Be of Use

A few weeks after the election Gov. Scott Walker spoke about changing the way we fund pubic K-12 and higher education. It's the usual tough talk about "outcomes" with on comment in particular that has turned some heads. "In higher education, that means not only degrees, but are young people getting degrees in jobs that are open and needed today -- not just the jobs that the universities want to give us, or degrees that people want to give us." Part of me could go on and on about where this could lead - plus  there are no specifics behind this statement, but I just want to focus my mental capital on things I know about - Schools of Education.  What we don't need anymore of are graduates who don't have a robust background in educating all learners. I recently ran into a former student who is now 21. He proudly told me he was getting an education degree to teach social studies. My response was "That's great! What do you think about gett...

I love big, new bold ideas for education. Anything John Seely Brown writes, I eat it up. Disrupting Class, couldn't put it down. The best books I've read lately about professional learning have been written by corporate trainers. I enjoy a wide variety of perspectives and experiences. Despite this, lately I've begun to get a little wary of the "education outsider as reformer" story line. What do they really do? Michele Rhee made a lot of noise, but wasn't able to keep her job long enough to see things through. She railed that the unions ran her out of DC, and now she spends her time raising money to elect school board members who are in line with her vision for change. Seems more like influence via Citizens United style tactics rather than reform. For all the talk about what Joel Klein did in NYC, there are plenty questions about the actual achievement that occurred during his rein. I don't know many teachers who are flipping over the Obama/Duncan agend...

My wife is in Philadelphia right now at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Annual Convention. Right away this morning she was texting about how inspired she felt right away in her morning workshop - seeing new things, sharing ideas with those around you in the room. A lot of goodwill all around. Education is tough. The day-to-day grind can grind people down. I commented on a message to someone on Twitter that I've seen way too many folks in my career that are checked out when they still likely have 30 years to go in their life. I wonder if those educators didn't do enough to revitalize their practice? Over the last few years I've been scoffing at conferences because first my Google Reader Feed fit my learning bill - long before I knew what a Personal Learning Network is - and now Twitter helps me to keep fresh ideas floating in. Those are the things we all need to make learning part of our everyday lives. Sure you can Email, Tweet or Post to sink y...

I've moved pretty much 100% of my reading to the Kindle or iBook format. There are a few holdout publishers out there - Teachers College Press is the most notable one that I can think of. Odd that they publish all these books from the Games + Learning + Society folks and none of them are offered outside of pulp products. That's also the reason why I haven't read Finnish Lessons yet - although I see its made it to Audible (and I have one credit left for it!). Of late, I've been having problems getting through any books efficiently. I'm a fairly responsible guy - my kids get fed and clothed, I pay my bills on time - but I'm having a hard time staying off of the Safari and in the Kindle or iBooks app. It dawned on me, it must be REALLY hard for a teenager or younger to do that - focus on the task at hand when Angry Birds is a few taps away. I believe this only reinforces the need to put devices in the hands of kids for educational uses. Some may think this is a...

For the last few months when a political ad wasn't on, there have been a few different ads running from Exxon on the importance of investing in our teachers. Is it just a feel-good ad campaign from Big Oil, or is this really happening somewhere? For the last several years I've been hearing about how important Professional Learning Communities are. Outside the bubble of Lincolnshire, IL who's really doing a PLCs in a way that is deep and meaningful? The DuFours have even admitted that the term is losing its meaning. Now the concept of becoming a Connected Educator with a Personal Learning Network is becoming popular, but districts still block Twitter and Facebook. I've never heard anyone involved in education say that professional development isn't important. It's just done really poorly. Here is a portion of  Learning Forward's  proposed definition of Professional Development for the reauthorization of NCLB. primarily occurs several times per wee...

At the end of the last week, I received an email from a teacher asking about how our Flipped Professional Development model will work inside the current Human Resources guidelines for what are called in our district professional growth hours. After so many professional growth hours - time outside the contracted day you are in a training session - you either cash out a set amount of money or take a credit on the pay scale (which I'm certain will look different by July 1 of 2013). This is certainly a fair question and I was honest with the teacher - I had no idea, but I'd get back to her. How do HR carrots apply to non-tradition modes of learning? Unless that teacher asks for time to meet outside of the school day to apply what she learned in the screencasts there's no set amount of time I could sign off on. I can't give anyone credit for watching the videos, because I have no clue who watched it. After reflecting on it for a couple of days, I feel the two don't ...

