OK, after watch­ing nearly all of the three debates I need to vent about the debate process. I want to see a truly 21st cen­tury debate! I’ve tried to frame my think­ing through an edu­ca­tional lens.  I’ve bro­ken my thoughts below into three cat­e­gories.  The first two are cur­rent sta­tus and desired sta­tus, and they refer to the debates.  The final cat­e­gory is edu­ca­tional impli­ca­tions, which relate to the con­nec­tion to education.

Photo Credit: Barak Obama on Flickr http://bit.ly/Vp3SFC

Cur­rent:  Facts are shared, but they go unchecked immediately.

Desired:  A panel of non-partisan fact check­ers are in a back room imme­di­ately check­ing the cred­i­bil­ity of can­di­date claims.  Their results are dis­played for all to see in real time (Maybe a flash­ing screen behind can­di­dates, or a loud horn when the fact find­ers say a candidate’s facts are false!).

Edu­ca­tional Impli­ca­tions:  If you’re in a 1:1 envi­ron­ment, every class should have a fact checker or two!  Assign stu­dents to not only check facts, but to find facts that con­nect to the lesson.

Cur­rent:  Can­di­dates stand or sit through­out the debate with essen­tially no resources other than what is between their ears.

Desired:  Can­di­dates are allowed to have resources includ­ing com­put­ers.  They can share data with view­ers and the other can­di­date.  Sim­i­lar to a trial, they should present “evi­dence” they will use prior to the debate.  It doesn’t need to be a surprise!

Edu­ca­tional Impli­ca­tions:  Cre­ate assess­ments that allow stu­dents to use resources and the Inter­net.  If you’re wor­ried the ques­tion can be eas­ily found online, it may not be a great ques­tion.  The abil­ity for stu­dents to eval­u­ate and make deci­sions based on infor­ma­tion that have found is a truly essen­tial skill!

Cur­rent:  Can­di­dates debate one another with­out any assistance.

Desired:  Can­di­dates can chat online with their strate­gists through­out the debate.  Part of being a great leader is sur­round­ing your­self with great people!

Edu­ca­tional Impli­ca­tions:  Allow stu­dents to col­lab­o­rate with other stu­dents in the class­room and around the world as much as pos­si­ble.  We often get con­sumed wor­ry­ing about stu­dents cheat­ing at the cost of col­lab­o­ra­tion.  In the “real world”, the abil­ity to col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers is invaluable!

Cur­rent:  Can­di­dates exhibit behav­ior that wouldn’t be accept­able in a mid­dle school debate when they speak over one another, refuse to lis­ten to the mod­er­a­tor, or don’t fol­low the agreed upon rules for time speaking.

Desired:  If a can­di­date goes over their allot­ted speak­ing time, their micro­phone is imme­di­ately shut-off and the audi­to­rium sound sys­tem begins play­ing the national anthem!  That may cut back on some of those problems!

Edu­ca­tional Impli­ca­tions:  Don’t con­sider a career in politics!

Happy bosses’ week to those of you who are in lead­er­ship posi­tions!  This week is a great time to reflect on the impor­tance of lead­er­ship in 1:1 ini­tia­tives.  When I think about all of the 1:1 dis­tricts I have worked with, some thoughts about lead­er­ship stand out in my mind.

• Lead­er­ship is the sin­gle most impor­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of a 1:1 program.…without a close second!
• Lead­er­ship isn’t always a per­son in a tra­di­tional lead­er­ship role.  Some suc­cess­ful 1:1 schools have cre­ated lead­er­ship teams that have really been powerful!
• Although prin­ci­pals and other build­ing level admin­is­tra­tors don’t need to always take the lead, they must sup­port the ini­tia­tive.  This includes a com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing train­ing and time for teach­ers to learn.
• Effec­tive lead­ers develop at least a basic under­stand­ing on the ways that tech­nol­ogy can be used in the class­room.  They also model tech­nol­ogy use with their staff.

When I write this blog, I gen­er­ally hope to pro­vide you, the reader, with ideas that may help move your 1:1 pro­grams for­ward.  After iden­ti­fy­ing the traits above, I am empa­thetic for those of you in schools with poor lead­er­ship.  So what can you do to gather the sup­port of your lead­er­ship team?

• Invite them into your room to demon­strate the great things you are doing.
• Ask to set-up or become involved with a 1:1 lead­er­ship team.  Use the team as a place to dis­cuss and imple­ment train­ing for teachers.
• Let oth­ers know about the great things you are doing such as board mem­bers and par­ents.  Hope­fully, they will push your school level leader to sup­port your work.
• Ask to attend addi­tional training.
• If denied, ask some more!

