Week 11 - LEADERSHIP - Agile and Servant Leadership

Agile Teams are Self-Organising Teams

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 four-step routine for continuous improvement: Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA). 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.

The four  basic requirements of the game are that:

1. As each ball is passed between team members, it must have air time
2. Every team member must touch each ball for it to count
3. No ball to your direct neighbour on either side, you must pass to your front
4. Every ball must end where it started. For each ball that does, the team scores 1 point (make sure you count your points)

Agile Leadership Style

Agile leadership is situational, adaptive, empowering and inspirational. The most important leadership theory applied to agile is that of servant leadership (Highsmith, 2009).

“For the Agile Leader, servanthood is the strategy. Situational actions are the tactic” (Filho, 2011).

The key characteristics of the servant leader include awareness, listening, persuasion, empathy, healing, and coaching. Situational leadership means that the servant leader may act as a democratic leader, a laissez-faire leader, or an autocratic leader in different situations (Koganti, 2014).

Servant Leadership

The originator of the servant leadership concept (though inspired by a Herman Hesse story) was Robert Greenleaf. “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (Greenleaf, 1970)

A longer extract from this work is in this week's media

Teachers as Servant Leaders

Servant leadership has been applied by a number of authors to teaching. “The teacher as servant leader functions as a trailblazer for those served by removing obstacles that stand in their path. Part of unleashing another’s talents is helping individuals discover latent, unformed interests. Art, music, and science teachers are prime examples of educators whose genius lies in leading students to discover unarticulated interests.” (Bowman, 2005).

Scrum Agile Lifecycle

Being an agile leader includes applying agile processes. Scrum is a very popular agile software development process, where the product backlog (of user stories) is broken down into a series of sprints. In each sprint, a priority list of stories (the sprint backlog) is chosen for completion. The sprint last for a certain period of time (e.g. 2 weeks, 30 days etc.). There are daily stand up meetings during the sprint, and at the end of each sprint a working increment of the software is delivered. In other words, it is only a successful sprint if it delivers something useful.

CC image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scrum_process.svg

Some other agile techniques

Pair programming - Remember that from computational thinking?

Stand Up meetings (Daily) - Three questions: What did you do yesterday, what are you going to do today? are there any obstacles on your way? (This relates to the next flipped task)

Test driven development - Start with the first test of something, then pass the test. Write the next test, pass that, iterate... The tests evolve and change along with what is being tested

See Briggs (2014) for some ideas about how various agile techniques can be used in education.

References

• Bowman, R. F. (2005). Teacher as Servant Leader. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 78(6), 257.
• Briggs, S. (2014). Agile Based Learning: What Is It and How Can It Change Education? InformED. Retrieved from http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/agile-based-learning-what-is-it-and-how-can-it-change-education/
• Filho, H. (2011). Achieving Agile Leadership: Proposing the Agile Leadership Manifesto. Retrieved from
  https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/january/achieving-agile-leadership
• Gloger, B. (2008). Ball Point Game: A game to feel what Scrum is. Retrieved from https://kanemar.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/theballpointgame.pdf
• Greenleaf, R. K. (1970). The Servant as Leader, The Robert K. Greenleaf Center, Indianapolis, IN.
• Koganti, S. (2014). A Brief History of the Servant Leader. Retrieved from https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2...
• Highsmith, J. (2009). Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison Wesley.
• Rother. M. (2015). Kata in the Classroom: A simple exercise to help you teach scientific thinking. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/mike734/kata-in-the-classroom-overview-47711515

Week 11 - DIGITAL - Agile and Lean Education

(My reflections and class notes)

Agile - software industry
Lean - automobile industry

Benefits seen from the combined work of these two industries have many benefits for the Education System

Researched informed and evidence based. 

Paul and my adaption of  Manifesto for Agile software development to Agile School

Manifesto for Agile School Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing
active learners by facilitating meaningful learning and teaching
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and toolsActive learners over carbon copies  Collaboration of learners over pre-set exemplars Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

            "Agile is fundamentally about learning, people and change - the three
              things we struggle with in education and handle poorly at the present
              time."

The Agile Manifesto

The key ideas of agile are embodied in the 'Agile Manifesto' - http://agilemanifesto.org/

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile is fundamentally about learning, people, and change - three things we struggle also with in education and handle poorly at the present time. 

Agile Schools

Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. His article on InfoQ, 'Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would) (Peha, 2011) provides some interesting ideas on how the agile manifesto can be reinterpreted to apply to schools, and how agile techniques might be used in the classroom. 

