always learning

One of the things I’m enjoying most about being on our coaching team here at ISB is the opportunity to openly share our challenges so that we can all work together to improve our practice. This week we had our first book club meeting to discuss the first chapter of Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives edited by Jim Knight.

To facilitate our conversation, we followed the Final Word protocol. Each of us selected a particular section of the text which stood out during our reading, and following the protocol process, discussed what was so important about that statement in a round-robin format. Although we all selected different sections, they seemed to have a common element: how to move beyond simply supporting teachers to increase their comfort level within our curricular areas to implementing changed practices with all faculty members to improve student learning.

The section of the book that we ended up focusing on the most was about Coaching Heavy and Coaching Light. The author of this chapter, Joellen Killion

assert[s] that there are two kinds of coaching – coaching light and coaching heavy. The difference essentially is the coaches’ perspective, beliefs, role decisions, and goals, rather than what coaches do… Coaching light occurs when coaches want to build and maintain relationships more than they want to improve teaching and learning. From this perspective, coaches act to increase their perceived value to teachers by providing resources and avoiding challenging conversations. (p. 22)

Coaching heavy, on the other hand, includes high-stakes interactions between coaches and teachers, such as curriculum analysis, data analysis, instruction, assessment, and personal and professional beliefs and how they influence practice… Coaching heavy requires coaches to say “no” to trivial requests for support and to turn their attention to those high-leverage services that have the greatest potential for teaching and learning. Coaching heavy requires coaches to work with all teachers in a school, not just those who volunteer for coaching services. Coaching heavy requires coaches to seek and use data about their work and regularly analyze their decisions about time allocation, services and impact. (p. 23 -24)

Reading this section I realized that often times I am coaching light, but not always because of a decision I’ve consciously made. I am hyper-aware of the anxiety level most teachers have when dealing with technology, which often results in focusing more on making teachers comfortable with the tools than initiating difficult conversations about changing practice. I wonder if this issue is specific to those of us working in the technology area, or if it’s really just the same as coaches helping to implement a new math, reading or science program?

I do believe that those difficult conversations are much easier once you’ve developed a trusting relationship and that only happens when teachers feel supported. Killion mentions that it often takes coaches a whole year to move from coaching light to coaching heavy because of all the ground-work required to build trusting relationships, but that they can also get trapped into coaching light indefinitely if they are not careful.

I’m wondering now, how can coaches tell when it’s time to move from coaching light to coaching heavy? I’m also conscious of the fact that those deeper conversations don’t always have to happen in a formal setting, they can be quick snippets in the hallway that build upon previous sessions or discussions over lunch or even in a social setting. Do coaches keep track of where they are with each teacher, as you would with a class of students, so that you have a running record of what step to take next?

The other issue that jumped out at me was that coaches are required and expected to work with all teachers. This directly contradicts my long-held belief in working with the willing. Perhaps I simply need to adjust that to: we should start with the willing, but know that eventually we do have to work with everyone. I do still firmly believe that to work with everyone, with the focus on improving student learning (which may entail changing teaching practice), requires clear and transparent communication from administrators about our roles and purpose.

Perhaps the most reassuring sentence (for me) in this particular set of paragraphs is that coaching heavy requires coaches to say “no” to trivial requests for support in favor of more meaningful actions that will have a deeper impact on student learning. One of the biggest challenges for me has always been saying no. I like to believe I can do everything, and that I can make everyone’s job easier by supporting everyone, everywhere at any time. It’s important for me to remind myself that this only ends up diluting the impact I can make on both student and teacher learning. I need to remember that I am in control of my time and that I need to prioritize which tasks I undertake on a daily basis. Letting my day get carried away with the little things is not fulfilling my role, and it’s not helping my school move forward. (Maybe I should post this above my desk?).

Saying that a coach’s role is to support teachers misleads teachers. A coach’s primary responsibility is to improve student learning. (p. 27, point #3)

Reading this, I wonder what most teachers would think. I know that I have often been referred to as a “support” person or a “resource” person, and to be honest, I never felt the term was quite right, but I didn’t know why. Now I do. A “resource” is something to be used (or not) and then tossed aside. A “resource” is not something that might cause you to change deeply held beliefs or to re-evaluate your practice. A “resource” is not challenging. If teachers see us as “resources” or “support” people, they will not understand the work we are trying to do or how we fit into the school’s vision and purpose.

By making observations, stating their point of view, and inquiring into practice, coaches erode stagnant practice and unchallenged routines to spark analysis, reflection, and appropriate change. In this role, a coach is not about change for change sake, but rather for continuous improvement and fine-tuning to meet clearly articulated goals. (p. 13)

All too often it feels like teachers view technology as yet another swing in the pendulum of education, something they have to adopt because it’s the “cool new thing,” but not because they really believe in the impact it can have on student learning. It’s reassuring to me to see that other instructional coaches face this same dilemma.

One of the most difficult conversations that seems to come along frequently in technology is when teachers want to replicate what they always do (for example, a poster) “on the computer” because it will look cooler to the parents (or to their administrators) – not because of the potential that technology might have to offer. I’m thinking that effective questioning strategies, as part of coaching heavy, are what can move the conversation along from substitution to transformation. I’m also wondering if distributing a LOTI survey can help begin to plant the seeds in teachers’ minds about the different levels of technology implementation?

Final Thoughts

Once again, I am impressed by the value of looking at other, more established, fields in education to understand more deeply and improve my practice in the area of technology facilitation. Considering we’re only on the first chapter of the book, I’m sure coaching is going to provide a lot of room for growth!

Cross-posted on the TechLearning Advisors Blog

What’s your job title? Yesterday I asked my twitter network the following question:

And received a lot of interesting responses:

Most of us share similar responsibilities, yet we have a wide variety of titles. Just looking back at my own experience over the last ten years in three different schools, my job titles have ranged from Technology Facilitator to Academic IT Coordinator, to 21st Century Literacy Specialist, to Technology Coach, to Technology and Learning Coordinator.

