Island Life

Tropical Paradise
I want to talk about island life for a moment and full disclosure, I have never lived on a remote island, so no offense to those who have. Living on a remote tropical island really sounds good though, at least for a short amount of time, but long-term, being on an island can become isolating. Not interacting with others, sharing, and working alongside peers that challenge you, will keep us from growing as individuals and we can become stale.

Stay Fresh
It is easy to become isolated on internal islands within our own technology departments. With the grind that comes with answering help desk tickets and trying to maintain normal daily responsibilities while pushing ahead with additional projects, communication between our peers becomes increasingly more difficult. If we layer on top of that the rapid pace that technology changes and the amount of content generated on a daily basis, the island starts feeling like a safe place to be. We all know however that isolation will not help us solve the problems in front of us, keep us fresh with new ideas, and increase collaboration amongst our peers to better serve our students and staff. 
 

PLN Strong
The concept of a professional learning network has been around for quite some time now and still, in my opinion, the most effective way to connect with peers. The power of a PLN is the informal manner that a person can participate, share content as well as consume, and take advantage of a global community. Having a staff that has strong PLN's will benefit our internal technology teams that often struggle with getting out and allows that isolated island feeling to creep in. Although the PLN and PLC terminology is synonymous with teachers and administrators, there is a vast community of technology-related professionals waiting to connect. A few places to connect with other technology-related professionals.

• Twitter: Search hashtags, ie. #itdirector, #networkadministrator, #datasecurity, #programmer
• LinkedIn
• COSN: Consortium for School Networking
• ISTE: International Society for Technology in Education
• State and local listservs 

Creative Time
I am not sure that creative time is a thing, my point here is that time is the magical piece that there is never enough of. Instead of using the old saying that you will find time for what is important, be creative with time and find different ways to get together other than the traditional meeting. A recent post on Engage, an employee engagement blog, on "7 Fun Ways to Host Team Meetings", points out a variety of simple common sense ways to make meetings not boring. Three of my favorites are mentioned below that I have added some ideas on how to make these easily happen with minimal time involved in preparation. 

• Use grouping: We know birds of a feather flock together right, so instead of having everyone count off from 1-5 then split up, which is boring, pass out different pieces of candy to everyone when they arrive and find their table of like sugary fun. Substitute anything you would like if candy isn't your thing. 
• Change the scenery: This one is very self-explanatory and why not meet at the local coffee shop, nothing makes a meeting more enjoyable than sitting in a comfortable chair with an iced coffee. One notable mention here is as the leader, you need to reassure your leadership team that this is OK. Let them know your expectations, traveling an hour across town to a nice speakeasy is probably not what counts as productive for most organizations. 
• Switch up positioning: This is similar to grouping in moving people out of their comfort zone by not having them sit in the same exact chair every week. Here is where you need to lead by example, the next time you walk into the meeting room, you start it off by sitting in a different spot every time. If we expect others to venture out of their comfort zone, we must lead by example.
  
  

Sharing is Caring

I would love to hear what others are doing with their staff for staying fresh, building their PLN's and being creative with time. Leave a comment, tag me on Twitter @jcastelhano, share the great things you are doing!

A Different View

Decisions
With Microsoft Office 365 Personal adds running lately, articles concerning the mining of student data, and the forever debate on which cloud suite to choose, I began reflecting on my district's office suite timeline. Maybe we have traveled a different road than others, but the decisions along the way I feel have been well thought out, even if the timing was not always perfect. Since 1998 we have run on four different platforms of office suites roughly:

Microsoft Office/Exchange: 1998-2000

Sun's Star Office/E-mail: 2000-2002

Open Office/Open Webmail: 2002-2005

Microsoft Office/Exchange: 2005-2009

Google Apps: 2009-Present

This is quick overview of our journey and why I enjoy the ever changing landscape of technology.

Duck and Cover

If you think switching to something other than a Microsoft product now is tough, try doing it back in 2000, we switched top down to Star Office then, departments and all! You would have thought the world was ending, but it really wasn't that tragic when everyone became comfortable and discovered they could still do their job. In those five years we switched email to Open webmail because the Star email went away when Sun pushed star office to the Open office format. Again, a few were upset, but then they realized they could access their e-mail from anywhere with a Internet connection and things were a little better than before. When we went from a distributive server model to a data center and made the move from Linux based servers to a Server 2003 platform, we decided to give the Microsoft horse a ride again. It was ok, and I do love me some Outlook, but the back end maintenance with Exchange was present and the web version of Outlook was not well received. As far as the departments go, they were happy and I do agree that they use Office products unlike most teachers for their jobs (no offense to any teachers who are power users with the Microsoft Office suite). For the ease of our departments daily functions, we will always run Office products for them, but they all have Google apps and Gmail is the districts e-mail client (sidebar, our departments are using Google Apps to collaborate in ways they never have been able to previously).  

