Friday Mindset #166

Happy Friday!

Where has this term gone? We’ve got one more newsletter after this one, and then we’re taking our customary break for half term. Plenty to share this week and next, though, and looking ahead to our week off, it might be a good time to share three things we’re geeking-out about at the moment:

If you want a fascinating and energising half-term read, buy Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, which we’ve really loved. Week-by-week advice for improving your life, full of ideas for helping students. Order it now!

If you want an interesting chat, we’d recommend Dr Alok Kanojia’s discussion of motivation on Mel Robbins’ podcast. Start at 37:40 for some interesting insights.

If you just want to chill the hell out, we’ve been getting zen to a Spotify playlist called Sleepy Fire and Rain Sounds, but since we can’t link to it here, there’s a Youtube equivalent for you. Very Autumnal, strangely state-altering.

As for right here, right now - let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This has been a really interesting opinion piece to dig into.

The background story is this - there’s a town in West Virginia located next to a massive and super-sensitive radio telescope. To preserve the signal, no-one in town can have wi-fi, including the local school, where classes are taught without chromebooks, google docs, or online learning materials (except where, in a small number of classrooms, LAN cables can be used.)

And the school posts the lowest test scores in the county. The initial conclusion? Tech like this helps learners, and these kids are missing out.

But Cal Newport has a different take. The piece is fascinating, as are the comments below, so brew up, steal a bunch of Bourbon Creams from the boardroom, get in and give it the once-over…

Portal Talk 101… over to Tony

We’ve been sharing our new reports recently, so I though I’d take this opportunity to explain a bit about the ideas that went into the new build online portal and, like a proud Father, share some screenshots from the upgrade!

We’ve never wanted to claim that an online portal will solve all your problems! …but we believe that the most effective way to change behaviour is to leverage the relationships you have with your students. The portal is simply a tool to allow you to do this. So here’s Part One of our tour. I’ll show you the homepage, questionnaire and student reports.

Feast your eyes!

Redesigned Homepage

The Student homepage can now show student academic subjects and targets, alongside the VESPA scores. Taster activities, which change when the page loads, show above the original VESPA Hub - Containing the VESPA Questionnaire, Coaching Report and Student Activities, and the PRODUCTIVITY HUB - useful tools for students, including a study planner and an AI driven Flashcard app, which allows students to create and study flashcards using spaced repetition:

^{VESPA Questionnaire}

The VESPA Questionnaire of course forms the cornerstone of the platform. Students complete this 3 times per year, each time getting a coaching report, which is available to both students and staff:

The 5-pt Likert scale responses are translated into a score out of 10, using percentiles to calculate where each score boundary should lie, (using around 30,000 data points, i.e. all students who have completed the questionnaire in the current academic year.)

We’ve upgraded the VESPA Report this year, making it mobile friendly and improving the student comment areas. Arguably the most important elements of the report, these are where students are asked to reflect on their scores and provide a response. This is pure gold for coaching conversations, providing deeper insights into the student mindset. We have added guides to help students respond effectively and also to set effective goals.

Next week, we’ll go deeper and share some of the activities available!

If you would like to book a demo or just ask a few questions - please use my link below to connect. I’ll get back to you!

Something to try...

Parks and Recreation. Brooklyn 99. The Good Place. A Man on the Inside. What have these wonderful TV comedies got in common?

The answer is Michael Schur - a superb show-creator and comedy writer. In this week’s powerpoint, we’re sharing Four Lessons from Michael Schur, taken from a wide-ranging and brutally honest TV interview in which he describes the difficulties he faced when he first started trying to write sketches.

There’s so much transferable advice in these clips…

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