Agile vs Waterfall video transcript (for in-class activity)

Meet Harry! Harry owns a car dealership - he needs a web application that will help him manage his current customers and their needs.

Looks like you're due for an oil change!

Meet Sally! Sally owns her own beauty salon. She needs a web application that will help her manage her clients and the services they enjoy.

Would you like to use the same color in your hair as last time?

Harry chooses to use traditional development - also known as the waterfall approach. In the waterfall approach, decisions are made at the beginning of the project. During development the customer is not involved with the creative team. Harry is only able to provide feedback at the end of the project when the creative process has been completed.

Sally chooses to use the agile approach. Agile development focuses on one area of the project at a time. During development Sally works with the creative team. Sally is able to provide feedback throughout the entire creative process.

When Harry sees the final product he realizes he needs a login feature. Harry is disappointed when he is told changes can’t be made.

Harry used the waterfall approach. Like water that flows down a waterfall cannot come back, it is not possible for Harry to adjust the scope of this project once it's been developed.

As Sally reviews her project with the creative team - together - they decide a profile feature would provide increased value. Sally is excited when the team tells her they can add it.

Sally used the agile philosophy. With agile, the client and creatives constantly work together to prioritize what is going to be the next feature that provides the most business value.

Every project has three main components: cost, scope and schedule. In order for Harry to get changes made, he is forced to spend more money and wait longer.

In order for Sally to get her changes made, she works with the creative team to decide which features will provide the most value.

The bottom line: Harry is left with a mediocre product and no money.

Sally is left with a superior product and extra cash to celebrate her success with!

The next time HWaterfall Planning vs Agile Model
Stepford Stan follows the Waterfall planning process with minimal student engagement

Agile Agartha looks for ways to engage students in their learning and in this process Agartha learns more about the students and the topic/ subjects they enjoy.arry needs a web application: “I'll have what she's having!”

Lean Production

According to Barney and Kirby (2004), educators can learn from lean production the importance of empowering teachers by training them to problem-solve and then expecting them to be self-reflective and to continuously improve their practice.

Class Task Amanda and Paul

Waterfall Planning vs Agile Model
Stepford Stan follows the Waterfall planning process with minimal student engagement

Agile Agartha looks for ways to engage students in their learning and in this process Agartha learns more about the students and the topic/ subjects they enjoy.

Stepford Stans Waterfall Model

 Agile Agartha's Agile Model

Kanban

One of the ideas that has been taken from Lean Production by agile practitioners is Kanban - which means 'visual card' in Japanese.

For an example of how Kanban boards can be used to help children plan, see Princess Kanban. This is on the agileschool blog, which you may find interesting. More recent materials are now on the Agile Classrooms site.

Trello

Trello is one of the tools that can be used to create Kanban style boards online. It is an easy-to-use, free and visual way to manage your projects and organise anything. Naturally there are other tools too, but this one seems to be the most popular right now, and amongst teachers and their students too. 

User Stories 

In software development and product management user story statements are often written on story cards following the format: As a (role) I want (something) so that (benefit). The idea is to capture what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function. It captures the "who", "what" and "why" of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small piece of paper.

Epics

User stories are short, simple descriptions of something to be achieved. They need to be small and focused enough to be achieved in a short time frame and allow success to be tested. A story that is too big is known as an ‘epic’ and has to be broken down into smaller stories. ‘Introduce BYOD to the school’ is an epic, and ‘Introduce BYOD to one pilot class’ is still too big. However, ‘Send a survey to families from one class asking if they are willing to provide a device for their child to bring to school’ is a smaller, story-sized step

3'c's

User stories have three critical aspects, Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. Ron Jeffries wrote about the 3'c's all the way back in 2001 and his advice is still good today. A good story card will likely end up with a back side covered with results of the conversation(s) and confirmation tests.

References

Barney, H. & Kirby, S.N. (2004). Toyota Production System/Lean Manufacturing. In B. Stecher and S.N. Kirby (Eds.), Organizational Improvement and Accountability Lessons for Education From Other Sectors (pp. 35-50). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Briggs, S. (2014). Agile Based Learning: What Is It and How Can It Change Education? InformED. Retrieved from http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/agile-based-learning-what-is-it-and-how-can-it-change-education/

Peha, S. (2011). Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would). InfoQ. Retrieved from https://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-schools-education

Reflection on Innovation in Digital and Collaborative Learning - Assignment 1

Reflection on Innovation in Digital and Collaborative Learning - Assignment 1

Who did you choose to test your innovation with first?

