The Tempered Radical

Quick Guide to Web 2.0 Services [HANDOUT]

As a guy who has written two books about using technology in schools (see here and here) and who regularly delivers two-day workshops on teaching with technology (see here), one of the questions that I'm asked all the time is, "So what digital tools are YOU using in the classroom?"

While my first reaction is always to explain that choosing tools can only start once a practitioner has a clear vision for what they want their students to know and be able to do (see here), I also understand that having a sense for the kinds of services that other digitally driven teachers have embraced is useful -- particularly to people who are just beginning to integrate technology into their classrooms.

To that end, I've created an annotated Quick Guide to the Web 2.0 services that I find useful as a teacher and a learner. 

You can download it here:

Handout_QuickGuidetoWebTools

You can also bookmark the link to the Quick Guide in my Dropbox here.  That may even more useful to you simply because you'll see new additions and deletions anytime that I make changes to the document.

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Related Radical Reads:

Digital Immigrants Unite

Making Good Technology Choices

Technology Will Kill

 

5 Resources for Leaders Starting PLCs from Scratch

A school principal buddy of mine who I'll keep nameless for the time being reached out yesterday looking for a bit of advice.

His teachers are incredibly excited about the notion of becoming a professional learning community, but he isn't sure exactly where to start in order to lay the right foundation for the work that they want to do together. 

He wrote:

"Not sure what I am asking here… I guess I just feel that I have teachers buying in now and I don't want to blow it… but I also don't want to have the time in which the focus is on conversations rather than actual doing.  I feel we have great conversations but these conversations don't always lead to change.

As we are just starting out in September, we have 3 more staff meetings and a possible day in the summer to discuss/plan for PLC time next year.  Should the focus be purpose, process (norms, etc) for this year and the start of next year?

There are so many resources at All Things PLC that I am a bit overwhelmed and not sure where to look.  Beyond the Learning By Doing book, are there other key resources you would recommend me checking out this year and in the summer?"

As a guy who is pretty passionate about the power of professional learning communities, I get asked this question a bunch.  While there are literally TONS of good resources for helping school leaders to structure professional learning communities, finding practical starting points can be tough simply because there is SO much information to sift through.

Here are five resources from my own work that I think school leaders who are starting PLCs from scratch might find useful:

The Power of PLCs - One challenge that many school leaders face when moving their schools towards a more collaborative future is convincing teachers that PLCs can be something more than just another initiative.  Those leaders might find this post useful.  In it, I give a tangible example of how my own practice changed as a result of an opportunity to collaborate with my peers.

Don't Skip Vision and Values Statements - On a more practical level, it is ESSENTIAL for school leaders to help their faculties define a set of tangible action steps that will guide the work of every learning team in their buildings.  In this post, I explain why vision and values statements matter so much and share the collective commitments and action steps that my school recently developed.

What DO We Want Students to Know and Be Able to Do and Practice-Centered Observation Protocol -  My buddy's primary concern is that the time his teachers spend collaborating might not lead to any tangible change in practice.  That's where these two handouts will come in handy.  Both are designed to help teachers keep the collaborative work that they are doing focused on student-learning.  They can serve as solid starting points for meaningful conversations.

Laying the Collaborative Foundation - In October of 2012, I spent a full day working with the Glenwood Leadership Academy -- a progressive school in Evansville, Indiana that was working to cement their collaborative foundation as well.  This link connects to the workshop materials that I prepared for their school.  It is designed to introduce teams and teachers to a set of tangible first steps that schools can and should take in order to ensure that their PLCs get off to a solid start.

Does any of this look useful to you?

You can find the rest of my PLC content by poking around in the PLC category of my blog or by exploring the handouts from my two PLC books:  Building a PLC at Work and Making Teamwork Meaningful.

Are there any resources that YOU would recommend to school leaders interested in setting up PLCs in their buildings? 

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Related Radical Reads:

PLCs: Why This?  Why Now?  Why Bother?

Why This, Why Now, Why Bother - Part Deux

The Stages of PLC Development

Twitter is MORE than Honey Boo Boo Child

Sometimes it's just plain amazing to see what you can find floating through Twitter. 

 

KNOW WHERE TO LOOK AND YOU CAN FIND HONEY BOO BOO:

AND SPANDEX AND HAIR BOWS:

AND CATS.  LOTS AND LOTS OF CATS.  AND EVEN MORE CATS:

 

 

 

BUT IF YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, YOU'LL ALSO FIND INSPIRATION:

 

CONTENT THAT CHALLENGES YOUR THINKING:

 

INTERESTING QUESTIONS:

CELEBRATIONS:

 

IN DEPTH CONVERSATIONS:

AND NEW CONNECTIONS:

 

MORAL OF THE STORY: Give Twitter a chance.  It's a powerful place where educators are learning together -- and learning together matters.

