Sentiments On Common Sense

Having worked in two schools in the past 9 years that are behind significant firewalls run by the government, I feel I have enough experience to write this blog post…. at least from the educational leadership side of the conversation.  In surveying the countries around the world that filter and block the internet, Saudia Arabia and my current location here in Shanghai are near the top.  In Saudi it was a bit easier to operate as we were able to get some satellite systems put in place to speed our upload and download speeds, and provide our students with access to the information systems that were blocked. A well placed dish behind the A/C systems allowed us just the right amount of access for our little school. There is a different access issue in my current country.  But, no matter where you are and what the mission and vision of your school is, there is ways to give your students access to Web 2.0 tools that are now present on the read/write web.  Now that g0-0g-le has left the country of my residence, I am getting more and more questions about how we run our student services.

To me it is like playing on the beach with all of that sand, or in your own sandbox. The sandbox, while a bit confined, allows you to build castles, dig holes and feel the grit in your hands just like you do at the beach. That sand is just like that at the beach and people on the outside of the box can reach in and touch the sand too, but whatever is inside that sandbox cannot be blocked by those problematic firewalls. When I have spoken to my community about dealing with the firewall and access issues, I always say, “We are just going to build our own virtual web 2.0 sandbox and give our kids access to similar tools, and access to a global audience.

Thus we have done or are in the process of doing the the following:

• Student email: We established our own domain name which allows us to monitor, administer and maintain a email webpresence. The key is the domain name which, if monitored carefully will not be a problem for the firewall.
• A blog installation at a local level.  We currently use WordPressMU and have found great success with the installation. Our school built this from the beginning and now has hundreds of students and teachers blogging as a part of the educational process.
• Web publishing space for teachers and students will soon be the norm. As a Mac school, the students and teachers will begin using iWeb to create their own sites.  It is easy, fast and allows for a global audience.
• In place of Flickr and YouTube we have established our own installation to serve and share our own videos and photos. This customize installation was based on some opensource software.  The key here is having strong technical support.
• Moodle- by serving this installation on-site with strong technical and educational support has helped launch many classroom programs toward a blended learning environment.
• Social networking alternatives such as Elgg can provide schools with that all important methodology that engage students in an online social environment.
• Up next—our own wiki installation.  There a many alternatives out there, but this is something that you will likely want to spend somemoney on to make work well.
• Locally hosted academic databases are the norm, not the exception. This gives the student access to online data but without the challenge of slow or filtered access.
• Locally hosted student information systems and parent communications systems, we use PowerSchool, but there are many alternatives. With the exception of our school’s webpage, everything is hosted locally so we don’t deal with the issues of access and internet reliability. If there is a problem, generally we have only ourselves to blame.
• Calendar servers and internal email systems with more than ample storage. Again, strong technical support is important, but even more important is a vision based committment to providing resources to the professionals in the school.
• Off-site backup and mirroring setup. This seems so natural and important, but interestingly enough this sort of setup is not considered essential.

The key to the list above is targeted staff development with an adopted set of tools. With a variety of tools like you see above, it is about choices, continual support and technical expertise. Living in a firewalled country is a challenge, but I also feel like our students are getting a great educational experience that allows them to learn the skills of web use and practice digital citizenship in our sandbox of tools without the intervention of a government entity.

Technorati Tags: shanghai, Saudi Arabia, internet access, web 2.0, digital literacy, student learning

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/32962238 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/33546752

Our educational blogging process has its ups and downs.   The teachers use the medium as an instructional tool and a tool to widen the audience for their students.  It is a collaboration tool and even an assessment tool.  Communications and Marketing people use it as tool to draw in potential customers and clients, or to get the message out that makes a difference for the school community.  Alas… my colleagues and peers, the administrators struggle with the medium and the purpose.

Thus, I was thrilled to read this article from www.inc.com, titled “Let’s Take This Offline”, by Joel Spolsky.

Mr. Spolsky is the founder and CEO of Fog Creek Software, and a regular contributor to Inc. magazine, although I am sad to report this is his last column.  Inc. does have a nice archive there of his past articles though and they are very good!  In the linked article, He notes he too struggled with the formula for success in using blogs to draw in business customers and clients. Noting that…

“It takes real discipline not to talk about yourself or your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal and often it is.  But when you are using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you.

