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summer-reading-2018

Summer Holiday Reading 2018/19

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Paula Eskett

We have made it to the end of another busy year! The Kiwi summer break provides an excellent opportunity to relax, refresh and prepare for the new year ahead. If you need something to read over the break, look no further!

CORE’s Knowledge Curator Paula Eskett has once again collected book reviews from across the CORE whānau, showcasing a number of new titles to inspire your thinking and teaching practice.

summer-reading-2018

Thank you for being late, an optimistic guide to thriving in the age of accelerations.

Friedman, T.  (2016). London, United Kingdom: Penguin Random House.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

Harari, Y.  (2018). London, United Kingdom: Penguin Random House.

The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.

Reese, B. (2018). New York, United States of America: Simon and Schuster.

Reviewer: Derek Wenmoth

derek-books

Rather than focus on a single book for this review I have chosen to provide a brief overview of three books; all focusing on the theme of the future, the impact of technology on society and what it means to be ‘human’ in the midst of this change.

The three authors, a journalist, an entrepreneur and an academic bring their own unique perspectives to this challenge.

Thomas Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes regular columns in the New York Times and is well known for his previous best seller “The Earth is Flat”. Friedman writes with vitality, wit, and optimism, and argues that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations—if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community.

Byron Reese is the CEO and publisher of the technology research company Gigaom, and the founder of several high-tech companies. His previous book as also a best seller, titled “Infinite Progress: How Technology and the Internet Will End Ignorance, Disease, Hunger, Poverty, and War.” Reese writes from the perspective of an entrepreneur, but does more than simply explain and describe the world of AI and robotics, he focuses on how to think about these technologies, and the ways in which they will change the world forever.

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli academic who rose to fame with the publication of his book Sapiens, originally written in Hebrew as a history of humanity, translated into English in 2014. He followed that with Homo Deus which is a gaze into the future. 21 Lessons provides a contemporary stocktake of where we are currently, and explores the issues facing us in the present time, challenging us with the decisions we will need to make as individuals and as society as we progress into this ever changing future.

My reason for providing this collective review is that when we read a single book on a topic like this it’s easy to become caught up in the particular set of arguments or thesis of that particular author, and lose sight of the bigger picture of the issue or issues at stake. The combination of these three books provides an eclectic mix of viewpoints which, while sharing a similar focus, differ in the perspectives provided, leaving the reader to synthesise for themselves the ideas to arrive at their own point of understanding.

My reason for choosing these three in particular is that they are each extremely well informed, well researched and profoundly challenging volumes. There is a plethora of books emerging at present on the similar theme, but many of these are purely descriptive or opinions of the authors, rather than providing the meaty, ‘metacognitive’ perspectives that these three do.

At the heart of what these authors provide are fascinating insights into Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics and Bio-technologies and their extraordinary implications for our species.

In The Fourth Age, Byron Reese makes the case that technology has reshaped humanity just three times in history:

  •       100,000 years ago, we harnessed fire, which led to language.
  •       10,000 years ago, we developed agriculture, which led to cities and warfare.
  •       5,000 years ago, we invented the wheel and writing, which lead to the nation state.

Reese then explains we are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics.

Harari arrives at a similar place, claiming that as humans we are currently facing three big challenges that are shaping our ‘future agenda’:

  •       How to prevent nuclear war
  •       How to prevent climate change
  •       How to learn to control new technology before it controls us

Friedman describes three key areas of non-linear acceleration that are shaping our future…

  •       The Market (digital globalisation)
  •       Mother nature (climate change, biodiversity loss)
  •       Moore’s law (exponential technological development)

While it may appear from these summaries that each author has a different agenda, their perspectives merge around building a picture of the future that is significantly different to what has been experienced in the past, and one that will present us with an unprecedented level of challenge in terms of who we are as humans. The change ahead is simply not a case of finding ways to adapt, but of considering how that future is being shaped by our own behaviour and decisions now, and then facing the consequences of what may happen when we are no longer able to make those decisions or act on them because a ‘greater force’ is doing that for us.

The challenge I’ve taken from these books is to consider the question that has challenged philosophers and academics for centuries, “how should we then live?” It is patently clear, from the three perspectives here, that our current ways of thinking about how we organise our personal lives, our business models and our political systems must all be up for review if we are to adequately prepare for, and shape, this uncertain future.

Throughout each of these books there are challenges that will resonate in the minds and hearts of educators. The future we imagine and are preparing our young people for demands action now. Our current ways of thinking and organising learning are being severely challenged and will require us to ‘let go’ of some of the things we feel precious about, and to act with greater determination to understand our role as ‘future makers’, rather than those who perpetuate the status quo. Essential to this is finding ways of working together, in collaborations, in networks, in communities – and not as isolated individuals with a ‘hero-mindset’.

The challenge is well summed up in the words of Harari…

“How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?”


The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life.

manson-subtle-artManson, M. (2018). New York, United States of America: HarperCollins.

Reviewer: Alyssa McArthur

This review has been written from my own personal point of view and is my opinion on some of the key points made in the book.

What attracted me to the book was the slightly naughty title ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’. In this day and age I feel we are programmed to care about everything and anything. It affects everything we do from our mahi to our personal lives; when really we need to figure out what we truly care about and what matters to us. It’s not just handed to us, we learn through our own experiences in life. I thought that reading this book would be a step in the right direction to help me lighten up and care less about the pointless dramas life throws at us.

The world we live in today has lots of not so great factors e.g. unhappiness, unsolved problems, depression, anxiety etc.; but it also has the good factors including happiness, problem solvers, and people willing to help. We are usually quick to forget about all the good factors as we are constantly dealing with our next issue or problem. Many people just like to complain and they can’t complain about the good factors which is why we hear more about the not so great factors.

A number of not such great factors affect my life daily and I was curious. I wanted an insight into someone else’s way of thinking about life and its problems and that person ended up being author Mark Manson.

I found the book to be funny and relatable in the stories Mark Manson used as examples to explain his theory as to why the human population think and act in the way they do. I didn’t take into account every thing he said (sorry Mark!), but that’s the good thing about this book; you can take what you want from it and use the techniques which align with you. They make you think! Sometimes I found myself having to stop halfway through a chapter just to think about whether or not I agreed with what the author was saying. It was like a mini counselling session for myself.

I honestly enjoyed reading this book. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking into changing their mindset or re-considering their own personal values. Life can be full of surprises and this book provides some interesting insights into how we can handle them.


Why We Sleep : The New Science of Sleep and Dreams.

walker-why-we-sleepWalker, M. (2018). London, United Kingdom: Penguin.

Reviewer: Pete Sommerville

An extract:  ‘Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory, makes you more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You’ll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious. Are you interested?’

The wonder drug can be hard to get your hands on. But it seems it’s worth the effort.

Everyone needs to know how our modern world has conspired against sleep. Matthew Walker clearly describes the damage we do by ignoring the importance and complexity of the role sleep plays in our lives.

