Blogosphere feed

Google Wave - is your school using it?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:28:48 -0800

So it’s been out for a little while now, and many of us will have tried it out…but what impact is Google Wave making on schools?

We’re in the process of updating our blog software, and we’ll be looking at options for increasing participation and collaboration. We like Disqus comments, but embedding Google Wave conversations could potentially transform the nature of our communications.

We know that some of our students are using it but are any of the IB’s tech savvy teachers surfing the Wave yet? What are your first impressions?

IB Virtual Community prepares for Release 0.3

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:42:38 -0800

The International Baccalaureate’s Virtual Community is right on task! We are set to release version 0.3 on 14 December. Upon this release, our first external users will join the site, representing the following stakeholder groups: MYP students, DP students, Educators, Alumni, and PD providers. Users will enter the site and create his or her personal profile [...]

Information for Secure Flight Regulations

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:52:03 -0800

It is IB Americas policy to keep our volunteers apprised of any new information regarding travel, and we would like to share with you the following informative link http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/secureflight/. We hope that this information is helpful to you.

If you have any questions or would like to share any experience that you have had in your recent travels, which may prove valuable to your colleagues, please post your comments here .

Lana Mills

IB Americas volunteer services

Online professional development website

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:54:43 -0800

IB Online Professional Development are pleased to announce the opening of the new web portal which will be the ‘one stop shop’ for online professional development for IB teachers.
Teachers will from the end of November 2009 be able to identify their workshop, register and pay using a secure online form.
Links built into the foot of all pages enable all users to inform their learning community of the site using micro-blogging (Twitter) and save page information using a variety of online social bookmarking sites.

IB Americas Action Kits

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:40 -0700

The IB Americas Action Kits are a series of information guides that explore the benefits of an IB education for students, schools and communities in Canada, the Caribbean and the United States.

Each kit includes an overview of our three programmes, our assessment and evaluation practices, and our professional development opportunities for teachers along with student profiles and testimonials from educators.

To access the Action Kits, please visit www.ibo.org/actionkits

If you have feedback or article ideas, please contact iba.comm@ibo.org

New Application and Authorization Process

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:51:56 -0700

Dear volunteers,

As part of the ongoing work to align processes within the IB Americas region, we have developed a new application and authorization process that takes effect this month for all schools submitting application form part A in 2010 or later.

These changes are explained in detail in the new application process and fees documents for each programme located on the Americas website at: www.ibo.org/iba/become

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight several important changes to the process:

For all three programmes:

New application deadlines for both northern and southern hemisphere schools
The introduction of a candidate fee payable annually that replaces all prior application fees (application form parts A and B fee and the continuation fee)
Ongoing services of a consultant for all candidate schools

For Primary Years and Middle Years Programmes:

The minimum time between application parts A and B has been increased to 18 months
Remote consultant assignment time has been increased to two years with an additional honorarium
Changes to professional development requirements

We rely upon our volunteers to help communicate these changes to schools in the region; therefore, we kindly request that you review the new documentation carefully.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the IB support desk via email at iba@ibo.org or by phone at 212-696-4464, extension 1 for English and French language assistance and +54 11 4766 3900, extension 122 for Spanish language assistance.

Thank you for your continued support of the IB.

Kind Regards,

Gloria McDowell
Senior Head of School Services
IB Americas

Presentations - The IB: A Catalyst for change

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:41:14 -0700

Dear all,

Most of the presentations have been posted on the “Presentations” page. We thank all the presenters for their generosity of sharing these with us.

As you will notice, there are some that have not been linked. These might have been a discussion rather than a presentation.

Please contact us if you have any further questions.

IB World - tweets and comments from the IB community

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:47:22 -0700

We had a great response to our request for examples of environmental initiatives that IB schools are involved in. View the thread on your school and green issues to see some of the comments.

Sean Löfgren tweeted

@iborganization I’m an IB student from Antwerp (AIS) and I help the environment by biking an hour a day to get to and from school. Cheers

Good work Sean! This is a great example of how every individual can make a difference.

Gavin Judd takes this one step further

@iborganization At Edron Academy in Mexico City, We have a whole school obligatory transport system. This has reduced traffic dramatically.

Sounds impressive, and there may well be more on this in the next issue of IB World, look out for it!

As far as the current issue goes, some great feedback from frobro Joe in Korea

Read some of the 9/09 IB World magazine this weekend. Some good stuff. Glad a PD emphasis from IB is coming soon. @iborganization

Glad you liked it Joe, a lot of work goes into every issue and the IB World editor reads this blog…so he’ll be very happy to see your comment!

Keep in touch!

To get in touch with the IB Online team, you can tweet @iborganization or contact us using the form above.

For IB world suggestions or enquiries email the editor

Linking your school website to www.ibo.org

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:30:45 -0700

The banners and buttons below are available to all IB World Schools. They will allow you to create a link from your school website to your page on www.ibo.org. By placing one of these banners/buttons on your website it will allow visitors to confirm that you are an official IB World School.

How to use

Copy and paste the code for your chosen banner or button into your web page. IMPORTANT - You must change the “XXXXXX” in the first line of code to your IBIS school code (the one used for your school’s page on the IB website). If this is not changed then the link will not work.

Please do not edit or resize the banner. If the banner does not fit your website, please consider using one of the buttons instead. If you have a special request, contact us for assistance.

Great examples

Riverwood International Charter School have put a link right on their homepage.

Banner, 525 x 110

Option 2 - Large button, 184 x 101

Option 3 - Small button, 125 x 69

Thank you all for attending!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:45:08 -0700

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for attending the Heads World Conference in Seville and for your contributions. We hope you had a safe return journey.

A special thank to the presenters. As announced at the conference the presentations will be posted on this web site within a week from today.

On behalf of the organizing committee

Åke Sörman

Volunteer Services Blog Launch

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:09:24 -0700

Dear volunteers,

Welcome to the Americas volunteer services blog. This blog will feature updates on volunteer services in the region, including:

Training announcements
New policies and updates to existing policies
Volunteer highlights
And much, much more

But most of all, this is a tool for you to use to communicate with me and the larger volunteer community in the Americas about any question you may have related to your work as a volunteer with IB Americas.

To post a comment, please click on the comments tab in orange on the top of this blog page, scroll down and enter your information in the “post your reply” section and then click on the button “submit comment”.

I hope you find this blog useful. If you have any questions, please feel free to post in the comment section.

Thank you.

Kind Regards,

Lana Mills
Volunteer Services coordinator

Primary Years Programme IB Academy

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:48:38 -0700

10-13 December 2009 (arrival 9 December)
Baltimore, Maryland

Are you an experienced PYP educator? Have you ever thought about becoming a PYP site visitor and consultant? This PYP IB Academy will provide intensive training to prepare participants to take on two formal roles as site visitors and consultants related to the authorization of IB World Schools.

IB Americas will pay reasonable and properly receipted travel and lodging expenses in accordance with IB Americas Policy and Procedures for Reimbursement of Expenses.

If you are involved in (or recently retired from) a Primary Years Programme,and would like to apply, please go to the online registration site at http://www.volunteers.apteknet.com/ to submit your application. If you have recently submitted an application for the October 2009 training, we already have your application, and it will be considered for this and all subsequent trainings within a 3 year time period.

You will have a 10 day time period with which to complete your application and the absolute final deadline for submitting is 11:59 PM EST 12 October 2009.

If you have any questions regarding the application procedure for this Academy, please feel free to use this blog to post any comments, suggestions or questions related to this post.

Thank you. Lana Mills
Volunteer Services coordinator
IB Americas

Conference programme - World Heads Conference 2009

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:50:03 -0700

The conference programme includes details of the full sequence of events, biographies of keynote speakers, information about breakout sessions and sponsor details.

Programme Seville World Heads Conference [PDF, 5MB]

Great round up of iPhone educational applications

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:01:07 -0700

Paul Reid, is responsible for iPhone in Ed, a blog that covers a range of potential applications for the iPhone in education.

Definitely food for thought for anyone who is interested in widening access to education through the application of technology.

IB World request - your school and green issues

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:23:17 -0700

We need great examples of things IB schools and students are doing to help the environment or to raise awareness of green issues.

From walking to school to saving the rainforests, it doesn’t matter how big or small your efforts are, we want to hear about them.

So if you have examples to share, either Tweet us on Twitter, post a comment on this blog or use our contact form

We look forward to hearing from you!

Wordpress multilingual blogging

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:34:21 -0700

We need to add two more languages to our blog network, French and Spanish. In most cases, this will simply be a case of providing entirely separate blog content, but in a select few we’ll have a requirement to pass English text to our translation department for like-for-like translation into French and Spanish. In these cases we’ll need:

A user-friendly interface to all three language version blogs for our translators and editors to use.
A simple language switching option for blog readers to be able to jump from one language to another.

While this may be easily achievable, we’re only just about to embark on it. Any suggestions for great plug-ins or words of warning would be gratefully received!

Watch this blog for news of how we get on.

What’s your Facebook personality?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:56:16 -0700

I found this article on cnn.com on “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.” You can read it here and take the quiz to determine your catagory. I took the quiz and got this response: “Chances are you are a popular resident of Facebook whose updates are interesting to read. Keep posting!” I’d say the quiz is accurate! Let me know what you think of this article, and please feel free to post your quiz results in this post’s comments.

Of course I found this article on my friend Sarah’s Facebook page. Thanks, SPP!

Calling Moodle developers

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:18:33 -0700

The IB is expanding its offerings of online professional development in 2010, in order to accomplish this a new group of course developers are required, who are experienced at development using Moodle. If you fit this requirement and perhaps additionally have IB teaching experience we would like to hear from you. Please complete the online form here and we will be in touch.
To find out more about the current and future online workshops for teachers, please visit our newly designed online workshop website

E-newsletter quick-start

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:04:01 -0700

A quick guide to creating E-newsletters using Campaign Monitor

1. Overview

Logging-in will take you to your ‘Overview’ screen. This screen shows all the campaigns you are currently working on, as well as campaigns you have recently sent. From this screen, choose the following option:

Create a new campaign (large button with green cross on right-hand side of screen)

2. Define campaign and sender

On this page you need to do the following:

Give your campaign a name - e.g. May 2009 regional newsletter
Enter the email subject - usually the same as the campaign name, this is the name your recipient will see in their inbox. The subject can include some personalisation if you have uploaded names or titles with your email address list. Select what to include from this drop-down.
A ‘from’ name - for example - IB Communications or an individual’s name.
A ‘from’ email address - the email address the campaign will appear to be sent from.
A ‘reply’ email address - the email address to which any responses will go.

