Why does so much technology training focus on the steps? I figured out a while back that one of the key pieces of technology staff development is to stop teaching applications. I'm not saying we abandon teaching the steps to make something happen. But it should not be the focus of what we are teaching.
Are teachers interested in advanced word processing skills? Are secretaries interested in databases and merges? Are students interested in spreadsheets?
Teachers are interested in created more effective digital documents. Secretaries are interested in pulling information together quickly and easily. Students are interested in how many kids like Oreos more than chocolate chip cookies. That is what we need to teach them! Identify a problem or a question for them. One they want to know the answer to. If they really want to know the answer, if teachers really want to know how to create a digital quiz, they will learn the form tools in Word. If kids really want to see which cookie is more popular, they will learn the spreadsheet. They will ask you for the steps instead of you force feeding them.
Why is it so hard, even for teachers, to realize that adults as much as students need to see meaning in what they learn?
Why the rant here... Simple. I need to get my staff developers to stop teaching just the steps to do things. They work hard. They believe in what they are doing. They see the power of what they are teaching for their students (the teachers). They need to deliver it differently when they do formal workshops.
In their day to day job, where they help teachers get things done using technology, this always happens. One on one, the teachers come to them with ideas of HOW to use technology for TEACHING and LEARNING. They don't know they need advanced Word skills to do it. They don't know they will need to use a spreadsheet, or Inspiration. But they want to. That is when they are ready for the steps. These steps may change when software or hardware changes. But once they get the concept of how they can use that type of software or hardware, it is so much easier to teach and to learn the steps!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
STOP TALKING!
I need to figure out how to get people to stop talking. It is difficult to provide constructive feedback to someone when they are talking instead of listening. At least she was talking about what she would have done differently!
Any advice?
Any advice?
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Power of Technology???
Last Wednesday afternoon we were told by our power conservation contractor that we were going to have to cut power consumption in the district by 500kwh between the hours of 1 and 2 on Thursday. This type of less than 24 hour notice cut back can save the district a good amount of money if we can meet the mark.
Still, with less than 24 hours to plan, this was bound to be a challenge. Add to that the communication challenge of making it happen and you get a mess. Let's start with how the communication went.
The Secretary to the Superintendent sent out an email to all administrators stating a MANDATORY power conservation period from 1 to 2pm. This message went out at 3pm on Wednesday. The message stated that all steps were to be taken to conserve power including shutting down ALL computer systems. The tech department was instructed by our network coordinator to remotely shut down all computers and building level servers at 12:55pm.
As Thursday morning hit, the tech dept. was going over the procedures to shut down the servers as well as restart them so this could go off without a hitch. This is a complicated process when you are talking about 8 authentication and data servers, as well as 8 application servers. Luckily, we would not have to shut down the servers in the administration center.
At 8:30, I decided to call each principal personally to ensure their staff had been notified. The High School Principal, the first I called, had autonomously decided not to notify his staff. He felt that because the marking period had ended on Wednesday and grades were due Monday, it just wasn't a good idea. I tried to stand firm and told him it was a mandatory situation and he should call the Assistant Superintendent for Buildings and Grounds who then referred him to the Superintendent of Schools when he would not give in.
The Superintendent agreed with the HS principal and allowed him to keep the HS functional and instruct the staff to turn things off manually unless they were used for grading. When I was made aware of this, I notified the Superintendent that the grading issue was not isolated at the HS as our Middle Schools had grades due at the same time. At 10:30am the Middle Schools were informed that they could stay up for grading as well.
The Elementary Schools shut down and came back up as planned. We will not know for e few weeks if we met the required minimum reduction to receive our rebate of a few THOUSAND dollars. I do know that our desktop computers district wide use 675kw/h. Thats right.. just the desktops, no servers, switches, routers, or printers.
Yes 24 hours notice is very short. However, communication here should have been much clearer. Our buildings and grounds people should have immediately gotten together with the superintendent, principals, and tech department so that all of this could have been cleared the night before and those of us who were running around all morning Thursday could have avoided the expenditure of all the Advil! Report cards being due was no surprise.
All in all though, as we monitored things from the central office, we only had 21 computers on at the HS during that 1 hour period. I think the principal may have over reacted at the down time, but I am sure he didn't want to have 21 teachers arguing with him that they couldn't get their grades in on time. If we had gotten the message out earlier that any use other than report cards needed to be curtailed, my day would have been a whole lot more sane!
