Archive for 2010

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What path innovation?”

October 12th, 2010 by Butch Owens

Are common standards and national tests the panacea for our nation’s woes?  Some seem to think so, but I’m not so sure.    Just last April I had the opportunity to hear Yong Zhao, author of Catching up or Leading the Way,  speak at our annual Leadership 3.0 Symposium.   He argues that while for years, politicians and the public have been looking for what is wrong with American education by constantly comparing the test scores of American students to those of students in such places as Russia, Japan, Singapore, and China, test scores don’t measure how well a country itself is doing. One striking example is how far America is ahead of all other countries in the number of patents issued; China, by contrast, is ahead in toy production.

The irony is that while we are busy trying to catch up with countries that have better test scores, those very countries are trying to emulate our educational system—or at least the one we used to have.  China, Korea, Japan and Singapore, for example, all have national initiatives to move their educational systems toward more local control, more autonomy, less emphasis on test scores determining a student’s or school’s future, and greater choices for the individual.  These are traditional characteristics of our system which have contributed to our success in turning out well rounded and innovative citizens.  And all of the latest literature argues that the ability to innovate is what we need in the future.

How would you judge an effective school?  Here are some top criteria on my list:

  • The number of  varied opportunities a student has beyond the core academics
  • The degree that students enjoy their school and feel they are important
  • Teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students can learn
  • Opportunities for students to progress at their own rate
  • Strong art and music programs and curricular activities that connect students to school

When you look back on your school days, is it the test scores that really motivated you to excel, or all of the opportunities you had to be an individual and find your own purpose and passion?

Take away those things that have enabled our system to produce the inventors and innovators of today and what will be left?  At best, a technically capable American engineer competing for the same job as an equally capable engineer from India who will do the job for $7500 a year.  A better alternative is an educational system that creates an American engineer with not only the technical skills but the imagination, innovation and creativity to design the new ideas that will need the $7500 a year engineer in India to help develop.

In an earlier post I wrote about what students really need to know and learn in school in this 21st century and ended with  the comment, “If it’s easy to test, it’s easy to digitize, and if it’s easy to digitize it can be done easily by a computer.”  What we really want are well rounded, innovative students prepared for a lifetime as productive, innovative citizens.  Will common standards and national tests ensure that outcome?

As you ponder that question, listen to Harry Chapin’s “Flowers Are Red“; how common do we want our standards to be?

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Posted in Pondering | No Comments »

Time to End the Tech Plan?

September 27th, 2010 by Bob Blackney

Oh dread. It is time again to rewrite our district technology plan. Contemplating this Sisyphean task got me thinking about where the requirement for a technology use plan came from and how can we improve it?

I did an Internet search for school technology plans to see what I could find. The oldest plan that I could find is a technology plan from September 1982 from a district in Salt Lake City. Interestingly, it was a 12-year plan for the small school district that totaled 412 words. Juxtapose that with the nearly 300 pages of our district’s last technology plan! It makes me wonder if all the energy we’ll spend rewriting it will pay off.

Sure, thirty years ago when the first computers started appearing on the steps of the schoolhouse, we desperately needed a plan for what to do with them. That was a good idea!

Fast-forward to 2010 and technology is so integrated into everything we do that it is nearly impossible to find an activity that has not been impacted by it. Instead of “How do we use this?” I’m far more likely to hear, “Why can’t I get this online?”

We are awash in a digital tidal wave. Like the music and printing industries, education is quickly moving to being completely digital. Instead of planning how to use technology, we are more likely to look for an electronic solution as our first alternative.

At this point, it makes little sense to write a detailed, three-year technology plan that is separate from every other planning document that a school district writes. What we need is a brief description that easily communicates the district’s direction to the stakeholders. Leave out the massive details that change before the plan can even get through the approval process. Forget the budget section that attempts to project expenses five years out when the Legislature hasn’t even passed a budget for this year! We need a simple plan that is integrated with other district planning documents and is revisited often—not once every three years.

