N Stygall- Mindlab 2018 blog

Agile Teams are Self-Organising Teams Peha’s (2011) version of the 12 principles of the agile manifesto reinterprets the last two as follows: The best ideas and initiatives emerge from self-organizing teams At regular intervals, teams reflect on how to become more effective, then tune and adjust their behavior accordingly We will explore this idea using a combination of Boris Gloger’s Ball Point game (Gloger, 2008) and Mike Rother’s Kata in the Classroom (Rother, 2015).  Kata is a term from martial arts. The Improvement Kata is a repeating routine for continuous improvement.  The following diagram of the improvement kata process is adapted from material on the  katatogrow.com  website. The goal of the ball point game is for each team to get as many balls as possible to pass through the hands of every team member in 2 minutes. The game involves both estimation and self-organisation.  - You have four rounds to iterate...

Agile in Education A number of authors have looked at ways that ideas from agile software development might translate into schools. For example Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. He  writes  “We talk a lot in education about creating a culture of learning in our schools. But we don’t have reliable ways of creating this culture. Agile does” (Peha, 2011). The Agile Manifesto www.agilemanifesto.org The Manifesto for Agile Software Development (Beck et al., 2001) was created in 2001 by a group of software development experts who had been exploring new ways of exercising their craft in the late 1990s. The manifesto provides four values and twelve principles to guide the agile software developer. The four values are:  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation C...

A Vision of the Change Process In this week sessions we explore two ways of looking at the process of leading change. Although both of these may seem simplistic on the surface, their ability to provide an overall vision for the change is important. "In reality, even successful change efforts are messy and full of surprises. But just as a relatively simple vision is needed to guide people through a major change, so a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure." (Kotter, 1995). School Vision and Learning In his book on collaborative leadership, which builds upon some ideas form the work of John Hattie, De Witt (2016) notes that “Hattie often asks educators whether they have the word ‘learning’ on the first page of their school website or in their school's mission and vision statement” School Vision Statements In the session we will be reviewing the school vision statements added to...

Before Class After reading the required article ' Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age ', fill out the following form with your responses to check your understanding of some of the key ideas within it.  tinyurl.com/TMLConnectivism Wisdom of the Crowd We begin this week be reflecting on last week's the Wisdom of the Crowd activity, guessing the number of jelly beans in the jar. Surowiecki (2004) claimed that "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. Groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart, and still they are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, and even predicting the future." The earliest exmaple of this phenomenon was observed by Francis Galton at a country fair where people were asked to guess the weight of an ox. The mean average was close to the actual weight. The...

Flipped Preparation - Applying the Assignment 1 Rubric You will find it helpful to apply the Assignment 1 rubric to the following example  Leadership 1 assignment example . Using the  Leadership 1 rubric , what grade would you give it? What feedback/feedforward would you give the author? Add your grades to the form at  tinyurl.com/TMLULeadership1 Note that this is NOT meant to be an exemplar. It has various strengths and weaknesses. It is deliberately shorter than a real assignment so it can be easily assessed. Define your Audience Ideo's (n.d.) Design Kit emphasises the importance of defining your audience when planning an innovation: “Before you dig into your in-context research, it’s critical to know who you’re designing for. You’re bound to learn more once you’re in the field, but having an idea of your target audience’s needs, contexts, and history will help ensure that you start your research by asking smart questions. And don’t limit your think...