Why did you choose them? What were their characteristics?

A group of reluctant boy writers who had not engaged with writing

Who is affected by the problem? (Stakeholders)

Note that you can tick as many boxes as you like, and also select the 'Other' choice if needed.

Students

Teachers

Parents

Week 10 - LEADERSHIP - Entrepreneurialism and Crowdfunding

(My notes and ideas)

Entrepreneurialism

We begin this weeks' session by asking questions such as 

What do entrepreneurs do?
Who can be entrepreneurs?
Why is this so powerful now?
What must we do as teachers? 
Is there risk?
Is it managed?
Can everyone do it? 

Why do we need the skills of an entrepreneurs and why do we need to teach our children these skills.

Everyone has the ability to take a great idea and grow it

Frances Ballintine - Founder of The Mindlab
Video presentation by Frances

The NZ Curriculum - Education for Enterprise

Education for Enterprise is about promoting an approach to learning – one that is real, relevant, and gives students responsibility for their learning.

The Vision of NZ Curriculum (2016) is for young people who will be creative, energetic, and enterprising, who will seize the opportunities offered by new knowledge and technologies to secure a sustainable social, cultural, economic, and environmental future for our country

Its about giving children opportunities to practice skills

Entrepreneurial Skills

According to Aileron (2017), the top skills every entrepreneur needs are

• Resiliency. 
  • The ability to weather the ups and downs of any business since it never goes exactly the way the business plan described it. This skill enables the entrepreneur to keep going when the outlook is bleak.
• Focus. 
  • After setting a long term vision, knowing how to “laser focus” on the very next step to get closer to the ultimate goal. There are so many distracting forces when trying to build a business that this skill is not easy to master.
• Invest for the long-term. 
  • Most entrepreneurs are not patient and focus only on what comes next, rather than where the company needs to go. Overnight success may take 7 to 10 years. Entrepreneurs need to stop, pause and plan on a quarterly basis.
• Find and manage people. 
  • Only by learning to leverage employees, vendors and other resources will an entrepreneur build a scalable company. They need to learn to network to meet the right people. Entrepreneurs strive to guarantee they will get honest and timely feedback from all these sources.
• Sell. 
  • Every entrepreneur is a sales person whether they want to be or not. They are either selling their ideas, products or services to customers, investors or employees. They work to be there when customers are ready to buy. Alternately, they know how to let go and move on when they are not.
• Learn. 
  • Successful entrepreneurs realize they don’t know everything and the market is constantly changing. They stay up to date on new systems, technology, and industry trends.
• Self-reflection. 
  • Allow downtime to reflect on the past and plan for the future. Always working only leads to burnout physically and emotionally.
• Self-reliance. 
• While there is a lot of help for the entrepreneur, in the end, they need to be resourceful enough to depend on themselves.

Similar skills needed for leadership and similar to the Key Competencies

How does this skill set map to other lists of skills we have examined on the course?

Social enterprise

Social enterprise is an organisation that applies commercial strategies to maximise improvements in human and environmental well-being - this may include maximising social impact rather than profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises are part of a continuum of enterprise types with different agendas.

How would you characterise The Mind lab by Unitec on this continuum?

Maori Entrepreneurship

From a research perspective Māori have been recognised as the third most entrepreneurial population in the world; however, their success rate in exploiting these opportunities was low. A recommendation... was to increase Māori awareness and exposure to business activity in order to assist Māori in obtaining the mindset and skills needed to successfully exploit entrepreneurial opportunities (Dawson, 2012).

Lean Canvas - Startup Vision

The Lean Canvas (e.g. leanstack.com) maps out a potential startup vision.
Lean focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics and competitive advantages, and promises an actionable and entrepreneur-focused business plan. 

Half-Baked.com

Dave McClure came up with the original concept of ‘HalfBaked.com: Entrepreneurial Improv Theatre.’

Act 1: Start by having people yell out 50 or so random words.
Act 2: Each team given 2 words + ".com"
Act 3: Teams have 10 min to prepare their BlankBlank.com business plan
Act 4: Each team does a 5 minute pitch on their product
Act 5: Vote on who did the best job

In class we will be doing an activity that has been developed by Nick Hindson and The Mind Lab PG team from this idea: Half-baked Lean Canvas which is in the media for this week.