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Posted in Productivity, Technology Planning | 3 Comments »

Facebook & Twitter Revisited

September 13th, 2010 by Lisa Marie Gonzales

The mere mention of Facebook makes some of us administrators cringe.  Talk about Twitter and eyes roll.  But I say to you, think again.

Facebook now has 511 million active users worldwide, 57% of whom are in the United States.  Establish your school or district on Facebook and you have an instant public relations and communication opportunity.

You have options.   You could start with an official community Facebook page for your school, accessible to anyone in the Facebook world.  It’s easy to add photos, links, discussions, notes, events, and more.  And it’s a multi-way communication tool because people can post messages on your “wall.”  One challenge with a community page is that updates don’t show up in the News Feed.  Also, community pages are limited to 5,000 “followers,” but isn’t garnering that much support a problem we’d all like to have?

A Facebook group is an alternative.  What’s the difference?  For one thing, their size is smaller.  Intended to be places for people to get together and share information, groups are limited to 1,000 members.  But a more important distinction is that groups can be closed.  People who want to participate need your prior approval.  With a closed group, you may feel more comfortable posting pictures or videos from events, working online with your PTA or School Site Council—or even Robotics or Dance Team parents.  You might also like the feature that lets you quickly send messages to group members.

Facebook can be a powerful tool for pushing information out to parents and the larger community about your events, programs, themes, and more. For example, if you have recognize character traits each month, such as caring, respect, or resiliency, you can share and reinforce examples on Facebook.  Its also a great way to publicly thank parents and other volunteers who support your events.  After all, don’t we all love to see our name in lights?

Twitter is another social networking tool that may seem silly to some but can be a loyal ally in your communication campaign.  Each day, some 190 million users send out more than 65 million 140-character “tweets.”  Why not you?  Again, this is not about letting your friends in on what you had for breakfast; this is about building community and connecting with those who you want to know about your programs in your school or district.  Some schools even use it for fund raising.  That’s right: Tweet for dollars!

For both tools, here are some tips.  Think “down to earth.”  Be personable.  Add smiley faces on Facebook—and, yes, copious exclamation marks!!!!!  These touches make people want to follow you and tune in.  Don’t just communicate when something goes wrong or when you need people to act.  Share the fun in school and the accomplishments.   “Wow!  400 students joined me at flag salute today who had perfect attendance for the month of September!  Next month we’re shooting for 500!”  Then sit back and see how many people click, “Like it!”

Too busy to mess with both a Facebook page and a Twitter account?  Not a problem.  You can link your Twitter and Facebook accounts so that when you update Facebook, the information is immediately shared on Twitter, and vice versa.  I prefer to post to Facebook because I don’t have to worry about Twitter’s 140 word limit.  My Twitter followers get a truncated tweet, like a headline, that links to the full version on Facebook.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are not just for the kids.  These easy-to-use Web 2.0 tools can help you build more of a sense of community and share the message you want others to hear about the work you do.  Learn more from these TICAL resources!

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Posted in Productivity | 1 Comment »

Hey kids, what do you think of your teacher?

August 31st, 2010 by Michael Simkins

Earlier this month, the California Legislature passed a bill (SB 1422) that “authorizes the student government of a high  school to establish a committee to develop a survey to solicit student opinions of different class aspects and  teacher effectiveness, and establishes requirements for the  administration and results of the survey.”

Now, like any bill, this one has its critics.  Are students mature enough and do they have sufficient experience and emotional detachment to make valid judgments of their teachers?  Will they use the evaluation process as a way to “extort” a higher grade from a teacher in exchange for not being slammed as an incompetent jerk?  Will the bill and its various requirements actually retard efforts by forward thinking teachers, districts and schools that have already developed and implemented surveys for students to provide feedback to their teachers?

Those questions have yet to be answered.  In the meantime, there is no reason we can’t start thinking about how technology might help us should we, in concert with our student government, want to move forward.

