Ruth’s Ruckus

Of course the test of my resolve to blog biweekly would be to look at my blog.  So no wonder that 6 weeks have gone by without a single entry…Well I continue to try.  

I found an interesting entry at 21^st Century Collaborative on professional learning communities. In the post Beach talks about a learning community including administrators and staff working and learning collaboratively to improve student learning.  I find it interesting that this approach while endorsed by ASCD and many others (Beach quotes Senge who I had to read as part of my school administration studies) is not being carried out  in the school division.  Several of the schools are in dire need of some intervention…we’ve got sweeps, school improvement plans, after school programs, but we’re not sitting down to learn together or from each other.  When research says that this approach could turn a school around, why aren’t we trying it?  My department is driven to be a learning community…whether we like it or not.  We meet weekly to share best practices, discuss the literature and learn new techniques.  We are challenged to reflect on our practice so that we can become better trainers. Even though she is way too busy, our supervisor subjects herself to many of the same things that she expects us to do.  This way, we learn together.  It does work for us, although we do a monumental amount of stretching ourselves.

What would it take to get administrators and teacher to develop a learning community?  I guess it would have to be driven by the administrator.  How do you get an administrator interested in doing that?  Why has this practice not been brought to our division when it has the potential to make lasting change by changing the very culture of the schools?  

I am catching up on my reading…still behind everyone by a few weeks.  Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach posted about virtual learning communities and communities of practice.  I found her post interesting considering my charge this year to develop a personal professional development plan.  I’ve been a member of a few communities, but never got past the linking or lurking stage.  David Lee’s explanation of these roles describes exactly where I was coming from in my membership.  I find it interesting that while I felt the need to join these groups as a matter of my own professional development, I never considered my role or the need to become an active participant until challenged to “take it to a new level” by my boss.  I then had the task to decide which community I would become an active participant of.  I belong/subscribe to several: an ITRT Yahoo! group,  The DEN, VSTE forums, TiPS, and Classroom 2.0.  If I was going to make the move from consumer to commentor it had to be in the right community.  The choice wasn’t hard.  Three of the five aren’t active enough to merit a change. I’ve always found participation at the DEN to be challenging, so I went with Classroom 2.0.  It’s got all of the hallmarks of the healthy community that Sheryl mentioned.  When I joined I was immediately welcomed by several members and the topics of conversation are really relevant to what I am doing.  In the week that I have been a more active participant, I have learned an aweful lot. 

• I got an idea for a lesson for a fifth grade class that I’ll be working with.   
• One discussion helped me connect some ideas I have for a teacher workshop that I am developing.
• I’ve been challenged to change my pedagogical ideas about instructional blogging.

As I told my boss on Friday – it’s already changed my practice.  As Sheryl puts it, I’ll be around Classroom 2.0 a lot  – not just because it’s part of my plan – it’s  worth my time.

I’ve been hearing a little voice in my head for the last week or so reminding me “You haven’t blogged recently”  and it is absolutely true.  Between the camp and getting ready for the teachers to come back, I’ve slipped back into my old habits of non-reflection.  SO it’s absolutely ironic that the first thing I want to respond to is Will Richardson’s post about educator’s inability to focus on their own learning.  I actually read the post a few weeks ago and said to myself  “I gotta respond to that” and never did.  I have been feelin’ Will’s pain the last month or so as I have been working on revising the performance evaluation and reflection requirements for the Technology Resource Teachers in my school division.  

Most folks acknowledge that the school division is behind in many ways, but those of us who love working here realize that we’re learning and growing in many areas.  Take our IT department for example.  When I was first hired 5 years ago there was an article in the paper that stated that our IT department was comprised of 3 people.  Now we (yes, I’ve joined the department) have close to 50 and have site based teacher coaches and tech specialists for almost every school.   While we were late coming out of the shoot, we’re making up for it by learning from the mistakes made by other school divisions who were light-years ahead of us and we’re catching up…

Our instructional technology department is really making some noise locally and it’s great to be in a department that is moving and shaking.  That’s why I find it absolutely ironic that our Technology Resource Teachers are in the same position as the folks in Will’s sessions.  Many of them pride themselves in being ahead of the curve in many areas, but when asked to reflect this past spring, most threw a fit.  Many acknowledged that portfolios are acceptable practice in other parts of the nation for a number of different applications. Unfortunately they could not see the application or benefit for themselves.  I was amazed at these professionals that I had come to respect were  putting down a practice that has been researched and widely accepted. Frankly their point of view made the reflection worthless, since you get out of it what you put in.  

So Will, you are not alone.  I too am amazed that teachers think everyone ought to be learning other than themselves.  In fact I have spent an entire month trying to make the whole self reflection professional development thing palatable to a group who ought to know better.  If those who are to be leading our schools in teaching about 21^st century learning refuse to examine the way they themselves learn and apply 21^st century techniques how can they lead the charge?  How can they model for and teach teachers? 

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 Scott McLeod has asked edubloggers to post about school technology leadership today.  with the list of questions that he suggested, I only thought I should address one.  I think that as we begin this conversation, that it’s important to recognize who we are talking about.  The average age of school administrators (in this area anyway) is somewhere in the late 40’s.  So by default they are at least digital immigrants if not digital dinosaurs.  So most of them are not tech-savvy, but they can be effective technology leaders just the same.   I think in order to understand this one has to look at the definition of leadership.  Which is: the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others. 