When you’re done, click ‘Next’.

3. Select the format for this campaign

This page allows you to select the format of your campaign. You have three options:

Create your own HTML page and plain text version and import it into Mailbuild. This allows you to send completely custom designs through Mailbuild and to take advantage of its tracking and reporting features. This should not be used without contact Communications first and is generally best for one-off campaigns that use lots of graphics or unique formats.
Send a plain text only campaign. This sends a basic plain text email, but still retains all the tracking features of Mailbuild.
Use one of my templates - this should be your default choice. Templates created by the web team in Communications are available here. For changes to templates contact web@ibo.org

For the purposes of this demonstration, choose one of the templates. When you’re done, click ‘Next’.

4. Define content

This page allows you to add and edit content.

How do I edit?

The icons on the page allow you to edit and delete existing items, as well as to add new items.

Some areas of the page cannot be edited and will update automatically, such as the menu under ‘In this issue’ which is created from every title you add.

Adding content

You can cut and paste content directly into any of the screen areas. When you cut and paste content you will be asked to create a plain text version as well. The plain text version may require some formatting to ensure it fits onto the recommended screen size and that it’s formatting is appropriate.

Adding new sections happens automatically when you hit ‘Add new item’. You should try and work with this format wherever possible, to keep the presentation of IB newsletters consistent and recognisable. If you have absolutely unique requirements, contact web@ibo.org

Adding images is managed automatically and images are resized in order to keep the filesize small. If you require bigger images, contact web@ibo.org

Some changes can be made directly in the HTML of the page. If you don’t feel comfortable working with HTML, contact web@ibo.org

When you have added your content, click ‘Preview’ to see how your newsletter looks.

If you’re happy with this, click ‘I’m done, return to the snapshot’.

If you need to make more changes, click ‘Make more changes’.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to ‘Snapshot’ next.

5. Snapshot

This page is your campaign homepage. From here you can preview and edit both HTML and plain text versions of your email.

Click ‘Define recipients’

6. Define recipients

This page shows all the subscribers you can send to. Subscribers can be added via pre-existing lists, or individually. Adding lists requires a seperate tutorial, but is easily done via CSV files.

Select the subscribers you want to send this email to and click ‘Next.

This will return you to the Snapshot screen.

7. Test

From the snapshot screen, you will need to click the ‘Test and define delivery’ button. From this screen you can send a test version of the email to yourself and as many approvers are required.

Send yourself a test email every time!

When you receive your test email in your inbox, and are happy with it, click ‘Next’.

8. Schedule campaign delivery

You now have the option to either send your campaign immediately, or to schedule it for future delivery. This is useful because you can stagger your email delivery times. For example, you might want to create an email on Friday afternoon that needs to arrive Monday morning. Simply set the scheduled delivery time for Monday morning and the system will do the rest. Certian times of day achieve better open and read rates than others, check your campaign analytics to see what works best for you.

When you’re done here, click ‘Send campaign’ and you will be taken to the payment screen.

9. Payment

The final screen allows you to pay for your campaign. Enter credit card details and you’ll be charged and the campaign will be scheduled.

IB Virtual Community - First version released

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:29:20 -0700

On June 25th it was announced that the International Baccalaureate and ePals, Inc. would collaborate to create a customized online learning community for IB students, educators, alumni, volunteers and other stakeholders. We are pleased to announce that on July 31st, the first release of the IB Virtual Community was launched. Our testing community has [...]

Google Wave (goodbye to email?)

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:29:51 -0700

Has Google found the next killer app?

That’s not for me to say. The way in which we communicate changes so fast that I wouldn’t bet on anything anymore. From letters to telephone to pager to email to mobile phone to texting to msn to picture messaging to Youtube to facebook. I’ve probably missed out a bunch of technologies and even put them in the wrong order, but that’s not the point. Technology and organisations like Google who push technology is allowing us to talk to one another in extremely interesting ways. And the best thing about Google…it’s all for free. That’s why I think Google’s latest development will catch on because anyone, anywhere can get hold of it and use it. So what is it?

Well, Google’s latest endeavour is an open-source web app called Google wave. To quote Google…

“Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web”

It’s quite hard to explain how it works but basically each message you send is called a wave. There is a huge number of things you can do with a wave. (To further quote Google…)

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

A really exciting aspect of Wave for me is everything is done in real time. When you contribute to a wave those who are part of the conversation see it being typed live. Pointless you may think but it can dramatically reduce waiting time for receiving messages. You can start responding or formulating your response while the other person is typing.

Other cool features of Wave is that it can be embeded into a web page and a conversation can take place live on a web page. You can also have a chat with someone through a web page but the other person can be using their Wave account to access the wave or even a different web page that it may also be embeded in. There is also infinite embedding possibilities through the Google Wave APIs.

Some may think that this is just email, with fairy lights, and possibly you’re right. But I also think that it’s a really useful communications tool. Google Wave is IM, email, document management, collaboration, sharing, real time, free and many other things.

Would this be useful at the IB? I think so. We have so many telephone conversations, email conversations, video link up’s and with each there is always annoying problems such as connection problems and dialing in issues. Time lost through trying to connect with eachother. Google Wave could provide an answer to these kind of problems through integrating many communication technologies and putting them all into one web based app.

It’s being released later this year and I’ll be putting some of my time aside to test out it’s features and capabilities.

You really need to see it to understand what it can do. The video below is a preview of Google Wave given at a Google conference this year. It’s pretty long at 2 hours, but it’s worth watching it, maybe over a few sittings like I did. Enjoy.

Social media cheat sheet

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:53:27 -0700

I found this blog post today that innumerates the top 100 social media sites available to businesses. I hope this is helpful to you! There are pages on here that I’ve never heard of–thanks Nextmark!

Here is the link: http://nextmark.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/top-100-b2b-social-media-cheat-sheet.html

About this year’s conference

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:30:21 -0700

This year’s theme, New Thinking for a New World, reflects the exciting changes and challenges facing the IB Americas community as it draws together the resources from the former IB Latin America and North America regions.

More information about the conference

Can’t be there? Keep in touch

Experience the conference live through Twitter beginning Thursday, 9 July at 4:30 p.m. EDT

The George Walker blog

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:57:21 -0700

George Walker’s blog ran from September 2005 until November 2007. In that time he wrote eloquently on a variety of topics that related to the IB and his role as Director General.

His blog is presented here for archive purposes only, it is no longer updated and George no longer responds to comments.

Google Chrome OS - web 3.0?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:40:25 -0700

As any Iphone user will tell you, there’s ain’t much you can’t do with web apps.

Apple’s lightweight device has demonstrated just how capable you really can be with just an internet connection and a load of cloud-based applications. It doesn’t need lightning fast processors or fat-pipe internet connection…it just works. In addition, Apple’s famous virus-resistance has been carried across to the Iphone, and it appears to be something Google will be implementing in their recently announced Chrome OS.

We’ve seen a lot of blurring of the lines between online and offline recently. Google Gears took us one step beyond simple online/offline sychronization and enabled us to use our favourite web apps without an internet connection. More recently, Adobe Air platforms have begun to extend the functionality of API enabled web apps like Twitter into that rarely navigated purgatory previously occupied by nefarious adware products. It’s increasingly apparent that our installed desktop applications are dating fast in comparison to our web apps, and without periodic synchronization or updates some of them are becoming archaic.

How long will it be before my creaky CS3 Adobe suite starts to look completely outclassed by free online apps? I might not be using Photoshop online right now, but if my browser was online and I could be running it all off a Netbook…hmm.

From an IB perspective, this fits well with our organizational ambitions - to be mobile, reactive and lightweight. Anything that reduces the burden of support is good for our business. What will be interesting, is to see how these products mature beyond offering cut-down but functional alternatives to the installed leviathans we rely on.

Beyond the move to cloud computing, I’d be very surprised if Google didn’t take this opportunity to push Google Connect as part of the package. If they score with their OS, the packaging of a single sign-on solution alongside it as an innocent freebie could just make Google OS the next big thing.

Twittering from the Americas Conference

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:37:14 -0700

On the right-hand side of this blog you can see the latest Tweets from Steve Hreha and Sandra Coyle.

Steve is an IB Coordinator and ToK teacher. Who loves telling bad jokes and making people laugh!
Sandra communicates with flair for the International Baccalaureate in the Americas.

Follow them throughout the conference by adding them on Twitter, or visiting this blog!

Wordcamp 2009 - we’ll be there, will you?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:31:49 -0700

The IB online team are excited to be attending Wordcamp 2009 in Cardiff, UK.

We’ll be looking for great examples of Wordpress as a multi-lingual, collaborative and secure platform to help us deliver on the IB’s mission values of ‘Quality, Access, Infrastructure’. How are we going to do that? Well, hopefully by providing support and advice, but also by creating appropriate forums for ideas to emerge and evolve amongst the IB community.

If you’re going be there, get in touch!

DSI Prototype Testing

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:20:07 -0700

Since we have announced the International Baccalaureate’s collaboration with ePals, Inc, we would like to share the results of our DSI prototype testing, held this past February. The feedback that we received will influence our future online learning community site. For the first phase of our prototypes, we had volunteer testers from the following stakeholder groups: [...]

IB chooses ePals to create our online learning community

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:20:03 -0700

The International Baccalaureate and ePals, Inc. will collaborate to create an online learning community

“Why we fight”

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:43:37 -0700

As this is my last post before I leave the IB, I thought I would sign off by sharing with you some correspondence I have had with a person who has both inspired and encouraged me over the 7 years I have been with the organisation.

Barbara Stefanics has been a faculty member for the IB’s online curriculum centre since its inception way back in 1999 and has helped develop a community of learners in ITGS that is both self-sustaining and serves as a model for other curriculum areas within the programmes. She retired from that role last year in order to become the chief examiner for ITGS.

Over the years, we have exchanged ideas, experiences and stories related to technology in education and how it can transform the design of teaching and learning. Recently she shared the following with me. I have copied it verbatim because, to be honest, she tells it better than I do. It’s a great example of why we fight.

