Director's Blog

Students at OIS-KG are accepted at many outstanding universities around the world. We are proud of them, and most importantly, they get to pursue their dreams. I am attending this workshop at the IB Asia Pacific Region Conference to better analyze where our students go to university, better promote it in and out of our community, and ultimately, to improve the higher education and career opportunities for our students.

This workshop is being put on administrators from the English Schools Foundation, which operates 15 schools in Hong Kong. They were established by the British Hong Kong government in 1967. 90% of the over 1,000 ESF students graduating from their schools, exit through the DP diploma.

Good Idea – They showed a creative example of how a school can demonstrate where their graduates study in higher education. A map of the world with pop-out names of universities and/or students is in my opinion, much better than a list.

They have accumulated a database of 5000 graduates from their schools over the years and they asked these questions.

• What do they do after they graduate?
• Which countries / universities do they go to study?
• What are they studying at university?
• How accurate/generous are students’ university predicted grades?
• How “successful” are students in being accepted into university?
• Are we ambitious enough with our applications? (first choice)
• Do students with unconditional offers from US offers “drop-off” with their IB exams?

They suggested for schools to do the following:

1. Centrally store applications, offers, and destination data

2. Create a database that counselor and students can share.

3. Analyse and understand the data

4. Decide on priorities and development.

ESF Statistics

• 88% higher education 10% gap year (doubled since 2010) 1% military service (Israel, S.Korea,Singapore)
• gap year – Why? (68% by choice with deferred place – 32% did not get offers or re-take IB exams)
• more students are staying in Hong Kong in recent years; trend – they are looking for more diverse places in Asia because Hong Kong is full, HK is cheap
• Because the USA is so expensive, the number of students is steady and the stronger DP students go study there.
• trend – medicine in HK

Predicted grades

• Most schools use the grades to parents pessimistic and grades to universities optimistic
• UCLA admission officer in attendance said he found 2.8 +/- from predicted DP grades to actual and they keep a list of over-predicted schools that are too high and take that into account.
• University of Melbourne got back to HSF – recently some DP schools are considered better than others
• U British Columbia – they did a study of first-year exam performance for Asian students 34-35 same as an US student gets a 29 – they are offering lower grades to US students;
• how do we get our students more informed about the admissions process? they send counselors with “readers”
• HSF students 5.67 average predicted grade – 5.54 actual
• 1/2 of predicted grades were spot on – half are +/-1; easy to explain -4 or -3, crisis, but difficult to look at +3?
• HSF wants to push the overall graph over to overselling our students; examine high performers are being undersold, how to identify them

How do we measure success?

• % of getting a place at university
• scholarships
• accepted at first/second choice of universities
• % accepted at “top-ranked” universities (goal is the fit)  – HSF 10%  – which rankings do you use?
• application success rates (top-ranked US universities – which ones are we highly successful vs. lower successful)

Other notes:

• publish offers, deceiving when 1 student gets three or four offers?
• hot discussion on limiting the number of applications, some are 6 firm, some are not
• We are the guardians of our reputation! The policies and practices will be based on evidence. Are we spending too much time weighing the pig instead of fattening it.
• Smaller schools keep yearly data – share with other schools – collect evidence!

Michael Anderson is an education professor at the University of Sydney. His research interests are creativity, technology, the arts, especially theatre and film. He referred to this website to supplement his speech. He is the second keynote speaker at the IB Asia Pacific Annual Conference 2015 here in Macau.

Creativity should be the center of schooling and sit besides literacy and numeracy. It is urgent in the rapidly changing global economy for our students to be creative. Why?

#1. How suseptible are jobs to computerization? Of the 702 occupations studied, half are at risk. What jobs will be available for our students?

#2 Students that engage in the arts as active participants enjoy school more, have higher self esteem, are happier, and have higher achievement in schools. Dr. Anderson’s research is here.

#3 Challenges that will face the next generations of humanity – world events like climate change, food/fresh water security, clash of cultures

There is a misunderstanding of what is creativity. It is trial and error, improvisation, playful exchange of ideas among students and teachers. Dr. Anderson used the metaphor of a waterfall cascade to teach creativity.

The first pool in the cascade is noticing. Dr. Anderson used this Diane Arbus – image to get us to look critically at a photograph. The second is asking why and then asking really why?

Dr. Anderson pointed to the life of Elon Musk, a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci. He invented pay pal, tesla electric car, etc. Only 15 of the 1000 people in the room knew who he was. He is the paragon of asking why. “Why is it hard to pay for things on the internet?”

Playing with possibilities – improvisation, trial and error,

Evaluating Responses – not all feedback is good feedback; usefulness of the response; seek feedback from someone who understands the project; discerning responses to the creative process and project

Things you can do at your school

1. Do a creativity audit – Is creativity happening in the classrooms?

2. Work with all stakeholders to put creativity front and center –

3. Use the research on creativity

Dr. Anderson was featured in the December 2014 issue of IB Global News.

