Dangerously Irrelevant

The Iowa series - Wrap-up

I've had a lot of fun guest blogging over at The Des Moines Register this week. For those of you who would like to have a single link that you can forward to others, you can use this web address:

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

Here are links to each of the five posts here at Dangerously Irrelevant:

• Iowa - 21st century curricula
• Iowa - A robust system of online learning
• Iowa - A computer in every hand
• Iowa - Invest in leadership
• Iowa - Better information

Happy reading!

Iowa - Invest in leadership

[This is post 4 for my guest blogging stint at The Des Moines Register.]

Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.” This week I am blogging about 5 key levers that I think are necessary to move Iowa schools forward and help our graduates survive and thrive in this new digital, global age in which we now live. Earlier I discussed the need for 21st century curricula, a robust system of online learning, and providing a computer for every student. Today’s post concerns the need to invest in leadership.

Leadership is absolutely critical to the success of any organization. Whether it be a school, corporation, government, faith institution, non-profit agency, or local community group, every organization lives and dies by its leadership. Organizations with effective, visionary leaders thrive. Organizations with lackluster, ineffective leaders muddle along or decline.

Adapting our K-12 school organizations to the workforce and citizenship demands of a digital, global age is extremely difficult, complex work. We must have leaders in place who can facilitate this transition. Here’s the problem:

That’s right. The people in charge of leading Iowa’s school organizations into the digital, global era don’t know very much about either the digital or the global aspects of the world in which we’re now living. They didn’t grow up in this kind of world, they weren’t prepared for it by their university licensure programs, and, for the most part, they are not receiving adequate training or professional development for it from their school districts, area educational agencies, professional associations, or the Iowa Department of Education. As a result, they’re not active technology users, they’re not immersed in electronic learning environments, and they’re not cognizant of the radical shifts that are occuring in the American workforce.

So we have a critical problem. Iowa principals and superintendents – the folks who are in formal leadership positions in K-12 schools – are the ones who have the responsibility for creating a vision and community buy-in. They’re the ones who have the power to reallocate budgets and other resources. They’re the ones who have the ability to reassign and retrain personnel. They’re the ones who have the authority to realign the various aspects of the organization to meet the demands of a rapidly changing environment. But because most of them don’t understand what it means to prepare kids for this new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected world, the end result is preservation of the status quo or, at best, minor tweaking of our current system of schooling.

It’s important to emphasize that it’s not the leaders’ fault that this is the current situation. There’s no blame to assign here. We just need to recognize that our leaders need a better system of ongoing training and a different kind of preparation in their licensing programs. Unfortunately, we’re lacking in this area as well. In the world of K-12 educational technology, virtually all of the money and attention from the Iowa and federal governments, foundations, corporations, and other entities has gone to teachers and students. Admirable and necessary as this is, we must set aside some of that attention and training money to enable the leadership that will be necessary to initiate and sustain the changes that we need in our school system. 

We pour large sums of money into teacher training, student programs, equipment, and other infrastructure. These are all good. However, we continue to see few tangible, sustainable benefits of technological and curricular reform initiatives in most school organizations. Why? Because even our most innovative, technology-using educators continue to run smack into the brick wall of their administrators' lack of knowledge and/or training. Superintendents and principals are making decisions based on ignorance or fear of the unknown. They don’t know what it means to effectively facilitate rich, deep, technology-enabled learning experiences for students. In this kind of unsupportive administrative environment, it is illogical to expect that major changes will occur in our teachers’ classrooms.

The preference of most Iowa legislators, school board members, and funding entities is to get monies directly to students. If that’s not feasible, then allocating monies to teachers is the next most desirable option. Over time, these preferences have led to our current situation in which we are systematically underinvesting in our leadership. Until we recognize that long-term, systemic change never occurs without good leadership – and invest accordingly – we never are going to see the changes that we say we want to occur.

Beware outside consultants? - Part 2, Ruby Payne

As America becomes increasingly diverse, many school districts are experiencing changes in their traditional student populations. When districts have significant increases in the number of students of color and/or students in poverty, they often try to increase the cultural competence of their teaching and administrative staff. And that means that many of them turn to Dr. Ruby Payne. Dr. Payne’s seminal book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, has sold over a million copies and has resulted in many regarding her as an expert on poverty.

Many academics (and others) have expressed grave concerns about Payne’s work, however. For example, here is an excerpt from a 2006 article in Teachers College Record by Dr. Paul Gorski (now an Assistant Professor at George Mason University):

A casual flip-through of A Framework uncovers dozens of deficit-laden statements. According to Payne (2001), people in poverty are bad parents: “The typical pattern in poverty for discipline is to verbally chastise the child, or physically beat the child, then forgive and feed him/her” (p. 37). They are also criminals:  “Also, individuals in poverty are seldom going to call the police, for two reasons: First the police may be looking for them. . . . ” (pp. 37-38). They are disloyal: “Allegiances may change overnight; favoritism is a way of life” (p. 74). They are violent and “on the streets”: “If students in poverty don’t know how to fight physically, they are going to be in danger on the streets” (p. 100). And, according to Payne, people in poverty are unmotivated addicts: “And for some, alcoholism, laziness, lack of motivation, drug addition, etc., in effect make the choices for the individual” (p. 148). Although research indicates some differences in child discipline practices and levels of day-to-day physical violence between economically deprived communities and middle or upper class communities, the fact remains that most people in poverty are responsible, hard working, drug and alcohol free, and not “on the streets” (a phrase that may also cycle the stereotype that all poor people live in urban communities, when many live in rural communities). These people – the average, hard working, employed, drug free people in poverty – are largely invisible in A Framework and Payne’s other books.

And here’s an excerpt from another 2006 article in Teachers College Record, this one by Drs. Jennifer Ng, Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, and John Rury, Professor at DePaul University:

[In Payne's] descriptive scenarios, the poor are generally depicted as having a weak work ethic, little sense of internal discipline or future orientation, and leading lives characterized to one extent or another by disorder and violence. In making these characterizations, Payne seems to be unaware of the many studies dating from the late 1960s that challenged the culture of poverty thesis, in many instances directly testing the extent to which traits such as these were more prevalent among the poor than other groups. By and large, these studies found that such characteristics were not more likely to be evident in poor individuals or households. Indeed, people in poverty valued work, saving money, behaving properly, maintaining stable families, and a number of other “middle-class” attributes as much as their counterparts in higher social and economic strata. These results, moreover, held across groups with experiences of differing duration in poverty and across racial and ethnic lines (Roach & Gursslin, 1967; Irelan, Moles, & O’Shea, 1969; Coward, Feagin, & Williams, 1974; Davidson & Gaitz, 1974; Abell & Lyon, 1979; Carmon, 1985; Jones & Luo, 1999). . . . Most educators . . . are unfamiliar with the extensive research literature on poverty and its effects on children, and if Payne’s citations seem to support their own views about the poor, they would hardly be in a position to challenge the interpretation of research that Payne offers. If they are predisposed to believing that the poor are lazy and impulsive as well as unreliable and temperamental, they are more likely to agree with Payne’s analysis than to question it. In short, Payne may be popular simply because she echoes commonplace assumptions about why some individuals appear to succeed in American society while others do not.

And here’s what may be the only criticism of a famous educational consultant by a 14–year-old:

Is this how schools should be spending their scarce professional development time and monies?

So, like my post yesterday about Dr. Willard Daggett, the information gathered for this post raises some important questions.

First, should districts be spending their monies on a consultant whose work has been accused of being riddled with hundreds of unproven assertions? Whose emphasis on students’ need to change is allegedly so reductionist that it basically ignores the school, neighborhood, societal, political, and other contextual factors that influence the life success of students in poverty? 

If the poor are poor simply because they do not know how to behave as if they were not poor, then the middle class and the wealthy should not be taxed to provide public assistance, public health, public schooling, or a public sphere in which the poor might participate. According to such a perspective, neither structural inequality, nor public policy, nor barriers to good jobs, nor lack of money cause the plight of the poor; they just don't have the right story structure, or tone of voice, or register, or cognitive strategies. (Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson, 2008)

Who self-describes her foundational work as “the findings of a 30-year longitudinal case study of one neighborhood of poverty” when that actually means that “her expertise on poverty resulted primarily from being married for over 30 years to her husband, Frank, who grew up in ‘situational’ (or temporary) poverty, but lived for several years with others who were in ‘generational’ (or long-term) poverty” (Gorski, 2006; Payne, 1995)? Whose seminal book was admittedly inspired by financial "spirit guides" and written in a single week so that she might “fulfill her dream of ‘a life without financial constraints?’" (Bohn, 2007; Tough, 2007).

Second, are most districts that hire Dr. Payne aware of the criticisms that have been leveled against her work? And, third, even if so, should districts’ professional development work involve a consultant/speaker that’s this controversial, no matter how famous or widespread her message is?

This is important, not trivial, stuff. As Bomer et al. (2008) note:

It is well-established . . . that teacher beliefs have an impact on the ways they teach and on their students’ learning (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996; Nespor, 1987). Since teachers do make decisions and plans on the basis of their beliefs or conceptualizations of their students, students' daily lives are strongly affected by the influences on their teachers' thinking. We have demonstrated through our analysis that teachers may be misinformed by Payne's claims. Poverty in Payne's work is marked only as a negative, only as a divergence from a middle-class norm, and students who are "of poverty" need to be fixed. This way of regarding the children of poor parents has predictable and undesirable consequences in US education (Brophy & Good, 1974; Rist, 1970; Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). As a consequence of low teacher expectations, poor students are more likely to be in lower tracks or lower ability groups (Ansalone, 2001, 2003; Connor & Boskin, 2001; Gamoran & Berends, 1987; Oakes, 1985), and their educational experience is more often dominated by rote drill and practice (Anyon, 1980, 1997; Dudley-Marling & Paugh, 2005; Moll, 1988; Moll & Ruiz, 2002; Valenzuela, 1999).

