Technology use at my school can best be described as nascent. However, it was a very prolonged labor to get this far. My mostly veteran staff has been reluctant to embrace much in the way of Modification or Redefinition in their use of tech. When I arrived a few years ago, there was little more than some word processing going on. The staff had been scared by a recently-retired tech guy so that they barely touched the five year old laptops they had. The interim principal before I arrived had begun to modernize with a new laptop cart, document cameras in most rooms, and a Smartboard in one room. Slowly, over the these last last three years, the new tech guy and I have added laptops, iPads, and (soon) some chromebooks. We believe that different students at different ages with different tasks need different tools.
With some small exceptions, most of the technology use at my school is very basic substitution with a bit of augmentation thrown in of or good measure. Tech activities like math games on iPads or spelling sentences on google drive offer little new (other than exposure to technology) over their analogue counterparts. We are hoping to get teachers to move their practice by changing small pieces of their tech integration. For example, last year, one teacher started having students type spelling sentences into google drive. Once her students got the hang of it (and we ironed out some tech wrinkles), the tech guy and I pushed the teacher to allow the students to comment on each other's sentences back and forth before students submitted to the teacher. This modified the spelling sentence activity because the students in that class had never shared their sentences with classmates before.
I would love technology use in my school to redefine learning for every student. To get there, we are growing one unit, one level of SAMR, at a time. Just like our children gradually grow and mature, so to is our technology integration.
Showing posts with label LeadershipDay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LeadershipDay. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2014
Posted with BlogsySunday, October 27, 2013
Promoting Critical Conversations #SVAMP
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| Conversation (Photo credit: Search Engine People Blog) |
How do you create a culture where “pushback” is encouraged?
How do you create a team that will give you honest feedback?
These questions shape much of the work that I do as principal. There are so many factors to consider when trying to encourage these critical conversations. What was the culture in the past? How did the previous principals do things? Where are the centers of influence amoung the staff? Who will be honest and forthcoming with the principal?
I believe that things take 2-4 years to become clear to a new principal. During the first few months, there is so much to learn that a principal can only go shallow into the issues. Over time, personalities emerge and things start to become clear. Some staff really do seem to put the needs of the kids above all else - sometimes to their own detriment. The scale slides from there all the way down to those rare staff members who seem to have lost most interest in doing right by kids (I am lucky to have no one like that at my current school).
Much like good teaching, good leadership requires a firm set of principles and a fair amount of differentiation. For example, there are some staff who need little encouragement to come tell me what they think. For others, I may schedule a regular meeting just get them to tell me anything at all. Knowing which strategy to use for which staff member is the key. For some a scheduled meeting is just a setup to miss things; they might need me to come find them on an unscheduled basis if we are going to talk. Again, like a good teacher, I have to solicit and accept feedback in different ways from different people.
A second key factor to promoting critical feedback is being clear about when it is welcome. For years, I have tried to get good at using a decision making matrix like this one that I got from a consultant years ago. There are many variations out there, but the idea is the same. Be explicit about what you want from staff when making decisions. I get better feedback, when I tell people what kind of feedback I am looking for. This even works with editing. I usually tell folks that I am looking for proofreading or content editing or both. Seems to me that most school staff want to know what the principal is looking for.Decision making styles from the chart are as follows:
Type 1: Leader announces decision to the team and seeks support but does not ask for any input.
Type 2: Leader has formulated an opinion about the best alternative for the decision s/he is making, but is testing it with the team to see if s/he is persuaded to rethink it before implementation.
Type 3: Leader has a decision to make, but does not have an opinion about the best alternative. S/he is asking the team to provide input and directions to guide decision-making.
Type 4: This will be the team’s decision. Leader’s participation and input will be considered along with others, but will not override others’ input.
Type 5: Leader believes that others are better able to make this decision. Leader will be a resource and will guide the process, but let the team make the decision without his/her involvement (unless asked) and support their decision. Leader will ensure that decisions are aligned with policies, strategic direction, legal issues, etc.
Type 6: Leader acts as if s/he is an outside facilitator. The decision is the team’s. Leader believes others are better suited to make the decision, but will lead and structure the team’s decision-making process. Leader will defer to the team’s decision.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Technology Gardening #leadershipday12 #summerblog12
Over the next few years I blogged about the goings on at school, my opinion an all sorts of education topics, and summaries of education books. I wrote for Leadership Day 2010, but missed it last year.