What is it about technology in education that makes it so difficult to define roles that everyone can agree on and understand? Even though we’ve had technology in schools for decades, it still seems like we’re making it up as we go along.

For the last few years I’ve been wondering if there are more established roles, that already exist (and are well-understood) in many schools, which could provide a model for this type of support position. Just because technology often deals with new ways of thinking about education, doesn’t mean that the process of supporting those new ways of thinking has to be different.

Looking at Librarians

When I first arrived at ISB two years ago, I realized just how much librarians have in common with technology facilitators. What impressed me most was the extensive research in the field of librarianship about the process (and effect) of collaboration among colleagues. Although the day-to-day tasks of a librarian versus a technology facilitator might be very different; the established, research-based process of collaboration, which librarians have been refining for decades, certainly provides an interesting inspiration for technology facilitation.

Considering Coaching

With the change in my position this school year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what another established educational role might have to offer technology facilitators: the Instructional Coach. This week, our fabulous visiting consultant, and experienced Literacy Coach, Maggie Moon, attended our Coaching team meeting. She shared an overview of her successes and pitfalls to avoid as a coach:

• A coach’s 3 major tasks in order of priority are: in the classroom (with teachers & kids, 1:1 or with groups of teachers), out of the classroom (with teachers, 1:1 or with groups of teachers), prep & planning.
• As a coach, begin with a vision of what you think teachers should/could do. What does the “ideal” teacher look like? How will we see the evidence that our teachers are meeting these expectations?
• Teaching teachers is just like teaching students: always explain things clearly & succinctly, and remember to show not just tell.
• Always focus more on the process of teaching well, rather than the content that needs to be taught. Let the content come through as you model best practice instruction.
• Be sure to track teacher progress by using a conferring notebook with items you’ve been trying to teach, times you are going in to see the teachers doing it (checklist), quality of what teachers are doing – use this to plan more in-classroom work.
• Have teachers bring student work with them during meeting time so there is evidence of what they are doing and students are learning.
• Getting started: keep it small, cycle through grade levels (work with 2 grade levels a month, go into classrooms and check in 1:1 with the other grade levels).  Sometimes it makes sense to start with groups to plant seeds, and then continue 1:1.

3 Phases of coaching (rotate through these phases – always possible to return to any of the previous stages):

1. Modeling: in the classroom, you’re teaching the class while the teacher is watching.

• Pre-conference: Be clear about setting up, discuss with the teacher beforehand what you’re doing & what to watch for and notice. Strategy: use guide sheets which gives structure of how lesson will go and the main components to keep teachers active during lessons
• In the classroom: Model best practice
• Post-conference: You reflect at the end of the lesson on what you felt went well, what you would change, to model reflection – reinforcement & refinement. Then, ask teachers what they notice (what questions does this raise?). Then discuss: “how does what you saw me do, differ from what you do?” (what’s different?). Finally, ask “whatever you just saw, how will that change what you do in your classroom?”

2. Coaching: in the classroom, the teacher teaches & you watch (next to them) – give feedback in the moment

• Start with a reflection with the teacher, ask them what they felt went well, always focus on the positive and be complimentary (any issues, record them and save them for later).
• If there are content issues (incorrect information), share this right away; issues with methods should be saved for later.

3. Co-teaching (good when you’ve planned a unit over time, building relationships)

Looking over Maggie’s coaching suggestions, I can easily see how all of them are relevant to technology facilitation. From the goal of being in the classroom as a top priority, to focusing on the process not the content, to starting small; everything Maggie shared fit closely with my experience and understanding of technology facilitation.

It’s particularly interesting to me that the process of coaching can be expressed in such concrete steps, so no matter what the grade level or content, Maggie follows a clear process that results in quality collaboration and teaching.

Although I like to think I follow a “process” myself, I feel that, in practice, technology facilitation is often far less systematic. Because it’s so organic, technology facilition can tend to be more individualized – different for each project and teacher. Although I love the fact that everything I do is tailored for each teacher, it’s possible that, as facilitators, we end up re-inventing the wheel each time, simply because we don’t have a systematic approach.

In fact, as Maggie was sharing her tips, our science and math coaches were nodding along with the terminology and processes she described, demonstrating that instructional coaching across content areas shares a vocabulary and philosophy that is worth investigating.

Final Thoughts

Although I can appreciate how much both librarians and coaches have to offer technology facilitators, I still feel that there is something different about technology. When Literacy Coaches are helping teachers learn how to teach reading better, those teachers still know something about teaching reading, they know how to read a book, they know how to spell, and how to write, because the tools of the subject are familiar to them. Technology doesn’t share the same tradition in schools. So what happens when the content area is just as new to the teacher as the best practice teaching?

And then of course, the technological support has to be considered. It would be great to focus solely on the pedagogy, but who deals with the broken projector and the students that can’t log in? I’m sure these are some of the reasons why we have so many different job titles and descriptions.

Clearly, while we can definitely benifit from the extensive experience of librarians and coaches in schools, there is more to a technology support role that needs to be included. So, I’m left wondering:

• What is still undefined in our conception of the role of a technology facilitator/coach/coordinator?
• How can we start building consensus on our roles in schools?
• What can’t we find that’s relevant to technology support when examining more established positions in schools?
• What does your job description include?

Cross-posted on the TechLearning Advisors Blog

It’s hard to believe that our summer holidays are officially over today and we start back to school bright and early tomorrow morning! I must admit, I’ve had a wonderful holiday: a week on Koh Racha in the south of Thailand, a few weeks in the United States spending time with family and friends – including a quick trip to St. Louis to lead a one-day session for MICDS Summer Learning (thanks to Elizabeth, Pat and Greg for taking such good care of me while I was there), and finally a luxurious week in the Maldives to celebrate my 5-year wedding anniversary. So, I can definitely say that I’m well-rested and ready to start the new year!

