Giles is a teacher and the e-learning coordinator at Marlborough Boys’ College. He has been part of the Pond rollout and engaged directly with our development team to have a say in the shape Pond takes for the rest of New Zealand’s educators. Here he presents his perspective on what Pond can offer as the community continues to grow.
Like almost every staff room in the country, the one I sip my coffee in, has inspirational posters. One of them suggests that, “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” There was no attribution. The simple solution, get the phone out, Google with quotation marks. The first 10 results indicated Antoine-de-Saint-Exupery. The next search provided a biography. A vague memory was also triggered; TED, Golden Circle. Again a quick search resulted in, Simon Sinek: How Great leaders Inspire action
As a non-digital native this lead me to consider, that twenty years ago to find the author of the above quote and investigate the link with Sinek would have taken hours of effort, or may not have even been possible. The internet, with its search engines and open access to other contributions, made the task not only possible but able to be completed in a few minutes.
The next jump was to consider how Pond takes this one step further. Alongside the raw search engine results are peer reviewed resources and educational provider resources, organised as to their educational suitability. Obviously spending less time finding better quality resources is exciting. Having over 5000 New Zealand educator peer reviewed resources is exciting. However, for me Pond’s real “longing for the endless immensity of the sea”, or in Sinek’s Golden Circle “why”, is the potential to improve teaching. As an aside it’s also exciting as most days I find something that interests me and I continue my own learning. I find it thrilling to have played a small part in reaching the goal of 5000 plus.
The process of getting there has also been exciting as a Pond Pioneer and as part of a Pioneer School. The responsiveness of the development team to suggestions has been amazing and there has been a real feeling of being part of a collective “longing”.
Well done Pond team, well done NZ educators. The next goal 10,000?