The Importance of Blogging

I haven’t posted anything on my blog for quite a long time…a few months to be exact…by 21st century standards, that’s an eternity! So many reasons not to post…too busy, too tired, can’t think of anything interesting to write, the list goes on. So, today…with a thousand things going through my mind and ten thousand things on my “to do” list, I am asking myself, “Why did I start this blog in the first place?”

My blog is my reflection log. It forces me to organize my thoughts and record them in a logical way. By doing this, I can almost feel things lining up in my mind. I look forward to the comments that I receive from all of you that read my posts. Quite often, the comments on my blog help me to stretch my thinking and, as a result, I learn and grow.

I originally sat down this morning to write a post about the iPad PD session that I led at our school yesterday but what came out was this reflection about the importance of blogging…so I will keep going with that.

Leading is all about Learning. I mentioned something during our PD session that I have been thinking quite a bit about. I told our staff, “I am by no means a technology expert, I am just one of the people who has recently learned a whole bunch of stuff.” As my friend, George Couros, always says…it is a leader’s responsibility to share that learning with others. This blog…and other tools…help me to share my learning and I am extremely grateful to those people, like George, who have shared their learning with me.

As I read the words above, I cannot help but think about the work of LInda Lambert and her analysis of building leadership capacity.  If a community of people is going to work toward a common goal, learning definitely needs to be at the heart of that. When we share that learning, it becomes more powerful and authentic.

There are millions of things that we need to learn and know as educators but no one person can be responsible to know EVERYTHING. Schools are multi-faceted and new information is coming at us all the time.  Sharing our learning and experience is essential.

Thanks for reading my thoughts, feel free to leave a comment.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Latest use of Twitter at a High School

At the beginning of this year, I started a Twitter account for my school which I called @AustinOBrienHS. We use it to tweet out information, reminders, activities that are happening at school. Every week, we receive a few new followers. We have been impressed by the results that we have seen so far this year. We are followed by students, staff, alumni and many others.

Today, an interesting thing happened. This is definitely a sign of our digital times. We received the following direct message:

I know that this particular student is one of our student leaders, so I took the tweet seriously. Locker 442 had a large amount of flies flying in and out of it. The student who owned the locker was called down to clean and disinfect the locker…but that is not the point of this post.

There have been posts written about using Twitter in a high school (this one is by my mentor, Bill Ferriter, who inspired me to become involved on Twitter). The tweet (above) was an unexpected but extremely effective and efficient way to send a message to the school administration. The student who sent it obviously felt comfortable sending the information in that way.

This would be proof that we need to meet our students where they are and become involved in social media.

If you are looking for a great book on this topic, I would highly recommend, Communicating and Connecting With Social Media (Essentials for Principals). This is the book that inspired me to create a digital branding for our school.

I look forward to any comments.

Stop…and think!

Last week, we had many staff members away at the ReImagineering Catholic Education conference including the other two members of our admin team. As always, there was 50 000 things to do including interviewing for 2 SNTA positions.

My principal forwarded an email to me that was from the organizer of our athletic league. The purpose of this email was for us to encourage our staff members to attend a playoff football game that our undefeated Senior Boys team was playing in. Basically, the message was that it was our responsibility to create an “adult presence” and to supervise the students in the stands. My principal asked if I would send an email out to staff on her behalf. One of the team managers had sent out an email message containing a roster and an invitation to the game.

Without really thinking I did a “reply to all” (from my Blackberry) with the following message:

• Good Afternoon,
• We were contacted by the league to encourage as many of our staff as possible to attend the game so there will be an “adult presence” there.
• They always have great hot chocolate at Clarke Park.
• H

There…message sent! One more thing off my “to do” list.

One of our more experienced teachers came to see me a little while later to ask me why my message was so harsh. Harsh?? I thought…was it harsh? She explained to me that the staff had read the message and thought, “Great, now we are expected to supervise football games, too.” Totally not what I had intended. We had a great chat and I offered to send out a follow-up email.
This time, I gave it some thought. I sent out this message with a link to the animation (below).