#simpletruth

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Related Radical Reads:

Twitter as a Tool for Professional Development

Twitter is Only ONE PLN Building Tool

Twitter Can SAVE You Time

Five Twitter Hashtags for School Leaders

Twitter Hashtags for Educators

A Twitter Push-Back

 

Three Professional Reads That are Worth Your Time

Let's start with a simple truth:  The best school leaders -- whether they are classroom teachers, principals, or district professional development providers -- should ALWAYS be reading simply because reading keeps a practitioner current and serves as a source of constant intellectual challenge. 

But ask around a little bit and you'll probably discover that there's NOT a lot of reading going on in your professional circles -- and "finding the time" is the explanation that most people will give for failing to turn any pages during the past twelve months. 

That makes sense, doesn't it?

After all, we really ARE busy people working in a busy profession that does little to create time and space for practitioners to reflect and to think and to grow. 

So I decided to whip up a list of three professional books that really ARE worth your time no matter HOW busy you are.  

Here they are:

Common Formative Assessment: A Toolkit for PLCs at Work

Several years ago, I stumbled across this quote from educational researcher John Hattie in a Bob Marzano book: “The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback.  The simplest prescription for improving education must be 'dollops of feedback.'” (As quoted in Marzano, 2003, p. 37)

It's a GREAT point, isn't it?  And it resonates with everything that we know about growing learners.  Feedback matters.

But providing "dollops of feedback" is a HECK of a lot harder than it sounds when you are responsible for 125 students who are assigned to classes of 30+ and you have 60 minutes of planning on a good day. 

Under those conditions, timely, direct feedback on performance becomes nearly impossible.

That's what makes Common Formative Assessment by Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic such an important read.  The authors take a difficult task and show teachers how to make it a manageable part of their everyday work.  

If you are a teacher, pick this up and work through it with your learning team.  You'll have a better sense for just what responsible formative assessment is supposed to look like AND some practical strategies for incorporating it into your practice without killing yourself. 

If you are a principal, share this with your entire faculty.  Formative assessment matters -- but teachers have to be convinced that it's doable.  That's exactly what Bailey and Jakicic do in this short, approachable text. 

 

Multipliers - How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

As a member of a panel discussion on the challenges of recruiting accomplished teachers to challenging schools a few years ago, I was asked a simple question by a district superintendent.  "How can I get more teachers like you in  my schools?" he said.

My answer was immediate: "Find as many amazing principals as you can.  Hire them, develop them, and pay them a heaping cheeseload of cash to stay.  Spend more time on recruiting and retaining school leaders because good teachers want to work for good principals."

If you agree with my logic that good principals matter, then you've got to read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown.

Based years of experience coaching the senior leadership of leading companies and thousands of hours combing through data on the traits of leaders who succeed, Wiseman and Mckeown identify the characteristics of Multipliers -- leaders who get the most out of their people -- and Diminishers, or leaders whose very behaviors hold organizations back.

What I like the best about Multipliers is that it gives tangible language for describing the kinds of steps that successful leaders take to empower their employees. 

While Multipliers isn't written specifically for schools, superintendents, principals and teacher leaders could pick this title up and quickly identify simple leadership changes that would leave their co-workers energized and their organizations more productive.

 

Why School?  How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere

I am a firm believer that public schools will never become the kinds of responsive, student-centered, progressive learning spaces that we want them to be until we can describe those spaces in simple, user-friendly language that everyone -- parents, policymakers and practitioners -- can understand.

That's why I think Will Richardson's newest book -- Why School? -- is worth your time. 

Not only is Why School a 51-page Kindle Single that you'll be able to read in one sitting, it's a title that you can easily share with everyone that needs to know more about the hows-and-whys behind the kinds of changes that most of us believe in. 

Will has accomplished something significant with Why School:  He's created a tool that interested educators -- and people who are interested in education -- can use to start the kinds of community-based conversations that might actually lead to real change for our schools. 

 

So whaddya' think of my list?  Have you read any of these titles yet? Would you recommend them to time-crunched peers?

What books would you describe as "must-reads?"

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Related Radical Reads:

What Are YOU Doing to Make Sure Your Students are Well-Googled?

Are Current #edpolicies Turning Schools into Brainpower Wastelands?

Is REAL Formative Assessment Even Possible?

My Saturday Morning Newspaper [SLIDE]

After wiping a cheeseload of tryptophanic crust out of my eyes this morning, I was feeling a bit creative  -- so I decided to whip up a slide for all y'all:

(click to enlarge)

Download Slide_SaturdayMorningPaper

Hope y'all dig it.

More importantly, hope y'all will spend serious time learning to embrace the simple beauty of a world where RSS feed readers like Google Reader allow YOU control the Saturday morning paper.

Need some help getting started with feed readers? 

Then check out this Commoncraft tutorial:

 

#muybueno

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Related Radical Reads:

Information Management is REALLY Just Filter Failure [SLIDE]

Managing Information in the 21st Century [SLIDE]

Twitter Snobs or Efficient Learners?

 

 

Original Image Credit:

I Can’t Believe the News Today by Thomas Lethuard

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on November 24, 2012

Answering Chris's Questions about Student Friendly Learning Goals

A few years ago, I wrote a bit on the steps that my learning team has taken to convert the clunky objectives in our state curriculum into learning goals that parents and students could actually understand. 