The Mind Lab Process

Create teams of between 3 - 5 people. Gather 30 random words from the group. Each team then chooses 2 words.

1. Start by thinking of real problems that somehow relate to those two words, add that into part 1 of the canvas.

2. Think about who are having the problem you chose to look at. Who are being affected by that? Then choose your main customer group that you want to focus on.

3. Ideate some solutions. Write down your favourite one to your lean canvas. Prepare a 30 sec elevator pitch about your business idea.

Take turns pitching your business ideas. The team that pitches the idea must listen to feedback without replying. Other teams discuss things they 'wonder about' and 'like'.

4. Based on the feedback make updates. Then consider who are your early adopters (the ones that are easiest to market your idea to).

5/6. What channels will you use to reach your customers? (How will you market it?) What resources do you need? (Human, finance ...) How can you make the plan sustainable and possible?

7. Purpose. Why do you want to do this? Why is it important? What is the big purpose behind it?

The Mind Lab by Unitec - Lean Critiquing Form

We've developed a The Mind Lab by Unitec Lean Form that helps you to explain and critique your innovation plan in a lean way. We hope this is a useful tool for your DIGITAL 2 assessment.

Filling in the form and seeking feedback and -forward from your fellow students might help you to explain the innovation and critique it. Remember to keep your answers Lean!

Once you have answered in class, you can view the responses from others and copy your own data to another document for reference.

Crowdfunding

With crowdfunding, an entrepreneur raises external financing from a large audience (the “crowd”), in which each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. Provini (2014) provides the following ideas for how you might raise money for schools with crowdfunding: 

1. Use crowdfunding for specific projects or needs, rather than general fundraising
2. Identify a safe, flexible and transparent platform
3. Start with reasonable goals
4. Break large projects into smaller steps
5. Prepare workgroup members to do intensive marketing
6. Marketing messages matter!
7. Target different levels of donors (alumni, community members, parents, local business owners, etc.)
8. Consider offering rewards and incentives for larger contributors
9. Offer students leadership opportunities and take advantage of teachable moments

Crowdfunding in New Zealand

• http://idealog.co.nz/venture/2014/02/ultimate-guid...
• https://www.snowballeffect.co.nz/
• https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/
• https://givealittle.co.nz/ (just donations and fundraising for causes and charities) 
• http://www.pozible.com/collection/detail/109 (Environmental Crowd funding projects in Australia and around the world)

Building an understanding of business

More and more young people are using crowdfunding platforms to gain public support to seed fund new start ups and early expansion plans for businesses.

Other ideas that students can use to build an understanding of business, entrepreneurship, marketing, target markets, sales, budgeting and economics include:

1. Creating a online shop on a low cost platform such as etsy.com. Online shops can allow students to sell items as diverse as art, crafts, digital assets such as Minecraft characters and simple services eg. car grooming, garage sorting, pet minding etc
2. Set up a school-wide or community-based pop-up fair where parents with businesses can sell slow moving or end of line products by hiring a stand where the community can shop.
3. Create a community garden at the school and grow vegetables for sale at farmers markets or to parents. Choose seasonal items that make for great after school snacks (for parents to buy) such as strawberries and carrots.

Resources for teachers and students

Young Enterprise offers a range of enterprise programmes and financial literacy resources that can be used by teachers throughout New Zealand. Each resource is designed for a specific age group, and aligns to the New Zealand Curriculum. http://www.youngenterprise.org.nz/

References:

Aileron. (2017). The Top Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs. Forbes.com. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/aileron/2013/11/26/the-top-skills-every-entrepreneur-needs/

Dawson, B. (2012). Māori entrepreneurship: A Māori perspective. Doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology. Retrieved from http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10292/4651/DawsonB.pdf?sequence=5

Provini, C. (2014). Raise Money With Crowdfunding: Top 9 Tips for Schools. Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/crowdfunding-fundraising-schools-tips-best-practices.shtml

The NZ Curriculum Online. (2016). The NZ Curriculum: Vision. Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum  

Week 10 - DIGITAL - Real World Learning and Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is the practice of engaging a ‘crowd’ or group for a common goal, such as innovation, problem solving or efficiency.It can take place on many different levels and across various industries. Thanks to our growing connectivity, it is now easier than ever for individuals to collectively contribute, whether with ideas, time, expertise, or funds, to a project or cause. (Crowdsourcing Week, 2017).

If you want to learn when 'crowdsourcing' became a trend, take a look at the real data that Google shares with us: www.google.co.nz/trends/explore#q=crowdsourcing

You could also combine that with other search trends.

