A few weeks I wrote about school leaders needing to ‘get’ technology. Scott McLeod seems to be the epicenter of this movement. He is directly involved in UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) which,

“was created to help address the critical nationwide shortage of administrators who can effectively facilitate the implementation of technology in schools and school districts. CASTLE is widely recognized as the nation’s leading authority on the technology needs of K-12 school leaders.”

They go on to descripe,

“CASTLE’s School Technology Leadership graduate certificate program is the only academic curriculum in the country that comprehensively covers ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). The graduate certificate program has been found by the American Institutes for Research to have positive, statistically significant impacts on participants’ school technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities and has been acclaimed for its innovative incorporation of technology into its coursework.”

CASTLE has also created LeaderTalk, a blog from School Administrators, for School Administrators. This has quickly become my must read of the day.

I want to personally thank Scott McLeod for all he has done to bring the relationship between technology and leadership to the forefront.

This seems to be the beginning of what I was looking for during my first post on leaders and technology.

In my last post I discussed the curriculum design on 21st Century Schools. Recently, Patrick Bassett, President of NAIS has pre-published a paper entitled, “So What’s it Gonna be, Huh?” that defines 21st Century education as:

In my work with schools in the US and around the world, I frequently address groups of leaders, not only educators but their boards of trustees, primarily comprised of CEOs, social sector leaders, professionals, and, internationally, the diplomatic corps. When I ask the kind of “generative” question these school leaders should be asking themselves, “What are the skills and values that will be rewarded in the 21st. C.?,” I always, every time everywhere and anywhere in the world, get the same list:

* integrity and character

* teaming and leadership

* communication skills

* empathy, social and global consciousness

* expertise/competence in some field

* innovativeness and creativity.

What’s interesting is that this “wisdom of the crowd” is actually confirmed by a whole host of researchers, observers, and commissions who have “weighed in” on the topic within the last year or so.

He goes on to list a number of examples of programs that embody these characteristics and challenges schools to implement one of these programs during part of your school day/week.

He’s looking for feedback, and the place where I’m very interested in seeing what is out there is in the examples section. Here is his list.

What are the programs that you think of in Bassett’s definition of a 21st Century School?

I recently received Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time by Jane Pollock (My ASCD Book of the month). Last year at this time I received Classroom Instruction that Works as my Spring ASCD book. Both of these books have helped me become a better teacher by giving me data to support research based instructional practices. This new book goes even farther, by providing a framework for designing curriculum called, “The Teaching Schema for Master Learners.”

Pollock argues that a good curriculum is defined by having clear expectations (Goals), setting up good instructional models, assessing work, and providing feedback. I see this work as a management style for adults, or a classroom environment for students. I see this pattern: goals, instruction (conversation), assessment, feedback, in Management books such as Good to Great or Now Here are My Strenghts. It’s amazingly flexible and seems to be a process that is running through many different realms of my life.

So why am I writing? Because this data conflicts with a survey on David Warlick’s blog where he asks, “Thinking of those great teachers that you had who truly influenced who you are today. What percentage of what those teachers did do you think might be effectively measured by scientific research, and what percent do you think is not measurable?” and out of 169 respondents he has received the following results:

100% measurable - 0% not measurable:(4%)

75% measurable - 25% not measurable:(12%)

50% measurable - 50% not measurable:(27%)

25% measurable - 75% not measurable:(45%)

0% measurable - 100% not measurable:(13%)

I answered 75% measurable and 25% not measurable. I find survey results like the one above concerning, because 58% of the respondents say that less than 25% teaching skills of great teachers can be measured by scientific research. I just find this hard to believe when reading books like Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time and Classroom Instruction that Works. I believe that there is a type of person that will be a good teacher, but I also believe that these natural teachers can get much better when using current research.

I believe it when Warlick asys that we need to re-define literacy, and learn to use the immense resources on the Internet as part of our schooling. I believe it when Richardson says that we need to Re-Envision Schools due to the new Flat World.

But there are clear processes and techniques that are research based that seem to me to benefit learners in our classrooms. I believe that the best teachers will be looking to use these procedures of curriculum design as found in Improving Student Learning One Teacher to create wonderful learning environments for their students. The declarative knowledge (content) can varied from the most progressive to the most traditional.

I believe that goal of School 2.0 can be the same as President John Adams, “There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live.” I believe we can get there in many different ways. I believe that you can use Pollock’s system to define varied schools.

So what do you think?

How does this apply to learning communities such that don’t have clear leadership such as open source projects?

What do you think, Will, David, Nancy, Fred, Laurie, Arvind and June?