The following video was Tweeted by Jessica Johnson ( @ PrincipalJ , http://principalj.blogspot.com/ )   the other night. It had quite an impact on me. It's two minutes...take a look. "...and remember, we'll be watching" Only a vendor could get away with making a video like this. Not ASCD, ISTE, AWSA...because this video has the potential to scare the living daylights out of some teachers. I agree with everything said in it. It's what I want for every kid, especially our two boys. But maybe this is a sign I'm not as tough as I think I am. If I were considering this for an all-staff meeting or a training session I'd sit down at night, have a beer and think REALLY hard about whether or not to show this. My first reaction was that this would have been perfect to kick-off iPad training in my former district. But it might have completely shut some folks down. A friend of mine told me her principal said to the staff that "you can't leave your ...

As I wrote last night, I'm all wound up about releasing of first Flipped PD  release on Tuesday. Tonight I was reading the Chief Learning Officer magazine and many of the articles focus on informal learning. The latest article I read - Unlock the Next Wave of Productivity - really drives home the importance of new shifts in what training should look like. Only by enabling informal learning will organizations meet demands for greater flexibility and more learner-driven content. While that article said what I wanted to hear (yes, you're on the right track), it also reminded me of meeting the needs of all learners. Our professionals come from different generations, have different learning styles and come with different levels of technology skills. How do we move forward and still respect the more traditional thinking folks? Hiring substitutes for teachers to go to training is an expensive non-scaleable solution, but you take advantage of it when you have it as an option....

Back in spring, I wondered via blog post how professional development might look different someday soon. After reading much about Social Learning, Personal Learning Networks and Informal learning, I knew there were ideas out there I was doing a bad job of connecting with. Plus I had come to a tipping point with professional development offerings. I was done with trying to make the 60 to 90 minutes between the end of school and picking your kids up from daycare, work. I threw it out to my fellow teaches to see what they thought. They said, what I thought they would based on seven years of experience with training teachers - after school isn't a very popular option for learning. Personally I believe your average teacher isn't going to be able to effectively jump right into Twitter and being building a strong Personal Learning Network after having only friend-to-friend interactions on social networking sites. I feel a bridge is needed to get to that place of independent, sel...

When decision times come around I like to say - If you ask people their opinion, then do what you want to do they'll be mad. If you do what you want and don't ask people their opinion they'll be mad too. Such is life when you're trying to get a read on where people in your organization are at in terms of prospective initiatives. In my last district, leadership decided on 1:1, then had a teacher committee to help steer the direction of the project. I joked with my now former colleagues "they could pick any device they want, so long as it was an iPad." That group met a couple of times and helped make decisions...kind of. I'm not sure the people who were a part of that group felt like they were empowered to make decisions. Personally I don't think they ever in the position to make their own major decisions. I don't think that's a bad thing - leadership had a good vision. I'm trying to figure out in reality what's the best way to get people...

My wife will tell you I'm a Mac snob and she's right. For the last seven years I've been an avid Mac user and all-things-Apple proponent. I'm a veteran of platform battles. XP drove me nuts. Back then I felt people wanted it because it was easier for network folks to manage and it allowed users not to have to think about much. "Computing for Dummies" I thought in my younger, more smug days. I argued with folks up and down about why we needed the Mac OS, how important iLife was to creating things that register on meaningful parts of Bloom's Taxonomy. I still believe those things are important, I'm just realizing it can be done a couple of different ways. For seven years I lived in a 90% Mac district. We were early adopters of all things iOS as well. Then I moved out of the Apple Orchard on to new adventures this past month. More than one former colleague thought it was pretty funny I'd be moving onto a Windows district that ran a Novell network...