Mr. Spolsky then goes on to credit Ms. Kathy Sierra for clarifying for him what successful blogging looks like for the entrepreneur

To really work, Sierra observed, an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. It takes real discipline to not talk about yourself and your company. Blogging as a medium seems so personal, and often it is. But when you’re using a blog to promote a business, that blog can’t be about you, Sierra said. It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.

What this would look like for schools is endless, but in the end I will tell you a few things I believe it should and should NOT be for administrators.  In the end, it is really about making our school community feel “awesome“.

Shoulds:
1.  Sharing news with a leadership voice.  This is not about you, but it should clearly come from you.  In the absence of news, people will make something up so give people something to talk about.  If it is bad news, then it is your chance to get the facts out there!  You can give short updates, status updates and the like!  Again… add your voice to the mix and make it about the organization. Parents will feel “awesome” when they feel involved and informed.  Thus, use your blog to help them be both.

2. Scott McLeod of the CASTLE Project in his document titled “Why Blog as an Administrator?” notes that marketing of your school is very important.

Because they’re electronic, blogs are both faster and less costly than paper communications. If the savings in paper alone aren’t persuasive, administrators should consider additional advantages that blogs often have over other communication channels. Web sites and paper newsletters are static, noninteractive, and often dated (who wants to readabout something two weeks after it occurred?). E-mails, electronic newsletters, and/or listservs contribute to clogged inboxes and get caught by spam filters. In contrast, blogs are timely, interactive, and avoid some of the issues that accompany e-mail communications.

Potential clients, customers and students want to go to the best schools with the best resources and the best teachers.  This will also help them be “awesome” now and in the future.

3.  Public relations is so important to school leaders and we need to think about the power can harness around getting our message out there without the filter of the media.  Again McLeod notes:

Frequent, transparent communication, with the opportunity to receive feedback through
comments, is a strength of blogs that administrators can leverage to their school organization’s
advantage.

Common messages bond a community and make it “awesome”.  Blog posts that can be referenced, printed and cross posted will help school leaders do that for their community.

4.  Finally, blogs are a powerful demonstration to your internal community (teachers and fellow administrators) that you are in thoughtful discourse about the school, its direction and its future.  The ideas of thought leadership and visionary leadership can be demonstrated for your school community.  By doing so, you and the school will be better set to have more conversations about the teaching and learning.  This is, as one person has mentioned to me, the “bread and butter” of schools.

Schools with a clear and common vision are seen as “awesome”.  This is just plain common sense!

Should Nots:
1.  Blogs should not be for announcements and dates.  Reason: Boooorrrrrriiiinnng and more easily found on a simple web page. In the age of google calendars, ical compliant software and rss feeds, I really don’t think this is a good use of web space.

2. Movie and photo warehouse. Reason: People will visit once or twice. You will have to maintain a flow of media akin to YouTube and Flickr to keep people enaged. Instead weave this media into your posts when there is a reason to do so.

3. Be simply a mass email.  Reason: If you want me to be sure to read it, then send it to me and mark it urgent.

4. Be a first line of emergency information.  Reason: Let’s face facts here. In an emergency the first place people will go is your schools main webpage. If your blog is the school’s main page then fine, but otherwise don’t rely on people clicking through to see your blog for this information.  In the age of mobile and cell phones, people expect a text message if there is an emergency anyway. If you school has not thought about implementing such a process, I would encourage you to do so.

Photo courtesy of www. zoo-m.com/flickrstorm, search term “awesome” and http://www.flickr.com/photos/13069239@N02/2409278113 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/66076061@N00/3767881751

Technorati Tags: blogging, thought leadership, INC.com, Joel Spolsky, AWESOME!, School communications

This entry has been cross posted to www.leadertalk.org

I just returned from a trip to the U.S. to hire some teachers for my school.  Those trips are grueling, intense and a chance to examine my personal educational beliefs at a core level.

We move out on these trips with great purpose.

We work in teams.

We talk. We collaborate. We commiserate. We come home exhausted.

We interview 15-18 teachers a day and make some very basic decisions (to offer a contract or say “no thank you”) which are VERY important decisions about who will be the teachers in some of our classrooms this next academic year.

Before we went out on our recruiting trips this year, I had our administrative team review an article from Independent School Management titled “Why the Worst (and Best) Teachers Matter”.  Unfortunately it is a copyrighted article not available on the web unless you are member of ISM, but I will quote from the article which focuses the reader on the aphorism that “a rising tide lifts all boats” is not necessarily true day in and day out in the classrooms.  The author notes that “bad” teachers also have an effect on the good teachers in the schools in which we work.  Evidence points to the fact that..

