Dangerously Irrelevant

• Calling all bloggers! – Leadership Day 2009
• Opening up my classes, looking for co-learners: Fall 2009 School Law & DDDM
• NECC – Resources for those of you who missed the circus
• Walking out on bad presenters
• Help wanted: Model 21st century schools?

Podcast - Conversation with Dr. Dan Willingham, University of Virginia

Many of you have been participating in and/or following the conversations for this year’s CASTLE Summer Book Club. 

I am pleased to announce that my interview today with Dr. Dan Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, is now available as either streaming audio or a downloadable podcast.

Happy listening!

NECC - Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation

For those of you who have asked, my Monday, June 29, afternoon presentation at NECC, Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation, is now available at ISTEVision: 

FYI, you also might be interested in my K12 Online presentation on this topic. Happy viewing!

15 questions to ask about the technology leadership in your school district

For Leadership Day 2009, here are some key questions that I’d ask about the technology leadership function in any school district:

1. Who is primary responsible for technology leadership in the district?
2. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, who is the primary technology leader’s direct supervisor?
3. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, does that person sit on the superintendent’s cabinet?
4. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, how often does that person meet individually with the superintendent?
5. How many other job titles (or what other job responsibilities) does the primary technology leader have?
6. Is the primary technology leader in charge of both networking / hardware / software support AND technology integration or just one?
7. Is technology leadership a shared function within the district or does it primarily reside in one person?
8. How big is the differential between the primary technology leader’s salary and what she could make in a similar corporate environment?
9. What kind of (and how much) professional development does the primary technology leader receive each year?
10. How big is the differential between the technology staff:computer ratio and what occurs in a similar corporate environment?
11. What percentage of technology-related expenditures go toward educator professional development?
12. What percentage of the technologies purchased by the district were primarily student-centric (as opposed to teacher-centric)?
13. When was the district’s last technology referendum? Did it pass? How close was the vote?
14. When was the last time (if ever) that students were asked about their experiences using (or not using) technology in their classes? What did they say?
15. And, what might be the most important question of all, how many minutes per week, on average, do students use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning experiences (and how do they spend those minutes)?

I’m sure that I could think of other questions too, but these are a good start. Here’s why the answers to these questions matter:

1. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. No one else has the power to set and facilitate the district-wide vision for effective technology usage.
2. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. The further down the org chart the primary technology leader sits, the harder it is for that individual to facilitate necessary change.
3. If no, that’s the wrong answer. Not including the primary technology leader on the superintendent’s cabinet sends a message to the entire organization (and the outside world) that technology is nonessential.
4. Ideally the primary technology leader would meet individually with the superintendent at least as often as the curriculum director, associate superintendent, business manager, and/or other top-level district staff. Desired frequency will vary by district, but I would say every few weeks at a minimum.
5. Many primary technology leaders wear other hats (principal, superintendent, director of facilities, business manager, etc.). Effective technology leadership is a full-time job. I understand that many districts – particularly smaller ones – need to job share, but the more this person’s work is diluted across multiple titles and/or responsibilities, the less successful the district’s technology efforts will be. Guaranteed.
6. If just one, that’s the wrong answer. Separating these functions is a potential recipe for disaster because it often leads to turf and/or resource conflicts, facilitates confusion by classroom teachers, results in the integration function being marginalized or nonexistent, and so on.
7. Ideally the technology function is shared across the district. Effective change is much more likely to happen when many pull together.
8. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader.
9. Pay close attention to the number of days the primary technology leaders gets for her own professional learning. Also pay attention to whether those days are just focused on networking/hardware/software support versus technology integration, how to facilitate effective change within complex organizations, large societal/workforce shifts that will impact schools, building effective teams, and other non-technical, leadership-related topics.
10. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader. Corporate computer:support staff ratios tend to range between 75:1 and 150:1. In K-12 education, ratios tend to be 300:1 or higher (and it is not uncommon to see 800:1 or worse).
11. Ideally this number would be between 25% and 50%. A corollary question might be How much of the computer equipment that you’ve purchased doesn’t get used very often?
12. The higher this percentage the better. It’s important for teachers to use computers. But it’s more important for students to use computers since they’re the ones that we’re supposedly preparing for their future lives.
13. A lot of districts have trouble passing technology referenda. Sometimes they’re close, sometimes they’re not. Taking a look at how a district pitches its technology referenda to its local community can tell you a lot about the district, the community, or both.
14. For most districts, the answer to this will be rarely or never. That’s the wrong answer. The correct answer is at least every year.
15. For most districts, the answer to this rarely will be more than a couple of hours (and often will be less than one hour). That’s the wrong answer in a digital, global era.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the posts for this year!