• Hi again everyone,
• I wanted to clarify.  It would be great to see as many of you at the game because the games are a great chance to do something fun together as a staff.  The kids love it when they see us in the stands.
• Here is a video of a conversation that I had with Louise earlier.
• http://goanimate.com/movie/0tCmeEUTwMBw?utm_source=linkshare
• See you at the game!
• Derek

Well, I have to say this had a much better reception.  It got the message across and it gave people an opportunity to laugh.

What did I learn:

1. Think before you act…even about little things…even when you are busy.

2. There are many ways to get a message out.

3. GoAnimate is fun and extremely easy to use and an account is free!

4. Relationships with people are so important.

5. More experienced female teachers love to be depicted as young and shapely.

Thanks for letting me tell my story.

Derek

Top 5 Reasons Why Local Educators Will Love Edcamp Edmonton

A big thank you to my colleague, Erin Ochoa, for sharing this with me so that I could post it.

1. It’s free – PD can cost quite a lot; edcamp never will. There are no registration fees, no sponsor driven trade shows, no non bio-degradable junk to take home. Just educators talking about education.

2. It’s personal – We can guarantee that you will find sessions that interest you because you make the schedule. Tell us what you want to learn, and tell us whatyou have to share. In one hour we’ll put together the most personalized PD day possible.

3. It’s local – Who understands Alberta education best? We think Alberta educators do. All sessions, topics and presenters will be local, current, and relevant to the Alberta classroom.

4. It’s about connecting – Our theme for this inaugural edcamp is “Making Connections”, and we mean it. Our small group sessions will connect us with one another, with new ideas and methods, and will ultimately help us all reconnect with why we love what we do.

5. It’s about conversation – You’ve heard these terms: 21st century learning, 1 to 1 environments, project based learning, social media, backchannel, collaboration, technology integration? Edcamp is about practicing these things, not performing or preaching them. There’s no lecture- it’s about dialogue: everyone talks, everyone listens, and everyone learns.

Hope to see you there!

The EdCamp Edmonton Team

Twitter:
@edcampedmonton

Email: edcampedmonton@gmail.com

EdCamp Edmonton- Making the Connection

Saturday, Nov. 5th

Lillian Osborne High School

Website: http://edcampedmonton.com/

Tickets: http://edcampedmonton.eventbrite.com/?ref=ebtn

Explanatory Prezi: http://prezi.com/to0u5wnjzvfn/edcamp-edmonton/

Staff Room Chat

A member of our staff was telling a story today at lunch in the staff room.  It was a tale about a teacher who had the entire English 10 course on an overhead projector transparency roll, which had been written with permanent marker.  When the teacher retired, a young teacher asked for some materials for this course.  The seasoned teacher handed over the roll and said, “Here is the entire course, day by day, just start at the beginning and work your way through.” 

After hearing the punch line, the staff room erupted in laughter.  For a good two minutes, the staff members laughed and laughed until one teacher interjected with, “Tell me how that is any different than PowerPoint.”

Silence.

Vision BEFORE purchase.

As the chairman of the Technology Committee at my school, I have been charged with the task of assembling a team of educators who will be responsible for setting the direction in terms of technology.  One thing that I have to make clear to the committee is that making decisions about technology is not about spending money on tools and then deciding what you are going to do with them.  I know that probably more than half the SMART boards that are in classrooms are being used as screens…a total waste of money.  Many of these IWB are also being touched by only one person…the teacher.  In that case, a Sympodium would have been a way better solution.

Our job as a tech committee is to decide what direction we want to take technology in our building.  We are scheduled to have total WiFi throughout the school by the end of January 2012.  With that, comes a number of discussions which need to occur.  For example, school owned devices or student owned devices?  Do we purchase a class set of laptops?  Who’s going to maintain all this stuff?  I can see some heated discussion occuring at some of these meetings.  But I think that is what needs to happen…we have to have those difficult conversations and we have to solidify a short and long term technology plan BEFORE we purchase anything new. 

