Taking it to the Next Level

Linda Darling-Hammond has my vote as the next Secretary of Education. 

This video, produced by Edutopia, looks at understanding why students in Finland and Singapore are achieving at such high levels. I was especially impressed with Hammond's succinct ability to explain the complexities of the PISA data.

I think this video could definitely make for some interesting PLC conversations tied to rethinking the nature of teaching and learning.

Some Interesting Stats

I came across this graphic created by the team at Online Education which takes as look at the average day in the life on the Internet. Ironically, I was listening to the Beatles tune "A Day in the Life" on the train to work this morning, and caught myself thinking how vastly different the world is today, from when I was kid first listening to that song on the record player in my family room.

"I don't know about this music, Dad. The guitars aren't loud enough." He just smiled and said, "Kid, you've got a lot to learn."

The statistics represented here are mind boggling to say the least. We truly are living in a fascinating and wild times.

In other news, Google just announced that they are launching an Enterprise/Education friendly version of Google Groups. This is big news for schools currently using Google as the mainstay for their online learning communities. We now have one more opportunity to enhance communication and collaboration among staff, students and beyond.

Creating a Culture of Innovation

On November 19^th I facilitated a full-day workshop entitled: Teamwork, Technology & Transparency – Envisioning Your School Innovation Plan. This was a challenging and awe inspiring day of discovery with an emphasis on moving forward as effective 21^st century teaching and learning communities. Educators and school leaders came together from across the city to begin laying the foundation for a school-wide Innovation Plan focusing on curriculum goals, improvement initiatives and technology objectives.

Throughout the day, participants were asked to grapple with this question: School transformation happens when? Some of their initial responses were quite telling:

Sonia, a teacher in Brooklyn said: “Transformation happens when teachers are open-minded to change and to learn new strategies and techniques to implement into their classrooms.”

Joan, an Assistant Principal in Staten Island said: “Administrators need to provide PD with new initiatives and technology and have a well versed on site Technology coach and PD from outside sources.”

Brian, a Principal in Queens said: “Teachers are engaged in socialized learning setting to share technological knowledge bases for purpose of investigating ways to use technology to enhance instruction and improve efficiency. The technology plan must support the instructional mission of the school and be viewed as a tool/vehicle, rather than an add on obstacle.”

Teams then worked collaboratively to envision their ideal 21^st century learning community. In order to complete this activity I asked participants to put on their thinking hats to brainstorm what they would like their schools to look like 5-years from now. Participants took on the role of students, teachers, administrators, and parents to describe what these learning communities would look, sound, feel, and think like. We watched a video entitled “What If” to spark their intellect. We also modeled how they might make their own video response by using the simple web based montage mixing tool, One True Media. View my video response below:

Participants spent the rest of the day working with their teams to begin the development of their school wide Innovation Plan. We reviewed and discussed the core components of an Innovation Plan: 1) Envisioning the 21^st Century School; 2) Curriculum and Implementation Planning; 3) Hardware, Software, and Infrastructure Policy and Implementation; 4) Evaluation; 5) Transformation. And then participants worked on setting SMART goals connected to a key area of the plan they wanted to focus on for the remainder of the day. In order to stay true to workshop theme  -- we utilized Google Docs to work collaboratively and share our results. 

This was a powerful day of learning – in which participants began to articulate how technology should be integrated to accelerate and positively impact teaching and learning. As the day came to a close one of the participants chimed in: “I now see why we’re calling this an Innovation Plan and not a technology plan. This is about creating a foundation for whole-school change.” I couldn’t have said it much better myself.

Polling for Engagement

Last summer I attended the November Learning BLC conference in Boston with a team of teachers and administrators from NYC. During several of the keynotes participants were given the opportunity to engage in real-time polling activities via Promethian's ActivExpression student response systems (SRS). The simple act of punching in some buttons to express our opinions on a given topic, and then moments later seeing those results published to the big screen, took the keynote experience to an entirely new level. I think it essentially served my own innate desire, at least on a superficial level, to express my opinion to the larger group.

Strangely, looking back on my teaching career I can remember numerous occasions, especially as a first/second year teacher, in which I overpowered the voices of my students. Like many new teachers a majority of my energy was focused on figuring out how to manage a room full of rowdy urban teens. And partially out of fear and lack of experience I attempted to control misbehavior by standing in the front of the room and lecturing. For some reason, this approach seemed to pacify a majority of the students -- it also bored them. I remember countless times staring into a sea of blank faces as I lectured passionately about Romeo's unrequited love for Rosalyn or the difference between simile and metaphor. Then one day a wise student interrupted me and said, "Mista, can I ask you a question?" For some reason 'mista' is the defunct title for all male teachers in NYC.