Tomorrow is Leadership Day 2009!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Leadership Day 2009 here at Dangerously Irrelevant!

You can see the posts from previous years at

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

Hope some of you will participate. The past two years’ posts have been awesome. Be sure to read over the guidelines for this year!

Are our training efforts helping educators or enabling codependence?

I had a Twitter discussion the other night with Jim Twetten, who’s the Assistant Director for Academic Technologies here at Iowa State University and also has quickly become one of my ‘go to’ people on campus.

Jim took exception to the fact that I had poked fun at the ‘Learn about Facebook’ training session that ISU was offering to faculty. I replied that I was concerned that we never seem to hold folks accountable for being self-learners. After all, Facebook isn’t an extraordinarily difficult tool to learn how to use. Most intelligent people (which university faculty generally are) could figure out much of it if they just sat down and messed around for 30 minutes or so. And of course the same applies to blogs, wikis, and many other technologies. They’ve gotten so simple that the learning curve just isn’t that steep anymore.

And yet many educators (K-12 teachers and administrators, postsecondary faculty, etc.) still are extremely unwilling to just sit down and try stuff. Our digital learners, of course, have little hesitancy when it comes to clicking on things just to see what they’ll do. That willingness to probe, investigate, and experiment helps them learn and master the tools.

As someone who does a lot of training and professional development for school administrators, I wonder how much I’m facilitating codependence. In many job sectors, employees are expected to keep up with relevant technologies or risk job loss. When do we require that of K-12 and postsecondary educators? At what point do we say to them “No, we’re not training you how to use this. It’s easy enough for you to learn on your own. And if you don’t, we’ll find someone else who can.”

It’s a fine line between helping and codependence. And when it comes to educator technology training, I’m not sure we’re always on the right side of that line…

Teen sexting: I failed my own information literacy test

I tweeted:

And Barry Dahl replied:

Barry’s right and I’m wrong. I failed my own information literacy test. Why? Because even though I had access to (and linked to) the original report, I didn’t critically consume it the way I should have. Instead I relied on this report from CNN:

And because I did, I made an incorrect statement that then got retweeted by others. Shame on CNN for being misleading and/or inaccurate, but shame on me too for not doing my homework the way I should have. Just because CNN is a traditional, reputable news organization doesn’t mean that I don’t need to be a critical consumer of the information it provides.

Thanks, Barry.

Calling all bloggers! - Leadership Day 2009

Since the past two have been so successful, I am putting out a call for people to participate in Leadership Day 2009. As I said two years ago:

Many of our school leaders (principals, superintendents, central office administrators) need help when it comes to digital technologies. A lot of help, to be honest. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, most school administrators don’t know

• what it means to prepare students for the 21st century;
• how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
• what appropriate technology support structures (budget, staffing, infrastructure) look like or how to implement them;
• how to utilize modern technologies to facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders;
• the ways in which learning technologies can improve student learning outcomes;
• how to utilize technology systems to make their organizations more efficient and effective;
• and so on…

Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Most of them didn’t grow up with these technologies. Many are not using digital tools on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.

So… let’s help them out.

Guidelines

On Sunday, July 11 12, 2009, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, etc. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. If you participated in years past, post a follow-up reflection. Whatever strikes you. The official hashtag for your post and/or Twitter is

#leadershipday09

Please also link back to this post to ensure that I find yours. If you don’t have a blog, comment on someone else’s post and/or send your thoughts to me and I will post them for you. I will do a summary afterward of what folks wrote and talked about [bloggers, this means some new readers probably will head your direction; this is a blog carnival for technology leadership!].