For example, we can all be divided into two genetically determined groups: morning larks and night owls, each influenced by different circadian rhythms. There is nothing owls can do to become larks  which is tough because work and school norms overwhelmingly favour early rising larks. Owls are forced to ‘burn the proverbial candle at both ends. Greater ill health caused by a lack of sleep therefore befalls owls, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, diabetes, cancer, heart attack and stroke.’ There is evidence for viewing lack of sleep as a factor in the onset of depression and schizophrenia. Early school starting times are disastrous for the mental health of teenagers.

If you regularly clock in under seven hours a night, you’re doing yourself a disservice as grave as that of regularly smoking or drinking to excess.


Your Wellbeing Blueprint: Feeling good and doing well at work.

McQuaid, Mmcquaid-wellbeing-blueprint., & Kern, P. (2017).  Australia: Michelle McQuaid.

Reviewer: Ara Simmons

Who doesn’t want to feel good and function well? For many of us work will make up a good chunk of our lives so why wouldn’t we want to thrive.

By regularly engaging in wellbeing habits and activities we can build on our wellbeing. In this book, the authors distill research from the past three decades and serve them up as practical activities which we can try on for size in our everyday lives.

The wellbeing blueprint provides a “how to” guide from initially supporting us to measure our own wellbeing right through to supporting us to create our own wellbeing plan.

Personally, I think it’s a gem of a book and something which I come back to regularly to provide me with doses of inspiration. For those of us with an academic thirst the book comes filled with a bumper store of references for further exploration.

Contextual Wellbeing : Creating Positive Schools from the Inside Out.

Strestreet-wellbeinget, H. (2018).  Australia, Wise Solutions.

Reviewer: Ara Simmons

So when we are creating positive schools what are some of the things we consider? Does context ever come into it?

Children not only need to learn, but they need to live well too but sometimes the decisions we make as schools can get in the way. In this book Helen Street asks us to be curious about what the social side of wellbeing looks like – considering community approaches instead of competition, looking at motivation as opposed to compliance and control as just a few teasers and then serves up a contextual model for wellbeing together with next steps on how to begin.

This book is for anyone who is interested in the conversation of creating positive schools from the inside out where health, happiness and positive engagement are all considered as an integrated whole.


Remixing the Key Competencies: A curriculum design deck.

key-competenciesWellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press.

Reviewer: Jacky Young

I have been working in a secondary school recently helping them to review their Year 12 NCEA L2 course, focussing on the key competencies to enhance student learning instead of focussing on the traditional ‘credit farming’ they had been doing previously.

NZCER have produced a deck of cards called  Remixing the Key Competencies: A curriculum design deck, where each cards lists an example of a learning activity on the white side and the relevant key competency on the other coloured side. We used them in a variety of different ways:

  • Lay out all cards white side up. Teachers select 2-3 cards that relate best to something they were doing with a class in the last day or 2. Talk about what they were doing, hoping to achieve etc in that lesson. Turn cards over. Taadah – which KC were you embedding?
  • Lay out all cards white side up. Select activities that best match up to a unit of work. Turn over and look at the frequency of KCs being covered. Where are the gaps? Which ones currently dominate? What do you want to do about this?
  • Fan out all cards. Pick one from the deck (a bit like a magic trick!) Turn it over and talk about what it would look like in your classroom if you designed an activity like this.

Lots and lots of ideas. Also blank cards so you can write your own. The school liked them so much they are going to buy their own set. They think they will get lots of use out of them when they start to review other year levels to be more inclusive of the KCs. All staff were fully engaged in this ‘gamification’ of curriculum design.

We have a set in our CORE Education library, but I liked them so much I bought my own.

NZCER also do a deck on remixing NCEA across learning areas (NCEA L2) and the Science capabilities.


Meri Kirihimete me ngā mihi o te tau hou ki a koutou katoa!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the CORE Education whānau!

We trust you have a safe and happy holiday break, the CORE Blog will return in 2019.

Featured Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Hey, let’s be careful out there – How to legally reuse images from the internet

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Paula Eskett

unsplash-photo-bird            Photo by a-shuhani on Unsplash

Whether you’ve briefly time warped back to the 1980s and are sitting in a moment of Hills Street Blues nostalgia, or you have no idea there is a backstory to this seemingly innocuous phrase, brace yourself for an abrupt segue.

Sharing is caring — or is it?

neon heartsPhoto by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

As educators, we can find ourselves overwhelmed and challenged when using the Web to curate a dynamic and engaging kete of teaching and learning resources for our students. With our world full of ubiquitous connectivity, mobile-device overload, and social media excess, sharing and reusing other people’s content has become a regular part of our daily digital diet.

We are overloaded with content, which, upon first glance, appears to have the potential to share, reuse, and repurpose culminating in us cutting, pasting, and screenshotting other people’s creations to curate and make resources that support our students learning. Add into the mix the undeniable fact that most readers will agree to always being time poor! Checking for a statement that gives permission to reuse an image or resource or scrolling down to the bottom of a webpage to check the details of a website’s copyright statement, can fall by the wayside as meeting the immediate needs of our learners takes priority. Unfortunately, the consequences for using other people’s content — even just a single photo when the creator has not given permission for reuse — can be expensive and involve a whole lot of legal headaches.

Creative Commons licenses and websites that curate openly licensed content offer
all educators — teachers and librarians — the perfect opportunity to role model and bring to life best-practice examples of how to ethically and legally use, reuse, and share digital content created by others.

In this blog post, we’ll mainly focus on finding and reusing photos for teachers, librarians, and students to reuse in their work, resources, and communications.

A picture says a thousand words — for free

photo of a photo
Photo by Rachael Crowe on Unsplash

Thanks to the incredible generosity of talented photographers sharing on sites like Unsplash, Pixabay and Flickr, we have an abundance of legally reusable photos at our fingertips.

Unsplash
https://unsplash.com

All Unsplash photos are shared CC 0, which means the creators of the photos have chosen to give up their copyright (anywhere in the world) and their photo is now gifted to society for any sort of reuse — even commercially. How generous is that!

public domain image

Just like we say “thanks” when given something because it’s good manners, we give attribution as an internationally recognised way of simply saying “thanks” to the creator of the resource we’re reusing. Attribution is you saying: who made what you’re reusing, providing a link to them and their work, and stating what Creative Commons licence it’s offered under. Even though it’s not strictly legally required to give attribution when using something with a CC0 mark, it is best practice, and everyone likes people with good manners!

Unsplash makes things super simple and does the attribution for you. As soon as you download an image, an attribution statement appears for you to copy then paste under the image you’re reusing. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

acknowledgement

Sign up to Unsplash and receive a weekly email of incredible eye candy to liven up your slides, school newsletter or projects.

Pixabay
https://pixabay.com

Last count, this stunning site had 1.3 million images, also videos, vector graphics (for a great alternative to clipart), and illustrations. Pixabay also licenses its content with CC 0.

pixabay illustration
Pixabay illustration.
Moon by thanh262K via Pixabay shared with CC 0

Sign up to avoid the need to prove your human-ness each time you want to reuse something, and you’ll also receive a weekly email with a selection of beautiful new offerings.