The process was INCREDIBLY important and INCREDIBLY rewarding because it forced our team to REALLY look carefully at what the state expected us to teach to our students. 

For the first time, we had meaningful conversations about what we wanted students to know and be able to do.  We collectively wrestled with the size of our curriculum and started to make careful decisions about how we were going to spend our instructional time. 

While the original goal of our work was to help our STUDENTS to understand the targets that they were expected to master, writing student friendly learning goals also created opportunities for our TEAM to have the kinds of meaningful conversations that define successful professional learning communities.

#THATScool

A reader named Chris stopped by yesterday and left a comment on that post asking a TON of questions.  It sounds like he's struggling with some of the work that his school is doing with student friendly learning goals. 

I wanted to answer a few of his questions and thought you'd be interested in my replies.

More on Developing EVERY Formative Assessment Together

Yesterday was a pretty terrific day of learning for me. 

After writing my bit answering a reader's question about whether or not learning teams should develop EVERY formative assessment together, I had a LONG conversation -- both on Twitter and in the comment section of the previous post -- about assessment with some of my favorite digital friends. 

I heard from Matt Townsley and Russ Goerend -- two guys who do a TON of thinking about assessment.  I heard from Mike Fisher -- who has an ability to cut to the core of an issue like nobody's business -- and from Marisa Dahl, whose follow-up questions still have me thinking.

Here are three takeaways from those conversations.

Should #atplc Teams Develop EVERY Common Formative Assessment Together?

After reading my bit on the role that common assessments should play in an #atplc school, KHC stopped by and asked:

Bill, by common assessments, do you mean ALL formative and ALL summative?

My Language Arts team of eleven teachers has been mandated to do so. It seems VERY restrictive to me that every single formative and summative has to be exactly the same for all eleven teachers.

My first reaction, KHC, is that common assessments are the least of your worries! 

There's just NO WAY that 11 teachers can collaborate with one another efficiently and effectively given the limited amount of time that we have for working together in schools.

Heck, I have a hard enough time coming to shared decisions with the THREE other teachers on my learning team.  I can't even imagine trying to work with TEN other teachers all at the same time. 

So PLEASE break your larger learning team apart into two smaller collaborative groups that meet with each other on a weekly basis! 

That doesn't mean you won't make SOME shared decisions as a whole group. 

Maybe you can spend staff development days together, brainstorming lists of essential knowledge and skills that ALL children need to learn.  Maybe you can have a few volunteer representatives meet monthly to ensure that there's some consensus and shared direction across the hallway. 

But regularly trying to meet with 11 people is a recipe for collaborative disaster.  No matter how great it sounds in theory, your meetings will be inefficient and ineffective on a good day and downright frustrating on a bad day.  You'll quit before you even get started.

As for which assessments should be common, the answer is simple:  EVERY summative task must be common. Common summative tasks help to ensure that EVERY student on the hallway is exposed to the same essential knowledge and skills.

What DOES Teacher Leadership Look Like in an #atplc School?

My good friend Brett Gruetzmacher -- who is a fantastic middle school #atplc principal in Indiana --dropped me a question in Twitter the other day that I figured I ought to answer here in the Radical. 

He wrote:

Bill. I am in the process of creating a PLC teacher leader philosophy/description. Do you have a Tempered post that discusses it? Take care. Brett

While I've never written directly about Brett's question here on the Radical, I wrote about teacher leadership in an #atplc school in my first book -- Building a Professional Learning Community at Work.

And the bad news is that there is no SIMPLE formula to determining who is going to make a good teacher leader in a learning community. 

That's because different teams will need different KINDS of leadership at different times -- so a teacher who exerts significant influence and points a team in the right direction early in their work together may not have the right set of skills to move the same team forward after it has worked together successfully for awhile. 

There are a few tricks to identifying potential leaders -- and to creating the right conditions for teacher leadership to thrive on individual learning teams -- that I can offer, however.

Common Assessments are the CORNERSTONE of #atplc Work, Y'all.

Blogger's Note:  Earlier this week, I sent out this Tweet about the role that common assessments play in a professional learning community:

Without common assessments, everything else about the professional learning community model is just window dressing.#atplc

— Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) May 27, 2012

My buddy Matt Townsley -- an assessment junkie who works in a district level leadership role -- asked me yesterday if I'd ever written more about common assessments as a foundational element of learning communities.

His request reminded me of a bit that I wrote years ago for another blog about the impact that writing common assessments had on my original professional learning team.  Figured y'all might dig it, so I'm sharing it here. 

Hope it helps,

Bill

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Are you ready to be shocked?

Until I started to work on a collaborative team, I hadn't even really looked at the standards for the subjects that I was teaching.

Instead, I taught topics that I knew other teachers in my subject area were teaching – or that were listed in my set of classroom textbooks.

And I'm supposedly an "accomplished teacher?!"

That all changed when I began working in a school built on professional learning community concepts.

You see, one of the only requirements that our first principal had for our learning teams was that we had to develop common assessments that would be delivered in each of our classrooms.