Some prompts to spark your thinking

• What do effective K-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?
• Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?
• What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators forward? Given the unrelenting pressures that they face and their ever-increasing time demands, what are some things that administrators can do to become more knowledgeable and skilled in the area of technology leadership?
• Perhaps using the new National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) as a starting point, what are the absolutely critical skills or abilities that administrators need to be effective technology leaders?
• What strengths and deficiencies are present in the new NETS-A?
• What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
• What should busy administrators be reading (or watching)?
• How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders?
• How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?

Here are the ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past two years

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

A badge for your blog or web site

Please join us for this important day because, I promise you, if the leaders don’t get it, it isn’t going to happen.

NECC - Resources for those of you who missed the circus

Did you miss the extravaganza this year? Wish you were at NECC 2009 but couldn’t make it? Hate NECC and want to snipe from afar? Here are some resources that should help…

• If you want unofficial, raw (dare I say authentic?) coverage, many of us tagged our blog posts with necc09 or necc or necc2009 or ebc09 or edubloggercon.
• If you’re looking for more official coverage, see all of the posts at ISTE Connects and read the conference newspaper, the Daily Leader.
• Some of the sessions were filmed. Check out the videos at ISTEVision.
• If you’re interested in a particular session, the presenter may have uploaded his or her handouts.
• You can sift through the many thousands of photos on Flickr tagged necc09 or ebc09 or edubloggercon or ccdc09.
• Watch the video interviews at the Bloggers’ Cafe. I love it when Lisa Thumann says, “Helloooo, Joe!” [Oh, and VERY uncool of Joe to completely dismiss the Internet access issues.]
• For the brave (or foolish) who want to read through all of the tweets, the official Twitter hashtag was #necc09. See also #ebc09 and #edubloggercon and #neccunplugged and #necc09mg and #notatnecc09.

My final thoughts on NECC 2009

• A big THANK YOU to everyone who said kind things about my presentations. I believe that both my Monday afternoon (Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation) and Tuesday morning (Why aren’t you having a bigger impact?) sessions were filmed and will be available online. I’ll post the links as soon as I have them.
• As usual, Edubloggercon and the Bloggers’ Cafe were the places to be for fun, stimulating, thoughtful conversation. A big shout-out to everyone I met and/or hung out with in those two locales. If I never attend a formal NECC presentation again, y’all are still worth the price of admission. Steve Hargadon took a fair amount of heat for last year’s Edubloggercon. This year I heard nothing but praise. Steve, you don’t hear it enough but thanks for all that you do. This year’s event was FABULOUS.
• There may have been someone at NECC who was funnier than Dean Groom but if there was, I didn’t meet him/her. Thanks for all the laughs, Dean!

Photo credit: Waiting, Dean Shareski

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, David Warlick’s Edubloggercon ‘09 Animoto, which I think captures the informal, conversational nature of the experience quite nicely. See you next year in Denver!

NECC - My adventures with Horse & Hound magazine: Florida Virtual School, Achieve3000

A few days before NECC I was invited by a publicist to interview Julie Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), and also speak with the folks from Achieve3000. I accepted because I’ve always wanted the chance to talk with Julie. I had no idea in advance that I would end up having a Notting Hill Horse & Hound magazine-type experience (and, yes, I was Hugh Grant).

Florida Virtual School

I knock on a door and am quickly ushered into a hotel suite. I meet and shake hands with Ben Noel, CEO of 360Ed, as he walks out the door. Then I am offered a beverage, plunked onto a couch, handed a packet of publicity materials, and given 30 minutes to talk with Julie and Andy Ross, VP of Global Services for FLVS. The topic: FLVS’ new online video game / American History course, Conspiracy Code. I’m a little bit disoriented but gamely dive in…

Conspiracy Code runs on a custom gaming engine designed specifically for FLVS by 360Ed. It cost $1.5 million to develop; costs were shared equally by FLVS and 360Ed and spread over three years ($250K per partner per year). Two hundred FLVS students are in the game now. Several other districts are piloting it. Conspiracy Code is designed to be an integrated, full-year course / gaming experience. Students take about 90 to 100 hours to complete the game. They dip in and out of the gaming engine throughout the year, assembling clues and completing missions. The game includes 51 assessments (both oral and written), 270 mini-games, numerous interrogations, 30 ‘agent eliminations,’ and 371 clues. Teachers monitor student progress; each of the 10 missions takes 2 to 3 weeks. Most students spend about an hour a day working for the class, some of which is in the game environment. Historical facts are interwoven throughout the gaming experience and student-teacher discussion. Sometimes the game requires students to do outside research to complete assignments and proceed forward.