Dear Lee,

The Horizon Project which was amongst one of the first Flatclassroom Projects 2006-07.
http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com
My first collaborative global project with my ITGS class and David B was a member of this class.

David B had diagnosed health problems that hindered both oral and written communication. He would stutter terribly - often struggling for minutes before he could say the one sentence that he needed to say. We all waited because we knew that that one sentence would have real value and substance. On any written work or test, additional time would make no difference. The longest response he could manage would be only a few words, up to a sentence.

One day in the staffroom (thank goodness for staffrooms), I bumped in to David B’s English teacher. We shared a common problem, and she gave me the first clue that there was a chance for communication. She told me that strangely, David B’s stuttering did not occur when he was involved in drama. That was quite a surprise.

As part of the horizon project there were two breakthroughs that gave me a hint of how to actually get a more reliable assessment for David B and by-pass the communication blocks. Both used technology.

1. All of the students in the horizon project were required to produce a video. David B produced this video at home on his own in his room. It was the evidence that I needed to show that David B could communicate just like any other student if he could use video or similar technology tools. Please go to
http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/MMEG+Impact+on+Science+and+Enviroment+and+Health
to see the video … you have to scroll down until you see “Overview of MMEG’s Impact on Health” and David B’s picture on the screen.
2. The second indication I got was in the student meeting on Elluminate with Julie [Lindsay]. All of the students were expected to explain their outcomes of their research and the Horizon Project. I simply could not believe it! Right before my very eyes, David was completely articulate. Unfortunately, it was such a surprise that I did not record it in Elluminate.

When I was in Cardiff at Grade Award 2007, I asked the subject area manager who I could speak to about this and he arranged for someone from the Special Ed’s office to meet with me. I showed her the video (1 above) and this actually started the process going that David B got the opportunity to record his IB examinations in ITGS and English with a microphone.

The result was that instead of a grade 0-1 for ITGS, he got a 5. He also passed his IB! It is truly the most amazing success story of my entire teaching career and all due to the support from IBCA for such a special case.

I thought you would enjoy this and the proof that technology opens doors for special students.

If you have similar stories to tell, please share them. It matters.

Thanks for listening and, as an old mucker of mine used to say, “Have fun!”

Lee

Even your local farm has a blog

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:34:08 -0700

I read this article on npr.org and wanted to share it, to show a great example of social media at work and making a difference in our sustainability footprint. Supporting local agriculture is a topic that our IB students sometimes explore in the classroom. This article is about Tim and Liz Young, who run Nature’s Harmony Farm in Elberton, Georgia, US.

Tim Young says, “”While farm life is thought of as rural, remote and antiquated, technology makes it easy to reach out and connect with like-minded people. Doing so allows customers, other farmers and interested parties to comment, criticize, question and share their own experiences in ways that stimulate conversation, learning and passion.” Right on!

You can read their blog here.

Social media roundtables

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:13:12 -0700

Last week, I attended the New York Social Media Roundtable event, “Social Media for Nonprofits.” The topics circulated around how to leverage social media to build communities around your nonprofit, and also to generate donations. I felt validated in our social media efforts here at the IB! Facebook is widely accepted as the best for nonprofits to crowd-source. There was not too much discussion on building private online communities; which is what we’re gearing up for here at the IB. But it was great to learn more about how other nonprofits have successfully engaged social media to deliver their messaging. There were also some fascinating figures on nonprofits raising money through microgiving from social media.

I came across this blog post by Zeb Dropkin: he breaks down the current social media tools and explains them clearly. You can read this post here.

Also of interest, panelist Matthew Knell used the phrase, “transparent authentic relationships.” It is these relationships that enable a direct connection to the stakeholder, and give social networking tools their stickiness.

For more information on the roundtable, you can go their website to download notes from the event.

The IB: A Catalyst for change

Fri, 29 May 2009 03:36:17 -0700

Registrations are now open!

We are delighted to announce that the 2009 Heads World Conference will be held in Seville, Spain. The conference will open on the evening of Tuesday 13 October, and conclude on Friday 16 October with a gala dinner.

Conference languages

The conference languages are Spanish and English. All plenaries and break-out sessions will propose simultaneous translation from English to Spanish and/or Spanish to English.

Registration forms are available in the three main IB working languages - English, French and Spanish.

Music from the Indian Ocean

Thu, 28 May 2009 04:12:06 -0700

The Indian Ocean has a history of connecting cultures from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Indian Ocean islands, along with Europe, through trade and exchange. Some of this has been brutal and dehumanising, notably the slave trade. Not all exchanges have resulted in the loss of liberty and life and one of the aspects that struck me quite strongly during the experience in Zanzibar was the magic of music to connect peoples.

Indian Ocean ...

During the Tuesday evening of the field experience we met a group of people who had been chosen to talk to us about Zanzibar history and culture. Two of these individuals had particular connections with music: Yusuf Mahmoud, organiser of the Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) international festival celebrating East African music (www.busaramusic.org), and Hilda Kiel, one of the founders of the Dhow Countries Music Academy, a not-for-profit music school in Stone Town (www.zanzibarmusic.org).

The aim of the Sauti za Busara festival is to showcase music from the Swahili region specifically and the African continent generally, as well as a smaller number of artists from further afield. Yusuf presented a short film about the festival, which showed the energy and passion of those involved and the clear enjoyment of the crowds. It seemed clear from what he told us that this festival is drawing many peoples together from various parts of the world.

The Dhow Countries Music Academy specialises in teaching the traditional music from that region and serves several purposes: providing music for enjoyment, education and employment. We had the pleasure of visiting the Academy on the Wednesday afternoon and experiencing the rehearsals of one of the ensembles, with some dancing! Definitely my highlight of the trip.

Ensemble rehearsing at the Dhow Countries Music Academy

On the Wednesday evening we had a very special musical experience when we visited the Maulidi Ya Homu rehearsal, which I think originates as a meditative tradition in Islam. This was a mesmerising performance that took place in a courtyard in the sidestreets of Stone Town; very subtle and almost sensual where the singers move and chant and fall into trance. We watched along with the local community and small children joined in with the graceful movements. A far better description of the performance than I could write can be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7646108.stm.

Maulidi Ya Homu rehearsal

Social media case studies

Thu, 21 May 2009 13:47:47 -0700

Last week, I attended Social Communications: The Case Studies - Conference and Roundtables at the CUNY Grad Center. Speakers included: Philip Mooney, Director of Heritage Communications at Coca-Cola, Allison O’Keefe Wright, VP Consumer Insight at MTV, and David Alston, VP of Marketing and Community at Radian6.

Philip Mooney’s blog is an narrative of Coca-Cola built upon its history, called “Coca-Cola Conversations.” He posts various old photos of people drinking Coca-Cola, images of bottles, recipes, and the evolution of the logo. I think this is an excellent example of how companies can build stories and therefore strengthen their communities around their products. I don’t even drink Coca-Cola, and I really like this blog. This blog helps Coca-Cola to position itself as a fixture in American history: its well done in layout, scope, and content. Here at the IB, I’ve been trying to gather our stories from around the world, through the 40 years that IB has been around. It’s been quite a challenge, but this is the way that the IB will be able to best connect its message to its community and beyond. It’s very exciting to me that we have so much to share; I just need help finding it. PS: “Coca-Cola Conversations” receives about 4000 hits per week, and they haven’t promoted this blog at all; it’s been pure word of mouth.

Some of the other highlights of the day include Allison O’Keefe Wright, talking about MTV’s private online community, MTVips (named by its members). MTVips has about 300 members, in the 18-22 age demographic. Allison says their interaction and feedback has been invaluable to them in terms of marketing, research and production. Not only that, but the members feel a personal investment in their opinions and their impact upon viewer experience. It’s been working extremely well for them. She said the success of MTV hinges on their consumer; they are constantly changing their approach to be completely current with their consumer. We are building a private online community here at the IB, and it’s extremely helpful for me to see what works for other companies.

In terms of social media as a tool for business, David Alston of Radian6 provided a clear and concise demonstration of the risks and rewards in social media. I recommend viewing his presentation here. He listed some of the reasons for a company to put off social media as: worried about ROI, fear of failing, unmeasurable, and not enough customers using social media yet. He asked, “What is the return on ignoring?” He made the analogy of a person standing outside of a company’s office, shouting complaints through a blowhorn. He asks, would you go down there and try to diffuse the problem? Or would you ignore it? Most likely, one would go talk to this person. That is what social media allows to do. Building communities creates a network of people that will not only promote your company, but also defend it.

For the IB, we only became part of the conversation eight months ago when we launched our fan page on Facebook. In the past two months, we are now on Twitter. And Social life, along with a few others, mark our foray into external blogging. For the IB, it’s just the beginning. The more we strengthen our online networks, the stronger our community will become and this will only enhance the experience of our stakeholders.

I also attended a great roundtable, “Turning Participation & Passion Into Profit,” hosted by Sandra Fathi and Leslie Campisi of Affect Strategies. Some of the other attendees voiced concerns of social media as unmeasurable. As Sandra said, what could be less measurable than traditional advertising? With the IB’s fan page on Facebook, we can track all of our interactions, what our fans like, our number of visitors, and demographics on the fans themselves (age, gender, and geographical location!). And that is just our Facebook page.

Let’s emphasize one more point from the conference: It’s not the tools. Social media has changed business and it’s here to stay. There will always be a new tool, and what matters is how we use it.

CASPAR

Wed, 20 May 2009 06:22:18 -0700

CASPAR, or Computer Assisted Self and Peer Ratings, is a project we have been watching for some time now out of the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP), Bournemouth University, UK.

It’s a tool for evaluating both the process and outcomes of group work in media projects and has a particular focus on assessing individual performance within the group. Understanding what contribution an individual has made within a collaborative piece of work is a major challenge for both teachers and assessment bodies, so this is one approach worth investigating further. Watch the video for more info.

When following the link to CEMP, check out their other projects too. There’s some interesting work that focuses on the application of new technologies, whilst at the same time demonstrating pedagogical principles in action.

Team collaboration

Fri, 15 May 2009 08:55:22 -0700

Each afternoon we walked from our hotel to the AKDN office located in a restored historic building, the Old Dispensary, opposite the port. The journey took us by key landmarks in the restoration of Stone Town such as Forodhani Park, the fort and water front. The sights and sounds of the port and nearby public open spaces such as Banyan Tree Square provided an authentic and exciting backdrop for our collaboration.

