The Tempered Radical

Technology Professional Development Scenarios

Let's start with a simple truth:  Schools have limited budgets and every time that we make careless spending choices, we tie our own hands behind our backs.

As a result, I've worked HARD over the past several years to encourage both teachers and school leaders to think systematically about just what they want to see happening in classrooms before they spend ANYTHING on technology.

To that end, I've whipped up a set of stories that are designed to start conversations about just what good technology integration is supposed to look like in schools.

You can download the stories here:

2. Handout_TechnologyScenarios

What I plan to do with the stories is ask audiences to engage in Carousel Brainstorming -- moving in small groups from story to story and answering the reflection questions found on the final page of the packet.

My hope is that every participant will see themselves -- both who they are and who they want to be -- somewhere in the stories.  More importantly, my hope is that the conversations started in small groups will help participants to wrestle with the rationale behind their own technology spending choices.

Whaddya' think?

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Related Radical Reads:

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Making Good Technology Choices

Buying Teachers Chainsaws

 

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

 

Why Preaching to the #educhoir Really DOES Matter

For the third straight year, I'm spending the last weekend in January learning alongside a TON of really bright minds at Educon -- the ONE conference that I attend as a learner and a learner only. 

Ask anyone who has ever been to Educon and they'll tell you it's a pretty special experience.  There's just something magical about spending two full days with other people who share your passion -- and your progressive vision -- about what education COULD be. 

But you know what skeptics will say, right? 

They'll call Educon a professional echo chamber -- a place where dissenting views are discourged and where people are wrestling with ideas rather than driving change.  They'll say that there's enough Rah-Rah to go around and that it's time that someone step forward and take action. 

They'll say that we need to stop preaching to the choir and start preaching to the pews!

Sometimes, though, spending time in the #educhoir DOES Matter:

(click to enlarge)

 

The simple truth is that being a change agent can be a REALLY lonely experience.

And while we have to remind ourselves to constantly introduce dissenting voices to our learning streams, never discount the role that singing together can play in lifting us up, affirming our core values and beliefs, and fighting back against professional isolation. 

That in and of itself makes preaching to the #educhoir -- and making time for #educon -- worthwhile.

Any of this make sense?

#gratefulforSLA

 

Looking for an #edtech Workshop? Come Learn With Me!

As most Radical readers know, I'm one of the authors of Teaching the iGeneration -- a title designed to introduce teachers to ways that technology can be used to design lessons that give students opportunities to experiment with essential skills like collaboration, information management and persuasion. 

It's probably the title that I'm most proud of because it is incredibly practical. 

I've shared everything that I know about good teaching in the 21st Century.  Readers -- especially those teaching middle and high schoolers -- should be able to pick up Teaching the iGeneration and begin changing their work immediately. 

That's why YOU -- or the teachers in YOUR school -- might be interested in a series of two-day workshops that I'm delivering in the Spring of 2013.  

Sponsored by Solution Tree, I'll be in San Diego in late March and Saint Paul, Minnesota in early April.  

Each workshop is designed to help teachers find logical first steps towards integrating technology into their instruction.  We'll look at the changing nature of today's learners and discuss the disconnect between the learning spaces that we've created and the learning spaces that our kids crave. 

We'll talk about the strategies that efficient learners take to manage the crush of information in today's hyper-connected world.  We'll examine the differences between students who use social spaces for networking and social spaces for learning. 

We'll explore the changing nature of persuasion in a visual world and talk about how students can generate their own audiences for the issues they care about.

Most importantly, we'll look for overlaps between the work we are CURRENTLY doing and the work that we SHOULD be doing in schools.  We'll innovate at the edges of the box and build bridges between what we know about efficient learning and what our students know about new tools. 

Interested in learning more?

Then download this PDF overview of the workshop:

Download Overview_iGenerationWorkshopREVISED

Or check out the session slides for two Teaching the iGeneration Workshops I delivered back in October and check out the session wiki where most of the resources for my iGeneration workshops are housed.

You can also explore the kind of content that I bring to workshops by exploring the resource pages for the three most recent technology workshops that I delivered:

Using Technology to Create a Highly Engaged Classroom

Building a Bridge to Better Learning for Today's Students

Literacy, Blogging and the Digital Native

What I hope you'll find is that my status as a full time, real live, bona fide practicing classroom teacher brings credibility to conversations about teaching and learning with technology. Everything that I share with audiences are lessons learned through experience -- and that matters. 

Hope you'll consider coming to a workshop this Spring -- and bringing friends! 

There's nothing that I like more than a room full of passionate practitioners who are interested in reimagining the work that we do with kids.

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Related Radical Reads:

What are YOU Using Technology For?

Making Good Technology Choices

Innovation and Intellectual Collisions

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?