With­out effec­tive lead­er­ship, it is likely your 1:1 pro­gram will have very lim­ited suc­cess.  It will be like many other ini­tia­tives in edu­ca­tion that are imple­mented incon­sis­tently.  The “pock­ets of great­ness” may be present, but your school will not have sys­tem­atic success.

Nick Sauers

Two weeks ago I par­tic­i­pated in the Lead­er­ship 2.0 Open Course hosted by George Couros. The first ses­sion, Cre­at­ing a Dig­i­tal Port­fo­lio, was well “attended”, and I’d rec­om­mend that you par­tic­i­pate in one of the other free ses­sions over the next seven weeks.

You can read about that first ses­sion on George’s blog, or check out the Twit­ter feed.  Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, George’s use of his blog high­lighted the ways a blog could be used as a learn­ing portfolio.

For many edu­ca­tors, sim­ply say­ing the word port­fo­lio sends shiv­ers up their spines. Per­son­ally, I cre­ated port­fo­lios as an under­grad, teacher, grad­u­ate stu­dent, and admin­is­tra­tor. I’ve also reviewed count­less port­fo­lios that were lugged into my office by eager teacher can­di­dates or vet­eran teach­ers “demon­strat­ing” their mas­tery of teach­ing.  Many of those port­fo­lios were sim­ply gal­leries used to store arti­facts that may or may not accu­rately rep­re­sent the portfolio’s cre­ator.  Unfor­tu­nately, many port­fo­lios have sim­ply become a “dog and pony” show.  So why has such a seem­ingly pos­i­tive learn­ing expe­ri­ence become so neg­a­tive to me and many other edu­ca­tors?  My bit­ter­ness towards these port­fo­lios really has lit­tle to do with the medium used to cre­ate the port­fo­lio, but rather the poor process of cre­at­ing and reflect­ing on the port­fo­lio.  George’s port­fo­lio embraced the many char­ac­ter­is­tics that should be part of any port­fo­lio.  Although the blog for­mat isn’t what makes his blog suc­cess­ful, the tech­nol­ogy sure makes things eas­ier! If you choose, or are forced to cre­ate a learn­ing port­fo­lio for your­self or your stu­dents, here are some key points that may help make your port­fo­lio more rel­e­vant and meaningful.

• Cre­ate a port­fo­lio that makes shar­ing with oth­ers easy!  As a prin­ci­pal, my first screen­ing of can­di­dates was a google search.  If I found that an edu­ca­tor had cre­ated a pos­i­tive dig­i­tal foot­print on a blog or another dig­i­tal tool, they would move up on my list!
• Use a tool that makes it easy to give and receive feed­back.  Those three inch binders don’t serve that pur­pose very well!  If you do choose a tool that allows for pub­lic feed­back, you will need to have seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions about how feed­back is pro­vided.  I like a pub­lic port­fo­lio because it pro­vides the learner with a wider audi­ence than sim­ply a teacher or principal.
• Use mul­ti­ple forms of media on your port­fo­lio.  Oth­ers want to read, see, and hear about your learn­ing.  Videos and images can cer­tainly enhance your portfolio.

When edu­ca­tors ask me about my pref­er­ence of a tech­nol­ogy tool, my first response is always to ask what objec­tive they are try­ing to accom­plish.  Cre­at­ing a port­fo­lio is no dif­fer­ent.  If you can clearly iden­tify WHY you are cre­at­ing a port­fo­lio, it will be much eas­ier to decide what tool works best for you.  Unfor­tu­nately, the why has often been poorly defined or for poor rea­sons.  As edu­ca­tors, we should rec­og­nize the value of reflect­ing on our work as well as receiv­ing feed­back on that work.  A blog, if designed appro­pri­ately  is one very trans­par­ent way to cre­ate such a learn­ing environment.

Nick Sauers

I am always very appre­hen­sive when I read research pub­lished by for profit cor­po­ra­tions.  My skep­ti­cism grows when their research results could be seen as a sales pitch for their prod­uct.  With that in mind, I cau­tiously share the results from a report issued by Dell.  The data for their report were col­lected from inter­views with stu­dents, teach­ers, and par­ents.  Although results are reported for the U.S., Ger­many, and China, my post focuses on the U.S. find­ings.  Some of their find­ings that stood out for me are listed below:

Social Media

• 66% of U.S. teach­ers dis­ap­prove of stu­dents using social media such as Face­book or Twitter
• 59% of U.S. teach­ers never access social media such as Face­book or Twit­ter in the classroom
• 44% of U.S. stu­dents never access social media such as Face­book or Twit­ter in the classroom

