Dangerously Irrelevant

For those of you who have asked, my Monday, June 29, afternoon presentation at NECC, Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation, is now available at ISTEVision: 

FYI, you also might be interested in my K12 Online presentation on this topic. Happy viewing!

For Leadership Day 2009, here are some key questions that I’d ask about the technology leadership function in any school district:

1. Who is primary responsible for technology leadership in the district?
2. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, who is the primary technology leader’s direct supervisor?
3. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, does that person sit on the superintendent’s cabinet?
4. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, how often does that person meet individually with the superintendent?
5. How many other job titles (or what other job responsibilities) does the primary technology leader have?
6. Is the primary technology leader in charge of both networking / hardware / software support AND technology integration or just one?
7. Is technology leadership a shared function within the district or does it primarily reside in one person?
8. How big is the differential between the primary technology leader’s salary and what she could make in a similar corporate environment?
9. What kind of (and how much) professional development does the primary technology leader receive each year?
10. How big is the differential between the technology staff:computer ratio and what occurs in a similar corporate environment?
11. What percentage of technology-related expenditures go toward educator professional development?
12. What percentage of the technologies purchased by the district were primarily student-centric (as opposed to teacher-centric)?
13. When was the district’s last technology referendum? Did it pass? How close was the vote?
14. When was the last time (if ever) that students were asked about their experiences using (or not using) technology in their classes? What did they say?
15. And, what might be the most important question of all, how many minutes per week, on average, do students use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning experiences (and how do they spend those minutes)?

I’m sure that I could think of other questions too, but these are a good start. Here’s why the answers to these questions matter:

1. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. No one else has the power to set and facilitate the district-wide vision for effective technology usage.
2. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. The further down the org chart the primary technology leader sits, the harder it is for that individual to facilitate necessary change.
3. If no, that’s the wrong answer. Not including the primary technology leader on the superintendent’s cabinet sends a message to the entire organization (and the outside world) that technology is nonessential.
4. Ideally the primary technology leader would meet individually with the superintendent at least as often as the curriculum director, associate superintendent, business manager, and/or other top-level district staff. Desired frequency will vary by district, but I would say every few weeks at a minimum.
5. Many primary technology leaders wear other hats (principal, superintendent, director of facilities, business manager, etc.). Effective technology leadership is a full-time job. I understand that many districts – particularly smaller ones – need to job share, but the more this person’s work is diluted across multiple titles and/or responsibilities, the less successful the district’s technology efforts will be. Guaranteed.
6. If just one, that’s the wrong answer. Separating these functions is a potential recipe for disaster because it often leads to turf and/or resource conflicts, facilitates confusion by classroom teachers, results in the integration function being marginalized or nonexistent, and so on.
7. Ideally the technology function is shared across the district. Effective change is much more likely to happen when many pull together.
8. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader.
9. Pay close attention to the number of days the primary technology leaders gets for her own professional learning. Also pay attention to whether those days are just focused on networking/hardware/software support versus technology integration, how to facilitate effective change within complex organizations, large societal/workforce shifts that will impact schools, building effective teams, and other non-technical, leadership-related topics.
10. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader. Corporate computer:support staff ratios tend to range between 75:1 and 150:1. In K-12 education, ratios tend to be 300:1 or higher (and it is not uncommon to see 800:1 or worse).
11. Ideally this number would be between 25% and 50%. A corollary question might be How much of the computer equipment that you’ve purchased doesn’t get used very often?
12. The higher this percentage the better. It’s important for teachers to use computers. But it’s more important for students to use computers since they’re the ones that we’re supposedly preparing for their future lives.
13. A lot of districts have trouble passing technology referenda. Sometimes they’re close, sometimes they’re not. Taking a look at how a district pitches its technology referenda to its local community can tell you a lot about the district, the community, or both.
14. For most districts, the answer to this will be rarely or never. That’s the wrong answer. The correct answer is at least every year.
15. For most districts, the answer to this rarely will be more than a couple of hours (and often will be less than one hour). That’s the wrong answer in a digital, global era.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the posts for this year!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Leadership Day 2009 here at Dangerously Irrelevant!

You can see the posts from previous years at

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

Hope some of you will participate. The past two years’ posts have been awesome. Be sure to read over the guidelines for this year!

I had a Twitter discussion the other night with Jim Twetten, who’s the Assistant Director for Academic Technologies here at Iowa State University and also has quickly become one of my ‘go to’ people on campus.

Jim took exception to the fact that I had poked fun at the ‘Learn about Facebook’ training session that ISU was offering to faculty. I replied that I was concerned that we never seem to hold folks accountable for being self-learners. After all, Facebook isn’t an extraordinarily difficult tool to learn how to use. Most intelligent people (which university faculty generally are) could figure out much of it if they just sat down and messed around for 30 minutes or so. And of course the same applies to blogs, wikis, and many other technologies. They’ve gotten so simple that the learning curve just isn’t that steep anymore.