To the Cloud

© 2004 Michael Jastremski

When we made the most recent move to Google apps, there were many reasons why and we did look to Office 365, but it was not ready for release and we felt the road map was not there at that time. We have pushed to do everything in the cloud for a number of years and apps fits nice. Teachers were given directions on how to setup their folders for migration to Gmail and that happened without much fuss on our side and that was their biggest concern was losing email, all students k-12 and staff use Gmail. We let teachers know that we would never be upgrading Office and did a survey if they wanted it to remain on their teacher laptops. All departments are running Office and theirs will be the only ones that we will upgrade. Google apps has done more for student/ teacher, student/student collaboration than any other program I have seen in many years. The communication and endless options are what makes cloud based apps a modern day joy....always changing.

Change
For many, all the changing we have done over the years may seem a bit much, but I think it has done a few things for us. One, it has helped staff realize that change is not such a bad thing. In a profession that is usually slow to change, it has helped create a culture that looks at change as something positive that keeps us relevant with the world and our students. Two, it keeps our tech staff always moving forward, innovating, and leading from the middle, which can be very powerful. I don't believe there is a one size fits all, so take the time to decide what fits for you and your district and don't look back.

Too Big

Backlash
Isn't it just crazy how some celebrities work all their lives to become larger than life and then after they get there, things seem to fall apart? It becomes trendy to dislike them at a point, their decision making skills go out the window, they start believing in their own persona, or they relieve themselves in mop buckets and spit on people, allegedly, (sorry Beiber fans). That is when a good publicists steps in and cleans things up. If the situation is completely out of control an entire team will go to work recreating an entirely new image for the person.

Similar?
It may be a bit of a stretch to compare celebrities to companies, but I can't help but see some similarities at times between the two. They start small and many grow quickly to what seems like a larger than life company that can't do anything wrong. But give it enough time and there will be some backlash or their product lines stay the same for so long that disruptive innovation is not a priority. I am not an expert on Blackberry history, but it seems like a good example of a powerhouse that had to play catch up in a market that quickly passed them by, and it seems like their clientele focus stayed to narrow. I am still a huge fan of Blackberry and their influence on messaging and e-mail use on a mobile device, but their name isn't on my radar when thinking about a new phone.

Microsoft restructure
When Microsoft recently made news with their big restructure plan, I couldn't help but think of the larger than life celebrity that became to big and then starting making questionable decisions. Ballmer seems committed to creating something that is more collaborative and focused, but is the direction a catch up approach or create game changers one, that will put them back on top as an innovative powerhouse. If they decide to keep throwing Hail Mary passes like giving away 10,000 Surface tablets at ISTE this year, I am not sure they are going to reconnect with their audience.

Bring it around
So how does it all apply to the local IT shop? I think it is rather simple, do not become to comfortable with the service you are providing and become something larger than life. When you become complacent and feel there is nothing that you can improve upon, the backlash will begin. Continue to look for ways to innovate and ask your customers for feedback on your service and please, stay away from mop buckets.

Quick Feet

The Future
I have said before that I like change for a number of reasons. Maybe it is because I am not a big story
teller of past experiences or don't spend a lot of time day dreaming about the good old days (there is nothing wrong with that of course). I just personally enjoy looking forward to the new experience, it keeps things fresh and even though it can be a struggle at times, the world we live in waits for no one.

Traditional
Quite often I hear industrial age model, traditional, slow to change, creatures of habit, as words and phrases commonly used to describe our public school system. Having two elementary age children, I would rather hear the words collaborative, innovative, student centered, challenging, and ready to adapt for each individual student. Those environments do exist in public education and we should hold them up as models for others to see.  The question is how did they get to that place many schools and districts struggle for everyday?

An Agile Staff
When I say agile, I am using the word it in the purest sense:

-quick and well-coordinated in movement
-active: lively
-marked by an ability to think quickly: mentally acute or aware

I am not an English major, so hopefully I am using the word correctly, but I can't dismiss the notion that if a staff is agile and prepared to be quick on their feet, they probably have a mindset that is open to change. The question becomes how do we build in a comfort level with our staff that allows them to be quick on their feet, embrace change, and allow that quick thinking, lively personality to take over?

Supportive Environment
Start by building a supportive environment that fosters collaboration, risk taking, and direct answers that address concerns when they arise. If staff members have support from their leadership and peers, change can become more of an opportunity for improvement and not a scary situation that threatens the comfort of what we know.

Change is inevitable and it is necessary for moving forwarding in any school, department, or business. Embracing the concept is difficult for most because routine is something that is built into us as humans from birth, so maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise. But a supportive environment is also something that most are provided from birth and that allows kids to grow and develop and enjoy new experiences. Maybe we just need to provide that supportive environment at the shop and see what happens.