Dangerously Irrelevant

The Did You Know? (Shift Happens) videos have been seen by at least 40 million people online and perhaps that many again during face-to-face conferences, workshops, etc. This week saw the release of the latest version, this one focused on the state of Iowa. Titled Iowa, Did You Know?, the video is aimed at Iowa policymakers, citizens, and educators and is intended to help them feel a greater sense of urgency when it comes to changing our schools. Right now there’s a fair amount of complacency; the average Iowan isn’t coming to his or her school board or politician saying, “Hey, why aren’t you preparing my kids for this digital, global world we now live in?!”

Take a look at the video and see what you think. Even if you don’t live in Iowa, I think you’ll find it quite pertinent to your educational context too. More thoughts and resources after the video…

Additional resources

We are hopeful that the video will be shown to groups all over the state. It comes with a facilitator’s guide to help spark conversation as well as PDF versions of each slide. The idea is that any local group – school, Rotary club, senior citizens’ center, community group, or book club (or even just a small bunch of neighbors) - can convene for 30–60 minutes, show the video, and then start talking and acting. Additional resources and information are available at the Iowa Future web site to help these groups. We need a groundswell of Iowans to start advocating for 21st, not 19th, century schools.

Leadership Day 2011

In addition to announcing Iowa, Did You Know?, this post also is going to serve as my Leadership Day 2011 contribution. If our schools are going to ‘shift’ and prepare students for the next (rather than the last) half century, school leaders are going to have to be much more proactive about engaging with parents, community members, and policymakers. Whether it’s pulling snippets from this blog or Mind Dump and mentioning them at every possible gathering, showing videos like this one and inviting discussion and action, or finding ways to regularly and visibly highlight innovative student and teacher uses of higher-order thinking skills and digital technologies, principals and superintendents can’t just focus on what occurs within their school systems. We MUST engage the public and we MUST engage the people who make policy at the state and federal levels. Right now we’re not doing this nearly as much as we should be. For example, we debuted Iowa, Did You Know? at the School Administrators of Iowa conference earlier this week. I heard lots of comments afterward from administrators about how excited they were to show the video to their staffs. But nary a single one said that he or she was excited to use it to help spark needed conversations with parents, citizens, or legislators. If we don’t have these latter conversations too, we’ll continue to run into the external mindset and funding/policy constraints that surround and hinder what we do, regardless of how innovative we are internally.

Does every state need a video like Iowa, Did You Know? Probably. If not a video, then a report or a recorded speech or something that galvanizes citizens to start putting pressure on school boards and lawmakers to do something DIFFERENT when it comes to learning, teaching, and schooling. Right now most of the discussion regarding educational reform is simply tweaking what we’ve always done, trying to make it a bit better or more intense. Given the transformational impacts of digital technologies on learning, communication, the global economy, our jobs, entertainment, and just about every other area of life we can think of, tweaking just doesn’t cut it.

With gratitude

It is with great appreciation that I thank:

• Troyce Fisher, School Administrators of Iowa, and everyone else involved with the Iowa Future initiative for being so patient with me as I worked to get this done, for insisting that the video have an encouraging ending, and for having the original vision for a visibility initiative to reach Iowa citizens and legislators, not just educators.
• XPLANE, who now has done the graphics on 3 of the 5 ‘official’ versions of Did You Know? and who came through yet again despite a very tight timeline. I can’t emphasize enough how creative the folks there are and how wonderful they are to work with. I have absolutely no hesitation recommending them for any project, any time. They are truly amazing and gifted.
• All of the wonderful Iowans, educators or otherwise, who will help spread this video across the state and maximize its impact. I’m thanking you all in advance; it’s up to us to make these conversations happen!
• Karl Fisch, who started the whole Did You Know? phenomenon and has graciously included me on every step along the way.

Previous videos in the Did You Know? series are available at the Shift Happens wiki. Source files for Iowa, Did You Know? will be available there soon.