This school year is shaping up to be an especially exciting one for me. I’m still at the same school, but my position has changed in 2 very different ways.

• First, I’ll be a Technology Coach in the elementary school, shifting my position from 21st Century Literacy Specialist to be part of a larger coaching team which includes our Math, Science, and Literacy Coaches. I could not be more excited about expanding this part of my job and working with such a knowledgeable group of people on a regular basis.
• Secondly, part of my job will be the Middle School Technology and Learning Coordinator. These last 2 years have been my first working full-time in an elementary school and as much as I’ve loved the experience (and learned so much), I know that I’m a middle school teacher at heart. I’m so looking forward to spending part of my time working with the age group that I love and getting back into the middle school vibe!

Although I’m not sure what this configuration is going to look like in practice, I’ve been thinking a lot about the last two years and all that I’ve learned about starting a new job – not as a classroom teacher, but as a non-teaching support person. Having been both a subject-area teacher (e.g. middle school technology) and a support person (e.g. technology facilitator), I’ve realized that there are different challenges to each type of position.

In the interest of starting the year off right, here are the top five things I’ve learned about starting a new job in a non-teaching, support role:

It’s all about relationships! As my friend Chrissy likes to tell me, I’m a fixer. I like to solve problems, preferably on the spot, and get working on the solution immediately. Which can be great when you’re teaching your own classes and making improvements, but when you’re working in partnership with others (especially those you haven’t worked with before) it’s more important that you spend the early part of the year building a trusting relationship. It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) technology a teacher  might be using in their classroom, what does matter is that they see you as approachable, dependable, collaborative, friendly, and above all, willing and able to support their needs. It those personal relationship that you form early on that end up leading to positive and successful collaboration later on. After all, it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job if no one is interested in working with you!

Start small! As tempting as it is to start the year off with a bang, developing large-scale, amazing projects with as many teachers as possible, it’s almost always more successful (and more sustainable) to start small and begin with simple, easy-to-succeed-at, projects that teachers and students will enjoy. Small successes breed continued risk-taking and trust. It’s better to leave teachers and students wanting more collaboration than finding themselves exhausted from an over-ambitious, all-consuming project, thinking “I’ll never do that again!”

Celebrate, praise and publicize! We all know our colleagues are doing amazing things in their classroom, but we rarely hear about it outside of individual grade levels or departments. Make the effort and take the time to find ways to celebrate and share those experiences across the faculty. Teachers will appreciate knowing what others are doing in their classroom and what their students are experiencing in other subjects or grade levels. Plus, the best way to spread the use of technology in the classroom is virally – once teachers see the success of others, they will be more willing to try something similar in their classroom, especially knowing that they will have a colleague they can count on for advice and assistance (thereby building their own support network).

Be there! Be visible: in the classroom, on the team, in the hallway. Teachers are busy people, they don’t always have time to find you to ask an emergency question, or they might not have a moment to spare to send an e-mail. If you’re always holed up in your office, you’re going to get a reputation for being unavailable, or worse, a slacker. The more time you spend with your colleagues and their students, the more you will learn about them, their curriculum, their needs and their experiences. A support person is not supportive if they’re invisible.

Don’t be a pusher! Everyone knows you were hired to spread the technology love, you don’t need to be ramming it down your colleagues’ throats every second of the day. Listen and learn what, how, when, and where you can help. Of course, you want to move your faculty and your school forward, but you can do that by supporting others and helping build their understanding of the power of technology. Sure, you will probably need to “sell” your ideas here and there (and everywhere), but it doesn’t have to be constant and it should never start with you – the students and the curriculum are the backbone of your success. When you can demonstrate how technology tools enhance learning by meeting the needs of the school, you won’t have to “sell” anything anymore.

Final Thoughts

One of the biggest challeges for me, when reading over my own advice, is how to balance my own needs (what I see as critical for student, teacher, parent and administrator learning) with being supportive of others.

I can’t assume that all of my colleagues will have the same passions, interests and beliefs that I do, so if my job is entirely to support them, how do I move forward with my own learning and meet my own personal and professional goals for the year?

One of the only drawbacks I can see to being a facilitator, coach, or support person, is that I don’t have my own group of students to try new things with, I can’t experiment or test out someting new without affecting another teacher. This makes it all the more important to try to find a balance between helping others and feeling that you’re moving forward professionally.

What other advice do you have for a new teacher starting this year in a non-teaching support role?

Tom Kelley got me thinking at the Hong Kong Summit: Where’s the innovation in our schools? Where’s the risk taking? Where’s the abundance of ideas? Who’s seeing things with fresh eyes? How are we taking the best ideas from other industries and applying them to education?

Generally speaking, schools are excruciatingly slow to change. Even when schools are making a concerned effort to be innovative and re-think traditional modes of learning, it often ends up being a variation of what’s already in place. I’ve been on countless curriculum review committees where one pre-packaged program was chosen over another in an effort to “modernize” the learning experience, but in the end all we ever seem to get is a new coat of paint on what we’re already doing. Sure, we’re moving forward, but it’s at a snail’s pace.

So how fast should schools be adapting and changing? What should the pace of innovation be?

Unfortunately, as Tom eloquently described, if we have any hope of staying ahead of the curve, we need to be moving even faster than the other innovators in our field. It’s not enough simply to be an innovator,  you need to stay ahead of everyone else who’s innovating – even if they appear to be outside your field.

Tom refers to this as the “Red Queen Effect” after a scene in Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, where Alice is shocked to be standing in the same place after running quite fast for an extended period of time and the Red Queen explains, “if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

This isn’t a question of schools choosing to stand still or not innovating at all, because I do believe we’re all trying to move forward in one way or another. This is about the dangers of slowing your pace of innovation just enough for others to out-pace you – not necessarily other schools, but rather other modes of learning. Interestingly, Tom also mentioned that resting on your laurels is usually the time when others outpace you innovatively (something I think many good schools are very much in danger of doing all too often).