PYP team considers a central idea for a planner

MYP team reflects on a unit question

Zanzibar: Spice Island

Fri, 15 May 2009 06:11:25 -0700

At one time Zanzibar supplied 90% of the world’s cloves and is home to many spice plantations. Spices are vital to the economy and culture of Zanzibar. We had the opportunity to visit a farm to learn more about the farming, harvesting and distribution of spices. Our knowledgeable guides introduced us to the raw forms of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, lemon grass, cardamom, nutmeg, vanilla and other spices which offered a unique and sensory experience. Consequently, our curriculum conversations were spiced with ideas from our visit…

Spice girls: Kirsten, Monique, Mshai, Christine and Suzanne

Micro-giving instant gratification

Fri, 08 May 2009 13:40:07 -0700

My friend Alex left New York last fall for the Peace Corps. He’s stationed in rural Kenya and his project is to help start a library. There is an actual space demarcated, “Library,” in the local high school, but there are no books. Alex spearheaded this project, found a partner to organize the logistics and shipping of the books, and his goal is to raise $5,500. He is about half-way there, and it’s only been about two months.

Micro-giving’s allure is instant gratification. Alex’s site on Change.org has a goal chart with the amounts raised and to go. Once one donates, his or her name, location, and personal message posts to the bottom of the page. As soon as one gives, the goal meter increases. It’s accretion in real time, and the books for the library are not far off.

At times, the vagueness of non-profit donations can occlude potential donations. One might be less inclined to give a smaller donation to a larger, nonspecific cause. A sum like Alex’s $5,500 seems achievable, and the goal of bestowing books upon a library that has none feels tangible, even from thousands of miles away. This is the power of micro-giving.

Alex told a story: a rural community in Kenya needs books for their library. And if some of us donate just a little, we will collectively give this to them. This is the changing non-profit business model in action!

Entitled to speak

Fri, 01 May 2009 13:00:23 -0700

Many academics and aficionados of William Shakespeare find it frustrating that the recorded biographical facts of his life are so scant. In Jonathan Bate’s new book, Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Bates waxes prolix with conjecture, over the course of 496 pages. (The page length is of interest when juxtaposed to Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, a mere 208). Due to the dearth of biographical fact, Bate takes the biography-of-the-mind approach. He traverses through close reads of Shakespeare’s texts to make suppositions on the mind of the man himself. The reader seeks to know William Shakespeare, to locate his personal voice, in order to understand him better. Bates performs ventriloquism, bequeathing Shakespeare a voice that readers will want to hear. In this way, the “voice” of Shakespeare, in spite of being lent by a biographer, can become a source of validation to the reader who wants access to this “voice.” In this way, one may better understand Shakespeare’s life and works.

Allowing one to speak: I observed this most recently this past weekend. I attended a poetry contest award ceremony in my hometown, in honor of my good friend who passed away three years ago. This poetry contest calls for poem submissions from students ages 5-18. What was important, in this community center on a humid Sunday afternoon, was not the awards bestowed upon each age category. It was bequeathing each young poet a platform to read his or her poem. This validation—reading their poems to an audience of parents, friends, local journalists, and community members—was all that these children needed to feel a sense of pride and purpose through writing. The awards were completely irrelevant.

To me, this is the strength of the IB’s foray into social media. As soon as we enabled and encouraged comments on our fan page, we have received an explosion of interactivity. We give the IB community a place to speak, and herein lies the strength of what we can offer: to show the community that we listen, and we care what you think.

Mtopepo Community School Visit

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:13:19 -0700

Our second school visit took us to the Mtopepo community. This school was started in 1995 and currently serves 1200 local secondary students. The school is a community initiative and receives little government support. The challenges the school community faces are immense including shortage of teachers, facilities, classroom materials, lack of a library and any labs, funding and water. We visited classrooms where there were 135 students to one or sometimes two teachers. We met with the school management committee who articulated their needs to us in Swahili and English. The challenges are great but the vision to empower a community to establish, manage and own sustainable schools is a beacon of hope.

Mtopepo community school

Monique, Robert and Nadine speak with students

Classroom setting

Madrasa School Visit

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:26:07 -0700

Our team visted two schools during the week’s field experience with both providing insights to community empowerment and sustainability. The first was a madrasa in an isolated, rural area on the island. This community owned pre-school works with approximately 65 students from the local area. The teachers from the community are trained at the Madrasa resource centre in Stone Town and their lessons make use of local materials for manipulatives such as sea shells and coconuts. The word ‘madrasa’ is Arabic and is related to the verb darasa which means to study. It was evident during our visit that both students and teachers were having fun as they studied playfully. The Aga Khan Foundation supports the Madrasa early childhood programme and the resource centre.

Madrasa school building

Madrasa classroom

Monday 20 April: Curriculum work

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:44:53 -0700

After learning about the old Stone town from a local artist and historian, John Baptist da Silva, the team met at the AKDN office to discuss their units of work and planners. PYP and MYP teachers were paired up to talk about the areas in their planning which they would like to enhance during this field work in Zanzibar.

The session also gave each participants an understanding of the similarities and differences with regard to planning a unit in PYP and MYP.

Ali and Daphne discuss their planners.

Monday 20 April: Exploration of Stone Town

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:08:36 -0700

In the morning we experienced the living history of Stone Town with local artist and resident John de Silva. During the afternoon session, our PYP and MYP participants shared their units of work. Our morning immersion into the cultural context of Zanzibar with its influences from the Swahili, Omani, Arab, Indian, German, British, and Portugese cultures provided a rich background for developing and refining the units.

Zanzibar: The team assembles

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:13:01 -0700

Martime collaboration...

By Sunday, all the participants arrived and we had our first evening session. We reviewed the scope of the project, expectations for our curriculum work and the cultural activity program arranged by the AKDN. Before getting down to business, the early arrivals had a chance to visit Mangapwany Beach for their first bonding session and swim in the Indian Ocean. Ruth and Mary from the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa take a moment to reflect!

Diploma Gap Study

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:36:15 -0700

In July 2008, the Gates Foundation awarded a grant to International Baccalaureate to fund an 8-week study of the Diploma Gap, the gap between the numbers of high school students who could be reached by the IB Diploma Programme and those who actually are. The goal of this project was to identify the reasons for the gap, quantify the impact of the gap, and devise strategic solutions to narrow it.

In their analysis, the consultants found that the causes for the gap could not be explained by the types of schools that the IB serves or the number of students academically qualified to participate. Instead, the reasons for the gap have more to do with the perceptions of students and teachers about the program, the level of funding and incentives provided by the state, the degree of commitment by leadership in the school and district in providing access to all students, and academic and emotional support for students, among other factors.

The study focused on three fundamental questions: (1) what value does IB provide for under-represented students? (2) What are the causes of the Diploma Gap? And (3) what should be the major elements of a strategy to reduce the Gap?

Please click here to read the Diploma Gap Study Summary.

Arriving Zanzibar

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:30:28 -0700

Exploring a conservation reserve in Zanzibar.

Christine, Suzanne and Kirsten arrived safely on Friday, 17 April after 16 hours of travel from Cardiff/Bristol to Zanzibar.

The next morning was spent exploring the nature trail at Jozani Forest, a protective reserve which is nearly 3% of the whole island.

We were taken around by a ranger from the local community with a real passion for the protection of indigenous creatures (big and small) in the reserve.

If you are lucky, you will find a friendly gang of red colobus monkey as well as a chance to feed sea turtles. Both animals are endangered and the community has many projects to make sure that these creatures are protected. Supporting their nature trail tours help in informing visitors about their projects.

Red colobus monkey carries its young.

Christine and Suzanne feed the sea turtle.

Most of the participants to this IB and Aga Khan project arrived today and we expect the rest to arrive on Sunday. Our first session begins Sunday evening.

Limning the IB fan page on Facebook (1)

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:53:54 -0700

Back in September of last year, we launched our official fan page on Facebook. Our board requested that the IB have an official presence on social networking pages. The demand from our stakeholders was evident; there were already 30+ unofficial IB groups on Facebook, as well as other blogs and networks to create a platform for IB dialogue. After some research into our best options, we decided to go with a fan page on Facebook, rather than developing pages on multiple social networking sites. We wanted to be able to contact the IB global community in the broadest sense—reaching all of our stakeholder groups—and convene members despite international locations and age demographics.

The concept behind the IB fan page is to service all members of the IB community. Though I manage this page, we own it collectively. I began to garner content from all of our regions, and I realized that there was a greater challenge in this process: with so many stories to tell about the IB and its people, how do we begin?

Taking a multimedia approach, I used all of the photos and videos that were available to us. Our videographer had just finished editing the film from our videos of the 2008 North America Regional Conference. All of the testimonials from speakers and attendees helped to tell some of the great stories about the IB. But this only represents a tiny fragment of the North American community. We received another great response from our Volunteers. We sent out an email to our Volunteer listserv, asking them to send their photo with their school and location. In less than two weeks, we received 212 volunteer photos! I was thrilled with the positive response. Some volunteers sent in a photos of themselves with their families, such as Kirsten Justice, from Raleigh, North Carolina, US. Others sent in photos from vacation, like Carleda Williams. Or with their pets, like Grant Miller from Vancouver. Tim Rawley sent us a photo of himself hiking in the Rockies! We began to build a narrative. Here are the albums: uno, dos, tres, y quatro.

The challenge all along has been: how do I reach out there and help others to tell their stories, especially to our global members with whom I may have limited contact? At the IB, we initially took a little bit of caution in allowing fans to comment on our Wall and discuss topics on the page. We were not quite sure which direction this could take. Would fans be excited to talk about the IB? Would they want to share their personal challenges, experiences, and successes? After about two months, I knew we were delivering a fair ammount of content to our fans. But the page was missing something. It wasn’t “sticky” enough. It didn’t have that grab to make fans want to return to the page on a regular basis. Finally, back in December, I enabled the Wall and Discussion Board.

The interactivity on the page so far has been great! This has opened up so many possibilites for the IB connecting our global community. More thoughts on the IB on Facebook and the new fan page layout, soon.

Ambient awareness

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:55:01 -0700

This week’s front page article of New York Magazine was a feature on the issues of ownership, privacy, and sustainability of Facebook. In “Do You Own Facebook? Or does Facebook own you?” Vanessa Grigoriadis discusses the recent response on Facebook to the new terms of service (that is, Facebook owns the rights to any information, photos, and videos submitted to them, even after one deletes her account).

