I Dream Teachnology

Transforming Education - 2009 Syfr Retreat Notes October 2009

2009-10-21T05:34:00.005-05:00

Notes, Reflections, and Small Essences from the 2009 LACOE/Syfr Retreat, Pasadena CA, Oct. 2009 – Using Innovation and Creativity to Shape Transformational Change

Framing: Are you looking at things in the “same, old way?” -
We must begin to FRAME our thinking to see a new and more global picture for the future. There is a great need for transformational thinking and change in education. But why now? We live in a world that is being transformed into a Conceptual Age. Have our schools transformed as well? The leaders who respond to the globalization of our world with innovative and transformative public education learning environments, not only our children, but also our entire communities, will evolve into the only viable solutions in the 21st Century. It is essential that we create new standards for our thinking and ourselves…

Those that implement Organizational Change and become the Leaders for that change in Teaching and Learning will be required to use Creativity and Neuroscience.

It is critical to examine what is happening in the world and to note the impact and relation to education.

Transformative education leaders should be feeling a Pressure to Change: Let’s face it. The world around us has changed, however, schools have not.
Daniel Pink’s (A Whole New Mind) six New Senses are important, no critical, in the 21st Century.
Story, Design, Empathy, Symphony, Meaning, and Play (Daniel Pink,)
· Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
· Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument.
· Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus). Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. It's a signature ability that is a great predictor of star performance in the workplace. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together.
· Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
· Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
· Meaning - the purpose is the journey; give meaning to life from inside yourself.

What Issues/Challenges Must Education Respond To in the New Conceptual Age:

1. Globalization and Immigration Issues:
Did You Know? The 10 Largest Economies by Population:
1. China – Largest now, but they are on a no-growth curve – *India will be #1 soon
2. India – 1,100 Million
3. European Union – 500,000,000 Million
4. US – 300 Million
5. Indonesia – 222 Million
6. Pakistan – 186Million
7. Brazil – 157 Million
8. Nigeria – 143 Million
9. Bangladesh – 141 Million
10. Russia – 131Million

The world our students will work in is totally different from the world we work in. We have the pressure to educate our children for this difference.
We will increasingly see the globalization of ideas and the immigration of people and products (out-sourcing, etc). This has to become a national issue that we consider and respond to as public education administrators.

We are receiving record numbers of non-English speaking students, which is not unnatural in a globalization era. There has been a 50% increase in immigration in the United Stated in last 10 years. We must respond to this.

2. Religions of the World:
This has a lot to do with how we frame the rest of the world. However, the rest of the world’s religion is not the same as “ours” (Christian).

Therefore…Empathy… This is the survival application of the 21st Century. Having a worldview, seeing the world through other’s eyes, will be extremely important.

3. Technology -
· Technology skills do affect personal income. People with technical skills earn 15% more than someone who does not have them.
· Technology does not always mean simply “the computer.”
· Technology is now defining the workplace.
· Technology is emphasizing the value of education.
· Technology involves expertise in judgment and complex communication. These are the combination skills of the 21st century that will be a must. Additionally, communication in the future will be much more visual.
How will our schools use technology for disruptive innovation?
(Disrupting Class)
One way – we will begin to use visual media in every aspect of instruction. This is how our students learn – visually. We don’t, so we discount the importance of visual media in education. If we want our students to succeed, we will discover a way to incorporate visual media into our schools and education.

4. Aging -
This is the increasing percent of the population.
We Must Have An Educated Population… our younger population is not as educated as the generation before us – our nation’s graduation rates are going down. We cannot support an increasingly aging population with a decreasingly uneducated population.
There is and will continue to be an increased demand on healthcare and education because our young people will have to make money to support an aged population.

5. The Environment -
To respond to environmental issues that are and will be facing us, education will have to focus on Science and Personal Responsibility.

6. Health and Wellness –
Why should Education be very focused on Health and Wellness? Exercise, Wellness, and Intellectual Intelligence…neuroscience promotes the relationship between exercise and mental ability.
Obesity – this is a huge problem for our society and we must be part of the solution.

Are we looking at these Globalization issues, or are we ignoring them. Ignore them and we will likely go the way of the Sears and Roebuck catalog sales.

Inability to Change – We must be very careful. We must be open to change and innovation. We MUST collaborate with one another to imagine solutions to problems that others have not even begun to think about.