How accountable should we be holding outside consultants (and the people who hire them)?

All NECC content should be shareable

There is a lively conversation occurring on the NECC 2008 Ning regarding fair use of NECC sessions. My reply to the original post is below. As you can see, I’m afraid we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture…

ALL CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS SHOULD BE SHAREABLE

I would like to see ISTE take a different stance on this. I thought ISTE was in the business of trying to make change in education, specifically around the utilization of technology in K-12 schools. How are we going to make that happen if we allow folks at the ISTE-sponsored conference to lock down content? How are we going to help facilitate true, meaningful technology-related reform if we aren't making important resources like NECC presentations available to the teaching public at large?

Instead of ISTE saying:

"Written permission from the session or workshop presenter is required prior to capturing a video or audio recording."

ISTE should be saying at the time of proposal submission (and when inviting keynote speakers):

"Any presentation given at NECC falls under a Creative Commons and/or other open use license. We encourage you to share this content with educators to enhance their knowledge and facilitate change in K-12 school organizations. Here is a publicly-editable wiki for web addresses of public repositories (such as ISTE recordings, Technorati tags, uStream archives, etc.) that may be useful to you."

All presenters - even the expensive ones - should fall under this rule. If they don't like it, they don't present.

If necessary, ISTE could help speakers understand that their own visibility, reputation, and potential income are enhanced, not hurt, by this policy. Think about the recordings of Clay Shirky, Seth Godin, and others that are out on the Web. Think about all of the TED videos. Are those individuals losing income because their presentations are available on the Web? Absolutely not. Instead, they are gaining bigger audiences and more customers precisely because they're more visible than they would be otherwise.

Charles Leadbeater says in his 'We Think' video that we now are what we share. He's absolutely right.

Given its larger mission, ISTE should be thinking more outside the box on this one.

To sum up: Instead of requiring participants to get permission to record, ISTE should be requiring presenters to give up their copyright for the good of the larger cause.

Do you think I’m right or completely off-base? Head on over to the Ning discussion and participate in the conversation!

DRAFT - Statewide 21st century learning system

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to outline what it takes to get your state or province from ‘here’ to ‘there.’ In other words, what would it take to get from our current system of schooling to a robust, province- or statewide system of 21st century learning? Here’s my first attempt at this task (click on the images for larger versions)…

PART 1

What needs to be done

The first step is to figure out what needs to happen…

1. Curricula that emphasize 21st century skills. Instead of simply adding on 21st century skills to our existing content-based standards, put them at the core of new, more focused curricula.
2. Preservice and inservice training for teachers and administrators. Training in colleges and universities. Training on the job. Regular, frequent, strategic, and ongoing.
3. Robust statewide online learning infrastructure for students and teachers. Because of resources or geography, high-level and credit recovery courses aren’t available to many students. Training opportunities aren’t available to educators. A vibrant system of online courses can help.
4. Computing device in every student’s hands. Laptops. Netbooks. Smartphones. Devices that have some power, are mobile, allow students to type, and can access the Internet.
5. Statewide no-cost or low-cost broadband wireless access. High-speed wireless in every corner of the state.
6. P-20 coordination, cooperation, and vertical articulation. Curricular, programmatic, workforce development, and other alignment across the P-20 spectrum.

Environmental supports

Some supports need to be in place to facilitate effective implementation…

1. Federal, state, and local laws, policies, and funding support. A thoughtful, helpful array of legal, policy, and funding supports for what needs to be done.
2. Monitoring, assessment, and evaluation. Regular, frequent, ongoing. To inform practice, not just for accountability.
3. Mindset shift. The digital, global age is here. It’s time to learn how to survive and thrive in it rather than being afraid of it or ignoring it.

PART 2

Marketing

There’s also a marketing piece to this. Who needs to be informed about what needs to be done in order to facilitate a broad base of support and buy-in?

1. Parents and community members
2. School board members and P-12 educators
3. Postsecondary faculty and officials
4. Employers
5. Legislators and policymakers
6. Media

PART 3

Cost

I’m working on this part…

YOUR INPUT IS DESIRED

I could use some help on this not-so-theoretical assignment. This is a draft. I need a final version by November 5.

• What would your system look like? How would you organize things differently? What did I leave out?
• How can we calculate some rough, back-of-the-envelope costs of these activities (e.g., just how much would it cost to get wireless broadband across the state)? I could really use some assistance costing this out.
• How is my thinking flawed? What am I forgetting? What is particularly important to emphasize? What else should I be considering?

Angela Maiers and Mike Sansone have been of great assistance with this first draft (any mistakes or logic flaws are mine alone!). I hope you will be willing to lend your thoughts as well. Thanks in advance!

[Feel free to download and play around with these files: png1 png2 ppt pptx]

Help wanted - Resources for high-poverty rural schools

This semester my preservice administrator students are creating a wiki that hopefully will become a helpful resource for high-poverty rural school districts. In particular, they're trying to locate resources that are helpful for educators working to increase the academic achievement of economically-disadvantaged rural students. If you know of any good resources in this area, please leave them here as a comment. Thanks!

Advice (and a video) for those just starting

Angela Maiers asked “What advice do you have for those just starting?” Here was my response:

Start with a RSS reader. Seed it with a few select feeds of interest (some professional, some personal). Read. Read some more. Read some more. Click on a few hyperlinks in what you're reading. Leave a comment or two. Return to see if anyone responded to your comment. Read some more. Click on some more hyperlinks. Leave some more comments. Start to participate in the conversation. Read some more. And learn the power of the interactive, social Web...

Also check out David Truss’ new video, which is making the rounds of the edublogosphere:

As I said over at Angela’s blog, the video is extremely well done and, as a techie, I like it a lot. But I also know that there are going to be LOTS of people whose reaction to David’s video is going to be

I DON'T WANT to be that connected.

I’ve added David’s video to the Moving Forward wiki. See also Nathan Lowell’s video, Welcome to Your World!

What's the best way to ensure mastery of low-level content?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

State and federal accountability schemes require that students master low-level academic content. Our decisions regarding how we structure our instruction to facilitate student mastery of that content strike to the very heart of what we believe about teaching and learning. To facilitate conversations about this issue, I made a short video:

What do you believe is the best way to structure instruction to ensure student content mastery?

Music credit: Safe Passage, Freeplay Music

Best online resources for information and/or media literacy?

Last week I had a brand new middle school teacher ask me what the best online resources were for learning about (and teaching about) information literacy and/or media literacy. Since this isn’t the world I live in on a regular basis, I thought I’d throw the question out to you. What sites do you find valuable related to this topic?

NECC 2008 - SETDA PD Roundtable

Here are my notes from Tuesday’s Professional Development Roundtable sponsored by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). This was an EXCELLENT conversation.

Effective professional development for educators

• Peer-to-peer training is particularly effective for teachers and administrators. Training also should be job-embedded. The focus should be the project or task, not the technology.
• Alabama has found that the graduates of their Gates grant initiative constitute the bulk of the innovative school- and district-level technology leaders in the state.
• Dr. Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director of SETDA, asked me to talk about CASTLE! Administrators need dedicated funding, training, and TIME to learn.
• Coaching models for professional development (PD) work extremely well.
• New York City has a comprehensive PD model that includes principals, teachers, etc. Principals want to see best practices and what’s working in other schools. In contrast, teachers want people to come to their classroom, to discuss ‘what works here.’ Having an in-school professional developer works really well for teachers. It’s important to have both the in-class and the off-campus components.
• A lot of people don’t really know what high-quality PD looks like.
• Brenda Williams, West Virginia Department of Education: If you get professional development right, student learning will improve.
• Steve Andrews, Intel: The politics of cost is incredible. EDC has found that If you can get one PD coach per building, the results and progress are amazing.
• Project-based administrator training needs to involve the team, not just individuals. The principals need their assistant principals, teacher leaders, etc.
• We need to get teachers into other classroom via learning walks, observations, lesson study, etc.
• Principals need to have an actionable theory of change.
• There are a number of strong PD models in existence. SETDA is going to try to collect and then disseminate some of these models.

Barriers to effective, scalable professional development

• Lack of adequate, large-scale Internet access in training facilities. The West Virginia Department of Education forced state hotels to step up or risk losing all of its workshops!
• IT people still aren’t talking to curriculum people, assessment people, etc.
• There is a fairly large number of obstructionist teachers.
• Time, perceptions of endurance, perceptions of efficiency. Teachers wonder if it’s worth investing in a technology because it is changing so fast. Teachers have seen a number of technologies come and go [and they have resisted all of them!].
• Lack of exposure to effective models for technology-related PD.
• Many teachers view technology as a classroom distraction rather than as a meaningful learning tool.
• We don’t bring IT people into the process soon enough. They need more lead time and more involvement.
• Statewide programs have trouble ensuring consistency and implementation fidelity.
• Intentionality is important. Technology training that’s driven by subject learning goals (e.g., we need to get our math scores up) is more successful. Dedicated time and focused assessment also are necessary.
• Leadership turnover and program sustainability are issues.
• Leaders need help translating models of effective PD and time reallocation to their local implementation context.
• Content area people need to be involved in the tech training. Instruction first.
• Tom Carroll, NCTAF: Are we applying the right treatment to the right teachers? One technology PD model does not fit the learning needs of all teachers (just like students).
• Students need to be the ultimate focus of teacher PD efforts. It’s not about the tools, it’s about how it benefits the students. Having students demonstrate and discuss can be a powerful motivator to teachers. Clayton Christenson: The disruptive innovation in education is not charter schools or online schools. It’s student-centered learning.
• New teachers are effective users of personal technologies and are comfortable with instructional technologies. However, they have few models of good technology integration in their schools and they also probably had instructional technology courses in their pre-service program that were separate from their content methods courses.
• Preservice teachers do not come out of college as instructional designers.
• Steve Andrews, Intel: One of the most incredible opportunities of our lifetimes is before us.
• We need to use pride, greed, hope, love, and guilt to get teachers moving.
• Schools’ poor use of technology is having negative impacts on the retention of young teachers.

