Sunday 15 October 2006

Welcome Robert Swartz


Today I was proud to welcome Robert Swartz to Taranaki for his workshop tomorrow "Infusing Critical & Creative Thinking into Content Instruction" He very kindly put up with an entourage of hungry children as we picked him up from New Plymouth, checked out the workshop venue & had a brief tour of the New Plymouth waterfront. Though my children have never been so polite & well behaved as i saw them today! I did say to Robert that i would photoshop this picture but i photoshopped myself right out of it... Maybe take a better picture tomorrow.
Particulary relevant to this workshop is the work that is going on in schools around the consultation and implementation of the draft NZ curriculum in particular the key competency Thinking. So this to ponder from the draft document:

“Thinking is about using creative, critical, metacognitive, and reflective processes to make sense of and question information, experiences, and ideas. These processes can be applied to research, organisation, and evaluation for all kinds of purposes – developing understanding, making decisions, shaping actions, or constructing knowledge. Intellectual curiosity is at the heart of this competency. Students who have well-developed thinking and problem-solving skills are active seekers, users, and creators of knowledge. They reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuitions, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions.”

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