To Learn How We Might Respond During this Transformational and Conceptual Age of Education, we can look at the: Story of Painting in France 1850 – 1910

The Most Important Things That We Can Learn:
· Painters responded to Change Going on around them
· Painters Collaborated in Truly unusual ways
· They embraced their Diversity
· They used Prior Knowledge, Practice, Repetition and Improvisation to learn

The Painters during this time used the collaboration method of “Pairing.”
Monet and Pissarro (a pair learning together): In 1872, they come back from seeing Constable and Turner’s work and begin to paint differently (industrial revolution, atmospheric things, factories).
These painters responded to change. Therefore they left a legacy. We have to do the same in Education. These painters are known because they responded to the Industrial Revolution. Now we have respond to the Conceptual Age.

Culture of Change in Organizations: Transforming Leadership
1. So let’s change our organizations. We need to improvise on what we know and improve it.

But, how? Relationships will be key. What kinds of interactions in relationships are important to know? What kind of relationships will be critical for Transformational Change?

Teachers to Teachers: Professional Learning Networks: Teachers working together and problem solving play a huge role in futures of students of the 21st Century.
Mentors/Coaches: These people show passion. If you have passion, it probably came from a mentor.
Groups: Problem solving together because this is best method for discovering solutions to major problems. Another positive aspect of Groups is “Group Genius,” groups work best with common goals and with Cognitive Diversity. That means a group is most effective when there is a very diverse group, working together to solve a problem.
Pairs – Two people learning, collaborating, and experimenting together. Pairs are the most comfortable way to share and learn; therefore pairs are where most learning takes place. Pairs establish relationships of trust.

Learning Like the Artists:
Practice – Repetition – Improvisation
They learned in Pairs. They Practiced because it was meaningful to them (Practice – doing something over and over to try and get it correct/perfect). During their Practice, they used Repetition (doing it over and over again), but each time improvising (making it a little different each time) until it evolved and transformed.

Educating for Creativity:
Michelle and Robert Root – Bernstein, Michigan State
Sparks of Genius
How do we reinvent classroom pedagogy in keeping with the transformational change in an increasingly global world?

Teach creative imagination – help children continually come up with creative solutions, to think and act creatively.
Stop cramming our kids full of facts. Focus on teaching students to learn for themselves. Don’t teach to the test. This is killing our kids. This does not mean, “teach no facts” – teach the facts in processes of solving problems.
How do we educate for creativity? There are 13 ways of thinking that everyone uses everyday.
Creative thinking is different from our normal modes of thinking.
Content (facts) must become subservient to creative processes of thought. Rethink what thinking is and rethink what education is.

Process should be the center of education, not facts.
Not just imagining new ideas, it also involves bringing them into the form of words, numbers, etc. Not an easy task. Creativity is a difficult process.

We must create novel, creative communities in our classrooms and schools.
Educating for Creativity and Novelty:
You never know who will be creative. It can be learned, it needs practice, it needs support, and it is TRANSFORMATIVE.
Enhancing creativity in the classroom:
Value Creative Effort, Design open-ended tasks which can have many right answers, encourage transformational thinking, do not rush, be a creative model.

The 13 Types of Creative Thinking (Creativity is not something you either have or you don’t, it can be taught and learned):
1. Observing – honing ALL of the senses to perceive acutely and accurately. Very important to go beyond simply looking. This has to be intentional. When you observe something, you must ask yourself, “did I use all of my senses?”
2. Imaging – creating mental images of things observed or imagined, using any or all of the senses.
3. Abstracting – a process of discovering simplicity in complexity by eliminating all but one essential characteristic. This is essential to clear writing, reading comprehension, clear problem definition, experimentation, and modeling. Abstracting always begins with something real. It is a process. Students need to see others’ process (Picasso’s process of sketching something real, differently many times, until he creates his abstract). Every poem is an abstraction. Next time you read a poem, think about how hard it was for the author to express those feelings and images in so few words. Kids need to see all of the bad poems that were written before the author had a finished poem.
4. Pattern Recognition – perceiving similarities in structure or property among various things.
5. Forming Patterns – creating or discovering new ways to organize or arrange things to reveal novel patterns.
6. Analogizing - discovering or creating functional similarities between structurally different things or processes.
7. Body Thinking – using muscle memory, physical feelings, gut reactions and emotional states to recognize, organize, and address problems.
8. Empathizing/Playacting – becoming the thing you want to understand, or recreate, be it animate or inanimate.
9. Dimensional Thinking – translating between dimensions (e.g. between a blue-print and an invention); shrinking or expanding within a dimension (such as size, or duration, or time).
10. Modeling – Creating a simple analog of complex object or process in order to test, modify, or play with its properties.
11. Playing – goal-less performed for fun or enjoyment that incidentally develops skill, intuition, and knowledge.
12. Transforming – using the previous eleven imaginative tools to think and make in a serial, integrated manner.
13. Synthesizing – knowing things in multiple ways simultaneously…bodily, mentally, intuitively, explicitly, sensually, intellectually, subjectively, objectively.