Policy and practice recommendations

• Specific guidelines of 1 instructional coach per 1,000 students.
• Concrete strategies for changing how we do business (at all levels), maybe differentiated by setting, size, and locale.
• Strategies for informing and engaging parents / community members.
• A comprehensive K-20 vision and agenda – state level and/or national level – that drives forward movement.
• Mandatory interactions between K-12 and higher education. [NCATE requires that colleges work with schools?]
• We need to pay more attention to our leaders!
• Colleges of education are not going to accept any responsibility (for technology training, outreach, service, PD) until legislatures, departments of education, and/or accrediting agencies make them do so. [U. Minnesota performance review: ‘Dr. McLeod’s work with schools is exemplary but inappropriate.’]
• We need to follow up statements of ‘It’s so expensive to do this’ with the reply ‘What is the cost of not doing this?’ We need to think more in terms of investment (not cost) and return on investment.
• We have to figure out what to take off educators’ plates (the idea of prioritized abandonment).
• Most high-functioning companies spend about 4% of their budgets on employee training. We come nowhere close to this in K-12 education.
• We need to remember the interconnectedness of the success of the whole. We don’t want others to cherry pick components of what should be a comprehensive approach to systemic school reform.

105 (CASTLE summer book club update)

What would happen if you expected that 15 to 25 people would be interested in your online summer book club and 105 showed up instead? I don't know but we're going to find out starting tomorrow!

Social Media in Plain English and Mr. Winkle

I’m a big fan of the videos from Common Craft. I use them constantly in my classes and workshops. Their newest video is Social Media in Plain English:

I also ran across the Mr. Winkle Wakes video today (hat tip to Jon Becker):

Ideas wanted - CASTLE summer book club

Today we officially topped 60 participants for CASTLE's first annual summer book club. That's great! - and many more people than I ever anticipated - but it also presents some challenges...

1. It's clear to me that we're going to need to have more than one discussion group. Even accounting for some attrition, if we don't break up into smaller groups then folks are going to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments. I also want to make sure that people have an opportunity to have a meaningful say rather than being the 53rd person on the comment list. Based on my experiences with the online courses that I teach, right now I'm thinking at least 2 and maybe as many as 4 groups.
2. I've been playing with Lefora as a potential discussion tool. I've also considered blogs and/or wikis. I definitely do NOT want WebCT / Blackboard / Moodle or any other kind of course management system (although Moodle's the least objectionable of those three). I'd like RSS subscription capability, maybe for both posts and replies. The ability to see what's new / read / unread would be nice too (I don't think Lefora has this). I'm not sure what else is out there.

If anyone has any ideas on either of these fronts - thoughts regarding group size and/or what good tools might be for this - I'm open to suggestions. I need to make some decisions soon. Sign-up ends June 1 and we start June 9!

Anything else I should be thinking about? I'm excited to get going!

Participants wanted for the first annual CASTLE summer book club

I’m going to try something new this summer. I just finished reading Influencer: The power to change anything. It’s possibly the best leadership book that I’ve read in years and I’m itching to discuss it with someone. So I decided to see if I can get an online book club up and running this summer. If you’re interested, read on…

Getting started

• E-mail me by June 1 that you’re interested in participating
• Buy the book!

Commitments

• Keep up with the reading
• Be an active participant in our online discussion area
• Dissect ideas vigorously but also be nice to other discussants

Schedule

1. 6/9 to 6/15 – Part 1 Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 (44 pages)
2. 6/16 to 6/22 – Chapter 3 (28 pages)
3. 6/23 to 6/29 – Part 2 Introduction and Chapter 4 (38 pages)
4. 6/30 to 7/6 – Chapter 5 (26 pages)
5. 7/7 to 7/13 – Chapter 6 (30 pages)
6. 7/14 to 7/20 – Chapter 7 (26 pages)
7. 7/21 to 7/27 – Chapter 8 (26 pages)
8. 7/28 – 8/3 – Chapter 9 (34 pages)
9. 8/4 to 8/10 – Chapter 10 and Wrap-Up (20 pages)

This offer is open to all leaders and change agents, at whatever level they’re operating (hint: might be a good summer activity for some of your local principals or superintendents?)

I’m looking forward to some powerful discussions. Hope some of you will join me this summer!

Blocking the future

My latest article for the American Association of School Administrators is now online. Titled Blocking the Future, it’s only a page long but I’m really excited about it. Here’s an excerpt:

[S]chool district leaders have a critical choice to make: Will their schools pro-actively model and teach the safe and appropriate use of these digital tools or will they reactively block them out and leave students and families to fend for themselves? Unfortunately, many schools are choosing to do the latter. . . . I can think of no better way to highlight organizational unimportance than to block out the tools that are transforming the rest of society. Schools whose default stance is to prohibit rather than enable might as well plant a sign in front of their buildings that says, “Irrelevant to children’s futures.”

Hopefully this will be a useful reading for your administrators and teachers. Feel free to distribute liberally!

Operationalizing the concept of 'teachers as learners'

Stephanie Sandifer recently blogged about the concept of ‘teachers as learners’:

Rather than immediately engage in a technology purchasing frenzy, take some time to begin discussions on your campus about how to transform your school into a place where teachers see themselves first as LEARNERS who are invested in improving their instructional practice through reflection and inquiry

This is an old edublogosphere theme. For example, here’s a post by Will Richardson from way back in 2006:

In a world where knowledge is scarce (and I know I’m using that phrase an awful lot these days), I can see why we needed teachers to be, well, teachers. But here’s what I’m wondering: in a world where knowledge is abundant, is that still the case? In a world where, if we have access, we can find what we need to know, doesn’t a teacher’s role fundamentally change? Isn’t it more important that the adults we put into the rooms with our kids be learners first? Real, continual learners? Real models for the practice of learning? People who make learning transparent and really become a part of the community?

So what do we mean, exactly, when we say we want teachers to be ‘learners?’ The operationalization of the answer to this question is important, I believe. For example, I once asked a group of high school guidance counselors in Minnesota, ‘How do you know if you’re a successful high school guidance program?’ They responded, ‘When every student has a meaningful connection to at least one adult in the building.’ I said, ‘That’s great! Now, how do you know when you’ve gotten there? How do you know where you are now? How do you know if you’re making progress?’ And then there was silence - crickets chirping - because they didn’t know how to operationalize what they said was the ultimate measure of success for themselves.

I’ve asked similar questions of school administrators:

If, like 98.7% of all schools and districts in the country, your mission and/or vision statement says something like ‘blah blah blah blah lifelong learners blah blah blah,’ how do you know when you’ve gotten there? How do you know if you’re making progress? What does that look like? Can you tell me?

And, again, crickets chirping - because they can’t operationalize what they say is the ultimate intended outcome of the organization.

So what’s your answer? If we want teachers to be ‘learners’ - if that’s important to us - how do we define that? What do we look for? How do we know if we’ve got it?

If we can’t define it, we can’t recognize it / hire for it / reward it / remediate for the lack of it.

Anyone want to take a shot at it?

One year ago: Don't hold your breath

Not so irrelevant 007

My latest roundup of links and tools…

Some really cool posts about Twitter

• Twitter set theory & the wisdom of the group (a must-read)
• 17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe

Reading blogs is like visiting a new city

• I need to think this way about all of the unread posts in my feed aggregator (thanks, Mike Maloy!)

Rethink trust

• An interesting video from an interesting organization (also downloadable)

Zamzar

• Like many others, I am enjoying using Zamzar, a video download / file conversion tool

Lame-o

As someone in a Ed leadership program right now, I couldn’t agree more that it is a waste of time and hoop-jumping to get an administrative license. My professor lectured for two hours to a class of adults on the importance of collaboration in adult education. Lame-o.
– Jethro

A great way to think about the social Web

• No one has ‘forgotten’ or ‘left out’ anything. You just haven’t added it yet. – Alan Levine, Wiki Way (thanks for the tip, Vicki Davis!)

The firestorm subsides

• In case you missed the latest edublogosphere hubbub, you can check it all out here (start at the beginning!). I thought that there were lots of thoughtful replies to Jon’s concerns, but Vicki Davis’ and Ric Murry’s and Tom Hemingway’s stand out for me. I also really liked Wesley Fryer’s reflective post today on his own history and the changes that he’s seen.
• One of my previous posts, Linked, may provide a useful way of thinking about blog ‘superhubs’ as connectors, not inner circles. As the conversation swirl about Jon’s post so aptly demonstrated, getting noticed by the superhubs can bring you into the conversation very quickly and get you a substantial increase in traffic. My experiences with the Did You Know? video and my post about classroom cell phone videos, both of which were picked up by bloggers with far larger audiences than me, bear witness to that truth.

Happy reading, everyone. Like Wesley, I am here for the learning revolution. Hope you are too.