Still, with less than 24 hours to plan, this was bound to be a challenge. Add to that the communication challenge of making it happen and you get a mess. Let's start with how the communication went.
The Secretary to the Superintendent sent out an email to all administrators stating a MANDATORY power conservation period from 1 to 2pm. This message went out at 3pm on Wednesday. The message stated that all steps were to be taken to conserve power including shutting down ALL computer systems. The tech department was instructed by our network coordinator to remotely shut down all computers and building level servers at 12:55pm.
As Thursday morning hit, the tech dept. was going over the procedures to shut down the servers as well as restart them so this could go off without a hitch. This is a complicated process when you are talking about 8 authentication and data servers, as well as 8 application servers. Luckily, we would not have to shut down the servers in the administration center.
At 8:30, I decided to call each principal personally to ensure their staff had been notified. The High School Principal, the first I called, had autonomously decided not to notify his staff. He felt that because the marking period had ended on Wednesday and grades were due Monday, it just wasn't a good idea. I tried to stand firm and told him it was a mandatory situation and he should call the Assistant Superintendent for Buildings and Grounds who then referred him to the Superintendent of Schools when he would not give in.
The Superintendent agreed with the HS principal and allowed him to keep the HS functional and instruct the staff to turn things off manually unless they were used for grading. When I was made aware of this, I notified the Superintendent that the grading issue was not isolated at the HS as our Middle Schools had grades due at the same time. At 10:30am the Middle Schools were informed that they could stay up for grading as well.
The Elementary Schools shut down and came back up as planned. We will not know for e few weeks if we met the required minimum reduction to receive our rebate of a few THOUSAND dollars. I do know that our desktop computers district wide use 675kw/h. Thats right.. just the desktops, no servers, switches, routers, or printers.
Yes 24 hours notice is very short. However, communication here should have been much clearer. Our buildings and grounds people should have immediately gotten together with the superintendent, principals, and tech department so that all of this could have been cleared the night before and those of us who were running around all morning Thursday could have avoided the expenditure of all the Advil! Report cards being due was no surprise.
All in all though, as we monitored things from the central office, we only had 21 computers on at the HS during that 1 hour period. I think the principal may have over reacted at the down time, but I am sure he didn't want to have 21 teachers arguing with him that they couldn't get their grades in on time. If we had gotten the message out earlier that any use other than report cards needed to be curtailed, my day would have been a whole lot more sane!
Staff Development and non-instructional staff
We had a staff development day last week and had decided a long time ago to provide some technology training for our secretaries. We have been having issues with them and the sharing of data between different types of software and wanted to help them in this area. In addition, there are some new features of our email system we wanted to show them. Sounds great, right? Well...
I had my new staff developer delivering one session with the support of another staff developer in the room. I reviewed her outline, talked to her about her plan, asked if she was comfortable enough with all of the software and gave her tons of lead time. I gave her the opportunity to work with another staff developer who would be teaching the same session in another room. I thought everything should be in place and all should be ready.
Problem #1 was NOT the fault of the staff developer. It was me. The labs they were teaching in all had Office 2003. All of the secretaries have Office 2000. The documentation for them was created using 2003. This created some confusion when the secretaries got back to their desks and the steps were a bit different and buttons were in other places.
This was my mistake and should not have happened. This is one of the reasons standardization of software is so important. I was under the impression they all had 2003 because the secretary across the hall from me does. NEVER ASSUME!!!!!
I guess the next issue was my fault as well. Overconfidence in my staff developer led me to allowing her to go in without me really looking at every step of her plan. I spent an hour observing the session. The staff developer has experience in presentation. She is a former teacher, literacy coach, and has a CAS in administration. I had high expectations from her first formal session in our district.
She walked people through the steps of each of the skills we were hoping to teach. Period. She slowed down and helped each one when they had trouble to the best of her ability. If they had questions on how they could use a particular skill to do something a bit different, she could not always answer. She did not know the software well enough. She had assured both myself and the other staff developer that she did. Often times, her supporting staff developer had to jump in and eventually took over once of twice.
This led the secretaries to a lack of confidence in the expertise of the presenter, NEVER a good thing. Where some were comfortable with the pacing, others thought it was slow. This is a challenge for all in tech staff development and we should know how to handle it.