Relationships among people in an organization matter a great deal.

Simply put, students get higher marks when both their teacher and their teacher’s peers are above average; when teachers peers are lower in ability and effectiveness, students achievement levels reflect that.

Technically speaking….

…the study notes that “replacing one peer (teacher) wiht another has one standard deviation higher value-added will increase her students tests scores by 0.86 percent of a standard deviation.” That improvement is noted for reading; for mathematics improvement “is associated with a 3.98% of a standard deviation increase in math test scores.”

Noteworthy?  I think so!  In fact as I read the article, and did as the author suggested and examine this trend in it’s entirety, I believe it confirms just what I believed for some time.  Teachers, like students, benefit from direct learning from their peers, and that learning and professional improvement result from exposure to better peers.  It is probably a “no-duh!” for many administrators out there when I state that it really has nothing to do with the school, and the organization and more about the quality of the teachers in the classrooms.  Great schools, as common sense would tell you, have bad teachers and bad, or poor performing schools have some good teachers.  In the Atlantic Monthly article “What Makes are Great Teacher?” author Amanda Ripley notes in her article detailing the “New Teacher Project” that,

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication.

She goes on to share that…

But we have never identified excellent teachers in any reliable, objective way. Instead, we tend to ascribe their gifts to some mystical quality that we can recognize and revere—but not replicate. The great teacher serves as a hero but never, ironically, as a lesson.

Noting that…

Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school; but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more within schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.

So, what should we be looking for out there?  What kinds of traits do we look for, and HOW does my team of administrators gleen realization of these traits from brief 15-30 minute interviews. My take as always been to find learners, not learned teachers.  I have always looked for teachers who have an innate joy and love of life.  I look for teachers who have demonstrated leadership and goal aquisition in the past.  I look for teachers who have perserverved, not through hardship, but toward a single-minded high standard for the student learning experience.  My common sense is once again confirmed as noted by Ripley when she quotes the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)

Interestingly this hit a nerve with me.  It makes a lot of common sense.

Grit.  Stamina. A learner. Flexible. Adaptable. Grit.

Technorati Tags: recruiting, hiring, great teachers, bad teachers, supervision and evaluation, Atlantic Monthly, What Makes a Great Teacher?

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/68898571@N00/3562074395

Image via Wikipedia

Ok… I am on a roll here, and I as type this in the car on the way back to my home campus here in Shanghai, I am watching a news podcast that is highlighting the response to the United States President’s plan to speak to students in schools about “goal setting and hard work”.  Apparently there are some – labeled “indoctrinators”- who believe that this should not happen as this is just another way for the left wing folks in the US to indoctrinate the children into the “cult of Obama”.  Sadly the discourse is more of the same, with little intellectual conversation, but instead, a more guttaral response to someone they do not like.  What next… a Joe McCarthy-like panel?  Perhaps a front runner candidate for the presidentency from the John Birch Society?  Where is this type of leadership leading us to in the long run. Is there some strategic thought here?  If so, I would like to see the long term goals here!

So… I go back to Wikipedia’s definition of bullying:

“the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation. Bullying can be defined in many different ways. Although the UK currently has no legal definition of bullying,^[2] some US states have laws against it. Bullying is usually done to coerce others by fear or threat.”

It makes all to much common sense that this sort of behavior by a small faction in our world can inhibit free speech by spouting the extreme retoric, it certainly does have the effects of 1) drowning out the less compelling and more cerebral conversations and 2) pushing the more thoughtful, reasonable and intellectual people to the point of being unwilling to speak for fear of being portrayed as ignominious and shameful members of our society. I call this bullying.  The are using verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation and it is WRONG!

Even the Telegraph out of the UK notes the trend in the recent article “50 Things that are being killed by the Internet”. Their #1 thing being killed-  The Art of polite disagreement.  Author Matthew Moore states:

While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.

My online collaborator Brian commented on my last post asking what is there to do? He said:

I’m seeing this professional digital bully trend happening quite a bit. I sense there is a new form of bullying happening between many of the early adopters and the establishment. The power of these tools is tremendous. It’s placing some who are a niched minority in educational institutions, into a quasi blogging stardom of the world. Some in the establishment may find this a threat and in effect the bullying starts.

My answers:
1.  Recognize and LABEL bullying.  The labeling of such behaviors make all of us take notice of exactly what it is and how we, in our effort to ignore it marginalizes it to acceptable parts of our world.

