Dangerously Irrelevant | @mcleod

Tony Sinanis asked a few of us to send him some (relatively quick) leadership challenges for his district’s school administrators. Here are the three I came up with today:

What three would you submit?

I had the privilege of participating in a conversation today at my university about how (and whether) the digital work done by faculty should count for promotion and tenure. (I also had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes; here are my slides). Here are four thoughts that are spinning around in my brain after a couple of hours of discussion…

First, if we publish an article in a traditional journal which happens to post that article online and it then gets a few social media shares, that does not make us ‘digital scholars.’ That’s definitely a step beyond traditional analog publishing. But to be relevant to the digital, online, hyperconnected, participatory, interactive, highly-distributed information landscape in which we now live and work, we need to expect more from ourselves. Not all of the time, but sometimes. And more often.

Second, why is it that the faculty who ARE trying to be relevant in our new information landscape are the ones that always have to justify their work to those who are less responsive? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Which side should carry the burden of persuasion regarding relevance and quality?

Third, no one owes us anything, no matter how good the work is that we do. We have to prove ourselves every day. Just because we did good work a decade ago doesn’t mean that we are doing so now. Just because we believe that our work is valuable doesn’t mean that others do – or should. As Seth Godin says, “If [our] target audience isn’t listening, it’s [our] fault, not theirs.” Make the case. Be engaged. Help others see the meaning and value in what we do. All the time. (These digital tools can help…)

Finally, we need to be less dismissive of the public and of publishing for non-academics. We ignore engagement with the public and policymakers at our peril.

With appreciation for all of the complexities behind these fairly simple assertions… let me know what you think.

Want to play along? Join us…

Betsy Corcoran, CEO of EdSurge, asked me to do two podcast interviews with her while I was at the EdSurge Fusion conference in San Francisco last month. The first recording is now available. Betsy asked me to reflect on the Did You Know? (Shift Happens) video series, its viral arc, and its educational impact.

• Has ‘shift’ happened? Revisiting a viral video

Happy listening!

Jeff Utecht grabbed me for a podcast interview when I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few weeks ago for the EARCOS Leadership Conference. Our conversation ranged widely, hit on some big ideas from my new book, Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning, and of course was a lot of fun…

• Shifting Our Schools Episode 72: The 4 Shifts Protocol

Happy listening!

Administrators: We want to be more innovative but we feel trapped by our schedule.

Administrators: We want to do things differently but we feel trapped by our curriculum.

Administrators: We want to go in new directions but we feel trapped by our PD model.

Administrators: We want to _____ but we feel trapped by _____.

Me: Aren’t you the ones who are in charge of those things?

A gentle reminder that we pay leaders to LEAD, not be helpless victims…

Image credit: Urbanely caged, Stuart Williams

Julie Graber and I often get asked if the 4 Shifts Protocol can be used as a comprehensive walkthrough or observation tool. While the protocol is open source and people can do whatever they want with it, we do NOT recommend using it in this manner. Here’s why…

The protocol is made up of numerous sections and discussion items. Unless a teacher is creating a many-week, interdisciplinary, group project for her students, it’s nearly impossible for her to address all of the items on the protocol in a short lesson or unit. If the protocol is used as an observation or walkthrough instrument, the teacher inevitably will not be doing many of the items. It seems unfair to penalize the teacher for not doing the impossible. The last thing we want is for principals, coaches, or mentors to walk into a teacher’s classroom with a big list from the protocol saying ‘nope, nope, nope!’

The protocol is designed to honor instructor purpose. In our workshops and new book – and as the #1 suggestion on the protocol itself – we emphasize that it’s much better if a teacher identifies a protocol section or a few bullet points to focus on. The goal of the protocol is to help educators gradually shift their instructional practice and build new skill sets, mindsets, and competencies. If we force teachers to work on areas that they’re not ready for or comfortable with yet because it’s on a walkthrough template, we risk alienating them from the important work that we want them to do. We encourage giving teachers as much choice as possible regarding which sections to work on, which items to work on within a section, and how deep to go on any particular item. If we use the protocol in this manner, it can be very accommodating of teachers’ different instructional orientations, skill sets, and comfort levels.

The protocol is designed to be as nonjudgmental as possible. One of the problems with SAMR and the Arizona / Florida Technology Integration Matrices, for instance, is that there is inherent judgment when we place teachers’ instructional practice into levels. As soon as we tell a teacher that she’s at the Substitution level on SAMR, for example, she’s going to feel at least a little bit judged and perhaps a lot defensive. That is not the stance with which we want to approach instructional redesign conversations. We frame the protocol as a discussion tool that hopefully can help us accomplish the goals that we set for a particular instructional activity. We’re not interested in judging anyone. We ARE interested in helping educators identify what they want to work on and then using the protocol to help them get there.

As we say in the book, we encourage educators to think about the protocol sections as sets of experiences that we want students to have multiple times each school year. Do we want students to have multiple opportunities for deeper learning this year? To have multiple opportunities for agency over their own learning this year? To have multiple opportunities to engage in authentic, real world work this year? To have multiple opportunities to use technology in meaningful ways and boost their communication and collaboration skills this year? A big YES to all of those. But today or this week – for this particular lesson or unit – we’re just hitting a few bullet points. Don’t bug us about the other ones – those happen at other times during the year. It would be okay to ask us about our plans to cover each of the sections multiple times over the course of this year. But please don’t mark us down for only focusing on one section or a few items in this lesson or unit. That’s exactly what we should be doing. Give us some feedback and suggestions in a pre- and post-conversation about what you see regarding the few questions that we’re focusing on, but please honor our intentionality.

I hope all of this makes sense. The only way I might be comfortable using the protocol as a walkthrough or observation device was if it was used occasionally as an environmental scan, just to take a pulse of what’s happening – or not – within a school across classrooms. Otherwise, we encourage everyone to use the protocol as a conversation sparker and redesign tool, not a mechanism for judgment.

Thanks. Let me know your thoughts!

America Achieves has been sponsoring an Educator Voice Fellowship program here in Colorado. They have an upcoming event where they will highlight the work that these awesome educators have done regarding authentic performance tasks and career-ready capstone experiences. Thought I’d share the video… we need more of this kind of student work and authentic assessment!

Happy viewing!

Attaching band-aids to our current work doesn’t change much

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Image credit: Patching up school items, Penywise, Bigstock

Until the life success of our students is more important than our own comfort levels, any change we initiate is doomed.

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Image credit: Shipwreck, sbuwert, Bigstock