I love this post from Bill Ferriter where he brainstorms how he would spend $18000 on technology. 

There are so many different directions to take technology within a school.  We need to spend some time examining what is important and what role technology will play.  Otherwise, we are going to have a bunch of expensive toys gathering dust.

Broken Elevator

Our school elevator is broken, and as a result our students who are wheelchair bound cannot access the second floor of the building.  This is fine for most but there is one boy in particular who has two of his classes on the second floor.  I overheard some members of staff discussing this problem.  “I suppose we could video tape the lessons and he could watch them later,” seemed to be the best solution.  I suggested that we find a way to have the student be part of the class by using a webcam with Skype.  The reaction was, “Can we do that?”

I went to Best Buy to pick up a webcam.  On the way over, I phoned Danny Mass (@dannymaas) to get his advice.  He suggested that we use a Blue Eye Ball 2.0 webcam because in the classroom, sound quality would be an issue.  I purchased this webcam then came back to the school to test it.  I met with our computer tech to install skype on the two teacher computers.  Skype is blocked by our district filters, so that caused a few problems, at first.  Once we had Skype installed, I created a generic Skype account that could be used by the two teachers.  Next, we installed Skype on a laptop for the student to use.  He already had a Skype account, so that was helpful.  The test went great and we were all impressed with the sound quality.  The student was in a teacher prep area on the first floor of the school.  This student has a full time TA so he made arrangements with the teachers to get powerpoint slides, readings, and handouts.

This morning, we were able to include this student in his classes for the first time in a week, using Skype…a truly powerful (and 21st century) moment.

Here’s the most important part…the reflective piece.  This situation has taught/reinforced a few things for me:

• Anything is possible.  If you want it…create it.
• Do what you think is right…not what is easiest.  Great leaders never say, “What is the least that I can do.”
• Work collaboratively.  This situation involved at least 5 adults and over 60 students.
• Don’t be scared to ask for help. There are people who have unique knowledge and experience.  I would not have been able to pull this off by myself…
• Always do what is best for students!  Recording the lessons would have worked but that would have been a punishment for the student to have to view these lessons after the fact.  With the Skype solution, he is able to interact with the class and ask questions.
• Celebrate the small victories!  This was a great opportunity not only for a student to be included but for two teachers and 60 kids to see technology as a learning tool rather than an instrument of socialization.

Just had to share!

Technology Tools

I was reflecting recently about the learning that I have done over the past few years in terms of technology.  A few years ago, I attended a conference in Calgary, AB and I had the pleasure of listening to Ian Jukes and Will Richardson.

These two individuals, among others, blew me away!  I was absolutely amazed by what they knew about technology and its applications to education.  I remember Ian Jukes telling us that schools of today are doing a great job of preparing kids for the year 1965.  Will Richardson was talking about becoming a digital citizen and having an on-line presence.  During one of the breaks, I bought Will’s book and I began reading it in the hotel room that same evening.  As I read through the book, I made up my mind that I would try to become a technology leader in my school and in my district.  At that time, I had no knowledge of blogs or wikis and I had only dabbled on Twitter.

As the years have progressed I have been intrigued by a wide variety of technology and Web tools.  I have concluded that it is impossible to use all of these tools, but I have been able to incorporate some of them into my work.  The purpose of this post is to share the tools that I use most often.

Twitter – the most important learning tool that I have ever used.  I have had the pleasure of learning and sharing with a group of fine educators.  I think I have learned more on Twitter in the last year than I have in the last five years of PD sessions.  I wrote a blog post about how I use Twitter.