So, here I am in August 2012 and the question is: What should a principal do to increase the amount of technology integration in school?
A principal needs to nurture the integration of technology. Nurturing means to provide the right environment for technology integration to grow. Teachers need to feel comfortable taking risks, the students need access to decent (or, dare I say, the best) equipment, the network needs to be robust, and the internet needs to be fast and stable. In other words, we need to prepare the soil.
Once things start to grow, we need to tend to them carefully. Of course tomatoes need different care than potatoes; lettuce is handled very differently than peas; squash and onions need totally different amounts of fertilizer (says my wife). Now, if I were far more ambitious (and did not have a board meeting earlier tonight), I would take this analogy way too far by describing what kind of adult learner compares to each of the aforementioned vegetables. Instead, I will point out that some teachers need only play around with technology to learn it well. Others want some direct instruction then off they go. Still others need step-by-step handholding until they are comfortable. Principals need to differentiate the professional training just like a gardener differentiates the care of the plants.
It is at this point that my garden analogy totally falls apart. Principals need to choose the right moment to shift from nurturing to expecting. While the peas on the faculty have already been integrating tech, often for years, the beets finished some PD and got started. On the other hand carrots take a long time to germinate and then grow (not sure how carrots play into this, told you the analogy fell apart). Anyway, two-thirds or more of the teachers are integrating technology. One way to get some of the remaining third growing, I mean using tech, is for the principal to set the expectation. Sometimes we have to quit nurturing and start expecting. Try telling a row of corn that you expect it to grow without fertilizer this year - this analogy is busted.
Another technique that principals often use to encourage technology integration is to model its use. I and many other principals integrate technology into our practice daily. We demonstrate classroom integration ideas into faculty meetings. I have been trying to convince my wife that the best way to get peaches to grow in Vermont is for her to show the peach trees how to grow here. I'm not yet sure that modeling is going to work in this case (in addition, I'm not yet sure that my wife has ever listened to a single word of my gardening advice).
In all good gardens, harvesting the fruits of our labors is the best part. Watching the cucumbers working on a dynamic lesson using all sorts of innovative technology designed by their teachers is as good as serving a salad of only locally grown students. Or something like that.
P.S. No vegetables were harmed in the writing of this blog.
P.P.S. Future blog post: how to avoid getting blight
Friday, July 30, 2010
Leadership Day 2010 #leadershipday10
A year ago, I wrote my very first blog post for Leadership Day 2009. Since then, I have begun picking up steam as an edu-blogger. For most of the school year, I used this blog to highlight the great work going on at school. Occasionally, I posted my opinions. I really got going in June when I took a challenge to write every day. July has been a month of vacation from most things school-related (except the a couple blog posts and virtual #ntcamp).
Now, Scott McLeod, has put out the call for Leadership Day 2010. Since I have vacation brain, I will shy away from deep, thoughtful missives about leadership. Instead, I will stick with a practical, concrete topic. One of Scott's prompts for those of us who like being prompted was this:
What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
To start, I would refer you, dear reader, to my short series of posts about Organization for Principals that I spilled in June. Then, I wrote about using gMail to manage todos (I still do); Evernote as the most amazing note keeper; Dropbox, the one folder that rules them all; and our fledgling steps to use Google Docs.
Today, I will write about RSS.
RSS might be one of the most essential tools for a school principal. Although it will not help manage the flood of tasks, RSS will help a leader immeasurably.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (I have seen variants on that theme). Basically, RSS lets you keep track of many other websites. A classic use is to subscribe to the RSS feed from your favorite news organization. Instead of going to the news website, you go to your RSS reader (more on that in a moment) and read the headlines. Then, decide which to click on and read.
As a principal, I subscribe to the RSS feeds of many education bloggers from all over the world and the ideological spectrum (I can't prove that and suspect I may be reading a more heterogeneous set of viewpoints). I also follow several other topics of personal interest.
Google provides the standard for web-based RSS readers with Google Reader. Most of the desktop and mobile RSS readers will either sync with Google Reader or merely be a front for it. For many months, I used Reader. As my list of feeds grew, I found that it was getting hard to keep up with all of the articles that I wanted to follow. Now, I use an add-on called Feedly. I like the My Digest view because I can easily see what there is to read. Feedly is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
On my iPhone, I have been searching for the best way to read the feed. Again, I started with Google Reader for mobile (a website visited through mobile Safari). Good, but sometimes slow to launch Safari. I have tried several in the past month, and I think I will settle on MobileRSS. I am currently using the free version, but I might pay $1.99 to get rid of ads. MobileRSS seems the easiest and cleanest. It just updated to version 3 and is a great improvement.