I didn't have much of a chance to perform on my own growing up, but attempted to play sports. These past few weeks I was reminded of what pre-game jitters are all about. As we wrapped up new staff inservice on day two I thought I was going to puke. I had literally just walked out of my old district that week, left all I knew professionally for the better part of a decade behind, all my sick leave (we have two young kids) behind in Sheboygan. The person who hired me had left the district the week prior. Sharing time with my new colleagues was over, now it was time to start things up. My mentors are fantastic people who know what they're doing, but not much would settle my stomach down that afternoon. If you're a classroom teacher or library media specialist you go and start setting stuff up, getting grade books, things like that. I'm starting a new position with no direct boss. Time to coordinate data and integrate technology...1,2,3 go! No log-ins to access data, no ...

...getting used to my new digs in Germantown . I moved into an office I'll be sh aring with a soon to be hired Student Information Specialist. To be honest there were plenty of times in the last week I felt like I was going to puke - moving on from all I've known for 7 years professionally. Stomachs have settled now and great conversations are taking their place. Had a great one today with our high school media specialist Jeff Schreiber  who has done great things integrating technology, boosting circulation and getting kids reading. I know we're going to do some great things in the next few years and I look forward to the challenge of discovering what works for Germantown in terms of instructional technology. In addition to instructional technology integration, I'm also working on data and assessment analysis. This is a hot topic in Wisconsin right now, as the DPI NAEPized  (more than you care to know on this link) our standardized test scores. Students who may...

After 7 years I'm moving on from my job in the Sheboygan Area School District. The right fit came along two weeks ago when I was offered the new position of Data Coordinator and Instructional Technology Integrator for the Germantown School District. It's been a great experience in Sheboygan, and I wouldn't be moving on had it not been for the work we've done with mobile devices over the last three years. Good things have happened in the SASD and will continue to with the 1:1 initiative and digital conversion of curriculum. It's too bad I'm moving on during such an exciting time, but when opportunity knocks... I officially start Wednesday, but have a few loose ends still to tie up this week and next in Sheboygan. What a start to the school year. Our oldest son will start his first day of Pre-Kindergarten and I'll be at new staff inservice.

Our iPad/1:1 initiative is just a few days away. On Thursday we will be working with about 50 teachers (another 15 at the end of the month too) to get them started on what our bosses are calling a "digital transformation" of their curriculum. My role is to walk the teachers through the nuts-and-bolts (buttons, swiping, double tapping, pinching...) of the iPad after the Keynote Speaker. Then after lunch my session is on using the Evernote app. I get about 40 minutes to give an overview on tagging, sharing, emailing into Evernote. What sold me on taking charge of this app is when my wife came home from a professional development session at her school about it. I never saw her so excited about something technological. The organization piece, where you forward emails to Evernote with the @ symbol to designate what notebook to send it to and # to assign a tag (already created) really resonated with her. As a yearbook advisor she saw instantly how she could make her inbox less of ...

Right now I'm writing this from Edwards, CO which is about 20 minutes from Vail, CO. Breathtaking views, great vacation spot - we've had a wonderful first day decompressing after a flight to Denver and a 2.5 hour drive. Here in the middle of the Rockies 3G and cellular service is no problem. About three weeks ago my wife traveled to Cuba with her colleagues for a week long trip. After I dropper her off at the airport I packed up our two young boys and headed for refuge on the shores of Lake Michigan at my parent's house. They live in a place called Kewaunee, WI. Kewaunee is about 30 miles west of Green Bay. I had random cellular access - meaning forget data, I was only able to answer or take a call at my parent's house maybe 5-10% of the time I was there for a six-day stretch. My parents Internet connection was okay for being non-fiber, bit was pretty pricy - $60 a month. In Wisconsin terms Kewaunee, isn't the middle of nowhere. Access to information is difficul...

One of my mentors was venting to me the other day about meetings he and his teacher learders go to once a month. The message is change the way you teach...facilitate learning...problem-based/challenge-based learning...flip the classroom. And what did they get in these meetings? Sit-n-git, sage-on-the-stage pontification for 2-hours every month. Not a good way to sell an idea. This post on The Tempered Radical  really brought our conversation back to me this week. Bill Ferriter hits it on head The moral of this story is that we CAN'T be surprised by teachers who run quiet classrooms where lecture is the norm and empowering learners is the exception when those same teachers sit silently listening in faculty meetings for decades on end. We can't really expect our teachers to change en mass if our leadership doesn't change - right? This is nothing new, but how much time have we wasted sharing news that could have been sent via email. In my life 6 years X 10 months X ...

