Sentiments On Common Sense

The post title is a famous line from Arthur Miller’s death of a salesman.

While the play is a dark and brooding, it is also classic as it shows the hard work and struggle the salesmen in our world face day in and day out.  Ben Stein (author, lawyer, actor and economist) writes about the sales professionals role in our world and that we should pay attention to their services.

Check out the NY Times article here. In it he writes:

Those who are in sales are always aware that the next sale is behind the next door, and they are always great companions. They are where the rubber of production meets the road of consumption, whether in a showroom or a studio or on the phone or calling you at home. When the recovery starts, they will be the ones making purchases happen.

I agree with him and in a time of needed innovation and ideas, this is the time to sell and sell hard the ideas of learning, leadership and collaboration!

We all, in some way, are salesmen in our work.

Some of us are selling ideas.

Some of us are selling concepts.

Some of us are selling dreams.

The best of us do it with grace, style and panache.

I do know that we all can learn from each other, no matter what we are selling.

Ben Stein, Sales, Educational Leadership

Tags: Arthur Miller, Ben Stein, Death of a Salesman, Educational Leadership, Sales

In my recent post, I spoke about the implementation of an innovative statewide technology resource teacher program in Virginia.  Paul McMahon then wrote me, thanking me for the blog post but stating that he’d “not seen a single blog post that would indicated systemic change in any school present from Hong Kong. (#hksummit)

Hmmm… Paul.  I don’t know if I have it in me tonight to write fully to the point you have, but I would come to a bit of defense for the very, very few administrators who attended the summit a week ago.  Let’s examine our reality.

1.  I am not sure you have noticed, but the world is in a bit of downturn and we are facing some tremendous pressure to keep our costs to a minimum.  The mere idea of “innovating” is difficult to sell to our increasing conservative clients.

2.  Most, if not all of the admin attending the summit work in schools already moving down the path of innovation and sustainable implementation. Can they explain in depth what they are doing? Probably not, and thus my last blog post.

3.  Let’s not forget that a blog post is a rare way for administrators to communicate today.  I am a rare bird (in more ways than one) and most of my colleagues don’t sit on the couch on a Sunday evening and rap out a blog post for their own reflection.  Many administrators show thought leadership in many other ways including the weekly memos that STILL end up in the teacher’s mailboxes on Monday AM.

I still feel that in order to make educational change, all members of the school community need to be supported through the process. This includes administrators.  I can guarantee you that the good admin out there appreciate the support and I can also guarantee you that the admin that attended the HKsummit left empowered and filled with ideas.  Change takes time. Change takes bravery.  Change takes guts.  Change takes focus.  How much of each of these things depends on the time and place.

My colleagues… continue to look for support and Paul… keep urging us all on.

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Apple Leadership Summit-Hong Kong, Digital Leadership

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Tags: Apple Leadership Summit-Hong Kong, Digital Leadership, Paul McMahon

I have written before about my belief that staff development needs to be addressed as a long term effort, and not something that can be taken on as a short term effort to solve a particular problem.

Let’s face facts!  Common Sense tells us that to really learn to do something well, guided practice with a trained expert will result in success far more times than a single “sit and get” lecture of a visit to our local or regional conference. It is how our BRAINS work!

Sure, there are exceptions out there, but teachers who do apply knowledge garnered at a single sit down session are either 1) unusual, 2) probably educational risk takers or 3) a little bit nuts.  Perhaps some of us are a combo of the three, but I won’t write about that today!

Today when I opened my email, I found the digital version of ISTE’s Learning and Leading magazine. In it is an article called “Getting to the Heart of Technology Integration and focuses on the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher Program in the State of Virginia. The article is written by Teresa Coffman, associate professor at the University of Mary Washington.  From what I read of Professor Coffman’s writings, these folks are close to getting it right.  The State Department of Education in Virginia mandates that the 134 school districts in the state employ tech teams built around two key positions.

Those positions are:

1. An ITRT, who is responsible for training teachers to use technoloyg and software effectively, as well as helping teachers integrate that technology into their curricula.
2. A technology support staff persons who is responsible for managing the school’s information network.

From what I read, in the Virginia model the program relies on the collaboration of the classroom teacher and the ITRT.  Wow! The state is mandating that the ITRT and the classroom teachers communicate and strategize the implementation of the technology tools and provide direct support in the classroom environment.