OpenIDEO

This is an open and global community working together to design solutions for the world’s biggest challenges. You can see some examples of the types of projects that are included on the site by looking at the IDEO Stories

Hacking NZ Education

Hackeducation is a crowdsourcing platform set up by The Mind Lab by Unitec to collaboratively brainstorm ideas of what the future of education in New Zealand could look like.

hackeducation.co.nz/about

We have been analysing the crowdsourced data from this web site over a number of phases:

1. Gathering Ideas from the crowd → 888 responses (by end of January 2017)
2. Analysis (Themes) → Data were analysed by crowdsourcing using students from the postgrad November 2016 intake. From this, 13 frequently mentioned concepts/themes were identified
3. Analysis (Relationships) → Students from the postgrad March 2017 intake were asked to identify relationships between the concepts identified in the previous phase, and a domain model was developed from these relationships.
4. Faces of Change → a website was created to capture our students' reactions to how they are responding to the themes within the Hackeducation data.

Real World Problems

Real-world problems have all of the following characteristics (ITL Research, 2013):

• Are experienced by real people. For example, if students are asked to diagnose an ecological imbalance in a rainforest in Costa Rica, they are working with a situation that affects the real people who live there.
• Have solutions for a specific, plausible audience other than the educator as grader. For example, designing equipment to fit a small city playground could benefit the children of the community.
• Have specific, explicit contexts. For example, developing a plan for a community garden in a public park in their town has a specific context; learning which vegetables grow best in which parts of one’s country does not.
• If students are using data to solve a problem, they use actual data (for example, real scientific records of earthquakes, results of their own experiments, or first-person accounts of an historical event), not data developed by an educator or publisher for a lesson.

Citizen Science

Engaging in citizen science allows people to experience, first-hand, the scientific process and engage scientific thinking at the same time as increasing their knowledge of the specific research topic. Citizen scientists are members of the general public that volunteer their time to work and collaborate with professional scientists to collect data and solve problems on real scientific research questions. (Masters et al., 2016).

Zooniverse

The flipped task was to draw a diagram linking the Zooniverse ‘Build a Project’ process with Kotter’s 8 stages of change.

Zooniverse claims to be the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. Research is made possible by volunteers, hundreds of thousands of people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. The goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, otherwise. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries and datasets useful to wider research.

Zooniverse projects have two distinct aims, (Masters, Oh, Cox, Simmons, Lintott, Graham, Greenhill, & Holmes, 2016). The first is to solve specific scientific problems through the use of citizen scientists. The second aim is to engage members of the public with real world science to educate and change attitudes towards science. Citizen scientists are members of the general public that volunteer their time to work and collaborate with professional scientists to collect data and solve problems on real scientific research questions. Citizen science is not a new concept but has become more accessible to people around the world through the use of the Internet. Edmund Halley used citizen science in 1714 when he got members of the public to report the total eclipse of the Sun across England.

Through platforms like Zooinverse citizen scientists are able to view, record, analyse, process and answer incredibly large amounts of data that would not be possible by the scientists doing the research alone. The first project, Galaxy Zoo, received 70,000 classifications per hour and more than 50,000,000 classifications in the first year (Graham et al., 2015).

Crowdsourcing by The Mind Lab by Unitec

As well as using crowdsourcing for the Hackeducation project, we also use it to help us decide where to run the postgrad programme. Do you know anyone who would like to join us for a future intake? Where should we go next? See the interactive map at wheretonext.school.nz/

Please also share the Pop-up Labs URL or our Facebook posts with your colleagues:

themindlab.com/postgrad-studies/pop-up-labs/

Part of our own marketing strategy is that we trust you wanting to help us.

References

Crowdsourcing Week. (2017). What is crowdsourcing? Retrieved from http://crowdsourcingweek.com/what-is-crowdsourcing/

Graham, C.G., Cox, J, Simmons, B, Lintott, C, Masters, K, Greenhill, A. & Holmes, K. (2015). Defining and Measuring Success in Online Citizen Science: A Case Study of Zooniverse Projects. Computing in Science & Engineering, 17(4), 28-41.

ITL Research. (2013). 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Retrieved from: https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/ITL-Research

Masters, K., Oh, E. Y., Cox, J., Simmons, B., Lintott, C., Graham, G., Greenhill, A., & Holmes, K. (2016). Science learning via participation in online citizen science. Journal of Science Communication, 15(3), 1-33.