• Conspiracy Code Product Overview
• Conspiracy Code Press Release
• FLVS Consipiracy Code web site
• FLVS Presskit
• Education Next article about FLVS

The first evaluation report on the Conspiracy Code is due in a couple of weeks but anecdotal evidence looks extremely promising. The students who seem to like the game the most are the ones who ‘hate history.’ The game requires students to write, create data maps, make timelines, ask questions, make associations, solve problems, etc. Students must apply their knowledge and facts in a number of different ways to be successful. Some ‘barriers’ were put in place to ensure that students didn’t play more than work (e.g., students can’t move forward until they work on their data map, write in their journal, get feedback from their teacher, etc.).

 

The first two teachers were ‘gaming people.’ It still took them 2 to 3 months to get comfortable with teaching this way. All FLVS teachers receive extensive professional development before they’re allowed to teach. The first few teachers will train those that follow. There is a ‘Teaching Online 101’ course plus a separate gaming module for Conspiracy Code.

 

Now that the gaming engine has been built, FLVS will use it for other games/courses; I also suggested that FLVS release it to students to design their own games. The next Conspiracy Code game will target reading and comes out in August. All in all, it appears to be a solid attempt at integrating gaming into the education experience. It will be interesting to see the evaluation results when they come out. FLVS is a data-driven organization and is committed to reworking the game/course as need be to ensure students are both engaged AND learning whatever facts they need for success in the standardized-testing era.

Achieve3000

Throughout our conversation, people are coming in and out of a door to another room in the suite (reporters? other bloggers?). When my 30 minutes with Julie and Andy are up, I’m swooped into that room, replaced by someone else who gets my spot on the FLVS couch. I’m handed another publicity packet, do the quick meet-and-greet, and away we go…

Achieve3000 is a ‘differentiated instruction solution.’ In essence, students are given an article to read on the computer that’s aligned with their reading level. The company recommends a minimum of 1 or 2 articles a week but there are articles available every day if desired. Great care has been taken to avoid stigmatization of low-level readers. For example, even though the article text and corresponding assignments are geared to students’ individual reading level, the overall layout of the article, font size, graphics, etc. all are extremely similar to what other higher-level readers in the class are experiencing. There is little to no difference in reading experience; it’s actually fairly difficult to tell at a glance at what level another student is working. The student reading at first-grade level also is reading the same content as her peer at the ninth-grade level. This allows low-level readers to still contribute to class discussions. All of this is in contrast to schools’ typical practice of having separate books or textbooks – often on separate topics – or pullout programs for struggling readers.

Results so far seem to be impressive. Expected student growth in a year is 46 lexile points. Students who read one article a week average 102 lexile point gains; students who read two articles per week average 124. The program accommodates Spanish-speaking students (and, soon, those that speak Haitian Creole). The New York City and Miami-Dade school districts (as well as the State of Hawaii) are using Achieve3000. Average gains in one year for ESL/ELL students are 166 lexile points (compared to 27 points expected). Good results also are being seen with students with special needs (see, e.g., the Arrowhead (WI) Schools).

Achieve3000 is working with the Associated Press and now has an archive of over 16,000 nonfiction articles. Next steps for the company are to 1) create a number of specific science units, and 2) identify and/or write articles that target specific career clusters and can be aligned with the WorkKeys job skill assessment program.

Final impressions

My time is up. I’m whisked out of the back room toward the hotel suite door. Julie and Andy are talking with someone new on the couch and I’m soon in the hallway, left at last to collect my thoughts. As I walk toward the elevator to return to my own hotel room, I’m left with one thought: Man, was that strange. Quite informative, but strange nonetheless. Who knows what else goes on in the back hallways, hotel suites, and meeting rooms of NECC?!

Disclosure: I received no incentives from either organization (other than a thumb drive from FLVS that contained the above Conspiracy Code materials) and was not pressured to cover them in any particular way. In short, I believe I was treated much like any media representative, despite being ‘just a blogger.’