And?

To answer Grigoriadis’ title question, it’s neither. It’s a collective, and I think looking at Facebook and other social networking sites through the lens of ownership is trite, predictable, and irrelevant. One could go into a discussion of what we own and what we do not. Last month, I was sitting on the subway and a couple who was standing nearby took their cell phone and snapped a camera phone picture of me. I responded with a puzzled, mildly miffed facial expression. Was I going to stand up and grab their phone, and demand the photo be deleted? No. There was nothing I could do. The issue of photos and privacy on Facebook is not all that dissimilar. On several occasions, I have been around friends and one may say, “I don’t have Facebook!” And another replies, “Doesn’t matter! There are already tons of photos of you on it!” Facebook is a service and it’s one choice to have a profile and submit photos. Facebook’s claims to ownership are for their legal protection. As this is still a free service to all users, we elect to use it and must accept these terms.

However, Grigoriadis makes a one or two observations of note in her article. With mention of status updates, she writes, ”This micro-knowledge of others has been termed ‘ambient awareness’ by sociologists, a new kind of social proprioception or ethereal limb.” She does not expand on this term or what it means for Facebook and its users. What is the significance of ambient awareness? Who do we connect with on social networking sites, and why?

Why is it enough to feel connected to a person if you know he or she had a soy latte that morning? Or that he or she is on her way to Patagonia? How and why is this enough? Sometimes we only want to know these minor details. (I would argue that these small details reveal one’s character in a much more significant way, though that’s for another post.) In the recent BBC article, “What’s the ideal number of friends?”, leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar, states that one can have about 150 “friends.” However, there is an “inner circle of five ‘core’ people and an additional layer of 10.” In person relationships, serious, face to face conversations—we can only have these connections with so many people. And for the rest, it’s enough to know that they are heading home for the day to make farfalle and watch The Office. Ambient awareness allows us to sustain a connection with the rest of our acquaintances.

For the International Baccalaureate on Facebook, it is enough for us to connect our community with our status updates and photo albums. It is not a question of single ownership, but a collectivity of shared knowledge and experiences. I provide page status updates with the goal of having our fans reply with a comment. If the International Baccalaureate can engage our stakeholders with an ambient awareness as they spend time on Facebook, we can only enhance and strengthen our relationship with our community.

A Profile of Yonkers High School

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:38:05 -0700

At Yonkers High School, a diverse, urban Title I school, nearly all students graduate with at least one Diploma certificate and one in five seniors participates in the full Diploma. The school has created a deliberate culture around academic acheivement and IB and has been recognized as one of the top high schools in the United States.

To learn more about how Yonkers High School helps students acomplish this success, read the full profile of Yonkers High Schoool.

Performance and Persistance in the Diploma Programme: Case Studies

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:36:34 -0700

In order to better understand ways to expand access and improve student performance among low-income and minority students, who are nationally under-represented in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme across the United States, IB commissioned case studies of two schools. Lamar Academy in McAllen, Texas and Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida both have found some success in recruiting and supporting low-income and minority students in the Diploma Programme.

The report on these case studies describes the history and structure of each of these programs; discusses general programme availability and student preparation, recruitment, selection, enrollment, persistence, and achievement at each school; explores school-level, district, and state supports that appear to facilitate successful outcomes for students in the Diploma Programme; and identifies lessons from the two schools.

Click here to read the case studies.

Roadmaps to MYP Authorization: Advice from the Field

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:40:55 -0700

Thinking about embarking on implementation of a Middle Years Programme in your district or school can be daunting. Where do you start? How does it happen? How do you reach the goal of authorization? What do you do between starting and authorization?

These are good questions. And there are answers.

We asked the “experts” for their advice. In order to provide helpful answers, we went to the experts: principals, coordinators, and teachers in four recently-authorized Middle Years Programmes. All four programmes are in public schools receiving Title I funding.

What we heard. Despite their differences in size and configuration of their schools, the principals, coordinators and teachers voiced strikingly consistent advice and concerns. What differed, though, was advice from each job title. Principals spoke to principals, coordinators to coordinators, teachers to teachers. Our respondents did, however, offer advice for everyone across job titles at the beginning of the consideration process. There is also job-relevant advice at this stage as well.

In their own words. Whenever possible, we have presented the advice in the respondents’ own words-the words of people who have been there, worked hard, and achieved authorization (in two cases, on the second try). The voices of our six principals, five coordinators, and seven teachers ring truer than any rules that could be made by anyone who hasn’t been through the experience. Was it challenging? Sometimes. Was it worth it? As several of the teachers said, “I could never teach in a school that wasn’t an IB school now.”

“Advice for everyone.” The advice begins with a section for everyone beginning to consider implementation of the Middle Years Programme. According to all of our respondents, this is the single most important time in the “life” of a Middle Years Programme. Some districts learned these lessons the hard way. The respondents in those districts talked freely and frankly, in the hope that your implementation will be as smooth and successful as possible.

These roadmaps are available at the links below. The advice from schools is group by the stages of the authorization process and each includes advice for three key stakeholders in the schools: principals, coordinators, and teachers.

Click here to read advice for schools in the Consideration Phase

Click here to read advice for schools in the Candidate Phase

Click here to read advice for schools at Authorization

Solitary confinement

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:07:27 -0700

In The New Yorker this week is an article on the affects of solitary confinement on the human psyche. Atul Gawande writes in “Hellhole”: “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain my become as impaired as one that has incurred traumatic injury.” While Gawande cites examples of hostage accounts, he moves into a discussion of solitary confinement as a just form of imprisonment.

Gawande gleans examples of social interaction as a necessity to brain function and one’s emotional and physical health. In the US, specifically, we have a near ubiquitous problem of suburban isolation. We have a problem of the destruction of local communities, exacerbated (and also perhaps the root cause) by the automobile. The affect on the individual began to be interrogated by psychologists, sociologists, fiction writers and visual artists starting in the 1950s. At present, the problem of isolation is still accute.

Most of us do not experience isolation in the extreme form of solitary confinement. I think these issues emerge as we harness social media, as people of all ages are now on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow one to feel connected to others, and a simple exchange of comments can be enough to ameliorate one’s own temporary tinges of loneliness throughout the day. The success of social media is that it hinges itself on personal validation.

It is from this viewpoint that I see the advances in social media as positive, and I look to ways to make this a productive endeavor for the community members of the International Baccalaureate. One of the most fascinating things about the IB is that a DP student in Rochester, New York can be learning the same lesson as a DP student in Calcutta, India. Our challenge as an organization is to embrace this global relationship and connect or stakeholders, worldwide.

Backward Curriculum Maps: Grades 9-12

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:47:17 -0700

IB Americas has developed a set of backward curriculum maps in order to help high schools increase participation and success in the Diploma Programme by strengthening the articulation between the MYP and Diploma Programme. These maps define some of the skills necessary for success on Diploma assessments, trace these skills back through grade 9 (level four of the MYP), present assessment and scaffolding ideas, and offer examples of MYP units that can help prepare students for the Diploma.

These materials are not intended to be prescriptive. Instead, they are intended to support schools and teachers in developing their own articulated curriculum that can prepare students for success in MYP and Diploma Programme. The IB encourages schools to explore a variety of strategies for mapping their curriculum across programmes, backward mapping being one such option.

These maps were created with funding from the United States Department of Education, to support IB implementation in the traditional 9-12 high school model, particularly in Title I eligible high schools. Schools and districts that offer all five years of the MYP are strongly encouraged to continue the process of mapping skills back to level one of the MYP. In addition, these maps reflect the landscape of public schools in the United States. We hope they will be helpful for a wide audience of schools, but they are not meant to serve as official IB curriculum materials. Please consult official programme materials for any questions about MYP and DP requirements.

These materials are part of a pilot project in the United States, and your comments and suggestions will be very helpful in further developing materials for a global audience.

Please let us know what you think!

The maps can be downloaded here:

Language A Backward Map

Language B Backward Map

Math Backward Map

Science Backward Map

Humanities Backward Map

Program Implmentation: A Literature Review

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:28:34 -0700

Increasingly, schools and districts in the United States have been looking to International Baccalaureate to provide aligned curriculum and assessment, teacher professional development, and school authorization and evaluation as part of an effort towards school reform. In order to support schools seeking to implement IB programmes, IB Americas commissioned the following literature review, which examines research findings about effective reform program implementation.

One of the major challenges with reforming high schools is that when implemented, the reform tends to adapt to the local context, resulting in very little change. (Vernez, Karam, Mariano & DeMartini, 2006). Consequently, many low-performing schools do not raise the academic performance of their students even after a reform has supposedly been implemented. If we hope to improve high schools and create more equitable educational opportunities for our students, we must better understand how to support the implementation of high quality academic programs in even the most challenging contexts. We can understand how to do this by looking to the empirical research on reform program implementation in schools serving economically disadvantaged and minority student populations. For the most part, researchers agree that it is a combination of both local factors and the design of the reform that lead to the weak implementation that takes place at many school sites. Researchers also agree that the level of reform implementation is directly related to program outcomes.

Please click here to read the full text of the program implementation literature review.

Supporting Minorty Student Academic Achievement: A Literature Review

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:28:20 -0700

Closing the academic achievement gap is one of the most pressing issues currently facing policy makers and educators in the United States. This gap is not just a phenomenon that exists among low achieving and average students; it is a significant feature among high performing students as well. Research findings utilizing both national longitudinal student data and data collected at individual schools suggest that the way schools are structured and students are assigned to courses are at the root of the opportunity gaps (Goldrick-Rab, 2006; Stevenson, Schiller, & Schneider, 1994; Friedlaender & Darling-Hammond, 2007).

While a much of the research done today describes the numerous academic and opportunity gaps faced by economically disadvantaged students, some researchers have attempted to understand and document the ways administrators and teachers can help these students become high academic achievers. This review of recent research uncovered five strategies that were the most effective. These are:

1. Close monitoring of students’ personal and academic growth
2. Providing access to high quality curriculum
3. Providing appropriate “scaffolding” to ensure academic success
4. providing academically-oriented, supportive peer groups
5. Providing opportunities for social-emotional growth.

This literature review explores what research tells us about what middle and high schools can do to implement these strategies in order to support high academic achievement for minority students.