Another Hong Kong presenter, Stephen Heppell, was also careful to emphasize that the biggest challenge today is the pace of change: exponential. With this rapid pace of change there is no time for the “staircase mentality” (pilot, review etc). He reminded us that we didn’t value tech in the 80s – what are we mistakenly not valuing now?

Why does this happen?

Tom explained that innovation falls squarely in quadrant 2 of Steven Covey’s matrix: it’s “Important”, but “Not Urgent”. For example, we absolutely have to have a new math/science/reading/social studies program. The teachers can’t teach without one, so picking a new one is going to fall in quadrant 1, and ultimately, innovation gets put off until tomorrow. However, innovation has an urgency all its own and those that don’t place innovation as a priority will find themselves displaced.

As innovators, Stephen mentioned that we need to be critical about what’s convenient for us versus what’s good for learning, for example, our assumption that ringing a lunch bell means that a thousand students will suddenly be hungry at the same time, or that students are at the same stage in their learning (in same grade) because they happened to born between two Septembers, etc.

Another problem is that radical change is often thought of as expensive. On the contrary, as Stephen, observed: “It’s more expensive to make or maintain schools and add bits of exciting 21st century around than to just skip to a much cheaper 21st century model model of community learning.” This is a good example of the difficulty people face in conceptually realizing the advantages of bold innovation: we naturally assume that slow steady progress will be best (as we are taught from an early age, when the tortoise wins the race).

How do we make innovation a priority in our educational institutions?

Tom discussed the 10 Faces of Innovation from his recent book of the same name, explaining that we need 10 different types of people to bring all the facets of innovation to the forefront of our organization:

• The Hurdler: this is the person who says, “of course there will be obstacles – that’s my job, overcoming obstacles.”
• The Storyteller: data is not that powerful. Stories carry messages farther.
• The Anthropologist: this is the person who focuses on seeing with fresh eyes (or “vuja de”). People get immersed in their own environment and simply stop seeing it for what it is, it becomes “just the way things are,” for example the turnstiles at CDG airport, which are impossible to carry luggage through, despite the fact that they’re between the airport and the subway. Yet airport employees see them day in and day out and they haven’t been changed. We need to observe objects in use in their natural environment so that we can design with empathy
• The Experimenter: this person gives permission for failure, knowing that innovation involves risk. To innovate, we must to be able to fail in a safe environment by creating an idea-friendly organization where we have the ability to “squint” and see the “shape” of an idea.
• The Cross Pollinator: the ability to share ideas, to take inspiration from other cultures and enhance, thereby gaining in translation. Examine other ideas cross continents, cross countries, cross industry, cross age (”reverse mentors”) to be able to build upon other ideas and transform and improve them.
• The Experience Architect : The Experience Economy – book (commodity, product, service, experience)
• The Collaborator: brings people together to get things done.
• The Director: enabler of great creativity around them
• The Set Designer: approaches from people standpoint then looks at business & technology elements to create effective designs. Building engaging, seductive, delightful learning is also a design task.
• The Care Giver: have empathy and work to extend the relationship.

How do you structure for innovation?

Tom shared several criteria for successful innovation:

• A flat leadership model to enable anyone to have their idea heard by the “boss” no matter where you are in the organization. He also pointed out, however, that after many years of experimentation at IDEO, the company found that 100 people is the limit for a flat leadership model, and any larger organization will unfortunately need to have a “boss’s boss” and so on.
• Must have an abundance mentality, the goal is to share as many ideas as possible, knowing that only a very small percentage will work. He cites an example of a game-design company which had 1000 ideas but only 6 patents in one year.
• The need for good humor, an environment where it is OK to make fun of the boss.
• Workspace design must focus on building collaboration, for example, the stereotypical office design of cubicles actually look a lot like voting booths, which are specifically designed to prevent collaboration. What about our set-up of each teacher in their own classroom? I’m not sure you could design anything so physically non-collaborative if you tried!

What does this mean for education?

The time for innovation is now, as Stephen described (and Marco Torres’ slide below emphasizes), “learning is at a crossroads:” we’re looking at a choice between productivity and new approaches, those new approaches being:

• student portfolios;
• making huge leaps in our model of education, not tiny steps forward;
• working to produce ingenious, engaged, inspired, surprising, collegiate students;
• and developing learning experiences that are open-ended, project-focused, multidisciplinary.

By innovation, I don’t mean just adding more technology to the classroom, I mean thinking differently about learning in its entirety. For example, I still find it hard to believe that many schools have not fully implemented a project-based learning approach. This was all the rage when I was in teacher’s college 10 – 12 years ago, but even now it’s still marketed as something “new” (maybe that’s why I like the MYP so much). How is it possible that, 12 years after learning about a model of education being the best thing since sliced bread, only a few schools really excel at this approach?

It’s not technology alone that makes us innovative, it’s looking at learning with fresh eyes. It’s asking ourselves: if we could start from scratch, what would our schools look like today? I can’t remember who said this first but, “technology is just an amplifier” – technology doesn’t change the quality of teaching or learning, it will only amplify it, either in a positive or negative way. What we need to be looking at is changing our approaches to learning, not modifying our curriculum to a “newer” version of what we’ve already had for the past 20 years.

We could start by taking a step back and looking at the whole experience of teaching and learning, as if we  were aliens from another planet or anthropologists studying a remote tribe, as Tom described the role of the Anthropologist in his 10 Faces of Innovation. It’s only through observing learning in its natural environment today, wherever it’s taking place, that we can understand how to build schools that meet the needs of today’s learners. As Tom quipped, “I don’t know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn’t a fish!”

What do you think? Is your school innovative? What are you doing to encourage innovation? What can schools do to focus on innovation despite the daily urgencies of our profession?

