Yes, No, Maybe?

Face-To-Face

The ISTE Learning and Leading publication is a membership magazine that contains great ideas, success stories, and the chance to share opinions. Point/Counterpoint is a regular feature that provides a topic question that readers can respond to. The reader answers yes or no and then gives their reasoning for their answer. It is a great feature that I enjoy reading and on occasion will respond to. Back in August the question was,  "Should students opt out of face-to-face education." This question is featured in the current issue and I thought I would share my response (added a little color) here and see if others have any feedback on the topic.   

No
Online learning has brought a great opportunity for both students and teachers in today's educational environment. It continues to evolve and K-12 institutions are finding ways to incorporate this medium of instruction in a number of creative ways. Traditionally, opting out of face-to-face and moving online has been associated with credit recovery, illness, participating in a class that their school does not offer, or particular situations that keep students from attending a traditional setting. I think we should be grateful to the online learning options for those situations. However opting out of all face-to-face education  just "because" is not the right choice in my opinion.

Blend It
I believe that a blended learning opportunity can better meet the needs of our students than opting out completely from the face-to-face environment. Blended learning was defined by Michael Horn and  Heather Staker in The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning as,

"any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace"

This definition has been interpreted and rewritten in a number of different ways, however the definitions that I believe will allow our students to be successful in society have a meaningful face-to-face component. We have created this definition in my school district to guide our blended learning opportunity pilot by combining our own thoughts and those of others.

blended learning is any time a student learns at least in part in a Project-based, higher level thinking, brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student
control over time, place, path, and/or pace

"When PBL is done correctly, it engages the students in their learning. They are motivated by an authentic purpose that peeks their curiosity. Learning is differentiated through product, process, possibly content, choice, etc. Various learning styles are met, and student strengths are nourished. Teachers can work with small groups, and can meet individual needs." -Tracy Watanabe

Why Not
I suppose there could also be an argument that PBL and higher level thinking can be facilitated online and not face-to-face, but a productive society still has to interact with one another sometime, so why not blend it.

The Role of IT

Amazing Group
I am very fortunate to be on the AZ CIO/CTO Conference planning committee, which works closely with Converge (@convergemag) to make the conference possible. The conference is a product of the AZ CIO/CTO group that is made up of CIO, CTO's, Directors, and other AZ educational IT staff. What is so refreshing about the planning committee and the group in general, is the desire to influence change in the classroom using technology as the catalyst. When planning the most recent conference, the discussion was focused on pedagogy, leadership, and how we could share thoughts on innovation with our audience. Yes the techie piece was still a part of the conversation, but a small part in the big picture. You may be thinking what is so great about that, but I would ask you to stop and think about your district's IT department and what their role is in the organization. Do they just manage devices or do they influence change?


Influence Change
The keynote speaker at the conference was Dan Thurmon (@DanThurmon), and his philosophy is based around, "Success in life is not determined by your circumstances, but by your actions." One of the statements that he made was, "you can't always control the situation, but you can influence it." I very much agree with that statement and believe that as technology directors and IT staff, we can and should operate as 360 degree leaders. John Maxwell talks about leading down, up and across in organizations and how you can expand your influence and become a more valuable team member in his book, The 360 Degree Leader. You may not always be able to control a situation, but you can spend time talking with your superintendent, working with principals, spending time in classrooms and leading your tech staff to be 360 degree leaders also. 

Why So Motivated
I may be generalizing a bit here, or maybe AZ just has the best group of educational IT staff around, but CIO/CTO's and techies in general are not afraid of change. Maybe it is because we are used to the rate that technology changes everyday, or the infinite number of possibilities that can cause a piece of software not to run properly. Whatever the reason is, district tech staff can be innovators and can influence change across a school district, they reach classrooms on a daily basis. What is the role of your district's IT staff, do they just fix devices and manage the network, or do they influence change and innovate?

Innovation Center

There were a number of great sessions at the CIO/CTO conference I mentioned earlier, but one that motivated me to write about the day and IT department was John Miller's session, Innovation Centers. Here is the session description.