What Works in the Classroom – Marzano, Habits of Mind, Blooms, 21st Century Skills…
Why are these learning tools ignored in classrooms?
Before the innovative scientist expresses himself in numbers, words, diagrams, etc., they think in terms of models, images, and emotions.
Therefore the Scientific Method does not teach the actual creative thinking processes of true scientists and technologists.
The creative skills that students need are now only formally taught and expected in the Arts classes and curriculums. The most successful scientists have been found to engage in Creative activities (photography, music, art, craft, writing, performing)
Examples:
Robert Fulton (steam engine) was a professional painter
Samuel Morse (telegraph) – painter
Einstein – was taught to imagine, visualize, draw, and create models
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal (neuroscientist) drawing
George W. Carver – painter
Luis Alverez (nobel prize physics) – craftsmanship
Dorothy Hodgkin – Mosaics
Alexis Carrel (inventing novel ways to stitch blood vessels together)
Mae Jamison – astronaut – dancer, choreographer, and art collector

SAT scores are higher for kids who have had 4 years of arts classes.
Creativity Requires Integrated Networks of Enterprise: Transfer of Creative Skills and Knowledge from Art and Science. Creative skills in the arts will help students build bridges of knowledge that can be applied to academic/core subjects.

How Do We Put Creativity into our Schools:
Create a Trans-Disciplinary Education
1. Teach the creative process
2. Teach imaginative tools for thinking – be sure that the 13 thinking tools are in all curriculum
3. Place arts on a par with sciences – require arts for all students
4. Integrate the curriculum with a common, cross-disciplinary language – help students make connections for the skills they learn in arts and how they can be applied to core subjects
5. Emphasize trans-disciplinary lessons
6. Teach using exemplary people
7. Present ideas in all disciplinary ideas in many forms.
8. Specialize in breadth, rather on minutiae – concentrate on learning how to learn and synthesis of learning

Robert J. Sternberg
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Tufts University

WICS: A Model for Teaching and Learning

You need different skills to be successful.
1. Creative Skills– everyday creative skills to come up with ideas and solve everyday problems (manage relationships, finances, etc)
2. Analytical Skills – to decide whether ideas are good ideas (to analyze your own ideas and other people’s ideas).
3. Practical Skills – skills and attitudes to make your ideas functional and to convince others of the value of your ideas. Example: Common Sense
4. Wisdom – to use your ideas to affect the common good and to balance the effects of ideas on yourself, others, and institutions in both the short and long terms.

Closed Systems: (This is how society socially stratifies people)
· Ability & Achievement Tests and High Grades = Successful Students and Adults - get into better schools, get better jobs, etc.
· Socioeconomic Class
· Gender
· Religious Group
· Caste at Birth

With these systems in Traditional Education, we are using Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. It is the Vicious Cycle. In each of the Closed systems above, there are low expectations for some. These people know this and therefore perform low. The expectations are reinforced because there is a reward to everyone - what is expected becomes reality. How we are treated is due to our own perception of ourselves.

Teachers have to look for strengths in students and capitalize on them.
So it involves Creative, Analytical, Practical skills, but it must also include Wisdom.
Analytical – critical thinking. Kids need these skills for analyzing the structure of arguments in things like essays, debates, etc.
Creative – skill in generating ideas that are novel, good, task-appropriate. People who are creative are willing to “defy the crowd” and willing to take risks. People are afraid to defy the crowd because of external pressure (peer pressure, pressure to conform to the norm). Example: pressure to teach to the test.
You eventually will begin to question whether the external pressures might be right.

Wisdom is:
· The use of one’s successful intelligence toward a common good,
· Through a balance among your interests, other’s interests, and community/global interests
· Over the long and short terms
· Through the use of good ethical values

Wisdom is difficult to teach, there are not a great number of wise people.

We must use Balance Instruction:
1. Memory-based – basic knowledge, facts.
Analytically-Based – Use these words as templates for work you design for students: analyze (ex. analyze a photo for bias), compare and contrast, evaluate, explain, judge, critique
Analytical Attitudes – teach students to recognize the existence of problem and then define the problem. Decide on a solution. Then, monitor the results and evaluate (is the product/result informed, logical, organized?).