If you were an alien who knew nothing about our education system and you arrived on our planet today, how would you design a learning community for today’s students?

Miguel Guhlin quote from Clarence Fisher, Literacy as Battleground, image source
Chris Lehmann quote image source: Flickr user Ali K.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences this year. So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about conferences, mostly about how to make them a better experience for the participants. After the absolutely fantastic Apple Global Leadership Summit in Hong Kong last week, I had a bit of a brainwave.

Here’s how I think a really engaging, exciting, and community-building conference could be run (apologies if there’s already conferences out there like this, I just haven’t been to any):

Action

So many conferences follow the “sit ‘n git” model where participants sit in room after room (or if you’re incredibly unlucky, the same room all day) listening to “experts” tell you how things “should” be done.

There’s no time in the schedule for actually doing something with our new knowledge, and sadly, often no time for just talking and interacting with our fellow conference goers in a learning- or topic-focused environment (coffee breaks don’t count).

We need to make conferences more practical, not just hands on training with new tools, but a focus on the actual creation of something that bridges new learning with what you already know, and asks you to create something useful.

Although it was great to see so many hands on sessions at the Hong Kong summit, as a presenter, it seemed like the hands on training felt very isolated to the new content presented and there really wasn’t enough time (1 hour for a hands on session) to activate and engage participants’ prior knowledge within the workshop as a whole.

As the ADE Institute and the Flat Classroom Conference did very well, conferences should make the event about some sort of action or project that bridges the theory, content and tools, helps build your network, and requires you to leave with something tangible.

Grouping/Differentiation

I would love to see a conference where attendees were grouped the first day (by choice, ability, experience or interest, organized in advance with color-coded nametags), and spent the whole conference reconnecting in various formats with a group leader (during an Apple conference, this could be an ADE group leader) to create something together.

All groups could have an ongoing task that lead you through the conference, asking participants to put their new knowledge to work, building on each plenary and presentation session, and then culminating in the production of something practical and useful during a hands on workshop time. The hands on workshop time could be lead by the same group leader, and introduce group members to the all of the different tools they will need to create their final action project (from a presenter’s perspective, this could be the new role of the “presenter” or “ADE Workshop Leader” at a conference).

Between keynote sessions, these groups could come back together to digest and discuss the information presented and then begin to develop an action project that utilizes this new knowledge. If the groups regularly meet in the same classroom over the course of the conference materials could be kept & posted around the room.

In order to ensure that there was enough cross-pollination across all conference attendees, the group action projects could be structured in such a way that each group is required to interact with members from the other groups in order to complete their project.

In terms of practicalities, in a conference of around 500 people, you could create 17 groups of 30 people, or 20 groups of 25 people (that raises your number of “presenters”, and therefore the cost of travel and hotel, but it would be so worth it for everyone). Group leaders could have a meeting before the conference starts to discuss, plan, and network among themselves. (And by the way, why don’t we have sessions for the presenters to network at conferences either? They miss out on all the casual conversations because they’re so busy organizing and prepping for their own presentations!)

Diversity

Why, oh why do we still see the same presenters at every conference? I don’t mean the same individual people (although that can be a problem too). I mean the same older, white, males. Where’s the diversity? Gender, race, age, experience? How did we get trapped in this model where we think only older white men have something to offer?

There have been many posts about the need for diversity in conference speakers, but some things never seem to change. This needs to make it to the top of the list for conference organizers.

We need speakers that represent our society. It’s not a planet full of older, white, men, but our conferences make it seem that way.

Students

Along the lines of diversifying presenters, why is it that we have all these conferences about learning and how to meet our students needs, but we never actually have any student participants or presenters?

I’m not talking about handing out badges or directing people to the right room, I mean students leading sessions. Maybe sessions on how to use new tools or on what they’re doing with technology outside of school, or what they’d like to see in school (imagine that?). What about having students as experts on a panel discussion of what schools should be doing with technology? Or how technology has changed the way they receive, create and distribute information?

Time for Reflection

As much as I loved the Hong Kong Summit, there was simply not enough time for reflection and metacognition. No matter how much you know about a topic, there is always a need for discussion after an engaging session. After each session, a group leader could facilitate an unconference style discussion, with a focus question or Visible Thinking routine to get people processing the information. If participants are working within the groups outlined in the first paragraph, they would get to know each other well during these breakout unconference sessions, and knowledge could be built as a collaborative team towards the final action project.

Dialogue

Here’s one of the many things I have learned from the past two years working in the elementary division. Every single presentation must include room for dialogue, not always with the presenter but just with the people you’re sitting next to, even keynotes.

Just a simple opportunity to chat with the person you’ve never met (but had to crawl over to get to the only remaining seat in the middle of the row) based on the information you’re learning. We know we have to do this in the classroom, and the same applies in a conference – it’s just a big classroom, right?

Movement

Do not sit in the same room all day no matter how logistically convenient it is.

Final Thoughts

What have I missed? What would you like to see in a next generation conference format?

World Mosaic: A Tribute to Flickr Portraits by pardeshi

Last weekend I attended (and presented at) the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools (EARCOS) Teacher’s Conference (ETC).  This is the second year in a row I’ve attended this conference and I absolutely love the opportunity to network with other teachers in the region. This time around the conference was in beautiful Malaysian Borneo – not exactly the most convenient location to get to, but quite relaxing once we arrived.

This year, I attended several workshops on the importance of effective teaming and collaboration.

As a technology facilitator, I often find myself working with a variety of teams across all grade levels and subject areas. I rarely do anything entirely alone and spend most of my time at work collaborating with at least one other colleague – whether it’s co-planning a project, supporting a team in developing a unit, or planning a faculty meeting – teaming is a huge part of my job. These sessions were a perfect opportunity for me to get a better picture of what makes teams work well (or not so well in the case of the “10 Symptoms of Dysfunctional Teams” session).