Flickr
www.flickr.com

“Tens of billions of photos and 2 million groups” — Flickr

 

alice in videoland
Alice in Videoland by librarypaula via Flickr licensed CC BY-SA 3.0

Flickr is a website that hosts amateur and professional photos and videos.

This site presents great opportunities for students to share their work in conjunction with learning about using and contributing to the commons of free and legally reusable content generated globally. This is a fantastic opportunity to embed citizen-generated content into a digital-citizenship programme and could be part of an offering from your school library that holistically supports teachers, students, and whānau alike.

Much of Flickr’s content is licensed with a Creative Commons license, which means the person who created the photo or video is letting you reuse it, with certain conditions. Let’s look at this a little closer.

Collaboration rules! Where Creative Commons fits in

Creative Commons licenses let you tell others that you’re happy to share what you’ve created, and the way in which you’re happy for your work to be reused.

Creative Commons licences work on a Some Rights Reserved philosophy — offering creators a spectrum of choices between retaining all rights and relinquishing all rights (public domain), whereas Copyright works on an All Rights Reserved approach used by owners to indicate that they reserve all of the rights granted to them under the law. (Creative Commons, 2018)

some rights reserved
When using Flickr, you will see a variety of usage statements. Don’t panic if these are unfamiliar and look like some secret and mysterious code — there’s a simple way of breaking them down to figure out what they mean.

Creative Commons Licenses are made up of four elements, and when these elements are combined there are six possible licences. Look at the elements below and read what they allow. Once you’ve done this, you’re well on your way to understanding the next Creative Commons licence you see!

The four license elements (from the Creative Commons website):

(For those using screen readers, click here and move to License Elements. You will need to come back to this page to continue.)

creative commons license elements Creative Commons Licenses Explained by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand licensed with CC BY 4.0

The six Creative Commons licenses:

(For those using screen readers, click here and move to The Licenses. You will need to come back to this page to continue.)

the creative commons licenses Creative Commons Licenses Explained by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand licensed with CC BY 4.0

Check your learning

The Alice in Videoland photo above is licensed:

CC BY-SA 3.0

Let’s break this down:
CC        = Creative Commons
BY        = If you reuse this photo you need to give attribution to who created the photo.
SA        = If you reuse this photo you need to share what you make with the same license
3.0       = This is the version of the Creative Commons license.

So, translated CC BY-SA 3.0 means:
If I reuse this Alice in wonderland photo, I need to say who created it and share anything I make using it with the same Creative Commons attribution / sharealike license.

Extra for experts

When you find digital resources that a creator has given permission for reuse, an easy way to remember how to give attribution is with the mnemonic TASL.

How to provide attribution

The six main Creative Commons licences all require users to provide attribution when they show, distribute or otherwise reuse someone else’s work.
A good attribution needs to provide at least four basic pieces of information — if the creator has made them available to you.
TASL:
T
itle —The title of the work (this is not always available)
A
uthor — The author of the work
S
ource — A link to the source, so that others can find the original work
L
icense — The Creative Commons licence it is made available under.
Using a CC Licensed work by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand licensed with CC BY 4.0

Some facts about copyright and Creative Commons licenses

Fact

If you create something — a photo, piece of music, short film and put a
Creative Commons license on it, you don’t give away the Copyright
to what you have created.
The Copyright is yours (or your estate’s) until 50 years after your death
(if you live in Aotearoa !).

 

Fact

A Creative Commons Licence sits on top of Copyright, it’s not one or the other.

 

Fact

The Creative Commons License lasts for as long as the Copyright does.

 

Fact

In Aotearoa, you don’t need to register the Copyright on something you’ve created.
As soon as it’s in a tangible form, you, as the creator, own the Copyright.

Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand resources

Resources from Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand

Creative Commons Kiwi from Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ on Vimeo.

  • Creative Commons Kiwi (above)
    A fun and fast five-minute run through Creative Commons thinking and application.
  • Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand resources
  • Creative Commons License Poster
    Great to have on your classroom, studio, library and staff room walls, also near computers and photocopiers.
    Free to Mix
    A great short information guide to using and remixing other people’s content, aimed at high school students and perfect for ALL teachers. Schools could include this in the student handbook or homework diary.

 

the end
Photo by Al x on Unsplash

Congratulations!

You’ve made it to the end of this post, and, hopefully, are feeling better resourced to reuse digital images and content with the suggestions provided.

This is part one of a series I hope to run this year in the lead up to uLearn. We want to support educators across Aotearoa to produce and share content at uLearn that others can learn from and build upon — and is legally sourced.

CORE Education is a passionate supporter of Creative Commons. We have staff who have recently completed the inaugural international Creative Commons Certificate programme, and are ready to support schools, kura or Kāhui Ako to create board-approved Creative Commons policies and understand how to reuse information and created openly licensed education resources.

We believe that publicly-funded research and resources should be available to the public that help fund them, and work to enable and empower educators to find and create openly-licensed content to support their learners and which others can benefit and build on.
If you would like to explore anything related to this blog, please email the author.

Extra, extra for experts (extra resources)

  • Creative Commons Australia
  • Creative Commons platforms — “Over 1 billion CC-licensed works exist across millions of websites. The majority are hosted on content platforms that provide CC license options for their users”.
  • Flickr CC Attribution helper
  • Guide to open licensing
  • What is Creative Commons?
  • A slide deck made for the Creative Commons Certificate course:

    What is Creative Commons ? – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

 

Paula is speaking at a coming CORE Breakfast in Auckland:

“What’s the domino effect of your library?”

Paula is available for consultation on school improving school libraries. Contact her now.

 

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Some summer holiday reading

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Paula Eskett

This is the time of year when projects and work streams wind up in preparation for the fabulous Kiwi summer holiday. Yet, for many of us, it can also be a time for reflection and thinking ahead to ways we can bring to life our goals and aspirations for 2018.

CORE whānau are ferocious readers with their fingers on the pulse of the latest national and international titles and best sellers. Our personalised reviews — with a uniquely Aotearoa — lens may support and inspire your thinking and teaching practice.

Enjoy a selection of reviews of the great reads from 2017.

Schools who are interested in subscribing to the CORE Library can contact Paula Eskett for details.

 

A Learner’s Paradise — a guidebook for parents and educators everywhere.
Wells, R. (2016).
EdtechTeam Press.
Reviewed by: Jacky Young

A Learner's Paradise Richard Wells (@EduWells) writes in a conversational style, which made this a quick and easy read for me. I also enjoyed the web links contained in footnotes allowing me to explore further. He made me realise that we do have a great education system, something those of us who were part of the evolutionary process as The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) document took shape often take for granted.