Creative-based – create, design, invent, imagine, suppose (examples: create a poem, design a new…, imagine what life would be like in a different country, suppose the worldwide temperature increased 5 degrees on average). Create an advertising campaign. Ask students “What if?” questions (ex. What if Rosa Parks had given up her spot on the bus, what if Germany had won World War II).
Creative Attitudes: Redefine problems, Analyze solutions, Sell Solutions (the art of persuading), Recognize strengths and limits of knowledge, Persevere in the face of obstacles, take sensible risks, attain self-efficacy, find what you love to do, and tolerate ambiguity, continue to grow, have a sense of humor, allow time. Don’t ever feel that you know so much that you create a focused thought process, attitude, etc. You will forget to consider new ideas and to learn from others.

Wisdom-based.
You have to teach all of these because remember, we have to capitalize on students’ individual strengths and also work to remediate our weaker skill sets. If I have good creative skills and weaker skills, I still need to continue to hone my creative skills, however I also need to build/improve the skills will I am not as strong.
Wisdom Skills –
Dialogical thinking – understanding others’ viewpoints
Dialectical thinking – recognize that truth can change over time.
Balanced thinking – thinking about a variety of things.
It is best to put kids in active learning situations to teach wisdom.
Research shows that when you teach kids in this way, achievement on even standardized tests increases.
High-stakes testing: we have focused on the content, but not the processes or the creative, practical, and analytical verbs. We have to teach for understanding, depth vs. breadth.
Teach this way because this is way students think… When you begin teaching this way, some things won’t work, but don’t give up. Additionally, kids may not respond immediately because they are so used to Memory-based learning only.

Teachers are accustomed to teaching to their own strengths and kids who have the same strengths will do well, but the others will not. When teachers have students who do not learn the way that they do, they may actually believe that those students are ‘dumb’ and cannot learn. Teachers must believe that all kids can learn.

Reframe our Thinking…Elements of Change…we have to be willing to look outside of education and notice that there are great elements and examples of change there. We must reframe our thinking and know that we can learn from other ideas and examples and bring those types of innovation and transformation into education.

Professional Development – Quality Teachers = Quality Teaching/Learning for Students = Student Success/Achievement

2009-07-23T08:36:00.002-05:00

What constitutes the best professional development? How can we effectively empower teachers to conscientiously analyze and use data, employ high-yield instructional strategies (Marzano’s 9), and assess the effectiveness of these strategies in the classroom?

The National Staff Develop Council has a new definition of staff development and specific strategies for us all to aid in our effort to ensure effective teaching, and therefore increase student achievement. Their definition includes the following components:

PL must be comprehensive, sustained, and intensive and is best incorporated at each individual school site.

PL must incorporate the Continuous Cycle of Improvement: 1. Analyzing data 2. Defining learning goals, 3. Implementing strategies, and 4. Assessing the effectiveness of PL efforts to see if learning goals and standards by students were met and improved teaching occurred.

Outside sources of PL are still needed for new knowledge, theory, practices, and strategies; however when outside sources are used for PL in a school/district they must align their message to the goals and needs of schools at their individual levels.

It is absolutely no longer acceptable for one teacher to learn in isolation. PL must be done as a collaborative community. Effective PL should be job-embedded and occur several times a week. It should involve ‘Coaches.’

According to the NSDC, the most successful schools – which include student populations of all levels and backgrounds – have some common attributes:

1. They have great leaders

2. They engage in great professional learning that involves a collaborate community where all teachers and staff are committed and learning is always the ‘fabric’ of the school

~Please visit http://www.nsdc.org/standfor/definition.cfm for detailed information and videos.

So, if effective PL encompasses these things:

1. Learning community/collaboration

2. Continuous Coaching

3. Modeling of Best Practices

4. Availability at any time through a variety of delivery systems

5. Integrated and aligned with district and campus standards and goals

…..what does this mean for BISD ITS? What does this mean for our district as a whole?

Cool Tool! - PictureTrail

2009-07-20T10:31:00.022-05:00

PictureTrail.com
"PictureTrail, Inc. operates a leading photo sharing social network and widget destination.
Members and visitors share photos online, host images, order prints and utilize most other options available through the top photo sharing sites." - from PictureTrail.com website

There is a really cool tool on the PictureTrail website. The tool is called, "Photo-Flicks," and it creates a Flash-based slideshow from uploaded images.

Take some pictures, or find some pictures...Upload them to the PictureTrail site...Choose your design...Write your captions...click Save...and get your created Flick! The html code is provided for you so you can embed your Flick into your webpage, Facebook page, etc. It's that easy.
What a great way for teachers, administrators, and central admin to showcase students or staff on their webpages. Also, what a fun and engaging way for students to create a story from pictures or to show what they have learned.