A few things that stood out for me during the sessions were:

• “As educators we overestimate the amount of change we can effect in one school year, and we underestimate the amount of change we can effect in three” – Larry Keeley
• If you don’t have a goal, you’re not a team.
• The primary goal of a team leader is to build trust. Actions speak louder than words and creating trust goes on for years, one action can destroy years of trust-building.
• Change must be thoughtful, deliberate and systematic, and planned with the end in mind, following the Understanding by Design process of curriculum planning.
• Teams must engage in healthy debate, dialogue, and professional discussion.
• One of the most important things a team can have to function properly is Essential Agreements that have been discussed, agreed upon, and revisited regularly. Examples of essential agreements that are currently working in other international schools: be fully present – don’t do anything else during the meeting; keep everything confidential (unless the group decides not to); start on time; minutes of the meeting will be within 24 hours; agendas will be given 24 hours before; monitor your own talk time; establish a shared vocabulary; it’s OK to disagree.

In all of the sessions, we talked a lot about different types of teams, and the fact that most people feel the best team they’ve experienced is usually a sports team – because they have such a clear, common goal. I wonder, how often do teams really define (and believe in) a common goal at work the way they would on a sports team?

Along the same lines, I’ve also just finished Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, which talks about two different dimensions of agreement that affects how successful an organization is:

1. agreement on what people want (the goal), and
2. agreement on the cause and effect (how to reach the goal)

So, even if we agree on what we want (improved student learning), but we don’t agree on how we can achieve that goal, we’re never going to get there.

The workshops and the book have really made me realize just how complex team building is – and how much of an impact individual teams can have on the success and movement of any organization.

There are so many elements, layers and personalities that need to be balanced in order to create an effective team. A team needs visionary people to create and advocate for goals, organized people to forge consensus on methods for achieving those goals, and thoughtful and sensitive people to make sure that everyone is heard and feels valued. Creating an effective team is much harder than I’d previously thought, and teamwork can be incredibly complex.

This all makes me appreciate just how lucky I am to be working on a team with Jeff and Tara here at ISB. We complement each other’s abilities and interests in a way that I think balances many of these elements. We have someone who’s good at envisioning the future (Jeff), someone who’s good at meeting individual needs and understanding people’s feelings and anxieties (Tara), and someone who’s good at organizing and managing steps toward progress (me). Between the three of us, I really believe we can tackle any task successfully.

It’s such a pleasure to work with Jeff and Tara not because we always agree on everything, but because we have an amazing dynamic that allows the group as a whole to take steps forward. It’s the three of us together that makes us so much more effective than even the brightest among us, which reminds me of another book I’m reading, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

What successful teams have you worked on? Why do you think they were so successful? What elements need to be in place, or balanced? How can we work to create positive, productive environments in existing teams which for one reason or another don’t have this balance?

Human Pyramid by chooyutshing

After having the pleasure of teaching the first course in our 5-course SUNY Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy, I’m now participating in the second course as a student. I’m really interested (and excited) to see what this course looks like from the “other side of the room.” I think it will give me a better understanding of what participants are looking for, and will hopefully open my eyes to improved teaching and learning strategies for adults.

It’s been around two years since I’ve taken a graduate course, and my last one was taught by two of my absolutely favorite instructors, Bill and Ochan Powell, so it will be very interesting to see how our style compares to classes I remember being so beneficial and productive (and by “our,” I mean all of the CoETaIL teachers, since we planned the 5-course certificate program together).

This second course is led by Jeff and Chad and focuses on issues and problems in 21st century learning (digital citizenship, digital footprints, safety, privacy, etc). In retrospect, it’s actually perfect that we have this course second, because these were the issues that were really coming to the forefront of our discussions at the end of the first course. It will be good to spend an entire 6 weeks discussing the challenges we all face with technology and learning.

Each week, course participants are asked to write one blog post about our essential question of the week. Since I’m late (as usual) with this post, it’s been fantastic to read some of the other participants’ thoughts on the topic and I’ve shared quite a few within Google Reader. This week’s prompt is:

When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?

This quote from Seth Godin, perfectly and Zen-tastically represented here by Michael Marlatt, sums up my thoughts about digital footprints in general:

As Silvia stated in her presentation (about backchannel chats in the classroom), having a digital footprint is a good thing! You are in charge of your presence on the web – it’s up to you to make it what you want it to be. Presenting yourself as yourself, sharing your thoughts, developing deeper understandings about your professional learning, is what your digital footprint should (and can) be about. Learning and professionalism online is now viewed with the mindset of: you are what you share.

Your digital profile should be a representation of who you are, with the knowledge that you are responsible for that representation. If you choose to use rude language, post angry or consistently negative statements, continually share information that is a little too personal (I consider “too personal” to be anything I wouldn’t tell my employer), your digital footprint will represent that side of you.

It’s certainly worth your energy to think about the way you represent yourself – because your next employer will most likely start with a quick Google search to determine who you are… I know I want those search results to be something I expect, value, and would like to share with a larger audience (and specifically prospective employers).

All of our students must have the opportunity to truly understand this new digital landscape. The stories of students getting rejected from university due to their Facebook profiles, or people losing their jobs due to quick and thoughtless tweets are scary, sure, but do students really understand how this will directly impact their lives? I know at least one teacher in the international school circuit that was fired for posting inappropriate material on one of their web sites. I know I don’t want that to be me!

So, have you decided? Who do you want your “digital me” to be?

Once again, I must admit that I feel quite lucky to be working at the elementary level. As much as I enjoy working with middle school students and teachers, I am realizing more and more that elementary is the place to instill good habits with technology.

Students are much more open to advice and suggestions from their teachers, parents are much more involved in their child’s schooling, and the elementary classroom is usually the place where students are learning to learn with these new tools for the first time. This is the time to instill safe habits.