And yet many educators (K-12 teachers and administrators, postsecondary faculty, etc.) still are extremely unwilling to just sit down and try stuff. Our digital learners, of course, have little hesitancy when it comes to clicking on things just to see what they’ll do. That willingness to probe, investigate, and experiment helps them learn and master the tools.

As someone who does a lot of training and professional development for school administrators, I wonder how much I’m facilitating codependence. In many job sectors, employees are expected to keep up with relevant technologies or risk job loss. When do we require that of K-12 and postsecondary educators? At what point do we say to them “No, we’re not training you how to use this. It’s easy enough for you to learn on your own. And if you don’t, we’ll find someone else who can.”

It’s a fine line between helping and codependence. And when it comes to educator technology training, I’m not sure we’re always on the right side of that line…

I tweeted:

And Barry Dahl replied:

Barry’s right and I’m wrong. I failed my own information literacy test. Why? Because even though I had access to (and linked to) the original report, I didn’t critically consume it the way I should have. Instead I relied on this report from CNN:

And because I did, I made an incorrect statement that then got retweeted by others. Shame on CNN for being misleading and/or inaccurate, but shame on me too for not doing my homework the way I should have. Just because CNN is a traditional, reputable news organization doesn’t mean that I don’t need to be a critical consumer of the information it provides.

Thanks, Barry.

Since the past two have been so successful, I am putting out a call for people to participate in Leadership Day 2009. As I said two years ago:

Many of our school leaders (principals, superintendents, central office administrators) need help when it comes to digital technologies. A lot of help, to be honest. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, most school administrators don’t know

• what it means to prepare students for the 21st century;
• how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
• what appropriate technology support structures (budget, staffing, infrastructure) look like or how to implement them;
• how to utilize modern technologies to facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders;
• the ways in which learning technologies can improve student learning outcomes;
• how to utilize technology systems to make their organizations more efficient and effective;
• and so on…

Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Most of them didn’t grow up with these technologies. Many are not using digital tools on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.

So… let’s help them out.

Guidelines

On Sunday, July 11 12, 2009, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, etc. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. If you participated in years past, post a follow-up reflection. Whatever strikes you. The official hashtag for your post and/or Twitter is

#leadershipday09

Please also link back to this post to ensure that I find yours. If you don’t have a blog, comment on someone else’s post and/or send your thoughts to me and I will post them for you. I will do a summary afterward of what folks wrote and talked about [bloggers, this means some new readers probably will head your direction; this is a blog carnival for technology leadership!].

Some prompts to spark your thinking

• What do effective K-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?
• Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?
• What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators forward? Given the unrelenting pressures that they face and their ever-increasing time demands, what are some things that administrators can do to become more knowledgeable and skilled in the area of technology leadership?
• Perhaps using the new National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) as a starting point, what are the absolutely critical skills or abilities that administrators need to be effective technology leaders?
• What strengths and deficiencies are present in the new NETS-A?
• 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)?
• What should busy administrators be reading (or watching)?
• How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders?
• How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?

Here are the ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past two years

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

A badge for your blog or web site

Please join us for this important day because, I promise you, if the leaders don’t get it, it isn’t going to happen.

Did you miss the extravaganza this year? Wish you were at NECC 2009 but couldn’t make it? Hate NECC and want to snipe from afar? Here are some resources that should help…

• If you want unofficial, raw (dare I say authentic?) coverage, many of us tagged our blog posts with necc09 or necc or necc2009 or ebc09 or edubloggercon.
• If you’re looking for more official coverage, see all of the posts at ISTE Connects and read the conference newspaper, the Daily Leader.
• Some of the sessions were filmed. Check out the videos at ISTEVision.
• If you’re interested in a particular session, the presenter may have uploaded his or her handouts.
• You can sift through the many thousands of photos on Flickr tagged necc09 or ebc09 or edubloggercon or ccdc09.
• Watch the video interviews at the Bloggers’ Cafe. I love it when Lisa Thumann says, “Helloooo, Joe!” [Oh, and VERY uncool of Joe to completely dismiss the Internet access issues.]
• For the brave (or foolish) who want to read through all of the tweets, the official Twitter hashtag was #necc09. See also #ebc09 and #edubloggercon and #neccunplugged and #necc09mg and #notatnecc09.

My final thoughts on NECC 2009

• A big THANK YOU to everyone who said kind things about my presentations. I believe that both my Monday afternoon (Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation) and Tuesday morning (Why aren’t you having a bigger impact?) sessions were filmed and will be available online. I’ll post the links as soon as I have them.
• As usual, Edubloggercon and the Bloggers’ Cafe were the places to be for fun, stimulating, thoughtful conversation. A big shout-out to everyone I met and/or hung out with in those two locales. If I never attend a formal NECC presentation again, y’all are still worth the price of admission. Steve Hargadon took a fair amount of heat for last year’s Edubloggercon. This year I heard nothing but praise. Steve, you don’t hear it enough but thanks for all that you do. This year’s event was FABULOUS.
• There may have been someone at NECC who was funnier than Dean Groom but if there was, I didn’t meet him/her. Thanks for all the laughs, Dean!