What ever way you choose to look at your feeds, RSS is the best way to follow lots of thinkers and ideas with the minimum amount of work (of course, Twitter helps with this too, but that is a different story).
Updated: Here is my collection of Education Related Blogs and Feeds. You can also see this on the left side of my blog.
Thanks.
Now, Scott McLeod, has put out the call for Leadership Day 2010. Since I have vacation brain, I will shy away from deep, thoughtful missives about leadership. Instead, I will stick with a practical, concrete topic. One of Scott's prompts for those of us who like being prompted was this:
What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
To start, I would refer you, dear reader, to my short series of posts about Organization for Principals that I spilled in June. Then, I wrote about using gMail to manage todos (I still do); Evernote as the most amazing note keeper; Dropbox, the one folder that rules them all; and our fledgling steps to use Google Docs.
Today, I will write about RSS.
RSS might be one of the most essential tools for a school principal. Although it will not help manage the flood of tasks, RSS will help a leader immeasurably.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (I have seen variants on that theme). Basically, RSS lets you keep track of many other websites. A classic use is to subscribe to the RSS feed from your favorite news organization. Instead of going to the news website, you go to your RSS reader (more on that in a moment) and read the headlines. Then, decide which to click on and read.
As a principal, I subscribe to the RSS feeds of many education bloggers from all over the world and the ideological spectrum (I can't prove that and suspect I may be reading a more heterogeneous set of viewpoints). I also follow several other topics of personal interest.
Google provides the standard for web-based RSS readers with Google Reader. Most of the desktop and mobile RSS readers will either sync with Google Reader or merely be a front for it. For many months, I used Reader. As my list of feeds grew, I found that it was getting hard to keep up with all of the articles that I wanted to follow. Now, I use an add-on called Feedly. I like the My Digest view because I can easily see what there is to read. Feedly is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.On my iPhone, I have been searching for the best way to read the feed. Again, I started with Google Reader for mobile (a website visited through mobile Safari). Good, but sometimes slow to launch Safari. I have tried several in the past month, and I think I will settle on MobileRSS. I am currently using the free version, but I might pay $1.99 to get rid of ads. MobileRSS seems the easiest and cleanest. It just updated to version 3 and is a great improvement.
What ever way you choose to look at your feeds, RSS is the best way to follow lots of thinkers and ideas with the minimum amount of work (of course, Twitter helps with this too, but that is a different story).
Updated: Here is my collection of Education Related Blogs and Feeds. You can also see this on the left side of my blog.
Thanks.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Leadership Day 2009
I am possibly the luckiest principal around. You see I work in a school that amazes me in so many ways: the students work hard and learn tons, the staff is incredibly talented and devoted, the parents and town are the most supportive anywhere, and the technology is first class.
So, what am I writing about on Technology Leadership Day? With so much going on at my school, I want to report on our progress towards integrating technology in a meaningful way.
When I arrived at my school two years ago, we were in the beginning of a major transition in terms of technology. Phase one of the Touched by Technology fundraising and purchasing campaign was complete, and every classroom teacher (not special educators or specialists) had a new laptop. Phase two was underway and will, by September 2009, include a SmartBoard in every regular ed. classroom (again, no special education or specialists. More on this later.) September 2007 also saw the introduction of a real email service for the staff instead of asking teachers to sign up for a yahoo account.
Over the last two years, we have come to rely on email as a way to eliminate paper in many situations; we have introduced a school calendar on Google calendar; I have begun spreading the use of Google Docs to various constituencies around school; at least one teacher created a classroom blog using the website subscription we buy the teachers; many teachers have made the SmartBoard a part of their daily teaching; many teachers have made the laptop mobile carts a regular feature in their rooms.
So, as of Leadership Day 2009 every professional staff member has a laptop, every homeroom has a SmartBoard, we have well equipped lab, and two mobile carts. Most staff members have had hours of training and mentoring. Most teachers have websites. Things are good.
Where are we going from here? There are two areas that we are going to work on next year. First, we are going to review and reinvigorate our technology skills scope and sequence. Second, I am going to work with a small group of teachers to look into ways that we can integrate our technology and, more importantly, to explore what’s out there that we should be using.
As principal, I am excited about increasing our use of technology.
Thank you.
#leadershipday2009
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