How about a 5th grader choosing pictures depicting the Civil War, writing captions, and creating a Flick that might explain the causes and effects of the War, and 'show' that war?
Or...How about a Biology student finding pictures of plant cells from different parts of a plant (leaf, stem, root, flower), and comparing the structure of the cells to their function? Or, using pictures and captions to compare the epithelial cells from a leaf to the epithelial cells from animal tissue to determine how they are similar and how they are different?
Possibilities are only limited to imagination and creativity, don't you think?

What a great tool for applying the high-yield instructional strategies that Marzano has identified as those that postively affect student achievement. This tool could be use for: Identifying similarities and differences, Summarizing, and Nonlinguistic representations. And, what a engaging way to apply some of Schlechty's attributes of schoolwork that affect the motivational processes of students. Examples include: Product focus, Choice, Novelty and Variety, etc.
When a student's PictureTrail Flick is posted on a teacher's or classroom blog and other students can learn from and comment on the work, then we can add the attribute of Affiliation, as well.

One of the most powerful ways that we will strengthen our teaching and students' learning processes are with research-based instructional strategies combined with effective technology use - BUT, only when the use of technology tools/resources is linked to specific educational goals. Thus, "Teachnology."

The world is rapidly changing and technology is a reality of that changing world. Technology resources and tools applied appropriately to instruction, thereby creating powerful learning environments for students, MUST be a part of our teaching.
If I were in charge of the world...well, I think you know.

PictureTrail.com - give it a try and see how quickly you become engaged in creating something to share with others. Then think about why any student in any classroom should not be given the opportunity to engage in active learning and make meaning from what they are learning.

Please take a few moments to watch my Flick:

Wordle - Too Cool

2009-02-23T15:26:00.001-06:00

Instructional Technology Achievements

2008-12-16T10:38:00.010-06:00

This week, it was my task to outline some of the achievements of my deptartment. Staring at a blank computer screen as I began this process was daunting at first, to say the least. Scary to know that you are constantly so busy, but what is getting done? And, am I making a difference in the lives of students, teachers, and administrators? Slowly at first, then in a rush, ideas began to flow.

I just wanted to share with you the wonderful things that are going on in BISD Instructional Technology. Of course, these positive happenings are due to the tireless work of 11 of the most brilliant Instructional Technology Specialists and Master Teachers on the planet - far more than due to me. However, I am happy to believe that I had a small hand in this wonderful work and blessed to work with such talented individuals and an incredibly forward-thinking visionary district.

Instructional Technology Achievements - 2008

M4 Principal’s Academy – Summer 2008 – Campus principals and Instructional Leaders experienced technology tools and resources that increase student learning, understanding, and achievement. These technologies motivate students, while fostering collaborative learning and the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills. The summer academy offered two days of focused instruction in using Media. Attendees chose to attend the Digital Strand or the Web 2.0 strand – or both. Principals were each given the book, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, an RCA Small Wonder video camera, and a microphone. Attendance from BISD Principals and Instructional Leaders: 30
Video: hear BISD Principals discuss how Instructional Technology is making a difference on their campuses

Instructional Leaders Technology Learning Series: One hour each week where BISD Instructional leaders (principals, consultants, coordinators, and directors) learn about new technologies, the best ways to use these tools for themselves, and how these tools are being used by BISD students for learning.
Number of classes offered Fall 2008: 11
Number of attendees: 68 total attendance
Survey results:
1. Did you find ILTLS to be beneficial? 100% yes
2. Did you find the ILTLS topics covered to be beneficial to instruction? 100% yes
3. Do you plan to attend more ILTLS next Spring? 100% yes
4. Would you recommend these sessions to your colleagues? 100% yes
This document is published on the web.
Your document is viewable at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9XFo-B0MbWoDxxSMn-1NXA
Published on Dec 16, 2008 9:22:55 AM CST

Adobe Acrobat Professional – Administrative Assistants and Principals have attended training resulting in increased productivity and a more paperless BISD
Digital Media Software – Student and Administrative Projects: Administrators (Dr. Bell) have utilized digital media software to create professional learning videos for Instructional Leadership Training; students are using the software to create digital content. When surveyed, students report being more engaged and learning more when using technology as opposed to traditional paper and pencil only.
Examples:
Dr. Bell’s Assessment video for ILThttp://www.birdville.k12.tx.us/instruction/podcasts/ebell/
Mrs. Sands 5th grade “Geometry in the real – world” http://www.birdville.k12.tx.us/schools/112/podcasts/Sands/
Video: Teacher explains how using technology and digital media is engaging students and increasing their desire to learn.
Video: actual examples of student media projects

Early Literacy Support:
Due to decreased funding, Sylvia Davies was unable to purchase an early literacy computer program district-wide K-2. Instructional Technology collaborated with Sylvia and K-2 teachers to create a series of free literacy resources. These resources and activities provide extended practice of the early reading skills: Listening to Reading, Working on Writing, and Word Work and Spelling. These resources, along with free software, were installed on every elementary computer in the district and all BISD elementary Principals and teachers were trained for the use of these resources. All of these resources support the District’s adoption of the Balanced Reading program “The Daily 5.”