Videos from Nathan Lowell

I just discovered, courtesy of Kim Cofino on Twitter, these videos by Nathan Lowell. They definitely deserve greater attention…

A view of 21st century learners

Welcome to your world

Free range learning

Nice work, Nathan! I’ve added these to the Moving Forward wiki…

At the Schoolhouse Gate: Re-launch

After a hiatus of several months, I am pleased to announce CASTLE's re-launch of At the Schoolhouse Gate, a group blog dedicated to legal and policy issues in K-12 schools. We have several new contributors. Recent posts have addressed states' teacher discipline databases, cyberbullying, students' rights to post pictures taken in class, and a boy's right to wear a dress to prom.

I hope that you will join us. We welcome all new readers, commenters, and contributors.

This stuff is too easy not to use

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I talked my department chair into letting me do a 10–minute technology demonstration to my faculty colleagues at each of our monthly department meetings. My last one was titled ‘Fun With Audio.’ It went something like this…

Hi everyone. You know how you open up your word processor software, type some stuff, and then hit Save and your file’s somewhere on your hard drive? Let’s take that same thought and extend it to audio…

[open up Audacity with the LAME MP3 encoder already installed]

This is audio software. It’s like your word processor but for voice.

[hold up tabletop mic]

This is a microphone. $30 at Best Buy. I plug it in here and I’m ready to go. I click on this record button, start talking [blah blah blah], hit stop when I’m done. Voila! A sound file!

[play back file]

What can I do with this? Well, I don’t know about you but I can talk faster than I can type. So maybe I’d like to send a message to my class…

[demonstrate a quick voice memo to students - blah blah blah]

Click on Export as MP3, put the file where I want it, and send it as an e-mail attachment. Ta da! I’ve just freed up 20 minutes of my day. What else might we do with this?

[talk about voice instructions for online course management systems, sending voice e-mails instead of text e-mails, doing interviews for research studies, interviewing local experts for department web site, etc.]

[expand my faculty colleagues’ horizon by quickly mentioning Skype and the ability to record long-distance phone calls for free; offer to help anyone install Audacity and get up and running; drop a hint that I’m going to do a hands-on podcasting clinic in the spring]

Done! Thank you very much!

[next month: YouTube QuickCapture!]

This stuff is getting too easy not to use. Faculty members in colleges of education don’t tend to be very tech-savvy. With the right approach, however, we can get them using, and thus exposing future educators to, these tools. My audio demonstration took about eight minutes, I never mentioned the word ‘podcast,’ and I had a ton of questions and interest at the end.

We can do this. Share the love, share your knowledge: adopt a professor today.

UCEA 2007 - How national technology policy REALLY gets made

Friday was the first day of sessions at the UCEA convention. CASTLE sponsored a panel discussion on national K-12 educational technology policy, moderated by Drs. Sara Dexter (U. Virginia) and Matt Militello (U. Massachusetts-Amherst).

 Listen to the podcast! (73.9 Mb, 81 minutes)

Panelists

• Hilary Goldman, Director of Government Affairs, ISTE
• Dr. Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director, SETDA
• Doug Levin, Senior Director of Education Policy, Cable in the Classroom

Some main themes

• In the mid– to late 1990s, there were LOTS of national funding initiatives aimed at K-12 ed tech – all were replaced by EETT, which is much smaller and more limited – today, EETT has declined from over $700 million to $272 million – in the past, the Bush administration has even attempted to zero out the EETT budget – Congress has saved the program but at increasingly lower levels
• There is a perception that the job is done
• Teachers have not been trained how to use technology to improve student learning outcomes
• Educators are moving slow – lots of missed opportunities – extremely incremental change in a revolutionary environment
• TPCK model – preservice teachers should not take separate ed tech classes – should be integrated with content-specific methods courses
• We are finally starting to get research that is helpful for policy purposes – for example, the eMints program in Missouri and other states
• The amount of education that people need is astounding – state and federal policymakers, education associations, the public – they make major assumptions about what is happening that just aren’t true
• Example: because nearly all schools are wired, people truly think that means that all kids have access to the Internet – far from being true – only buildings and teacher computers are wired – every student is NOT wired and connected
• Example: lots of money has been poured into student information systems – as a result, people think that teachers are getting data that informs their day-to-day instructional practice – again, this is far from true – in most districts, the data that are in these systems are not that granular
• You have to use sexy vocabulary – the terms of art – that capture policymakers’ attention – right now it is global competitiveness
• High school reform and other change efforts – technology is not specifically articulated as a component – it thus gets lost or left out
• Ed tech policy is still fairly immature - we’re in our tweens
• Groups like NEA, AFT, NSBA, AASA, NASSP, and NAESP are not knowledgeable about technology – they advocate for Title I, IDEA - they don’t advocate for ed tech
• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is trying to change the conversation rather than trying to figure out how to fit ed tech into existing paradigms / models / laws - this is a real herky-jerky process
• There is not, and has not been, a systemic long-term research agenda, funded by policymakers, to answer key research questions about K-12 educational technology
• What kind of research is needed to further the cause of K-12 educational technology?
• Most education academics are naive about how policy gets made – don’t really understand the policy process – much educational research is not pertinent or helpful to policy conversations and the questions that are being asked by policymakers - we have to remember that ed tech is only one voice of many
• ETAN – www.edtechactionnetwork.org – you don’t have to get to DC – can plug in your e-mail and zip code and get resources and information – just 12 letters can make a difference – meeting in local offices back home also make an impact – asking questions at local town halls sponsored by legislators
• We were blessed in the 1990s with the folks that were in the U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) – there are lots of places where this can break down – there are not strong advocates there today – one place to focus advocacy efforts is the US DOE, not just legislators
• Why has school leadership been left out of the ed tech policy conversation and policy efforts? – historically, efforts were focused on affecting the classroom, not on changing the system – promising levers appear to be 21st century skills, data-driven decision-making, and cybersafety
• We could draft Title II legislation around professional development for administrators regarding technology leadership

[left to right: Sara Dexter, Matt Militello, Hilary Goldman, Mary Ann Wolf, Doug Levin]

Higher education column for TechLearning

A few months back, Susan McLester, Editor in Chief of Technology and Learning magazine, asked if I would write a monthly column on higher education technology issues. Always mindful of opportunities to spread the word about CASTLE, of course I said yes!

Here are my first few articles:

• Professors who blog (May 15, 2007)
• Our ethical obligation (August 15, 2007)
• Document management tools (September 15, 2007)
• RateMyProgram.com (October 15, 2007)

Duty of care

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I have been reading with great interest the conversations that have been sparked by Kurt Paccio’s post on Internet filtering. As my brain has swirled around the issues involved, it has returned to an experience I had earlier this year.

As some of you may know, I was the recipient this year of one of the cable industry’s Leaders in Learning awards. It was a phenomenal experience and I highly encourage you to nominate someone for next year’s awards (the due date is January 16, 2008). As part of that June trip back to my home town of Washington, DC, I had the wonderful opportunity to hear a presentation by Dr. Tom Carroll, President of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF), on teacher supply and demand. Here is a slide from his presentation (click on image for larger version):

As the graph shows, the number of ‘entrants’ into the teaching profession increased somewhat beginning in the mid-1990s but the number of ‘leavers’ rose even faster. My first reaction was that the numbers reflected the growing numbers of Baby Boomer teachers that are nearing retirement. But look at the next slide:

Although there has been the expected increase in the retirement numbers, the growth in the number of ‘non-retirement leavers’ has been much, much larger. As the first graph illustrates, the end result is that nearly twice as many teachers are leaving the profession than in the late 1980s.

Look more closely at the x axis of the second slide. Tom noted that these time spans roughly reflect the entry of Generation X and Generation Y into the education work force. As he talked with us, his basic message was that

Increasing numbers of young teachers are deciding that schools are not personally- or professionally-fulfilling workplaces and are taking their skills and talents elsewhere.

The way that schools operate is not working right now for many creative, talented young adults. They look around at how things work in schools, they might even give teaching a try because they want to make a difference in children’s lives, but then they become disenchanted and they leave. This has always happened, of course – the statistics on new teacher attrition have always been appalling – but new teacher departures are occurring at an ever-increasing rate, with the following impact on the average age of the teaching workforce:

As the third graph shows, the average age of our teaching force is getting older and older. These teachers can’t teach forever. Who is going to replace them?

It seems to me that the issues that underlie Kurt’s post and the new teacher attrition rate are intertwined. The comments surrounding Kurt’s post ultimately revolve around this question:

Similarly, is it schools’ responsibility to provide viable and palatable working environments for new employees or is it not? Whether we’re talking about schools’ obligation to meet the future life needs of students or their need to retain new, talented educators, in both cases the issue is one of duty of care. What is our duty to care for students responsively and responsibly? What is our duty to care for new staff in ways that are embracing and empowering? What is our duty to care for young adults in ways that recognize their power and potential? What is our duty of care to our communities to adequately prepare the next generation?

Schools can’t continue to have more employees leave than enter. Schools can’t continue to ignore the fact that increasing numbers of students and families are rejecting traditional paradigms in favor of alternative learning structures (magnet schools, charter schools, home schooling, cyberschooling, etc.). If schools are to survive, they have to start addressing their underlying lack of engagement for both students and new staff. Otherwise they will be relegated to the dustbin of history as something more responsive takes their place.

Moving forward - Example wikis to use for presentations?

In August I announced a wiki, Moving Forward, that is intended to provide technology-related resources for everyone who gives presentations or delivers training workshops for K-12 or postsecondary educators. I asked readers to contribute blog-related resources and URLs to the wiki, including good classroom blogs and other blogs that can be used as models for educators.

A big thanks to everyone who contributed to the blogs page. We still could use some more model classroom blogs. It would be particularly nice if some of our ‘superhub’ bloggers could throw in a link or two. I know that many of these folks show examples to schools all the time and they’re extremely well-versed on cutting-edge stuff that’s occurring in the world of K-12 ed tech. The average educator who’s trying to facilitate technology-related change in his/her school or district could use some help. Can we give those folks a few choice links that they can show their staff as examples rather than making them dig around the Web trying to find their own?