Twenty-first century innovation is a symphony of the arts and sciences to design beautiful products and services in new ways. Innovation centers prepare a generation of creators with self-directed teams of students learning through active creation. They are a mash-up of science experiment, art project, music class, multimedia lab and innovation playground. With the help of a trained facilitator, students select, lead and manage their own projects, developing empathy, teamwork, independence and creativity. Evolve beyond the computer lab or Media Center to student Innovation Centers. Transform the digital native to the innovation native.

John truly believes that IT staff can help bring innovation into the classroom and he is working closely with one of his district's elementary schools to create an innovation center that focuses on keeping the creativity in learning. I wanted to end with a picture that John recently shared of the door to his IT department, nice to see department names and titles starting to change to reflect the 21st century.

"Billy" Beane for the Disruption

Baseball

softdistrict.com

Like most kids I played baseball growing up, Little League and then Senior League, before giving it up for track in high school. It was fun hanging out with friends, developing rivalries with the other teams, yelling hey batter batter batter.....swing, from the dugout. I have to admit that I don't follow baseball very close anymore, I don't know many players names and only keep up with the AZ Diamondbacks, who are doing very well I might add:-). Despite me not knowing every stat of every player in the league, there are many amazing baseball stories that have inspired countless books and movies over the years.


Moneyball
I recently went to see Moneyball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, "A story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players." Like any Hollywood movie based on a true story, I am sure there were a number of changes to keep things interesting and people planted in the seats, but what I took away from the movie was very simple. Beane brought disruption to the organization. By using sabermetrics to build his team, he caused discomfort to the traditionalist of the game and was quickly criticized when the team got off to a rough start.

typepad.com

Sound Familiar
The wheels in my head were spinning throughout the movie as I kept thinking about how disruption is so difficult for most people to accept and when it happens, how quickly the change is condemned unless there is immediate success. Once Beane had his team together, he used stats to build relationships with the players and it gave them an understanding of the why...sound familiar? I won't give away a few great scenes in the movie where others have their aha moments, but there are a number of them that could be used with staff as examples of how change can be something positive and professionally stimulating.


Final Quote
Like I mentioned earlier, I am not a die hard baseball fan and I am sure there are many arguments by purist that may argue Beane's methods of constructing a baseball team. However I think many scenes in this movie will be used by leaders as examples that disruption is not a bad word and changing the way we have always done things is OK. I will leave you with my favorite quote from the movie, "adapt or die!"       

Nothing Without It

mediabeast.net

Relationships
I recently was having a conversation with someone and the topic of discussion was successful teams/departments and the relationships among them. While we were discussing the qualities of the leaders that have built these great teams, this person said something which I found puzzling. They said that the person didn't really matter to them, just what they had to say. It quickly put things into perspective about this person, but also confirmed for me the importance of relationships when attempting to build a solid team or connect with anyone for that matter. 



Long Term
So what does it take to build relationships that will leave people truly listening to what you are saying....trust. I believe John Maxwell puts it in very simple terms, "In reality, trust is necessary in ALL good relationships. Good marriages, business relationships, and friendships all require trust. Without it, there can be no open and honest interaction, and the relationship will be only temporary". Have you ever watched a group of people follow someone they don't trust, or work collaboratively together, or sustain a relationship that proves successful over a long period of time? Temporary relationships may yield quick outcomes, but not long term growth.

bydanleisure

Build Them
Relationships exists at every level within a school district and building them is critical for the success of the organization. Everyone must take responsibility for building them, admin-staff, teacher-student, teacher-parent, the list could go on. If we are to build more than a short term relationship between individuals, we must build trust. I was sent a post by Mike Myatt recently, via @LarryLaPrise, that addressed leadership and presence. One takeaway for me was, "Leadership is about trust, stewardship, care, concern, service, humility and understanding. If you build into those you lead, if you make them better, if you add value to their lives then you will have earned their trust and loyalty. This is the type of bond that will span positional and philosophical gaps, survive mistakes, challenges, downturns and other obstacles that will inevitably occur".