As a past CORE Education e-Fellow, he explored how the NZC has been interpreted by a wide range of schools throughout NZ. Many parts of it are well worth sharing with others, especially if you are working as a facilitator in schools. His key focus is on the amazing nature of where education is at in NZ, and the possibilities of its future due to the innovative and flexible opportunities inherent in the NZC as our guiding document. He came to NZ in 2006 after having taught in a very constricting and rigid education system in England. Based on his prior experiences, he calls our curriculum the ‘empty’ curriculum because of its lack of content, driven by key competencies and values allowing it to be interpreted in diverse ways to best meet the needs of learners and school context. He frequently refers to NZ’s high trust model, which means that teachers are treated as professionals capable of making good decisions about what and how they teach.

This book is not just targeted at New Zealand readers and has received accolades worldwide for his reflections on the ideas and possibilities that are embedded within our national education system.

In the words of our colleague Philippa Nicoll Antipas, as quoted on the cover:
“A Learner’s Paradise offers a fresh and engaging overview of the New Zealand education system with provocations and practical suggestions for the classroom teacher… This is a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking read.”


 

Moving the Rock: Seven Levers We Can Press to Transform Education.
Lichtman, Grant (2017).
Jossey-Bass.
Reviewed by: Rebbecca Sweeney

Moving the Rock Grant Lichtman’s #EdJourney is the precursor to his latest book, Moving the Rock. He has searched far and wide for examples of innovation and real change in education, and has shared these in #EdJourney and on his blog. Now, with Moving the Rock, Grant presents his thoughts on exactly how we should achieve the changes needed to shift education dramatically. He shares seven “Levers” for transforming education:
1. Create the demand for better schools
2. Building school-community learning laboratories
3. Encourage open access to knowledge
4. Fix how we measure student success and admit students to college (university)
5. Teach the teachers what they really need to know
6. Connect, flow, and rethink “school”
7. Lead change from where you are

I loved so much about this book and wish I could share it all in this review! While Grant writes from an American perspective, many of his ideas and much of his take on the state of education can be aligned to our New Zealand view. You can happily skip the descriptions of the American policy scene and read about each “Lever” to get some amazing ideas on what you can do right now to influence change from where you’re at — whether you’re a learner, a parent, a teacher, a leader, or a facilitator.

A few snippets I liked a lot include:

Lever 1: Creating the demand for better schools can involve starting small from wherever you are through things like having open community conversations, inspiring our communities by watching films such as Most Likely to Succeed, by piloting new programmes, and by showing off our successes, our pilots, our passionate, and engaged learners!

Lever 6: Online technologies and learning spaces (like MOOCs) may have opened up all kinds of “transactional access to learning but they largely ignore the critical importance of relational learning” — Virtual Reality has potential here, if we can develop a relational pedagogy to go along with relationable VR and Augmented Reality technologies. Exciting!

Lever 7: We need to consider the human side of school change and consider the role of leadership by classroom teachers, families, and communities, too. “Leading from where you are” is important in order for significant change in education. How might we provide opportunities for “early adopters” to engage in leadership learning and then in leading transformational change? How much leadership mentoring and training have school leaders had? How do they enable distributed leadership in their schools?


 

Disobedient Teaching : Surviving and Creating Change in Education.
Ings, Welby (2017).
Otago University Press.
Reviewed by Anne Kenneally

Disobedient Teaching What a pleasure and a privilege to get to review this book. Earlier this year, the title piqued my interest, I’ve been following the social media hype, and have been thoroughly looking forward to diving into it. Welby is a learner, an educator, professor, award-winning academic, designer, film-maker, and author.

Opening the book, I immediately found myself immersed in a thoroughly engaging and easy read that grabbed and embraced me in positive hope and positive disobedience. Perhaps the most poignant for me is the need for absolute belief in the preciousness of every learner. Belief that all flowers bloom when they are ready given the right environment.

The notion of ‘social editor’ is a new one to me. That ‘editor’ who causes us to be wary of standing out, of being disruptive. I am wondering how powerful the ‘social editor’ is in those youth who have incredibly creative ideas, thoughts, and processes. What if they are filled with creativity that they are simply unable to share because of the force of the ‘social editor’?

As I read voraciously, I reflected on a couple of things that I think are worth noting:

  1. As a young learner, I would have died rather than stand out for my ideas.
  2. As an adult, I am increasingly aware of the ‘lack of real creativity’ in my current work life.
  3. I am continually reflecting on the explicit inclusion of creativity in some aspects of my adult life, especially in times of creative questioning and reflecting.
  4. I am acutely aware all over again of the true power and need for Story Hui as a tool for capturing a success story.

This book is full of ‘real’ stories, practical examples, big questions, and a whole lot of hope.

BIG QUESTIONS examples:

  1. How do we give learners ‘permission to disobey conventional thinking and the protestations of their social editor’?
  2. How do we foster creativity? (Question, take risks, have unrelenting courage)
  3. How do we rely on ‘the transformative power of productive disobedience’?
  4. What are we doing to address the conflict with measurement causing dependence?
  5. What do I really and truly know about the way I learn?

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to Welby, at the University of Otago. And we are privileged to have him sharing at uLearn18.

If there is one book to read this summer, this is it! Get positively disobedient!


 

Collective Genius: The art and practice of leading innovation.
Hill, Linda A. (2014).
Harvard Business Review Press.
Reviewed by Oceane Imber

Collective Genius When we think about innovation, our imagination usually pictures creative and charismatic individuals such as Marie Curie, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg. We can be set with the idea that the capacity to change our world and be innovative only lies in the hands of a genius with the one revolutionary idea.

In Collective Genius, the authors, Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback, uncover what it takes to be an innovative company and dismantle the myth of an individualistic innovator.

Through in-depth research, case studies, and interviews this book demonstrates that the reality behind the success of innovative companies lies in the diversity of people working together to achieve a common dream. Innovation takes place when a melting pot of ideas and people work together supported by innovation-oriented leadership. The importance of the right type of leadership cannot be underestimated. A leader of innovation aims to create the right culture of innovation to give space for the collective genius to thrive. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to bring innovation to life.

Not only does “Creative Genius” give us more realistic perspective on what the buzz word “innovation” hides, but it also gives examples and guidance on how to lead innovation and bring this into the norm in our own environment.

“Every person in your group, whether that’s a small team or a large corporation, contains a slice of genius. Your task as leader is to create a place where all those slices can be elicited, combined, and converted into collective genius.” (Hill et al, 2014, p.7).


 

Reduce Change to Increase Improvement.
Robinson, Viviane (2017).
Thousand Oaks
Reviewed by : Chris McLean

Reduce Change to Increase Improvement Don’t be put off by the cover. You certainly won’t regret spending three hours reading this little taonga of a book. Every school leader should have this in their Christmas stocking to reduce stress levels in the year ahead.

We’re under pressure in education to improve outcomes for all learners, and with good reason. However, this expectation often pushes us to make changes without clearly understanding the why and the how before we embark on yet another journey of change. Robinson unpacks some key steps for leaders, facilitators, or coaches, to take to ensure everyone is on board from the outset, using her ‘bypass’ and ‘engage’ approaches to leading improvement. You’ll love the examples. They’re real and make perfect sense.