The ITRT staffer has a wide vareity of responsibilities, but some include:

• Modeling instructional strategies for teachers
• Providing direct training and professional development
• Researching technology-based instructional strategies
• Evaluating software and hardware
• Meeting with administrators and content supervisors at the school or district level to coordinate services
• Serve on building and district leadership teams
• Creating and implementing a plan for communication on progress and activities to school faculty and admininstration.
• Maintaining records where and when appropriate to document progress

So… What’s Missing?
Where is the administrator support?  Why is it that the administrators are left off the list? Why does the state not recognize the importance of administrative leadership in the implementation of technology. Nothing will do more to raise the bar at a school level than to hold the administrators responsible for (at the minimum) the NETS-A.  To be fair accountability applied to any member of our learning communities without support of those members, is like taxation without representation.

Let’s just simply add one bullet point:

• Provide direct training, support and professional development to building and district level administration on the building of their digital leadership skills which focuses on the use of technology tools for administrative work and on the evaluation of the use of technology in the classroom programs.

I think that without that step, the $500 million dollars dedicated to this effort will fall well short of the effectiveness that the designers have hoped for in the long term.  The implementation of this program is merely focused on and dependent upon the ITRT position.  The good news here is that Virginia has at least recognized this as a key component.

The article states that:

Of the recommendations that researchers made for the ITRT program’s continued success, perhaps the most compelling was the idea that administrators should become more involved in the program so that they can recognize effective technology use and support their teachers’ integration efforts.

The author goes on to state that:

A Technology Resource Teacher Coaching Academy…. echoed this sentiment. It found variable levels of administrative involvement in the county. Some ITRTs indicated that their administrators provide ample support adn encouragement, and this was both necessary and beneficial.

Necessary and beneficial- yes, I could not agree more. It is in many ways like the air we breath.  It is not only necessary but also beneficial.  Without administrative support, technology integration efforts, no matter how well financed and resourced will struggle and suffer.

An analysis of the program (written in 2007) can be found at this link: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Technology/OET/info_brief_itrt.pdf

Leading and Learning, ISTE, ITRT, Technology Integration Specialists, Administration, Digital Leadership

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Tags: Administration, Digital Leadership, Education, Educators, Instructional technology, ISTE, ITRT, K through 12, Leading and Learning, Professional development, Technology Integration, Technology Integration Specialists, University of Mary Washington, Virginia

Walking down the stairs of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong with my colleage @chinaleish- and if you have never been to this school let me tell you… THERE ARE LOTS OF STAIRS!! @chinaleish had a few things to say about the stairs and I was complaining about @adecardy getting up at 6-dark-thirty this morning to twitter about twittering! (There is probably more of a story there!)

That is when the question came:  “Andy…. How do you have time to twitter?”

Truthfully, during a busy working day, I do not have time and tend to just keep tweetdeck open during my day to check on the people I follow during a lunch break or during a lull in a meeting.  Very seldom do I tweet at all during a day unless there is something noteworthy.  My secretary does the tweeting for the school, but she generally does this in advance on tweetlater. In the evenings at home I often will do a little multitasking (TV, email, twitter, perhaps a blog post, some RSS reading, etc) after my kids are in bed.  It works. It keeps me connected. It keeps me informed.  I learn a little, laugh a little, and relax a lot. It is a little bit of “me” time embedded in my homework time.  Perhaps it may keep me a bit more balanced.

I have often linked posts to the Blue Skunk Blog. Doug Johnson is one of the best educational bloggers out there and if you don’t have this guy on your RSS list, you should link to him today.   He responds to some blog chatter about the issues with being “hyper connected”, which is certainly a concern of mine as well. He links out to Darren Draper(another strong educationally focused blog).  Darren has some issues with Twitter, and fair enough I say.  I would warn all readers that even broccoli will make you sick if you eat too much of it!  ALL things should be used in moderation!

Doug’s post about a PLN Bill of Rights and Responsibilities provides a nice framework for digital leaders to use for themselves, but also to be shared and pushed to their faculty and their students.

Doug’s of R and R’s for PLNs is:

Personal Network Member Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

1. I have the right not to be social 24/7 – either online or in person.
2. I have the right to time for reflection and responsibility for doing so.
3. I have the right to use only the tools that suit my learning style.
4. I have the right to stop using a tool when it is no longer useful.
5. I have the right to not be on the cutting edge all the time or feel I need to always know all there is to know.
6. I have the right to choose those with whom I learn in my personal learning network and responsibility to learn from those with whom I don’t always agree.
7. I have the right and responsibility to disagree and the responsibility to do it professionally.
8. I have the responsibility to become familiar with a tool before sharing it with others.
9. I have the responsibility to share my knowledge with others in my network.
10. I have the right and responsibility to not let online activities keep me from my friends, my family, my workplace, or my community.