Yes, of course, some meetings would be in order.  After all, we all spend a good part of our day on the same physical campus.  Nonetheless, the faculty, administration and students are occupied much of the day in separate activities and separate spaces.  So the committee working on this task might find it very useful to record meeting notes and develop drafts of a questionnaire using an online tool such as Google Docs or Buzzword.  These let committee members add their 2 cents whenever its convenient for them.  And anything they write is immediately available to the group.  Plus, you don’t have to deal with the confusion of several versions being exchanged among committee members and trying to make sure someone has the actual, final, complete version.

Once the developers agree to the questions that will be asked and the response scales, these can be easily deployed via simple online tools such as a Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, or Qualtrics.

Whether or not you think it’s a great idea that high school students evaluate the effectiveness of their teachers, if you live in California it’s now a fact with which you’ve got to deal.  Check out these technology tools; they can really facilitate the process!

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Posted in Productivity, Professional development | No Comments »

Using Visualization Tools to Get the Bigger Picture

August 24th, 2010 by Devin Vodicka

As you dive into the flow of minutia that comes with the opening of a new school year, don’t forget to take a moment now and then to stick your head above water and remind yourself of the Bigger Picture.  There are some excellent new visualization tools that can help you do it.  Let me show you what I mean.

A Blueprint for Reform is a 45-page document that outlines many proposed changes in the federal role with respect to public education.  You can use visualization tools to get a sense of the report even if you don’t have time to wade through all those pages.  As an example, I’ve created several graphics using  Many Eyes, a beta project out of IBM that lets you upload data (for example the text of a document) and then analyze it in various ways.  Creating a “word cloud” is one example.

Some of the words that jump out are not surprising.  We would expect that the Blueprint would reference schools and students.  I was most struck by the way that the word “will” stands out in the word cloud.  Some of this may be due to the fact that the document describes a desired future, but there may be other implications as well.  Also of interest is the pervasiveness of “college” in this document for K-12 education.  This is reflective of the emerging emphasis on college and career readiness that we can expect to amplify in the near future.  For those interested in hints about future funding, the phrase that jumps out to me is “grants.”

Another visualization that I created pulled two-word pairs instead of singletons .  This visual suggests that the U.S. Department of Education will be shifting away from formula-funded resources to more competitive grants.  We can also see that the emphasis on student groups such as English Learners is not likely to diminish.  Other phrases that stand out include career-ready, effective teachers, and charter schools.  I’m pleased to see student growth emerge as a concept that may help reframe our accountability systems.

My next visualization of the Blueprint was to create a “phrase cloud” that indicates relationships between words in the Blueprint.  This diagram helps to reveal the thinking behind the organization of the Blueprint.  For example, states will work with districts, districts will work with schools, schools include support systems that will improve, develop, strengthen, and expand practices and programs.  It is also interesting to see nonprofits included as partners to districts.  Notice also how each mention of teacher (or teachers) is connected to principals and leaders.

Given my interest in data and technology, I next created word trees that isolated those terms to provide a quick visual synopsis of the role of those items in the Blueprint.  For technology, this graphic reveals how it is embedded within the Blueprint as a tool to improve instruction and address student learning challenges.  This word tree also shows a connection in the document between technology and engineering and mathematics—this is reflective of the expansion of this reauthorization away from just English Language Arts and Mathematics.

The word tree for data reflects an emphasis on systems, identification of local needs, and also includes a number of data elements that we can expect to see included in the new accountability model.  Many of those data elements, including disaggregated analyses, are familiar to us but some—such as levels of support and working conditions—will require entirely new data collection systems and methods.

You can explore the online graphics or you can use the data set to create your own visualizations.  I am hopeful that this visual tour of the Blueprint has been a helpful introduction to what appears to be an ambitious agenda for educational reform.  It is my belief that we as educational leaders must not only leverage existing technology tools such as these online visualization resources, but also network and connect with one another to share information and knowledge as we continue to navigate this transition into a new era of public education.

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Posted in Leadership, Productivity | No Comments »

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