 

Essentialism : The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
McKeown, Greg (2014)
Virgin Books.
Reviewed by Joanne Robson (#ProfReading)

essentialism This year’s pick was originally recommended to me by Derek Wenmoth, CORE Education. For me, an outstanding professional reading is one that challenges my thinking, is underpinned by sound principles/research, and offers practical approaches to achieving the desired life — work balance we crave.

Moving from a non-essentialist to an essentialist mindset requires a shift in thinking, doing and getting in order to live a fulfilled life. McKeown, emphasises one of my mantras, “Less, Better” (note the placement of the comma), so I was encouraged to read on.

Each chapter: Essence, Explore, Eliminate, and Execute encourages us to discern what is truly important, remove the distractions, and ultimately effectively focusing on less but better. The principles can be easily applied to teams, organisations, leaders — starting with you!

In summary, this book reminds us to be mindful of everything we choose to undertake. By creating new triggers to develop healthy habits, we will be able to BE living essentialism — the disciplined pursuit of less. Being equipped with the powerful “slow yes, and quick no! Go on, dare you to pursue this. Ask yourself, “what is essential?” and eliminate everything else.

“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”


 

Late Love: Sometimes Doctors Need Saving as Much as Their Patients.
Glenn Colquhoun 2016)
Bridget Williams Books
Reviewed by Carolyn English

late love You may know and love Glenn Colquhoun’s poetry — Playing God, the Fine Art of Walking Upright — now he has used his poetical skills to tell us about his life as a local GP/youth worker in Levin and what needs to change to reconnect our health system with the more vulnerable and less resourced parts of our society.

“I noticed that in consultations after that my head would calm …. wrinkles began to shimmy on the faces of my patients. Parrots or bellbirds or fantails would appear on their shoulders and dead people shuffle shyly out from behind them. Some would hide beneath their skirts or behind their trousers and others would trail warily after. Some would haunt and others would protect.”

This essay is part of the Bridget Williams Books (BWB) series — short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. It’s not just the health system that needs changing Colquhoun also describes his views on the role of teachers and education to reduce the poverty divide in our country. A very thought-provoking and visual text.


 

Gamify – How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things.
Burke, Brian (2014).
Bibliomotion Books and Media.
Review by Fionna Wright

Gamify
Gamify written by Brian Burke, presents the value of gamification and ideas on how to design a gamified experience. Burke is a prominent researcher in the areas of business/IT strategies, disruptive technologies, and gamification. He argues that gamification can address three key elements of motivation:

  1. Autonomy – allowing for choice and agency.
  2. Mastery – providing challenge and feedback to motivate participants.
  3. Purpose – engaging people at an emotional level, in a meaningful way.

 

At the heart of the book, Gamify is about creating an environment that motivates participants to achieve their own goals. The implication for businesses and organisations is, as Burke states,
“If the player’s goals are aligned with the organisation’s goals, then the organizational goals will be realised as a consequence of the player achieving her goals”.

Gamify highlights that workplaces don’t have to be boring, or disconnected from employees’ personal lives. Work can be fun, personally meaningful, and allow people to set and reach goals that also support the organisation they work for.

In schools, gamification is fundamentally about rethinking learning. This book encouraged me to ponder:

  1. Why learning should ever be boring, or personally meaningless?
  2. How gamification could help educators provide more choice, personal meaning and a real sense of purpose to learning?
  3. How gamification could help school leaders provide more choice, personal meaning and a real sense of purpose in their workplace for their staff?

A good read for people considering how to motivate others to learn and work in different, engaging, and purposeful ways.


 

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die.
Payne, Keith (2017).
Penguin Random House.
Reviewed by: Nick Billowes

The Broken Ladder I really enjoy books that take a multidimensional view of complex problems and bring coherence to the chaos through clever storytelling, analysis, and the integration of frameworks from the work of others.

Is The Broken Ladder this kind of read? Absolutely it is! Keith Payne knits a clever writing style together with his unique experiences to provide deep thinking around the genesis of and approaches to dealing with inequity. He answers the questions around this topic that you have often asked yourself. As well, he challenges your thinking about the social and moral milieu that is leading to its increase.

Inequity is undeniably on the rise as a major global issue, affecting not just financial disparity but also access to opportunity, access to a quality lifestyle and access to a fair and free society. Payne takes a storyteller’s view of the issues and our reactions to and ways of coping with the challenges of inequity. He provides a mirror on the societies in which we live, questioning what we see around us at a societal level, and noting our responses and their consequences. Inequality divides us at a fundamental level, consigning us to lifestyles that are reflective of our opportunities, our health, and our consequential attitudes. Payne brings this sharply into focus.

Through the clever use of research, theory, and the insights of others, The Broken Ladder takes us on a journey where both our actual economic, social, employment, and community standing and our perception of the fairness, justness or otherwise of these, affect our future potential. In other words, it is not just how we are, but also how we accept where we are that defines inequality and how we deal with it. The ways we think and respond deeply change our prospects and, thus, our social and economic status and opportunity.

This book will help you make sense of social dislocation brought about through the impact of inequity, how it affects individuals, and how thinking about its genesis can help us all learn to address ways that we might mitigate its impact.


Image Credit (Feature image): Photo by Bethany Laird on Unsplash

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What are we reading 2016?

Posted on December 22, 2016 by Paula Eskett

If you are what you eat, what does your reading selection say about you?

In a world where the feeling of information overload resonates with nearly all working in education, some of CORE Education’s most ferocious readers have reviewed their best professional read of 2016 in the hope we can help with any feeling of ‘infowhelm’ you may have.

Our curated What are we reading — the best of 2016 professional reading list is a snapshot of recent and current literature which has been added to our CORE Library collection. This collection — a mix of print, e-readings, and research — supports our CORE whānau to keep current and innovative, as we work across Aotearoa’s schools, kura, and centres.

Your local public library can get you a copy of any of the books reviewed here, if your school library’s Professional Development Collection doesn’t.

Happy Reading!

 

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable — Patrick Lencioni, Jossey Bass. Wiley, 2002.

The five dysfunctions of a team Every organisation within and outside of education faces, at some point, the need to address issues around trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, or results. In fact, these are areas we continually work on, in, and across our teams. Lencioni’s work promotes these five areas as the necessary components of a successful, functioning team. If any are absent, a team will not be successful in achieving its common goal or desired results.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is an easy-to-read fable created by Lencioni to illustrate his theory in real terms for leaders, or for anyone working in, or with, collaborative groups or teams. The fable follows the efforts of a newly-appointed leader who has been introduced to an organisation with several dysfunctional practices. She uses Lencioni’s theory to observe the staff and then to slowly address their areas of need in terms of working successfully as a team. There are challenges along the way — as there always are when working with other people — and the fable shows practical ways to introduce the model and then address the five dysfunctions. At the end of the fable, Lencioni provides a series of chapters outlining the five dysfunctions in detail, along with some strategies for leaders.

