Administrator 2.0

It was a rush, to put it lightly.

Wednesday, I had the opportunity to present some ideas on school change, leadership, social networking, and ongoing district projects to our whole team of administrators from the K-12 buildings. I had been waiting for this.

The wiki (private for now) I created for it doesn't really do it justice because of the discussion that took place in the breaks, or the people who stopped me afterward and pushed the topics further, or asked for more time on these the projects we saw. I didn't hit the nail squarely, as I explained to my wife, as I feel that I didn't really address the need for them to be reading administrator blogs or teacher blogs, nor did I show them how their teachers can fully utilize some of the new tools we have added to district machines, but, hey, I only had 2.5 hours.

Here was the agenda:

1. Overview and Purpose
2. What skills are our students going to need to compete in a changing workplace environment?
3. Does our pedagogy prepare them for that workplace?
4. When you meet with teachers, what can you offer by means of improvement of instruction or preparation through technology?
5. What meaningful experiences are teachers in your building, your district and beyond engaged in with their students?
6. What are some tools I can use to become more productive and save time while performing tasks that are essential to my job?

I really adhered to Scott's post from while ago and tried to focus on issues that they currently deal with, and how to make them more productive. One of the issue that stood out from my contact with teachers over the past year was lack of specific direction coming from post-observation meetings. When told to incorporate technology, what did that mean? When told to differentiate instruction, how did they do that? During my presentation, I tried to give examples of specific methods they could incorporate into their written evaluations.

There has been a recent spate of posts about meetings like this (see Bach, Chris, and Barbara), where the presenters were asked to accomplish a lot in a small amount of time. Reflecting on it, I truly love the moment where you know you've prepared, and you are so ready that you are inviting dissension that leads to discussion.

Anyone else out there doing anything similar?

Re-entering the Fray

We haven't been to the beach as a family yet, as Audrey has not been able to travel much, but now that everything has settled, we were able to get away and spend the week in Cape May. As much as we all praise the ability to get away and recharge, I still have a little bit of Dan Meyer in me in that I sometimes feel that I could work around the clock. Maybe it's the changing definition of learning that has overtaken me, or that the way I approach learning is so powerfully informal. Regardless, coming back into this arena after taking several days away is intimidating on so many levels.

As this summer began, I had such high hopes for what would come at the start of this year. Now as the summer ends, I am seriously questioning what should be the top priority for me this year: increasing access for teachers in a non-threatening way, embedded technology in curriculum design, pushing through personal learning networks a la Karl Fisch, changing the way teachers approach their role in the classroom, or just trying to keep everyone in sync with all of the recent changes to our district network.

In the limited time that I have spent over the last day or so running through some posts from people like Jen Dorman, there is something to be said for a sequential process for either students or teachers to go through. This next week poses some really enormous challenges for me, both professional and personal, and one thing I want to hammer out before I begin the deluge that is the first week of school, are measurable progress indicators. I want to sit down at certain points, set up before the year begins, and assess what has gone on, and what needs to change. It is all too easy to get caught up in the small details of our work and suddenly find ourselves in December.

This is general and vague, but it is all I can muster after having been out of the loop for a week.

Difficult Questions Expected

Back in the late spring, when I submitted my summer slate of professional development classes I added one that wasn't available to teachers, only administrators. Lacking a better name, I called it Administrator 2.0. This was the first time I had done this, and as it turns out, our assistant superintendent has made it mandatory for all of the administrators in our district. This I am thrilled about.

Reading collaborative blogs like LeaderTalk really pushed this idea along, as I realized that the movement to change the definition of literacy and transform our pedagogy was also being joined by educational leaders at the administrator level. For any movement to gain credence, even with teachers, a dynamic, present, and informed leader must aide in that journey.

Here is the blurb I created for the class back in June:

What makes administrators effective technology leaders? Do we need to be immersed in technology in order to promote its pedagogical resources within our buildings? While we all might consider ourselves to be at least proficient in various applications of technology, the pace with which it advances is unprecedented, meaning that our knowledge base must increase as well. Also, emerging social applications like MySpace and Facebook for middle and high school students, and Club Penguin for elementary school children have left a lot of us in the dark as to what our students are doing online and why they feel the need to connect in such a way.

Since then, I have added some aspects of personal productivity, like using RSS and aggregation, using blogs as a means to communicate to staff and connect to the scores of professional development available in the blogosphere. In reflecting on what I want them to leave with, I remembered Scott McLeod's advice for working with school administrators in workshops like this:

1. Change their mindset.
2. Have a keen understanding of their work.
3. Ensure that training is authentic.
   
4. Make it easy for them to learn.
   
5. Make their lives easier.
6. Tap into what they already know.
7. Address their concerns about the rate of change.
8. Comply with what we know about effective professional development.
9. Respect their time.
10. focus on leadership, not tools.
    
11. remind them of the importance and power of modeling.
    

I love number 9, because it identifies the pressure I feel in this situation; it's the end of the summer, school is beginning in a week, and here they are, "stuck" in a mandatory workshop. I need to give them much more than a make and take, I need to identify what their roles are and create the content with that in mind. This has to be relevant to them.

Has anyone ever run something like this before? Or better yet, has any administrator gone through something like this? I would love feedback as I prepare.

