Sentiments On Common Sense

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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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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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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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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