Photo credit: Waiting, Dean Shareski

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, David Warlick’s Edubloggercon ‘09 Animoto, which I think captures the informal, conversational nature of the experience quite nicely. See you next year in Denver!

A few days before NECC I was invited by a publicist to interview Julie Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), and also speak with the folks from Achieve3000. I accepted because I’ve always wanted the chance to talk with Julie. I had no idea in advance that I would end up having a Notting Hill Horse & Hound magazine-type experience (and, yes, I was Hugh Grant).

Florida Virtual School

I knock on a door and am quickly ushered into a hotel suite. I meet and shake hands with Ben Noel, CEO of 360Ed, as he walks out the door. Then I am offered a beverage, plunked onto a couch, handed a packet of publicity materials, and given 30 minutes to talk with Julie and Andy Ross, VP of Global Services for FLVS. The topic: FLVS’ new online video game / American History course, Conspiracy Code. I’m a little bit disoriented but gamely dive in…

Conspiracy Code runs on a custom gaming engine designed specifically for FLVS by 360Ed. It cost $1.5 million to develop; costs were shared equally by FLVS and 360Ed and spread over three years ($250K per partner per year). Two hundred FLVS students are in the game now. Several other districts are piloting it. Conspiracy Code is designed to be an integrated, full-year course / gaming experience. Students take about 90 to 100 hours to complete the game. They dip in and out of the gaming engine throughout the year, assembling clues and completing missions. The game includes 51 assessments (both oral and written), 270 mini-games, numerous interrogations, 30 ‘agent eliminations,’ and 371 clues. Teachers monitor student progress; each of the 10 missions takes 2 to 3 weeks. Most students spend about an hour a day working for the class, some of which is in the game environment. Historical facts are interwoven throughout the gaming experience and student-teacher discussion. Sometimes the game requires students to do outside research to complete assignments and proceed forward.

• Conspiracy Code Product Overview
• Conspiracy Code Press Release
• FLVS Consipiracy Code web site
• FLVS Presskit
• Education Next article about FLVS

Achieve3000

Throughout our conversation, people are coming in and out of a door to another room in the suite (reporters? other bloggers?). When my 30 minutes with Julie and Andy are up, I’m swooped into that room, replaced by someone else who gets my spot on the FLVS couch. I’m handed another publicity packet, do the quick meet-and-greet, and away we go…

Achieve3000 is a ‘differentiated instruction solution.’ In essence, students are given an article to read on the computer that’s aligned with their reading level. The company recommends a minimum of 1 or 2 articles a week but there are articles available every day if desired. Great care has been taken to avoid stigmatization of low-level readers. For example, even though the article text and corresponding assignments are geared to students’ individual reading level, the overall layout of the article, font size, graphics, etc. all are extremely similar to what other higher-level readers in the class are experiencing. There is little to no difference in reading experience; it’s actually fairly difficult to tell at a glance at what level another student is working. The student reading at first-grade level also is reading the same content as her peer at the ninth-grade level. This allows low-level readers to still contribute to class discussions. All of this is in contrast to schools’ typical practice of having separate books or textbooks – often on separate topics – or pullout programs for struggling readers.

Results so far seem to be impressive. Expected student growth in a year is 46 lexile points. Students who read one article a week average 102 lexile point gains; students who read two articles per week average 124. The program accommodates Spanish-speaking students (and, soon, those that speak Haitian Creole). The New York City and Miami-Dade school districts (as well as the State of Hawaii) are using Achieve3000. Average gains in one year for ESL/ELL students are 166 lexile points (compared to 27 points expected). Good results also are being seen with students with special needs (see, e.g., the Arrowhead (WI) Schools).

Achieve3000 is working with the Associated Press and now has an archive of over 16,000 nonfiction articles. Next steps for the company are to 1) create a number of specific science units, and 2) identify and/or write articles that target specific career clusters and can be aligned with the WorkKeys job skill assessment program.

Final impressions

My time is up. I’m whisked out of the back room toward the hotel suite door. Julie and Andy are talking with someone new on the couch and I’m soon in the hallway, left at last to collect my thoughts. As I walk toward the elevator to return to my own hotel room, I’m left with one thought: Man, was that strange. Quite informative, but strange nonetheless. Who knows what else goes on in the back hallways, hotel suites, and meeting rooms of NECC?!

Disclosure: I received no incentives from either organization (other than a thumb drive from FLVS that contained the above Conspiracy Code materials) and was not pressured to cover them in any particular way. In short, I believe I was treated much like any media representative, despite being ‘just a blogger.’