So $162 later, I had a iPhone replacement. Like most others with Smartphones, this is so much more than a phone. Pictures, books, music...pretty pedestrian stuff, but I get my money's worth out of it and then some. While I was well aware of how iCloud helps manage content from the iTunes and Apps Store, I was really happy to get my contacts and Photo Stream back with just a username and password. How did we get along before the cloud? Beats me...I guess we just accepted data loss or jumped through hoops to back stuff up. A few weeks ago I just wrapped up listening to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson for the second time. The part of the book where he Jobs berates the Mobile Me staff is memorable - the changes he made payed off from my vantage point. I'm sure there are people who can poke holes in the service, but it does it what I need it to do. Have my back.

Dropped my iPhone in the water yesterday. Yup, needed to check my email so badly that I had to take it out over water. I watched the life flicker out of it, then Googled what to do - so now it sits in a sealed bowl with rice. I have little hope. What was so important? Nothing...just the feeling that I can check it, so I should. Being that this information obsession is going to cost me, its time to take a breath and re-evaluate my usage.

A few things came together today to make me think about the term hacker . The book of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, David Warlick's post Learner as Hacker  and an email from a colleague all caused me to reflect on the term, that to your average person views as a negative thing. The colleague was asking about a friend's email being hacked - just wondering if she had to worry about anything. I didn't think much of it until I came across Warlick's post on "learning as the practice of hacking." Excellent stuff, with a great deal of quotable lines on the parallels between hacking and how we need to prepare students today for life-long learning. When Woz was putting together boards with the Homebrew Computer Club , he thought of himself as a hacker, but then there was no negative conotation with the term. In his letter to prospective shareholders  a new generation of hacker, Mark Zuckerberg writes about the bad rap: The word "hacker" has an unfairl...

I'm wrapping up Jay Cross's Informal Learning , a book I started between semesters this winter and picked back up after wrapping up my last final at UWM. The New Social Learning   and Personal Learning Networks   started to reframe my thinking on what we need professional development to be - learner centered, flexible, online, informal...not top down, large group, "formal" classes or sessions. I think that this change is obvious, especially in light of the push for Professional Learning Communities that help create job-embedded learning opportunities for staff. But it's not an easy sell, at least for me, to the powers that be. They seem to not know anything else, other than the tried and true after school session, workshop or mashed together credit-worthy professional development class. Development opportunities, some think, need to have a date on the calendar or event, with a stopwatch keeping track of the time. Could their be a more top-down approach to lear...

Will Richardson and Chris Lehman shined a light  on what I found to be horrifying statements. At the Education Innovation Summit Lehman reported defeated former Mayor of Washington DC Adrian Fenty said "if we fire more teachers, we'll have more money for technology."This happened a while ago - back in April, but this morning it came back to me as I contemplated the future of technology funding and support in schools in the face of ever-decreasing budgets. In my opinion, people are more important than machines for our kids. I can buy an iPad or laptop, but a personal teacher/mentor/advisor that's a little more pricey. Can we find ways to use technology to lighten the load for teachers - of course - but as a parent, a school flush with laptops and tablets, but devoid the necessary number of caring professionals to support learning is not a school I want my kids in. To contradict Mr. Fenty, "the more technology we don't buy, the more caring professionals we ...

On Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog, he shared two excellent posts. One on mobile learning  from Mind/Shift, the other on change  in schools by Larry Cuban. The realist in me knows that big shifts in practice, no matter what the institution takes time. The visionary and parent in me wants change now. Others people's kids and my kids shouldn't have to wait. If we wait, we may just be behind again once we're"caught up"...always a few steps (or much more) behind. The realist in me knows that what some consider "real change" is more just rhetoric that faces an up hill battle no matter the philosophy - like over in Oconomowoc . Something hit me the other day while training on the basics of SMART Board software. I had a nice group of teachers who were trying very hard to improve, but I couldn't help but wonder "are they already too far behind?" Am I training them on decades old software that we should be moving beyond? Did we fail as a tech ...

