TRaining

Sydney: 17th - 20th March 2018

Compiled by Sasha Andersson

Day 1:

After enjoying a lovely breakfast at Rydges Sydney, we gathered at tables in the conference room, one per country (but two for Brunei!) and got down to the business of getting to know each other. This started with introductions at the table, then a getting to know you activity, for the partners, using maps and sticky notes we drew ourselves, our schools, and our work, then had to decipher each others drawings!

Getting to know you activity:

MY SCHOOL

MY WORK

(green for Aina, purple for Sasha)

Next was discussing what the goals of the program were, with the question "What if the BRIDGE project could change the world?"

BRIDGE develops students to be global citizens who have:

deeper intercultural understanding
real-life digital capability
new knowledge of Asia and Australia
strengthened language skill

These goals are reflected in the OECD Global Competencies Framework:

They also support the UN Sustainable Development Goals:

It was these two documents that guided all our training and project planning for the weekend.

Our agenda for Day 1 then included collaboration and communication (building BRIDGES activity), exploring global competence (in particular, empathy) and a city photo-empathy challenge to develop our ideas about perspective (check out #BRIDGE5X5).

Building Bridges:

The task? Build a bridge that is 30cm long, 15cm high, and can stand for 30 seconds.

The challenge? You get to plan together, but break into two teams and build it separately and see if they still look the same.

hmmmmm.....

(Our table: standing - Diana, Tan, Brent, Jodi, Janet, sitting - Iza, Aina, Sasha)

We agreed upon the following norms for the weekend (credit AEF). In particular I liked 'hold your ideas lightly' and I've posted this picture here as a reminder to come back to them as often as possible.

I think this is also a key time to mention Chris Harte, and Unstuck Learning Design. Chris was an amazing facilitator and I gained a lot from working with him.

Perspective

A task to develop our perspective. What do you see here? Does anyone else see the same things?

I see...

I think...

I wonder...

City Photo Empathy Challenge - go out into the city, find 5 interesting things, and take 5 photos, from 5 different perspectives! Check out #BRIDGE5x5 on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Here's some of Sasha's:

Our group out and about in Sydney for the 5x5 challenge.

Left to right: Iza, Janet, Beatriz, Sasha, Aina, Brent, Jodie, Mona, Tan, Diana.

Reflection for each day occurred on FlipGrid, a video sharing application. The reflection topics for Day 1 were:

During the City Challenge, were there any particular things you saw which changed your perspectives?
How did empathy play a role in the task?

Day 2:

The foci of Day 2 were the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and Design Thinking. After a short warm-up activity (Word Sneak - inspired by the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, YouTube it!) we did a Map from Memory task, which involved working in groups to draw, from memory, the UN SDGs, and then grade the other team on the table (interesting exercise in moderation - how do we grade each other fairly?)

I'm going to stop here briefly to mention the 'Sets' we used daily:

Knowledge set
Mindset
Skillset
Toolset

Each day, and for some activities, it would be re-iterated what particular things we were using or developing within each 'set'. Here's our table from Day 2:

Sustainable Development Goals

I'm putting this video here, because it's something we watched, and it gives better context than my words ever could: The World's Largest Lesson

Also check out:

Looking at the SDGs led us to a Design Sprint: The 1 hour SDG Lesson.

The task was to use Design Thinking (critical thinking and creative thinking) to design a 1 hour lesson that focused on one-two of the SDGs. We went through this step by step over the course of the day, until every group had designed and drawn up a one hour lesson that was high impact, and low effort, to get students passionately curious about an SDG.

Problem Finding

What are good questions?
What's relevant to our sites?
What are my/their/our problems?
Draw the links

Empathy

What are the challenges faced?
What would be their perspective?
Draw this in

How might we...?

Focus it!
Amp up the good, and dial down the bad
Get specific:
How might we collaboratively design sustainability projects across both our schools in order to reach goal 11 of the SDGs?

Our team: Tan and Brent, Aina and Sasha

Our thinking: reduce paper waste in the schools.

Ideation

Write down every single little idea ever about this goal
You have 10 minutes - aim for 100 ideas!
Narrow down to the high impact, low effort strategies

Our group got 96 ideas!

Highlighted in green are the ones that fit into High Impact/Low Effort

Prototyping

Get the idea out of your head
Communicate it
Use pen and paper to quickly sketch your ideas
Use a simple sequence

Pitching

The Hook: how do we engage them?
The Activities: what will they do? Student centred as much as possible
The Evidence: how will they demonstrate their knowledge of SDGs?

Our groups lesson: a simple way to get students to take note of how much paper waste is around the school; where it comes from; how to reduce printed waste; how to change from paper to paperless; getting commitment for change.

Critique

This happened the next day, but our steps were:

Take post it notes with you to view all the 1 hour lessons on the walls
Be hard on content, soft on people
Hold ideas lightly!

The Day 2 reflection focused on three parts- Connect, Extend, Question.

one thing that connected your thinking
one thing that extended your thining
one last burning question

Of course then it was off to the

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

Dinner and drinks provided, dress up in your finery or traditional dress, listen to speeches from Julie Bishop (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Bob Randall (ACARA CEO) and of course our own Hamish Curry (AEF, Executive Director). We all so had the opportunity to meet Nicola Rossenblum, the High Commissioner for Australia in Brunei.

Above: All cohorts from the Australia-ASEAN BRIDGE Program 2018, the Indonesian members of the Australia-Indonesia BRIDGE Program 2018 and invited dignitaries.

Left: Sasha and Aina at the Opera House.

Right: Julie Bishop, MP, giving her speech.

