Leadership Day 2009

"Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future." Edwin H. Friddman

If you are a school administrator what is your vision for the future? Have you articulated your vision for education in the age of technology to your staff? Are you leading the change or have you developed a 'let's wait and see where this is going' policy?

More than ever leaders need to be learners. Have you ever said to your staff, "Here's something I learned about on Twitter." Or shared something from your RSS feed? A few months ago an administrator handed me a magazine with an article in it he thought I might enjoy. That same article is available online. It can be shared out to multiple people simultaneously and then conversations can be started.

Why leaders as learners?

- Taking even 15 minutes a day to learn something new will change your world and that of your students.
- With perhaps only a handful of people in your district who do the same job, using technology can enhance the ways in which you connect and support each other. Start a blog. Use Twitter. Create a wiki of resources for admin. Start a collaborative collection of bookmarks using delicious.
- Technology is not a passing trend. It's not going away. Ever.

Resources and Starting Places

I asked my own PLN to suggest the names of people that administrators might follow on Twitter. While this is a matter of personal choice and learning style these will get you started. Look to see who they are following as well. One person suggested following @shareski's blog, in fact most of these people write blogs that are well worth reading.
@shareski (read his blog too: Ideas and Thoughts
@wfryer @chrkennedy
@chrislehmann @courosa
@datruss @dogtrax
@Principals

There is a list on the Twitter4Teachers/Principals page. If you can suggest others please leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

David Truss has sites for administrators bookmarked on delicious.

A few suggestions for blogs to follow are listed on the Seycove Library wiki.

Read these summaries of other's reflections on effective school technology leadership from Scott McLeod's blog :
Dangerously Irrelevant - Leadership Day 2007
Dangerously Irrelevant - Leadership Day 2008

And for some inspiration, take a look at this Wordle created when Ann Johnston (@amjohnston) asked, "Which words would you use to emphasize an administrator's role in technology?"

"In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer

Don't say things are moving too fast. It may work out for tomorrow's students but our concern is for the students who are sitting in our classrooms today. Are they being well served? Are you leading the change?

Playing Tag

Image used under a Creative Commons License by ocean.flynn
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Let's face it, many of the things educators learn these days are done on the fly, squashed in between lesson planning and marking. Done in a just-ahead-of-time way to use in class with students the next day. There's a price to pay for this kind of learning, one that I am dealing with this week as I attempt to tidy up my online bookmarks in delicious.

By some standards I have a great many bookmarks. As more of the resources I direct students and teachers to become available online my list of bookmarks grows. This week I began some spring cleaning by weeding out similar tags. For example, I'll keep resource and delete resources.

In workshops I explain tags as similar to the words one would see in the index of a book. Some people recommend using as many tags as possible, others say fewer are better. As I look at the way I've used tags I think I've come up with a better plan for tagging, keeping in mind how I will search for the links later.

- use subject tags like English or Socials
- consider the type of information: resource, tutorial, howto
- use all singular or all plural tagging: tutorial or tutorials
- add the author's or creator's name if there is one
- decide how to deal with multiple word tags, some popular ones are the hyphen, underscore, forward slash or period. I'm tending towards using the period: copyright.friendly

When I recently searched for some examples of how blogs are used in English classes I used these two standard tags: blog, english and added in other tags as needed: poetry, guidelines, commenting, writing etc.

So there you have it, some of my simple rules for making sense of my delicious tags. If you need me, I'll be slogging through my tags, cleaning them up and wishing I'd had these guidelines in mind when I started tagging.

Some resources for learning about delicious:

Finding other educators who use delicious in the Delicious4Teachers wiki. Add your name to this wiki.

Firefox Add-on for using delicious.

Chris Betcher's "I Like Delicious Things" from the k12 online conference.

The Delicious Blog has great tips and tricks.

From YouTube "Getting Started With Delicious"

Not at NECC09

Mulling over the many wonderful ideas I gleaned from NECC09. The sessions I attended were inspiring, as were the conversations I was able to take part in. "But you didn't go to NECC09 did you?" I hear someone say.

Well, in a way I did, virtually. For all you who were there in person I would like to say: Thanks for making my own experience so rich. Thanks to all who made their live-blogging accessible, thanks to those in the back channels and chat rooms who engaged in rich conversations and provided links to resources, and thanks to my Twitter friends who alerted me to the places where those online conversations and events were taking place.

Here are a few of the things I've gotten from NECC this year:

- from Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand iPod session - stay posted, he'll be adding his session as a series of podcasts from his blog.

- from someone's tweet - Leslie Fisher's handout on iPhone/iTouch application support

- many great session notes from Wesley Fryer on his Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog.

- Steve Dembo's Top 10 Web2.0

- Edublogger's Web 2 Smackdown session. With my favourite part being when Kevin Honeycutt skyped in to talk about how he uses keychains in training sessions from the train on his way into NECC.

So there you have it, my week at NECC. All sessions attended as I sat in my PJs in the still of the early morning before the rest of the family emerged. The time difference worked in my favour. I may have missed the face to face meetings but I took so much away to mull over and plan with for the coming year.