What disappointed me the most was the instruction itself. There were no Anticipatory Sets, no meaning was provided for the learning. There was no closure. If she was teaching to an objective, I wasn't sure what it was. Although the lesson was at the appropriate level of difficulty for the group, there was no differentiation.
Our post observation conference s coming up. I will post how that goes. It is sure to be interesting.
Now the big trick will be how to get the secretaries to go into the next staff development day in the spring with a positive attitude. The last thing I want to do is waste their time. I sent out a feedback for asking for suggestions for our next opportunity. I also re-wrote and sent specific instructions for some of the skills they had learned the other day. Of course, I wrote them and used screenshots for Office2000. My direction were VERY specific. The ones they received in the session were bullet points and would not have been clear to the staff if they did not use them immediately following the session. Hopefully, their confidence in the whole tech department in terms of PD is not destroyed.
I had my new staff developer delivering one session with the support of another staff developer in the room. I reviewed her outline, talked to her about her plan, asked if she was comfortable enough with all of the software and gave her tons of lead time. I gave her the opportunity to work with another staff developer who would be teaching the same session in another room. I thought everything should be in place and all should be ready.
Problem #1 was NOT the fault of the staff developer. It was me. The labs they were teaching in all had Office 2003. All of the secretaries have Office 2000. The documentation for them was created using 2003. This created some confusion when the secretaries got back to their desks and the steps were a bit different and buttons were in other places.
This was my mistake and should not have happened. This is one of the reasons standardization of software is so important. I was under the impression they all had 2003 because the secretary across the hall from me does. NEVER ASSUME!!!!!
I guess the next issue was my fault as well. Overconfidence in my staff developer led me to allowing her to go in without me really looking at every step of her plan. I spent an hour observing the session. The staff developer has experience in presentation. She is a former teacher, literacy coach, and has a CAS in administration. I had high expectations from her first formal session in our district.
She walked people through the steps of each of the skills we were hoping to teach. Period. She slowed down and helped each one when they had trouble to the best of her ability. If they had questions on how they could use a particular skill to do something a bit different, she could not always answer. She did not know the software well enough. She had assured both myself and the other staff developer that she did. Often times, her supporting staff developer had to jump in and eventually took over once of twice.
This led the secretaries to a lack of confidence in the expertise of the presenter, NEVER a good thing. Where some were comfortable with the pacing, others thought it was slow. This is a challenge for all in tech staff development and we should know how to handle it.
What disappointed me the most was the instruction itself. There were no Anticipatory Sets, no meaning was provided for the learning. There was no closure. If she was teaching to an objective, I wasn't sure what it was. Although the lesson was at the appropriate level of difficulty for the group, there was no differentiation.
Our post observation conference s coming up. I will post how that goes. It is sure to be interesting.
Now the big trick will be how to get the secretaries to go into the next staff development day in the spring with a positive attitude. The last thing I want to do is waste their time. I sent out a feedback for asking for suggestions for our next opportunity. I also re-wrote and sent specific instructions for some of the skills they had learned the other day. Of course, I wrote them and used screenshots for Office2000. My direction were VERY specific. The ones they received in the session were bullet points and would not have been clear to the staff if they did not use them immediately following the session. Hopefully, their confidence in the whole tech department in terms of PD is not destroyed.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Library Redux
The Library Task Force finally met. The frustrations in procedure were clearly expressed by many of the teachers and the Library Aide.
I would rather not get into all of the details in such a public forum, but I can express the outcome and my reflection on my place within this situation. The procedural issues were cleared up rather quickly as the rationale behind the procedural changes are very clearly stated in the task force's goals. Make the library a more friendly environment.
The personnel issues were handled by myself and the High School Principal. We both made it clear what we felt was not being done. We set out very clear steps we felt needed to be taken immediately. The librarian will perform certain tasks over the next few weeks that are usually handled by the aide in order to be sure she is capable of running the library in the event the aide is not there.
I would rather not get into all of the details in such a public forum, but I can express the outcome and my reflection on my place within this situation. The procedural issues were cleared up rather quickly as the rationale behind the procedural changes are very clearly stated in the task force's goals. Make the library a more friendly environment.
The personnel issues were handled by myself and the High School Principal. We both made it clear what we felt was not being done. We set out very clear steps we felt needed to be taken immediately. The librarian will perform certain tasks over the next few weeks that are usually handled by the aide in order to be sure she is capable of running the library in the event the aide is not there.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Too much testing?
I found this interesting. I will add my thoughts as I have time.