So… What did he miss?  What needs to be considered as we look through the eyes of our children? Our family lives?

Thanks Doug for the great post and the help in maintaining our balance!

Doug Johnson, PLN Bill of Rights

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Tags: Blog, Doug Johnson, Hong Kong, On the Web, PLN Bill of Rights, RSS, Television, twitter

I would like to follow up on my post yesterday. I have been doing a lot of thinking how technology builds a new classroom environment.  I use the word “new” very carefully here, in that we have been using tech in classrooms now for quite a while.  Heck… I used computers in my classroom way back in ‘87.  That would be a healthy 22 years ago now.   Nonetheless, tech does move the classroom environment toward a more democratic approach with the direction of learning coming from both the adult and the child (or teacher and student).

Silvia Tolisano at the Langwitches blog wrote a great post on the 29th called “Take the Technology out of the Equation”. This post is worth a read if you have not had a chance to work through her thoughts and the links. It is a well written post that goes to the heart of my beliefs and the point of my “micro”-rant from yesterday.  Her wordle from the post is to the upper left of this post.

In the post she asks a series of questions about learning.

They are:

• How do we teach students how to learn?
• How do we motivate and engage learners?
• How do we create a climate where learning is valued, not test scores or a covered text book?

Yesterday I stated that if we as educators are constantly stuck in the learning skills we will never “…be able to drill down deep in our conversations about higher level thinking, collaboration, problem solving and content creation”.

Let’s think hard here.  It really is common sense. To get past the reasons and excuses and the lack of skills by both the teachers and the students (recognizing both as learners) we as school leaders must focus our organizations on learning and the learning process.  I have said in the past and probably will do again and again, that we are denying our students great learning experiences if we remove the technology component from the learning equation. I believe that technology could be the greatest learning tool ever invented, and it really does flatten the instructional process by involving all members of the learning community in the process.  By gaining the engagment of the learner, we also gain their trust and their passion for learning.

Silvia said it best when when she states:

Maybe we need to be talking about something no one can deny as a priority in our schools: STUDENT LEARNING. Maybe we if we talk on that common ground,  there will be less resistance, more collaboration and communication on how to achieve that.

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student learning, Langwitches, collaboration, communications, 21st Century skills

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Tags: 21st century, 21st Century Skills, collaboration, communications, Education, Langwitches, learning, student learning, Teacher, Technology

Sigh….

Through my Diigo in Education group link I received a notice of a blog entry titled “Top 10 Tech Skills Your Teen Needs Now”.

Wow… that sounds like a great link to put in front of my community to focus them on some of the skills our school will be developing next year.  This will be great. With great glee I clicked the link and the number one thing list is: KEYBOARDING.

My common sense tells me that yes, keyboarding is important. I think back to my 8th grade year and my horrible experience in typing (manual typewriters and dull boredum of aaasssdddfffjjjkkklll;;; over and over again) where I earned some very bad grades!  I think to the hours that I have spent with elementary school kids teaching them “good” typing habits.  Was it time poorly spent. My answer is no, but my point is that KEYBOARDING is not a tech skill. It is a life skill.

After a quick search on the very same site I found this article which defines literacy (I read tech skills here) as:

• Using digital technology, communication tools and/or networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge economy
• Using technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information, and the possession of a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

One would argue that keyboarding is a part of this list above, but frankly, without beginning the conversation at the most macro level, we will forever be stuck in the logistics of keyboarding instruction and morass that focuses on the skills of operating common applications.  Never will we be able to drill down deep in our conversations about higher level thinking, collaboration, problem solving and content creation.  If we continue to focus on the whys and hows of social networking and computer maintenance, then we will never be able to concentrate on using the machine as a ubiquitous tool.  You teach students only that using a database is about maintaining password security and using web searches to find and secure information then our kids never will understand the use of the deep web of informaiton that lies beneath a Google search, and will forever be doomed to simple information analysis.

No offense to the author, but I believe she has missed the point.  Basic skills are good, but focus these skills on deep, meaningful and pertinent application in content study will create stronger more flexible, capable thinkers.

Image from Flickrstorm CC http://www.flickr.com/photos/21814877@N00/3363073562

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Tags: 21st Century Skills, Basic skills, Digital Media Literacy, Diigo, Education, Google, Google search, Keyboarding, Social network service, Technology, Top 10 Tech Skills

Ok…. perhaps my title post is a bit limited.