Happy viewing!

I’ve spent the last two days at the Iowa Education Summit. Now that it’s over, I have a multitude of thoughts and observations swirling around in my head. Here are eight…

1. Politics over substance?

From the anti-Governor Christie flyers distributed at the entrances to the invited guests who appeared to be there for political reasons rather than their possible contributions to Iowa education, there was a great deal of political theater at the Summit. I’ll leave it at that. You can decide for yourself who was invited for what reasons.

On a related note, many participants left the Summit saying that they didn’t learn much that was new and that they wished that there was more discussion about solutions rather than repeated reminders of how much Iowa education sucks. Personally, I enjoyed hearing from the various experts that were invited. There was a lot of brainpower at the Summit and I enjoyed hearing perspectives from other places during our two days together. We’ll need equal brainpower, however, to sift through all of the commentary and determine what to do next in terms of policy and implementation.

2. The ascendance of Twitter

The backchannel on Twitter was phenomenal. I have the very naive wish that Iowa policymakers would spend some time going through the tweets. The backchannel conversation was witty, passionate, insightful, both challenging AND supportive, and, most of all, real. Whatever political points were being attempted on stage were dissected in depth and filtered through the honest reality of learning, teaching, and living in Iowa. The very best barometers of how crowd members were receiving the intended message(s) were the tweets at #iaedsummit.

The Summit was the first event I’ve attended in Iowa where the Twitter backchannel was so robust that I had trouble keeping up. I don’t know how many of the 1,600 attendees actually were on Twitter, but the sheer volume of tweets was astounding. I know several people who signed up for Twitter there at the Summit so that they wouldn’t miss the side discussion.

3. ‘Sit and get’ and clickers do not a conversation make

There was extremely limited opportunity for interaction and dialogue at the Summit. Thank goodness for the Twitter stream. The Summit consisted primarily of smart ‘experts,’ either individually or on panels, talking down at the audience (literally down, from a raised dais). Occasionally we got to answer a multiple choice question using Promethean ‘clickers.’ Occasionally we got to ask a question during a breakout panel. If we were really lucky, perhaps a question we wrote on an index card would be read out loud to solicit a speaker response. This does not constitute a conversation any more than a teacher lecture with a few clicker questions and a brief opportunity for student questions constitutes a classroom discussion.

The stated purpose of the Summit was ‘to build a consensus for how to give all [Iowa] students a world-class education.’ I don’t see how Iowans can build a consensus when we’re not allowed to talk and argue and share and collaborate. We need a different structure if we’re truly going to have a dialogue about the future of Iowa education.

4. What could have been

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gives a good speech (and really shines during Q & A). So do current and/or past Governors Chris Christie, Jim Hunt, and our very own Terry Branstad. But the crowd favorite by far was Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond. In a concise, focused talk replete with research and evidence instead of political talking points, she spelled out what high-achieving nations do (and don’t do) in order to achieve high and equitable levels of student learning. Dr. Darling-Hammond was in the running for U.S. Secretary of Education. After hearing her speak, many in the crowd found themselves wishing that she had been selected.

5. NAEP or nope?

One of the driving statistics for the Summit – which was cited repeatedly – was Iowa’s alarming drop in national rank on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I confess that I found it humorous when Dr. Darling-Hammond began discussing higher-order versus lower-level thinking skills. To illustrate her point, she showed an example of a shoddy multiple-choice assessment question for high-schoolers, which just so happened(?) to come from NAEP. Given the consistent emphasis throughout the conference by all of the presenters on the need for more students to be proficient in higher-order thinking skills, I know I wasn’t the only one in the audience wondering why we’re so concerned about results on an assessment rife with lower-level items.

Secretary Duncan and other speakers highlighted federal and other initiatives that are aimed at creating assessments that get at higher-level student work. So should we really care about Iowa’s rank on NAEP since most of the assessment doesn’t get at what we really need to get at?