CORE facilitators use this book to support CoLs, Clusters, teaching teams, and many other groups, both within the CORE Whānau and with our clients. Facilitation, teaching, and educational leadership are all human-centred professions, and this book shows you in clear, easy-to-understand ways how to ensure that you can be part of, or lead, highly collaborative groups. Combine this theory with your organisation’s cultural values and with our tikanga Māori — for example, using a wānanga setting to build teamwork — and you can build powerful, connected teams. (Also available on Audible as an audiobook)

Reviewed by Rebbecca Sweeney

Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems — Michael Fullan & Joanna Quinn. Corwin, 2016

coherenceBefore I had even started Chapter 3, I had pulled several valuable quotes from Michael Fullan and Joanna Quinn’s book, Coherence (2016), for proposals and papers! It is deceptively easy to read, with a framework, detailed examples, infographics, and guidelines. The book, I feel, would support facilitators, kaiako/educators, and leaders/kaiarataki to work with demanding political requirements, while also building the conditions for genuine change, shared aspirations … and learning — with the learner very firmly at the centre —  “…through purposeful action and interaction, working on capacity, clarity, precision of practice, transparency, monitoring of progress, and continuous correction“.

Some of the recommendations for leaders include:

  1. Engage as a co-learner;
  2. Support the growth of leadership from the middle
  3. Recognise that “shifting practices” will come from all areas of an organisation;
  4. Balance push and pull strategies;
  5. Create “safe places for risk taking”; and,
  6. Encourage the growth of human capacity in every way possible.

Fullan and Quinn define coherence as the “[s]hared depth of understanding about the purpose and nature of the work“, as opposed to structure, alignment, and strategy. Their framework for coherence making is based on 1) focusing direction, 2) cultivating collaborative cultures, 3) deepening learning, and 4) securing accountability. To achieve coherence, all four need to be “addressed simultaneously and continuously”. There is plenty of room built in for the human factor within the change process, including the recognition that many in the education profession are working “under conditions of overload, fragmentation and policy churn“.

There are also, for me, some insightful ‘myth busters’, including a sometimes misplaced notion that to “gel under the reality of action” collaboration is the key. However, although important, “collaboration as an end in itself is a waste of time”. To make sure that collaboration is effective it also requires the “discipline and specificity of collective deliberation”. The people who are involved in the collaboration need to have a clear idea of why they are collaborating, to the point where everyone in the kura / school / centre or region can “talk the walk” (i.e., articulate the key ideas and actions behind any initiative for change).

By the time I had finished reading the book, it was bristling with the little stickies I use to mark nuggets of ‘idea gold’. The picture presented by Coherence grew as I read it and the pieces all started to gain detail and colour. I would highly recommend this as a quick read — and then something to return to for a follow up read!

Reviewed by Hazel Owen

 

Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It by Gerver, Richard (2013) Paperback — Richard Gerver. Portfolio, 2013.

change An interesting year indeed, for me, in terms of reading. I have borrowed more books than ever before and read less. I refuse to enter the ‘busyness-trap’-type discussion, I just think I am changing as a reader. I skim and scan, I read online, I devour magazines and articles, and I enjoy reading for pleasure, losing myself in a book that is as far removed from my real life as possible. Having said that, I have a stack of partially read books that I can’t wait to dive into as the end of year chaos settles…

Our educational landscape is undergoing change at a fast rate of knots, and my reading choice of late aligns with the change theme:

Change: learn to love it, learn to lead it by Richard Gerver is a great easy read. It reads as if Gerver is speaking directly to the reader, inspiring, empowering, and encouraging. Following a carefully woven path; from exploring change, to questioning change; to developing and leading change, this book is a refreshing read in changing times. Sharing and reflecting on his journey, Gerver invites us to welcome change.

This book speaks to me as a facilitator, an educator, and personally; encouraging and embracing change with a hunger for continuous improvement.

Whatever you are grappling with now, I thoroughly recommend that you read Richard’s Change, to help you reflect on where you’ve come from and maybe set some new pathways and goals.

Reviewed by Anne Kenneally

 

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable — Seth Godin. Penguin, 2005

purple cow - set godin I came across this book when I was in the States and it seemed very apt for where CORE is as we transition from a company focused on Ministry of Education contracts, to one operating in an increasingly competitive environment.

The main premise of Godin’s argument focuses on the need to be remarkable or become invisible in a hectic marketplace. Godin has taken the 7 P’s of marketing principles (price, product, promotion etc) and added the ‘Purple Cow’ as a way of standing out in a crowd.

For Godin, though, it is deeper than how you promote yourself — it isn’t about painting any old cow purple, it is about developing something so fundamentally different it will become a purple cow. It’s about pushing the boundaries right from the conception of an idea.

The book is quite small, and at first glance seems like an easy read, but it is packed with great insights and examples of modern marketing which certainly get you thinking. In fact, I think it is worth a second read after a few months to ensure you have digested all those ideas and mulled on how you could adapt them.

A couple of key takeaways to whet your appetite:
“It’s much riskier to be safe and blend in with the masses, and it’s safer to be risky and set yourself apart from the rest” – whilst it is scary to be brave and take risks, it should be safer for the business in the long-run to take some well thought-out risks.

And then there are the sneezers — someone who spreads an “ideavirus.” They’re more than willing to tell the world about an awesome product or service, and every market needs them. — our role is to find and woo sneezers.

It is an enjoyable book, and one I would encourage anyone to read if they are interested in how we need to position ourselves in this challenging new market.

Reviewed by Ali Hughes

 

Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders — Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnstone. Stanford University Press, 2015

simple habits for complex timesThis book has a simple and practical message —  ask different questions; seek multiple perspectives; and understand the system. The writers suggest that developing these habits helps leaders move from ‘managing the probable’ to ‘leading the possible.’ I’d suggest these habits of mind are useful for everyone. I had to buy my own copy of the book as I had so many yellow stickies in the first few pages of the CORE copy. Now I’ve got a well dog-eared version.

The book powerfully uses storytelling, and is a bit of a page turner as you get involved in the lives of the protagonists. Their story is interwoven with the lessons about putting the simple habits into practice — by knowing yourself, breaking the old habits, and trying something new (all not so simple). The chapter headings are also wonderful draw cards. For example, ‘Make rational use of human irrationality’, ‘Grow your people to be bigger than your problems.’

The writers know their stuff — all theory is referenced; and they know New Zealanders — they have worked closely with government and industry leaders. They are kind to each other and kind to the leaders represented in the book. I’m recommending this one to everyone at the moment.

Reviewed by Carolyn English

 

Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean — Roberto Verganti. Harvard Business Press, 2009.

design driven innovationInnovation in industry has focused broadly on two strategies. One is the radical improvement in product performance pushed by breakthrough technologies. The other is improved product performance based on users’ needs. Both strategies focus on improving a product or service. With its user-centred approach, however, the latter strategy sits within the realm of ‘design-thinking’.