I should define my comments from the start to really be pointing at effective push-in educational specialists. This includes (but is not limited to) Tech, ESOL, Special Ed., Academic Support, Librarians, Counselors… ADMINISTRATORS, etc.

I have been around a while and seen some some great teacher specialists, and some not-so-effective teacher specialists.  The good ones are easy to supervise and make a huge difference to a large number of students. The not-so-good ones are extremely difficult to supervise and manage as the job descriptions, no matter how well they are written, always seem to miss the point.  Their job is teach everyone, not just the kids, and in fact, if they are doing it right thing, the most learning is being taken on by the teachers with whom they work. More importantly perhaps, is that they are models of learning for their colleagues, their school and the community.  It is learning out loud!

What got me going on this post is The Thinking Stick Entry, Why every school needs a Kim Cofino.

Jeff Utecht writes:

Some times being in the educational technology business can be a thankless job. The phone call or the e-mail that is a panicked teacher that sends you sprinting down the hallway. We get to play the hero a lot of times….swooshing in to unmute a computer who’s audio is not working before a presentation or other times more complicated matters arise. Nobody ever complains when the Internet is working, when the e-mail chugs along or every student laptop connects to the wireless Internet flawlessly.

I have met Kim and she is great and yes, she is a wonderfully talented woman, but I think Jeff missed a great opportunity to point out that perhaps the most effective way to move educational change forward is to TARGET the instructional message WITH the instructional strategy delivered directly WITH the classroom teachers who will be incorporating the lessons and tech skills over and over again!  Jeff….. YOU KNOW this is true! I have personally seen you do it.

The most interesting connection that this post made for me was in the book “Influencer“. David Maxwell and his colleagues have put together a great read if you don’t have this book. One of the wonderful lessons I learned from this reading was that humans are biologically programed to learn best by WATCHING and OBSERVING.

Hmmm… let’s see.  We take a talented master teacher.  We put them in a room with a talented and eager learner teacher. There are kids.  There is a skill or concept to be learned.  Mix together… embedded staff development!  Long lasting change.  A more effective school perhaps!

Note:  Go to the Influencer Link and there is a self-assessment, a blog and 4 very compelling videos.  There are lessons to be learned here in influencing and leading.  The great part to me is that it is all based in common sense.

So… the shout out here is to the digital leaders of the world who convince the powers that be, that technology specialists (or ESOL, Library/Media, etc) are not really there to teach the kids, but instead there to teach themselves and their colleagues. If we recognize the leaders as part of the staff development effort, the progress made will be measured in different ways, and will perhaps drive those involved and those hired to target their work in new ways.

Image courtesy of http://static.flickr.com/2308/2363259230_97830fb599.jpg

Educational Specialists, Technology specialists, staff development, embedded staff development, Digital Leadership

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Tags: Digital Leadership, Educational Specialists, embedded staff development, Staff development, Technology specialists

www.schooltechleadership.org

Scott McLeod has pulled together a nice list of some of the more innovative blogs written as a resource for busy admin. He has provided you with a recommended list of blogs for busy administrators (and educational leadership faculty). You can subscribe to them individually by clicking on the relevant link or you can read/subscribe to all of them at once by using one of these links:

• Read posts from the overall feed on a web page
• Subscribe to the overall feed via RSS
• Subscribe to the overall feed via e-mail

It is worth a look!

Andy

school technology leadership, school administration

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Tags: school administration, school technology leadership

Author’s note: I wrote this post about a year ago and updated a little here for Leadertalk. I stumbled upon it the other day while cleaning out my hard drive. It hit home with me as we all are facing some tough community issues right now and I decided we really need to get our PR machine running at 110% capacity. Thanks for reading. This post is also is cross posted on LeaderTalk. Thanks for reading this post! Andy

—————————————-

We need to do a much better job of self promotion or we will be run over by our own failures and lack of progress.

In act one, scene two of Julius Caesar, Caesar asks a soothsayer what the future holds.

Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak. Caesar is turn’d to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.

Let’s face it. Common sense would tell anyone that no school is perfect. In fact, by nature of the school improvement process, we honed our knives of self improvement by becoming very, very good at self criticism, and ultimately it is also deemed cathartic to announce our own weak points out loud and with robust vigor and valor. Alas, this time of year people get cranky and irritable. The ides of March saying often comes to my mind.

Such announcements like,

“Our school has progressed just 10 percentage points on the nationally normed test in the past three years, missing our target by 2 percentage points. We are disappointed in missing our target despite the tremendous progress we have made.”

The newspapers and online networks out there are all over this stuff, and the fuel for the school critics’ fire is among the worst in journalism falling just short of the criticisms and interrogations meted out on Meet the Press and Jerry Springer combined!