6. Technology was largely absent

Although there were a few quick shout-outs to the power of technology to transform student learning, there weren’t many specifics given. Secretary Duncan, for example, cited the power of technology to better ‘deliver information’ [emphasis added] during his Q & A time (and mentioned technology not a whit during his main speech). For those of us who are used to talking about the power and potential of digital technologies to empower student voice and engagement, facilitate authentic work, and connect learners to the global information commons and its participants (just to name a few affordances), the lack of specificity was dismaying. I suspect that the very basic treatment of technology stemmed from folks’ fairly basic understandings of what is possible these days. An exception was Max Phillips, who serves on the Iowa State Board of Education and who is thinking big. Very big. I wish we had more policymakers in Iowa who were ready to join him.

As I said on Monday, it’s time for us to get serious about school technology in this state (we can start by having wireless Internet access at every public Department of Education function like this one).

7. We’re ready for something different

Iowa is ready for something different. It’s ready for the things that Dr. Darling-Hammond described. If you look at what high-achieving nations actually do to achieve their learning outcomes – the outcomes that Iowa says it also wants to achieve – their efforts are not in the domains of:

1. greater test-based accountability,
2. improvement of teacher quality through implementation of alternative certification routes,
3. charter schools, or
4. reexamination of teacher compensation structures.

Instead, they are:

5. creating assessments of higher-order thinking skills,
6. reducing the frequency of student testing,
7. empowering and trusting teachers,
8. providing adequate social supports for children and families,
9. substantially investing in better initial teacher and administrator preparation,
10. increasing opportunities for educators to collaborate and share expertise, and
11. equalizing educational resources across schools. 

The panel members generally were closer to what Dr. Darling-Hammond shared with us. The Summit’s main speakers, however, placed great emphasis on the first four items. Which brings me to my last thought…

8. Genuine dialogue or political cover?

The great unknown is whether Governor Branstad and the Iowa Department of Education truly intended the Summit to initiate a statewide dialogue about what effective learning, teaching, and schooling should look like in the state or whether the Summit was just to give cover for implementation of an already-determined political / educational agenda. Only time will tell. Right now I’m willing to take Iowa Education Director Dr. Jason Glass (whom I like more and more every time I interact with him) at his word when he says that he wants us to build the solution together. He’s not the political boss, however, and there was a lot of cynicism regarding this issue in the crowd. If we see policy proposals that heavily emphasize items 1–4 above and deemphasize items 5–11, for example, those skeptics will feel vindicated.

Despite what may seem like an overly-critical tone for this post, I enjoyed the Summit and am glad I attended and participated. Like many of the other speakers there, I believe that we have an opportunity to do – and already are doing – great things in Iowa education. In some areas, we have promising initiatives (like the Authentic Intellectual Work, 1:1 laptop, VREP, and instructional rounds movements) that just need scaling up. In other areas, we have much more to do.

Let the real work begin.

Image credit: spartannielsen

Since the past four have been so successful [last year we had 114 posts!], I am putting out a call for people to participate in Leadership Day 2011. To paraphrase what I said four 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 digital, global world in which we now live;
• how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
• what appropriate technology support structures (e.g., budget, staffing, infrastructure, training) 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. Many of them didn’t grow up with computers. Other than basic management or data analysis technologies, many are not using digital tools or online systems 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.

How to participate

1. On Friday, August 5, 2011, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, resources, ideas, 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.
2. The official hashtag is #leadershipday11
3. TO ENSURE THAT I FIND YOUR POST, please add your info to the online spreadsheet AFTER you post. This will allow me to mention and directly link to your post when I do my summary post(s) a few days later. Everyone also will be able to see the complete list of submissions. If you want to link back to this post or leave a link to yours in the comment area, that’s okay too!

