From a storytelling perspective, I struggled with this one. I have about 90 minutes of footage including about 65 minutes of interviews. Trying to edit that down to something that captures the essence of a story without leaving out any key ideas is challenging. I also had difficulty finding a style that would work.

As you can see, I decided to write a short narrative to provide some background at the beginning and also included another short description in between. After spending the hours I did on this over a 4 month period, it’s hard to tell if you’ve communicated the message you intended. I hope I have.

Of course I subscribe to Will’s blog but it wasn’t until someone tweeted it again, did I go back to re read it, or read it properly. As I read it I realized I needed all our administrators to read it too. We have a division weblog of sorts that gets used primarily by me but felt that’s the best place to post the idea.  I’ve been pretty gentle with talking to teachers and administrators about sharing. I’ve hinted at the idea that it might be their professional responsibility, but Will’s post made the argument more compelling.

…there is certainly much I could learn from them if they were sharing. But most of them are not.

In this same vein, I have more and more of an expectation of the teachers and especially the administrators in our schools to lead transparent lives. The fact that they are veritably “un-googleable” in terms of finding anything they have created and shared and perhaps collaborated with others on troubles me on a number of levels. First, I can’t see for myself whether or not they are learners. And, almost more importantly, I get no sense as to whether or not they are leaders of learners. Whether they are in the classroom or in the front office, I want (demand?) the adults in my schools to be effective models for living in a transparent world. I want my kids to see them navigating these spaces effectively, sharing what they know, teaching others outside of their physical space, and contributing to the conversation.

Demand. Strong word which Will puts in parenthesis and adds a question mark behind it. I realize it’s tough to demand people to share but when we toss our phrases like “life long learner”, “professional responsibility”, “modeling” and “learning communities” these quickly become catch phrases that have little or no substance.  Even with our small school division of 40 schools, there are almost 80 school administrators that could be highly connected and learning from each other every day. Instead they gather a few times a year, spend most of the time catching up, complain a little and then address the more important issues, with a select few only to have time run out. That’s fixable. Easily. These are smart, caring, innovative people who should be learning with and from each other every day.  That goes for teachers, students and central office people. It’s been rewarding to work with pre-service teachers and lead them to this idea. Some may say I’ve forced them to share. But others have come to embrace it.

I’m going to start stepping up the language and if not demand, strongly encourage us to be more transparent.

One email later to three people and the deal was done. Lee Kolbert was gracious enough to let us use their Adobe Connect as a platform which proved to suit our situation well. Tom Barrett would be able to chime in from England and Tim Lauer would have to grab an early Starbucks but was ready by 7:30.

Students asked questions, we gave some answers. Easy squeezy.

This is how classrooms ought to look. Learning from people.

If you generally think of the Internet as a place to look up stuff, you’re missing the best part.

This is not just about “wow is this ever cool”. This is about learning. Learning from someone who:

• has a lemon tree and grows lemons
• can see Mount St. Helens
• lives in the city famous for Robin Hood

Do you see how this might make a difference in classrooms? Is there some potential here? Those of you who do this everyday in your classrooms know exactly what I’m talking about. 

This is my first attempt to do anything beyond a few basic edits in iMovie 08. It captures about 5 minutes of the 30 minute conversation. (the video may not be processed, if you’re one of the early viewers of the post)

prairiesouth, centralbutte, barbmcinnis, timlauer, tombarrett, leekolbert

My district is 3 years old, an amalgamation of 7 small districts into 1. Building culture, unity and morale has been challenging but in many ways is going really well. The big challenge I have is that I’m the only person really focusing on technology, outside of our online classes, supporting 35 schools and 7,000 students. I’m good, but I’m not that good. We previously had some level of instructional support at the school level but staff cuts have pretty much reduced to zero at most schools. So how can I possibly help teachers make the shifts necessary to develop rich, relevant learning for students?

Although I’d love more support, I recognize that’s not likely to happen. What I do have is a group of administrators who for the most part want to push the envelope and provide teachers with everything they can to make them better.

We have a number of administrators committed to changing schools to providing authentic, relevant and connected classrooms. They challenge their teachers to become better, and are truly instructional leaders as opposed to paper pushers. They allow their teachers to try and explore. I’ve begun many great conversations with them and sense their desire for change.

These folks are the real key to the change. So every 6 weeks when they meet, I get some time to plant seeds of change and they’re taking root. The overall plan for our division likely doesn’t look like many strategic plans. We’ve resisted trying to get to specific but rather employ principles of learning that will last.  We are using the new ISTE standards as a guide and specifically this year we’ll pay attention to the second student standard of Communication and Collaboration.

Today I brought in 5 teachers who are on the right track, specifically in the area of social learning.  I asked administrators to move from station to station allowing teachers to share, for them to ask questions and try to learn more about what they do in their classrooms. I then invited any administrators to share with their schools and contact me about developing some ongoing support both face to face and online.

I immediately had some great conversations afterwards from a number of principals as they either enter into social learning or enhance what they have. I have no illusions in knowing there will be some who just don’t buy in, but I’m not worried about those as much as I am glad to have the vast majority looking forward and supporting teachers.

So our model has been to share, invite, support and learn together.  We don’t typically run workshops for blogging, or any other of the latest software. We count on teachers to make the changes and they are. If there is an interest in learning a new tool, we’ll try and find someone or I’ll do the work but we want to focus on big ideas of teaching and learning, “what are the shifts we need to make?” We are building capacity by holding up our champions and doing what we can to allow them to flourish and encourage others. Slow at times but it’s the model we’re sticking with.

prairiesouth, administrators

Our school division will be hosting a day long event with Ewan Mcintosh. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ewan’s work, he is outstanding advocate of social media and has been involved with Scotland’s very progressive curriculum innovations.