Making Teamwork Meaningful in a PLC at Work Now Available!

So it was an exciting weekend in Radical Nation, y'all:  My newest book -- Making Teamwork Meaningful in a PLC at Work -- was officially released!

 

I'm proud of Making Teamwork Meaningful primarily because I think it can help readers to tackle the five common frustrations faced by the leaders of professional learning communities. 

And that's important, y'all:  PLCs are incredibly empowering and rewarding when you get them right.  But "getting them right" depends on taking practical steps forward even when the going gets tough. 

Here's what others had to say about Making Teamwork Meaningful:

Educators engaged in implementing the PLC process need specific, practical strategies for overcoming the inherent challenges of substantive change. 

Ferriter, Graham and Wight alert educators to the obstacles, but more importantly, present proven, practical strategies for addressing those challenges.

Making Teamwork Meaningful is a gem.  I highly recommend this book to those who are serious about transforming their schools into PLCs.

Rick DuFour, Architect of the PLC at Work model. 

 

As a Principal at a high school in its fifth year of the PLC journey, I found Making Teamwork Meaningful to be one of the most important books that I have read to date. 

Nearly all of the successes and challenges described in this book resonated with me, from the initial excitement and euphoria that comes from attending a PLC conference, to the confusion that can result from creating structures to enable teacher collaboration and mechanisms for student intervention, to the frustration that can happen creating and co-existing within collaborative groups and the issues that can arise with singleton departments. 

What distinguishes Making Teamwork Meaningful is the sound, practical solutions and easy-to-use resources that any educational leader can use to diagnose and improve their Professional Learning Community. 

Cale Birk, Principal of South Kamloops Secondary School

 

Making Teamwork Meaningful is the epitome of turning the often perceived complexities of professional learning communities into simple and powerful actions.

Leaders in PLC schools are always searching for better methods to maximize capacity, thus improving student achievement.

All leaders, ranging in experience from novice to expert, will discover practical and innovative solutions that have the potential to resolve seemingly impossible problems in this book.

John Wink, Principal of Gilmer Elementary School

 

Making Teamwork Meaningful is a must read for any school administrator.  It doesn't matter if you're a seasoned vet or a novice. 

The authors provide great advice, solid research, and amazing resources.  Most importantly, they provide the keys to creating a progress-driven PLC in any school. 

Brett Clark, eLearning Coach

 

If you're interested in exploring Making Teamwork Meaningful, check out this link, which will allow you to download every handout in the text for free. 

You can purchase the Perfect Paperback version of MTM on Solution Tree's website here.  You can pick up the eVersion of MTM on Amazon here. 

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

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Related Radical Reads:

Making Teamwork Meaningful Coming Soon

Building a PLC at Work

A Win for Building a PLC at Work

Making Teamwork Meaningful in a PLC at Work

So it's a pretty big day in Radical Nation.

Solution Tree finished the cover design for my fourth book, Making Teamwork Meaningful: Leading Progress Driven Collaboration in a PLC at Work -- which I co-authored with Parry Graham and Matt Wight, two of the best principals I've ever had the chance to work with. 

Check it out:

(click to enlarge)

It's designed to introduce readers to sets of tangible strategies for tackling five common frustrations that often stall professional learning communities:

• Getting the right people into the right collaborative places.
• Making collaboration work for singletons and teachers in small schools.
• Designing a master schedule that facilitiates PLC priorities. 
• Building a system of interventions to address the needs of every student.
• Increasing the collaborative capacity of faculty members and learning teams.

Our goal was to remind the leaders of struggling learning communities that there ARE practical steps that they can take in order to help EVERY learning team to make progress and to move forward together -- and early reactions to the content that we've put together have been really positive.

I think what I like the best about MTM is the fact that we use regular examples of leadership and progress BEYOND schools to make our key points. 

Lessons drawn from disastrous Amazonian expeditions, successful stock market analysts, intelligent medical practitioners in America's delivery rooms, and the principles that drive progress in the natural world make the text more relevant, engaging and unique. 

Needless to say, I'm excited to see what y'all think of it when it's finally published! 

 Look for it in January of 2013. 

#jazzed

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Related Radical Reads:

Building a Professional Learning Community at Work

Teaching the iGeneration

Communicating and Connecting with Social Media

 

When Should You Block a Twitter User?

It's been an interesting few days in my Twitterstream, y'all.  I've been engaged in a bit of a digital slugfest with a guy I'll call Conner in the interest of protecting his identity. 

Conner saw a Tweet sharing a Darcy Mullen bit on the rationale behind flipping learning spaces that referenced me and started throwing haymakers about the complete uselessness of flipping -- and of the educators who are exploring it. 