High Quality Learning in Fine Arts that lead to students having critical, creative skills —>

• Teachers engaged students in both mind and body. (compose, sculpt, film, play)
• Resilience perseverance – failure happens all the time and is accepted
• critical reflection
• great discipline (rigorous, controlled, exacting form in the specific arts)

I am at the International Baccalaureate Asia Pacific Annual Conference 2015 in Macau. The keynote speaker is former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (2010-2013), a labor party politician. Before becoming prime minister, one of her posts was Minister of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Social Inclusion. She is now a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, working with the Center for Universal Education (CUE) She is also Chair of the Board of the Global Partnership for Education. The CUE is a policy center and think tank that works on improving access to quality education for all in developing nations. Her talk today is answering the question, “How can the world ensure a quality education for all, in both developing and developed nations?” She will also discuss how IB assessment practices can drive global student achievement.

MACHINES The digitization and rise of robots or artificial intelligence is a major revolution in our society, the second machine age. Machines are increasingly able to do routine, repetitive knowledge work, like filling out taxes, payroll accountants, call centers, etc. Non-routine, non-manual work is the safest of all from machines. She cited the book, “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies“, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. What does this mean for our children?

• Creativity
• Analyze for Meaning big data sets (working out what it means!)
• Teamwork among people and machines (soft skills,

MONEY Asia, especially China’s unprecedented growth, is the biggest opportunity for our students. In a few years time, our region will be the home of the biggest middle class in the world, more than the rest of the world combined. For example, Apple was the first company to hit a market capitalization to hit $700 billion, and it did so through selling products to Asian consumers. The needs of this middle class include quality education, hence the rise of private, international schools. The world will hunger for people that can forge links to Asia.

MEN She also mentioned her experience at some of the economic summits, where she was the only woman (example above).  The importance of education of equality for gender is imperative. She cited numerous studies that show students unconsciously favor male teachers over female teachers, which means cultural stereotypes run deep and women in leadership are viewed negatively. Machines, Money and Men are the prism that she looked at the future. Under 2% of developing country aid goes to education. So many of the world’s ills can be helped through education. We as international educators must push for more funding to go towards schools in developing nations. Privileged IB schools have the responsibility to work towards gender equality and better schools in the developing world.

This Saturday March 7 many of the OIS faculty and teachers from other JCIS (Japan Council of International Schools) participated in a Foundation Day workshop at our school. The workshop was run by Deborah Masters from Visible Learning Plus, a consultant group that helps schools implement the ideas of education professor, Dr. John Hattie. The New Zealand based company focuses on Dr. Hattie’s principles, detailed in his 2012 book, “Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning.” Visible Learning is part of Cognition Education and it is the first time they came to OIS. I would like to thank JCIS for partially supporting Master’s visit.

The Foundation Day is an introduction to the ideas of Dr. Hattie. Below are my notes and major learning points of the day.

One of Dr. Hattie’s big contributions to the field of education was the synthesize a huge number (over 50,000 papers) of research studies focusing on student achievement. In my 20 years in education, I have seen many good ideas and innovations come and go in schools. Hattie looked at 150 of them and put on one scale, the effect on student achievement of these. The full chart is here. An effect size of 0.40 on his scale is what educators should expect and aim for when trying to influence student learning. It was enlightening to see which influences had the greatest impact on achievement and many of them go against current popular opinion. They are great conversation starters for faculty.

The second session brought to light assessment-capable learners. I was inspired to do a better job of looking at our current learning data, both standardized test scores and other assessments, and use them better to guide learning. More importantly, to get these in the hands of the students so they themselves can guide their learning. The third session, Know Thy Impact, introduced effect size and gave some statistical data analysis to help us convert student achievement data so teachers know what effect they have on learning. I will definitely dig deeper into our international schools assessment data and share it with faculty.

Session four broke feedback from teachers to students into different levels. Beginning students need basic task level feedback, intermediate students need process feedback, and expert students need self-regulation feedback. Visible learning does not regard praise as feedback, although important, it does not impact learning directly. We went through an exercise of giving examples of the three levels of feedback.

The final session introduced Mindframes, which are a set of beliefs that underpin the actions and decisions of teachers. Two that resonated with me were using assessment as feedback to the teacher on how they can improve, not only what the students achieved and a school developing a culture of positive relationships where teachers and students are not afraid to make mistakes and trust and support each other.

All of my notes can be found in this Google document.

The Foundation Day was an introduction to the research and several days could be spent further learning about the five strands of Visible Learning. We hope to further explore how our school can improve student learning through putting into practice, Dr. Hattie’s ideas.