Here’s a some more information about the day:

Scotland meets Saskatchewan Outline

9:00-10:30
Presentation: Scotland’s story: how curriculum meets innovation
The new curriculum, developed with the profession and parents over several years, has ‘allowed’ more teachers to break with tradition and take up new technologies to facilitate children’s learning. The curricular moves share much in common with Canada’s states’ and provinces’, so what are the similarities and differences in technology, professional development and the way students learn?

11:00-12:30
Roundtable:Assessment is for learning and making the links through new technologies – share experiences from both sides of the pond.

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00
Practical workshop:Thinking Out Of The (X)box
Scotland is leading the way in some respects of games-based learning. Experience some of the methodology and ideas in this practical workshop.

6:00-7:30
Focus on Leadership Dinner: Ewan will focus on leadership and explore Scotland’s approach and experience with leading change.

7:30-9:30
TeachMeet08 Saskatchewan
An unconference for teachers, by teachers. Share something from your classroom or professional learning in a seven-minute micro-presentation, two-minute nano-presentation or simply be an enthusiastic lurker.

To register, email me shareski.dean at prairiesouth.ca by June 22.

$75 Covers your cost for the day. If you planning to attend the evening meal, please add another $25.
Make your cheques payable to: Prairie South School Division and send them to:

Prairie School School Division
Attn: Dean Shareski
15 Thatcher Dr.
Moose Jaw, SK
S6J 1L

This is going to be an outstanding day!

Because of a last minute cancellation I was asked to do an additional session. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to suggest the conveners invite Carla Dolman to do a session on her use of cellphones in the classroom. Maybe my smartest decision of the year. Carla agreed and decided to bring with her a half a dozen kids to help her. You should have seen these kids.

I wished I’d have capture it. Carla began briefly by outlining the thoughts behind the experiment to use cellphones. After about 15 minutes she paused and asked for questions. The audience of about 75 immediately began asking the students questions. “Did it change your learning? Were you tempted to use it to text or call in off task ways? Was it just a novelty? How did students who didn’t have a cellphone feel? Are you still using it for learning?” Hard, challenging, important questions. These 13 and 14 year olds handled them with a poise and sophistication that would make any teacher or parent proud. I sat back with awe and pride as they took turns, not by design, but simply as polished presenters would in responding to questions and concerns. Wow. Then Carla allowed them to share their formal presentation where they discussed the details of their learning as well as educated the audience about the language they communicate with everyday. Finally they had everyone take out their phones and begin showing them how to use bluetooth and soon they had everyone buzzing with learning as they facilitated a hands on learning experience.

While the story about cellphones is a great one itself, watching students present ideas to a real audience about something they were engaged with was another Tlt highlight. They blew me away.

Now I’m thinking about how I might get them to share their story with more people in yet another live, interactive setting. I feel a ustream presentation coming.

After the video, I talked for a few minutes about trends I see and what where we need to be headed. The Board members responded with some great comments and questions. One Board member recognized that while he might not have the understanding of how learning and education is changing, he knows we have to do a better job sharing this with parents. Another mentioned his excitement for a virtual school project that’s currently on hold. Still another shared a story about his granddaughter who asked him about bio-diesel fuel and when he didn’t give her the answer she wanted said she’d ask Mr. Google. It’s clear they embrace the future.

I was clear to tell them we don’t have all the answers. I told them that many schools can’t figure out how to handle cellphones but they need to begin involving students and understanding its power. To demonstrate I asked if they knew the population of China. While they debated I texted 466453 and “population China” and had the answer set to me before they could come up with an answer. I emphasized that it requires shifts for our teachers and while we have some great examples of those that are on their way, we have a long way to go.

I came across this video from Susan Young after I presented. I wished I had it earlier. I think it would have told them even more.

Not for me. I’ve touched on this before and am currently working with our IT manager on a presentation at Tlt in a few weeks that deals with how we work together.

Today I was trying to access the chat portion in ustream. I had mentioned it casually with our IT staff and they said since it uses port 666 which is generally used for IRC, it could be potentially a threat. Makes sense. That’s their job, to protect and insure our network is stable and safe. But I persist. Since we all use Gtalk, it’s a quick IM conversation and here it is:

me: how hard is it to open port 666? Is it like a click of a button or some weirdly involved coding? temporarily I mean
stinndler: i have to log into the firewall console
find the right access-list then add the exception to it
all so you can use IRC
me: It’s part of Ustream…lots of online presenters use it.
stinndler: how many is lots?
me: I could join one everyday
stinndler: ustream.tv?
me: yep
I’m watching this right now http://www.ustream.tv/channel/weblogg-ed-tv
It’s basically over but just curious to see if we can do it.
stinndler: so it allows you to ask questions of the presenter?
me: that and chat with participants
stinndler: checking my firewall logs it looks like it’s always going to the same server
i could potentially open up port 6667 to just that server
that would remove the risk
me: that would be cool
you rock….you knew that right?
stinndler is typing…

That’s all it took. Conversation, relationships and common sense. Unfortunately, there are not that many school districts that operate this way. We need more stories and examples of effective relationships. I’ll be sure to post our presentation and materials on May 15th.