Today saw the finals of the Global Issues Competition 2013 take place at International College Hong Kong. In its third year, the competition featured 60 competitors from 6 Pearl River Delta schools (GNIS, Harrow HK, ICHK, LPCUWC, RCHK and STC). With passionate presentations on issues ranging from the health of our oceans to gay rights, students showed a great level of maturity and knowledge of the world around them. A new feature this year was the use of a backchannel, allowing students to discuss presentations online as they unfolded, which they duly did. After the presentations, students worked together under the leadership of Sophia and Lukas to plan action on two of the issues discussed earlier. The day ended with a very moving, amusing and inspirational talk from Crossroads spokesperson David Begbie. Students and staff alike left inspired and ready to make meaningful change.

Thanks must go to our wonderful judges (Kevin Coniam, Pam Ryan, Vincent Chan and Roy White), to David Begbie for his wonderful talk, to ICHK for hosting and funding the event and to all the teachers who organised for their students to come along. Extra thanks to Mike Cline of GNIS for his support throughout the day.

Congratulations to all students for reaching the finals, and for having the courage to stand up and defend their ideas. Listed below are prize winners from the day, all of whom put in excellent performances.

The following feedback was provided by the judges, and may be useful for those hoping to compete again next year:

• Make connections obvious, don’t rely on your audience and the judges seeing things the same way as you do, and coming to the same conclusions.
• Be aware of the judging criteria, and work to them.
• Use media effectively (show graphs for longer, really explain them).
• Be aware of the audience, and use materials that they will appreciate.
• Questions asked and answered to count to the judging, so:
  • When asking questions, make sure you are polite. Avoid being flippant, trying to trip people up, etc.
  • When fielding questions, make your point as clearly and professionally as you can.

We found these on an SD card tucked away in a draw. Filmed November 2010. Produced April 2012. He has changed so much in the last 18 months.

Footage © Parker Family

It seems as if there are plenty of people in the world who believe that education is “broken”. I totally disagree with this statement, and believe that there are plenty of excellent schools, students and teachers doing great things. However, I still believe there is a real need to revolutionise education, not because we are broken, but because we can be so much better than we are. A call to arms is easy, much easier, in fact, than deciding what we want  our goal should be. The question of “what should education be?” has limitless answers. What I hope to achieve here is to outline a brief answer of my own, primarily as a means to organise my developing thoughts whilst engaging other educators in discussion.

I firmly believe that if we want to revolutionise education we need to start at the end point and work back. Today’s end point is generally a set of exams which test students on a limited set of content in limiting and limited conditions. I believe in the usefulness of external exams as a means to fairly assess talent, but can’t get away from the fact that they need to be reworked to mimic ways of working in the real world. Really useful exams need to include the following elements:

• Skills – Test skills, not content. This is not to say that content is not important, simply that in a connected and content saturated world what you can do is much more powerful than what you can do. Content will always be at the heart of knowledge, but we no longer need to focus on internalising content as much as we do on harnessing its power.
• Ways of Working – Allow students to work in a variety of ways, such as individually and collaboratively, online and offline, open and closed.
• Real – Ask students to solve authentic, relevant and contemporary issues which students might actually have an interest in. Isn’t this what we want our students to be doing in the real world? Isn’t this where they can be most useful to humanity, the planet, themselves and their communities?

With such an end point to education, we can free teachers from the arbitrary and artificial constraints of teaching content as discreet silos of information, and move to a system of skill acquisition. We can move from a system where students are forced to student content that does not interest them, to one where they can chose the content that allows them to learn the required skills. So, what might these essential skills for the modern world be? A start that seems logical (to me) is, in no particular order, with no particular form:

• Open creativity (explicitly building on the work of others, output in variety of media inc. writing)
• Close creativity (creating new ideas ourselves, output in variety of media inc. writing)
• Working independently
• Working collaboratively
• Reflecting
• Analysing
• Consuming and comprehending media (would include traditional writing comprehension, but could be so much more)
• Numeracy
• Using the scientific method
• Empathy
• Compassion
• Taking action
• Creating working solutions
• Working physically (sports, labouring, traditional crafts, cooking)
• EQ/Balance (meditiation, looking inward, yoga)
• Discipline (self and imposed)
• Passion

Of course, this shift would require a whole new approach to teaching and learning, offering a great chance to excise ideas long past their use by date, and introduce some fresh thinking. One possible way to structure school (suggested by my bus buddy Wayne) would be to have an intense cross-curricular core extended by electives to achieve skill learning while pushing students to pursue their interests. The core could be delivered in the morning in large lectures (with floating teachers for support), with a focus on required content, while the electives would be based on smaller groups with focus on skills and application. Ideally, the core would involve strong discipline in order to get the maximum value out of the minimum time, freeing up as much elective time to allow students to be more expressive and free. Students would study across year groups, breaking down many artificial barriers we have erected.

With this triumvirate of exam reform, skill focus and restructured schools, we could make education far more meaningful and enjoyable for all, without (I believe) ramping up costs. And who doesn’t want that?

I would love to work with teachers from around the world to build this into a working framework for education, raise some capital and who knows, maybe start a school some day. Anyone in?

Some Caveats & Notes

• #edrevolution if you want to build up some Twitter discussions. Comment here too!
  
• I am a secondary/high school teacher, so much of this might be more relevant to secondary than to primary.
• These ideas are my own, except where noted, but my wife always helps me think, so I owe her credit. I am sure there is plenty of overlap with the writing and thinking of others, so I don’t claim these to be original in the sense of “first written” but they are my own in terms of “not taken directly from x”. Obviously I am constantly influenced by the background noise of the educational world.
• I am indebted to the amazing stream of educational ideas that coming flooding from my Twitter-based PLN, where I hide under the moniker @rossdotparker. In particular @robheinrichs tweet on the words of Parker Palmer “Not teacher centered, not child centered, but learning centered” really go me thinking. Thanks also to @intrepidteacher for encouraging me to post early and build from comments.
• Thanks to slinky2000 on Flickr for the image Bulb vs Hammer.

Joseph Kony, head of Uganda’s LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), is responsible for the abduction, sexual enslavement, multilation and militarisation of thousands of African children. Although he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he remains essentially invisible to the world’s media, governments and armed forces. Kony2012 is a massive online and real-world campaign to push for the capture and prosecution of Joseph Kony this year. Watch this video, share it, and take action.

My current thinking is to bring this to my students in the hope that they will be inspired to take action.

Edit 09/03/2012: it seems like this story is taking the world by storm. When I watched the video it had 40,000 views: two days later the figure had jumped to 49,000,000 and within the last three hours it has accrued a further 3,000,000. This really attests to the power of social media, although of course there are years of grassroots campaigning behind this seemingly spontaneous combustion. I guess Malcom Gladwell’s “tipping point” should be invoked here. As is to be expected, a huge number of critics have surfaced regarding all manner of issues to do with the operation and methodology of Invisible Children. It is nice to read a level headed response to these, and whilst they need to be acknowledged and dealt with, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this movement shows that a huge swathe of humanity are willing to stand up for their less fortunate brethren. I think the critics need to take a good hard look at themselves and ask if their negativity is due to a lack of personal success in this very same sphere.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on putting together a unified ICT rubric for my Key Stage 3 students (ages 11-14). Hopefully this will allow both students and myself to understand progress across all units and over three years. Although I do not teach the UK National Curriculum, and I used their level descriptors as a starting point. The content goes much further and deeper than the National Curriculum, but the levels for attainment should align fairly well. You are welcome to download the draft version, have a look, and let me know what you think. The writing may be a little dense, and will need careful deconstruction for students to really utilise it.