NECC - Vendor excess (aka Do pink Cadillacs really sell printers?)

I am by no means anti-corporation. And many companies have been very good to me and CASTLE. And I know they’re an important part of the NECC convention each year. And yet, when I went into the NECC 2009 vendor hall today, I was struck by the sheer extravagance of many of the booths: exhibits two or three stories high, a bistro, a singing Elvis, giant computers hanging from the ceiling like Damocles’ sword, an enormous white cave, a two-part neon-illuminated complex that was larger than my backyard, and more…

I’m not the only one who left a little unsettled:

The Bloggers' Cafe is buzzing and Twitter has been all-#NECC09-all-day.

For the most part, it seems like the educators here are mostly interested in access, connection, and sharing info via Web 2.0.

I didn't find a single booth downstairs that talked about any of those things. [Shelly Blake-Plock]

I can’t quite put my finger on what I felt down there today. A little sick at the waste / uselessness of it all (is bringing a pink Cadillac really going to help OKI sell more printers? do they have data on that?)? A wish for more substance and and genuine engagement and less flash?

Maybe it was just such a sharp contrast to the authentic interactions I felt I was having with folks in the Bloggers’ Cafe. Or maybe my crap detector was just on high alert…

Photo set: NECC 2009 Vendors

NECC - NETS-A Release Celebration

Here are my notes from the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) Release Celebration here at NECC 2009 in Washington, DC.

• The new NETS-A are a big update from the previous NETS-A. They emphasize change, should be a systemic road map for leaders, and also are designed to be aligned with the recently-refreshed NETS-S and NETS-T.
• Here are the new NETS-A standards:
• Visionary leadership
• Digital-age learning culture
• Exellence in professional practice
• Systemic improvement
• Digital citizenship
• Intel: across countries, the building and/or district leader can either be a huge catalyst or a huge barrier. [Like I’ve said time and time again, “if the leaders don’t get it, it doesn’t happen”]

NECC - No Internet in Blogger's Cafe, NECC Unplugged - WRONG ANSWER

The Internet’s down here at NECC 2009. “Too many people – it overloaded the system” has been the response.

WRONG ANSWER. The convention center knew 14,000 techies were coming. If it couldn’t handle the bandwidth need, it shouldn’t have accepted the contract. Unacceptable response by the convention center.

I asked some ISTE people (staff? volunteers?) here in the hallway when the Internet will be back up and available. They said a reboot was occurring and hopefully everything would be fine in another 15 minutes. I said, “Okay. Well, sorry. I’m sure you’re taking some heat for this.” They shrugged their shoulders indifferently and said, “Oh, it’s no problem. We’re not worried about it.”

WRONG ANSWER. Indifferent to the Internet needs of the 14,000 techies who paid a boatload of money to attend the conference and who have expectations about access to the Web? Unacceptable response by ISTE.

Remember – your organization is only as good as the people who interact with your clients or the public…

UPDATE: I am pleased to announce that the Internet is back up again. Thanks, ISTE. Everyone, cross your fingers that it lasts!

NECC - You want coverage of Malcolm Gladwell? We got it (both good and bad)!

Count ‘em: Four, yes four, CoverItLive sessions for Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote at NECC 2009 in Washington, DC:

• Kristin Hokanson
• ISTE Connects
• TechChicks
• TeachPaperless

If you can’t figure out what Gladwell talked about after looking at all of these, there’s no helping you!

The Twitter hashtag for Gladwell’s talk was #necc09mg – you can read everyone’s comments there or at #necc09. Most tweets were restatements and note-taking. Many were positive. Some weren’t. The pushback already has begun. Personally, I love what is happening now that everyone can have a voice, but I also have to note that this is one reason why academics are very reluctant to embrace social media. They are NOT used to having much pushback on their ideas, particularly from “the masses!”

 

NECC - Constructivist Celebration

These are my notes from the 3rd annual Constructivist Celebration, hosted by Gary Stager at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC.