Sigh… why do schools insist on focusing on the negatives? Must we be so self critical? Is it a deeply held community expectation that we be negative about ourselves?

Would be appear to be a cover up if we instead said,

“The progress that our school has made in the past three years equates to 10 percentage points, and has moved our school to within 2 percentage points of our target. The school will reevaluate their academic targets and continue with our aggressive school improvement progress to ensure our students continued success.”

Much nicer if you ask me.

Alas… things do go bad in schools sometimes and black and white honesty is the best policy for sure. We seemed to have our share of them lately, and sadly some are really out of our control, although that is NOT the message a school administrator wants to send. To take responsibility and not being able to truly implement mitigating steps is certainly frustrating. I won’t make the laundry list of things that go awry, as I suspect you have two or three on your mind right now.

Instead let’s turn this coin over and I propose some positive communications that will rebuild the interest and confidence in the school.

Taking the old motto “Ten to glow on, one to grow on”, I figure that we must provide 10 or more quality examples of positive results in our schools to counter balance the single quality result.

Guiding factors for these include:
• Always tell the truth. (This should be easy)
• Do not exaggerate. (This is harder than you think)
• Make the message understandable. (This is the hardest thing to do!)
• Recognize your experts. Show them off to your community. Quote them frequently.
• Any school event or school personnel recognized by an independent source (i.e. newspaper, professional organization) should be published and republished. Theses events and people should be your poster children.
• Focus on direct implementation steps taken by the school, and not just mere happenstance occurrences.
• Student learning data must be targeted and not over generalized
• Over reliance regarding co-curricular (sports, after school, clubs, etc) for positives should be avoided.
• Concrete, real life celebrations of school events connected to learning are most efficient.
• Be visible with your positives and the positives will make your visibility less negative even when bad things happen.

My other suggestion is to think ahead of the curve. One area that I need to do a better job of addressing. Perhaps a weekly “devils advocate” session with some trusted colleagues will squeeze out those negative thoughts to address, change and squash in the public setting. My favorite recently has focused on a proposed program change in our school. The critics have come out in vocal fashion, spreading rumor by email and by voice to anyone on a mailing list.

What are we to do? My suggestion is the truth should be spread. Accurate, factual, research-based information and “on-the-ground” examples that share the positives. The mere thought that your veracity and honesty are being questioned hit hard with emotional impact. One must step forward professionally and let those attacks roll off your shoulders to the floor where they belong. The fact is, we may not always win the battles that we fight on these issues, but if we stay true to our beliefs about putting children first and focusing on what is best for our schools, we will most likely always triumph in the long run.

It’s my wife’s fault really. So much is when it comes to the technology in my life. Let me extrapolate.

Tool ———->Blame

Twitter ——>Amanda
Blogging—–>Amanda
Netvibes—–>Amanda
Intl. Ed——>Amanda

You get my point.  I’m not complaining mind you.  She’s usually..er… ALWAYS right and then she got me using Facebook and I have taken some time to get up and running with my own Facebook page.  I would link it here but it is pretty lame for sure.  Yesterday when I received my daily email from my Diigo education list with the title “10 Privacy Setting Every Facebook User Should Know” it really caught my eye!  Wow… you mean we have privacy issues on Facebook??

Let me be clear here. I really didn’t start using Facebook to connect anyone. I was just exploring and continue to do so.  I don’t use many apps… at least I don’t think so. I did nail the 80’s music quiz and showed my old high school buddy I haven’t slipped into dementia quite yet.  I have found a few old friends from High School and college and lots and lots of former students.  That is about it.  Nothing more.

After reading the “10 Privacy Setting Every Facebook User Should Know” posting, I have a new found respect for this VERY transparent medium.  My favorite setting:  Number 8. Make Your Contact Information Private. The author Nick O’Neill notes in this tip:

I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. One of the first things I did when I started approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built a strong relationship with, was make my contact information visible only to close contacts.

The contact information is my personal email and phone number. It’s a simple thing to set but many people forget to do it. Frequently people we don’t know end up contacting us and we have no idea how they got our contact information. Your contact privacy can be edited right from your profile. If you have chosen to enter this information, you should see a “Contact Information” area under the “Info” tab in your profile

Like most things on the web, Facebook can be misused and abused.  I would encourage you to be educated and informed if you use Facebook for professional reasons. In fact I URGE you to read this posting.

Flickr storm “surprise” photo creative commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/7169437@N03/2081945161

facebook, privacy, digital literacy

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