Systems

We live in an insta-world.  You can anytime, anywhere (with Internet access) find out how much money you have in the bank, how many library books you have checked out at the local library, the pronunciation of the word Caprese,  and the latest news from around the world.  How is that possible?  All of those places have set  up systems.

I find myself developing systems every day – and that without them, work is chaotic.  The problem is that the world doesn’t stop while you are building them.  How do you find the balance between telling someone to wait, and making exceptions because we’re in a people business and we want to keep them happy.

On another note, today my 15 minutes of professional learning came from reading peer observation protocols.  I am excited to be part of changing how the teachers in Webster grow professionally!!

NECC…Nerdy Educators Communicating Compulsively

Along with my hotel-mate, we are first time NECC-ers.  The title of this post is a quote from my hotel-mate. I love it.

I spent all day following ustreams from the conference I WAS AT, twits from summize, twits from my feed, Google Reader, the sessions I was in and the conversations with people around me.  Holy cow!  My brain is full! I keep trying to figure out whether this conference is going to make a shift in my thinking.  Don’t get me wrong, it has completely energized me.  I have often thought about teachers in my district that would love being here.  How do you measure learning in at a conference?  Is $1500 too much to dole out to each teacher to attend?  Do we really need carpets with the NECC and/or ISTE logo to greet us when we arrive?

This morning I sat in a panel “debate” about the AASL standards and the NETS-S.  Doug Johnson usually has a few nuggets to chew on…and today did not disappoint.  “NCLB asks far too little of our children.  They need to do more than read and write.”  True.  I agree with that, but I don’t agree with how and why NCLB was authorized, and I don’t think you can isolate one or the other.  He left us with this thought, “I only promise to leave people confused on a higher level.”  At one point the panelists, Annette Lamb, Gail Dickenson, Joyce Valenza and the before mentioned Doug Johnson, addressed the individual needs of our students – the idea that we need IEPs for ALL of our students.  Don’t they all deserve how to learn in the best way possible?  Interesting.

I went to a session on observing teachers using your handheld…too bad it was a commercial product.  Then to a session on Google Earth – learned some cool stuff there, but now you can too as everything is on the site.

The best part of the day?  Dinner at Dicks Last Resort.  (No, it was not the conference.)  I have never been so abused, made fun of, been rudely addressed or laughed so hard at dinner.  We also found some entertainment yelling to our boat captain, Cara, every time her boat went by.  The boats make a loop in the river every 30 minutes or so.  We took the ride, and then went to dinner.  We watched for her as she came around by Dicks – we sat right by the Riverwalk.  We left Dicks and walked back to the hotel, over part of the loop.  We cheered her on from the bridge as she went under.  I felt a bit stalker-ish, but man, it was fun.  She told every group of people on her boat that we were her “Rochester, NY friends.”  I loved it.

Day 2…Fin.

Overheard on Twitter: “jonbecker: At NECC NETS-A refresh session, one guy said he had ‘multiple colliding epiphanies.’ I hope he’s OK.”

Learned at Unconference session with Chris Lehmann from the Science Leadership Academy about Understanding by Design: Too often we don’t know why we do what we do.  Teachers need to teach understandings…this is a powerful thing.  Give the students an intro to UBD and then have them reverse engineer the lesson.  The kids get to the work, rather than trying to figure out what the teacher meant.

Giggled at Storytelling with Wesley Fryer, Vicki Allen and Karen Montgomery: “How many of you do unprofessional development?”  Also learned how to teach Web 2.0 with Coffee 2.0.

Finally, at Google for Educators: “We need to stop collaborating like it’s 1999.”  Presentation is here.  Couple of marvelous ways of using Google Docs.  When asking students to do group work, you can check the revisions tab to see who has contributed and how much they did.  One school is using Google Docs Spreadsheets to keep track of discipline.  Each student has a row.  As they travel to their classes through the day, each teacher adds a note.  At the end of the day, the principal celebrates those students that have positive notes in the docs.  Instant feedback for administration, teachers and students.  Also, you can use the fill out a form feature to collect info from parents.  Cool.

San Antonio has treated me pretty well so far!  Dinner at Zuni Grill tonight – crab and sea bass.  Yum.  Once back at the hotel, Jeremy wowed me with his Excel and PowerPoint prowess.

Night.

PS – “kdumont: New blog post: Apple’s Big News from NECC http://theeducationalmac.com/blog/?p=260″

Spotty Wifi…Unspotty Learning

It always amazes me how many people are NOT in sessions at NECC…and then you get to a session and you are closed out!  No close outs for me yet, but it’s only Monday.

This morning I was at the NETS-T Standards “release party.”  It was fun to be there for the beginning.  I did leave that session early though to head to a research paper discussion: Developing Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge  (TPCK) with Spreadsheets.  Yes, that is the actual title.  No, I didn’t enjoy myself.

I walked the vendor floor for my swag, as Bill Arcuri calls it.  A nice Amazon.com gift card and a stainless steel thermos were the best finds.  Getting a million NECC postcards finally paid off!  (Sorry we had to kill all those trees to get them though.)

Wendy Smith, and the other Klem South teachers involved with the HP Grant, showed their wares at the poster session this morning.  It is amazing how many people had great things to share at the poster sessions – and the three days of NECC are the only time they are all in one place at one time.  Overwhelmingly marvelous.