Training/Teaching

• 63% of U.S. teach­ers said stu­dents know how to use tech­nol­ogy bet­ter than they did
• 34% of U.S. teach­ers said they had enough train­ing on how to use tech­nol­ogy in the classroom
• The most com­mon use of tech­nol­ogy in U.S. schools was for research

These find­ings were the ones that I found most alarm­ing.  I’m not shar­ing them because I have great faith in their num­bers, but instead I’m shar­ing to encour­age you to have con­ver­sa­tions about the bul­lets above in your own schools.  How are your teach­ers using social media?  Would your teach­ers say that they have been pre­pared ade­quately to use tech­nol­ogy in the classroom?

The entire report from Dell can be found here.

Nick Sauers

Through­out the coun­try, many schools and states are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about mas­tery based learn­ing.  I have had the great for­tune to lis­ten to col­league and national expert on the topic Tom Guskey explain mas­tery learn­ing on mul­ti­ple occa­sions.  The con­cept is sim­ple; rather than mov­ing through mate­r­ial after a pre­de­ter­mined amount of time, stu­dents move through as they mas­ter the con­tent.  Mas­tery learn­ing is some­thing most edu­ca­tors would agree makes sense, but the con­ver­sa­tions about imple­men­ta­tion get much more dif­fi­cult for some.  My post isn’t intended to address the con­ver­sa­tion around mas­tery based learn­ing with stu­dents, but rather as a unique approach to pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment around tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion.  My thoughts are out­lined below as “what ifs”:

What if…

• rather than requir­ing all teach­ers to attend pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, those who had mas­tered the con­tent didn’t need to sit through the training?
• school lead­ers and inte­gra­tion coaches devel­oped assess­ments for teach­ers to demon­strate their under­stand­ing prior to PD sessions?
• those teach­ers who needed extra sup­port and help got it, and those who didn’t need the extra sup­port weren’t forced to sit through PD about a topic they had already mastered?

My thought is that if schools imple­mented this type of PD, they would actu­ally get MORE out of PD with teach­ers.  Those teach­ers who needed more help would receive train­ing in a smaller group that was tai­lored to their needs.  The other teach­ers would be more than pleased to demon­strate their mas­tery prior to attend­ing PD if it meant that PD time truly became their time.

“Day of Discovery”

Does this look like your PD? (Photo credit: kross­bow on Flickr http://bit.ly/7ECEZT)

This model isn’t unique, and some of your schools may already be imple­ment­ing such a pro­gram.  Dur­ing my tech-savvy super­in­ten­dent inter­views that are archived on blog talk radio, one of the super­in­ten­dents dis­cussed how he was imple­ment­ing a sim­i­lar pro­gram with his school admin­is­tra­tors.  After clearly iden­ti­fy­ing the tech­nol­ogy skills he wanted his admin­is­tra­tive team to mas­ter, he cre­ated an assess­ment aligned with those skills.  Those admin­is­tra­tors who didn’t mas­ter the skills on the ini­tial assess­ment were given extra sup­port until they mas­tered the skills.  It wasn’t pun­ish­ment, and even­tu­ally the ENTIRE team mas­tered the skills that had been iden­ti­fied as impor­tant for the dis­trict.  There will cer­tainly be some chal­lenges to imple­ment­ing this sys­tem, but it should pay div­i­dends in the long run!  It would move your PD away from the “time=learning” men­tal­ity in which one size fits all.

Nick Sauers

As a prin­ci­pal and teacher, I’m sure my stu­dents and co-workers got tired of hear­ing me say the word “expec­ta­tions”.  When writ­ing teacher eval­u­a­tions, I used the word over and over because I truly believe that explic­itly set­ting clear expec­ta­tions is one of the most impor­tant things we can do as edu­ca­tors.  Dou­glas Reeves’ book Lead­ing Change in Your School helped frame my think­ing around set­ting and com­mu­ni­cat­ing expec­ta­tions when imple­ment­ing a change ini­tia­tive.  He poses a chal­lenge to lead­ers who have imple­mented major change, and high­lights his chal­lenge with an exam­ple related to read­ing.  Reeves encour­ages those lead­ers to ask their teach­ers and other admin­is­tra­tors ques­tions such as:

What is good read­ing instruction?

What are the five most impor­tant ele­ments of good read­ing instruction?

Once those responses are col­lected, lead­ers should eval­u­ate them for con­sis­tency.  If there is a lack of clar­ity and con­sis­tency, it is likely that the change ini­tia­tive has not been com­mu­ni­cated clearly.