I like to compare Kwansei Gakuin University to the University of Alabama in the USA. They are the premier American football school in the country. They have won more national championships than any other university in Japan. Later this month Ivy League university, Princeton, will be coming to Japan to play in the Legacy Bowl. The famous New Jersey university has an extensive co curricular program. Connected to the visit is a symposium hosted by KG university entitled “How Co-Curricular Activities Help Universities Foster Global Leaders- Information Exchange with Princeton University”. Dr. Allison Rich, the Associate Athletic Director of Princeton, the football coaches from both schools, and KG professor Yukio Mirata from the International Studies program will be speaking.  They symposium takes place in the afternoon of Thursday March 19 . For more information, please follow the link above.

Go Fighters!

This is the third in a series of posts about the people from the Kwansei Gakuin Foundation that work behind the scenes at the school. Keishi works in the business office and this year he has devoted much time to facilities. He is shown above with a new L.E.D. light and the old fluorescent light.The campus facilities people are replacing lights with energy efficient L.E.D. lights and Keishi explained to the students who are studying sustainability, the cost savings to school and some of the technical aspects of the new lights.

Mr. Uenoya has been working here at the school for 1 year. He is a graduate of Kwansei Gakuin university and was working in the School of International Studies office before being transferred to our campus. Keishi is originally from the Fukui prefecture and after a year of studying abroad at the University of Georgia (USA), he wanted to support students going abroad, hence the reason why he was working in the international studies office. His bilingualism and comfort with foreigners have been assets for the school. Besides facilities, Mr. Uenoya works with the special programs (Just For Kids, Saturday English School) office and deals with the Osaka Prefecture MEXT (Ministry of Education) subsidies program.

Keishi finds the international atmosphere and the style of education at SOIS very interesting. We are glad that he brings a youthful, positive, energy to the school.

On Tuesday the OIS music department hosted an International Baccalaurate (IB) music recital. Performing were IB music students Sara Okino and Leila Sakamoto. As part of the IB music curriculum, students need to submit videos of performances for IB examiners to assess. Both of the grade 11 students composed original music pieces for the performance. They were accompanied by other SOIS students. Sara’s speciality is voice and her vocal skills and range were exhibited with a variety of singing styles from traditional Celtic to modern musical theatre songs.

Leila is an accomplished violinist, and besides having her classmates play her original piece, “Stained Glass and Instability”, she played Bach’s Partita No. 1, a four-movement piece written for the violin. The audience was moved by the stirring performance.

The IB music course consists of composition, performance and critical analysis of music. It exposes students to a wide range of music forms in a wider range of historical and social contexts. It is the highest level of study a high school music student can complete in an international school. Congratulations to Sara, Leila, and music teacher Mr. Vernon Villapando on the recital. We are looking forward to hearing more from them in the spring concert.

The OIS elementary students have been getting fit, often without even knowing they were exercising. PE teacher Mrs. Leanne Entwhistle wanted to get students running more and came up with the idea of measuring how much they run and challenging them to make it to Disneyland in Tokyo, 522 kilometers from Minoh. It is 86 meters around the gymnasium, and for the 6-week fitness unit this term, the students begin class with running around the gym as a warm up for the lesson. The students start with 3 minutes and depending on the age group, build up to over 15 minutes of running at one time. “The Big Run” challenge is taking place this week as a culmination of the unit. Grade 1 students run up to 8 minutes, grade two for 10 minutes, etc. Besides endurance, Mrs. Entwhistle teaches form, technique, and pacing. This is such a valuable life long skill!

I am happy to announce that the combined efforts of the students were more than enough to make the 522 kilometers. This was even before the Big Run starting today. Mickey Mouse even sends them a gift and a certificate for accomplishing the feat.

Perhaps next year they will set their sights on a further destination. How about the 1,363 kilometers to the Disneyland resort in Shanghai?

Thanks to all the parents and faculty who attended and participated in the discussion last week about technology’s impact on families and education. The session was recorded and the link to the podcast is located here. Below are some links of resources mentioned during the conversation.

Background Info: The internet and mobile technology devices have profoundly changed the way we live and work. The increased access to information and ease of communication came so suddenly that families are still figuring out how to deal with it.

Links

Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/)

BBC series The Educators (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dwbkt)

Article from MacWorld about jail breaking an Apple product

(http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iphone/ios-jailbreaking-pros-cons-jailbreak-iphone-good-bad-3491721/)

In the April 2014 issue of the Educator, OIS Technology Director Stephen Frater summarizes research on children and screen time.

(http://www.senri.ed.jp/site/attachments/852_Educator_12%20April%202014.pdf)

Article from the NY Times September 10, 2014 “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html?_r=0)

Article from the May7, 2014 issue of The NewYorker “Multitask Masters”

(http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/multitask-masters)