Listen
Building relationships, it is the foundation in my opinion, that will allow a successful structure to be built. It opens the door for genuine collaboration, interaction between customer and business, school and students, teacher and parents. And just think, when people are listening to each other, they may just matter.

Teachers Talk ISTE 2011

Update

School has now been back in session for three weeks, and although the AJUSD Technology Department continues to get busier by the day, I was able to present to our School Board this afternoon. I like to share our conference experiences with the board, let them know what was gained from attending and discuss returning the next year.

ISTE 2011
I was fortunate enough to be able to take a wonderful group of teachers and an amazing Technology Integration Specialist to Philadelphia this summer. The trip was great (minus the roller coaster ride on the way there), and all that attended grew as professionals. We captured their thoughts on video about ISTE 2011 and showed that to the board (meeting was during class time and did not want to pull 5 teachers away from their students), but also wanted to share with others. Enjoy!



Thanks to AJUSD School Board, Dr. Chad Wilson, Gina Fraher, Elizabeth Francois, Amber Moore, Bethany Myers, Maryanne Galvan, and Tracy Watanabe.

Fail, Learn, Try Again

Fail
I believe there are a number reasons why people are afraid to change and try new things. Two specific reasons that come to mind are:

• The fear of failure itself
  
• Staff members are not encouraged to fail

The end result of the fear of failure and not wanting to change can lead to a stale environment. We had a situation recently with our network that reminded of an incident which took place almost 10 years ago now.

Learn
I was a technology trainer at the time and one
afternoon was working with one of the desktop technicians on an issue that an end user was having. We were running all Linux servers at the time and everything was done through a shell window. We were certain that the problem was a particular file within the etc directory that needed to be deleted. So we typed out the command line and both looked at each other with that uncertain hesitation, then hit the enter button. We were both really happy with ourselves and went about our business. Not long after we walked away from the computer, the phone started ringing and one of our schools was reporting that they were having some trouble. I began hearing our system admin asking the other guys about the etc directory, rm -rf (in plain English that means remove, pretty much forever), who deleted the entire etc directory at SMES? Yep, we deleted the entire etc directory at one of the schools in our quest to fix an issue a teacher was having. Nobody said anything to us the next day, even though they knew we had blown away the directory. Instead they let us sweat a little and then sat us down and went through the entire process of what we had done and where we went wrong. It turned out to be a great learning experience and they were happy we had made the attempt to give it a go on our own.

Try Again
I was not afraid to try again after that incident because we were encouraged, not punished or embarrassed. As leaders we must encourage our staff to be creative, try new things, and know that if they don't work, try again.

Students Speak

Kick It Off
Every year in my district we have a welcome back day for all district staff. It usually consists of some kind of breakfast or lunch, a guest speaker or district admin delivering the welcome back message. It is a difficult couple hours to plan as feedback is always mixed on these type of events, and with tight budgets, outside guest speakers are not an option for us.

The Green Light
Our Superintendent, Dr. Chad Wilson, is a dynamic public speaker, he does a great job communicating his expectations for the district and recognizing successes. One element that I thought would be beneficial for this years welcome back, would be to hear from our students, listen to what they feel is working and what they hope to see this school year. With the go ahead from Dr. Wilson, I set off to figure out how to make this happen. With help from Tracy Watanabe, we gathered a group of students from across K-12, and invited them in for a short two question interview. Their responses were not prompted or edited for effect, just honest.



Coming Together
With all the negativity around public education right now I think it is important to share the good things that are happening out there while not losing sight of the high expectations we must hold ourselves too as educators. Our welcome back day this year had a different feel to it than previous years and hearing from our students and teachers (see Reflections video below), things are coming together. We have a ways to go before all students are college ready by the time they leave us, but we are off to a great start.



Thank You
I want to thank all the AJUSD students and parents for taking the time and allowing their children to share their thoughts with us. They were amazing! I would also like to thank Tracy Watanabe for all her assistance with the project and Dr. Wilson for always allowing us to run with our ideas.