100 Hour Challenge

I am undertaking a hundred hour challenge.
I will be blogging about this to report progress.

• Ewan McIntosh’s Challenge
• What is my Challenge?
• Why this Challenge?
  

Ewan McIntosh Laid out a hundred hour challenge

Don't just read this post. Do something.

Here’s my challenge. Right now, put aside 100 hours starting at some point in the next twelve months. Do it right now, in your head. Put that time aside. 100 hours. 7 hours a week for 14 weeks. One hour a day, or one working day a week. It’s one term out of your entire life, it’s nothing. Okay, you’ve got that 100 hours?

Now for the next two days, go to talks (or listen to them online) and start conversations with people you don’t know, and choose what to spend your 100 hours on.

I guarantee that everyone reading this can produce something or has some special skill, and maybe they’re not even aware of it.

Ask your friends, colleagues and students what their’s is. Find out, because you’ll get ideas about what to learn yourself, and decide what to spend your 100 hours on.

Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you’re no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting.

Full blog post link

And mine is … D R U M   R O L L please

What is it?

The stakes are high because I have chosen to help my son Jack who wants to publish a book.
I am reading, talking with him and finding out about him a little more. We are working in online spaces
and face to face. Who’d have thought collaborating with each other in the same house and much of it online.

This is Jack.

Why this Challenge?
Jack has always written and I have not always read this writing. As a parent I have often been too busy and perhaps too self absorbed. This was an opportunity to give time to Jack around a mutual interest. I believe that young people are capable of more than we give them credit for. Jack’s story was over 60 pages when I suggested the challenge. A barrier to taking this further is an audience an editor and a mentor. I have decided to become involved, is this a good decision? When someone’s passions are at stake any mentor coach has the ability to make or break motivation.
We will see ….

Here are a couple of extracts form Jack’s Writing

Shaking my head, I tried to rid the noise from my ears like an animal tries to rid a fly from its back.

I was hardly aware of my body slipping down the slope, rolling over rubble and rocks as my eyes closed shut, and my ability to stay conscious abandoned me.

Picture Test

Just Checking how Posterous deals with pictures.

Bloggers are interested

One thing that the students at Southwell have done is that they have really stuck with their blogging.

It's not as easy as it looks.

The temptation seems to be to create a post that gives a quick message to others. I can understand this writing can sometimes be boring we often want to show pictures rather than spend a long time creating some of the people need to read. The problem I have with this is originality of ideas, a lot of the pictures that students use are being copied from somewhere else. What this means is that we have only really managed to identify the good ideas of others rather than to provide our own. How we can get around this. One of the things I think is important is that we consider the audience the people who are going to read our blog. They want to hear what we think, what we know, what we have found out and what we can add. 

Euan has been working hard to create a new unique post on as aviation blog where he describes a process that he is going to undertake to try and achieve his pilot's licence.

Dave Winter

Dean eLearning Southwell School

Ph 07 855-2089
Fx 07 855-9023
School Http://www.southwell.school.nz

Programme Director Connected Regional Community

Mob 021 1769425
Web Http://www.connected.org.nz
Blog Http://education-realitycheck.blogspot.com
Twitter: davein2it

Skype: davewin2it

Week Two of our Blogger's Cafe

Well we are in our second week of the Blogger's cafe we have added in some links on the side.

Each of the Bloggers has actually chosen a topic for their blog. 

We have :

Windurfing

Marvel Comics

Aviation 

Video Games

One thing that has come out of the second session is that other people can help us give 

ideas about what we can post.  We started talking about how you can get comics and that then became 

an idea for a post from Casey. I'll be looking out for it because who knows I might have to start reading comics.

Blogger's Cafe starts

I went to the Ulearn conference in Christchurch 

How Good is Good enough?

 
“A school or schools operating in isolation is no longer good enough in my mind.”
Why? this is the way things have always been done and it has worked.

The potential understanding of what is out there has changed we often apply this to our understanding of students learning.
At the school level we are now seeing this take place and I am happy to be part of groups that are trying to network develop and connect on behalf of their regions.
In New Zealand I think we are on the right track with regional capacity being developed by the key stakeholders. Regional groups extend pre-existing clusters and therefore connectivity. 
A fantastic example of this is

Manaiakalani an Auckland Community who are achieving multi dimensional improvements for their community.
The result is a ambitious project that is looking to bring 1:1 to a community without huge financial resources and includes wireless internet access to homes supported by Housing New Zealand.

This community is trying to transform itself led it seems by the Tamaki Transformation Programme Board. The complexity of successful change makes it vital that we look beyond ourselves and look to others while understanding that the sharing.

So what are the features of this project that we could look to for our preferred futures????

• Long term vision and community ownership of outcomes
• No constraining of dreams big expansive goals such as bringing connectivity to students in their homes
• Working with multiple agencies and supports
  • Housing New Zealand
  • Work and Income New Zealand
  • External consultancies eg Hapara putting interface layer over google docs that is purpose built for learners and schools.
  • 
  • Folksonomies by this I mean communities of goodwill eg software developers
• Focus on student achievement and well being
• Connected thinking and community

So what do we need to do?
At a regional level we can use presently operating networks such as principals associations and curriculum interest groups and add to them further collaborations with. Think LONG TERM 

• The willing
• Charitable Trusts
• Regional and local councils
• Multiple Govt agencies
• Libraries
• Tertiary institutions
• Community Educational Leaders

I like this video which tells a story about why collaborations are so powerful

 

Kia Kaha Manaiakalani

Reality Check Inventions

The Students have designed some inventions and spoken about the on ustream.
I was impressed by the creativity that went into ideas such as the “ultimate hair brush”,
”The Magniball wall” and the “Super Alpaca feeding station”. The ability to adapt, change and think in different ways shows that young students are able to move from designing to inventing. Well done.

It takes bit of strength to get up in front of the camera. There is a pause for about 30 seconds while one student gets up the courage to show what they invented.