Web 2.0 in Birdville: Birdville ISD is leading the way among educators who are beginning to discover the power of Web 2.0.
Rather than treat pedagogy as the transfer of knowledge from teachers who are experts to students who are receptacles, educators should consider more hands-on and informal types of learning. These methods are closer to an apprenticeship, a farther-reaching, more multilayered approach than traditional formal education. – Futurist, John Seely BrownClick here for more information and BISD examples
BISD Instructional Technology created a wiki – “BISD Instructional Technology Successes” to showcase and highlight successful educational technology strategies, student/teacher/administrator products, professional learning, successful collaborations, instructional technology Initiatives and goals progress, and exemplary technology integration ideas/ examples.
Click here to view the BISD Instructional Technology Successes wiki

Birdville E-Learning: Online courses providing BISD students the opportunities to:
1. Accelerate their Graduation
2. Provide additional opportunities during the school day
3. Recover credits for Graduation
Instructional Technology collaborated this year with Curriculum and Instruction to implement this program. Online curriculum course management software was purchased, all teachers were trained by an instructional technology specialist, instructional technology managed the registration of students, and this fall TIMS programmers wrote a program to totally automate the registration process for students. Instructional Technology also designed and created the website for BISD e-learning.
http://birdville.k12.tx.us/elearning/index.html

BIT TV – Instructional Technology’s creation of technology how-to videos. These videos are created by the Instructional Technology staff. If students, teachers, faculty, staff, or family need a visual technology how-to, these can be accessed 24/7. There are over 125 how-to videos posted on the site.

Instructional Technology Specialists Scope of Work and Impact on Teachers, Students, and Staff:
Number of Teachers and Students involved in Educational Technology Projects and Collaborations with Instructional Technology Staff Fall 2008: 5111
Number of Teachers attending Educational Technology Professional Learning Fall 2008: 1695
Number of Administrators and Central Office Staff attending Technology Professional Learning Fall 2008: 248

Becoming a Transformational Leader-Manager

2008-12-10T13:27:00.006-06:00

I am a member of the Northeast Tarrant County Chamber of Commerce Leadership Class of 2008-2009. So far this has been an incredible experience! I have learned so much about my communities that my school district serves and have made some wonderful connections and new friends. We meet one day each month to learn about different aspects of our community and to strengthen our relationship as a Class. Every class day has been terrific and yesterday was no exception. One of the highlights of the day was a presentation by John Wright, President of SLS (Simple Leadership Strategies).

John's consultation company "specialize s in custom-designing transformational learning workshops that help managers integrate leadership strategies into management processes." They "help organizations become a leadership engine by transforming managers into leaders, thereby creating leaders at every level."
John's presentation to our group was wonderful! He is very knowledgable and very engaging.
He really challenged me to think about my Leadership style and how I can improve. Here are the highlights of his workshop:

The Transformational Leader – Manager
By John Wright, Simple Leadership Strategies

Leading is not being a Controller, it is being an Influencer. How do I become a better Influencer?
1. Know – get to know your people, more each day, ask them questions, find out about their families, what they like to do outside work, successes/things they are proud of, what their frustrations are
(Reflection: What can I do to improve in this area = set aside a calendar time each day to talk with the Instructional Technology Specialists (ITS) that I lead individually and ask them questions about themselves)
2. Like - - when your employee like you that leads to…
3. Trust - employees who trust your competence and character and help you achieve your vision

It’s all about relationships!

When Change is Needed in an Organization

3 C’s of Change for an Organization/Learning Community - These are the things you must do as a Leader in the face of change/when change is needed:
1. Confront /Admit – admit there is a gap between what is and what you want it to be
2. Contribute – what can you do to change?
3. Commit – it’s self-awareness, what will you (and your organization) do?

Leadership: the ability to get people to willingly do what they are normally unwilling to do.
My definition of Leadership: Creating positive relationships, steering others/motivating others to obtain a goal or objective.

