Leading a Digital School 2016 Day 2

Day 2 theme - Shift to Deeper Learning

Keynote Derek Wenmoth

Two questions:

1. Who owns the knowledge?

  • What are our ideas about knowledge, minds and learning that inform our teaching?
  • Our education system is prefaced on the idea of knowledge transmission.
  • We need less passive and more active learning
  • Breaking down the curriculum - is that actually good for students?

2. What is our vision of learning and technology?

  • Socratic app scan homework and get answers. We need to ask un-Googleable questions!
  • Homework - home - why is that different? Work - why not learning? We should call learning learning - it doesn't matter where it happens.
  • OECD report on technology use
  • Introducing a new technology doesn't change just one thing, it changes everything.
  • Student access to technology is changing their expectation as learners - how do we engage them in the content and process of learning?
  • New pedagogies for deep learning - Michael Fullan
  • Is tech simply a substitute for existing practice or does it open up opportunities for new things in new ways?
Derek described a continuum between tasks that are totally focused on ICT to tasks that use ICT implicitly where there is a total focus on learning.

Derek also described a two-dimensional model 


  • Engage students with "Wicked problems" - no clear solutions, span multiple domains, are highly complex, uncertain and value laden
  • Going deeper - engage in learning opportunities that go beyond their class and school walls, put students at the heart, stop testing all the time, engage in authentic projects, let them learn about what they are interested in, stop benchmarking to measures such as international test scores
  • Start inventing the excellence of the future. You cannot fix the horse wagon to get to the moon, you need to work on rocket science.


Keynote Address 4: Jill Margerison

Jill's keynote descibed a number of tasks she has used that encourage deep learning.

Jill described a normal writing task, where students were told their writing would be published in a class book that would be sold to parents. Publishing it made a difference to the student performance. They had a bigger audience than just the teacher.

She described a class project - starting with $100 her homegroup used Kiva lending to decide who to lend money to.

The usual silent reading lesson in library was flipped so students made/created using lego or play-doh to demonstrate what they had learned from their reading.

My Mahara portfolio software
Other points:

  • Would you want to be a student in your classroom?
  • eTwinning - connecting teachers and classes across the world
  • Forums allow introverts a voice
  • Empowering staff - how? Delivering programs (Celtic), Myer Briggs, personal study programs
  • Tai Chi for students
  • Action research project
  • Learning - call it a celebration rather than test
  • School Marketing - emphasise play, discovery, imagination.