Gary Stager

• 150 participants here today
• See constructivistconsortium.org/books for constructivist teaching resources
• Tags/hashtags = constructivist celebration, constructivist consortium, #ccdc09
• Good ideas are incredibly fragile, bad ideas are timeless
• Regardless of what we’re asking educators, the level of resistance is relatively constant over time (so why not ask a lot more of the rest?)
• Computers are knowledge machines that allow you to go further than you could go on your own
• Educational computing is about software, not hardware, because software ultimately determines what you can do
• The only question we should be asking about computers in schools is “what are students doing with the computers?”
• Are the students programming the computer or is the computer programming them?
• Who has agency in the learning process?
• microworlds.com - design video games, not just consume them
• Getting the computer to do something it doesn’t already do is an important life skill
• Elements of an effective project
• Purpose
• Time
• Personally meaningful
• Complex, including serendipity
• Connected
• Discipline
• Reflection
• Shareable
• Access and constructive materials
• “Can you build an amusement park for kids?” is a more authentic, meaningful question/project than “Martin Luther King had a dream. What dream do you have?”
• Questions worth asking
• Is the problem solvable?
• Is the project monumental or substantial?
• Who does the project satisfy?
• What can they do with that?
• Less is more
• A good prompt is worth 1,000 words – if these are in place, you can do lots more than you expected
• A good prompt, challenge, problem or motivation
• Appropriate materials
• Sufficient time
• Supportive culture (including expertise)
• Maybe we should be adopting an artist’s aesthetic more often – is the work beautiful, thoughtful, personally meaningful, sophisticated, whimsical, shareable with a respect for the audience, enduring? does it move you? (we should ask more: “why should anyone have to sit through that crap?”)
• Good project-based learning (PBL) has a fighting chance of being enduring
• Technology matters
• When students come back years later and say “Remember when we … ?”, they never finish the sentence with “used all of those vocabulary words in a sentence” or “studied so hard for the state assessment” – it’s invariably some enduring project that they remember

Melinda (Lindy) Kolk

• Learning happens when children make things
• If students can text message their friends to get the answers, we’re asking the wrong questions
• Let’s focus on knowledge construction, not reproduction
• More than one right answer
• Collaborative
• Student-centered
• Requires high-level thinking

Peter Reynolds (author of The Dot and Ish)

• Great teachers notice kids
• Great teachers are not about managing data, they’re about loving kids
• Great teachers have an idea first and notice it later
• It’s not a tiger, but it’s ‘tigerish’ – the ‘ish’ concept tells the world ‘back off, I’m trying to figure this out, and right now this is the way I do it’ – gives us some room to play, experiment, LEARN
• Expose kids to big ideas and encourage them to have big ideas
• We often ask ‘what do you do?’ – we should ask ‘what’s your misssion?’ – adults often have trouble answering this – the sooner we ask that of kids, the better
• The best children’s books are wisdom dipped in story – they move you somehow
• There are so many kids out there that don’t get captured by the testing camera
• Be brave about your own artwork and be nice about others’ artwork

NECC - Thumbs up for unconferences!

The sign of a good unconference is when every session you attend goes over time, people don’t want to leave, conversation pushes into the next scheduled session, etc. EVERY session I attended today was like this. Awesome (and thank you, Steve)!

Now, how do I get this format as part of the annual educational leadership professors conference?

NECC - Edubloggercon, Web 2.0 Smackdown, Chicks That Click

NECC ‘09 and Edubloggercon ‘09 are underway! We had a quick intro from Steve Hargadon, then broke into sessions. I stayed for Vicki Davis’ Web 2.0 Smackdown. Here are the tools and resources that people showed:

• Vicki Davis, demonstrated Diigo Lists.
• John Costilla, demonstrated QR Codes.
• Rushton Hurley, demonstrated FreshBrain.
• Lisa Thumann, demonstrated Google Labs Similar Images Search.
• Angela Maiers, demonstrated CompFight, FlickrStorm. and Wibe7.tv.
• Kristin Hokanson, demonstrated CoverItLive.
• Jane Krauss, demonstrated a “thinkspace” for those of us who help others with Web 2.0.
• Adam Frey, demonstrated Wikispaces tags.
• David Jakes, demonstrated Fur.ly and Issuu.
• Scott McLeod, demonstrated Twoogle, Twitalzyer, Retweetist, and David Pogue’s article on typing expansion software (EVERYONE should be using this kind of software!).
• Leigh Zeitz, demonstrated Woot!
• Wes Fryer, demonstrated the K12 Online Conference and EdTechTalk.
• Lee Kolbert, demonstrated Tag Galaxy.
• Maria Droujkova, demonstrated TinEye.
• Chris Chater, demonstrated Noteflight and JamStudio and the Opus09 Ning.
• Jim Gates, demonstrated the WolframAlpha Firefox extension.
• Chad Lehmann, demonstrated the iPhone app Bump.
• Craig Nansen, demonstrated Tinypaste and Today’sMeet.
• Kevin Honeycutt (via Skype from a train in Missouri), demonstrated his new Web 2.0 keychain and album.

I’m now in a small break-out discussion regarding the lack of female students’ interest in technology / computer science careers (and also science, math, etc.)!

Recent publicity for me and CASTLE - Edutopia, T.H.E. Journal, Fort Dodge Messenger, ISU Talk About IT & College of Human Sciences

Thought I’d share some recent publicity that CASTLE and I have gotten. I’ve been sitting on some of these for a while and wanted to get them all out so I can focus on NECC ‘09!

Edutopia

Quick: Name ten excellent Web sites related to the grade level or subject area you teach.

Scott McLeod, coordinator of the educational-administration program at Iowa State University, recently posed that question on his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant. Many of the comments his readers left echo McLeod's assertion that the Internet delivers "a paucity of high-quality online resources for educators."

McLeod and others don't deny the abundance of online resources teachers have at their fingertips. The challenge is sifting through all that stuff to find what you need -- and then knowing how to incorporate the gems into your curriculum. 

Read more…

T.H.E. Journal

SCOTT MCLEOD SAYS the great sin in the way professional development is provided in this country is one of omission. On his blog, McLeod, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University and the coordinator of the department's Educational Administration Program, writes, "Most of our school leaders have received no training whatsoever when it comes to 21st-century schooling."

It is not totally their fault, he says. Few higher ed programs for administrators even have a course dealing with digital technology, and if they do, the course generally covers basic software, not leadership. Neither school districts nor professional organizations offer workshops in the area either. As a result, no movement can be made toward 21stlearning environments: When leaders are clueless about technology and the impact it can have in classrooms, they are powerless to change their school or district into one that provides tech-enabled instruction for students.

Read more…

Fort Dodge (IA) Messenger (this link might expire?)

In a world where so much revolves around technology, high school students often only have the opportunity to use technology as part of their in-school learning process for an average of 30 minutes per week.

That is something that Scott McLeod, associate professor of educational leadership at Iowa State University, would like to see change in Iowa classrooms.

McLeod was the keynote speaker Tuesday afternoon at the Iowa Central Summer Science Institute at Iowa Central Community College, where he addressed a group of 25 high school and college science instructors on how they can implement technology in the classroom and why it is so crucial for students to be able to develop workplace skills and remain engaged in their course work.

Read more…

ISU Talk About IT

See the original here…

ISU College of Human Sciences

See the original here… (pp. 18-19)

Happy reading / viewing!

Walking out on bad presenters

I walked out of a 2–hour workshop last week. I actually really wanted to know the information that was to be presented, but the workshop facilitator did such a terrible job that I left after 35 minutes. My graduate assistant said the next day, “I heard you walked out on that workshop.” I replied, “Did you hear anything else about it?” She said, “Yeah, I heard it was pretty bad.”

I find myself having less and less patience for people who waste my time in unproductive meetings, boring presentations, workshops that don’t meet my needs, and so on. Even when I’m extremely interested in the topic, a facilitator’s structure and/or delivery can ruin it for me. I don’t leave right away. I try to stay mentally engaged and I give the facilitator a chance to right the ship. But if it’s clearly a lost cause, I’m usually out of there (if I can’t leave, then I start quietly checking my e-mail / surfing the Web).

I have worked very hard over the past few years to ramp up my presentation skills, both in terms of content and delivery. I try to apply that learning to the various aspects of my life, whether it be teaching, consulting, or just holding meetings. I ask myself questions like “Do we really need this meeting or activity?” and “What is my audience doing at this stage?” and “How are my students or participants feeling right about now?” In other words, I try my utmost to think intentionally and purposefully about the impact of what I do on others’ valuable time. Is it too much to expect others to do the same?