Click here to read the full text of the Minority Student Achievement Literature Review.

Sir, you twitter!

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:24:05 -0700

Apologies for the rather UK-centric nature of this post and the fact that I’ve ripped it from TechCrunch, but it appears the British government is proposing that Twitter be taught in primary schools as part of a wider push to make online communication and social media a permanent part of the UK’s education system. It is to include blogging, podcasting and how to use Wikipedia as well, alongside the traditional Maths, English and Science curricula.

The draft plans were due to be published next month, but have been leaked to The Guardian. It’s worth a read as it hints at a much more comprehensive overhaul of the primary curriculum than just getting kids to tweet. I look forward to the official report.

Access Rubric

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:50:20 -0700

This School Assessment Rubric is a tool designed for high schools offering the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the Diploma Programme. The purpose of this rubric is to foster reflection and guide discussion about IB implementation and access. The tool is meant to engage multiple stakeholders in a dialog about how the school is performing in terms of IB and access and to help facilitate planning for improvement.

This activity is most fruitful when it is revisited by school staff at regular intervals, perhaps on an annual basis, in order to focus attention on the school’s progress and plans for the future. It is hoped that this rubric will allow school leadership teams, teachers, parents, and students to examine IB and access in a meaningful way.

This rubric was developed with funding from the United States Department of Education’s Advanced Placement Incentive Program as a part of the project, “Support Structures and Services for Title I Eligible High Schools.” This project aims to increase the participation and success of low-income students in the Diploma Programme by creating resources to support the articulation between the Middle Years Programme and the Diploma Programme in Title I eligible high schools.

Please click here to read the Access Rubric

Survey of Title I High Schools

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:49:42 -0700

In order to broaden our understanding of what Title I-eligible high schools with IB programmes are like, who they serve, and what kinds of issues and challenges they face, IB Americas worked with the Institute for Education and Social Policy at NYU to conduct an email survey in the Spring of 2008. IB coordinators in Title I-eligible high schools generously responded to this survey and provided important information about 127 IB programmes around the country. The results from this survey provide a window into the conditions and experiences of Title I-eligible IB programmes in the United States.

Click here to read the Survey of Title I Eligible High Schools

Net Generation Education

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:09:08 -0800

I’d like to give a little publicity to some great work being done by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis over on Ning. For several years now they have been designing some class and project work around the Horizon Reports which come out every year from Educause and the New Media Consortium.

I’ll leave you to check out the links for yourselves, but I just wanted to mention an announcement they’ve made regarding the project for 2009. It’s copied below for convenience:

“Dear Flat Classroom Project Ning members

A message for all teachers

For 2009 we will be running a new project in place of the Horizon Project. It will be called Net Generation Education, and all details can be found on the wiki at http://netgened.wikispaces.com/ and the Ning at http://netgened.grownupdigital.com/

The NetGenEd project will continue to use the latest Horizon Report as stimulus for research and discussion. It is also being run in collaboration with Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital, a new book released in November 2008 that features the 2008 Horizon Project.

So, we invite you to consider joining us for this exciting new project! We are starting this about NOW, a little earlier than last year….so check your calendars and then fill n the application form hyperlinked from http://netgened.wikispaces.com/

Send all questions to Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay at flatclassroomproject@gmail.com

We are especially looking for MORE non-USA schools. Come and join us! [Emphasis added]

Visit Flat Classroom Project at: http://flatclassroomproject.ning.com“

I encourage you all to investigate further and consider if this is something in which you might want to participate with your students later this year.

Kindle 2

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:19:53 -0800

There is much speculation in the blogosphere that Amazon are just about to launch a second version of their e-book reader, Kindle (something we blogged about just over a year ago).

The guys over at The Boy Genius Report claim to have the first pictures, although they do look a little prototype-ish.

It’s a welcome announcement. Not least because these things need to get a lot better before they become more popular with the wider public. The wireless connectivity is a major advantage over its rival, the Sony Reader, but, as with the Sony, the current Kindle needs to meet the more social aspects of book reading, such as note/annotation sharing and clippings features. Perhaps Kindle 2 will go some way to addressing these needs on Feb 9.

Google Docs - examples in education

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:08:31 -0800

In September last year Google asked teachers to send in some examples of how they used Google Docs in their classrooms.

The submissions received ranged from forms that students use to provide peer feedback for group work to spreadsheets used to conduct science experiments. I particularly liked the use of Google Sites as a process journal/e-portfolio by a couple of students doing internships at Blue Ridge Virtual High School. Take a look for yourselves here:

To see some of the better ideas that were submitted, visit the Docs for Teachers page.

Tell us what you think: design sketches for the stakeholder gateway and virtual community

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:36:21 -0800

Short, 5-minute screencast tours of the sketches for the IB’s new Stakeholder Gateway and Virtual Community are ready for viewing online! We are inviting members of the IB community – students, parents, educators, alumni, staff, volunteers, and all other community participants - to review the sketches and to then give us feedback about the proposed features [...]

The power of wikis

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:36:38 -0800

Some extraordinary work has been done recently by Richard Allaway, Jim Williams and Natasha Winnard on a wiki to support the new IB Diploma Geography guide being launched in February next year. Drawing on their considerable experience in the subject, they have put together an outstanding resource structured around the forthcoming syllabus content. Full of web links, textbook references and the application of geographical skills, the wiki is constantly being updated as Richard et al come across new resources on the web.

How does it work? Well, they all have Delicious accounts and as they come across something useful on the web, they simply tag the resource using a previously agreed taxonomy and it automatically displays on the wiki via RSS. Thus a web link for Disparities in Wealth and Development could be tagged with ibgeog2009 and disparities_indicators or disparities_patterns for example.

It demonstrates the enormous power for social constructionism that wikis have and also how communities of practice can take a basic document like a subject guide and add real value to it for themselves and others. I encourage you to take a look when you have time, and if you’re a geography teacher, you can suggest resources or discuss an issue with them too. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:59:47 -0800

Google have recently announced their latest layer on Google Earth. Under the Gallery option you can now add an Ancient Rome layer which displays more than 6000 buildings from 320 AD.

In collaboration with the Rome Reborn project, based at the University of Virginia, Google have provided some extraordinary detail on buildings such as the Basilica Julia, the Temple of Vesta and, of course, the Colosseum.

See more details and download the whole program here.

The DSI is gathering momentum

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:10:25 -0800

Following the feedback from our recent stakeholder research activities (see previous blog entries), the Digital Space Initiative (DSI) is picking up pace as we move in to phase 3 of the programme (November 2008 – January 2009). We will be launching a clickable test site at the end of January for a select (and globally dispersed) [...]

Participate in Our Next DSI Feedback Exercise

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:07:53 -0700

We want to thank everyone for their continued support of the IB’s Digital Space Initiative (DSI) and its stakeholder research activities! The input collected from our focus group activities and the general DSI survey in September has helped to inform our initial/proposed design, content and features for the IB’s new stakeholder gateway and virtual community. As [...]

Over 3,800 Thank-Yous

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:06:16 -0700

As of today, over 3,800 members of the IB community have taken the time to participate in the DSI general survey effort. We are extremely pleased with (and grateful for) the strong response! Below is an overview of some of the current survey results. The data has made a real impact on the design work being [...]

Make a difference: We want to hear from you!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:14:18 -0700

The Digital Space Initiative (DSI) aims to better coordinate and align the IB’s current online offerings and to generally improve your experience with the IB online. As the IB works to create new web-based features and functionalities, we’d like to hear about your needs and preferences. We are inviting members of the IB community – students, [...]

August 2008 DSI Updates

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:28:39 -0700

New Gateway and Virtual Community on the Horizon The Digital Space Working Group – made up of IB staff from across the organization – has made significant progress on the DSI’s 10 projects. Developments of interest include: Work on a stakeholder gateway – linked off of the IB homepage, the new gateway will allow IB stakeholders to [...]

Conferences – “affair[s] of masks and mystification”

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:07:30 -0800

Let me admit from the start that I am a conference phobic. I am the person who is seen rebooking his return flight and sloping off to the airport in urgent response to a bogus message from my PA telling me the office is on fire. At least I was, until I very nearly rebooked onto the TWA flight to Paris that crashed soon after take-off from JFK. Since then I have stuck it out to the end.

I have attended several million different conferences and one of my annual nightmares is being trapped, always in the same fin de siècle hotel, unable to find the way to the station (isn’t it interesting how one’s dreams are historically consistent). An enduring memory of the IBO will be the bell that sounds when the lift finally arrives at my hotel floor which – together with the ever-optimistic wait for my luggage coming round (or not coming round) the carousel at the airport – must have accounted for at least a year of my life.

The IBO thrives on conferences and sometimes measures the relative success of its different parts by conference attendance figures. Regional conferences, sub-regional conferences, heads’ conferences, coordinators’ conferences: you name it and someone will organize a conference for it. Indeed, we have very efficient regional conference units to do just that. But finding myself in someone else’s conference last week, as I dozed off in rather comfortable chairs, listening on my headphones to translations that one can only admire but never fully comprehend, I began to wonder what it was all about.

After all, every one of the papers being presented would be posted on the conference website; the programme was so full there was no time for serious discussion. In the plenary sessions, each distinguished speaker said more or less what one would have expected each distinguished speaker to say. The lunch was modest and the afternoon tea was cold. But, of course, there was the networking amongst all those important people who have come with the sole purpose of learning all about your latest bright idea so another KPI to measure a good conference must surely be the number of visiting cards you bring back.

I think we do still go to conferences in the hope of being inspired but in my experience it rarely happens. I can remember about half a dozen such set-piece moments of truth, starting with Jawaharlal Nehru, whom I heard when I was a student, and more recently Nobel Laureate, Oscar Arias, who opened our Americas conference in 2001 in Costa Rica with a brilliant speech. But too often what we hear are recycled presentations obscured, rather than illuminated, by distracting PowerPoint.

Then there is death-by-reporting-back from the inevitable working groups (now rather dubiously called ‘breakout groups’ – if only one could). Well chairman, I’m going to be very brief as all my points have been covered by previous speakers….25 minutes later….and now I think our scribe, Wendy, has just a couple of tiny suggestions to make.

And yes, we do go to conferences for the networking so it would be interesting to know what percentage of time most people spend in the bar compared to the conference sessions and to ask if it might not be more efficient to put everyone together on a cruise liner without the guilt-inducing distraction of a conference.