In his book, Design-Driven Innovation, Roberto Verganti suggests a third strategy: the radical innovation on the meaning of a product. This approach, he suggests, creates ‘disruption’ in the market. Think of Apple with its design and release of the first smartphone (the iPhone). Apple innovated on the meaning of an existing product. In doing so, it pushed the possibilities of technology and created a new market. People embraced this change quickly. They then viewed, used, and engaged with their mobile phones in a completely different, new, and ‘smarter’ way. It was unexpected and it ‘disrupted’ the mobile phone market. An entire industry then followed Apple’s lead.

In terms of education, design thinking, can be a useful strategy to change and shape the systems that have a direct impact on policy-making and educational practice. With its user-centred focus (student, leader, teacher, parent…), it enables innovative, but often incremental change. However, Verganti argues that it is limited by the parameters that are defined by a user’s current beliefs, values, knowledge, and experiences. Incremental change in education has real value, but, with its reliance on a user-focus, do we only design different ways of implementing change based on old systems and processes, improving upon our own and others’ outdated ideas and beliefs? Is this type of change too slow? Is it truly effective? Is it enough?

Even though Design-Driven Innovation is not an educational book, it really made me think about the ideas presented in the context of education. The world around us is changing rapidly. For our children’s sake, do we keep relying on an incremental approach to changing education? Can we afford to rely on a user-focus? Or do we design something that is totally out of people’s realm of thinking? Like Apple did with its innovative new products introduced in 2007, disrupting the mobile phone market. Should educators and policymakers break away totally from past and present ideologies to disrupt the status quo? Are we too busy innovating on the form and function of products and services within education, and have we neglected to look deeper and innovate on the meaning of education? Furthermore, if we were to do this, what would it look like? Is the education system ready for disruptive innovation? Do we have a choice?

Reviewed by Fionna Wright
http://www.core-ed.org/about-core/our-team/content-design-and-development/fionna-wright

 

Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone — Mark Goulston. Amcon, 2010

just listen - mark goulstonEvery day we talk to different people about different things, but actually, how effective are we at understanding other people’s needs, and helping them to understand ours? This book was definitely my ‘best read of the year’. Once I finished it I started again at the beginning. I wanted to be able to remember each page word for word. I wanted to be able to remember each strategy and each occasion to use each strategy.

This is a very easy and engaging read. You will find yourself thinking of different people as the author helps you to look at yourself, and how your communication style may not actually be helping you get through to the different people you need to communicate with. Whether you are engaging with adults or children, in business, in schools, or in your personal life, this book will have something for everyone.

Reviewed by Jane Nicholls

 

 

The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity — George Couros. Dave Burgess Consulting, 2015.

the innovator's mindsetIf you are familiar with Carol Dweck’s concept of growth mindset, and the power of ‘not yet’, or perhaps John Hattie’s mind frames, then The Innovator’s Mindset is for you. Starting with questions, with the learner firmly at the centre, Couros challenges educators to consider:

“What is best for this learner?”

The book is clearly structured, with questions for discussion at the end of each chapter. These serve as critical self-review, and opportunities to identify next steps. A taster of topics covered include: relationships, leadership, culture and overcoming barriers to innovation in education. One thing that resonates well with me is the ‘Less is more’, a concept that we need to address if we want quality education that empowers our future learners. Couros starts with knowing WHY we must change, and identifies eight characteristics of an Innovator’s Mindset:

 

8 characteristics of the innovative mindset Image: @gcouros @sylviaduckworth

As an aside, I took the opportunity to participate in the inaugural #Innovators Mindset MOOC #IMMOOC earlier this year. I highly recommend this as Couros is planning to run round two from February 2017. You may wish to read more here. Also, subscribe to George Couros’s blog here.

In summary, the by-line of the text summarises why you might want to add The Innovator’s Mindset to your professional reading. Educators and leaders — what are you waiting for?
‘Empower Learning, Unleash Talent and Lead a Culture of Creativity’

Reviewed by Joanne Robson

 

UDL in the Cloud!: How to Design and Deliver Online Education Using Universal Design for Learning — Katie Novak & Tom Thibodeau. Cast Professional Publishing, 2016.

UDL in the Cloud!: How to Design and Deliver Online Education Using Universal Design for Learningudl in the cloudAs a facilitator of blended learning, I found this book a MUST Read! I particularly liked the daughter/father team approach, and the practical nature of the book, with useful tips throughout. For example, to build engagement online, offer multiple ways of getting to know your learners. What about a 6-minute video, or an online survey where learners can share goals; how they might manage their time, and ways to measure the impact of their learning.

‘UDL assumes learner variability’ (p. 165)

To ensure we are motivating, engaging, and connecting all our learners, Novak encourages us to explore learning in a meaningful, authentic way, to ensure learners are encouraged to think critically and be creative. Facilitators need to consider their social and cognitive presence in an online environment, alongside the learners themselves. Novak asks us to consider:

What do you want your learners to remember in two years’ time?

I highly recommend this book for those embarking on online/blended facilitation, developing online courses, and anyone who wishes to ensure that their learning environment is inclusive, for all.

Reviewed by Joanne Robson

 

 


Feature image: Fractal-imagination — CC0 Public Domain

 

 

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Literacy should wear a superhero cape

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Paula Eskett

Laundry, Libraries and Literacy. Which is the odd one out?

The answer may depend on where in the world you are reading this.

Khayelitsha is an informal township 30km from Cape Town on the Western Cape Flat. In the 1950s, South Africa’s race-based legislation such as the Group Areas Act and pass laws forced non-white people out of Cape Town’s urban areas and designated them for white people only. Known as “apartheid‘s dumping ground”, Khayelitsha and the surrounding informal settlements on the Cape Flats were made home to non-white people, and continue to be a legacy of the Apartheid government.

Today, 21 years after democracy, Khayelitsha is Cape Town’s biggest township and home to between 300,000 and three million people depending on whom you ask. It’s not part of the usual Cape Town tourist circuit of beautiful beaches, wineries, eateries, and landmarks.

It could be said, it’s deliberately out of sight to be out of mind.

KhayelitshaCC 0 By Paula Eskett (Own work)

A day in the life of

If you’re a woman in Khayelitsha, it’s likely you will spend close to nine hours a week hand washing your family’s clothes. Your shack may not have water, which means (statistically) you’ll be walking 200 metres to collect the water for your washing, or you may be lucky enough to share an outside cold water tap with a neighbour. For the women and mothers of the Cape Flats, the onerous task of laundry takes its toll on the amount of quality time able to be spent connecting and teaching their children.

Libromat is born

LibromatImage source: Paula Eskett (Own work) [CC BY]

In 2015, the Hult Prize offered $1 million award for young social entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. The 2015 challenge: to provide self-sustainable education to impoverished urban areas. Five social entrepreneurs from Oxford University with extensive backgrounds in childhood education and inspired by a Cape Town research project focusing onThe impact of dialogic book-sharing training on infant language and attention (interactive book sharing), pooled their talents to apply for the fund.

Their idea for a Libromat was born.

Libromat supporting literacy

Iminathi Educare was the pilot site for the first Libromat in 2015.An inspiring preschool run by the Thokozani Brothers, a grassroots youth development organisation that use the performing arts as an entry point to engage youth in education and positive youth development based in Khayelitsha.