We offered a professional development day in February. Below is the introduction talk I gave to the faculty. The day was successful, because we surveyed the faculty and designed the day for what they needed/required.

Thanks to Nancy White and David Wilcox for their inspirational comments that fundamentally influenced the design of this day.

It’s Spring Break. The kids (and teachers) are gone for two weeks… Today has been very quiet. It’s been quite a productive day. Last year at this time, I was running around fixing things and installing new hardware/software. This year, I’m catching up on posting audio files, cleaning out my hard drive, and generally, just trying to catch up a bit.

What’s the difference? We have a new Head of School and Business Manager this year. One of the great parts of these two new perspectives is that I have been forced to slow down and look at our whole program. We have begun to review our mission, student technology program, staffing, budget, computer to technical support ratios, and training/professional development program.

This slowing down has been hard for me. But as we have, I’ve realized parts of the program that were missing/glossed over. So for next year, we will concentrate on reliability of systems and faculty professional development. We will have two new department members next year, and their perspectives will inform our metamorphosis as well.

I keep catching myself wanting to offer professional development seminars on blogging, wikis, etc, but that will come. Our professional development Tech 20s will get there… But I need a critical mass of faculty who are comfortable with tech before we go further. One step at a time.

It feels good to slow down.

Question: I am extremely interested in using Skype in our Global Ed program. Do you give workshops or have good reference materials to pass on to me?

My Response:

Hi,

I webcast weekly at http://www.edtechtalk.com and Skype is the program we use to conference the participants together. I am going to give a workshop in the fall in Baltimore, but I think that with skype and a partner school, you can get this going.

I posted some directions on how we video conferenced with china here: http://www.learning-blog.org/2006/12/05/video-skyping-with-china/

There are so many resources out there. I would check out the Webheads in Action: http://webheadsinaction.org/ for a great group of international teacher where you can create these types of connections. Also, check out http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com/.

I hope this helps.

- Alex

There are tons of other resources… What else am I missing?

Boy has it been an intense few weeks. I have so much to write about and will soon. In the mean time, I have a thought.

Last week I had a conversation with a colleague about his head of school. My colleague said the following in reference to technology, education and our changing landscape, “Yeah, my head is young and great, but he doesn’t even get it.”

So Saturday morning, I got up and thought, what about a leadership academy for school heads, principles, and any other school leader that would help them see this new world, these new literacies, and the new frontier that we must adjust our educational system to work with, instead of against.

I Googled for sites that would cover 21st Century School Leadership issues and found some, but most of the links went back to Chris Lehmann at Science Leadership Academy.

Warlick, Richardson, Lehmann and others write about School 2.0, but to get there, I believe we need to have leaders who “get it.” So how do we get our leaders to “get it?” We train them, right? (I know it’s not quite that simple, but…)

Maybe this is the type of project that EducationBridges.org will help fund. What do you think, Dave? Or some national organization or international organization.

What do you think? Do you know of any leadership academy that does this type of work?

If you haven’t checked out the School 2.0 interview series that Steve Hargadon had been doing, you’re missing out.

This interview with John Seely Brown challenges my thoughts about education and gave me wonderful ideas on how to begin to explain the shift to my colleagues. This one is getting burnt to CDs and handed to my Administrators. It is inspirational and wonderfully reflective.

Thanks, Steve, for your great work on these interviews!

Thanks, Nancy and David for stretching my thinking about this professional development day.



I’m struggling with appropriate administrative pressure and my department’s buy in to provide basics training to faculty. I have been re-tooling our sessions to allow for better technological solutions for everyday problems. For example, “Appropriate Presentations” would include a discussion about what appropriate skills and guidelines are, how to find images, and create a presentation that is visually appealing. Another example is, “Creating a Newsletter” which would include pulling resources together and then formatting them in a desktop publishing program.

Nancy, I love your visualization question,

“Try to “imagine it is a year from now and you have embraced a couple of tools and practices that make your work more meaningful/fun/productive. What does that look like?”

I plan on using this when asking folks to register for sessions.

I am truly struggling with David’s game. I believe in my heart that that is the way to go, but want to start slow in smaller groups so we have some practice before going to the “big group”. I would like to try this with a small group of faculty during this day.

I hesitate because this is my professional development first day like this with a new Head of School and Business Manager. We have a traditional faculty and I want to expose small groups to this before we do it with the entire faculty.

I will definitely use these exercises in my department over the Spring, and then during our Summer Professional Development series where we’ll be working with faculty to use read/write web options…

I’m trying to be transparent in my writing here… Honest and open. But boy do I feel like I’m not living up to good pedagogical principles for adult learning… It’s very hard to let go of that “control”.

Thanks again, Nancy and David, for stretching me.