2.  After recognizing it, ignore it.

3. If they continue, then apply discipline when possible.  If in school, suspend or expel priviliedges of either school activities, school attendance.  If in the “real world”, press charges, apply legal recourse or notify authorities.

4.  Protect the innocent.

5.  Apply a SPAM blocker and tell your friends to do the same.  After a while even the nice people at Google and Yahoo! will take notice.  If nothing else, you don’t have to read the garbage in your own email box.

6.  If they have a web page that is getting lots of traffic, explode a Google bomb on them and do searches on alternative sights that have a more reasonable approach.  I’ve seen this work in the past pushing the more obscene and obnoxious to the less famous 2nd page of searches where the less famous web publishers are pushed to forever!

Technorati Tags: Online Bullying, Polite disagreement, intelligent debate

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• Bullying- What would your children say? (sentimentsoncommonsense.com)
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Wikipedia descibes bullying as….

“the act of intentionally causing harm to others, through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation. Bullying can be defined in many different ways. Although the UK currently has no legal definition of bullying,^[2] some US states have laws against it. Bullying is usually done to coerce others by fear or threat.”

Recently, I have observed the extension of this sort of behavior into what most of us would consider realms that would not be consider appropriate for this behavior before (not that even a back alley way or drug den would embrace such behavior either!).  As an American expat, I have been appalled by the behavior of the opponents of health care reform in the US.  They have come out of the wood work using tactics like “verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation.”  Over and over the people on the news keep asking each other if they have seen this kind of behavior before and over and over, they express their shock, dismay and awe at the tactics of these people. Today, I watched on one show a woman in a wheelchair publically outlining her medical issues to a congressman while members of the audience (many who were standing in the backrow) were yelling and screaming at her.

Sadly, I have to say I have seen similar tactics in schools over the 23 years I have worked with children and their families.  In the past, I would see these issues as one-off, disruptive, often unbalanced individuals.  Some of these people had long term mental health issues. Others were labeled alcoholics, druggies and criminals.  As of late, I have begun to see this behavior being perpetrated not by these sorts of people, but by “respected” members of the community in schools in the US and in some international schools.

My colleagues are reporting similar complaints at small international schools, colleges, and even in the larger international schools.  My school, so far, as been immune to the public displays of such behavior and thankfully, our discourse remains polite, respectful and constructive (on the surface anyway!).

The members of many of these communities under stress are unwilling, or perhaps unable to have a civil conversation, or even polite disagreements.  All conflicts are perceived as win/lose, good/bad, pure/evil for those who come to school with a concern.  The digital environment has made this more underhanded and mean.  In just a few minutes, I can create an anonymous email account and send 10-15 emails making allegations, threats, lies or insults and nobody is the wiser.  This is adults committing cyber-bulling!  Yes folks, that’s right. We have full grown adults (with children!) going out and doing google searches in order to find people to insult,harass, assault, coerce and manipulate.

According toe How to Stop Cyber Bullying.org cyber-bullies have a different profile than the off-line counterparts.  While I understand that to be true, I see the goal to be the same for both.  It is through insult,harassment, assault, coercion and manipulation, that the bully somehow gains power.

My response to this behavior (face to face and digital bullying) is always silence.  I will, at all cost ignore the ignorance right up until it hurts a child or one of those people of which I supervise. Then I will step in. Behavior like this bring up more questions than answers, but My question is one I ask myself often:

“If my children were watching, would I want them to do the same thing to their teachers or principals?”

Or….. as Thumper says:

“If can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Top graphic from http://www.flickr.com/photos/47753500@N00/3525111678
Bullying article referred to from wikipedia is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying
Thumper from http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:TxO8z789CaJEQM:http://disney-clipart.com/bambi/jpg/Thumper-1-lg.jpg

I am not sure how old I was when my Dad put a 9 iron in my hand in the back yard with those annoying little plastic whiffle balls to hit around, but I can remember whacking those tiny balls around the yard back and forth, to and fro…. later in life that same nine iron was the tool used for my first “real” shot on a golf course, hitting a green from about 110 yards, sticking that ball about 6 feet from the pin and gaining great praise from my Dad.