What is the difference between motivate and inspire? Motivation can be tied to consequences (it’s transactional – ‘bribes and bullets’ leadership) *sometimes there is a time for this. Inspiration is intrinsic and the most effective (it’s transformational – this is the kind of leadership that can result in a permanent change).

The best leadership, when at all possible is: Communicate the end result and let people come up with the tactics to get there. That will get you the best results.

Training vs. development = training is existing vs. development is learning for the future: you have to have both for your employees.

The Simple Leadership Strategies Pyramid:
1. The foundation of any business is the skills of the leaders and managers.
2. Your people need to feel they are partners in the company.
3. When people feel they are partners in your organization, they will become a TEAM. You must have talented teams.
4. When your customers are served by talented teams, you will have customer advocates –not just simply customers, but customers who sing your praises and bring others to you.
5. Lastly, if you have all of these levels of the pyramid, you will have profits/success.

Simple Leadership-Management Strategies – Great Leaders and managers are successful and effective in when they apply the best strategies in both roles – as a Transformational Leader-Manager you must do both and do them well

Management – Excelling in the Process
The success of every organized activity – be it a business, a hospital, and association or a government agency – depends upon the management skills of its leaders. – Dale Carnegie & Associates, Managing Through People

Leaders must have good management skills.
You can use the process of:PLORDICO (Planning, Organization, Directing, Controlling)
Your organization has to know the vision, the goals, the plan, and the priorities!!!! This is the only way a team will execute at a high level.
(This is also Continuous Improvement (Plan, Do, Study, Act) (PDSA)

The following 2 things must happen before your organization’s work begins:
1. Planning – setting a goal (it must be a SMART goal - measurable). Tell your team on the front side what “we” are doing & where “we” are going. Everybody has to know what an “A+ company and organization” looks like. To find out if your team knows where you are going and what the vision of a successful looks like, ask your people what the goals of the organization are and what the goals should be. It’s so simple. Ask them.
*The Secret to making your vision become a reality? Create the movie in your head of your vision (the full-color picture of exactly what the perfect would be like). See it, feel it. Make it real and play it often.

2. Organize – who does what and are they equipped to do it? Does your team have the tools, training, and resources to do the job you expect? Does your team have everything they need to be successful? Have they received all of the training they need to do their job successfully? Again, ask them!

The next 2 happen during and after the work:
3. Direction – This will keep your people on track. Direction involves on-going feedback, training, and professional learning. It also must include providing inspiration (and motivation when needed).
4. Control – Set a time to evaluate the plan. Ask, did we have a valid plan? Did we execute or plan, or did we not? If we did not have success, was it because we did not work the plan? In this phase of evaluation, it is important to study results, data (qualitative and quantitative), create new goals and objectives to improve – improvement is always possible. It is very important that all members of the team be involved in setting the new goals.

One important action of a Leader and a Manager is to periodically ask oneself: “Am I managing, or just doing?” You must be very careful that you do not get caught up simply doing “busy tasks” that you get from the actual job of managing the plan.

Leadership: Values-Based Leadership

Leadership isn’t some sophisticated technique for getting people to do what you want them to do. Leadership is getting people to want to do what you want them to do because they share your purpose, vision, and values. – Kevin Freiberg, NUTS! Southwest Airlines Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success

The 2 Primary Areas that Successful Leaders must work on:
1. Character – the who you are
2. Competence – the what you can do (you must be a competent manager and have knowledge and skills for your job)
If you have both of these things, people will TRUST you and follow you. L
You have to possess ethos (ethics/character) logos (logic), and pathos (emotion/heart).

The Transformational Leader-Manager builds POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS.
Find out what the people in your organization really, really, want. Find out their dreams. Ask and discover the personal and professional goals of each member of your team and then strive to help them reach those goals and dreams.
“You get what you want by helping enough people get what they want.” – Zig Zigler.

How do you become a person that people will willingly follow? You must decide your Purpose, your Vision, and your Values. You must write these down – things that do not get written down are not likely to materialize.

So, I here are my relections of Purpose, Vision, and Values as I strive to become a Transformational Leader-Manager:

My Purpose:To become the a great leader of leaders. To grow individuals, support them, help them achieve their personal and professional goals; and our goal of creating an engaging learning community/organization where students learn profoundly and voluntarily.

My Vision:That all students will attend a school where they are inspired and motivated by teachers who provide authentically engaging work that includes technology tools and interweaves 21st century skills each and every day.

My Values:All students and employees deserve an engaging, happy, satisfying place to learn/work.Everyone must feel valued. There should be equal access to quality technology tools and resources by all students and teachers.