By middle and high school, it may be too late. Students have already formed their opinions, habits are already in place, and they definitely are a lot less interested in discussing their online life with their teachers (and parents) than they would be in elementary school.

With that in mind, it’s equally important that elementary teachers are comfortable and confident discussing these kinds of issues with their students. We’ve recently had an epidemic of inappropriate (student-produced) material (nothing too serious, but also nothing we can condone at the school) being housed on the server accounts of elementary students.

When my principal asked what we can do about this, my first piece of advice was to have our students physically sign our Elementary School Acceptable Use Policy (if they don’t sign it, there’s no guarantee that they – or their parents – have even seen it) along with an in-depth discussion about appropriate online behavior in every classroom in our elementary school at the beginning of the school year.

To actually do this, we need every teacher to understand the implications of the AUP and to feel comfortable enough discussing it with their class. This is no small task.

Hosting appropriate files on the school’s server is an excellent, somewhat safer, learning experience for students to truly understand the impact of their digital footprint. If they are creating and saving inappropriate material on their school account, what are they doing online? And who’s watching them there?

When do you begin talking with students about their digital footprint?

The Age of Candid Camera image courtesy of Michael Marlatt
Silvia Tolisano image courtesy of Teaching Sagittarian (but I believe, taken by me!)

Apparently I am embarking on a very modest consulting career.

Last year, Julie Lindsay invited me to spend 2 days at her school, Qatar Academy, working with the Primary School teachers on 21st century learning. Amazingly, that visit went so well that she invited me back again this year, this time to work with the Senior School (middle and high school) teachers on the same topic. I was truly flattered to be asked back and have really enjoyed the experience.

I never would have expected when I started teaching that anyone would invite me to their school to work with their teachers, but now that I’ve had the chance, I know I would like to continue building these skills.

One of the things I really enjoy about these visits is the opportunity to really consolidate my thinking. Every time I make a presentation I take the time to really clarify what I need to say, what background needs to be covered for it to make sense, and why it’s important to teaching and learning. This time around a few topics from the three presentations I gave jumped to the surface:

Using technology in the classroom is a mindset, not a skill-set.

This is something I’ve been saying for a long time, but I feel like it’s becoming more and more important as technology continues to change more and more rapidly. The feeling of being overwhelmed by new information, of not being able to catch up, of needing to know more than your students, can end up leading teachers down a path of avoidance instead of adoption. Focusing on the attitudes and mindset of a teacher who successfully uses technology in the classroom helps make the shift more approachable.

Teachers who use technology in the classroom are: flexible, willing to take risks and try new things, not afraid of failing, able to learn from their students, adaptable, and comfortable with the fact that they are not the smartest person in the room. Cultivating this kind of mindset is the first step to understanding how to use technology successfully in the classroom.

Unfortunately, this is also a paradigm shift for many teachers. What do you mean I’m not the smartest person in the room? Isn’t that why I’m the teacher and they’re the student? Which brings me to the next key point:

It’s not about the technology, it’s about the pedagogy.

It’s so easy to focus on the tools. Teachers are very comfortable being shown the power of a new tool and figuring out how they can make it work for their teaching style. It seems like the “how to” is what most teachers like to hear, see and test first. Unfortunately, it’s just too easy to make the tools fit the old paradigm. If we’re not talking about pedagogy, if we’re not talking about changing the classroom environment, if we’re not talking about students learning how to learn, there’s really no point to talking about the tools.

In the end we all want our students to be successful, but there are certain pedagogical approaches that will help them become independent learners, who can survive and thrive in the constantly changing, media rich, content saturated world we live in. Classrooms that are project based, inquiry driven, and student centered not only help us reach our goals as teachers, but they also very naturally lend themselves to successful technology integration. If a teacher is using the same worksheets s/he has used for 10 years, or teaching one individual lesson one day after the next, or leads an activity-based classroom, it’s going to be awfully hard to authentically embed technology into that environment. No matter how easy and quick it might be to look at the tools first, we have to start with the pedagogy and the “why.”

We need to learn with technology the way students live with technology.

In the end, this is about making school relevant. We may not like the changes in our society, we may not appreciate the constant media bombardment of our children that ends up in something like this (which, personally I find rather horrifying), but the reality is, this is our world. We made it this way. Now we have to find ways to ensure that our children learn how to live in this world, how to stay safe, how to lead balanced lives, how to use all of these many tools at their disposal for appropriate and authentic purposes. We can’t do that by ignoring technology. We also can’t do that by making those tools fit our preferred style of learning. We have to tap into the energy our students bring to class to find ways to learn with technology the way students live with technology.

This is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s about finding ways to authentically use the appropriate, relevant and pedagogically sound tools to enhance the learning experience for our students. It doesn’t mean all the time, but it does mean in different ways that we might be used to. I love Marc Prensky’s statement about doing new things in new ways. This is what we’re looking for. No need to retro-fit a new tool to an old project. How can we get to our curricular goals in a new way, in a way that engages our students? As Chrissy likes to say: we’re still going to the same place, we just might need to drive a different vehicle.

Conversation Starter

In the end, these visits are about starting conversations, promoting new thinking and questioning just about everything. Everything is not going to be resolved in a two- or three- or even ten-day visit. All we can hope to accomplish is to get people talking, to stir up the pot a bit, to snap some out of their comfort zones and to promote the work of others, to bring in relevant information from the “outside world” and to kick start the change process.

The absolute best thing about my visit this time around was having the chance to talk to some of the Primary School teachers I worked with last year. Every single one of them said to me: “You changed me.” Wow. I’ve never, ever had anyone say that to me before. To be able to come in for a short visit, share some new ideas, help inspire and empower people, and then to hear about your success from those very people only a year later. Yes, that is definitely something I would like to do more often.

