Author: billkralovec

The Senri & Osaka International Schools of Kwansei Gakuin will be hosting Literacy for learning: International edition tutor training program on October 31 – November 3, 2016. The program is produced by the Department of Education and Child Development (DECD) in Adelaide, Australia and is one of a suite of professional development programs developed by DECD under the name, Unlocking the World: Professional Development for Teachers.

You may be familiar with the Teaching ESL Students in the Mainstream course (TESMC) also developed by DECD. The Literacy for Learning (LfL) course is similar to TESMC, without any ESL references, contains many new texts and activities and is focused on literacy. It is 7 hours shorter and while TESMC is for teachers new to working with ESL students, LfL is for teachers who are very familiar with working with ESL  students and their needs.

For more information on training program, please visit

http://www.unlockingtheworld.com/programs/literacy-for-learning-international-edition

Successful graduates become resident school-based tutors who deliver the Teacher Development Course. This provides your school with cost effective, school-managed professional development. The cost of the Tutor Training is AUD$3,380. You can register for the course online at

http://www.unlockingtheworld.com/training_venues#10713.

I’ve been intrigued for several years in the idea of applying “big data” and analytics to the field of education. I’ve seen the power of statistics in sports, city government, transportation, policing, etc. I recently completed Data-driven Decision Making, a course taught by Dr. Craig Hochbein and Abby Mahone at Lehigh University. It is part of my doctoral program at the school.

Dr. Hochbein challenges much of conventional/traditional thinking of schools and he made me and many of us in the class, reconsider what we take for granted in education. Craig referred to the movie Moneyball often during the course. The movie portrays Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, the first to use advanced metrics in baseball to find players overlooked by the bigger teams. The A’s did not have a fair playing field against teams with larger payrolls and needed to find ways to compete with a smaller payroll. He did so by using statistics to find players that were undervalued by other teams. The same is true for many of our schools, we need to find ways to overcome the handicaps of our various situations.

The challenge for school leaders is collecting data. Unlike baseball, every action is not tracked. The class renewed my enthusiasm for collecting more data. Besides digging deeper in the school archives for test scores, one can use technology to help. Above is a sensor that takes in location data. For example, as a school leader, I can see how much time I am in my office, when it may be better to be visible in the school. WiFi access points can also be used to track if you have an iPhone. There are even sensors that track if one is sitting or standing or breathing rate to measure activity amounts or stress.

The major project was a balanced scorecard which emphasizes finding evidence and asking the right questions and making sure the data you are collecting is answering the most important question. Below are my notes from the class.

I am at Lehigh University again this summer continuing work on my doctorate in global educational leadership. My first class this summer session is a bit different than previous courses. Teaching and Learning with Geospatial Tools, the tools being Google Earth and Arc GIS. Maps have always been an interest of mine and is part of the reason that I decided to go into international education and travel the world. Actually going to the places I looked at in childhood is still thrilling to me.

The class has been fascinating and I am very excited about the power of mapping and big data sets. I am looking for ways to use them in an educational leadership / sustainability education framework. Above, Dr. Hammond is reviewing with us on the Lehigh campus, the concepts of latitude and longitude which are the fundamental base of geospatial tools. Global Position System technology is such a powerful tool and the perfect way to visually represent and analyze data. Geospatial tools combine maps with data to show patterns and they can be used to help explain historical events, climate change, biodiversity loss, etc. Having the ability to put huge amounts of data into a clear form is powerful and possibly transformative. It fits in well with sustainability education because as a framework of solutions-based education, problems can be demonstrated more clearly through combining data with maps.

Dr. Hammond introduced the following tools/websites for us to begin exploring:

Google Earth – This software is much more powerful than the ubiquitous Google Maps found on mobile devices. I am surprised people do not use this more often after I saw all the things that are possible. The pro version is now free and that may be a sign that Google cannot make money off of it and will stop further development.

Arc GIS – This geographical information system that allows people to create and share interactive maps. Esri is the company behind the software and there is lots to explore on their website. Using this software is a bit frustrating for me because it is difficult to import data into the software due to formatting differences. I would like to do the lesson tutorials and really get good at making data-rich maps. This is such a powerful tool. I spent several hours formatting my data to make it readable for Arc GIS.