But how many of us go to a conference prepared to do some work, to make a contribution, to actually produce something? The distinguished American psychologist, Jerry Bruner, urges us to associate learning with the production of tangible “oeuvres” and there was a time when one at least returned home with a satisfying pile of conference papers, but no longer: they are only available on the conference website. Now, all we are left with is the conference bag, a leaking biro and, at the top of the range, a t-shirt.

One of the most stimulating events I ever took part in (OK, it was a workshop not a conference, but the principle remains sound) brought together a mixed group of people sharing an interest in comprehensive education in the UK to write a book from scratch over a weekend. And, inspired and encouraged by The Guardian’s wonderful education correspondent at the time, Maureen O’Connor, we wrote it, from start to finish, and the sense of achievement was huge.

The recent Heads Standing Association conference in Bangkok came somewhere near this when participants were challenged to contribute to a communiqué to be published at the end of the conference. I hope someone will build on this idea because too often we invite large numbers of able and experienced people to gather together, we sit them in conference halls and then fail to make best use of their time and talent.

George Walker

Hidden gems - lessons from the past

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 08:09:53 -0800

Oxfam has a rather good second hand bookshop in Cardiff so whenever I am there for meetings at our curriculum and assessment centre in Peterson House I try to find time to call in. As well as the usual shelves of paperback fiction, there are many more unusual items if you care to search for them and there is also a small, locked glass cabinet in which I recently saw…but it was far too expensive.

Then I went back a month later and it was still there and, after all, it cost less than a few tanks full of petrol and, after all, it was Oxfam and not some seedy second hand book dealer and, after all, it was one of the first books I ever read in a serious study of education.

So I am now the proud owner of a first edition (1861) of Herbert Spencer’s classic collection of essays entitled Education.

Spencer (1820-1903) was a British philosopher and sociologist. Largely self-taught (turning down a place at Cambridge University) he was an ardent supporter of Charles Darwin and it was he, not Darwin, who first used the expression “survival of the fittest.” Not surprisingly, then, he applied evolutionary theory to philosophy, psychology and sociology, and to education. The four essays are entitled What knowledge is of most worth, Intellectual education, Moral education and Physical education, and the uncompromising tone is set at the outset by the question, “Of what use is it?”

Well, all this appeared nearly 150 years ago, but Spencer’s ideas have given me a helpful peg on which to hang some recent thoughts. In October, IBAEM organized a regional conference in Barcelona which, for the first time, challenged science teachers of the Middle Years Programme and the Diploma Programme to work together on issues of continuity. Not easy, and I know from bitter experience how high school teachers of linear subjects like science and mathematics tend to boss their junior colleagues about, telling them what and how they should teach.

The handed-down instructions tend to be of two different kinds. First the guilt-inducing: “If you don’t teach them this, followed by this, finishing up with that before they reach us, then please don’t expect us to sort out the mess before they sit their examinations”. Then there is the patronising: “If I were you, I wouldn’t bother to introduce that concept at all; much better to leave it so we can do it properly.” (I was once a curriculum deputy head of a 9-13 upper school in the UK which received its new students from six different 5-8 middle schools and the preceding quotations were the staple diet of our school liaison meetings.)

What does Spencer have to say about all this? His first thought (in the second essay) is to draw attention to the parallels between a system of education and the social state in which it exists. Thus he could see the growing impact of Protestantism, political liberty and free trade in nineteenth century Britain reflected in less harsh discipline, more recreation and a growing awareness of the unfolding mind of the school child. Today, our science education reflects its changing social status, which has moved from a sense of triumph (when I was at school) to speculation (when I started teaching it) to the current period of atonement. I wonder whether there is a shared perception of the role of science education amongst teachers of the different age ranges.

Looking now at the actual process of education, Spencer insists on the substitution of principles, built up from individual instances, for rules learned by rote. Now this is the pure Nuffield philosophy that I grew up with but I suspect Spencer is concerned with the process of induction whereas science makes progress through hypothesis and deduction: a scientific hypothesis is set up in order to be demolished. I wonder if all teachers convey to their students the provisional nature of scientific principles.

Finally, Spencer writes

In the mastering of every subject some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through…which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into the mind in the normal order.

Today we might call it a spiral curriculum or scaffolding or constructionist theory but essentially it acknowledges the simple truth that learning requires clear signposts to indicate where it has come from and where it is going next. Otherwise, in Spencer’s words, it will be received with apathy or disgust…unless the pupil is intelligent enough eventually to fill up the gaps himself. Agreeing where and how to erect those signposts is perhaps the most important task of liaison between the Middle Years and the Diploma Programmes.

I’m glad I went back to the Oxfam shop!

George Walker

Hidden gems - lessons from the past

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 08:06:39 -0800

So I am now the proud owner of a first edition (1861) of Herbert Spencer’s classic collection of essays entitled Education.

Finally, Spencer writes

In the mastering of every subject some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through…which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into the mind in the normal order.

I’m glad I went back to the Oxfam shop!

George Walker

In search of the Philosopher’s Stone

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:04:39 -0800

A few weeks ago I was in Stockholm where I attended a welcoming reception at the city hall, famous for hosting the ceremony each December at which the Nobel prizes are presented. Since then, a visit to the University of Adelaide reminded me that one of its most distinguished alumni, Lawrence Bragg, achieved a double-first in Nobel prizes: he and his father, William, are the only father-and-son prize winning partnership and, at the age of 25, Lawrence remains the youngest ever Nobel laureate.

The Nobel prize for physics came in 1915, in recognition of their pioneering work in the development of the analytical technique of X-ray diffraction and with it the birth of solid state physics, and Lawrence received the news in France, in the trenches. He finally collected the prize in 1922 but his father did not turn up at the ceremony in Stockholm; all pleasure and pride had been destroyed by the death of his other son, Bob, at Gallipoli just a few weeks before the prize had been announced.

I heard Sir Lawrence Bragg lecture at the Royal Institution in London in the late 1950s when I was in the sixth form at school. By now he was a grand old man of science and he had left behind an unhappy period at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where he had been sucked into the unseemly squabbling between Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin over the controversial discovery of the double helix of DNA (the first three, but not Franklin who died, would win their Nobel prizes in 1962).

Bragg’s lecture was brilliant and I can still remember much of its structure, many of its experiments and its sheer panache. The subject was radioactivity, which was too dangerous to explore in any practical way in a school laboratory, but here we could see it all happening on the floor of the Royal Institution in a series of experiments we had read about but never expected to see. It remains one of the most memorable presentations I have ever witnessed and, looking back, I recognize its profound impact because it was one of the factors that contributed to my decision to study chemistry rather than music at university.

In fact it was not a difficult decision. In the 1950s science seemed to have all the answers: astronomy was explaining the past; the present offered a huge choice of well-paid scientific jobs and the future would be taken care of by nuclear energy. Fifty years later it all looks rather different and we are seeing a worrying flight from science in schools and universities. The sciences (Group 4) are no longer the most popular subjects in the IB Diploma Programme, having been overtaken by the humanities (Group 3) in 2001. Although the quality of high-performing science students is being maintained, the ‘tail’ is growing longer and longer with nearly a third of all students obtaining a failing grade in their chosen science subject.

A reason for the malaise might be the disappearance of the magic and mystery that attracted me to the subject and was so powerfully present in Bragg’s description of radioactivity. I still keep on my desk a beautifully shaped glass retort or alembic. It reminds me how my chemistry teacher at school promised that one day we would use one in our experiments. We never did but the idea was enough to make me want to study a subject that was evidently still largely concerned with turning base metals into gold. It is many years since I taught a science lesson but I suspect much of the mystery has gone, replaced by a fatal dose of social responsibility. Every science teacher should be presented with Oliver Sacks’ wonderful biography Uncle Tungsten, Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (published by Picador) to be reminded of the sometimes irresponsible excitement of doing science and of the essential part it plays in the world’s narrative of growing human potential.

George Walker

Postscript
An interesting article related to the above has recently been published by The Guardian. Readers can find this at:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1642253,00.html

George.

Blog post script

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 08:16:20 -0800

Recently, Professor Walker joined me at the IBO’s curriculum and assessment centre here at Cardiff for a chat. We talked about a whole range of things, including his reflections on international education over the past 15 years, his work with the newly-opened United World College in Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina, and his plans for the future.

To listen to the podcast, please click here.

During our discussions, a number of references were made to Howard Gardner’s new book, Five Minds for the Future. The book will be released in January 2007, I believe, but recently Professor Gardner delivered a lecture on its key ideas at the Royal Society for Arts in London. You can listen to his speech here. Please note that you will need to scroll down to locate the media file and accompanying presentation slides.

The paper Professor Walker gave at the Nordic Schools conference in September 2005, and to which we refer at the beginning of the podcast, has recently been published in Educating the Global Citizen (Walker, 2006). Further information on this title is available here.

Regrettably, this will be the last entry to the blog. We hope, though, that you have enjoyed reading it as much as we have enjoyed creating it. Watch this space for teacher blogs on the OCC after its relaunch in 2007.

Warmest regards,

Lee Davis
Head of online professional learning

Saying goodbye

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:15:10 -0800

Modern management theory insists that if you cannot measure it then you cannot manage it. That, of course, is nonsense but it has nonetheless sparked a healthy debate within the International Baccalaureate Organization about the use of KPIs, key performance indicators.

I have learned that diagnostic KPIs monitor how the organization is performing today, but we need a completely different set of strategic KPIs to tell us if we are moving towards a better or a different performance in the future. I also understand that we must not put all our KPIs in the same basket, but instead adopt a balanced scorecard approach that measures key business processes, finance, staff capacity and customer satisfaction.

But I am still attracted to the suggestion floated over dinner during the recent Council of Foundation meeting by Tony Flatley, chair of the International Heads Representative Committee, that KPI really stands for key pleasure indicator. I do indeed hope that the IB brings pleasure to those associated with it: the pleasure of achievement, of friendship and of a cause worth working for. When I started teaching all those centuries ago, much of it was a pleasure and some of it was even fun. Alas, I don’t see much evidence of that today but I still remember the comments of a taxi driver taking me to Cardiff airport, ‘The strange thing about all you InterBac (sic) people is that you always seem so happy. You ought to see the teachers in my daughter’s primary school.’