Dangerously Irrelevant - Backlash against progress monitoring
Dangerously Irrelevant - Backlash against progress monitoring
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The Dreaded Filter
A teacher emailed me yesterday trying to use a Youtube video, which is blocked in our district. I was able to pull down the video and convert it to a format she can use. The issue of what is and is not blocked once again came to the forefront of my day. We are relatively open. We do not block all social networking (although we do block myspace). We do not block blogs or wikis.
Our filter has its limitations. What is in each category is defined by the company although we can choose which ones to block. The problem is our custom whitelist and blacklist is limited to 255 entries. Overall, our settings are pretty good. Most web 2.0 tools are accessible. I can use twitter, post to this blog, use google docs, etc. Sometimes I forget how open we are.
After getting the video this teacher needed, which was of excellent quality and directly relevant to her course content, I asked the teacher if she thought we should open youtube.
Here was her response:
"hmmmm that is a loaded question. I think that there are so many great videos on utube, but they are far outweighed by the ridiculously inappropriate ones. Searches turn up videos that are of no use to a classroom teacher. It can be very dangerous. I guess that about sums it up. With a very HIGH level of guidance utube can be a great resource, but without that guidance it could be disastrous."
I couldn't agree with her more. If we had the ability to open it just for teachers I would. Our filter does not distinguish between users. I wish it did.
Here is an interesting post I noticed today on this very issue:
And another:
Our filter has its limitations. What is in each category is defined by the company although we can choose which ones to block. The problem is our custom whitelist and blacklist is limited to 255 entries. Overall, our settings are pretty good. Most web 2.0 tools are accessible. I can use twitter, post to this blog, use google docs, etc. Sometimes I forget how open we are.
After getting the video this teacher needed, which was of excellent quality and directly relevant to her course content, I asked the teacher if she thought we should open youtube.
Here was her response:
"hmmmm that is a loaded question. I think that there are so many great videos on utube, but they are far outweighed by the ridiculously inappropriate ones. Searches turn up videos that are of no use to a classroom teacher. It can be very dangerous. I guess that about sums it up. With a very HIGH level of guidance utube can be a great resource, but without that guidance it could be disastrous."
I couldn't agree with her more. If we had the ability to open it just for teachers I would. Our filter does not distinguish between users. I wish it did.
Here is an interesting post I noticed today on this very issue:
And another:
From the Roundtable to the Board
Informing the roundtable group (Assistant Superintendents and the Superintendent) of what an emergency notification system can do for us (and can't) was a pleasure to do. It is a system I believe can help our district in a few ways.
Apparently they agreed as the moment they finished asking their questions, they invited me to present my findings to the Board next week. I am excited at the opportunity as this is a great way to use technology to increase our communication with the community.
It also gets another competency for my internship done!
Apparently they agreed as the moment they finished asking their questions, they invited me to present my findings to the Board next week. I am excited at the opportunity as this is a great way to use technology to increase our communication with the community.
It also gets another competency for my internship done!
PD -- not just for teachers
I am currently supervising the development of a 1/2 day of professional development for our clerical staff. Yes, clerical staff. If they cannot use technology effectively, it makes everyone's job more difficult, including the kids!
Emergency Notifications
Today I am presenting to our district level administration on Emergency Notification Systems. They have been in the news a bunch lately at the university level because of recent tragedies. But they can do more.
I am trying to maintain my focus on students and instruction. How do these systems help in that respect? The systems can notify parents of ANYTHING. Food service balances, attendance, special events, school closings, and emergencies. Research shows a 2% increase in attendance when the systems are used. Keeping parents and kids involved in school in every possible way is a gain in my book!
The notifications can go out by phone, SMS, and email and are relatively instant. This means not having someone making 75 phone calls all day long. That translates to more time and resources focused on helping students and teachers do a better job. My hope is that we can implement something like this by the end of the year.
I am trying to maintain my focus on students and instruction. How do these systems help in that respect? The systems can notify parents of ANYTHING. Food service balances, attendance, special events, school closings, and emergencies. Research shows a 2% increase in attendance when the systems are used. Keeping parents and kids involved in school in every possible way is a gain in my book!
The notifications can go out by phone, SMS, and email and are relatively instant. This means not having someone making 75 phone calls all day long. That translates to more time and resources focused on helping students and teachers do a better job. My hope is that we can implement something like this by the end of the year.
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