Below: The Brunei Cohort, with Julie Bishop (Minister for Foreigh Affairs), Aaron O'Shannessy (Director, AEF), Hamish Curry (Executive Director, AEF) and Nicola Rossenblum (High Commissioner for Australia in Brunei Darussalam)

Day 3:

Day 3 had two foci: Project Hives, and a Technology Exploratorium. The Project Hives was the start of focusing our individual partnership plans, using the design processes used yesterday in the Design Sprint, broken up by an exploration of various technology options available to us, including VR courtesy of Google!

Firstly we got interested, the way our students would, on an interesting version of the globe (available here). We asked questions, again the way we want our students to, based on the images presented, which bought up the idea of Google-able and un-Google-able questions.

We want our students to be curious, and so we have to find ways of drawing them in, and it is the un-Google-able that draws in the highest engagement.

As we learnt, from Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neurobiologist from the University of Southern California,

"It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things you don't care about."

And if that isn't one of the most important things about education I've ever read I'm not sure what is.

From there it was onto Hexagonal Mapping - working on narrowing down our big picture plan, using the OECD Global Competency Framework and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as being encouraged to link to our respective Curricula and educational goals. On butchers paper we started to map our ideas, making links and annotations, moving things around and trying new combinations - our original Hive is nothing like what we finished with!

Below: The Hive at 3 different stages during the day!

To break up the day (yes this took all day!), not including lunch, we also did a Technology Exploratorium, with the highlight being a virtual reality journey using Google Expeditions! This included a cheap phone and cardboard set up, to create a set of VR goggles, while the facilitator took us up a huge rock face! I think the number of people sitting down indicates just how disconcerting this was, but also how fun, and also how accessible, even on a budget.

Other tech we explored and discussed includes:

Mentimeter
Kahoot
Padlet
Storybird
FlipGrid
Slido

and we have since started a shared Padlet to share more and more examples of technology we are using in our classrooms.

After getting back to our Hives for a bit, we took a break to discuss critique. I'm going to leave this video here, because it was shown to us then, and is now, still the best thing to demonstrate how we learnt to understand critique.

We were also given the following posters, before finding a partner team, to briefly describe our plan, and get feedback. The key point in this I think though, was that we asked specifically how much feedback we wanted. Eg, "we are about 70% finished, so 30% feedback please."

Our reflection today was to focus on evaluating our Hives, what went well, what we achieved, and what we could do better next time. That evening we enjoyed a quiet BBQ on the rooftop of Rydges, and had an earlier night, preparing our bodies for day 4, and our travel back to our Australian counterparts schools for our home stay.

Day 4:

Today was the day to exhibit our projects! And of course, get feedback! But the day couldn't start without a warm up, and for that we did a Team Conga of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Basically you play off against someone, and if you lose you join their conga line. It reminds me of Snake (circa 2005), and I have since played it in my classroom to get a 'winner' using complete chance (we call it 'Ulat' (caterpillar in Bahasa Melayu) and play Gajah, Orang, Semut, rather than the standard Rock, Paper, Scissors - feel free to use it!) Oh and btw, I'm pretty sure Australia beat Vietnam in the final round.

Our next activity was to empathise with our ASEAN counterparts - they've been working in a second language all weekend, and it was our turn to work in a second language! The Bruneians on our table taught us the simple kids rhyme, Kap Kap Udang, (nearly) completely in Malay! Words and video below!

kap kap udang

udang tangkap lepas

banyak bunyi orang

lari lekas-lekas

Video from Sasha A

Next we were given a blank PowerPoint template to start cementing our projects. To see our respective projects, check out the slides on our respective partnership pages. This involved taking our Hive, and fitting it into a presentation, thinking about things such as vision and evidence, roles and responsibilities, calendars, technology, and a pre-mortem! What can go wrong and how do we mitigate it?

From there it was our project presentations! We set up our PowerPoints, our Hives, and a feedback sheet, drawing on De Bono's Critical Thinking Hats and waited for feed back! We did the same for other groups after lunch.

Clockwise from top left: Sasha and Aina prepared for their presentation, Brent and Tan prepared for theirs, sticky notes giving feedback to Sasha and Aina, the critique template

Our next instructions were simple:

be proud of ourselves!
share our plans, at school and with colleagues
hold your ideas lightly
try things soon and critique them

Our final reflection for FlipGrid was to think of 4 things we were proud of, and give appreciation to one other member of the group for a positive thing they had done.

And so ended our intensive 4 days of training, networking, planning and reflection. We headed to the airport and flew off into the sunset... to visit our Australian partner schools and continue to cement the relationships we had built that weekend.

Information and reflection on Home Stays is available via each individual partnerships page. I'll leave you with a map of just how wide-spread this project is.

Australia - ASEAN BRIDGE 2018

Thank you for taking the time to read about the birth of our project, and the efforts that went into it.

Thank you also, on behalf of all of us, to the Asia Education Foundation, in particular:

Aaron O'Shannessey, director and all round great guy
Hamish Curry, exec and ambassador
Emeline Gillingham, master organiser and planner
Jessica Stevens, master organiser and stylist
Natasha Redden, social media guru

and last but not least, Chris Harte, design genius, educator extraordinaire, and tech wizz!

Apologies if I've missed anyone. Send me an angry email.

A final thank you from me, Sasha Andersson, to the amazing team I have with me:

Aina - partner teacher from heaven ;)
Tan and Brent
Iza and Jodi
Diana and Janet
Mona and Beatriz
Emily, Anna and Sharon
Joanna and Bianca

Feedback is encouraged! If I've missed anything, or got anything wrong, used a picture or document without permission or generally buggered up, let me know! Also let me know what you like (think like De Bono)! The goal of this website is to share and grow. Email me:

sasha.andersson157@schools.sa.edu.au

Google Sites

Report abuse