And I have to ask myself, which might have been the richer experience, attending in person or virtually? I had no jet lag to contend with. I was fresh each morning as I arose from a good night's sleep in my own bed. I may have missed the excitement of meeting twitter friends for the first time. There were sessions that provided no live streaming and therefore I could not attend.

It's something to think about.

What's New?

While catching up some of my RSS feeds I came across this post from Rodd Lucier on the Clever Sheep. He asked on Twitter, "What are you doing in your classroom today that wasn't possible 5 years ago?" and shares the answers in his post.

I am not sure what I am doing that wasn't possible 5 years ago but I do know what has become part of my daily practice. Here's the short list:

- Using Skype to plan, ask for help, explore new ideas.
- Writing this blog.
- Creating school accounts on Facebook, Delicious, Pageflakes, Wikispaces, Blogspot, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.
- Using a flip camera to record students work, ideas in meetings, school events.
- Attending a number of presentations, discussions, workshops and conferences virtually.
- Using delicious as a search engine.
- Building a PLN on Twitter and through my RSS feeds.
- Reading blogs and news daily through my RSS feeds.
- Building library resource pages using wikispaces, pageflakes and delicious.
- Chatting online with colleagues in my district and around the world to share resources and collaborate.
- Collaborating using Google Docs.

I'm sure I've left something off the list because it has become so ingrained that I don't even notice I'm using it anymore.

What tools or practices have become an invaluable part of your work day? What one tool or idea would you pass on to someone else? Where might you be 5 years down the road?

Too Cool - Livescribe

I met with a couple of techie colleagues today and got to watch the livescribe system in action. It had me using words like amazing! and whoa! with all the restraint of a 13-year-old let loose with a bag of coins at the video arcade.

This amazing tool (I warned you) comes with an electronic pen and special notebook. It records the conversation as you take notes. When you plug the pen into your laptop it stores each page which then appears as if you had scanned it in. The notes are searchable and you can send a link to them to other people in an email. The file can be downloaded as a PDF, shared on Facebook or embedded on a web page. For a sneak peek at how it works look here.

It lets you take doodling at meetings to a whole new level as this Youtube video demonstrates. You can ask it the time or use it as a calculator with results displaying in a small screen on the side of the pen.

So now I am sitting at home listening to our meeting as I read over the notes taken during our session. This is one powerful system.

Dear Santa,
I've been a very good girl this year ...

Photo used under a Creative Commons License from cogdogblog
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/3371119819/sizes/m/
Thanks Alan!

Creating a web2.0 Library with Pageflakes

Inspired by The Unquiet Library's Pageflakes I spent some time today developing several pages for my high school library. Several weeks ago I staked our claim by setting up accounts on Twitter, Facebook and delicious in addition to the library wiki I set up some time ago. I am so very happy that The Unquiet Library has been generous enough to share their pages. It has given me a starting place that I can learn from and build on. I hope to encourage staff members to start their own pages which can be added as this resource grows.

This YouTube video gives a quick explanation on sharing options for your pages - Pageflakes: how to share your page.

One of my main reasons for taking the library online has been to encourage students to read using as many tools as possible. The Unquiet Library has some great ideas for feeds on their YA Lit 2.0 page. These include author interviews and book trailers from YouTube, author blogs and teen books review blogs.

A Teen Author Blog index can be found on the TeenLib Wiki. At the bottom of the list of authors are links to other lists of teen author blogs. I chose a couple of authors that are popular with our students as well as the fabulous Reading Rants blog.

Check your local public library for blog feeds. Ours is running a summer reading book club that I've added a feed for.

This will be a work in progress as I hope to:
- add pages for socials, science and english classes
- set up pages for specific large research projects
- add a flickr feed for images around a theme.
- create news feeds for events such as elections or the upcoming 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Are you using Pageflakes or an equivalent service like Netvibes? How do you envision it being used to serve a school library community? Please offer your comments!

Image credit to me!

Reflection and Planning

Every June I start my September file. As I tidy up my office I reflect on what was successful this past year and what I would like to focus on in the new school year.

When I still get requests from staff asking about a website I forwarded to them some time ago I know I need to revisit social bookmarking with them. The benefits of learning to use social bookmarking well are numerous. Socials, Science and English teachers in the district are banding together to build strong collections of material resources found online and have created delicious accounts for this purpose. I plan to teach my staff how to use delicious as a search engine to turn up useful sites.

When I read posts from powerhouse educators I know I can adapt their ideas to my situation.

Kim Cofino writes about the monthly coffee and technology sessions for parents held at her school. Our circumstances are different from those in an International School so mornings won't work for us. I plan to approach our Parent Advisory Council about doing a monthly tech evening.

Doug Johnson's post on the practice of "mini" research encapsulates the essence of good practice when it comes to teaching students how to become thoughful researchers. I plan to visit each department in September and start discussions around how to make research and problem solving an integral part of each day's lesson.

I try to use this time to create useful resources to add to the school websiste like some quick tips for using Google Docs. The more I use Google Docs the more I love it. Today I discovered that you can check the spelling of a word, look up synonyms or pull up an encyclopedia article on the word. I also discovered that you can insert bookmarks into a document that work as shortcuts to places within the document. This will be very useful for longer projects that require an index or table of contents.

What interesting projects are you considering for next year? Post a comment and tell us about them.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Dominic's pics
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