That was the shot on that course in Ontario, Oregon- Shadow Butte Golf Course, on the back nine (see photo above).   Over the past few years, I’d lost my glee of the game a bit.  My wrists ached, my back hurt, the walk was so long and I was just plain bad company the whole round.  I could occasionally hit those shots, but they didn’t seem to stick like they used to do so.  I am sure you know the feeling.  No joy. No glee.  No fun.  My clubs sat in the garage in my house in Shanghai looking out over the 15th tee of the Jack Nicolaus golf course. A kid in a candy store with no need to even take a taste.

Then at the end of the year, I took a few hours after school and decided to play a round with some guys at work.  As I stepped to the first tee, I decided I would change my mindset.  Instead of swinging with hesitation, trying to guide the ball, I would revert to that 9 iron I hit from 110 when I was 13 years old.  Afterall, how hard can it be.  The game is about putting the ball in the hole.  Just do it I thought.  I relaxed my arms.  Stood above the ball, took the club back with rhythm, my wrists relaxed, and swung down on that ball like I did 32 years ago.  No fear, no regrets, just a decisive, direct and rhythmic swing.  Even the bad shots felt good again.  My wrists stopped aching.  My elbows no longer were painful for 3 days after a round.  More importantly, my mind was able to concentrate on putting the ball in the hole instead of worrying about striking the ball. What was taking 5 or 6 strokes took 4 or 3… even sometimes two strokes.  I was able to think ahead.  Look two, three and four shots ahead.  I read putts and ROLLED putts rather than pushing them toward the hole.  When the ball rolls toward the goal they go in a lot more often!  The game has become fun again.

This coming year, I hope to play more golf, and will carve out time in the early mornings on weekends to do so.  I will also take my lesson of relaxing my local intent and thinking about the 3rd, 4th and 5th steps more carefully. Long term, I need to think like a golfer and remember the intent of my work.  Mark Shead wrote in his post “Leading on Purpose” on the blog Leadership 501 back in February, 2007 that leaders should examine each action from a leadership perspective.  He states:

Many people get put in a leadership
position and just lead by accident. They do whatever seems good at the
time without viewing each action as part of an overall plan. Sometimes
they do great things and sometimes they do things that really hurt them
from a leadership standpoint. Leading on purpose means making decisions
as part of an overall strategy to make it easier for people to follow
you. Whenever you get ready to do something, ask yourself if it will help
or hurt your leadership influence. For example, the evening you are
asking everyone else to stay and work late, probably isn’t a good time
to announce that you are head off to see a movie.

He goes on to write:

Leading on purpose means taking the long term approach to
leadership. It means thinking about how current actions will impact
your leadership ability 4 or 5 years down the road. In many situations
leaders don’t think like this. They expect to move on in 2 or 3 years,
so they only think about short term impact.

The problem with this approach is that the leadership legacy that
you have built will follow you beyond your current job. The world is
getting smaller and it is very likely that you will be working with
someone in the future that you’ve worked with before, or who is best
friends with someone you’ve worked with before. If you haven’t done a
good job of making long term decisions, it will come back to haunt you.

I guess, in reflection, this is what I am looking to do more effectively.  I need to play my game (both on the course and in my work) with the mindset of leaving a legacy.  In golf, my legacy should be to look to the next shot and then next shot and the next, all honoring the placement of the one that came before it.  In my work, I will strive to think about my next steps as a way to honor and follow the completed tasks of the past, building a legacy of consistency, intelligence and long term thinking.  In both cases, when it comes to the completion of a job, I can confidently step up and roll the final stroke to the goal knowing that my past work will more often than not have a positive result, and if I miss my mark it won’t be by much.

One of the things I forgot to do when I was not enjoying golf was look out on a hole that stretches out before me and admire the work of the course architect and course superintendent.  It is the challenge of the game that makes it fun.

The green grass, the wind, the occasional rain or the unbearable sun, it all contributes to the experience of the game.

You put your ball down.

Take a deep breath.

Maybe you take a practice swing.

Aim.

Relax.

Breath.

Rhythm.

Backswing.

Slight pause.

Weight forward to the left.

Turn hips slightly pulling the club down the line and watch the ball fly microseconds later.

Through the club feedback is given. Did I hit? Where on the club? How solid? Which direction?

Smile- no matter what.

I bend down to pick up my tee and start thinking about the next two or three shots.

Planning, thinking, breathing but living in the moment and laughing with my coworkers and friends.

This is my lesson from a game I forgot how to enjoy.

Golf Course Photo from http://www.oregongolf.com/ontario/ontarh09.htm
Swing photo from http://bnewman2000.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/inil01_jjhenry2.jpg?w=470&h=312

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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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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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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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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.