"What's up?" I said, amazed he wasn't transfixed, like the rest of the kids, by my riveting explanation of Dickinsonian poetics.

"Why do you talk so much?" asked this brilliant scholar. This was long before my introduction to the debates over teacher-centered versus student-centered instruction. But thanks to one brave kid and a lot of inner soul searching I decided my teaching style needed a tune up. This is where I preach to the wonders of project based learning, and how it transformed my classroom into a community of learners engaged in constructivist learning experiences. The fact is, once I began relinquishing more control over to my students with an emphasis on collaboration and production -- real "teaching magic" began to occur.

This brings me back to the notion of clickers and how they, with the right amount of planning and creative thinking, can support active, participatory learning. The SRS systems also provide teachers with a better sense of where his/her students are at on the learning continuum.

A few weeks after BLC I received an email from a special education teacher, Ms. P, whom I attended the conference with. She said: "Dan, the BLC conference really got me excited about the possibilities. I was especially excited by the clickers because I think they would provide an AMAZING opportunity for quick assessments/differentiated instruction. The problem is we don't have any student response systems in the building. Do you know of any alternative web-based, free tools that mimic classroom response systems?"

Here was a teacher that saw the potential but did not have the available resources or funding (clicker systems cost anywhere from $2000 - $4000) to follow through on her vision. I knew this was a make or break opportunity. Right away, I dug into my PLN and started searching around for a tool that could fill this need. Within minutes, I found this post on Classroom 2.0 which led me to the discovery of duh, duh, duh: Poll Everywhere, a free (up to 30 users) polling tool that allows for SMS or web based responses. Needless to say, Ms. P. was very happy, and after a few back and fourth emails she was up and running. Below is a snapshot of how Ms. P used Poll EveryWhere to help prepare her students for the NYS Regents:


And here is an example of how I used it recently during a PD session with NYC teaching fellows preparing to enter the classroom:


Feel free to participate in this poll as well. So far 15 people have responded. I am curious to see how the results will shift as more people voice their opinion. Simply text your answers to "99503" and then punch in your vote. For example, if you believe Digital Citizenship is the most important skill text in "16881" as your response. If you have a SmartPhone take the poll at http://poll4.com.

Have you used Poll EveryWhere or similar response systems in your classroom? If so, did you see an improvement in student engagement and understanding? Let me know what you think.

Image Source:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roswellsgirl/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

NAMLE Recap

I had the opportunity to present with Rhys Daunic of the Media Spot at the NAMLE conference in Detroit yesterday on the subject of building 21st century learning communities. We had, what I thought, was a very engaging session.

I've embedded the Prezi that Rhys and I put together, along with a sampling of some of the Tweets that came out during the session -- I think they do a nice job of summing up what I think was a powerful dialogue about transforming teaching and learning in the 21st century.

Let's keep the conversation going:

Tweets:

how do you power up the teachers? research shows that teachers are lacking professional development #namle

technology can be "trendy" #namle

we need the foundational skills -- they're not going anywhere. #namle

social is a prevailing word in the new standards. how do people communicate globally about science and math problems? #namle

According to Obama -- The 21st century school is about getting online. #namle

We are preparing kids for jobs that are not do not exist yet. #namle

when students are coming to school, they're powering down. then going home and powering up. #namle

The notion of literacy is changing. What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? #namle

responding to new standards: nice to see information instead of "literature" #namle

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PREZI PRESENTATION: Media Literacy in the 21st Century School

Also available at Prezi.com; NOTE: may take a few minutes to download all embedded media files

Leadership Day Post (a little bit late)

Last week, I received a very nice email from an administrator who attended my "Building 21st Century Learning Communities" workshop on July 9th. The email read:

"Daniel, Yesterday's workshop was eye opening, exciting, wowing and indicative of the potential that can be accessed. During the 1st week in August, we are going to be in school preparing for the new school year. We would like you to come in early August to help begin our process with this initiative."