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 administrators can take to move their school organizations forward?
• What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators themselves 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 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 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) that would help them be better technology leaders? What are some other resources that would help them be better technology leaders?
• How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders regarding technology?
• How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?
• When it comes to K-12 technology leadership, where do we need new knowledge, understanding, training, or research?
• What are (or might be) some successful models of technology leadership training for school administrators?
• How might preservice preparation programs for administrators better incorporate elements of technology leadership?
• When you think of (in)effective K-12 technology leadership, what comes to mind?

Here are the ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past four years

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2009 - Summary spreadsheet
• Leadership Day 2010 – Final list, some highlights, summary spreadsheet

A badge for your blog or web site

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

Checklist

• Post on Friday, August 5, 2011 about effective K-12 school technology leadership.
• Add your info to the online spreadsheet so I know where to find your post.
• See others’ posts.
• Publicize as desired using the #leadershipday11 hashtag.

Want to have a great experience at the 2011 ISTE Conference? Here are 7 tips to get you started…

1. Approach every vendor booth and presentation with one question in mind: Will this genuinely enhance my ability (and that of my students) to live at the upper end of Bloom’s taxonomy? This simple question allows you to winnow out the shady salesmen who are just trying to make a buck off of you, avoid all of the sessions and pitches regarding technology for technology’s sake, ignore everyone who’s participating in the Great Tchotchke Land Rush, and skip all of the rest of the presentation chaff that’s not worth your precious time.
2. Walk out of every session that doesn’t meet your needs. Every single one. Don’t feel bad about it. Don’t feel apologetic or guilty. Just go. Find something that’s a better fit. It’s all but impossible for any single session to be a good fit for everyone who attends. There are 13,000+ people at the conference. Guess what? You all have different needs. Make sure yours are met.
3. Remember that knowledge is socially constructed. Meaning is made within social contexts. Your best learning will be through conversations in the lounges and at Edubloggercon and by getting hands-on in the playgrounds rather than attendance at sit-and-get sessions. I’m happy to chat any time. Look for me in the Newbie Lounge on Sunday afternoon and maybe Monday morning. Otherwise I’ll most likely be hanging in the Bloggers’ Cafe.
4. Walk up to someone new and introduce yourself.
5. Keep up on all of the latest posts, tweets, photos, events, etc. with the magic #iste11 hashtag.
6. Think about ways that you can step up. Steve Hargadon and others wanted more of an unconference experience and thus Edubloggercon and ISTE Unplugged were born. Beth Still didn’t attend the ISTE conference until 3 years ago; now there’s a Newbie Lounge just for newcomers. If there’s something you wish were at ISTE, make it happen.
7. Eat a genuine Philly cheesesteak. From a street cart or stand, not a sit-down restaurant.

That’s my list and I’m sticking to it. Have fun!

Three upcoming events worth noting…

ISTE

The annual ISTE conference is right around the corner. Over 13,000 people attended last year, along with 456 vendors. The annual goal is to up educators’ proficiencies with learning technologies. The annual challenge is to move beyond the tools themselves to get at discussions regarding higher-level learning and teaching. Will we succeed?

I’m facilitating a panel session this year (on June 27): What does it mean to be a tech-savvy principal? Many of you will recognize the panelists from CASTLE’s Connected Principals blog: George Couros, Lyn Hilt, Patrick Larkin, Brian Nichols, and Eric Sheninger. There is an ISTE Conference Ning page for the session, which includes our tentative list of questions for the participants. If you’d like to add a question of your own, you can leave it as a comment there or here. More information about the session is available in the online ISTE conference program.

After my campaign of last year, I’m delighted that Chris Lehmann was selected as a keynote speaker for ISTE this year. Hope to see many of you in the Blogger’s Cafe or the Newbies Lounge (where I’ll be spending much of my time schmoozing with old friends or new ones!).

Edubloggercon

On the Saturday before ISTE (June 25) will be the annual Edubloggercon. A day-long unconference, I believe that Edubloggercon represents the best of what ISTE can be: rich discussions around important educational technology topics. Learn more at the Edubloggercon web page. A huge thanks to Steve Hargadon for once again organizing what I know will be an amazing day of conversation and learning.