In addition to my plea for more blog-related resources, I’ll now request some links to some good K-12 wikis. If you have some good examples of how teachers, students, and administrators are using wikis to facilitate their work, please add them to the Moving Forward wikis page.

Thanks in advance. We’re all in this together. Let’s help each other out?

2007 recipients of the Technology Leadership Research Award

It is my great pleasure to announce that Dr. Chris Gareis and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach are the recipients of the 2007 Technology Leadership Research Award. Here is the abstract from their co-authored article, Electronically Mentoring to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers:

With nearly half of all new teachers leaving the classroom within five years, schools are faced with the challenge of retaining early-career teachers while simultaneously providing them with the support they need to develop into effective professionals. Mentoring novice teachers by pairing them with experienced teachers in schools is a widely adopted practice for addressing these needs; however, face-to-face mentoring is subject to challenges. A promising complement to face-to-face mentoring may be found in the innovative use of computer-mediated communications, such as online forums. In an effort to support, develop, and retain novice teachers, The College of William and Mary has partnered with the Center for Teacher Quality to create ENDAPT – Electronically Networking to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers. ENDAPT is an asynchronous online forum that brings together novice teachers and teacher leaders in a virtual mentoring community. This article provides an overview of the program model and presents research findings from a study of participants' postings using content analysis methodology to identify and describe the nature of professional conversations among mentors and novice teachers.

Although we can’t share the actual article with you (because it’s currently under review by a journal), Chris and Sheryl will be giving a presentation on their paper at the UCEA conference in November which we will try to make available to folks.

I would like to publicly thank the other practitioners and academics who took the time out of their extremely busy schedules to participate in the anonymous review process this year:

• Kurt Bernardo, Technology Coordinator, Orange City (OH) Schools; 2005 Ohio Technology Coordinator of the Year
• Dr. Jim Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
• Dr. Chris Sessums, Director of Distance Education, University of Florida College of Education; Best Individual Blog, 2006 Edublog Awards
• Dr. Jon Voss, Coordinator, Northern Star Online (MN) Schooling Collaborative

The Technology Leadership Research Award is jointly sponsored by CASTLE and the UCEA School Technology Leadership Special Interest Group.

Kudos to Chris and Sheryl. I'm looking forward to the submissions for next year!

School data tutorials

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Even when principals and teachers have access to data, they often aren't sure what to do with it. That’s why CASTLE (okay, it was me!) created School Data Tutorials, a web site intended to help K-12 educators work with raw student and school data.

The tutorials on the web site highlight many of the Excel skills that are helpful when working with building- and district-level data. The tutorials are targeted at data managers, principals, guidance counselors, teachers, and other school personnel who have the responsibility for collecting, analyzing, and reporting K-12 performance data (which is just about everyone these days!). You will see that the tutorials are much like the ones created by Atomic Learning (they trained us!) but are focused on data-driven decision-making needs of educators rather than being generic.

Below are the four sets of tutorials we recommend for every teacher and administrator. If every educator knew how to do these four things, schools’ capacity to do some basic monitoring of student progress would be greatly enhanced. They take just over half an hour to watch once, and of course they can be viewed as many times as necessary to accomplish mastery.

Many more tutorials are available on the site, including instructions on how to make your own data collection templates. Let me know if you feel empowered after watching these!

Freeze panes

• Freezing rows to remain visible (1:11)
• Freezing columns to remain visible (0:40)
• Freezing both rows and columns to remain visible (0:49)

Sort

• Sorting data using a single criterion (3:04)
• Sorting data using multiple criteria (2:29)
• Sorting data with multiple header rows (1:27)

Filter

• Filtering data with AutoFilter (1:13)
• Analyzing data with AutoFilter (1:45)
• Using Custom AutoFilter to filter numerical values less or greater than a specified value (1:41)
• Turning filters off (0:34)
• Printing datasets from AutoFilter (1:39)
• Copying just the dataset obtained from AutoFilter (2:23)
• Using the Esc (Escape) key to clear selections and copy another dataset (1:16)

Conditional formatting

• Changing a numerical cell's color with single conditional formatting conditions (2:17)
• Changing a numerical cell's color with multiple conditional formatting conditions (1:50)
• Changing a text cell's color with single conditional formatting conditions (0:55)
• Changing a text cell's color with multiple conditional formatting conditions (2:53)
• Changing a cell's color with calculated value conditions (3:58)

Note that you may need to turn off your browser's pop-up blocker or install the latest Flash plug-in to view these tutorials. Happy viewing!

Did You Know? predicts Armageddon?

Karl Fisch just sent me a link to this video. If you watch the first 10 minutes or so, you'll see Hal Lindsey of the Trinity Broadcasting Network use Did You Know? (Jeff Brenman's adaptation of the original version) as an indicator that Armageddon is near.

Oh, and if you like the video, you can order it on DVD at 1-800-Titus35.

Moving Forward - Example blogs to use for presentations?

Many of give presentations or deliver training workshops for K-12 or postsecondary educators. As part of those professional development efforts, we have a variety of resources and favorites that we use: background readings for participants, videos that we show, example blogs or wikis that we highlight, etc.

I’m working on a wiki, Moving Forward, which I’m hoping can be a good resource for all of us. Miguel and David and Wesley and Will and Sheryl and Karl and Jeff and John and Vicki and … Each has their own private list of examples and resources that they use when they present. I’d like to encourage everyone to contribute at least one resource to the Moving Forward wiki.

To start, let’s focus on blogging:

• What are some good background readings and other resources on K-12 and/or postsecondary blogging?
• What are some good example student, teacher, administrator, or staff blogs to show audiences?

Please contribute your resources and URLs to the Moving Forward Blogs page. This is a great way for everyone to create a resource that can be used by all of us as we work to facilitate technology-related change in schools and universities. Just one resource or example blog, that’s all I ask. C’mon, that’s nothing! You can do it!

Feel free to add to the other pages as well. I'll issues calls for contributions for other sections of the wiki over the coming weeks. If you make a contribution, please add your name to the contributor list!

Important questions about school leader preparation

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

A lot of folks have been asking important questions about school leader preparation lately. The most recent issue of AASA’s The School Administrator magazine profiles four key concerns.

Are school leadership programs any good?

Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, angered a number of folks with his 2005 report, Educating School Leaders, which was a scathing indictment of university educational administration programs. In this issue of The School Administrator, he and Diane Dean continue the theme that most school leader preparation practices are out of sync with the needs of schools:

The mission of the field is confused; the curriculum and degrees awarded have little relevance to practice; clinical experience is weak; the faculty is overly dependent on adjuncts and insufficiently involved with schools; admission and graduation standards are low; and research is of poor quality.

Do we have too many school leadership preparation programs?

In her article, Margaret Terry Orr chooses to focus on the growth of educational leadership doctoral programs and the resultant impact on quality and student selectivity. Orr notes that the growth has occurred mostly in smaller regional universities:

[T]hese programs lack the institutional resources, breadth and history of other universities to support a doctoral program. New programs are more likely to start up with fewer full-time dedicated faculty members and be more reliant upon adjunct faculty. They may be less able to develop more advanced-level coursework, offer more diverse specialized course options, support research and research skill development or have other educational developments in their institutions that would enrich their content. . . . [As smaller] institutions expand both doctoral program availability and number of admissions, access becomes less competitive. But does greater access diminish the value and quality of the degree?

Should we be skeptical of superintendents who don’t have an education background?

Tim Quinn, managing director of the Broad Foundation’s Superintendents Academy, writes about preparing effective leaders for large urban school districts. Although teachers and principals often are wary of non-educator superintendents, Quinn notes that running a large district can be similar to running a large, multinational company:

It takes strong leadership skills to successfully run an entity as large and complex as an urban school district, much less turn around one that is low-performing. Most people don’t realize many urban school systems are as large as the biggest companies in America. The New York City Department of Education, with a budget of nearly $13 billion, ranks among the top of the Fortune 500 list in terms of size, alongside companies such as Sun Microsystems and Continental Airlines. Many urban districts have more employees and larger budgets than any other entity, business or government in their city. Urban school district leaders have a massive scope of responsibility. . . . [M]ost current educational leadership programs are not preparing leaders - whether traditional or nontraditional - to handle the realities and complex challenges of leading an urban school district.

Can school leaders be prepared effectively online?

In the issue’s final article, Patti Ghezzi writes about online doctoral programs for school leaders. Although school systems and traditional university programs tend to be skeptical about the quality of online leadership preparation programs, participants often claim that their coursework is more rigorous than anything they’ve done in face-to-face graduate study:

One critic, Thomas Glass, a professor of educational leadership at University of Memphis who tracks superintendent trends, believes online programs run by online colleges cannot prepare educators for executive-level positions in a school district. “They are definitely second class or third class.” . . . Leaders at the institutions now offering online doctoral degrees say their programs are as rigorous, if not more so, than programs at bricks-and-mortar universities. They contend their electronic classes emphasize practical skills and applicable research over education theory and say their instructors are practitioners who understand the public education landscape better than tenured professors who may be decades removed from working in school settings. . . . Dolly Adams, a lead teacher for gifted education in Richmond, Texas, who is working on her Ed.D. in educational leadership [says,] “You’re not sitting in a lecture listening to a professor who likes the sound of his voice.”

As the new coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University, I obviously am concerned with effective leadership preparation practices. If you are too, I encourage you to read one or more of these articles. Then, since there’s no discussion area at AASA, come back here and give us your two cents. There’s plenty of fuel here for discussion!

