Be of Use

Over break I kicked the tires on Udemy for the first time. Being that Big Data and Personalized Learning are my current obsessions I choose Educational Big Data and Learning Analytics as my first class. Above is a video from that class - I was surprised I had not seen it yet. Warning - it is put out by Ericsson - but they aren't selling broadband plans with it ( at least not directly). There's plenty of good sound bites in here, but Sugata Mitra's line toward the end jumped (19:07) off the screen at me - "the teacher needs to step back and say, 'today's topic is this, now open your notebook and figure it out.'" An exciting (at least for me) and simple statement on his vision of education. I have hear and read a lot about holding  students and adults responsible for their own learning. Frankly I think that there's a lot of focus on student learning and not near enough on teacher learning. This statement certainly asks the learner to own it....

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

I strongly believe in instructional visions that put the teachers on the sideline facilitating learning instead of leading it. Be it the flipped classroom or Clayton Christensen's vision of learning programs and games taking the lead in personalizing instruction, I think we need to embrace this developing role. The teacher is by no means marginalized with these models, simply more of a coach or counselor. In the world of easy access to information personal relationships development trumps content expertise. For those of us working in technology, we've known for a long time that its okay to tell someone "I don't know, but will look into it" (I think that's a Doug Johnson line...). All of us in education need to be okay with that, from the superintendent on down. Content expertise is great, but I think humility is more important. I get it that it's a tough pill to swallow for some, but I feel I've been both happier and more effective in my job since I...

It's funny that I started this rant on January 3rd, then on January 4th this post appears on All Things PLC - Creating Buy-In for PLCs ---------------------------------------------- "The OSEP (Office of Special Education Programs) Technical Assistance Center on the SWPIS website (www.pbis.org) suggests that before schools begin implementing any sort of system change, they achieve at least 80 percent buy-in from building staff" (Windram, Bollman & Johnson, 2012). 80%! Really? In the book How RTI Works in Secondary Schools:Building a Framework for Success  authors Holly Windram, Kerry Bollman and Sara Johnson cite reliable sources - Mike Schmoker ( Results Now ) and Anthony Muhammed ( Transforming School Culture )  on the importance of buy-in. I'm not questioning the importance of buy-in. After a great deal of reading and seeing change flounder in different settings, I'm just starting to wonder what kind of Herculean effort is needed to pull it off? Windr...