Here's one way to spread the transformation of education: distribute FREE POSTERS

The following post shows the type of "outreach" and distribution that is needed for transforming schools.

1.  The goal is to learn from other countries (such as New Zealand).  Below is an explanation about "Why is New Zealand ahead of the USA?" in the area of "making school fun and effective"  (see the explanation at the end of this post)

2.  Create FREE MATERIALS to give to teachers, students, parents and taxpayers.   

I created this poster

3.  Put the free information on key bulletin boards.  
a. Scribd.com is free
Make the description of the item in the language of the target audience.
b. Then post the link to the Scribd document in a blog.
c.  Post the document in a Google DRIVE account and put the link in email messages to influential educators.


4.  Hope that teachers and parents will share the information with the decision makers.  Eventually the free materials will reach politicians and principals of schools.  The demands of teachers and parents might be heard by decision makers.

Nil Göksel translated the poster

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Example:  How can we get this translated poster into the hands of teachers, parents and students?

The new design in Turkish

I created a poster


A graduate student in Turkey (Nil Goksel) volunteered to translate the document.  


Then she created a new design of the poster.  

This is a file on Google Drive  (get it)

The challenge is "How do we distribute items to teachers, students and parents?"  Scribd.com is part of the answer, and there is Google DRIVE, but there's also the role of advocates.  Each one of us can become "marketers" of the transformation of education.  "Each one, distribute one."

The poster is also on DRIVE

If you know people who speak Turkish, please send them this link.

Thank you.


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By the way... Have you heard about the learning revolution?
Here is the explanation of "why New Zealand has community centers and the discovery method in elementary schools."  The extract is from an email discussion with Gordon Dryden (an advocate of theLearningWeb.net) about "how to transform schools."

Because it is much more difficult to change high school methods than elementary, and our elementary schools have been “discovery – learn by doing” schools since 1940, we didn’t have to start our ICT program from scratch.  We were already the world’s first country to adopt Dewey principles in all primary schools.  And as many of those are in the country (we are the world’s biggest exporters of lamb, butter and cheese).  And, apart from tourism, our biggest export earner and public company is a farmer-owned cooperative.

Many of our schools act as community centres.

[Gordon describes the impact of environment on learning and the role of the arts in the development of students.]

To make all the digital effects for Lord of the rings, Weta Worshops and Weta Digital (Weta being a New Zealand spider, Peter Jackson and hs colleagues in Wellington (now an entire suburb is like Hollywood) recruited and trained 900 young New Zealanders.  Half were from sm all towns in New Zealand’s South Island, where the entire island (half of New Zealand) has only 800,000 people,, many in small farming communities. 

For all their life they have played outside, making their own sculpting, puppets, clay modelling (New Zealand is very big in the art of pottery), building home kilns, etc.

And when, in 1999, our ministry of Education advertised for a national ICT coordinator to supervise the ICT cluster movement, the Ministry correctly chose Carrol Moffat, the principal of Oxford Area School, the main school in  farming district which had about five feeder schools.  This in fact became the model for the cluster movement.

Gordon Dryden's current book
(FREE 34-page excerpt)

Small Schools

As an example, where I was born (still a town of 700 people: a servicing town for farming community), there is one central “area school” in that town , called Owaka (o-waka means “place of the canoe”, and it is both a middle school and a high school.  This sounds incredible, but the school in which I started my “education” (I actually started playing in nearby farms and the sawmill where my Dad worked)still operates, with only nine “pupils”.  When they reach middle school age, they join a “school” bus each morning for a 20-mile ride to the area school.

We’re a “do-it-yourself” country.  People joke that Kiwis (New Zealanders, excluding me) can fix everything with “a piece of number eight wire” (the original fencing wire used on farms).

Gordon  Dryden

I include this letter to highlight the importance of small schools as well as the role of arts in education.

Free Resource (1999 version)

Gordon Dryden compiled a book about the Learning Web (which sold 10 million copies in China and is now a free resource on the Internet).  A 34-page excerpt of the next edition, called The Learning Revolution, is available at this location.  

I hope to visit some schools in Auckland when I visit in March 2013.