The Values Questions you must continually ask yourself:
1. Can people trust me?
2. Do I put the team before myself?
3. Do I believe in excellence?

John’s 3 Musts for Transformational Leaders-Managers to Live By:

1. “If you aint havin’ fun, you ain’t doin’ it right.” – Enjoy what you do! You are responsible for having fun and getting it right. You are responsible for your success/failures. Do not blame others. You are 100% accountable.

2. “The purpose of learning is not knowledge, but ACTION.” – (1 action I commit to is: to build relationships with the ITS. Every single day do something to build these relationships)

3. “If it ain’t in writing – it ain’t real. “– If you really want to be effective, you must have (both you and your employees) organizational, personal ,and professional goals. And make sure that you put all of these in writing!

The Six Cs of Leadership
1. Character
2. Commitment
3. Confidence
4. Competence
5. Caring
6. Communication

John says that the bottom line is this: Transform yourself into a leader, instead of a just a manager. Transform your employees into partners and a team who will transform your customers into advocates.

Thanks, John. Now I had better get started!

BISD and Web 2.0

2008-12-05T08:13:00.005-06:00

One of my goals for this semester/year is to market what the Instructional Technology Department in BISD is doing to help students, teachers, and administrators be more successful. My newsletter below is one of the ways I am doing this. I am also collaborating with our district Communications Director to get the word out. Take a look at our BISD website:
http://www.birdville.k12.tx.us/Family/index.htm

Tech-Know News Dec. 5

2008-12-04T15:33:00.002-06:00

2008-12-04T15:09:00.010-06:00

I know many people already know about the cool new tool Glogster, but I have to brag about it a bit more. I love creating newsletters and messages to send out to teachers, administrators, etc. I am currently using it for my department's bi-monthly Tech-Know News. It's a great way to include video, links, photos, etc. in a consise format that is visually appealling. And now, Glogster had introduced an Glogster Education division. There are some very cool projects done by students posted on the site. In this digital world that our students are so empowered by, why not allow them to demonstrate profound learning by choosing a medium that they feel comfortable with and which allows for incredible creativity on their part? We have to help teachers become aware of the wonderful opportunities that exist for 21st century students to show mastery, application, and systhesis of content. Creating things like glogs to show learning = Engaged learners!
Above is an example of our latest Birdville Instructional Technology Tech-Know Newsletter:

Instructional Leaders Technology Learning Series

2008-11-24T14:56:00.007-06:00

Kristin Kozloski, in her dissertation, - “PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP FOR TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION:
A STUDY OF PRINCIPAL TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP” writes: “Educational leaders must seek to understand, promote and implement the notion that technology integration is not about the technology, it is about focusing on future generations and leading teachers to a change in pedagogy to support these generations with 21st Century teaching and learning strategies that increase student achievement.”

As Instructional Technology Leaders and Facilitators, we already know that without campus principal and central administration adoption/promotion of technology integration, student acquisition of 21st century digital skills probably won’t happen – at least not pervasively. As a response to this belief, and in an effort to empower our campus principals and district instructional leaders to become more familiar and comfortable with the technology tools that students need to be using, we created the “Instructional Leaders Technology Learning Series.”
Each Thursday, from 12:00 – 1:00 pm, we provide a Lunch-and-Learn 1-hour technology session for our district instructional leaders. We buy the pizza and drinks. The principals, content-area consultants, and central administration leaders come by for a very relaxed hour of learning. Our ten Instructional Technology Specialists each chose one Thursday to present a topic. This has really been well received and I am interested to see the results of a Google Forms survey that will go out to our attendees after our last session this semester. If, as we suspect from the feedback we have received thus far, that the results are having a positive effect, we are planning to continue our ILTLS next semester as well.
Our ILTLS is featured on our BISD Instructional Technology website (we take pictures each week and create quick Animoto videos to publicly “brag” on those who attended) and on our Leadership training page: http://www.birdville.k12.tx.us/instech/iltls.htm

First and Finally

2008-10-17T14:11:00.005-05:00

Finally! My first post!
I work with the most brilliant, creative, and innovative individuals in the world. I can only hope that some of those qualities rub off on me - or I at the very least acquire them simply by osmosis. I love going 'to school' each day because, just like the kids in my district, I am engaged and learn new and wonderful things from experiences, friends, and caring mentors. I am a living, breathing example of one of Dr. Phillip C. Schlechty's engaged learners and lucky enough to be a member of a dynamic professional learning organization that values 21st Century Skills and technology integration.