Thursday, July 28, 2016
The word on The Russell Street...
My perspective about The Russell Street Elementary School in New Zealand might be a little different than the other posts on this blog. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about instructional designs or schools in K-12 education because I teach at the College/University level. My only comparative reference is my son's school and I'm not sure what the differences look like between his and my classmates' schools from EdTech537. I recognize some of the same teaching techniques I have learned in higher education such as student centered design and mega-cognition. My son's school was also considered one of the most technological ones in Boise. It didn't seem that much different except for the blogging aspect. I am not sure that I was particularly impressed. It seemed obvious that The Russell Street School is private or a charter type of school due to the fact that they only enroll a certain number of students. Therefore, it is my opinion that the blogs were just propaganda and advertising to parents who were thinking about enrolling their children or who needed validation for enrolling them. It seemed like the teachers just blogged about what kids were doing. I didn't see kids themselves write opinions or post their own presentations (like my son made on Google Slides here in Boise in 1st grade). Sorry everyone, I guess I just wasn't as impressed as you. On a side note, I did read that New Zealand is desperate for teachers and is recruiting American ones with great wages and benefits.
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Belle, just a quick comment. Russell Street School is a public school (see complete list of public schools in Palmerston North at http://www.school.nz/area/palmerston-north-city
ReplyDeleteThere are actually only a handful of charter schools in all of New Zealand - like five or six, mostly in Auckland and Wellington (and those were only introduced in the past three years or so). One difference in the school system is that each school is self-governing. So instead of an elected school board for a district that has x number of schools, like we have in the United States, in New Zealand there is a board for each school. So in the case of Palmerston North, all 30 or so schools on that list have their own school board that governs it, even though the population of Palmerston North is only about 80,000.