But, Scott, it’s rude to walk out on someone (or check your e-mail). Not any more rude than it is to fail to deliver a learning experience that meets the group’s needs rather than your own. It’s one thing to waste your own time. It’s another to waste the time of five to twenty to hundreds of others. Shame on you.

But, Scott, aren’t you worried about your reputation? I’m willing to stand up for quality presentations, meetings, and learning experiences. I think that collectively we would be better off if more of us left more often. We’re captive to our own ‘politeness’ (if that’s what we want to call it) and we suffer countless wasted hours as a result. If folks walk out of one of my presentations, that lets me know that their needs aren’t being met. Rather than taking it personally, I’m glad that they’re going somewhere else that is a better fit for them. If walk-outs happen in large numbers or on a frequent basis, that lets me know that I need to something differently.

But, Scott, maybe the facilitator didn’t know how to do any better. So? How is that my problem? Why shouldn’t the responsibility be on presenters, facilitators, and instructors to do a better job? Why should they get to waste our time rather than improve their skills? What’s their impetus for change if we passively acquiesce to their ineptitude?

P-12 students usually don’t have the chance to walk out of poor learning experiences (wouldn’t it be interesting if we gave every student a red ‘I’m disengaged’ card that she could lay on her desk every time she was turned off or tuned out?). But we adults do if we’re brave enough to stand up for quality learning experiences. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not investing my walk-out last week with any huge societal significance. But larger battles start one principled stand at a time… Care to join me?

Photo credit: Not my cat, but cute enough.

P.S. On a related note, my proposal submission to address the issue of bad academic PowerPoint got rejected by the reviewers for the annual educational leadership professors conference. Ugh.

Opening up my classes, looking for co-learners: Fall 2009 School Law & DDDM

Some of you may have noticed that I have two online courses coming up this fall. Here’s what I’m thinking…

I’ve been reading Jeff Jarvis’ superb book, What Would Google Do? (which I’ll be writing more about soon). Over and over again, he stresses the importance of openness, transparency, collaboration, collective action, co-learning, co-creation of knowledge, and giving up control in this new Internet era.

So what would that look like in a graduate-level course? I’m not quite sure but I want to find out. I’m taking my two most popular educational leadership courses - School Law & Data-Driven Decision-Making - and offering them online to anyone, anywhere who wants to take them.

I’m looking for teachers and administrators who want to dive in deep, wrestle with thorny problems, and challenge their thinking regarding these two important school leadership topics. I don’t know yet what directions we’ll go; we’ll determine that together. I don’t know yet what topics we’ll cover; we’ll determine that together. I don’t know yet how we’ll demonstrate our learning; we’ll determine that together. The point of this is that I’m not going to be the omniscient, omnipotent faculty member dictating course structure, sequence, assessment, etc. This is a joint exercise in learning and I need participants who are willing to be active co-learners.

I’ve taught these classes online before with great success. I’ve prided myself on being a student-centered instructor. But it’s time to take my teaching to the next level. Am I a little uncertain about this? Absolutely. But a little healthy instructional tension will be good for me and my students both.

More information on the two courses - including tuition costs and how to register - is here. Both classes should be excellent options for educators who need relicensure credits, are exploring the idea of graduate-level coursework, or need to take an outside course for an existing graduate program.

Hope some of you will join me; please feel free to also pass this along. We start at the end of August!

Where are our academic superstars going to college? Who knows?

Check out this comment on Linda Fandel’s Des Moines Register blog today:

"Ames’ Kellogg says she will play basketball at Minnesota"
"Charles City’s Buss says he will play basketball at UNI"

These are two headlines from the DMR [Des Moines Register] today.

Where will Des Moines North Valedictorian attend school? Where are the National Merit Scholars going. Who else got scholarships to attend college... non-sports' scholarships?

Cut the arts??? Maybe a hundred people will be at the school board meeting to complain. Cut the football program... you will have a community-wide revolt.

You want world-class schools on a limited budget... not till the people value it more than sports.

So true, so true…