I'm glad a few years ago I introduced the book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times  to our administration. It was exciting to have an assistant superintendent interested in changing the conversation for learning in our school district. While I still certainly appreciate the content of this book, I am soooooooo sick of hearing about 21st Century Learning, 21st Century Skills, 21st Century ad nauseam . Isn't there a better way to phrase this for everyday conversation? Perhaps we need to stick with this so everyone hears consistent jargon, but I don't think people overall have the right idea of what it means. I would imagine if we polled our staff or parents they would say its technology or computer skills. That couldn't be further from the truth. If I say higher order thinking skills  I think that's pretty clear (at least to me) of what that means. I worry 21st Century  means the Jetsons or Star Trek to all too many people. I appreciate Tony Wag...

I've done a bit of an about face since my last post on my next learning steps as I wrap things up at UWM in a couple of weeks. Last post I was thinking about my next program. Now I'm looking forward to the freedom of learning independently. The books we had for classes were great, but I know over these 20 months my personal reading has suffered...how could it not at six credits a semester? I've been kind of jealous of my wife's personal reading of late. I'm one 20 page paper away from that. The worm turned for me about a week ago when something switched in my head. I asked myself, why do I think I need to pay someone $2000 a class to learn? Before UWM I learned quite a lot from books and blogs. I bet I could again! I've been pretty faithful to my favorites - Blue Skunk and Dangerously Irrelevant , but I haven't done much online reading beyond that. With new initiatives coming for 2012-2013 I need to more deeply explore Edmodo communities and see what othe...

This May I'll be wrapping up my master's program at UW-Milwaukee in Administrative Leadership . This program was 100% online . I've done a master's face-to-face too, and the online experience has been better for me. There's no way with a 2.5-year old and a almost 3-month old I could have done this any other way. If UWM hadn't offered this sort of format to earn a degree with licensure for Wisconsin's principal and director of instruction certifications, I wouldn't have done it. I think back to my first master's program, sitting in a car for 180 minutes a night to listen to a 2 hour lecture with some lame group work and a few breaks. Certainly the relationships I built weren't a waste, but those were more built on our collective misery for that process. I can't/won't go back to doing that. Now that I'm at the right stage in my life where I truly love learning (if only 16-year old me had a twinge of that feeling...) I want to event...

So there is tons of writing and speaking about the evolving role of the teacher. If I hear the terminology "sage on the stage" or "guide on the side"used again I may throw up. I completely believe in this evolution, I'm just tired of hearing the same line about it. A similar sort of catch phrase came up a while back in a department meeting with our technology department. At a conference a colleague of mine said a speaker was talking about using their technology to empower users (in this case teachers) to do things themselves - installing plug-ins, free software or items we have a site license for. "Think of yourself as a facilitator, not an administrator" the speaker said. In technology, teaching, professional development and I'd imagine in many other careers I have no idea about, we need to help people help themselves. As we move beyond may I Google that for you  at the intersections of teaching and technology we need to make sure we don't j...

Started this up as a New Year's resolution this year. If you look at my time stamps, it's been too long...like another resolution gone bad. But here I go again. Hoping to be more consistent. Update: Looking back on it, it may have something to do with the beginning of the Spring semester at UWM, along with doing it with two kids for the first time...just saying.

The pitch has been made for a 1:1 initiative starting in 6th Grade. So now, the tough part of "how do we pay for this?" Thankfully, that's not what I have to figure out. Once that gets figured out (multi-million dollar project in the middle of a recession - no big deal...) we have a ton of work ahead of us. There is so much out there that has been shared about 1:1 initiatives. Not the least of which has been on  Dangerously Irrelevant of late with two wonderful guest posts on how they've done this. In our planning to plan I'm taking to heart a short post from Scott McLeod last week New technologies vs new behaviors Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors. - Clay Shirky,  Here Comes Everybody , p. 160 I visit many schools that have 'new technologies,' but not enough of them also have 'new behaviors.' It's time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I'...