It doesn’t require much imagination to extend Tony’s KPIs to key place indicators and to remember with pleasure all those sights I only dreamed about before I joined the IBO: the Great Wall of China, Niagara Falls, the geysers in Iceland, the rain forest in Costa Rica, the mermaid in Copenhagen, the koalas in Australia, the medieval centre of Vilnius, the ancient city of Jbeil, the Civil War memorial at Vicksburg, the exact spot where my father stood in Singapore in 1945 as the Japanese surrendered to Lord Mountbatten, the exact spot in Sarajevo where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914. Everywhere I have been during the past six years I have bought a postcard for my older grandson, Robert, (incidentally the quality of postcards is not a bad KPI for a country’s economic development) and I now look forward to leafing through his very thick scrapbook.

But we all know that KPI really stands for key people indicator and each of those places I have mentioned, and dozens more, bring back special memories because of the people I was with at the time: people who have welcomed me into their country, into their culture and into their lives. These are the people who make up the IBO and only a fraction of them are our employees; the majority are volunteers who are giving their time, their ideas and their commitment to help the IBO to make the world a better place.

You cannot measure people on a scale of one to ten: their hopes and fears, their illnesses and family responsibilities, their loyalties and motivations, still less their occasional inspirations. But the generous management of all these different aspects of messy, unpredictable human behaviour ultimately determines the success of a not-for-profit organization like the IBO.

So I sign off my final blog as I come to the end of more than 30 wonderful years trying to manage messy, unpredictable human behaviour. And now I shall have time to look at those postcards.

George Walker

Digging a hole for ourselves?

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:14:16 -0800

I doubt if any educational term has been more misunderstood than ‘holistic’. It even gets misspelled and a colleague was once obliged to sit through a presentation in an IB candidate school on the importance of “wholism”. Although many people believe that the IB programmes are ‘holistic’ in nature most would be hard pressed to explain why, beyond the fact that they seem to contain something of everything.

It has therefore been a particularly interesting experience to help in the supervision of a piece of research at the University of Bath in which the student is examining the concept of holism in the context of the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and, in particular, its science component. After all, we do say in the Schools Guide to the MYP:

While insisting on a thorough study of the disciplines, the MYP accentuates the interrelatedness of them and so advances a holistic view of learning.

But first, let me go back to a rash comment I made when I was director general of the International School of Geneva (a version was published under the title The Art & Craft of Teaching in the International Schools Journal of November 1997). I wrote,

And what of the special teaching skills needed by the teachers in an international school? I suspect there are none…
Two years later I revised this sweeping conclusion and decided instead that international schools need holistic educators. I presented a hexagonal model of holism which illustrated its six component modes of learning: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, moral, emotional and physical and I made reference to the research on multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner.

I felt rather pleased at my refinement of the ‘something of everything’ definition, but I now realise that I was still quite wide of the mark. To quote my research student, the basic principles of holism are:

There is an interconnectedness of reality and a fundamental unity in the universe
There is an intimate connection between the individual’s inner or higher self and this unity
In order to see this unity we need to cultivate intuition through contemplation and meditation
…

At this point, I have written (in red, naturally) in the margin of an early draft, ‘This is in danger of going over the top’. What I really meant was, ‘I don’t understand it any more’ or perhaps more honestly, ‘I do understand it and I’m not very comfortable with it.’ Hexagons, forms of learning and Howard Gardner fall well within my intellectual comfort zone. Fundamental unity, higher self and meditation do not.

But that is more a reflection on me and my narrow, single-track intellectual upbringing than a serious comment on the concept of holism. After all, my favourite book on education What is and what might be by Edmond Holmes, published in 1911, (I’m afraid you will have to search hard to find a copy and I am not lending you mine) has some entirely convincing passages on the education of the soul. And the whole point of education, surely, is precisely to take you outside your comfort zone in order to examine previously unimagined relationships

I think John Miller (confusingly, there are two Millers who have written extensively on holism, the other being Ron) offers a description that I can both relate to and find challenging (The Holistic Curriculum by J.P. Miller. Revised 2nd edition (2001) Toronto: OISE Press.):

The focus of holistic education is on relationships – the relationship between linear thinking and intuition, the relationship between mind and body, the relationship between various domains of knowledge, the relationship between the individual and community, the relationship with the earth and the relationship between self and Self. In the holistic curriculum the student examines these relationships so that he/she gains both an awareness of them and the skills necessary to transform the relationship where appropriate.

This is not a million miles away from a statement the IBO makes in its publication A Basis for Practice:

The focus of holistic learning is the discovery of relationships between areas of knowledge, between the individual, communities and the world.
So how does the MYP measure up as a holistic curriculum? The final draft of the thesis is in my briefcase.

George Walker

In praise of Arnold

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 08:13:20 -0800

I always enjoy reading good news about the IB and never more so than a recent headline in The Arizona Republic: Vault over the minimums and reach for the stars. Just a bit over the bar, but we should certainly keep it in mind until the time comes to revise our mission statement. Through challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment, the IBO encourages its students to vault over the minimums and reach for the stars. I like it.

On a slightly quieter note, but a particularly resonant note for me personally, was a comment made in a report by the UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in 2003:

The whole structure of the (IB Diploma) course - including the examination on the theory of knowledge - and to a great extent its assessment are traditionally rooted in a concept of the educated person with which Matthew Arnold would probably have felt comfortable.

And at this point I have to admit to total bias. For me, Matthew Arnold (1822-88) is a hero, indeed several heroes. First, he wrote one of the best poems in the English language in the nineteenth century, Dover Beach, which ends apocalyptically in words that might have been written yesterday:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Second, he had a daytime job as Her Majesty’s Inspector of schools and from 1851 to 1886 he visited schools across the United Kingdom listening to children regurgitate their rote-learning. Their teachers would be paid according to his assessment in a system known as ‘payment by results’ (today it is called performance-related pay). He hated it but his experience informed his brother-in-law, W.E. Forster, who introduced into Parliament the Education Act of 1870 making the first provision for state elementary schools.

Third, he was the loyal son of a famous but controversial father, Dr Thomas Arnold, the great Headmaster of Rugby School, and he wrote a moving (if at times verbose and pompous) poem in defence of his father’s reputation, entitled Rugby Chapel. I frequently use this poem in seminars about leadership:

And there are some, whom a thirst
Ardent, unquenchable, fires,
Not with the crowd to be spent,
Not without aim to go around
In an eddy of purposeless dust,
Effort unmeaning and vain.

Finally, Matthew Arnold produced one of the most intellectually influential essays ever written entitled Culture and Anarchy (1869) in which he seeks to describe the educated person. In it he coins the phrase sweetness and light, which for him is the essential character of human perfection. The essay raises the spectre of élitism (IB research notes, January/Feburary 2005) but a careful reading suggests the very opposite:

…culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of the inferior classes; it does not seek to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgements and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely – nourished, and not bound by them.

Matthew Arnold did not always get it right. As a young man in 1846 he was travelling in central France and got himself invited to midday breakfast with his heroine, the novelist George Sand, at her home in Nohant in the Berry. Chopin was there, a musical genius amongst literary mediocrity: would Arnold be able to tell the difference? Amongst those present, he wrote later, was Chopin with his wonderful eyes. Oh dear.

George Walker

Beyond the UWC model

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 08:11:55 -0800

The early relationship between the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and the United World Colleges (UWC) is accurately described by that sometimes ill-used term ‘symbiotic’. In the early days, each needed the other and Lord Mountbatten, an influential supporter of both, wrote to the IBO’s first director general, Alec Peterson, in 1976:

…as you know, anything you can do to enlarge the acceptance of the IB will be very helpful to UWC.

Peterson, in his classic account of those early days (September 1987, Peterson ADC, Schools Across Frontiers: The Story of the International Baccalaureate and the United World Colleges, Open Court Publishing Company) later reflected:

…without the input of students and teachers from the United World Colleges, the IBO would have foundered, as I am sure that without the IB, the United World College fleet could never have set sail.
and the remarkable decision taken in 1971 by the headmaster of Atlantic College, David Sutcliffe, to abandon all national examinations in favour of the IB Diploma (less than a year after the award of the first diplomas to just 29 candidates!) was arguably the turning point in the successful development of the IBO.

At the time, Atlantic College, located in a medieval castle in Wales, stood on its own. Today there are ten UWCs dotted around the world, all of them, apart from the college in Venezuela, depending upon the IBO and it is no coincidence that some of our most interesting diploma syllabuses have originated from the work done by UWC teachers.

In recent years, though, the relationship has weakened and I doubt if any of the colleges is now in the top ten of the largest IB schools. At a joint conference in Prague in 2000, I suggested (September 2004, Walker G, To Educate the Nations: Reflections on an International Education: v. 2, Peridot Press):

The IBO and the UWC have developed during the past generation into organizations whose influence has far exceeded their size. I am suggesting today that our potential influence over the next generation is even greater but it will only be achieved through partnerships and collaborations. We can neither do it alone this time, nor can we do it together because the world around us has changed. We need partners and that will test our political skills to the limit but my colleagues and I in the IBO will be doing our best to practise the art of the possible and we shall look forward to the closest possible collaboration with the UWCs.

I therefore have contradictory reactions to the recent news that two more colleges, one in Costa Rica and another in Kenya, are being planned. On the one hand, this will bring fresh vigour to an organization that has not made much headway since the tenth college opened in India nearly 10 years ago. But I cannot conceal a feeling that it merely perpetuates the existing system with all its apparent weaknesses – unstable long-term funding, geographical isolation and an educational paradigm that (for me) does not sit entirely comfortably in the 21st century.

A few weeks ago I was in Banja Luka and Sarajevo participating in the joint UWC/IBO project in Bosnia and Herzegovina (The IB in the Balkans). Our international conference in Sarajevo attracted representatives from IB schools in Croatia, Slovenia and Greece as well as a large group of UWC graduates, some local some international, from colleges around the world. I doubt if there has ever been such an impressive example of the potential influence of the combined networks of UWC and IBO and it offered a tantalising glimpse of how we can move beyond the syllabuses and examinations of the IB Diploma Programme to offer a new model of post war educational reconstruction.

To those who ask me, how can I best see international education in action? my reply has always been, visit a United World College. Now, I believe this latest UWC/IBO partnership should encourage both organizations to seek a renewed relationship that reaches beyond the often isolated experience of one particular institution.

George Walker

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