ARIS – This is a free, open-source software of augmented reality and educators can make interactive mobile device games. The recent Pokemon Go craze is based on this technology. I would like to use this for scavenger hunts for new teachers and high school / middle school / upper elementary students to our school. International schools always have newcomers and this would be a different way to orient them to the history, culture and geography of the school buildings and campus.

Other resources to use

Classcraft – Teachers can use this as a classroom management/reward system for their classes. It is based on the role-playing fantasy games like “mine craft” or “dungeons and dragons” and basically “gamifies” classrooms. It is popular in some schools.

Story Maps – Another tool of Esri that allows creators to add text, images and other items to maps that creates a very powerful teaching tool. An example of a similar program is VisualEyes, created by a professor at the University of Virginia. This link shows a project teaching Thomas Jefferson’s trip to England when he was ambassador to France.

Gapminder – An online visualization tool for statistics with a huge amount of content.

Some of the theoretical concepts touched upon in class were as follows:

map projections – 2-D maps distort the spherical earth – I believe that with Google Earth and mobile devices, 2-D maps will be a thing of the past and everything will be in 3-D. The mercator projection, the most common format of the world map has so much distortions.

GIS = maps + data / .kmz and .kml are keyhole markup language files that are the format most used in mapping. Databases are best in CSV (comma separated) format.

The US government has some great websites for data including the department of agriculture, geologic survey, census.gov, etc. I would like to make a linked list of website.

EDD Maps – an invasive species database

GPS/GIS is “cross-fit” for your brain and many types of thinking and processes occur to orient oneself

history – whiskey rebellion / civil war battles / Nazi extermination camps / John Snow cholera outbreak in London

For innovation to diffuse, need compatibility, trialability, relative advantage, observability and simplicity vs. complexity.

Why do we have seasons? The tilt of the earth causes sunlight to move through a greater distance of atmosphere in winter than summer. Light energy degrades as it moves through atmosphere, hence in winter when it reaches earth’s surface, much less energy. The big lesson for us – messing with the atmosphere (ie greenhouse gases) has huge implications for our climate!

 

You can  read the latest issue of Tango the student newspaper and literary magazine of the Osaka International School. This issue has a “scoop” on next year’s All School Production and lots of good stories, news and information.

 

Link to OIS head’s study podcast page.

OIS mathematics teacher Kevin Bertman and I talk about teaching programming in his mathematics classes in the podcast above. Coding or computer programming is increasingly being offered in schools today and there are initiatives throughout the world to make it mandatory. With computers taking over many aspects of our daily work, a knowledge of programming and the logic behind it are important for students to be exposed to. In this podcast we talk about coding, mathematics teaching, the different levels of mathematics in the IB, driverless cars and other topics. Thanks to Mr. Bertman for sharing with us his passion for programming and on behalf of the community, thanks to him for bringing it to our curriculum.

MrBertman.com is Kevin’s professional website.

Codecademy  is a free website that you can teach yourself coding.

Scratch is a free programming language created by MIT that is a great introduction to coding for all ages.

Sketch Up is a 3D computer aided drawing program.

To download Kevin’s apps from the iTunes store, please go to this link.

 

Interculture magazine is published by the Senri International School public relations center. One issue is published every trimester. The articles are in English and Japanese and many feature OIS students and teachers due to our Two Schools Together program. Enjoy reading the spring trimester issue.

 

Read the June issue of Educator, the monthly newsletter of OIS.

 

Here is this week’s issue of the bulletin with events and announcements of the Osaka International School of Kwansei Gakuin.

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Being a head of school at times can be isolating because one does not have colleagues on an equal level on the school hierarchy. Faculty are in “the trenches” together, there are usually principals for elementary and secondary, but there is usually, only one head of school. I’ve always tried to have a collaborative leadership style and really rely on leadership teams, which usually consist of the principals, business manager, tech and admissions director, etc. Hearing others’ opinions and combining ideas to generate an even better model has led to great success for the schools I’ve worked in. A board chair also can serve as a partner, but they are sometimes removed from the daily life of the school.

The Senri and Osaka International Schools have a unique model where I also have a Head of School counterpart. Mayumi Ito, shown above, is the head of the Senri side of the school and we meet daily and help each other lead our respective schools. The Two Schools Together model often means we are working together on joint projects. It is really nice to have someone on my level to work with. We made a combined welcome speech at Tuesday’s music concert, Mayumi in Japanese and my speech in English. I find bouncing ideas of someone with a different perspective, allows me to fine tune initiatives to give them better success.