PLN, and learn new things
5. Share what I learn with our staff and post it on my blog in week 10 of term

Quick note about Blogging

Despite knowing a bit (still much to learn) about blogging - I had created a blog previously during my Master degree (Student of the Red Brown Earth) mainly to document procedures, processes and make communication with my supervisor easier while studying part-time, I was unable to maintain the blogging commitment of my personal challenge, it could be described as a #Epicfail. No excuses though, I am going to keep trying, hoping to redeem myself with this long overdue post.

What I learned

Twitter is a great way to stay connected with other educators and share ideas. My fellow educational colleagues on Twitter were very accommodating of 'Newbie's' like me. It was with some trepidation that I tried my first Twitter chat which was #Learning Frontiers. I quickly found that the connection with like minded individuals all over the country was well worth the initial leap, as I fumbled at the keyboard in a struggle to keep up with the conversation.

Twitter helped me to quickly establish a Professional Learning Network (PLN) and soon I started sharing and asking questions myself. My PLN on Twitter were very quick to respond and helped me during the course of the term. My PLN helped inform some important school based decisions around technology. And helped me organise some school visits in Sydney (Merrylands East Primary School and Northern Beaches Christian School & Microsoft Head Office ) for our staff late term four. Among other things, these visits are now helping our staff rethink the use of furniture in our school.

Thank you to everyone out there in my PLN. You have helped me learn more than I would have without Twitter. I look forward to learning and sharing more with you in 2014.

I have 'Storified' (which was a tool I learnt about on Twitter) a series of twitter posts about our College below:

A Student voice: A thank you from World Teachers Day 2013

This year on World Teachers Day we asked the school community to 'Thank a teacher' via email and Twitter. A host of great personal stories came in from parents and a few from students. With some technical help we were able to share\feed the messages to a screen in the staff common room during morning tea on the day. Amongst the messages there was the following letter written late at night by a year 12 student. With his permission I have included his thankyou in this post (he asks that you excuse his grammar).

To all my teachers,

I only have had the privilege of being at the College for year 12, but in this one year alone I have been taught by people which I have never encountered in my 12 years as a student, It never seemed like any of my teachers were teaching me because it was their job, they often seemed passionate and excited about teaching which I found very strange at first. As I progressed through the year (I admit, I'm probably not the most educationally-orientated student on earth) I really enjoyed being in the College, small things like teachers not treating me like a little child makes the learning experience a lot more pleasant.  At our lunch during the AST (Scaling test that Year 12 students wishing to get an STAR do in the ACT) I saw our principal walking around with that box of assorted cake and teachers conversing with students not just in a teacher-to-student manner which I think had them gain my respect. There are certain teachers who stood out for me, like Ben, at first I had no interest in ancient history, but now I am quite hooked to it. David who started working at the College around the same time I did, I learnt a lot from him, I've never had such a good flight teacher, the learning content is excellent.  Alfred I would like to thank for sharing and teaching not maths, but life skills (I did not do too well in math, I do apologise). Duncan is the most interesting English teacher I have ever encountered (Sorry my sentence construction isn't that great, excuse my African education). And finally, Maria and Shannon. I've always enjoyed drama, Shannon had the great privilege of teaching me from the beginning of the year (Couldn't get rid of me actually), I enjoyed drama significantly more than I ever would have, I was shown that the dramatic arts isn't just some acting skills one could get, but an important stepping stone for the future of any person's career (public speaking, confidence, body language). I would like to commend all of my teachers for their amazing work, adjusting to Australia has been very easy, and I would say this is because of the excellent teachers I have been fortunate to have,  Thank you. 

Year 12 Student

There once was an office that grew into a school

I started working at Gungahlin College in late August of 2010. At that time there was a Principal (Gai Beecher, who was appointed in July), a Executive Teacher, a business manager and myself (Associate or Deputy Principal). In those days the College was a construction site and we all worked from a small office upstairs in the Gungahlin Market place. With the College opening for the school year in 2011, we got very busy appointing the rest of our staff and establishing a school.

Gungahlin College Office\Shop front July to December 2010

I recall a very busy first week where we had to: visit both of our feeder schools and talk about the college; visit the Australian Science and Mathematics School (ASMS) in Adelaide; and finalise 22 classroom teaching positions. This little office was a hive of activity where Gai's catch phrase "Every day is a big day at Gungahlin College"  rang true. From this brightly coloured office we organised and appointed another 7 executive teachers and our admin staff, enrolled students, took student ID photos, had our initial planning meetings with executive, created all of our start up procedures and processes, and had our initial  staff get together.

Office partition complete with College Plans and student uniform

 This little office was a place of robust conversation and many new ideas. With no sink and no toilet the shopping centre facilities and accompanying music also helped the creative juices flow. In the time leading up to the College opening the staff were only able to visit the college site on two occasions. I felt at times that we where buying a school from the 'plans' not knowing exactly how the building would finish up, and how it would function as an effective learning environment.

Front counter of shop front - complete with funky lights

My 10 week challenge

Do you want to?:

• stay in touch with the latest educational discussions
• learn about learning technology quickly and easily
• build your Professional Learning Network (PLN) in your school and beyond

Then you might want to follow me on my '10 Week Challenge'. My challenge may not deliver a dream job or  a hot body for the beach this summer, like the infomercials on TV. It may however, help you develop a fantastic PLN of like minded educators. Well that is what I am hoping for.

I am relatively new to Social Media. I joined Twitter and Facebook in 2012 and I guess I was a 'lurker' (watching the conversations but not participating), accessing content occasionally and wondering what all the fuss was about. Recently I have started to engage with Social Media more and the advantages are becoming more apparent. So that I continue to explore the advantages of this communication platform I have set a few goals for myself in term 4:

1. Tweet at least once a day about our school
2. Participate in a Twitter chat(s)
3. Create a blog and post at least ten times during the term
4. Connect with people outside of my school, build a PLN, and learn new things
5. Share what I learn with our staff and post it on my blog in week 10 of term

You can follow me on twitter @CraigMEdwards_ . I will report back about my personal challenge week 10.

 For those that are new like me and want to get started, the following two guides are useful for understanding Twitter (obtained via Edudemic.com)

What is in a name?

You know the line "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ". So why was finding a name for this blog so hard? Well it really wasn't all that hard, finding a name that was available was the hard bit. I wanted to create a blog about education focused on innovation and trying new things, in order to advance learning. I want to be able discuss attempts to 'change up' learning and celebrate the attempt and learning outcome whether it is good or bad.

At my house I have  a favourite children's book which I have read to my children. The title of it is "It's Okay to Be Different" by Todd Parr. I love this book at its message: It's Okay to wear glasses; It's Okay to need some help; and It's Okay to make a wish etc. I have actually read this book to the staff at my school - I reckon they thought I was nuts but I made my point which is it's Okay to take a chance, take a risk and learn.

So in this blog I hope to document the things that our school, I, and others have tried, what worked, what didn't. It might be good, it may not - but that will be Okay. I will take a chance. And there it was, the title, and it was available!