SOLO Taxonomy: A Guide for Schools.
Launching SOLO Taxonomy: A Guide For Schools Book 1 at the ULearn11 conference in Rotorua was a wonderfully comedic occasion.
The book was stunning – the publisher Essential Resources had done a wonderful job in a very tight time-frame and I was especially chuffed that Professor John Biggs had critiqued the book and sent his personal congratulations. He describes the modifications of SOLO as a unique interpretation and rates the new HOT SOLO visual rubrics that feature in the book as an exciting extended abstract approach to using SOLO in schools.
“Congratulations to Pam Hook and Julie Mills for their innovative work in introducing the SOLO taxonomy and constructive alignment into the school system. This book demonstrates clearly how children can become participants in improving the quality of their own learning.” John Biggs, author, Teaching for Quality Learning at University.
ER on crowd control
The launch itself was a cross between a “Suzanne Paul and her bronzing powder” infomercial … and trying to stand on a riverbank between the water and a hippopotamus – deliciously outrageous, uncontrollable and chaotic in all its launchiness.
Imagine the narrow corridor in a trade hall with a small table loaded with wine and books and a thoughtful publisher ready to give a serious talk about pedagogy and conceptual understanding – crowd the space out with your three ever faithful friends and eleven others who are helplessly attracted by the promise of free wine you made in your workshop – then just as the publisher starts her prepared speech – let loose a kazillion hungry teachers – who flash mob the corridor space hell-bent on finding the quickest route to the buffet tables – it turns out that teachers worried that they will miss out on a Vietnamese spring roll and a Danish have a collective motion not unlike that seen in Pamplona’s “running of the bulls” – I was lucky not to be carried away in the rush. The whole launch just needed a barrow boy/costermonger crying “hot codlings …hot codlings” to make it complete.
It was as RoseG would say “persactly” how you’d like a book launch to be.