After read­ing Reeves exam­ple, I real­ized how applic­a­ble his exam­ple is to a change ini­tia­tive such as a 1:1 ini­tia­tive.  With that in mind, I’d like to pose the fol­low­ing chal­lenge to you. If you’re a teacher, pose the fol­low­ing ques­tion to the team of teach­ers you work with reg­u­larly.  If you’re an admin­is­tra­tor, pose the ques­tion to all teach­ers at your school.

What does effec­tive tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion look like?

Would all edu­ca­tors in your school or your team answer that ques­tion sim­i­larly?  Obvi­ously, responses can and will vary by school because sim­ply inte­grat­ing tech­nol­ogy is not the goal of most schools. In most places, tech­nol­ogy is inte­grated in an attempt to meet another goal.  By answer­ing the ques­tion above and hav­ing ques­tions about what effec­tive tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion looks like, you can help your entire team!

Nick Sauers

A recent post by Melinda Miller about her flipped fac­ulty meet­ing helped me reflect on other poten­tial impacts of the flipped class­room model.  She essen­tially took care of what she called the “nuts and bolts” of her meet­ing vir­tu­ally by allow­ing par­tic­i­pants to inde­pen­dently read and review infor­ma­tion and view mul­ti­ple videos.  The idea behind the flipped class­room or fac­ulty meet­ing is to allow for a richer dia­logue in the actual class­room or meet­ing rather than wast­ing time on deliv­ery of basic information.

As a prin­ci­pal, I too tried to take care of basic infor­ma­tion prior to meet­ings through emails or other forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  How­ever when I reflect back, I real­ize I didn’t fully embrace tech­nol­ogy in all pos­si­ble ways.  As I read Melinda’s post, I began to think about the pow­er­ful ways tech­nol­ogy can pro­vide the oppor­tu­nity for flipped com­mu­ni­ca­tion with other stake­hold­ers.  Research has shown the ben­e­fits of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with par­ents. Have you and your school embraced tech­nol­ogy to com­mu­ni­cate in new and more effec­tive ways?  Here are three ways to use tech­nol­ogy to increase par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  The sug­ges­tions may stray a bit from what many peo­ple views as the flipped model that sim­ply presents infor­ma­tion in basic ways.

1)  Cre­ate a YouTube chan­nel with mul­ti­ple purposes.

• Share gen­eral suc­cesses and chal­lenges with parents.
• Have stu­dents cre­ate videos or screen­casts review­ing content.
• Cre­ate videos that address com­mon ques­tions or con­cerns that arise through­out the year.

2)  Cre­ate a class twit­ter account to share class­room or school infor­ma­tion.  Have stu­dents take respon­si­bil­ity for the account!

3)  Set-up a flickr account and share images, when appro­pri­ate, of stu­dent work, guest  speak­ers, and even notes from the whiteboard.

Obvi­ously, it is also impor­tant to note that not all par­ents will check these var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods just as some par­ents don’t read newslet­ters or let­ters home.  As I wrote this post, I real­ized I moved away from the con­cept of sim­ply shar­ing basic infor­ma­tion vir­tu­ally.  The ideas above, along with many oth­ers, may poten­tially help you to cre­ate “meet­ings” in ways that were not always pos­si­ble.  Whether you are a school admin­is­tra­tor, coun­selor, or teacher, these things may poten­tially allow you to strengthen the com­mu­nity within your class­room or school by embrac­ing the tech­nol­ogy tools that are read­ily avail­able to all.

Nick Sauers

Today is the sixth anniver­sary of Scott McLeod’s blog Dan­ger­ously Irrel­e­vant as well as Lead­er­ship Day. Scott chal­lenges read­ers to blog about any­thing related to effec­tive school tech­nol­ogy lead­er­ship in what­ever for­mat they choose.  My post is an open let­ter to school lead­ers across the country.

Dear School Administrator,

I’m writ­ing this let­ter to encour­age you to rethink the ways that tech­nol­ogy is used in your school as well as in your own pro­fes­sional life.  Although this let­ter may be crit­i­cal at times, its intent is to help pro­vide poten­tial alter­na­tive views to the cur­rent sta­tus of tech­nol­ogy in our schools.  This let­ter addresses two major con­cerns related to tech­nol­ogy and school lead­er­ship.  The first con­cern is focused on the ways that tech­nol­ogy is used, or not used, in our schools.  The sec­ond is related to how you (school lead­ers) are using tech­nol­ogy for your own per­sonal learn­ing.  As we move into the 2012–2012 school year, the time to change is now!

