Friday Mindset #89

Happy Friday! The first week is done.

Maybe six(ish) more to go, and Benidorm beckons. Beach towels. Windbreakers. 600-page novels about time-travelling vampires. So in celebration, let’s take a few minutes to get our breath back and start thinking about next academic year; the adjustments we can make, the tweaks and tricks that will improve things for everyone, the nudges in culture and behaviour.

Lots to share this week, so let’s dive in.

Something to try...

(with apologies to Sandra, who’s seen all this and chatted through it with us…)

Recently we’ve been visiting, and talking to staff from, schools who are having a really tough time with their year 11s.

These observations come from two or three schools and are amalgamated here, so don’t describe one institution but a number… year 11s haven’t been turning up to their exams. Teachers have driven to their houses, woken them up and taxied them in. Once morning exams are complete, kids are running off, skipping their afternoon revision sessions. Booster classes and last-minute support sessions have been very thinly attended. Behaviour has become combative, students angry at the system.

It’s got us thinking. Sometimes, of course, children are wilful, antisocial and badly-behaved for lots of complex reasons and the school is doing its very best to handle hugely challenging personalities.

Other times, it could be that we unwittingly play a small part in demotivating students, creating and exacerbating our own problems. Here’s a very short powerpoint you might want to consider. It explores the work of Yale Professor Victor Vroom, whose work has largely been about motivation and behaviour within organisations. We’ve adapted his work a little so that it suits schools and students, and created a simple three-part test you could take, which should give you a steer on your current culture, and the likelihood of student disengagement as a result.

It’s been a good starting point for discussion. See what you think…

Something we're reading...

Here’s something that’s caught our eye over half term. A pop-up museum, The Museum of Failure has opened in New York, and is running until mid-June. It’s a repository of products and ideas that absolutely bombed, from Betamax video machines through terrible flavours of Oreo, Pepsi-related disasters and running shoes with strange plastic blades for soles…. even a hula-hoop chair.

Google Glass, is there, Apple and Microsoft are there - it’s an interesting reminder that the most successful companies are also the ones with the highest profile mistakes.

There are a couple of amusing videos to watch, one really interesting one about the same museum in Sweden, and a website of exhibits to browse. All-in-all, we think it’s an interesting place to start if we want to use a tutorial discussion to normalise setback and failure as an unavoidable stopping-off point in the pursuit of success.

Portal Talk...

AI in Education - Part One

As the hype around AI takes hold, I decided I’d explore the impact it is likely to have in education. I’ve been experimenting with AI prompts at VESPA HQ and we’re excited about how we might add time saving tools to the current platform in the future. Here’s part one of our discoveries; more to come next time.

I have created a pulse poll below to gauge your current thoughts on AI and how it might impact education… results to be published in two weeks. We’d love your thoughts:

For those of you already experimenting with ChatGPT you’ll have quickly realised - like we have - that the quality of the output is determined by the quality of the human prompt. Luckily https://www.helloteacherlady.com/ has your back, and has created some fantastic teaching prompts for us. Check them out on her brilliant, tech-focused blog below:

To demonstrate the importance and power of prompts I decided to create an alternative newsletter article using a detailed AI prompt. Click below to read the resulting article!

Our latest offer...

Remember friends, we’re offering a discount on our online materials if purchased in June. Woo! If you use the code VAJUNE23 at checkout, you’ll get a 20% discount on any of our online materials - that’s questionnaires or resources. Check out what we’re offering here:

And that’s it for now. Enjoy the sunshine!

All the best to you and yours,

Marin, Steve and Tony