I should have known the conversation was headed nowhere when Conner's first Tweet was, "Talk to cheerleaders and get a cup of Kool-aid.  Is that the intent?"

He followed that up with, "Also enthusiastically awaiting response re: under-theorized, de-politicized "fad" pedagogies."

After seeing his responses, I decided to push back against his approach to learning in social spaces.

I explained -- much like I do to the kids in my classroom -- that it is only possible to learn from people with different points of view when you see them as partners instead of opponents. 

His response:  "Thinking 'with' folks who help hollow out teachers' work isn't on my agenda.  Call it a character flaw."

So I blocked him.  I figured that anyone who was unwilling to listen with an open mind deserved the same fate as the strippers and spammers -- and, strangely enough, Scottsdale periodontists -- who swill through my learning stream on a daily basis. 

But I won't lie:  I always feel a little dirty when I block an educator on my blog or in my Twitterstream. 

I LOVE pushback because it helps me to polish my own thinking -- which means I'm always on the lookout for people with different points of view that I can learn from.  And as a guy who believes in the power of collaboration, I'm always somewhat convinced that I have a responsibility to work together with anyone who comes my way.

But I'm also incredibly protective of my learning spaces.  The simple fact of the matter is that I don't have a ton of time for learning -- so every time that I turn to my blog or to Twitter, I want to be with people who see me as a learning partner whether they agree with me or not.

When people come along showing a complete disregard for the thoughts of others -- call it "working and playing well with others" if you want -- I'm simply not going to allow them to ruin my learning. 

And the beauty of digital spaces it that I don't HAVE to let them ruin my learning. 

Still MORE on Flipping the Faculty Meeting

Back in early July, I wrote two posts (see here and here) suggesting that if school principals REALLY wanted to see teachers flipping their classrooms, that they should consider flipping their faculty meetings. 

My reasoning was simple:  Teachers won't be convinced that flipping the classroom carries benefits FOR learners until they experience those benefits first-hand AS learners. 

Heck - who are we kidding: Teachers won't be convinced that flipping the classroom is even DOABLE until they experience flipping first-hand -- and what better way to expose teachers to a flipped learning environment than to model those environments in our regularly scheduled faculty meetings.

The posts really touched a chord, receiving just over 10,000 page views in a month and sparking a bunch of action on the part of school leaders around the country -- including several first-attempts at flipping faculty meetings by folks like ME Steele-Pierce.

I was most jazzed, though, by the packed session on Flipping the Faculty Meeting run by my digital pal Damian Bariexca at Edcamp Leadership. 

Not only was Damian surprised by how many school leaders turned up for the conversation, he was blown away by how willing they were to collectively think through the challenges of making flipped faculty meetings a reality.

#thatscool

One of the core questions the group wrestled with over and over again -- which Damian attributes to Marc Seigel -- was, “What is the most effective use of our time together?”

My answer to that question is a simple one:  When teachers are together, they should be studying the characteristics of effective instruction -- and sadly, that hardly EVER happens in traditional faculty meetings.

But it would be a BREEZE in a flipped faculty meeting!

So here's another challenge to school leaders:  Early next year, go to one of your best classroom teachers and record about 15 minutes of one of their lessons.  Capture different moments -- maybe the way that they open the lesson or the way that they use higher level questions to challenge their students.

Then, break your video into five-minute segments.  Upload each segment to a different slide in a VoiceThread presentation and then share the final product with your staff at least a week before your next faculty meeting. 

Ask your staff to watch the video in advance -- either alone or with their learning teams -- and to answer the questions in this practice centered observation protocal in comments around the actual VoiceThread slides or on a handout that they'll be required to turn in.

When you actually gather as a faculty, have teachers work in table groups to reflect on the lesson that they observed. 

Encourage them to use the commenting feature of VoiceThread to highlight strengths of the instructional practices that they observed in action. Just as importantly, encourage them to offer suggestions about how the practice can be polished and improved.

By doing so, you'd accomplish a thousand leadership goals, wouldn't you?

First, you'd be modeling the power of a flipped classroom.  By having teachers consume content and reflect in advance, you'd free time for more powerful conversations when you're actually in the same room together -- which is one of the main advantages of flipping anything.   

You'd also be making the kinds of accomplished practices that are common in your building transparent to everyone -- something that rarely happens in the sadly isolated reality of most traditional schools -- and modeling the kinds of questions that are asked and answered by peers who study practice together.

But most importantly, you'd be reminding your faculty that the time that you spend together should be spent on studying teaching and learning -- and THAT's a message that we ALL need to hear over and over again.

Does any of this make sense?

More importantly, is it actually doable?

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Related Radical Reads:

What If You Flipped Your Faculty Meetings?

More Ideas for Flipping Faculty Meetings

Practice-Centered Observation Protocol [Handout]