P.S. In addition to these four interesting articles, you also should make it a priority to track down a copy of Joe Murphy’s phenomenal article in the April issue of Phi Delta Kappan regarding the disconnect between university educational leadership programs and the needs of practicing administrators.

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

A lot of folks have been asking important questions about school leader preparation lately. The most recent issue of AASA’s The School Administrator magazine profiles four key concerns.

Are school leadership programs any good?

Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, angered a number of folks with his 2005 report, Educating School Leaders, which was a scathing indictment of university educational administration programs. In this issue of The School Administrator, he and Diane Dean continue the theme that most school leader preparation practices are out of sync with the needs of schools:

The mission of the field is confused; the curriculum and degrees awarded have little relevance to practice; clinical experience is weak; the faculty is overly dependent on adjuncts and insufficiently involved with schools; admission and graduation standards are low; and research is of poor quality.

Do we have too many school leadership preparation programs?

In her article, Margaret Terry Orr chooses to focus on the growth of educational leadership doctoral programs and the resultant impact on quality and student selectivity. Orr notes that the growth has occurred mostly in smaller regional universities:

[T]hese programs lack the institutional resources, breadth and history of other universities to support a doctoral program. New programs are more likely to start up with fewer full-time dedicated faculty members and be more reliant upon adjunct faculty. They may be less able to develop more advanced-level coursework, offer more diverse specialized course options, support research and research skill development or have other educational developments in their institutions that would enrich their content. . . . [As smaller] institutions expand both doctoral program availability and number of admissions, access becomes less competitive. But does greater access diminish the value and quality of the degree?

Should we be skeptical of superintendents who don’t have an education background?

Tim Quinn, managing director of the Broad Foundation’s Superintendents Academy, writes about preparing effective leaders for large urban school districts. Although teachers and principals often are wary of non-educator superintendents, Quinn notes that running a large district can be similar to running a large, multinational company:

It takes strong leadership skills to successfully run an entity as large and complex as an urban school district, much less turn around one that is low-performing. Most people don’t realize many urban school systems are as large as the biggest companies in America. The New York City Department of Education, with a budget of nearly $13 billion, ranks among the top of the Fortune 500 list in terms of size, alongside companies such as Sun Microsystems and Continental Airlines. Many urban districts have more employees and larger budgets than any other entity, business or government in their city. Urban school district leaders have a massive scope of responsibility. . . . [M]ost current educational leadership programs are not preparing leaders - whether traditional or nontraditional - to handle the realities and complex challenges of leading an urban school district.

Can school leaders be prepared effectively online?

In the issue’s final article, Patti Ghezzi writes about online doctoral programs for school leaders. Although school systems and traditional university programs tend to be skeptical about the quality of online leadership preparation programs, participants often claim that their coursework is more rigorous than anything they’ve done in face-to-face graduate study:

One critic, Thomas Glass, a professor of educational leadership at University of Memphis who tracks superintendent trends, believes online programs run by online colleges cannot prepare educators for executive-level positions in a school district. “They are definitely second class or third class.” . . . Leaders at the institutions now offering online doctoral degrees say their programs are as rigorous, if not more so, than programs at bricks-and-mortar universities. They contend their electronic classes emphasize practical skills and applicable research over education theory and say their instructors are practitioners who understand the public education landscape better than tenured professors who may be decades removed from working in school settings. . . . Dolly Adams, a lead teacher for gifted education in Richmond, Texas, who is working on her Ed.D. in educational leadership [says,] “You’re not sitting in a lecture listening to a professor who likes the sound of his voice.”

As the new coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University, I obviously am concerned with effective leadership preparation practices. If you are too, I encourage you to read one or more of these articles. Then, since there’s no discussion area at AASA, come back here and give us your two cents. There’s plenty of fuel here for discussion!

P.S. In addition to these four interesting articles, you also should make it a priority to track down a copy of Joe Murphy’s phenomenal article in the April issue of Phi Delta Kappan regarding the disconnect between university educational leadership programs and the needs of practicing administrators.

Three great questions for school districts

Ken Pruitt has posted three great questions for school districts:

1. What are the 21st century skills we want our teachers to model?
2. How can we provide consistent and relevant training to 200 teachers?
3. Will adequate resources encourage teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum?

The second question is a classic dilemma for school systems. Most still haven't found a good answer to that one.

I love question 3!

Common Craft and dotSUB

If you haven't seen these three films from Common Craft, I think they are great introductions for educators, parents, and others who are not familiar with these interactive Web 2.0 technologies:

• Wikis in Plain English
• Social Networking in Plain English
• RSS in Plain English

You'll notice that the links are to the dotSUB versions of the videos (thanks, Wesley!). dotSUB is a fantastic new service that uses volunteers to create video subtitles in different languages. I just uploaded Did You Know? 2.0 to the site. Awesome!

Is Will asking the right questions?

Will Richardson voiced his frustration in a recent post about the trouble that he’s having getting teachers to focus on the potential of Web 2.0 tools to enhance their own personal learning.

Part of me wonders if he’s asking the right questions. It’s hard to tell what Will is saying to the teachers. If he’s trying to get at their own personal learning practices, it seems to me that the first questions may need to be

• What are your personal and professional interests?
• What are you passionate about? What do you care about?
  
• How do you currently learn and grow in those areas?

All teachers are learners because all humans are learners (okay, 99.99% of humans are learners; we all know a few oddballs). If Will can find out how these educators acquire and gain new knowledge that is of personal and/or professional interest to them (particularly outside of school for their hobbies, music, athletics, and other outside interests), it seems to me there then exists a natural opening to discuss how various Web 2.0 tools can connect these folks to various communities and content of interest.

Will, perhaps you’re doing all this already. For example, maybe you’re contextually embedding your participants’ learning by selecting one or more individuals, asking them what their interests are and how they learn and grow in those areas, and then illustrating in front of the rest of the audience how to expand those circles of knowledge and knowing using these new tools (look, here are 56 blogs about pomeranians! 204 blogs about orchids! a wiki devoted to knitting!).

I don’t know what your strategies have been, Will; this is just what I’d do. But I’d love to learn more (hint, hint)!

Did You Know? 2.0

Karl Fisch and I are very pleased to announce the new version of Did You Know?

• Did You Know? 2.0

As you'll see, we tried to minimize what some perceived as alarmism about globalism. We also fixed some errors, changed the music to something that didn't violate copyright, and got a complete graphic makeover from XPLANE. Additionally, we added some material after 'Shift Happens' to encourage viewer conversation and action.

More information on the new presentation (including suggestions for usage, a link to downloadable versions, and other resources) is available at

• http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com

As always, comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!

Administrators, standards, and technology

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

There are two primary standards documents for school administrators: ISLLC and ELCC. Together they broadly define the parameters of school leaders’ work. They also guide school district position descriptions; administrator evaluations and assessments; state licensure, certification, and accreditation expectations; and the content and coursework of postsecondary leadership preparation programs.

ISLLC

The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium Standards for School Leaders (a.k.a. ISLLC), were created by the Council of Chief State School Officers and are the foundation of nearly every state’s standards for administrator licensure and certification. The ISLLC framework was adopted in 1996 and is organized around six basic standards. The ISLLC standards note that a “school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by…”

1. facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community;
2. advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth;
3. ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
4. collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
5. acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner; and
6. understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

The ISLLC standards only mention technology twice:

• the administrator has knowledge and understanding of the role of technology in promoting student learning and professional growth (under Standard 2); and
• the administrator facilitates processes and engages in activities ensuring that there is effective use of technology to manage school operations (under Standard 3).

ELCC

The Educational Leadership Constituent Council standards (a.k.a. ELCC) were adopted by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and are used for accreditation of postsecondary educational leadership programs. The ELCC framework was adopted in 2001 and is organized around seven basic standards. The ELCC standards note that “[c]andidates who complete [educational administration programs] are educational leaders who have the knowledge and ability to promote the success of all students by…”

1. facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a school or district vision of learning supported by the school community;
2. promoting a positive school culture, providing an effective instructional program, applying best practice to student learning, and designing comprehensive professional growth plans for staff;
3. managing the organization, operations, and resources in a way that promotes a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment;
4. collaborating with families and other community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources;
5. acting with integrity, fairly, and in an ethical manner; and
6. understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

The seventh ELCC standard has to do with preservice administrator internships.

As you can see, the ELCC standards are extremely similar to ISLLC. However, the ELCC standards mention technology a little more than does ISLLC:

• candidates demonstrate the ability to use and promote technology and information systems to enrich curriculum and instruction, to monitor instructional practices and provide staff the assistance needed for improvement (under Standard 2);
• candidates are able to use qualitative and quantitative data, appropriate research methods, technology, and information systems to develop a long-range plan for a district that assesses the district’s improvement and accountability systems (under Standard 2); and
• candidates demonstrate knowledge of adult learning strategies and the ability to apply technology and research
  to professional development design focusing on authentic problems and tasks, mentoring, coaching, conferencing, and other techniques that promote new knowledge and skills in the workplace (under Standard 2); and
• candidates use problem-solving skills and knowledge of strategic, long-range, and operational planning (including applications of technology) in the effective, legal, and equitable use of fiscal, human, and material resource allocation and alignment that focuses on teaching and learning (under Standard 3).

There also is some additional language regarding technology in the narrative sections accompanying Standards 2 and 3.

