Educational Origami

This week has been exciting and fun. ISNZ – independent schools of New Zealand held the annual conference for Heads, Bursars and boards in Wellington. This year had a different twist to the opening and closing keynote addresses.

The opening keynote was Martin Westwell of Flinders University. He was presenting to the conference on Nueroscience, education etc. The difference was that in addition to all of the assemble principals etc were students from independent schools.

The students were in four nodes around the country and were beamed into the conference via HD video conference on KAREN. Kristin, Southwell (Hamilton), Scot’s College (Wellington) and Christ’s College hosted the nodes and the students from the independent schools in the region.

At the end of the Keynote, the assembled students were presented with a challenge in the form of a experiment on Multitasking. Over the next 2 days the students tested their peers and teachers. They processed and collated the data on Editgrid.

Saturday the students reassembled at the host schools and processed, analysed and evaluated the results. They then reported back to the closing keynote of the conference (and their principals) via the video conference (the keynote also video conferenced in from Flinder’s University).

The experience was brilliant. The students conducted the experiment, recorded and processed the data and then presented this back to a conference of the heads of the independent schools of New Zealand. They were fine ambassadors of their schools. The conclusions, analysis and evaluation showed a high degree of understanding, imagination, and maturity.

It was for me a privillage to be involved. I don’t know if this has ever been done before, certainly to the best of my knowledge it hasn’t. The focus was not the technology, that was for the most part seemless and unnoticable, rather the focus was on the students and their learning.

Wow! what fun.