Is it possible for someone who is not tech savvy to influence, motivate, and enable others in the area of technology? Of course it is! Two of the things that we learned when I was studying for the principal’s certification would be helpful to building leaders who find themselves falling behind in technology:  Staff to your weakness and lead by example.

Staffing to your weakness is easy.  Look for those who have technology skills when you are hiring.  Realize that they are not always the young folks.  Look for teachers whose students use technology.  Not just for typing spelling words or Accelerated Reader, but for projects that demonstrate higher order thinking about content area subjects.  These folks typically have the pedagogical understanding of technology integration that will help in encouraging technology use in the building. 

Leading by example takes a little more work, but is also within reach.  Take part in activities to increase your own personal productivity using technology.  Then mention them when you are talking to teachers informally.  If teachers know that technology is important to you they’ll take the hint.  Look at how you budget money for your building – how much is spent on technology?  or tech training?

Since the administrators that I serve are not tech savvy, I’ll end this post with list of things that would help if they were interested:

1. Personally read email daily and reply
2. Send out a weekly email to staff
3. Schedule a school technology integration survey
4. Develop a technology plan (I’ll help)
5. Distribute a monthly article for staff to read on a technology integration idea and provide a forum for discussion on the article
6. Allow a monthly inservice on a technology integration topic
7. Recognize teachers who integrate technology on a regular basis
8. Require teachers to teach a  lesson that uses technology weekly
9. Require students to complete a technology infused project every nine weeks
10. Require teachers to take their class to the computer lab on a weekly basis

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I was just reading Steve Dembo and I realized that I have no idea what an operational definition for School 2.0 would be.  I think I’ve just about got a handle on the Web 2.0 thing, though I still find it hard to articulate to folks in my school division.  Most of them have no idea that the web is evolving.  I’m pretty sure I’m the first to podcast and blog with elementary students here.  The more I learn, the more I realize how far behind we are.  How can we change practice or even reflect on practice when we have no time, no opportunity, no encouragement to do so?  And if we don’t reflect, are we truly able to educate our students?  No one here is talking about 21st century learning.  They are too busy trying to get the kids to pass the SOL.  Many realize that the SOL is a minimum standard and a low benchmark, but they are afraid to step out of the drill & kill mode in order to do authentic learning with the kids.  It’s a systemic problem.  How can we possibly get to school 2.0 when we can barely get school 1.0 under our belts?

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I’ve always been a fan of simulations.  I used SimFarm, SimPark, and SimSafari to teach cause and effect when I was a practicing Educational Therapist.  I’ve been hooked on The Sims since the game first came out.  Got all the expansion modules…I even remember one long weekend when I did nothing but play the game.  I was still living “at home” then, my mother couldn’t understand the fascination. 

So when I first heard about Second Life, I was very interested.  I think I was reading Will Richardson or David Warlick when I first found out about it.  I thought I could just jump in late one night and got overwhelmed.  About 2 weeks later I went to a workshop on podcasting at WHRO and the instructor was talking about developing a second life course to teach int he fall for WHRO.  I knew this was a hot topic, but I still wasn’t getting all of the educational implications.  When Second Life was on the cover of the ISTE magazine, I knew I had missed domething. 

So I’m sitting here after NECC and still wondering what’s all the hype about?  I know, I should have gone to a session or two about MUVEs, but I needed to bring back info to my school division about Web 2.0/School 2.0 and check out some the sessions that touched on my dissertation topic.  I’ve done some additional reading, but right now I’m feeling a lot like the post on MUVEs in Techlearning.  I mean it’s just simulating life.  Yeah it’s cool and interesting, but I find the financial statistics alarming.  So I decided to check out some additional MUVEs.  I found Kaneva and decided to work on my apartment.  I joined club penguin.  I’m not sure what will come of it, but I’ll see if I can understand what goes on there as well.

I guess I understand the how and the social part of the why.  I’m not getting the educational part of the why yet.  It concerns me that we’ve got folks going full speed ahead into this.  Do we have pedagogical information that supports this?  My boss wants to explore it. I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll figure it out…

Technorati Tags: ISTE Warlick secondlife Kaneva MUVE NECC techlearning

I am sitting at NECC 2007 and after a good year of exploring and experimenting with blogging I’ve decided to join the conversation.  I enjoyed a session yesteday called Sidebar Envy.  It was led by Chris Lehmann and David Warlick.

Episode 0: Podcast introduction

Trying out a podcast…

ok. So it takes me a while to catch on.  I jsut realized that the reason that my blog looks funny is because the theme is no longer available.  So here’s the new theme.  I can’t seem to get those two slideshows to work, so I don’t quite know how I’ll be able to interweave them into my teacher camp in June…I guess I’ll keep trying…

Karl Fisch was just doing his job…don’t think he wanted to start a revolution…now he has one of the most popular presentations on the interent.  I’ve seen it and thought a lot about it.  I think this adaptation makes his point very well…