NETS-A

The International Society for Technology in Education released its National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) in 2001. The NETS-A are comprised of six broad standards and 31 performance indicators. The NETS-A state that “educational leaders…”

1. inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision;
2. ensure that curricular design, instructional strategies, and learning environments integrate appropriate technologies to maximize learning and teaching;
3. apply technology to enhance their professional practice and to increase their own productivity and that of others;
4. ensure the integration of technology to support productive systems for learning and administration;
5. use technology to plan and implement comprehensive systems of effective assessment and evaluation; and
6. understand the social, legal, and ethical issues related to technology and model responsible decision-making related to these issues.

The NETS-A do not align very well with the two main sets of administrator standards. To date they also have had little impact on most state licensure and accreditation efforts or on most university educational leadership programs.

Discussion

Should there be more mention of technology in either ISLLC or ELCC? Probably.

That said, we also know that technology leadership is just one aspect of principals’ and superintendents’ busy lives. While we might wish that ISLLC and ELCC better recognized the ways that digital technologies are revolutionizing our personal and professional lives, we also must remember that school administrators are responsible for leading instruction, supervising and evaluating employees, budgeting, community relations, management and operations, and a variety of other duties. There’s only so much time in administrators’ days and we have to prioritize their time and energy.

The NETS-A are an ambitious set of standards. While ideally all of the NETS-A capacities exist somewhere in the school organization, it is difficult to argue that a single person should be proficient in every single area the NETS-A cover. There will be some educators, whoever, who want a comprehensive program grounded in the NETS-A. The graduate programs offered by CASTLE, our partner universities, and a few other educational leadership programs are an attempt to meet that need.

The ISLLC and ELCC standards dominate conversations and expectations regarding school administrator competency. The next iterations of both documents probably should more explicitly address the technological changes that are occurring in our society. Until then, anyone got a good NETS-A / ISLLC / ELCC crosswalk?

Other questions

• Do you know of any comprehensive, high-quality, district-sponsored staff development efforts based on the NETS-A?
• Are the NETS-A too ambitious for principals, superintendents, and/or central office administrators?
• Which NETS-A standard is most important for principals? Which is most difficult for them to master?
• Does your school organization and/or local university do a good job of preparing administrators to be technology leaders?

$2,000 pencils

I just ran across this Alan November post on the 'laptop lashback.' Here's a great quote:

Teachers have not changed the way they teach. We are using $2,000 pencils.

Also, check out Comment 3...

Key question

Principal universities

As part of his five-point proposal to reform schools, Chris Whittle, founder of Edison Schools, proposes that we create five 'principal universities.' As Whittle notes, these would be the equivalent of the Air Force Academy, West Point, and Annapolis but for K-12 school principals. Each would serve approximately 3,000 students, whose tuition and expenses would be fully covered.

Whittle believes that these universities 'could dramatically enhance school leadership in the United States' (he's got a similar idea to create five new teacher colleges too). It's an interesting idea. I'll have to think about this one a bit.

Vote for Did You Know?!

Jeff Brenman's adaptation of Karl Fisch's Did You Know? presentation is currently the most popular slideshow at SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest. If you haven't seen it, Jeff's version is awesome. Go watch it, and then vote for it in the contest!

Did you know? We need your help.

Will Richardson says he’s stuck. I say we need a plan. Karl Fisch says we have a pretty good anticipatory set. Will says what next?

We need action on multiple fronts: schools, universities, policymakers, business people, local communities. But we can’t start moving without having some important conversations. So with that in mind…

Karl and I are working with XPLANE to update the Did You Know? video because it seems to resonate with folks. We’re going to update some of the facts, reframe some of the slides, turn down some of the global alarmism, and turn up the visual attractiveness several notches. Our goal is to make a version 2 that resonates with folks even more than the first one. But we need your help.

Imagine that you’ve just showed Did You Know? to an audience of educators (or business people or politicians or community members). What questions do you ask to start the conversation about what’s next? In other words, we don’t want people to just watch the video, say Wow!, and then continue to do nothing. What questions should we be asking at the end to facilitate people talking about and moving toward the creation of 21st century school environments?

Here are some possibilities:

• What should we expect high school graduates to be able to do in this new era?
• What should we be doing to help K-12 educators make the transition to this new world?
• How can we tap into students’ existing knowledge and skills in this area?
• What kinds of supports are schools going to need to become 21st century learning organizations and how are we going to provide them?

I’ll stop here because I don’t want to shape your thinking any further, but you get the idea. Please submit your ideas for good end-of-video questions, as well as any other suggestions you have about this project, as comments on this blog post or on Karl’s post. Thanks for making a contribution to this important endeavor!

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

I hate the whole concept of Fox’s television show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Here’s why…

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thought it would be fun to have local teachers create a twenty-question quiz on stuff fifth-graders ought to know. Here are the questions from the quiz, each of which is hyperlinked to the Google search results for the question text:

1. What is a hyperbole?
2. Which chamber of the heart receives blood from the lungs?
3. Is the equator a line of latitude or longitude?
4. What is a mixed number?
5. What organ in the body produces bile?
6. What kind of a root is a carrot?
7. Nomadic tribes of American Plains Indians lived in what structures?
8. What did American Indians of the Northwest coast use to symbolize their clan and tell family stories?
9. Which is larger: 3/5 or 5/8?
10. What are the three branches of the United States government?
11. What are the names of the five Great Lakes?
12. How many hydrogen atoms are there in a molecule of water?
13. "You are as strong as an ox." Is this statement a simile or metaphor?
14. What part of speech is "after": An adverb, conjunction or preposition?
15. Who invented peanut butter?
16. How many pints are in 2 gallons?
17. How many feet are in 9 yards?
18. What part of speech describes a verb?
19. What is a proper noun?
20. What is something found on a plant cell that is not found on an animal cell?

Go ahead. I dare you to compare the Google search results to the quiz answers. For nearly every question, the first or second Google link has the correct answer. In most instances, you don’t even need to click through to the actual web site. You can just read the short blurb for the link on the Google results page. [Also, note that question 14 is a trick question and that the teachers’ answer to question 20 may be incorrect (I think it should say chloroplasts, not cytoplasm).]

So now we’re not only spending all this time in school making kids memorize stuff that literally can be found in mere seconds, we’re actually making game shows out of it (like we’ve always done) and framing it in such a way so that grown-ups feel stupid if they don’t remember information that most adults never need to keep in their heads. Let’s be honest here: when is the last time you really needed to know the names of all five Great Lakes, whether or not animal cells have cell walls, or who invented peanut butter?

I’ve blogged about this before. I know there is some core knowledge that we want all of our kids to know, both because we want them to be able to recall it even faster than the time it takes to search the Web and because it’s part of our cultural / societal background and heritage. But as I said in my earlier post, I’m guessing that this body of knowledge is much less than we’ve traditionally believed because of the technology that is now available to us.

We used to have to memorize things because the only way we could store knowledge and information was in our heads. We passed that information down orally from generation to generation. Over time we learned to mark stone tablets, knot ropes, write on papyrus and then paper, and print books. With each technological progression, we needed to carry less factual information in our heads because it was available in other places and we could get it if we needed it. Our ability to store information digitally on hard drives, DVDs, and the Internet is just the latest transition, with a concurrent reduction of the need to carry around a bunch of disparate, disconnected facts that are irrelevant to our daily lives. There’s a reason we don’t make most individuals memorize the periodic table or the quadratic equation: they don’t need that information most of the time and, if they do, they can find it pretty easily.

Am I smarter than a fifth grader? Yes, and it’s not because I have memorized all of this stuff. It’s because I’m an adult who can find the information that I need in mere seconds when I need it, critically consume information, and act upon information in professional, ethical, and productive ways. What do you want your fifth grader to be learning in school?

Further reading

• Gary Stager
• Pete Reilly
• John Taylor Gatto

[Update: I love this follow-up on the Journals of Journeys blog.]

The power of a good message

It may be that few of you are interested in this besides me, but I thought I'd post on the impact that Did You Know? has had on this blog over the past month. I posted earlier that Karl Fisch's video had gone viral yet again, this time outside the education community. Karl and I continue to have some very interesting exchanges with folks about the presentation; there now are even spin-offs and parodies.

According to Feedburner, on February 12 I had 378 subscribers to Dangerously Irrelevant and 352 folks who actually visited the blog that day. Over the past 30 days this blog has averaged 1,095 visitors per day. As of yesterday, the number of subscribers to this blog is 639. In other words, traffic to my web site has about tripled (although it's slowing down of late) and the number of individuals who have decided to add me to their RSS aggregators has increased 70%. Now that's the power of a good message combined with technology that enables reach!  (FYI, the most popular YouTube version of Did You Know? has been viewed over 274,000 times)

I'm not in Will Richardson, Stephen Downes, or Boing Boing territory yet, but I'll take the traffic (and give Karl my thanks yet again!). As I've noted before, I'm on a mission...

Institutionalization of mediocrity?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

One of the reasons I like the Eduwonk blog so much is that Andy Rotherham doesn't pull any punches. I may not always agree with what he says, but he dares to speak his mind. For example, in a recent post he says that K-12 education

'is a culture that accepts and institutionalizes [teacher] mediocrity'

and that there is a

'chronic lack of emphasis on effectiveness and performance at every step along a teacher's value chain from preparation, recruitment, hiring, induction, mentoring and support, and professional development to evaluation and compensation.'

He goes on to say that

'talented people don't want to work in places that aren't talent sensitive and this creates an adverse selection problem that reinforces these problems. [Also,] current practices make this even worse in practice ... and credentialing rules, which often have little connection to research, further limit the pool of would be or could be teachers.'