Also, I would love to skype (provided it behaves) a few administrators and teachers in to the session for a brief chat to address questions and discuss what you are doing in your schools to address change. Also, what really would impact this group would be a focus on student outcomes.

I am pjhiggins1 on Skype.

Image credit: Hamed Saber via Flickr.

In Search of...

The wheels are turning, our preparations are in full swing, and we've lined up over 40 teachers, two rather sizable grants to really round out the project, when all of a sudden....

There is no more project. Well, sort of.

We had been relying on a product, which will remain nameless here, that we had used in the past to create video podcasts of live lessons. The kicker was that they weren't really videos of teachers teaching, but rather actual PowerPoint or whiteboard slides coupled with audio and live penstrokes: essentially, they were Java-based screencasts. However, the real bonus about this product was that it had two features which really set it apart from anything else.

The first feature was a question and answer feature that allowed viewers to ask questions of the lesson author directly in the lesson. So if I were a student watching the lesson on fractions and did not understand the lesson, I had the option of asking a question by right clicking and typing my question. The question would then get forwarded to the author's email address where the author could answer the question and then embed the question back into the lesson for the next viewer to see, thereby adding to the overall experience.

Secondly, it created a feed that allowed users to download through iTunes every time their teacher posted a lesson. We loved this feature because it made us available to the world at large, a la Dr. Tim Tyson and the Mabry Middle School. We are proud of our staff and the work they do, and we wanted it out there.

Days ago, we were informed that the product was going back into development and would not be ready again until Fall 2008. After initial disappointment, we have redirected our efforts to try to find something in its stead. Here are the particulars:

• Windows-based screencasting software, preferably something that would live natively on our machines
• The ability to export as mp4, or at least create a feed that would be accessible through iTunes
• Price needs to be workable, without a yearly fee for services.
  

I am also thinking of obtaining a server solely for this purpose that can house these projects. My real aim here is to begin having our teachers produce content that is usable by more than the students they see; we want to contribute to the creation of usable content. Also, it has to involve quick setup with minimal downtime as teachers have had problems with this in the past. A plug and play situation would be ideal.

It's always this way, isn't it? When you are geared up for something so exciting and progressive, a twist is thrown your way. This could have been worse, but now the solution doesn't seem as singular and self-contained, but rather one that will involve a few more steps to complete.

Any opinions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Networked Chambers of Commerce

We spend quite a bit of time wondering about how social networking technologies will affect the classroom and school environment, but what about other areas of our lives? I came across this article in a local paper this morning while I was waiting for my bagel. The title, "Internet Forces Businesses the Rethink Their Model" caught my eye, as did the opening paragraph:

Consider today's young professionals, with their pod-casting,
Web-casting, blog-browsing, socially networking, online work-shopping
ways of staying connected. Now pan over to the local chamber of commerce, traditional organizer of card exchanges, golf fund-raisers and guest-speaker luncheons.

The struggle to remain relevant in the business world, particularly the world of small business is no less high-stakes than the very one we are in here in the field of education. Local chamber of commerce meet-and-greets at the Holiday Inn are as much in danger of becoming irrelevant as are schools married to the 20th Century style of teaching and learning.

"There's definitely a gap between the traditional way that most chambers operate and the way businesses operate today," said Angela Harrington, chief executive officer and president of Harrington Communications LLC in Springfield. "Technology to many of them is maintaining a database. But they don't really use their site as an interactive medium."

We see the same attitude in the business world that we sometimes see in the faculty rooms we encounter:

"At the end of the day, I don't really want to look at a computer,"
said Scott Cohen, training director for Children's Aid and Family
Services Inc. in Paramus. "It may be a networking tool, but do I want
to integrate that tool into my entire life?"

I think that in business or in education, getting the message out and providing your consumers with the necessary information to be successful (whether buying your product or learning a skill) is paramount. When I teach, I am a big fan of the "any means necessary approach" to getting students to learn, reflect, and be successful. Wouldn't the same ring true for the business world, especially the small business world which depends on networking and contacts in order to compete for consumers in a small market?

We often wonder about the nature of the 21st Century workplace, and we should; however, are we as behind as some segments of that workplace? When I read articles like this one, I am reminded that the pace of change is slow at all levels.

Animoto Test

Very cool application for creating quick slideshows.

Top Ten Tools

This post is inspired by Jane Hart's project, which I heard from through George Siemens' post about it.

Although I am famous for the phrase "it's not about the tools," I couldn't help but look at what people are using to produce and manage content. Especially when you get to peer into the minds of some really sharp people. Here are mine, with explanations:

• Google Reader- a bit overwhelming at times, but still the hands down best resource for learning
  
• Blogger- my think aloud. This is where conversation begins and ends with me.
  
• Google Notebook- I use this for focused research when I need to compile a list of sources for myself or others.
  
• iShowU- Best cost to performance ratio I have found in a screencaster
  
• Audacity- still simple, still perfect
  
• Zamzar- Converts just about anything on the fly and offers a simple downloadable file
  
• Skype- How I connect to people much brighter than myself
  
• Twitter- My new favorite thing. Quick, ubiquitous, and networked.
  
• del.icio.us- I use this more as a searchable catalog of links rather than an organizational tool
  
• Firefox- As many have said, this is the home base. Completely customized and suited to what I need it to do.

What are your top ten tools?