TIE Colorado Leadership Academy

For those of you who are in the Colorado area, check out the upcoming TIE Colorado Leadership Academy. Pam Moran and Ira Socol are headlining the event. I really wish I could attend; I’m trying to get Pam and Ira out to Iowa and/or Kentucky sometime in the near future. It looks like it will be an awesome day of learning for principals and superintendents. We need more technology conferences aimed at school leaders; support this one!

[UPDATE: And the winner is… Suzie Linch, who submitted Nathan Barber’s blog, The Next Generation of Educational Leadership. Congratulations, Suzie!]

Just a quick update… Six days after announcing my goal of identifying 500 school leadership blogs, we’re up to 402 submissions. Removing duplicates, that’s a total of about 330 school leadership blogs so far.

As I noted in my previous post:

I know that many of you will contribute out of the goodness of your heart. But, because 500 blogs is a very ambitious goal, I’ll sweeten the pot a little. The kind folks at Lenovo are going to let me give away a Lenovo m90z all-in-one desktop computer to anyone in the world who submits a school leadership blog using the form below. I’ll choose at random from all of the submissions. You get an extra chance for each blog you submit; the more you enter, the better your chance to win!

The form is below. The deadline is May 16. I’ll clean up the list of contributions and share it back out so that we all can make good use of them. Thanks to everyone who already has submitted an entry. If you know of a principal or superintendent or school administrator association who is blogging, your assistance would be greatly appreciated!

[UPDATE: And the winner is… Suzie Linch, who submitted Nathan Barber’s blog, The Next Generation of Educational Leadership. Congratulations, Suzie!]

Does your local principal or superintendent blog? Do you read the blog of your local, state, or national school administrator association? Know of other blogs that are of interest to school leaders? I’m trying to collect 500 school leadership blogs in the next 10 days. Sure, there are some lists but they all need updating:

• CASTLE’s blogs for busy administrators
• Moving Forward: Principal / school blogs
• Support blogging: Principal blogs
• Support blogging: Administrator blogs
• Developing an RSS feed for principals

I know that many of you will contribute out of the goodness of your heart. But, because 500 blogs is a very ambitious goal, I’ll sweeten the pot a little. The kind folks at Lenovo are going to let me give away a Lenovo m90z all-in-one desktop computer to anyone in the world who submits a school leadership blog using the form below. I’ll choose at random from all of the submissions. You get an extra chance for each blog you submit; the more you enter, the better your chance to win!

FYI, the m90z is a pretty sweet machine (Lenovo sent me one to review first). The huge touch screen is very responsive. It would be a great home or classroom computer; my kids have taken to it like ducks to water. Here are a few pictures so that you can see what you might win and here are the technical specifications. Also, over the next few days check out these blogs for additional opportunities to score a m90z:

• Bud the Teacher (May 8–12)
• Kikolani (May 9–13)
• Geeks to Go (May 10–14)
• Chad Lehman (May 11–15)

The form is below. The deadline is May 16. Thanks in advance for helping out. I’ll clean up the list of contributions and share it back out so that we all can make good use of them!

It’s spring training for Major League Baseball and that means it’s time for another season of edublogger fantasy baseball! Last year’s champions were Harold Shaw, Vinnie Vrotny, and – for the first time ever in more than 10 years of playing fantasy baseball - me! (we had enough participants for 3 leagues last year)

Same rules and league settings as the three previous years. A trophy for the winner(s). Friendly banter, potential bragging rights, and loads of baseball fun could be yours!

If you’re interested, complete the BlogBall11 online registration form no later than March 23, 2011. [UPDATE: BlogBall11 registration is now closed.] First come, first serve. You must have an active education blog to participate. We’ll make as many leagues as we can fill. Opening Day is March 31!

[sorry for the delay on this; it’s tough to type with a broken elbow!]