Mhlangabezi Masizana and his wife Lindelwa started the Thokozani Centre in response to the specific problems confronting their community.

“Better to build a child than repair an adult”
Mhlangebezi Masizana — Director, Thokozani Brothers.

Children at the early childhood centre Eminathi Educare
Children at the early childhood centre Eminathi Educare [Photo source: Paula Eskett (Own work) [CC BY]

As the morning dawns, parents drop their children off at the early childhood education centre (Iminathi Educare). As the day progresses, families visit the centre to use the laundry services and children’s library, and receive mentorship from the dedicated librarians on site through Libromat. In the afternoon, the centre is used as a homework club run by volunteers from the community; and as evening begins to set the youth choir rehearses. Finally, at night and on weekends, the centre is used for community meetings. 1

The Libromat is a combination of training hub, library and Laundromat, encouraging and teaching parents how to share and enjoy picture books with their children, while using low-cost washing machines to complete the family washing. For many participants, this is a daunting, and often intimidating, prospect as they, themselves, may be unable to read.

For four weeks, Libromat offers courses on book sharing between parents and children. Lessons start with videos clips that teach parents techniques like pointing at and naming key objects, connecting pictures in the books to familiar things, and taking opportunities to talk about feelings and emotions with their child. Then parents practice these techniques and receive immediate feedback from two women in the community trained at a nearby university. 2

Within a few weeks, the programme has shown marked improvements in

  • Children’s language
  • Children’s concentration
  • Children’s social understanding
  • Parent’s responsiveness
  • Parent’s sensitivity 3

“I am a working mother, so more often than not I am tired. But now, I make time to share something in a book with my daughter every night. There was not much communication before. I see her drawing closer to me.”
Ntomboxolo – Mother, 34

Libromat March specials15 Rand roughly equals NZ $1.40 [Image source: Paula Eskett (Own work) [CC BY]

Although they were not the overall winner, a $200,000 donation enabled them to bring their inspired idea to life to contribute to improving the literacy outcomes of young people in the Cape Flats.

There is now second Libromat  co-located with a public library in Nyanga, also on the Cape Flats and a new Iminathi Educare / Thokozani Youth Centre as a key project for Uthando in 2016.

Uthando is the Zulu word for Love

loveCC0 Public Domain Ben Kerckx https://pixabay.com/en/users/Ben_Kerckx-69781/

I had the incredible opportunity to discover the Libromat and Imanthi Educare because I took part in a Philanthropic Cultural Tour with Uthando. James Fernie and Xolani Maseko run Uthando South Africa, together they work with committed locals. Through their not-for-profit work, which includes an enormous number of grassroot projects, they are truly changing lives. It is difficult to write about this inspiring organisation without emotions beginning to flow.

My half day tour to Khayelitsha was a truly life changing experience.

While writing this blog post, New Zealand’s housing crisis, Auckland in particular, has been very much in our news. In June, John Campbell’s CheckPoint’s programme featured an interview with eleven-year-old-T.A. Her story, and that of her family reached into hearts and minds of New Zealanders across the country. The family of eight had been living in their van since February. When asked what she wanted most in the world, T.A replied “A library” She said the hardest thing in her life was “not being able to read”. With eight people living in their van “ they’re all up in my face. There’s no light either, I can’t waste the (van) battery, so I can’t read”.

It’s hard to comprehend that in 2016, children in New Zealand and Khayelitisha have more in common than we would like.

Literacy’s SuperHero Cape

superhero
CC0 Public Domain Prawny https://pixabay.com/en/users/Prawny-162579/

There is abundant research citing evidence that proves beyond any doubt that literacy and being literate changes lives.

LIANZA’s  recent GoodE literacy event hosted Miranda McKearney in New Zealand.  British social justice entrepreneur, reading advocate, founder of The Reading Agency who recently set up The Empathy Lab, Miranda’s message (underpinned by research) is  — literacy and being literate changes lives.

  • “Cognitive development is massively sped up with reading for pleasure”
  • “Kids who read for pleasure and do lots of it, the research shows that’s more important for life progress than parents level of education or their socio-economic background.”
  • “If you have a difficult or disadvantaged start but you love reading, you have a huge chance to bust of that difficult start”
  • “Reading for pleasure has a proven poverty busting dimension”

Miranda’s powerful Radio New Zealand interview also talks about reading and empathy.

OECD research shows reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s future success. Proficiency in reading is crucial for individuals to make sense of the world they live in and to continue learning throughout their lives.
– Pisa in Focus 4

Literacy’s importance is not restricted to childhood; it plays a vital role in our adult world too:

  • communicating online
  • collaborating online
  • transactions with government
  • e-commerce, and more.

If you can’t read in the 21st century, you’re seriously disadvantaged.

Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st C will need to read and write more than at any other time in human history. They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives. They will need literacy to cope with the flood of information they will find everywhere they turn. They will need literacy to feed their imaginations, so they can create the world of the future. In a complex, and sometimes dangerous world, the ability to read can be crucial.
International Reading Association, (Moore et al, 1999, p3 as cited by Clark & Rumbold, 2006).

The Challenge

We have the evidence that proves reading and being literate changes lives. But, for many, poverty, access to libraries, books, and resources continues to be an unfair barrier. Decision makers, holders of the public pursue, designers, and those privileged and trusted with making the decisions that will determine the existence  — or not,  to Library services of the future, you have a great responsibility.

The shoes you may walk in, and lives you lead may not be those of the children and communities you are making decisions for and about. At the end of the day, you hold the ultimate power to make the decisions that will continue to impact on those children, families, and communities.

A rebuilt school designed without a school library, or a public library closed down, removes from that school and community all the potential a cultural, social, and academic hub offers. These decisions, often presented as the result of a tight fiscal policy, say as much about decision-makers’ lack of insight, understanding, awareness, and potential that 21st century libraries offer the people they are employed to service.

Those leaders owe communities the promise that they will acknowledge, try to understand, and walk in their shoes as you make decisions about services and spaces that you yourself may never use, but for people  like T.A in Auckland and Ntomboxolo in Khayelitsha, they change lives.

“A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate “need” for “stuff.” A mall—the shops—are places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a library is where the wealthy’s taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power. 5 “
– Caitlin Moran

Further reading:

  • Rinse, Spin, Read To Kids: It’s A Mashup Of Laundromat and Library – NPR
  • Libromat frees women from laundry to read with their families – Inhabitat
  • Libromat: A New Approach to Early Childhood Development – Ayiba Magazine
  • LIANZA Libraries in Aotearoa 2016

1 James Fernie Uthando https://www.facebook.com/groups/212073008812776/

2 http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/27/452210361/rinse-spin-read-to-kids-its-a-mash-up-of-laundromat-and-library

3   http://www.libromat.com/about.html

4 https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisainfocus/48624701.pdf

5 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caitlin-moran/libraries-cathedrals-of-o_b_2103362.html

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