Now, this is not to say that everything went perfectly during both visits. There are challenges, problems, disagreements and, to be honest, a little bit of anger and fear, all to be expected. But in the end it’s those conversations that get things started. And, as we all know, there’s always room to grow. A few things I want to think about well in advance next time around are:

• What has been the school’s history with technology (or any other) initiates?
• What is the general feeling of the staff? Are there members who are supportive? Those who will challenge anything?
• What success can we share from the school itself? How can we promote success internally?
• Where are the administrators? How visible will they be during the visit?
• What are the practical issues specifically relevant to the school, student body, parent population and culture?
• What is the culture of the school in general?

As usual, everything is a learning experience. Anyone have any other advice about consulting?

Seeing as it’s the end of the year, and the perfect time for reflection given that our three-week semester break started yesterday and our friends from Munich won’t arrive until Monday, I thought I would take some time to list my recent achievements at ISB.

There’s something about the act of writing things down that helps solidify them in my mind – it’s almost as if I don’t write them down, they didn’t happen (which definitely makes me wonder what I did before I started blogging two and a half years ago). And, even though I know I have all of these things already recorded in various posts here on this blog, it really helps organize my own thoughts by listing them all in one space.

In addition to keeping myself organized and up-to-date, I also love the idea of sharing successes. I am always inspired by all of the amazing things I read from my personal learning network, and I would love to see a similar list of achievements from other edubloggers (if you have the inclination and the time). Being able to follow up with a concise list of the fantastic work I know everyone is doing would be just perfect for a type-a personality, such as myself!

So, in the interests of sharing and reflecting, here’s my highlighted list of achievements over the past year and a half at ISB:

• Building productive and positive collaborative teaching relationships with staff, at both the individual level, and the team level, including teachers in “my” division (elementary), as well as the other two divisions of the school.
• Co-planning and co-teaching a wide variety of projects, using the Understanding by Design process, which authentically embed 21st century literacy skills with teachers at each grade level in the elementary school, as well as additional projects in the middle and high schools, on request.
• Bridging and merging the educational technology team and the library team to form a new, cross-school department focused on 21st century learning: the ISB21 Team.
• Collaboratively designing the future of 21st century learning at ISB: through curriculum planning, presenting to leadership team, and working within the tech and library departments.
• Continually striving for change within the school structure, focusing on 21st century learning.
• Helping teachers build their understanding of how 21st century tools can help students learn through collaboration on projects, the development of a Professional Learning Community, after school and weekend PD, leading faculty meetings, in-school presentations, sharing of resources and casual conversation.
• Planning, implementing and teaching a new graduate-level, 5-course SUNY Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy.
• Building parental understanding of 21st century literacy tools in a positive, exciting and approachable manner.
• Publicly documenting ES student success through the use of 21st century communication tools, as well as traditional communication methods.
• Extensive professional development – learning as an attendee, receiving awards, presenting (at quite a few conferences), bringing in experts, and consulting.
• Learning to be a better teacher by working with elementary students and teachers.
• Focusing on curriculum development, specifically planning units of inquiry which authentically embed technology and 21st century literacy skills.
• Collaborating with teachers to plan and teach units that engage, motivate and excite students about their learning from kindergarten to grade five.
• Helping students and teachers build Personal Learning Networks – connecting people around learning and making meaningful connections
  
• Collaborating with teams on developing, documenting and sharing an overarching vision for learning – looking at “the big picture“
• Building excitement and enthusiasm around technology and 21st century literacy – differentiating, connecting and collaborating – with students, teachers and parents
• Bringing new tools to our Learning Hub that will enable students, teachers, and parents to take full advantage of the multimedia resources we have to offer.
• Coordinating and leading professional development training on technology and 21st century tools
• Continually learning and reflecting with and using 21st century tools to share, connect and collaborate with others both within our school environment and among the global community of educators I am proud to call my Personal Learning Network
• Taking a leadership role on projects outside of the school environment to further enhance and build my understanding of 21st century learning.
• Reflecting and refining practices to ensure that I am learning from each experience.

Phew! I’m tired just looking at this list! It’s amazing how quickly you forget what you’ve done if you don’t take the time to reflect. And, of course the constant influx of amazing things streaming in via Twitter and Google Reader, is always inspiring to do more, to go further, to keep moving. Sometimes it’s nice to just take a moment to see how far we’ve come. There is always more to be done, always the next steps to take, but for right now, I think I’m pretty happy with what I see here.

What are your major accomplishments for the year? Please feel free to share a link to your own list in the comments here!

Oh my! I could not be more flattered or proud to have been nominated for an Edublog award by two of my personal blogging heros: Julie Lindsay and Silvia Tolisano. Both Julie and Silvia have pushed my thinking for years, supported me through some difficult times, and been inspirational in their contributions to the educational blogging world. Thank you!

Not only was this completely unexpected given my totally random bursts of blogging and often quiet spells, but I can’t believe I’m listed among so many amazing bloggers, check them out:

Mobile Technology in TAFE
Education Investigation
Learn Online
Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs
Bionic Teaching
SCC English
Nadstar’s Blog
Teachers at risk
John Connell
Doug – off the record
Mathemetics Learning
The Scholastic Scribe
Newly Ancient
Chrisina’s Classroom Early Childhood blog
Cliotech
ICTlogy
Theology in the Vineyard
Computer Science Teacher – thoughts and information from Alfred Thompson
Darcy’s blog
The Edublogger
Teaching and Learning Design
The Bamboo Project
All teachers are learners – All learners are teachers
Sarah’s Musings
Using Blogs in science Education
Learning with ‘e’s
What It’s Like on The Inside
EFL20.com
Generation YES Blog
Betty’s Blog
Teach42
Creating Lifelong Learners
Always Learning
The English Blog
David Truss: Pair-a-dimes for your Thoughts

Thank you again for this wonderful surprise ladies! And if any of my equally wonderful and thoughtful readers felt like heading over and voting for me, that would just be the icing on the cake!