A recent post by John Connell Hexagonal Leadership draws our attention to the use of metaphor in making sense of our actions and reactions in our education endeavours. John was responding to Don Ledingham’s Seven Sides of Educational Leadership.

John’s thoughts on the use of metaphor were timely, and made me realise that in my own way I also make use of metaphor to make sense of and to energise my work in ICT and learning. John referred to Greg Whitby’s Distributive Leadership ideas – and with a certain amount of synergy – here I was yesterday presenting Web 2.0 and some introductory material on blogging to Greg’s leadership team – using a metaphor of creating an impressionist painting together, full of light and shade, energy and vibrancy – new and different and contributed to by each member of the team in some way yet to be defined.

Yesterday’s session was about creating those first sweeping brushstrokes – shaping outlines of our new educational vision for 2007.

Monet himself provided a new vision of movement for Western Artists – drawn from tradition and cultures already in existence. His art is based on the use of color, which has to “draw” the motive without resorting to line.

I see our 2007 Web 2.0 initiatives very much in terms of the colour and vibrancy of Monet, and in the shape of the Hokusai wave! We are poised for significant changes.

Our system of schools will launch into a new era of Web 2.0 with the start of the new academic year. Amongst other things, one of our first priorities will be the use of blogging to empower communication, information dissemination, reflection, dialogue, inspiration etc. We have created a network of leadership blogs that will link the emerging energy of ideas and innovation in learning and teaching between all parts of our educational enterprise.

Nothing new to John and the scottish GLOW initiatives – but a great leap forward for us in our group of schools ‘downunder’.