Be of Use

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...