Although my webcam normally works perfectly well, on this occasion, presumably in honour of Greg’s origins, it chose to transmit my picture upside down. And perhaps this was appropriate in more than that respect, for Greg is someone who would like to turn much of our thinking about school, and learning and teaching on its head.
His website tells me that: “Greg Whitby is the Executive Director of Schools and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools serving the Catholic community of greater
In recognising the critical link between good teaching practice and student learning outcomes, Greg is working to build the capacity of school leaders and teachers through a whole-of-system approach to professional learning.
As a regular speaker at national and international conferences, Greg talks about the key areas underpinning a new model of schooling for today’s world: de-privatising teacher practice, personalising student learning and ICTs as enablers to facilitate deep learning.
In 2007, he was named the most innovative educator in
An impressive CV, and he is also an inspiring and stimulating speaker of sufficient stature to have his feet firmly on the ground, whilst describing his elevated view of the road ahead. Already I’ve read some excellent blogposts about the talk, (eg Neil's, Ollie's) and look forward to reading more. I can’t summarise the whole talk, so here are just some of the ideas Greg described that struck me most powerfully.
First would have to be his definition of personalisation of learning. Personalisation, he said, does not mean individual learning programmes for each child. Instead it means having “a deep understanding of both depth and breadth, creating continuous rich learning opportunities that are real and of their world not apart from their world.” Hurrah! I wishhe’d come and speak to some of the parents in my school though.
He talked also about his strategy of having one hundred 5-year olds in one room, alarming parents, but finding favour with the teachers who tried it. The atmosphere in the room is purposeful and the children are engaged appropriately. In the teacher prep area they have a 100-square and anyone who has contact with a child writes a note on a post-it and puts it on the board on the child’s square. Teachers can then see patterns and plan. Simple but effective.
I liked his idea of developing a “learning story” for an individual child in the class. A nice way to talk about progression and one I think I will work on with the children in my class next week. At the moment they have “achievement books” they brought with them from their previous class, which they like. But the learning story idea would give more emphasis to the continuous, developing nature of what they are doing every day. How to make this relevant for all of them, and not a writing exercise? What about a diary room a la big brother? How can I set this up? Would I need video? Could they use the little TTS microphone? or Voicethread maybe?
It reassures me that, even after all these years, I still feel excitement when I hear a speaker whose words immediately point me to ways to make my teaching, and more importantly the children’s learning more effective. That’s what the best CPD does, doesn’t it?
You can watch the whole presentation on the Flashmeeting replay here.