What am I looking forward to next???  The unconference session with Chris Lehmann at 12:30.

Later.

Keynote 1 @ NECC

Favorite quotes:

“After 15 minutes in a meeting, you look around and realize you are dumber now.”
“Suggestion boxes are better than nothing.”
“Technology allows us to aggregate judgments very fast.”
“Diversity makes us significantly smarter.”
“Having the same person be the devil’s advocate makes things worse, not better.”

Too many people (!) in Bloggers’ Cafe…..have to move to a different satellite office.

Behind the Scenes at NECC 2008

I am sitting on my couch, in dreary Rochester, NY, watching the fun going on at NECC 2008.  I am watching Will Richardson, Chris Lehmann, Jeff Utecht, Dean Shareski, Sylvia Martinez, Bud Hunt, Ewan McIntosh, Brian Smith, and Carl Fisch, among others, jail breaking Will Richardson’s phone.

Now, this is not the important part.  Sure, it’s cool.  These are some amazing people, who help me do my job better.  But the important thing is that they sit around and play with things.  They don’t wait for the administrator to come in and tell them what to do.  They don’t wait for the list of Time Magazine’s Top 100 websites.  They play, they try things out and they talk to each other about what works and doesn’t work.  Will had no idea why he should jail break his phone, nor did he know how.  But he had the resources he needed and he went after them.

I am getting on a plane tomorrow for NECC 2008.  I am traveling with a K-5 Technology Teacher that is not excited about NECC.  He lives in a place that is not experimental friendly.  He has tech tools, and he uses them.  He creates user guides for the teachers in his building to use the tools they have.  Of course he is successful, he is a friend of mine.    But he’s not excited about NECC.  He’s worried that he’s not into all the stuff that I like.  He’s worried he will be over his head.

If only he could see the stream I am watching now.  He would feel much better.

Oh – and props to Chris Lehmann.  He wouldn’t get his laptop out.  He said, “We talk to each other every day and we aren’t in the same room.  Now we’re in the same room and we’re still using the computer to talk to each other.”

Visual Rememberer

I think I may have made up the word rememberer, but this is a cool tip.

http://lifehacker.com/391550/keep-a-cameraphone-photo-album-to+do-list

Perfect.

Provocative

This morning I sat in the ballroom of The Sagamore listening to Giselle Martin-Kniep give the keynote of the 2008 NYS Teacher Center Spring Retreat. Giselle demonstrated her understanding of how people learn by explaining that keynotes are not an effective instructional tool, but that she knows that keynotes are meant to inspire those in attendance. She wanted her keynote to be provocative.

Her Dispositions of Practice show her commitment to teachers. She craves the practice of teachers working together to create vision, to share ideas, to harness power and to change the world.

But the biggest take-away for me only reinforced what I have been thinking about lately: relationships make or break everything.

Before Giselle spoke, we heard from Johanna Duncan-Poitier from NYS Ed. Department, and from Maria Neira, Vice President of NYSUT. Talk about a political, and positional, morning. We’re doing this over here, but NYSUT is not happy. We’re doing this over here, but State Ed. is not happy. Then we heard from Giselle who takes the level of respect up about 1,000 notches. She talks about partnerships and learning. She talks about sustaining educational expertise. Her vision: “Schools, one day, will be places of learning.”

One of my hats, that of Webster Teacher Center Co-Director, pushes me to make people in our school community realize that they can rely on each other. It makes me sad to think of teachers in one building doing something well that in another building they struggle with on a daily basis. How can I break down the barriers? What tools do I have in my toolbox to inspire them to remember what is important. In the end, it is all about the students. How can I support the teachers to feel that they can do their job?

I leave you with a quote that Giselle shared from Peter Block: “All learning is social. It is with our peers that we will ultimately find our voice and change our world. It is in community that our lives are transformed. Small groups change the world.” There is hope. There is collective wisdom and energy. We need to find it. We need to spread it. We need to believe it is possible.

Pandora

http://blog.pcpandora.com/2008/03/06/myspace-body-count-rises-unnecessary-tragedy/

Enough said. Or is it? If our job, as teachers, is to prepare kids for life in the real world…why aren’t we teaching them how to use the tools? Oh, well, this means that we need to train teachers how to teach about these tools, doesn’t it. How to you teach someone how to use tools that may or may not exist next year or next week or tomorrow?

On another note…watched these today. Thanks dwalt!

What picture do you see?

With the words “professional development” as part of my title, it immediately creates a picture in people’s minds about teaching teachers. What picture do you think of?

This week I sat in a meeting talking about training our district-wide lead teachers. We asked them to answer a survey and identify their needs, but it wasn’t enough because we don’t know how we are going to deliver the training. Now, anything I read about PD research speaks to job-embedded PD as the way to go. What does that mean for teachers?

• Should every classroom have two teachers? Does that automatically mean they collaborate? Does that mean while one is teaching, the other could be learning?
• Should all teachers be asked to attend training on a routine basis?
• Should there be a standardized test for all teachers?
• Should all principals inspire all teachers to believe failure is not an option?
• Should all teachers self-identify their needs?
• Do all teachers know enough about adult learning to choose their professional development options?
• Does the coaching model work for all teachers?

The more I brainstorm questions, the more I find them completely ridicoulous. Yet I find myself planning training for the programs that staff members want, not what they need. How do I know? Not all of our students are successful.  What should the picture of professional development really look like?