My reasons for sharing this email are two-fold: First, I want to commend this school leader for looking inward and recognizing an opportunity for change. On the flip side, there is that pestering voice in my head that questions whether or not this learning community is ready to put in the work that it takes to move forward as a 21st century teaching and learning community. As Douglas B. Reeves states in the introduction of his book, Leading Change in Your School, "Educational leaders are expert in announcing change, scattering the seeds of promising ideas. But they are considerably less adept at moving aside the initiatives of the previous year so that the seeds of the new announcement have the slightest opportunity to take root." Many times, school leadership teams might abandon a new initiative because of the numerous constraints inherent in running a school. This happens time and time again, which is why it is important to have someone in place within the school (lead teacher, administrator, consultant, etc.) directly responsible for ensuring that the school has what Reeves calls a "meaningful implementation."

Fortunately, there are frameworks currently in place like the National Education Technology Standards which school leaders can use as a helpful guide in monitoring their learning community's progress. The first standard in the newly refreshed NETS for Administrators falls under the category of "Visionary Leadership". Perfect. This standard pushes administrators to create and implement "a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology to promote excellence and support transformation throughout the organization."

In my last post I talked about the importance of creating a vision for technology integration. The next step after creating that shared vision is to develop specific goals to help achieve that vision. Finally, each goal requires an action plan to assist in the implementation and assessment of each goal. Once those action plans are created and roles are assigned and deadlines are created I firmly believe that a school has a real chance for success. The key, as Performance Indicator B states is to: "engage in an ongoing process to develop, implement, and communicate technology-infused strategic plans aligned with a shared vision." During the workshop, I discussed how using a shared learning application like Google Docs could allow for this process to become much more transparent. If everyone is truly invested in the process then the document will begin to take on a life of its own. We will see comments about the progress; arguments over the vision; goals that are timely, and on it goes until it catches on like wild fire, and the spirit of the document becomes contagious.

I have seen this type of change in practice take effect in several schools I worked in throughout the past two school years. It just so happened that Google Docs was the glue that brought us all together. But the real change came from the people invested in the process, and the tool simply gave us the means to achieve our goals. Once the key stake holders are on board driving this change a "common language" connected to the vision begins to emerge, and with that in mind the schools finds itself in a ripe opportunity -- ready for lift off.

As Editorial Director for The Journal, Geoffrey H. Fletcher states, "Many US schools are on the cusp of greatness. Robust deployment of technology, effective professional development, informed use of data, and close connections to parents and community at large are the hallmarks of these campuses." I agree with Fletcher, but I also believe there is no one size fits all model for this type of transformation. However, a collective vision that evokes shared responsibility, high expectations, and accountability certainly plays a large part in actualizing that vision.That alone is a challenging task. Clearly, there is a lot of work to be done. But the key is working smarter, not harder. Let's get moving.

*This post was inspired by Scott McLeod's Leadership Day 2009 Challenge. Unfortunately, I did not make the July 11th deadline.

Image Source: www.lumaxart.com/

Leadership Day 2009 -- Some Prep

I just came across an interesting challenge on Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, in which he is calling on edubloggers across the globe to share their thoughts "related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, etc." As this is is a big part of my job as an educational technology consultant -- I owe it to myself to participate in this conversation.

Mr. McLeod speaks from his heart when he expresses that many administrators just don't get it. I believe the 'it' he is speaking of refers to driving systemic change with a focus on 21st century teaching and learning. This is not about pointing fingers, and Mr. McLeod clearly states that many of these administrators simply do not have the time, background or support to move forward in this direction. In his experience he sees that:

"most school administrators don’t know

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

Tomorrow, I am facilitating a workshop for NYC administrators entitled "Building 21st Century Learning Communities". The workshop is a 3-hour session that attempts to hit on many of the bullet points that Mr. McLeod so eloquently articulated. I'm going to attempt to raise awareness about how the effective use of technology can transform teaching and learning. I'm going to point out that there are national standards and frameworks that are all ready in place that can help schools rethink their notion of technology integration. I'm going to say: "It's all about the learning and not the technology."

I am also going to try and get the participants excited about going back to their schools to rethink their vision for technology integration. I want to inspire them to put together an "Innovation" team that will write a vision for technology usage that will be embraced by their entire learning community (students, teachers, parents, etc.). The Innovation Team will work throughout the year to assess where their school is at in terms of technology usage. The team will use the data from their assessments to create long-term goals, and each goal will require an action plan. All of this work has to be timely, measurable, and collaborative.

I plan to use tomorrow's workshop as a starting point for my Leadership Day blog. As we review the new National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators I'm going to ask the participants what they see as the key skills or abilities they need to be effective technology leaders? I'm going to collect their ideas as best I can, while trying to manage a room of 40 teachers and administrators, and then I'm going to write about the experience with the hope of pushing some boundaries and stimulating some conversation for Leadership Day 2009. Plain and simple.