For too long, our school sys­tems have approached tech­nol­ogy with a cul­ture of fear.  This cul­ture of fear has been mag­ni­fied by the media’s extremely neg­a­tive cov­er­age of tech­nol­ogy.  I real­ize that as a school leader one of your most impor­tant jobs is the safety of your stu­dents.  How­ever, in your quest to keep stu­dents safe and pro­tect them, you have dras­ti­cally over­re­acted.  You have blocked web­sites, at times exten­sively, and restricted stu­dents from bring­ing their own tech­nol­ogy into your schools.  You have pro­hib­ited stu­dents, as well as teach­ers, from embrac­ing social media.  I am strongly encour­ag­ing you to rethink these poli­cies!  You do need to keep stu­dents safe, but you should do that in a rea­son­able way.  Each year you make count­less deci­sions about the safety of stu­dents.  You weigh the con­cerns ver­sus the ben­e­fits of activ­i­ties.  I encour­age you to do the same with tech­nol­ogy.  One exam­ple is the stu­dent trips you take each year.  Some of those are sim­ply day trips to busi­nesses or muse­ums, but oth­ers are overnight trips to Wash­ing­ton D.C. or a long dis­tance band trip.  When you send stu­dents out­side of your school, you real­ize that they may not be as safe as if they remained in the school building.

How­ever, you weigh those safety con­cerns against the amaz­ing learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and life expe­ri­ences your stu­dents will have on the trip.

Your deci­sion to send stu­dents on those trips is based on the fact that their risks are still min­i­mal because you have put appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions in place.  Please begin to use that same rea­son­ing when con­sid­er­ing how tech­nol­ogy is used in our schools.

As school lead­ers, you have wisely warned stu­dents about the harm that can come from post­ing inap­pro­pri­ate mate­ri­als on the web. Unfor­tu­nately, that warn­ing has often trans­formed into a mes­sage to not post any­thing online.  Many schools have taken the approach that if stu­dent con­tent can be found on the web, that is a hor­ri­ble thing.  I strongly encour­age you to change that approach.  We need to begin to encour­age our stu­dents to cre­ate a pos­i­tive dig­i­tal foot­print!  The amaz­ing work that they cre­ate should be shared with the world.  Although we have many great teach­ers, stu­dents want an audi­ence out­side of their class­room teacher.  As an employer, my first screen­ing of any can­di­date was a google search.  If I can’t find some­one on google, I’m bewildered!

I won­der what in the world have they been doing with their life, and why can’t I find  any pos­i­tive things about them online.

Finally, school admin­is­tra­tors, I really want you to con­sider the ways in which you use tech­nol­ogy.  I know that you are extremely busy.  As the for­mer prin­ci­pal of a school with over 900 stu­dents and no assis­tant prin­ci­pal, I can empathize with you!  There were days that I was so busy I didn’t know which way to turn!  With that in mind, I’m plead­ing with you to use tech­nol­ogy for two rea­sons.  First, tech­nol­ogy can make your life eas­ier.  Tech­nol­ogy can allow you to com­mu­ni­cate, col­lab­o­rate, col­lect and ana­lyze data along with a host of other things much more effi­ciently and effec­tively.  The final rea­son I encour­age you to use tech­nol­ogy is that it allows you to develop pro­fes­sional net­works with oth­ers and gather infor­ma­tion effec­tively.  I often get push back from you when I ask you to use twit­ter or an RSS feed to help increase your knowl­edge of what is hap­pen­ing in edu­ca­tion.  The com­mon response is “I don’t have time”.  I often nod my head politely and lis­ten, but want to scream in dis­gust.  As a school leader today, is it really an option to ignore what is hap­pen­ing because of lack of time?  How would you react if other pro­fes­sion­als took the same approach?  Is it accept­able for a phar­ma­cist to fail to stay cur­rent with new research because he/she doesn’t have time?

I close with one last plea.  Tech­nol­ogy by itself is not enough.  Please invest in train­ing your teach­ers and devel­op­ing poli­cies that focus on stu­dent learn­ing!  Never before in his­tory have we been so informed about what works in edu­ca­tion.  The tech­nol­ogy has also given us tools that make the impos­si­ble imag­in­able.  You are serv­ing at a very excit­ing time in edu­ca­tion.  For the sake of our stu­dents and our future, please do not ignore how tech­nol­ogy is impact­ing nearly every sec­tor out­side of edu­ca­tion.  Please use tech­nol­ogy as that lever to truly change learning.

Yours in education,

Nick Sauers