Andy's original post is here and includes some interesting links to other sources. What do you think of Andy's comments? Is he off-base or right on the money?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

One of the reasons I like the Eduwonk blog so much is that Andy Rotherham doesn't pull any punches. I may not always agree with what he says, but he dares to speak his mind. For example, in a recent post he says that K-12 education

'is a culture that accepts and institutionalizes [teacher] mediocrity'

and that there is a

'chronic lack of emphasis on effectiveness and performance at every step along a teacher's value chain from preparation, recruitment, hiring, induction, mentoring and support, and professional development to evaluation and compensation.'

He goes on to say that

'talented people don't want to work in places that aren't talent sensitive and this creates an adverse selection problem that reinforces these problems. [Also,] current practices make this even worse in practice ... and credentialing rules, which often have little connection to research, further limit the pool of would be or could be teachers.'

Andy's original post is here and includes some interesting links to other sources. What do you think of Andy's comments? Is he off-base or right on the money?

Learning Spanish virtually

Yesterday I uploaded our third CASTLE Conversations podcast. I interviewed Julie Sykes, a doctoral student here at the University of Minnesota, about her Spanish Pragmatics Project, which is using virtual world software (like Second Life) to help postsecondary Spanish students learn how to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. Screenshots are included with the podcast.

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Yesterday I uploaded our third CASTLE Conversations podcast. I interviewed Julie Sykes, a doctoral student here at the University of Minnesota, about her Spanish Pragmatics Project, which is using virtual world software (like Second Life) to help postsecondary Spanish students learn how to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. Screenshots are included with the podcast.

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Going viral

Well, it appears that Did You Know? has gone viral (again?). Both Karl Fisch and I have been getting boatloads of e-mails and phone calls lately from non-education folks. Apparently Did You Know? broke out of the worlds of education and the education blogosphere into corporate / government life.

According to FeedBurner, Dangerously Irrelevant has about 400 subscribers right now:

The chart below shows what the traffic has looked like lately for Gone Fischin', my blog post with the modified versions of Did You Know?. As you can see, over the weekend the number of visitors to the page started climbing and then really took off the last two days. I still can't believe that nearly 2,000 people visited the page yesterday.

I've had to make several changes to the post to be clear that the presentation is not mine but Karl's. I thought I had given Karl clear attribution before, but folks were still missing it. It doesn't help when the e-mails that are floating around are just a direct link to one of the versions without any accompanying explanatory text.

As I said to Karl last night (who continues to be quite humble about his presentation), this is really a tribute to the emotional power of what he put together. This is fun stuff and a good example of the power of the Web.

Assessing 21st century skills

If we’re going to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy skills in schools, we need ways of determining whether or not those skills have been learned by students. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills notes that answering the question ‘How do we measure 21st century learning?’ will be critical as we try to prepare students who can be productive citizens in the new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected economy.

Over in the United Kingdom, the British government’s Key Stage 3 ICT Literacy Assessment for 12- and 13-year-old aims to assess higher-order thinking skills in conjunction with ICT use. For example, as part of a task to draft and publish a journalistic article, students must use search engines to collect and analyze employment data, e-mail sources for permission to publish their information, and present data in graphic and written formats using word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all within a simulated computing environment. Student actions are tracked by the computer and assessed for both technical and learning skills such as finding things out, developing ideas, and exchanging and sharing information. If you’re interested, you can download a demonstration file and see for yourself.

Other interesting projects in the U.K. include Northern Ireland’s Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment A-Level Examination in the Moving Image (students must create and assess digital film clips), the Ultralab International Certificate in Digital Creativity (students must defend their digitally-produced film, artwork, and music to a panel of peers and professionals), and the eViva e-portfolio initiative (online space where students can receive feedback on their research and communication, data analysis, and presentation skills). If anyone in the U.K. is reading this post and has experience with any of these assessments, I’d love to hear your perspectives in the comments section.

Over here in the United States, ETS also is attempting to create new assessments of 21st century learning skills. I had a chance last fall to get a personal demonstration of the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment. Like the Key Stage 3, ETS’ assessment is a scenario-based test. This is a completely new paradigm for ETS, which the ETS representative said is challenging but also exciting for its psychometricians to try and wrap their heads around. I encourage you to visit the demo site and see how the test works. It may not be ideal, but I think it’s a lot further from your typical standardized test than one might expect. It’s an interesting attempt to blend both the technology and information literacy skills needed by future generations and at least offers some food for thought. Also check out the News and Research links to find out more about the results from ETS’ pilot tests.

We will see the birth of many new 21st century assessments in the years ahead. Like these early attempts, most of these assessments will be performance-based and thus will avoid some of the objections we hear about current standardized tests. Most, if not all, also will utilize the multimedia, simulation, and tracking power of digital technologies to create more authentic assessments of real-life tasks. It should be an interesting journey.

Credits

Much of the information in this post, including some very close paraphrasing, comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills report, Assessment of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. If you’re interested in 21st century learning skills, this report should be an important addition to your reading list.

Other resources

• Partnership for 21st Century Skills
  • Framework for 21st Century Learning
  • Assess21
  • Publications
• Calls to action
  • Are They Really Ready to Work? [Partnership for 21st Century Skills]
  • Tough Choices or Tough Times (executive summary or full report) [New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce]
  • Rising Above the Gathering Storm (executive summary or full report) [The National Academies]

This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.

Three data-savvy principals

Today I uploaded the second CASTLE Conversations podcast for our data-driven decision-making podcast series. After feeding them a yummy lunch, I had a great discussion with Joan MacDonald, Linda Perdaems, and Colleen Wambach, three data-savvy principals here in Minnesota. If you enjoyed our previous conversation with Dr. Jan Witthuhn, you'll like this one too!

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

100% proficiency on old skills?

Here's something if you have a 60- to 90-minute block of time with educators...

100% Proficiency on Old Skills? A Candid Conversation About the Demands of NCLB and Preparing Students for the New Economy

• Step 1 - download the handout (jot a few notes)
• Step 2 - watch Did You Know? (6:05) (become a little overwhelmed)
• Step 3 - see the slides and listen to the podcast (34:20) (challenge the status quo)
• Step 4 - watch The Human Network (1:32) (remain hopeful)
• Step 5 - start discussing
• Step 6 - hand out either the short version or the long version as a take-away
• Step 7 - share widely!

P.S. This presentation is better than the one I did last week.

CASTLE Conversations

We've started a new initiative we are calling CASTLE Conversations: interviews with interesting people about technology and/or leadership issues. In some ways it will be very similar to the awesome work that Steve Hargadon is doing (and that others are doing). However, we're mostly going to interview people that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility.

Our first interview was with Dr. Jan Witthuhn, the Superintendent of the Mounds View Public Schools here in Minnesota. Jan is highly-regarded for her data-driven decision-making expertise. Give us some feedback and let us know what you think. We're also taking nominations for interviewees: if you know someone local and interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Gone Fischin'

Did You Know? (version 1 and/or version 2) has now been seen by over 10 million people online. This is the post that went viral in February 2007. In November 2007 it was nominated for an Edublog award.

FYI, a new version of this presentation is now available:

• Did You Know? 2.0

Listen to this post!

[update: please see my comment below regarding permission rights to use this presentation; also, Karl says that the music is a mix of three tracks from The Last of the Mohicans]

Earlier this month I thanked Karl Fisch for his wonderful Did You Know? presentation. I've been playing around with a modified version of his original files and Karl has given me permission to make the new version available to folks. Here it is:

• YouTube movie (online)
• streaming Flash movie (online)

[Because of bandwidth issues, other versions are available here: QuickTime (.mov); Windows media streaming (.wmv); downloadable Flash movie (.swf); AVI video (.avi); and PowerPoint (.ppt) with accompanying audio file (.mp3).]

I shortened it to 6 minutes, 5 seconds by deleting the first few slides (which pertained to his school) and changing the remaining slide timings; added a slide on MySpace; and made a few formatting and wording changes. If you've never seen Karl's presentation before, you should read my post on the impacts it is making on folks in Minnesota and then watch it immediately. More fun from Karl is available on his Fischbowl presentations page. [update: you also might be interested in the other presentation materials I use along with Karl's video]

I'm using the presentation with a variety of different audiences: preservice teachers, district leadership and/or technology planning teams, doctoral students in colleges of education, other teachers and administrators, etc. As we all do so, let's keep in mind Karl's e-mail message to me:

I'm glad the presentation is making an impact - that was the idea, of course (although mostly for my own staff, I didn't know it would take on a life of its own!). I hope that the conversations it starts don't just stop at conversations, but actually translate into actions for our students.

Thank you, Karl Fisch

Listen to this post!

This semester I taught the College’s School and Society class to our preservice teachers. This foundations course acquaints students with the historical, philosophical, sociological, and political aspects of K-12 education. I took the opportunity in our next-to-last class to talk about educating elementary and secondary students for their future. In their end-of-course reflections, a number of my students commented about Karl’s video:

• What impacted me the most throughout the entire semester was the seven-minute clip we watched last week called Did You Know?
• I have looked at the Did You Know? PowerPoint presentation several times, and I can not help but be amazed. I have showed it to many of my friends and everyone gives the same reaction. I keep asking myself as a math teacher, “How can I best prepare my students for their futures?”
• I was so inspired by this video that I e-mailed it to several friends and posted it on both my Facebook and MySpace pages.

I also received a number of comments such as the following:

• After [Scott’s December 5 lecture], I got into my friend’s car and couldn’t stop raving about the lecture I had just received. It was one of the best lectures I have ever been to in my college career.

Bottom line: the message about ‘School 2.0’ resonates with future teachers. They use technology, they understand the potential. Let’s try not to let reality disappoint them too much as they enter the K-12 workforce?

Thanks, Karl, for a wonderful resource for the rest of us. When I said we should be making resources that make a difference, this is exactly the kind of thing I meant.