Blogs – I think about blogs as tweets that are longer than 140 characters.  There are many blogs that I follow regularly so I have added them to my RSS reader in Outlook.  This way, I can read my favourite blogs when I read my email.  As you can see, I have also started blogging myself. It is a great way to reflect on my practice, share my learning, and record my thoughts so I can read and refer to them later.  I use wordpress because it is so easy to post and to add web parts to my site.

Diigo – is a web-based bookmarking site.  Whenever I find a great article, I bookmark it using Diigo.  If you tag and organize your bookmarks, they are so easy to find at a later time.  I also have Twitter set up so that when I mark a tweet as a favourite, it automatically sends it to Diigo.  Diigo also allows me to share my bookmarks with others.

Posterous – is a service that I use to keep cool images or quotes.  When I post something here, I have it set up so that it will automatically share the post on Twitter.

Lino it - allows you to set up an on-line placemat where anyone can place a sticky note.  We have used these at meetings and during Master’s classes to share thoughts and ideas.

Todaysmeet - this is a twitter-like microblogging service which allows us to have a back channel during a meeting or class.

Prezi - by far the best presentation software.  Try it and you will never use PowerPoint again.

Google+ – I just started using this one recently.  My favourite feature so far is the Google Hangout which allows up to 10 people to have a face to face meeting without being in the same room.  We are currently planning an Edcamp in Edmonton and all of our meetings have been Google hangouts.  Google+ is a cross between Twitter and Facebook which allows you to share things with certain “circles” of people.  For example, I can share something with my family that my colleagues will not see.

Hootsuite – my apologizes to the owl…I posted this and then remembered what a timesaver Hootsuite is.  Hootsuite helps me to manage 3 twitter accounts (2 personal and 1 school @AustinOBrienHS), a LinkedIn account (that I don’t look at very much), and my WordPress account (I was amazed to find out that I could post to WordPress from Hootsuite).  This is an awesome application because you can be in many places at once without jumping around and logging in multiple times.  You can also manage other SM (Facebook, myspace, etc.) with Hootsuite.  The link shortener is a nice feature!

Just are just a few of the tools that make my learning more authentic.  I have come a long way since the conference in Calgary where I felt like such a noob with all of this technology.

My last word…there is so much technology out there, yo u never have time to use it all.  You need to find the tools that make your life (and learning) better and easier.  I believe that if we model this type of learning, it will be the best way for our students to learn.

Assessment/Grading PD Session

http://prezi.com/kvae4tnhhlf7/grading/?auth_key=26d56335c458da1ee218efbfe060608c99fe591a

The above prezi was created to lead our staff through a discussion-based PD session about assessment and, more specifically, grading.  In order to put staff members into groups of 4, we had them line up by birthdate…without speaking.  The staff had fun getting aligned (even though some were out of order).  The first 4 people were a group, then the next 4, and so on.

After a brief discussion about the session and how it fits into the district goals, the objectives for the session were presented:

• to examine current assessment practices
• to engage in a collaborative discussion
• to take the first step in developing a school wide assessment policy

The first task was for groups to discuss the question, “What is the purpose of a grade?”  Many of the groups recognized that a grade is a means of reporting where a student is at in terms of a set of learning outcomes.  We then talked about a grade in terms of some of the images in the prezi.

The second learning activity was to calculate a student mark given raw scores and weightings.  This was a great activity and the discussions at the tables were rich, indeed.  The tricky part of this activity is that the student (see prezi) has a mark of zero for a major exam.  The final calculations of grades ranged from 57% to 82% as a mark for this student.  This lead us into a large group discussion about the inclusion of zero in a student mark.  Many members of staff were passionate in their debates…I loved it!

The last activity was 3 questions which groups wrote answers for.  I had originally intended staff to add the answers to a google doc but we were running out of time so I had them answer the questions on the back of the sheet which they used to calculate the student’s mark (above).

Overall, it was a great session in which the professional conversation was stimulating and thought provoking.  It was an awesome introduction for me…the new AP.